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boldlyvoid · 3 years

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Amoreena | chapter eleven

chapter eleven

main summary: Heaven is a real place and it's located exactly 14.6 miles away from the FBI, Quantico Headquarters. Off behind a small park, under a fantastical willow tree surrounded by wildflowers, in every colour young minds can imagine.

Don't forget, heaven also comes with angels.

Chapter Warnings: Y/N POV: details of what happened to Stephen, her grandmas cancer, and very detailed explanations of how babies are made (as biologically accurate and not very graphic as possible) this is an angsty trauma filled chapter that made me cry a lot just writing it so I'm sorry in advance

word count: 3K

from the beginning <3

June 13th, 2010

There’s a knock on her parent's door at 4 in the morning, Y/N’s sound asleep on the couch back at her grandma’s, awoken by said grandmother as she hears all the noise beyond the porch. There are 2 cop cars at the main house, worry starts to settle over them.

She puts on a pair of shoes, taking her grandmother's hand in hers as they begin the early morning trek up the road, anxiety seeping in deeper and deeper as they get closer to the lights illuminating their driveway.

Her father is talking to an officer on the steps, her mother is crying behind him. “We’re so sorry for your loss,” the officer says and Y/N’s blood runs cold, numbing her from the impending despair.

“What happened?” Her grandmother asks, rubbing a hand along Y/N’s back in preparation for the worst.

“Evan was in a car accident,” her father says softly, knowing that Y/N knows Stephen was with him tonight. She breaks away from her grandma and without thinking she’s right in the officer's face.

“Which one of them died?”

“Ma’am,” it was never a good way to start the worst conversation of her life with that word or in that tone. She felt like a '40s housewife learning her husband wasn’t coming home from the war, only he wasn’t even her husband yet.

He would have been on next Saturday.

“I’m sorry, Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” he says the worst sentence she’s ever heard, and now she’ll never forget it. “The passenger side took the worst of it, once again, I am so sorry for your loss.”

She’s surprisingly calm, managing to whisper, “thank you,” before she’s walking off into the field, pushing everyone's hands away as she travels as far as he feet will take her.

She ends up at the willow tree by the pond as soon as the sun is rising, it happened a lot earlier in June than the rest of the year. The birds singing, the wind blowing against the leaves making them carry a tune in harmony together. The world is still spinning, life is moving on, but how?

She sat there against the tree for a while, picking blades of grass and weaving them into a chain, soothing her brain as she makes a pattern. Giving her hands something to do so they stop going numb, it’s the only thing that really reminds her that she's real, that she’s controlling the twists and tucks, the shape and length and the fact that it was created at all.

Ending the life of the single blade of grass as she picks it, never to be whole again. Snatched from its happy place, where it grew loved and surrounded by other matching green strands as they blew in the wind.

Then she's pulling fist full after fist full of grass out of the dirt, her hands covered in mud as she shouts, throwing handfuls of grass and dirt towards the pond. The once blue water starting to turn cloudy; disrupted and upset with her anger as it swallows her weapons, but it doesn’t make her feel better. All she did was disrupt the earth, changing the way this once beautiful patch of land used to look. She couldn’t help but sob, realizing that she was like this field now and her beautiful green pasture was disrupted, overturned and ruined.

The life that flowed through her died along with the love of her life.

“Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” the words echo in her mind in a constant circle like she’s stuck in a tin can.

It starts to reverberate, getting louder and louder as the same 7 words all run around in her head. Bouncing off the walls, smacking her down again and again as she hears them over and over and over… she’s holding her hands on her ears, shaking back and forth, sobbing when she feels someone wrap their arms around her.

She doesn’t open her eyes, instead, she's rushing to push them off of her, struggling out of their grasp as she fights them. Finally, she loses, being held in her brother's embrace as they both cry, he barely has a scratch on him when she finally looks at him.

she’s never been physical in her life, but she punched him right in the face. Her twin brother, best friend in childhood and the person she’s known the longest in her life. He held her close in the womb, crying if they separated as soon as they were born, she loved him deeply and yet she hated him something fierce at that moment.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Evan cries, “we were stopped at a red light, Y/N!”

“I don’t care! He was supposed to be my husband!” She swats at him, smacking his arms again and again as he tries to hold them back, holding her so tightly as she basically screams bloody murder in the field.

All she can see is his face, her beautiful happy Stephen. The first time she ever saw him, standing under a street light in Boston, papers in his hand and wonder in his eyes. The way he looked up at her, the glow of the light making a halo glow over his head.

She should have known he was too good to be true. Always destined to return to the heavens, he was truly angelic with his big emerald eyes that were only the tiniest bit yellow on the edge of the pupil, the way her name sounded on his tongue like a blessing coming true.

They buried him 2 days after what was supposed to be their wedding. Disrupting another beautiful patch of earth to hide him away forever, she placed a single rose on his casket, she never said goodbye and she never planned to.

“See you later, superstar,” she patted the glossy black box once last time before sending him down into the earth.

—

September 2012

This fucking willow tree and 7-word sentences…

“What do you mean you have cancer?”

Her grandma let a tear slip from her eye, “I’ve got colon cancer, honey, the doctors said I have another 2 years, maybe 5 if I'm lucky.”

Every time someone sat beside her in this one spot, she learned the worst information in the world. Sure Evan didn’t mean to kill Stephen, doesn’t mean she’s talked to him at all in the last year. with Grandpa dying only a few summers back, her favourite house cat now buried in the yard, she can’t lose her grandma now too.

“Okay,” she starts to plan in her head, her eyes about ready to jump out of her skull as she tries to think of all the things they need to do before it’s too late, “let’s go to England, let’s blow my bank account, you can’t leave me without going to England with me? We were supposed to get tea and pretend to be the queen and princess?”

She couldn’t stop the tears, her whole body heaving as she sobbed into her grandma’s dress, “you can’t leave me too!”

“Your grandfather and I have a fund for you, you were the last baby we got to raise when your mom went back to work, I want you to use it for that baby we talked about,” her grandma’s voice is barely a whisper, softly getting the words over her vocal cords as the tears joined Y/N’s on her dress.

Without another word, she took her hand and walked home, getting in her car together and heading to the closest fertility clinic, she booked her first insemination for February, pre-paying for a round of IVF hormones and everything to start in January, she had 3 months to plan.

Finding the perfect donor was the only hard part. She had 3 different books to choose from with all the clinics in the DC area sharing 1 sperm bank. She finally made her decision 3 weeks before they were set to get her pregnant when they updated the books.

Sample 2319, male 30’s, healthy, high IQ, 6’1, brown eyes, brown hair (curly). “Sounds a lot like Stephen,” her grandma agreed, saying his name for the first time in over 2 years, she knew this was her guy.

—

June 14th, 2021

Peeing on a stick shouldn’t be as terrifying as it is.

She hasn’t been this nervous since the first time Dr. Collins inseminated her. Laying back on the table at a weird elevation to make sure she got pregnant, her whole body tense as she thought of the possibilities of her future child.

Sample 2319 sitting in a cup not too far from her face as she prepared for a man she barely knew to put the semen of another man she didn’t know, inside her. She only picked this guy cause he was smart and tall, no health issues to report and the number made her think of Monsters Inc.

In her mind, she made a baby with a man she named mike wazowski, not knowing his real name was actually Spencer Reid and he was only just down the road at Quantico the whole time. It was the weirdest day ever, and then it became the second-best day of her life

Nothing could top holding her baby in her arms for the first time. Her grandma and mother beside her as they all cried, the perfect purple baby screaming on her chest as they tried to wipe the white gunk off her tiny body. her sweet little coos, seeing her swollen eyes open for the first time, the silence that overcame her as they made their first introduction to each other. Her little person, the love of her life, her wonderful Amoreena.

Her cry was perfect, like music to her ears she wanted to hear her little voice as long as she could because it meant she was alive and real. She was healthy and beautiful and the most perfect bundle of joy she could have ever made.

Now she was hiding in the bathroom to pee on a stick while her 7-year-old had breakfast in the next room. Oh, how times changed, but one thing remained the same, she was finding out alone again. Only this time she meant for that to happen, it was exactly 4 days since her period was supposed to start and it wasn’t there, neither was Spencer.

He had something to do that morning, but he’d be meeting them later that afternoon, it was Amoreena’s last day of kindergarten after all. She wanted time to either enjoy the thought of having another baby or cry in peace because for once it didn’t work, giving her a week to recover before trying again.

Amoreena was a miracle, the easiest IVF baby they ever made at the clinic, apparently. If she was pregnant this easily again it was a sure sign that he was Amoreena’s father too, only he could get her knocked up while not even trying.

She didn’t remember pregnancy tests taking this long, she flipped it over and walked out of the room, unable to think of anything else while she waited for 3 minutes to pass. Amoreena noticed she was being weird, studying her mother's movements as she paced the hall outside of the bathroom door.

“What are you doing?” She asked, curious as ever as she twirled lightly in her new princess dress.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Always mom, I’m the best secret keeper in all the kingdom, remember?” Amoreena smiled, holding onto her leg as she stared up at her.

“Your dad and I tried to make a baby,” she whispered, petting the litter hairs on her forehead as Amoreena looked up at her, her first little baby. “I’m waiting to find out if it worked, but we can’t tell anyone in case it didn’t, okay?”

Amoreena’s eyes were wider than she’s ever seen them, her mouth opened slowly as she understood the words in her mind. She didn’t look happy or surprised, nor upset or worried. She looked confused, “how?”

She laughed then, shaking her head as she lifted Amoreena into her arms, she would have to know soon anyway. “You know how every month mummy has a bad week where she bleeds and her tummy hurts?”

“Yeah?”

“When people with our parts grow up they make little tiny eggs but we don’t lay them like chickens do, they stay inside our tummies and wait to become babies and if they don’t we have a period and release all the stuff our bodies saved up that month to make a little person. You’ll have one soon too in a few years, probably when you're 12 like I was, and when people with a penis get old enough they’re able to help us make the babies like roosters help the chickens. Our bodies are really special and make some really cool things when we try to,” she explained it in the most simple farmhouse way she could.

“Like when the goats are all born in the spring and they just show up?” She tried to clarify, understanding it at the basic level.

“Kinda, you’ve seen the photos of you in my tummy and how aunty Shannon’s stomach grew when she had your cousins, I’ll get really big like that too if I’m pregnant, the baby will grow for 9 long months till they’re nice and healthy and then we’ll have another person in the family,” she couldn’t help but smile as she thought about it.

“How do we find out?”

She opened the bathroom door then and carried Amoreena inside, setting her down on the sink and pointing at the upside-down test stick. “We create a special hormone when we’re pregnant, it’s something that can be detected in our pee!” she explained it like it was magic, watching her get excited instead of grossed out.

“So I peed on that stick and if it has 2 lines I have a baby in my tummy, if not then your dad and I have to try again.”

Amoreena picked up the test and looked at it, keeping it out of her mothers sight as she did so, “there’s two lines,” she lit up waving the stick lightly as she squealed.

Y/N wrapped her up in her arms and twirled her around, “you’re gonna be the best big sister ever!”

“How do we tell dad?” Amoreena’s soft voice whispered in her ear as she snuggled into her shoulder.

“I have an idea,” she whispered back before carrying her back into the kitchen.

Her All About Me project was sitting on the counter, ready for Y/N to drive her into school today. She set Amoreena down on the floor to watch her as she took some tape and taped the stick to the bottom corner of the project. “Pass me the marker, please?”

Amoreena ran to the counter to get it, coming back and placing it in her mom's hand before leaning in to watch what she was writing.

“I’m going to be a big sister sometime next February!” Amoreena read the words as her mother wrote them, unbelievably excited.

“Your dad can read that at the ceremony tonight!”

“I thought you said we can’t tell anyone yet?” Amoreena questioned her, like always.

“Your teacher can know, the other kids won't know what it means, it’s just important Spencer sees it, but we will wait to tell nanny and poppy, okay? Sometimes the babies don’t always stay, it’s sad so we keep it a secret until they’ve got a tiny little heartbeat in there,” she didn’t want to scare her, but she knew it was always a possibility.

“Then we try again,” Amoreena smiled, “It’ll be easier now that you don’t need Dr. Collins to help you, how did you even make me without Spencer?” She didn't use his real name often anymore, only in times when she wasn't referring to him as her father.

She sat down then, pulling Amoreena into her lap so she could hold her while she thought of the right words. “So we have eggs, but people with penises have something called sperm. When adults, and I mean adults you have to be at least 25 to have a baby it’s the rules,” she teased her slightly, ticking her arms.

“Adults have sex, babies are made when someone with a vagina and someone with a penis get together. But when you don’t have a partner with a penis to help, sometimes they’ll donate their sperm to the doctor's offices to help people like me make their perfect little families all by themselves.”

“Interesting,” is all her little mind can say, she has learned so much in one day, Y/N was surprised she was still listening and surprisingly still for once. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“We won't know for a while,” she smiled, holding Amoreena closer to her chest. “How do you feel about all this?”

Amoreena was quiet as she thought about it, “is Spencer the guy who gave the doctors the sperm for me?”

“We think so, but we don’t know, why?”

Amoreena looked at her softly, “it wouldn’t be fair, I know he said I don’t need a father but why do they get to have him for both?”

“I think Spencer is your father, you’re just as smart and wonderful as he is, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re his baby too. but if you want to know if he isn't, when you turn 18 the doctors will tell you who it is, it's completely up to you to find out,” she whispered, the tears starting to fall down her cheeks as Amoreena tried to wipe them away.

"I like thinking he's my father, so he is." Her mind worked in the most wonderful way. Y/N couldn’t help but hold her close as she lightly cried, “I had a dream yesterday that I had 8 sisters,” her voice was so soft and innocent as her tiny hand cupped her mother's cheek.

She gasped lightly at the words, remembering Spencer’s panic in the middle of the night last night, how scared he was to leave her all alone with 9 babies and no one to help her. They knew something that she didn’t yet, cheaper by the dozen seemed less like a dream and more like a prophecy.

“I’m so happy to make your dream come true,” Y/N whispered, “I promise I’m happy, the baby just makes me emotional.”

Amoreena placed her hand on her tummy then, “I love you, baby.”

Y/N stuck her tummy out as far as she could, “I love you too, big sister,” she said in a funny voice to make Amoreena laugh, leaning back in the chair as she held her.

And just like that, getting pregnant with Amoreena was bumped into 3rd place for the best day of her life. Sharing the moment with her and no one else was perfect, insuring she knew that she was just as important moving forward as the little person she was growing this time.

tag list: @shemarmooresfedora @spencers-dria @spookyspence @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @samuel-de-champagne-problems @jswessie187 let me know if you would like to be added as well!!

#spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid self insert #spencer reid request #criminal minds smut #criminal minds imagine #amoreena

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bellamyblake · 3 years

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i think one of the sweetest things that could ever happen to bellamy in his very long adult life is that his son Gus, names his own son Bellamy Junior-

Like i can JUST imagine Bellamy who is in his late sixties and Clarke in her earlier ones expecting the grandkids

they already have two girls by Gus, adorable little menaces called Leah and Hannah who drive them absolutely nuts on the weekends and whenever Gus leaves them by because he works very hard with his life, they are establishing peace treaties and visitng villages a lot so they need Bellamy and Clarke to take the kids in often-

and then voila, a third kiddo comes up and it’s a boy and Clarke and Bellamy are so excited and when Gus and his wife come over to show him up cause Bellamy has a bad knee and uses his cane all the time now and Clarke gets headaches often and has bouts when she can only lay in bed and do nothing, they’re both so enthusiastic

a little boy, a cute little fella-

and bellamy has absolutely NO idea what they’ve planned; Clarke knows, she’s asked Gus if they had any plans and he had told her long ago even before Leah and Hannah were born that if they have a boy, they want it to be named after his dad-they need another Bellamy because he never put himself first,

he never thought he mattered, he never even believed he did well as a parent or as a leader, he always beat himself up

and Gus was determined as Clarke to prove him wrong

so this time when Gus comes they put the boy right in Bellamy’s arms first, not in Clarke’s like they did before with Hannah and Leah and Bellamy is a little confused but he just shrugs it off-

he’s sitting in his rocking chair, the identical one to Clarke’s which he made a few winters back when they figured they could use them to relax by the fire;

he has his cane propped on the wall nearby and his pipe which he had put down under clarke’s stern look (”They’re bringing a baby, Bellamy, you can’t smoke inside!” and he had smiled and huffed at her)

the kid looks so much like him that it startles bellamy; he looks even more as he does than Gus had when he was a baby; Gus had Clarke’s blue and green eyes and though he bore his curls and some of his freckles he had his mother’s cheek and chin as well as her softer, doctor hands and not Bellamy’s rough and gun-bearing ones;

but this fella? this was him and he was taken aback so much he looked up at Clarke who was leaning over;

“He is....he’s perfect.” Bellamy says voice thick with emotion as he offers the kid his finger and the baby wraps his little hand around his grandparent’s one; “Strong kiddo, big too. He’ll be a a good boy, right...you’ll be good to your mom and dad, mm?” Bellamy asks, rubbing his nose against the kid’s forehead and making his face crumple,his body move in the blanket;

“He looks just like you.” Clarke says in his ear “A spitting image.”

“Maybe that’s cause he has the same name.” Gus chimes in and at first Bellamy, too mesmerized by the kid doesn’t notice it but then his head snaps up and he stares at his son in confusion.

“What?”

“Meet Bellamy Augustus Blake Junior.” Gus announces and he watches as his jaw drops a little as he rocks the baby that gets a little fussy.

“Gus no...you didn’t!”

“We did, dad.” he pushes his wife to his side and they both smile at him “We want you to know how much we love you, how much you mean to us...how we want our son to be like his grandfather.”

“Poor you then-you’re bound for a life full of wanting to hit your head against a red bricked wall” Clarke jokes and they all laugh except for Bellamy who’s still stunned, staring mouth agape.

Then he looks down at the baby and smiles a little.

“Junior?” he asks quietly “Hey, ....hey you little kiddo.” he whispers “Hey, little Bellamy.” he says and the rest of the visit goes like that with Bellamy holding Junior in his arms, talking to him quietly, kissing his forehead, whispering to him in Tagalog which he still used, telling him stories and the kid...the kid was mesmerized with his grandpa too-he was quiet and soon enough he fell asleep, drooling over Bellamy’s shirt but never letting go of his finger.

that night bellamy can’t sleep

his joy turns into fear, into panic

he wakes up and goes to the backporch smoking his pipe, filling it with tobacco over and over again, limping all over the wooden beams until he wakes Clarke;

“Bellamy, what the hell is going on?”

“It can’t be true. It can’t-” he’s mumbling worriedly “You have to make him change it.”

“What? Change what? What are you talking about?”

“The name!” he throws his hands in the air exasperated and coughs loudly after the yet another pipe he had smoked “Gus has to change it! We can’t let the kid be named after me.”

Clarke is taken aback, confused but she can see this is sheer panic so she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Why not?”

“Because-” Bellamy pulls at his hair “Because I am bad. I’m bad...I’ll...I’ll bring him bad luck! He’ll have a horrible life.”

“Bellamy-”

“Just think about it, Clarke! I’ve killed my mother, I’ve made my sister hate me, I’ve killed...I have...I have TAKEN LIVES, we can’t name our grandson after me!” he protests and starts walking up and down the porch limping even more heavily.

Clarke sighs, rubs her forehead and smiles a little at his sweet worry before she stands in his way to stop him and catches his cheeks.

“Bellamy, I need you to listen to me and do it carefully, okay?” she asks and he stares into her eyes for a while before he nods a little “You won’t bring this kid bad luck. On the contrary, you can only give him bravery, selflessness and a very big, a little stupid and stubborn heart that loves every little thing around him.”

“But-”

“The fact that you’re worried about this means Gus did the right choice.” she insists and Bellamy deflates a little at that “All his life, you have been our son’s hero-his guardian, his advisor, his friend, his father. You have scolded him when needed and loved him endlessly. He just wants the same thing for his grandson.”

“Of course I’ll love him same as Gus! Same as Hannah and Leah and everyone else!” Bellamy states loudly for the whole world to hear even though he doesn’t need to-the world and they, his family, already know his boundless love.

“I know.” she rubs the tired circles under his eyes “You’ll love Junior just as much if not more and he will grow to love like you do. That is what Gus wanted-in our world as harsh and horrible as it is still, despite the peace, everyone can use someone whose hear is bigger than themselves.”

Bellamy thinks over it a little, then looks up at her.

“And we’re not immortal.”

“We’re not immortal.” Clarke confirms.

“But I don’t want him to be like me. Not all of me is good.”

“Not all of me is good either but we made Gus and we did well I think.” Clarke assures and Bellamy squizess her wrist in return.

“But still...Junior will be his own person-his own love and his own characteristics.”

“Of course, but he’ll bear our hearts, your heart-” she covers his chest with her small a little wrinkled hand “And if he loses his way he will remember his name and what his grandpa did to fix things.” she smiles and moves up to kiss his lips “I think that’s a good start, wouldn’t you agree?”

After a moment, Bellamy pulls her to his chest and though they’re older, they’re weaker, the grip he has on her back is still the same, his lips on top of her head is just as warm and his heart oh, his poor, tired, out of rhytm heart, it was still filled with love.

She has no doubt Junior’s will be as well.

Because that love didn’t just go out into the nothing when they died-ti found its way back and it bloomed and burned just as brightly.

#bellarke fanfiction #bellarke #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #canon divergence #bellarke as grandparents #headcanons #idk how i did this #but anyway #my writing

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stardew-goblin · 4 years

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why their favourite items are their favourite items for the bachelorettes? you can just pick one item if you like

OH I’ve been thinking about this since I started playing! I tried to do the things that aren’t as commonly thought about as favorites. I hope you enjoy! Thank you ily <3

HA so after doing all of the bachelors I re-read and realized it was only an ask for the bachelorettes SO you get both now hehe

Sebastian

Favorite thing: Pumpkin soup

His dad left them in the fall which is why he has an aversion to most of the autumn seasonal flavors

He was really attached to his dad as a baby so when he abandoned them it hurt Sebastian really badly

The one thing he can’t seem to stay away from is pumpkin soup though

Robin actually has cooked it since he can remember

It was his dads favorite too

It brings back the good memories he has from when his parents were together

Robin only makes it when Maru and Demetrius are out together doing sciency things

They sit on the couch together and watch old movies and bond while they eat it but Robin keeps it a secret because she knows he doesn’t like to come across as a softie

She’ll also make him some if she knows he’s particularly down. She’ll just run it down to his room, kiss him on the forehead, remind him that she’s always there if he needs to talk, and leaves him be

Sam

Favorite thing: Tigerseye

Before Kent could afford the mermaid pendant for Jodi, his mom gave him an old tigerseye ring to propose with

Sam always though it was more romantic than a stupid mermaid pendant (basic, duh)

He used to sit on his grandma’s lap as a kid and she would tell him all about his grandpa who died before Sam was born

He was poor, too, when they got married and he managed to trade some manual labor for the ring

It always reminds him of his family and how much he loves them

100% will propose with a tigerseye ring instead of a mermaid pendant

Harvey

Favorite thing: Coffee

Started drinking coffee in middle school

His grandma would always brew a pot while he was over and they would sit and chat about life

The smell of coffee always reminds him of her

He still makes it how she would make it for him. 2 spoonfuls of sugar. That’s it.

He regularly uses the coffee cup he would always use at her house

It has ducks on it with blue trim

Every year on the anniversary of her death he’ll bring a thermos and two cups and sit at her grave and drink coffee and talk about how life is going

He misses his grandma very much

Elliott

Favorite thing: Pomegranate

He knew Leah before he moved to the valley

They’ve been best friends for years

He gets sick a lot and tends to forget to take care of himself sometimes

Leah has always made sure he was okay

She would bring him fruits and soup and make sure he was staying hydrated

One day she brought a few pomegranates

How the fUCK do you eat a pomegranate ??

Leah help me please for the love Yoba what is this weird ass fruit you’ve brought to me on my death bed

Once he actually ate some though, he could not get enough.

It was the first thing he could actually taste in days and it was so sweet and flavorful

He will not buy his own pomegranates though.

It has to be a gift or it’s not the same

Shane

Favorite thing: Hot pepper

Used to struggle with really bad anxiety

He would disassociate a lot

Struggled with mental grounding techniques

So one day is dad was like

Here son

Bite into this hot ass pepper

It was so spicy that it snapped Shane back into reality

He used to keep a ziplock bag of hot peppers in his pocket

Sometimes will still bite into one if he’s particularly going through it

One time gave Sam one at work and told him it wasn’t spicy

Sam cried in the bathroom for 20 minutes

Now Shane has to keep his waterbottles with him at all times because Sam puts weird stuff in them as payback

Alex

Favorite thing: complete breakfast

Alex never wanted to leave his room after his mom died

He would cry himself to sleep every night

He refused to eat with his grandparents

Evelyn would make him hashbrowns, eggs, and pancakes with a side of milk every morning

And would leave it in his room for him to eat when he was hungry

And would always stick a note on the tray reading “breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I love you always. Grandma.”

She never pressured him to do something he didn’t want to do

But ALWAYS reminded him that he was loved

Complete breakfast reminds him that Evelyn loves him no matter what

It will always feel like a warm hug

Abigail

Favorite thing: Pufferfish

When Abigail was little, Pierre and Caroline used to take her to the aquarium in Zuzu City

Her favorite was always the pufferfish

She felt like she could relate to them

Always keeping people at an arms length

Tough when she has to be

She used to collect pufferfish plushies

Does not actually eat them

She could never

But she likes how you can die from consuming them incorrectly

Kicking ass from beyond the grave

Haley

Favorite thing: Coconut

She actually likes the smell more than anything but is a sucker for coconut shavings on her desserts

She’s allergic to coconut

But it isn’t deadly

Emily used to use coconut body spray to hide the weed smell when she was in high school

Haley thought Emily was so cool

Will always remind her of when her and her sister got along better

Haley has a mean streak but is very sentimental

She’ll still tease Emily about it

Keeps a small bottle of coconut body spray in her room for when she needs to feel better

Will not admit to anyone ever about why she likes coconut so much

Penny

Favorite thing: Tom Kha Soup

Elliott actually introduced Penny to the dish

Penny and Pam had gotten into a particularly nasty argument which left Penny in tears

It was pouring but she needed out of the trailer

She went to sit on the docks to listen to the ocean until she calmed down

Elliott saw her sitting alone in the cold rain and invited her inside

He was just about to sit down for one of his favorites, Tom Kha soup, and gladly prepared a bowl for Penny

She had never been close to Elliott even though she saw him at the library often

The soup was delicious

And she was blown away by his kindness and how easily she felt comfortable talking to him

She tries to cook it (it’s terrible)

She always beings some to Elliott (he never comments on how awful it is, and politely accepts it)

(He throws it in the ocean when she’s gone though)

Emily

Favorite thing: Survival burger

Emily is a vegetarian

Her favorite food before she went vegetarian was cheeseburgers

Her first girlfriend showed her how to make burgers from eggplant

She is the one who showed Gus how to make them and season them properly to taste good

She got Haley hooked on them too

She’s lowkey one of those vegetarians that wants everyone to be a vegetarian

Her favorite recipe to show off because it really does taste like a frickin burger

Maru

Favorite thing: Rhubarb Pie

Maru really wishes that she and Sebastian were still close

As small children they did everything together

She looked up to her big brother

They used to play in the lake by their house during summers

She would always catch frogs. It was her favorite thing.

They would come into the cool house when the sun went down and lounge on the couch watching cartoons

Robin would frequently make Rhubarb pie for dessert

Maru and Sebastian loved it

They would eat it in front of the TV and joke around with each other

Rhubarb Pie still reminds her of those warm summer nights when her big brother was still her best friend

Leah

Favorite thing: stir fry

The first time she ever tried stir fry was right before she moved to the valley

Like literally her last meal in the city was stir fry from a restaurant around the corner from her old apartment

It was their only option that had mostly vegetables and oh my Yoba was it delicious

The day she moved was the most hopeful day she’s ever had in her life

New beginnings were terrifying but Leah knew everything would be okay

She always makes stir fry before she tries something she’s terrified to do

It reminds her that new things are scary but she can really do anything she puts her mind to

#stardew valley #sdv #sdv headcanons #stardew headcanons #stardew valley headcanons #sdv sebastian #sdv sam #sdv shane #sdv elliott #sdv harvey #sdv alex #sdv abigail #sdv haley #sdv emily #sdv penny #sdv maru #sdv leah #stardew farmer

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dxkuuu · 4 years

Note

Hi! I was wondering if you could do something with the idea of, 1A! Bakugo's & his S/O future son time-traveling! Backstory: he inherited Y/N quirk and used it to his advantage because they died protecting him when he was still months old, so now he wants to meet them for the first time. Bonus points when he meets them they're all mean to each other and hes like 'so these are by loving parents grandpa kiri told me bout???😬'

a/n: OMG I’M SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG! I actually got a break from school, and managed to finish this request that I’ve been working on for so long now! I reallyyy hope you like it, and again, sorry for the wait!

Also, can I just say, I LOVED writing this request! I actually had something similar to it in mind, so I was really excited when I got this!

From The Future// Katsuki Bakugo

⤷ pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x reader

⤷ genre: Fluff/ slight angst?

⤷ summary: In which, your son from the future comes back in time to meet you and Katsuki, but reason why is far from happy.

⤷ word count: 1,285

You were walking back to the dorms with Mina while chatting about a new cat café that had opened up nearby. The day was as normal as it could be, and your conversation was average. Nothing weird was going on for once, and to be honest, you were sorta enjoying it. That was, until he showed up.

“Hey, wait up!” you heard someone call out. You and Mina paid the voice no mind to the voice, as you didn’t think they were addressing either of you. They shouted again, “Mom, Aunt Mina, slow down!”

Upon hearing her name be said, Mina turned around to see who it was. You turned around as well and asked her, “If you’re ‘Aunt Mina’ does that make me ‘mom’?”

“I mean, I think so,” she answered as the two of you watched an unfamiliar boy quickly approach you.

“Hi,” he said as he tried to catch his breath.

You and Mina shared a look, unsure of what to do. “Um, hi,” you said hesitantly.

“Oh, right, you don’t know who I am,” he mumbled sheepishly.

“Yeah, so do you mind telling us?” Mina asked.

“My name is Rin Bakugo!” he exclaimed.

You turned to Mina, “You think he’s Bakugo’s brother or something?”

“There’s no way! Bakugo never mentioned having a brother,” Mina replied.

“Maybe they’re cousins, then?”

“Actually, I’m his son,” Rin answered enthusiastically.

You choked on your spit, and Mina looked like she was going to have a stroke. “Huh?” was all you could spit out. You noticed the boy shared a few qualities with the said explosion boy and you. The boy standing in front of you had Katsuki’s spiky hair, but it was the same color as yours. He also had the same striking crimson eyes as Katsuki.

Still, you weren’t sure he was Katsuki’s son, as he seemed to be the same age as the temperamental blonde. “There’s no way!” Mina shouted, “You two are the same age!” She must have been reading your mind.

“Well, yeah, about that...I’m sorta from the future,” he explained while rubbing his neck.

“Huh?!“ you were shocked to say the least. You weren’t sure if he was telling the truth, but it was possible so you tested out the theory. “Alright,“ you said, “Tell me something I should already know about the future.” You watched him intently as he squinted, trying to think of something to tell you.

Suddenly his eyes widened and he seemed to know what to say. He snapped his fingers, “Oh, I got it! In a couple months, All Might is going to reti-,”

“Ok, we believe you,” you said as you quickly cut him off. You knew he was going to mention All Might’s retirement and you couldn’t have Mina finding out about that just yet. Sure, it worried you that the symbol of peace would be retiring in two months, but you didn’t know why he’d be retiring so there was nothing you could really do about it. “I guess you really are my son..” you said, taking a moment to absorb the reality of the situation.

“That’s so cool!” Mina squealed. “So, Bakugo’s your father, huh?” she asked as she wiggled her eyebrows.

“Yeah! I mean, I never actually got to meet him but-” he started, thought you cut him off once again.

“What do you mean you never got to meet him? Don’t tell me he abandoned you with me!” you inquired.

He shook his head, “No that’s not it. Actually, I never got to meet you, either. The two of you died shortly after I was born, trying to save me from a villain,” he muttered sadly.

You didn’t know what to say. Mina was freaking out too, but she did her best to stay quiet so that you could have a moment to take it all in, and process what you’d just been told. “Oh,” was all you could say.

“It’s alright, Uncle Ejiro and Aunt Mina took me in, and I’m doing alright. But, I was hoping to actually meet you which is why I came back here.”

“Why did you come see us as kids? Why not go back to a time when we’re actually adults?” you asked.

“I wanted to know what you were like at my age before going to see you when you’re already married,” he answered.

“Oh, alright. I guess that makes sense,” Mina said. The two of you then noticed that he was staring at something behind you. As you both turned around, you saw Katsuki walking back to the dorms with Kirishima.

“I’m guessing you wanna go say ‘hi’?” you asked.

“Duh,” he replied before running off. You and Mina quickly followed, and caught up to him while he was introducing himself to Katsuki.

“There’s no freaking way you’re my kid, we're the same age!” Katsuki said in an irritated tone.

“Relax Bakugo, it has to do with his quirk. He time-traveled here, because we’re gonna die in the future without getting to raise him,” you explained. Mina nodded her head, as an act of support.

“Wait how can you tell that’s not a lie?” Kirishima asked.

“He told us something that’s gonna happen in the future. Well, he tried to anyway. Y/n cut him off, but she says she trusts him and I’m sure she knows what she’s doing,” Mina said.

“Oh ok,” the redhead said, but the angry blonde only narrowed his eyes. “He does kinda look like the two of you,” Kirishima noted.

“There’s no way I’m believing it,” the explosive boy said.

“How can you not?” you asked, slightly annoyed. “Do you want me to take you into the future to prove it?”

“Hell no! I’m not letting you use your quirk on me!” he shouted.

“Well then, what do you want me to do?” you yelled.

As the two of you entered into a verbal fight, your son nervously watched from the side. “Wow uncle Ejiro, they’re so...different,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just that from the way you described them, they’re gonna end up as a really strong couple. But..I just don’t see it right now, you know?”

“Don’t let him fool you, he’s totally head over heels for y/n, he’s just not the best at expressing his feelings right now,” Kirishima said.

“Wait, Bakugo likes her too?” Mina asked. “Don’t tell me, we could’ve set them up a lot sooner!” She shook her head.

“Wait, but they’re acting like they totally hate each other,” Rin mentioned as he watched you and Katsuki tear into each other with your words. “You told me they’d rarely ever raise their voices at each other after they got married.”

“Wow, I can’t wait to see Bakugo as a softie,” Mina exclaimed.

“So about the reason you’re here..” Kirishima started.

“Oh, right. I’m sorry if my timings really bad or something. I just wanted to get a chance to really talk with them. You know?” Rin said, not looking away from your interaction with Katsuki.

Kirishima’s happy expression had quickly faded. “No, your timing’s great. Don’t worry about that. I’m glad you came, actually. It just really sucks knowing what’s going to happen to them.”

“Wait, do you think there’s a way we can change their future?” Mina asked.

Rin turned to look at her, “Honestly...I don’t know.”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt to try!” she said. “Why don’t we leave them alone for now and go get some ice cream or something?”

“Ok, sure!” Rin said excitedly.

As the three of them began walking off, Kirishima turned to Rin, “So, tell me more about what I’m like in the future!”

#bnha fanfiction #bnha x reader #katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugo imagine #bakugo fluff #katsuki bakugo #bnha bakugou #katsuki bakugo x reader #katsuki x y/n #katsuki x you #bnha bakugo katsuki #bnha bakugo x reader #bnha x you #bakugo angst #rachel writes ✨

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czestmememoir · 4 years

Text

First Impression – Rafe Adler x F! You – SMUT!

Smut warning!

I know I don’t post much here, but yeah! here’s some U4 trash <3. idea is originally by a friend, destiny! hello bb

warning: graphic language, random treasure hunting hookups (??), just a lil filth.

Summary:

You get to keep Avery’s Treasure.

In one condition.

"This is it!"

You gleamed at the ship in front of you. "Oh my God. This is amazing." You say, tucking your gun back in your holster. "Welp. Here goes nothing." you say, doing a few stretches before taking jumping in the water. It was cold, and you reach for the surface, taking a deep breath. "Holy fuck. This is- This is fucking cold." You murmur as you started swimming towards the ship, which was farther than you thought.

"Avery, here I come," You thought to yourself. Soon, you were floating in front of the ship. It was much bigger up close, and you started climbing. "The shit I do for treasure. This is for you, Grandpa." You whisper, getting on board on the ship. You open the door, and you could almost drool at how fucking amazing the whole thing looked. Filled with gold coins, and things you didn't even know existed, and much better, it was made in gold. You picked up a gold coin, tossing it and toying with it in your hand. "Now how the hell do I loot this?" You say to yourself, and you feel your eyes roll when you hear a gun click and feel a gun against your head.

"You don't."

You put the coin in your bra, before raising your hands, slowly turning around to see who was the dickhead pointing a gun at you. It was a man, obviously, around the same as you, and he wore a dark grey shirt that sculpted his gorgeous body. And clearly, he also swam to the ship, based on his soaked clothes and hair. "And who the hell are you?" You asked, sneakily checking him out. "That's none of your business, lady." he said. "It is my business, you fucking cocksucker. You're holding me at gunpoint," You hiss, and the hot man glared at you with daggers.

"Only if you tell your name first." He said, and you rolled your eyes. "Ladies first, am I right?" he adds, and you chuckle at him. "Chivalry's dead, mister. But I’ll play along. I'm F/N." You said. "Now, listen, F/N. I've spent my whole life trying to get Avery's Treasure." he started speaking. "And what makes me any different?" you raise a brow. "My grandfather has been on this treasure before I was born. I'm just carrying on his footsteps." you said. Before this dickhead could even react, you grabbed his arm, pointing the gun away from you, and shots were fired. You knee him onto the stomach, and more shots were fired, and you give him a strong punch on the jaw. Finally disarming him, you throw the gun away, and you doubt he'd find it in the treasure stash.

You grabbed your gun, putting it onto his chest. "Your name, asshole." You hissed, and the man laughs, letting the blood drip down from his nose.

"Rafe. My name's Rafe."

You furrow your brows. Haven't you heard of this guy from somewhere? You brush it off. "And also, that gun cost a lot. It’s customized. I had my own engravements." he said. "Shut up, Rafe. I don’t care, and I’m doing this not just for me, but for my grandfather. Avery's treasure is mine. Unless you wanna get shot, be my guest." Rafe could only laugh. "Alright. Well, how the hell are you gonna loot this then, genius? Pack it all up with one hand? The other pointing a gun at my chest?" Rafe says, and you look at him with feint realization.

"Ah, yes. I should be pointing it here." You said, pointing the gun on his head. Rafe looks startled. "Let's be clear here, Mr. Rafe. I'm gonna get this treasure, so suck it up." you hiss, jabbing the barrel lightly on his forehead. "Let me propose a deal, F/N." Rafe spoke. "Can't lie, you're such a pretty face." he adds, and you roll your eyes. "Oh, you flatter me, Rafe." You said. "Are you done? Is this your way out? Flirting?" you said, resting a foot on his chest, and resting your elbow on your knee.

"Whoever makes the other one cum three times gets the treasure." Rafe said, and you look at him with surprise, before laughing. Rafe watches you in amusement as you continued to laugh at how fucking ridiculous his deal was, pulling away the gun from him, and if you weren't so busy laughing, you'd see relief wash over Rafe's face.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Rafe." You said. "That's so- this is so fucking funny," You say. "You're telling me, three orgasms have the same worth of this gold?" you ask, before laughing again. You looked at his face, searching for any ounce of playfulness. Nothing. Your laughter dies down, and you purse your lips.

"You're not kidding, are you?"

Rafe grinned. "Nope. Besides, I'm a man of my word. I can make you cum, sweetheart." Rafe purred. You laugh. "That's what they all say." You said, watching him sit up. “Wait, are you clean, though?” you asked. “Do you think I have the hygiene of a peasant, F/N? Yes, I’m clean. Are you?” Rafe raises a brow at you. “I’m clean because I don’t fuck on the first date,” you hissed. Rafe laughed. “I’ll make it worth your while,” Rafe cooed, and you usually didn’t easily give in to flirtatious tones, but Rafe was different. His voice was so amazing and smooth. It felt so hypnotic you fucking loved it. “Do we have a deal?" Rafe asked, and you lick your lips.

“Fine,”

It's not like he was any different from your other partners, right?

Right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

As soon as your lips touched, you knew you were doomed. His whole being screamed dominance. Territorial. Which was definitely 100% your type. Pinning you against a wall, Rafe holds your hand, and you immediately pull away when you felt him trying to disarm you. "What the hell?" You raise a brow. Rafe groans. "Look, I'm not exactly comfortable fucking someone with a gun pointed at me." Rafe says, and you scoff. "You ever try anything, I'll smash your face, bitch boy." You hissed, and Rafe rolled his eyes. You throw your gun somewhere and Rafe starts kissing your exposed neck, his hands caressing your hips to your ass, giving them a firm squeeze.

"See? I'm not gonna hurt you,"

Rafe whispered against the spot under your ear, and- Oh my God, did he just leave a hickey? Fucking hell. You thought, feeling him suck and bite on it. Your hands trail down, one staying on his fit chest, and the other lightly stroking him through his pants. Rafe kisses your jawline, then gives your lips a gentle peck.

“Take the lead, babygirl,”

You push Rafe off you, and you got down to your knees, kicking away a few stray gold coins that hurt your knees. “Eager to suck my dick, sweetheart?” Rafe asked, unbuckling his belt. You looked up and raised your middle finger at him, causing him to laugh as he unbuttoned his pants. And as soon as it fell down to the ground, your hands make their way to his thighs, and his cock was nicely outlined on his expensive-looking boxers. Rafe kicks off his shoes, a dull thump resonating in the room. “What’cha waiting for? Need a little help?” Rafe asked. You sighed and pulled down his boxers, his cock proudly springing up. “Well?” Rafe yanks your hair, forcing you to look up at him. You open your mouth, and Rafe shoves his cock down your throat. You could gag, but Rafe started moving his hips.

“Fuck. Your mouth, holy shit,” Rafe whispered, his mouth agape as he continued fucking your mouth. You’d make a gagging sound every now and then, but not that both of you minded. Rafe very much adored those pretty eyes that looked up at him as you took his cock so nicely, your other hand groping his balls and earning a cry from him.

You pull away, and spit on the tip, before pumping it nicely in your hand. “You’re so vocal.” You teased. “Don’t care.” Rafe groaned, his hips bucking against your hand. You rub his tip, and Rafe lets out an amazing loud moan, and you put his cock back in your mouth, letting out a soft hum and shutting your eyes as you enjoyed his taste. “Fuck, F/N.” Rafe cried out, his grip on your hair getting tighter as he started to move your head to the pace of his liking.

The way you bat your eyelashes at him had his knees almost wobbling. You looked so pretty sucking his cock, and Rafe knew deep down you were now his new infuriation. “That’s it, baby. Fucking take it,” Rafe growled, tugging on your hair. You could only let out a muffled cry, sparks of arousal shooting through you. He buries his cock deep in your throat, and he lets out a guttural moan when he felt you gag. “Too big?” Rafe asked, looking down at you. You shut your eyes, tears threatening to spill from your eyes.

“Look at me, baby. Look at me while I fuck that pathetic mouth of yours,”

Rafe says, lightly slapping your cheek, and you grunt, opening them, and tears streamed down your cheeks. He held your hair tightly, mercilessly pummeling his thick cock in and out of your mouth. Saliva leaks from the sides, and your hands held onto his built thick thighs, raking your nails onto the skin.

“Oh, shit!”

Rafe moaned, throwing his head back as he fucked your mouth. You only hum and let him manhandle you, and as much as Rafe didn’t want to admit it, he was definitely gonna cum. “Oh, fuck, sweetheart.” Rafe hissed, biting his lip. His cock twitches in your mouth, and he sheathes his cock deep inside your throat, and you groaned, gagging. “I’m gonna fucking cum in that mouth of yours,” Rafe whispered before giving your mouth a harsh thrust, burying himself deep inside you. You cry out when you felt his cum spill in your throat, forcing you to swallow.

He pants, his cock still in your mouth, and you pinch his thigh, and he grunts, pulling out. “You came a lot.” You said, wiping the saliva off the sides of your mouth. “Shut up. Lay down.” Rafe said, pointing to the floor. “Bossy,” You said, before laying down. Rafe hovers over you, and you cup his cheek and kiss him. Surprisingly, he kisses back. Not caring if your tongue had remnants of his cum. You pull away, staring at his eyes, and then his lips.

“What is it?” Rafe asked. You lean in and kiss him again. You’ve never met someone you wanted to kiss badly. Rafe wraps his arms around you, kissing you back feverishly. Trying to pull him closer, you wrap your arms around his neck, messing up his hair. The two of you laid there, making out and savoring each other’s lips until you two were breathless.

“You’re a great kisser,” Rafe whispered. You smiled. Rafe’s hands started working on the zipper of your pants. “So kiss me again,” you pout. “Later,” Rafe said, pulling down your pants, and you kick off your shoes so Rafe could take it off your body, taking the underwear along. Your wet cunt was exposed to him, and Rafe ran his thumb on your clit, eliciting a light squeak from you. “When was the last time someone touched you, babygirl?” Rafe asked, his other fingers prodding at your soaking slit. “Long time ago,” you murmur.

“No one has ever made you feel this good before?” Rafe asked, teasing your entrance. You shake your head, and Rafe shoves a finger in you. You let out a surprised moan, clenching your fists. “Oh, my poor girl. What kinda losers have you been seeing?” Rafe asked, shoving another finger in you, and you moaned as Rafe started moving his fingers. “Fuck, Rafe,” you cried out. “Go faster. Please, please,” you plea, and Rafe complies, mercilessly fucking your pretty pussy with his fingers. “Fuck, look at you.” Rafe says, watching your pleasant expressions as he kept moving his fingers. “Oh, fuck, Rafe!” you moaned out, your walls nicely clenching on him. It was so hot hearing the wet sounds that came from your cunt, and Rafe enjoyed how much you coated your fingers with your slick.

“Rafe, go harder. I won’t break. Go hard, pretty please?” you whine. Rafe doesn’t say another word, fucking you hard and fast with his fingers. You whimpered, and your legs were trembling at how hard his fingers pumped in your pretty, soaking pussy.

Rafe curls his fingers up, making sure to press up against the spot that sent your nerves to a frenzy, and your moans could definitely be heard from outside.

“Right here?” Rafe asked, and you nod vigorously. “You gonna cum?” Rafe asked, and your mind goes back to Avery’s treasure. But you were so close. Your body ached and craved for that sweet release. It felt so intense and it was coming in quick. “Oh, fuck, Rafe. Please. I’m gonna cum. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop!” You screamed, and Rafe hits your sweet spots over and over. Your roll your eyes and let your head throw back as moans left from your lips. “Cum for me, F/N.” Rafe said, and you did. Much stronger than your usual ones. You screamed, arching your back and your whole body gets washed with bliss.

“Oh, fuck. You squirted on me, F/N,” Rafe chuckled, and you groaned, your body falling limp on the floor. “Fuck.” Was the only thing you said while you were gasping. Rafe pulls his fingers out, dripping with your cum. “Let me- can I- take a breather?” you asked, and you immediately know your answer when Rafe leaned down, delving into your sweet cunt as his tongue started lapping you up.

“Rafe-!” you groaned, feeling your sensitive clit pulsate against his tongue. He pulls away briefly, looking up at you with a smug grin on his face. “Relax,” Rafe said. You rolled your eyes as you held onto Rafe’s hair, tugging on it and pulling it tight, but it didn’t matter. Rafe savored you. You tasted just as how good you looked, and he was definitely not going to let an opportunity like this to miss. “Rafe, oh my fucking God!” you whimpered, your hips twitching against his goddamned tongue. Your mouth was agape and you could only moan and scream his name. Rafe looks up at you, seeing your fucked out daze, and you haven’t even taken his cock yet. Rafe held your legs open, just making sure to not let you do a chokehold on him with your legs if you ever wanted to.

“Cum for me again, sweetheart,” Rafe whispered, his mouth all over your cunt as his tongue tease your slit. “Oh, fuck! Rafe- fuck you-! I’m gonna fucking cum!” You screamed, shutting your eyes. Rafe could only chuckle, and with another swipe of his tongue you shut your eyes as you uncontrollably came- well, squirted, on his mouth. Rafe made sure to lap you up, letting your mess drip down from his stubbled jaw. He pulls away, and the sight of his face soaking with your cum was quite one of the hottest things you’ve seen.

“That’s not fair,” you hissed. Rafe scoffed. “You’re on the losing side,” Rafe said, and you raise a brow at him. He makes his way back up to you, and you kiss him. Your hands held onto his collar, and you flip your positions, straddling him. His bare cock rubbed against your drenched cunt, and you grind yourself against him.

“I’m waiting,” he hissed, and you held his cock in your hand before slowly pushing it in, and you slide down, and you felt so fucking full of him. “Shit!” You both hissed, giving out shaky breaths as you started rocking your hips. Rafe held onto your waist, moving along with your pace and rhythm. “Rafe, your cock feels so fucking good,” you groaned, clutching on his shirt. “Yeah? Feels so good to be filled with my cock, babygirl?” Rafe asked, one of his hands tugging on your hair and exposing your neck.

Rafe sits up, kissing your neck and leaving more hickeys that were sure going to look questionable tomorrow. “Fuck, F/N. Gonna fucking ruin you,” Rafe whispered, his other hand holding your ass as he moved you back and forth on his cock. “Fuck, Rafe! More,” You cried out. Rafe bites down again on your skin, and you let out a yelp.

He switches positions with you, with you beneath him, and you let out a gasp when Rafe puts your legs on his shoulders. “Rafe-!” “Relax. You’ll be alright,” Rafe says, before leaning in forward. You were almost folded in half, and not gonna lie, it hurt, but you’ve had worse days. Rafe was so fucking deep inside you, and your could just melt when he started moving his hips. “Oh, fuck!” you moaned. “Just like that, Rafe! Please!” you wailed, holding onto his forearm and scratching it with your nails.

“Fuck! You’re so fucking hot,” Rafe whispered, pounding mercilessly on your pretty pussy. “Gonna fuck your pretty cunt until you cum, babygirl,” Rafe said, grabbing your jaw.

“You hear me? I’m gonna make you fucking cum. After this, I’m gonna make you my girl. Gonna make you mine.”

He says all while fucking you. “Yes! Oh, fuck! Rafe!” You cried out, your eyes rolling back as you felt his cock stretch your walls. “Fuck, you feel so good!” you cried out, your legs shaking as your body was in immense pleasure. You clenched on Rafe just nicely, and vice versa. Rafe filled you up so fucking good. You knew you were gonna ask him out later after this stupid treasure expedition. “Rafe, baby, fuck! More, please,” you plead, one of your hands making its way down to your clit as you started rubbing gently.

“Shit!” Rafe hissed, too turned on at the sight. “You like that? Look at how horny you make me, Rafe,” you purr. “I want to- oh fuck! I-I want to see you again. I-I wanna be fucked by you again,” you whisper in his ear. “Anything for you, sweetheart.” Rafe cried out, his cock twitching in you. “Fill me up with your cum, Rafe,” you pant out, cupping his cheek. “Please. Wanna feel your cum leak out of me,” you whimpered out, and Rafe’s expressions were priceless. “Fuck! You’re gonna be the death of me,” Rafe whispered, his orgasm coming in quick.

“Pretty please, Rafe? Fill me up. I’m on birth control. I wanna see your cum drip out of my cunt,”

You whimper, and with another snap of his hips, he spilled his cum inside your cunt, a loud moan escaping his lips. “Fuck, Rafe!” you rolled your eyes, his hot seed dribble in you, and Rafe rides his orgasm down with a few thrusts, soft, guttural moans coming from him. “It’s a tiebreaker,” you chuckle, and Rafe laughs. “I’m gonna get that treasure, sweetheart. Just like what I said. I’ll get the treasure and make you my girl,” Rafe purred. “I don’t think so. You haven’t made me cum the third time yet,” you say. Rafe pulls away, and your legs hurt. “And if you win?” Rafe asked, and you laughed, feeling some of his cum drip out from your cunt while he was still in you. “I’ll take you to places you’ve never been in. A cruise, maybe?” and it was Rafe’s turn to laugh.

“Bold of you to assume I haven’t explored the world or had a cruise,” Rafe said. “Well, I haven’t… So-“ You were cut off mid-sentence when Rafe starts moving his hips. But something was wrong. There was suddenly a change in atmosphere, and you didn’t like the feeling of it. “Rafe.” You call out. Rafe doesn’t answer, and you held onto his shoulders. “Stop. Rafe.” You held onto him. Rafe stops, seeing the discomfort on your face. “Get up. Something’s wrong.” You said, and Rafe rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing wrong, F/N. Unless you forgot you’re not on birth control,” he said, slipping out of you. Then your suspicion was right. You heard voices, many different ones.

“Search the area! If you see F/N, kill her!”

Oh shit.

“Get dressed!” You whisper to Rafe, who looks at you in disbelief, but gets dressed anyway. “Who’s that? Your husband? You’re married?” Rafe asked, putting on his boxers, and- where are his pants? “No! I’d rather die than marry him! That’s my former partner, Nikolai. And he threw me under the bus last minute when I told him how to get to Avery’s treasure,” you said, getting dressed quickly. You button up your pants, and you grab your gun and holster, and your bag, which you’d almost forgotten existed. “Rafe?” You called, and you hear Rafe searching for his gun, murmuring soft profanities under his breath. “Rafe!” you call again. “Just a fucking second!” Rafe whisper-shouted back. You look cautiously at the door, and Rafe comes back, and you see the customized engravements he was talking about. You hear people climb the ship, and you and Rafe stay close together, trying to quietly avoid Nikolai and/or his men. “You know you can leave me behind, right?” you say to him. Rafe looks at you weirdly.

“I’m not leaving you behind. Or Avery’s treasure. C’mon, we can take ‘em one by one.”

Rafe said. You hear Nikolai’s men walk in, and the two of you exchange glances.

“You still owe me a date, Rafe,”

“And you owe me a cruise, F/N,”

End.

Goodbye I am dead. This is amazing. I love Rafe Adler. Goodnight.

#rafe #rafe adler #rafe adler x reader #rafe x reader #uncharted #uncharted smut #smut #x reader #reader insert #fanfiction #uncharted fanfiction

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bewaretheidesofmarchyall · 4 years

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Soulmate Shenanigans Part Two (Electric Boogaloo)

Good morning (or at least, I’ve started writing this in the morning! Who knows when I’ll complete it)!

I’m continuing my Soulmate AU Tomfoolery (you can find part one here)

Prompt #2

There is a timer that counts down to when you will meet your soulmate.

Warnings for death mentions, and temporary major character death

World Building

Everyone blames the mad scientist.

Which is fair. When someone makes billions of clocks in about a weeks time, each declaring when everyone in the world (including people who wouldn’t be born for decades) would find their soulmate, it’s considered to polite to stick around to answer questions

Instead, Logan disappeared to who-knows-where and left everyone else to pick up the pieces.

Rude.

Ever since the early 1910′s, the clocks have existed, one for each person. When any kid is born, the first thing a new parent does is rush to the register to see when they’ll meet their soulmate. It’s a big deal.

If your child isn’t going to meet their soulmate in the next 13 years, they are told the exact number on their 13th birthday

Philosophers have been enraged by all of this. Is free will a thing? Is existence a lie?

Non-philosophers will often close their curtains when they see a wandering philosopher, which are easy to identify by their look of abject confusion and plucked chickens.

Characters

Remus: Remus pretended that he didn’t care about who his soulmate was when his 13th birthday rolled along. He wasn’t the best actor.

His brother seemed happy when he found out that it would be sixteen years until he found his soulmate. 29 wasn’t a bad age at all, considering that some people would have to wait until they were old and in a nursing home, or would never even meet their soulmate at all.

Remus waited for his parents to tell him. They gave each other nervous looks, and he was convinced for a few seconds that he didn’t have a soulmate after all.

The actual answer was much weirder

526 years. 526 years until he met his soulmate.

Remus said a silent thank you to his soulmate for making him functionally immortal. After all, that meant that he’d survive until then!

HE WAS IMMORTAL

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Now, whenever someone would try to say something like, “Why do you like serial killers? Planning to become one?”, he could just look them dead in the eye and say,

I’m going to outlive you, Brian

(On an unrelated note, Brian disappeared a few months later. It actually wasn’t Remus’s fault, surprisingly. One minute, he was at a museum, the next, gone)

Remus would be fine with never finding his soulmate, honestly. Connection is nice, but being eldritch is more fun.

Virgil: Virgil didn’t want to be immortal

Sure, he wasn’t a fan of dying in practice, but in theory he didn’t want to live to over 250!

His family and friends were going to die, and he’d have to live through it. And for what? To meet a soulmate? Who gave a fuck? Virgil had never wanted a romantic relationship in his life, and he didn’t think that a 526 year wait was going to change that.

He was determined to find his soulmate early so that he could live a normal life like a normal person who doesn’t cause additional distress to the wandering philosophers.

Plot

It was easy to find Remus. Local Child Will Live To Over 500 makes a good headline, and Remus wasn’t one to shy away from attention.

When Virgil was 16, he packed his bags and ran away from home to go meet his soulmate. He didn’t ask Janus how he got the bus tickets, but he did ask him to tell his parents that he’d be okay.

Virgil knocked on the door, and waited. Someone who looked almost exactly like the news site photo answered. The conversation went something like this:

Virgil: So, YOU’RE Remus McFricking Sanders-

Roman: Nope, not him, whatever he said isn’t my fault.

[Roman slams door]

Virgil was pretty sure that he had, in fact, met Remus, and he was just being annoying. Roman believed that his brother had just manage to piss off yet another person.

Virgil retreated to a restaurant, and looked up the photo on the news article, just to make sure. No denying it, that was him! Same eyes, same hair, same general face-wait.

Remus had a nose that had obviously been broken at least once. The guy who’d greeted him at the door had definitely been in less scrapes than his soulmate.

Whoops.

Meanwhile, Remus had a plan to avoid Virgil at all cost. Virgil had tried to shy away from press attention, but he tracked down a photo eventually.

And when his brother told him that some emo with “awesome” eyes had turned up on the doorstep looking for him, he had a bad feeling.

Well, spooky boy wasn’t going to cost him his long future.

And so the dance began.

In one corner, Virgil, who had spite, stubbornness, and a deadline on his side (he had to get home to his parents eventually)! Never discount a spiteful Virgil!

In the other corner, Remus, who has nothing on his side but fate. Fate, however, has a sense of humor, and Remus read enough old myths as a child to know that whatever happens can’t be changed by petty human actions.

Virgil tries breaking and entering many times, each failing in a more ridiculous way. He is a careful, but Remus is practically Kevin McCallister in terms of traps, and he fails to meet his soulmate face to face all day and all night.

They do get to have some verbal exchanges, which are pretty much

Virgil: You think you want the existential hell of immortality??

Remus: Oh, fuck off, I’m going to have the best vampire aesthetic!

Virgil: The vampire aesthetic is wonderful, but can we do everything for aesthetic?

Both at the same time: Yes. Yes we can.

And then Virgil is herded out of the house by Remus’s pet rats.

However, the final encounter goes a little differently. No witty quips, just Virgil picking the lock of yet another window, and then a very specific sound.

Have you ever heard a stubborn emo get pulled into a portal in the spacetime continuum?

It’s a distinct sound that is along the lines of loud crash-The fu-whirring noises-nyoom-eerie silence

Remus didn’t give a second thought before diving into the portal after him. If he had, he would have thought hey, this’ll probably bring us face to face, something I’ve been avoiding or maybe jumping into random portals in a stupid idea or I’m going to grab a weapon before just running at it. But his first impulse was to make sure his snarky soulmate hadn’t died, so into the portal he went.

The Year: 2550

The Portal: Glows a lot, thank you for asking

The Reason: A mad scientist has only one thing left to lose, and is terrified as it slips away

Logan: Logan was a geek at heart. He loved science, in both theories and practice. He probably should have toned down his obsession with Nikola Tesla. He wanted to travel to the sky, and touch the stars, and watch time like a film reel.

Time travel was his passion. If people could travel across the physical seas, why not the metaphorical ones of time?

It was pure luck that he actually figured it out, but figure it out he did. Logan loved his creation.

He wanted to create a million inventions, but more importantly he wanted Patton to see them all.

If there was one thing he loved more than science, it was him.

The two kept each other from drifting off into the stars, or sinking into the dirt because they’re too afraid of being rude. One of Logan’s favorite memories was he and Patton running through the St. Louis fair, giggling at terrible puns and sharing a quick kiss out of sight, before catching the next exposition.

Patton was kind, and caring, and knew how to talk to people to get them to like him, and was just good. He was good.

Logan dealt only in facts. And it was a fact that it would have been better, more fair for Logan to have died in the fire.

It was a fact that he didn’t (even though it felt like it sometimes). It was a fact that Patton had been the one to notice the smoke. It was a fact that the love of his life waited for a few seconds in the doorway, trying to call the cat out. It was a fact that, after Logan was out of the house, he turned around to see the doorway collapse.

He found a way back into the house, but it took too long.

Fact: Humans can only endure severe smoke inhalation for a few minutes before dying.

Logan took one look at his time machine, somehow still undamaged. He’d never tested it before, but he really didn’t have a choice, so he kissed Patton on the forehead and stepped into a portal.

Back To The Plot

Virgil and Remus immediately knew that they were in the 26th century.

How? There was a sign!

Hey! If You Happen To Be A Time Traveler, This Is 2550! Check In With The Lord Cerebrum To Know More, Unless You Don’t Have A License, In Which Case

You Know What Happens

They don’t have much time to mull over this before Remus tries to murder Virgil. He’s not IMMORTAL any more, and it’s not FAIR, and it’s all HIS fault!

This is where we enter the Rivals To Friends (While On The Run From Time Management) section

Remus and Virgil have many adventures escaping from Time Management, while learning to appreciate the other as a friend. They are platonic soulmates, after all!

But Time Management is nothing if not patient, and the boys are caught eventually (you know how it goes. You forget to check around for listening ears, you use 21st century slang, and suddenly a single “yeet” and a “same” get you dragged before the Lord Cerebrum)

A Handy Dandy Guide To The Year 2550 (transcript from the Handy Dandy Infomercial Station)

Hey, time travelers! I know that everyone likes zipping around the time-stream and seeing what the fates throw at them to keep them from murdering their grandpa, but we have to do this by the Rules!

If you break the rules, you know what happens

The Year 2550 is protected by Logos Industries’s time dilation filter, to ensure that no one gets the wrong idea about going free range!

If you have a license, just proceed to the Lord Cerebrum to get your stamp of approval and philosopher disguise for the maximum positive effect! After all, Logos Industries needs funding to protect us all!

If you don’t have a license, you’ll see the Lord Cerebrum too!

Have a Handy Dandy Time :)

Back To The Plot

The boys are led through a menacing government facility, taken to see the Lord Cerebrum. They try to ask questions, but Time Management is rather disinterested in their fleeting existence, so nothing much gets answered.

The final destination is a computer room, where the Lord Cerebrum sits. His form was half hologram, half skin, his age unchanging for 526 years, and recognizable at first sight to Remus

Lord Cerebrum, aka Brain, aka Brian: Hey, Remus, what exactly did you say about outliving me?

Brian: Brian was a dick. There’s no other way to put it.

He and Remus used to be friends, sticking brand new phones in water to see what would happen and planning out pranks (they made their history teacher think that she was being haunted by the ghost of Charlemagne!), but things changed, and by 8th grade his dickishness was on full display

It was really easy to get away with being cruel to Remus. He naturally unnerved people, and anyone in a position of power immediately knew he was trouble (which was true), so when there was a conflicting story between a star student and the kid who poured ketchup in the principal’s desk, you can guess who’d always get believed.

Brian was a dick, but he was 13. He could have grown later in life, regretted his ways (or at least stopped), but instead he touched an antique time machine on a museum tour of the Clock House (home of Logan, the famous inventor of soulmate clocks).

He’d been planning to snap off the handle and pin it on Remus (or maybe Roman for variety), but instead

Crash-what the-whirring noises-nyoom-eerie silence

And Brian arrived in the year 2520, the first of many time travellers.

He became a celebrity. The parts of him lost in the wormhole were quickly replaced with state-of-the-art holograms, and his fame went to his head.

Thirty years of good marketing later, he was the Lord Cerebrum. And when a desperate mad scientist came crashing through a portal of his own, it was easy to get him to work for him under the promise that Brian would let him save his “Patton” once he made some technology for him.

He recognized Logan from the museum. He knew who’s fault it was that he was trapped travelling through time, whirling through the portal, praying and promising and in the end just screaming. Brian knew who was to blame for the fact that he couldn’t tell how much of his body would stay when the power went out.

So the tasks got longer and more complicated, Patton dangled like a carrot over Logan’s head.

Fact: Logan would never win, and someday Brian would get tired of this game and there would only be one genius left in 2550.

Back To The Plot: Virgil punched the Lord Cerebrum in the face. He didn’t know all of the context, but his best friend seemed not to like the guy, and he seemed evil, so he punched the overlord in the face.

Brian was offended, and abandoned all plans for a monologue in favor of leaving them to die.

The most fitting way to do away with a time traveler is to send them everywhere at once. It’s an awful death, one where molecules are slowly lost as the traveler in question hits walls and trees and memories.

The duo managed to survive five or so timelines, before the machine miraculously shut off. A mad scientist ran into the room, unscrewed the vents in the walls, and told the teenagers that they’re late.

Things are explained as they escape the facility.

Things

Logan needed a way to break the time dilation filter. He did the math (which he tried and failed to explain to the boys), and it was determined that Remus and Virgil had the most butterfly effect capabilities to influence this particular event

Basically, removing them from the timeline changed things just enough for Logan to find the chink in the filter’s armor.

The duo’s job is done, and Logan is only sorry that he didn’t find them earlier to get them home.

Back To The Plot

Everything seems like it’s going to be fine, and the duo are almost able to go home, when the Lord Cerebrum finds them.

CLIMATIC SHOWDOWN

An Ending

In the end, Brian is sent to the 22th century, the year where nearly all of humanity were turned into giant rats for some reason

Logan found his way back to the 1910′s, and used the 26th century technology to heal his love. The time machine burned in the fire. Good. Space travel was where it was at, anyway.

Virgil had so much explaining to do to his parents

Remus knew that no one would believe him. Roman did.

Virgil and Remus stayed the closest of friends. They dressed up as vampires for Halloween. They stuck together. They got to grow up.

More soulmate shenanigans, amiright?

#sanders sides #ts sides #remus sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #logicality #platonic dukexiety #time travel #soulmate au #beware the drafts of march #soulmate shenanigans #unsympathetic brian #i don't know why this random shorts character is awful in my mind #i'm sure he's a perfectly nice fictional character #i love writing #fan fic #sanders side fic #sanders sides fic

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princessmo · 3 years

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this is just gonna be me bitching about stuff under the read more because i need to do that, but i don’t want to burden anyone specifically so i must burden everyone at once. tw for child death, child abuse and probably other shitty stuff. i’m not the victim of these, my parents/their siblings are/were and i think about it too much.

so i dunno if anyone else ever does that thing when you’re bored where you look yourself up, but i was doing that today and stumbled across some huge family tree website that includes stuff from both sides of my family and i thought it was interesting especially because i know almost nothing about my paternal grandfather since he and my grandma got divorced a couple years after my dad was born, and he died a few years before i was born. from what little i know, he sucked as a person and cheated on my grandma, but i still can’t help but be curious. somehow he’s not even close to being my worst grandparent. anyway, i didn’t find very much about him other than some basic stuff, even just trying to look him up on google doesn’t do anything, i don’t think he even got an obituary and i don’t know if anyone cared about him at the end of his life, i don’t know how much he deserved it all (my dad doesn’t tell me about his childhood unless he’s super drunk at 4am watching music videos on the youtube tv app with me). also, not from this website, but i learned that my dad’s former stepfather who used to threaten my grandma/aunt/dad with his gun is still alive and i’m upset about that because i (falsely) assumed he was dead. he was a cop and the other cops wouldn’t do anything about him.

what i did find out, or rather maybe rediscover? (i knew this information before but i wasn’t supposed to and i had repressed/forgotten it) was that my mom had two brothers who died in infancy, and it’s both appalling and entirely unsurprising because that’s just a family tradition when you’re irish catholic. i could’ve had two more uncles. i don’t know how or why they died. thank god for findagrave.com. my mom also had a really shitty childhood where my grandpa was (and still is) a fucking horrible and miserable person; he’d beat my grandma and their five living kids, and she’d beat the kids and the kids would all beat each other. i don’t really know how to end this but i’m too goddamn lazy to look into therapy right now and i needed to tell anyone who would listen.

none of these are even my own problems but i think about them a lot. i do have a few problems of my own but they’re not at all comparable (i’ve convinced myself i’m gonna die a virgin because i’m ugly and too goddamned selective and i don’t have any interests or talents i can see myself pursuing as a career) and sometimes i think i don’t deserve to talk to anyone about my own insecurities because everything could be a hell of a lot worse. for two people who didn’t have a single good parental influence between them, i think they did a pretty good job raising me.

#ask to tag #i don't know i don't know anything sometimes i wish i did

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astriiformes · 4 years

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Got a package in the mail today that made me cry.

My grandfather on my dad’s side was a biologist and avid outdoorsman who also loved to make things, so his gifts to me and both my sisters when we were just babies, fairy godparent-like, were handcrafted fishing rods, personalized for each of us. I think his aim in making them was that someday he’d be able to take us out on a river somewhere in Oregon, teach us how to use them, and have all of us bond over an activity he loved. Life subverted that part of the fairy-tale though. He died when I was only 10 years old. My littlest sister, 9 years younger than me, never even met him -- as far as I know, her fishing rod was one of the last things he ever made.

My dad doesn’t really like to fish. We never went on a trip where I could learn from him, even though he got to learn how from his dad. I’d only ever seen my fishing rod once or twice, pulled out of storage while he told me the story of how mine had been in-progress before I was even born. But with me spending so much time outside now, and in particular on the lakes here, where you can see the fish that fill them every time you look down into the water, I thought it might be time to give it a go. I didn’t even know where the rod was when I moved out here, so I had to e-mail my dad and ask if he still had it, and if he could get it to me. I was worried it might be risky, mailing it, but he packaged it up safely and it got here just fine.

I think a lot about how I never really got to know my grandpa, but never more keenly than today. I have incredibly fond memories of museum trips and visits to the fish ladder and wooden dinosaur-bone puzzles sent in the mail, because he loved and encouraged my interest in science, and it’s easy enough to think he would have been thrilled by my decision to pursue the sciences as an adult. To get a biology degree just like him. But unwrapping the package today, I was reminded that I knew so little about myself when I was 10 -- which means that he did, too. The protective fabric casing it’s in is a perfect baby-girl pink, tied shut with little satin ribbons of a similar hue. On the rod itself is my deadname, written lovingly in his tiny handwriting, so similar to mine.

I don’t know if my grandpa would have been accepting of my trans identity. My dad has been pretty decent, so I’d like to believe that the man who raised him would be similar, or at least similar enough. I’ve lost the only other real familial connections I had (besides my dad and sisters), on any side of the family, largely due to coming out, so in my head there’s this little fantasy world where he saw me become an adult and was proud of every aspect of me, not just my love for science. But there’s something really complicated about knowing that had he lived longer, had I actually gotten to have more of a relationship with him, that might not have been how it would have gone. I’ll never know if I was spared a different kind of pain or if I lost something that would have been wholly good when he died, and I don’t know how to voice how that feels.

It’s not something I have an obligation to dwell on, I guess. Maybes and could have beens and what ifs are not a good world to live in. Instead I’m going to try to focus on the good and the real: that soon enough, I will learn how to use my fishing rod from somewhere or someone else, and I won’t care that it’s covered in criss-crossing pink ribbons, because all they mean is that somebody loved me a lot once. I’ll go out to a lake with my friends -- maybe even with my sisters, with their matching rods -- and maybe I’ll catch something, and maybe I won’t, but we’ll still have fun, and it will still be the realization of something pretty special, over 20 years in the making. And my love for nature and his love for nature meeting will be the relationship I get to have with him instead, two biologists displaced in time and space but not in spirit.

How’s that for a fairy-tale?

#i keep crying on-and-off over this so i've earned my right to be a little poetic i think #i'm really glad it got here safely. and i think getting to use it will be fun as well as moving and isn't that the ideal #but also pulling it out and putting it together was. a lot #death cw #ask to tag

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starswornoaths · 4 years

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Prompt 7: Nonagenarian

Oh hey, another one that got away from me. 5.0-5.3 spoilers, especially toward the end when perspectives change.

The Crystal Exarch did not have a nameday. And for little Lyna, that just would not do.

Word count: 2,222

The Crystal Exarch had long since lost track of when his nameday was, to say nothing of how many of them that had passed him by. Even long before the Crystarium rose around his tower, he had given up keeping track of his exact age. The community that turned to him for guidance didn’t ask, likely out of respect for what they recognized was a painful past of a kind man who tried to forget it all, even as he clung to all the good he had known and fought to save.

Little Lyna, however, the inquisitive little girl with bright, keen eyes and a need for familiarity with the man she viewed as a grandfather, had no hesitation in asking, even if she had already asked at least a dozen other times over the years, and had yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

“Exarch, when is your nameday?” She asked one year, as he had mentioned wanting to plan for her nameday coming up.

Her words were wrapped around a lisp, her teeth not quite grown in— soft, barely there if one wasn’t paying attention, but the Exarch always did. He always had time to listen to his granddaughter, even if he didn’t always have it in him to be honest with her. Or anyone, really.

“I don’t have one!” He replied, as he always did.

And as always, that didn’t satisfy her.

When she puffed her cheeks out in annoyance at him, he paused in pursuing their pantry shelves for cake ingredients to ruffle the hair between her ears. Batting his hand away and giving a whine in the back of her throat as she tried to fix her mussed up bangs, she scowled up at him.

“You have to have one! Everyone does!” Lyna insisted.

“I’m not everyone, and I am quite certain I do not have a nameday, little one.”

“That’s not true!” She raised her voice, startling him. “Why can’t you just tell me!”

She growled in frustration and stamped her foot, and at first he had been prepared to calm another fit, as children are wont to have, but then when he turned to face her at a soft sniffle, he realized she was legitimately upset— and worse, that he had upset her.

“Lyna—”

He knelt down to her level, hand reaching out toward her again. Not teasing this time, but comforting, a hand on her shoulder as she ducked her head. He heart squeezed— she only ever hid her face from him so when she was trying not to cry.

When she shoved his hand away with both of hers with a hiccup and scrubbed at her own eyes, he couldn’t find it in him to blame her.

“Lyna, tell me how I’ve upset you.” He requested, deliberately keeping his voice soft.

He already knew why she was upset, but it was important that she learn the words to express her upset, and that she should be able to give voice to them when she was hurt, even by family. Especially by family.

“You always lie to me.” The little Viis girl sobbed, knuckles still rubbing at her eyes. “You’re my grandpa and I don’t know anything about you!”

The Exarch paused again, hand hovering in the space between them before resting his forearm on his knee as he watched her weep, his heart twisting at the sight. Deep down, in that part of him that remembered he had once had a name and had wanted to be someone to someone stirred at being loved in such a simple, familial way. Demanded that he comply with his granddaughter’s one wish: to give him a nameday and not argue with her on the point.

He had already failed in distancing himself so she wouldn’t mourn him when he died, reasoned the part of him that remembered he had once been G’raha Tia. Would it be so awful to give her something happy to cling to? Something she could say she did?

Hadn’t that been what he had wanted more than anything as a little boy, clinging to his books of history and fairy tales alike, because they accepted him for who he was more than his tribe had?

“I’m sorry, little one.” The Exarch murmured, voice only just louder than her sniffles and hiccups. “I try to protect you from everything, but in so doing, I fear I’m only hurting you.”

When she peered up at him with wide, glassy eyes through the fringe of her bangs, he offered her a remorseful but pleading smile.

“In truth, I forgot when my nameday was.” He said, technically in truth for how he had lost track of the Eorzean calendar, and how it could translate to Norvrandt’s. “So I simply don’t have one.”

“Then I’ll give you one!” She pointed at him with another stamp of her foot. “Everyone deserves a nameday!”

A simplistic, if genuine argument. It wasn’t a matter of not deserving one, but not wanting to keep one, not wanting to know. Bad enough that he was distantly aware that he was a nonagenarian at that point, bad enough that he had to live with the guilt he had. No, having an actual nameday would be a line to cross, every year, that would remind him of how long he had lived like this, how long he had to wait to right a wrong he hadn’t even been around to try and prevent. Having such a marker would make it worse.

“Tell you what, Lyna.” The Exarch smiled, and held out the hand not yet claimed by the tower. “You can pick a day— any day of the year, any one that you like— and you can celebrate it for me.”

“...Promise?” Lyna asked, not yet accepting his handshake and giving him a suspicious side eye.

“I promise.” He swore with a firm nod.

After another moment of her examining his offered hand, a smile slowly bloomed on her face as she accepted his handshake. They shook on it, hands bobbing in one single shake. And after a moment, the Exarch offered his arms stretched wide for a hug. With a giddy laugh, Lyna leapt into them and let her grandfather scoop her up in a hug.

It was maybe a week later, maybe a mite longer, that he found a lumpy, misshapen little cake on his desk. The frosting ran off the side, more watery icing sugar than true frosting, and the cake was half burned with lumps of unmixed flour dotting the inside. Beside the child’s baking attempt, there sat a little crayon drawing of what appeared to be a very red man with triangles on his head holding hands with a little grey, stretched out stuck bunny beside him. Above the little sketch of him and Lyna, the words, “HAPPEE NAMDAY GRAMPA” were written, the letters alternating in color between what crayons she had at her disposal.

The was the best nameday cake he had ever had.

As the years wore on, and Lyna outgrew him almost one and a half times over as she matured into the strong, powerful, dignified Captain that he had always thought she could be, she never forgot. It was almost their little secret.

It was never the same day of the year— that never really mattered anyroad— but one day, each day of the year, Lyna would leave a little cake and a note for him, wishing him a happy nameday. The innocent and unskilled drawings of a youthful child gave way over the years to respectful but muted letters of well wishes and expressions of gratitude, wrapped in hopes that he had a pleasant day. Despite the ever increasin professionalism with which she carried herself, Lyna had never once lost a bit of that warmth that made people follow her into the jaws of death itself.

Then one year, decades after they had established that the Exarch got to have a nameday, that Lyna chose to deliver his cake in person.

The cake itself was her best yet. Vanilla buttercream frosting made fresh that morning piped in a perfect little mound atop a little spice cake that perfectly fit in the palm of her hand. A perfect, singular serving. She had packed a little satchel with a thick blanket, a thermos of tea to compliment the cake, (a nice black tea, strong enough to balance out the sweetness of the cake,) and set out early that morning.

She had the day off, and had found herself wanting for the Exarch’s counsel. The people had begun to turn to her more and more in recent times, and though she offered them a sturdy pillar to lean on, she wondered if this was beyond her scope as Captain of the guard. If anyone would know how best to proceed, it would be him. That, and she hadn’t gotten around to celebrating his nameday this year. She would be remiss to let it pass by— she never had before, and was not going to stop now.

The stairs were numerous, and the path not quite familiar enough that she didn’t have to take heed of where she was going, but Lyna made it to him just as she had hoped she would. The dawn was just breaking beyond the horizon, and there was a light, sweet breeze drifting between the broad crystal pillars that held up the ceiling to this platform, at the very top of the Crystal Tower. The hallway between here and where her grandfather was resting was as a yawning expanse before her, giving the already ostentacious room an even more grandiose air.

All her life, Lyna had felt small compared to the might of the Crystal Exarch. This room felt the most like him, in that regard.

“Good morning.” Lyna said quietly when at last she stopped before her grandfather. “You did not assume me neglectful of your nameday, I hope?”

She averted her eyes as she removed her satchel and rolled the blanket out beside him. It was thick enough to be comfortable when she situated herself on it, sitting with her knees crossed. She set the cake down in the space between them, on a little kerchief, and took a few moments to pour herself a cup of tea in the calm quiet of the room.

Then, she began to speak. She told him of all that was happening in the Crystarium, all that the people had come to ask of her in his absence. There were children born in recent days that had asked after the Exarch’s name to give to them. Lyna instead offered them a name from any one of the tales that her grandfather had told her growing up, names of heroes that had stood up to do the right thing, whether that had been to proffer a blade to an enemy or give comfort to a friend. Between each tale, every bit of information she had to catch him up on, she would take a bite of the cake. Resources were not so plentiful that she would waste it in offering— and if the Exarch were here, that would be the last thing he would want from her.

The sun rose higher in the sky, catching the crystal of her grandfather’s torso. She brushed the crumbs away from her blanket and stood.

“I hope my report was sufficient.” Lyna murmured, rolling the blanket back up and sticking it back in her satchel. Her thermos, emptied of tea, soon followed. “...You could do with some plants here to keep you company. I cannot always be here.” After a moment, she said, almost to herself, “Perhaps we might start a garden here. Your garden.”

She looked back at her grandfather. Enshrined forever in crystal, eyes forever facing forward, the outlines of his face gleamed in the rising sun. His expression was that same, steadfast calm she had always known him to possess. Of all the things that were a mystery of him, she never once wondered if he had the courage to face his destiny. She had learned to tackle it head on from the best, after all.

“My duties will keep me away most of the time.” She told him, and in a strange way, she made this the goodbye she didn’t get to have. Or the closest thing she could make to it, anyroad. “But I will come back— as long as I live, you have a nameday, after all, remember?”

Her eyes stung. Her satchel felt heavy, slung over her shoulder— or perhaps that was because her heart felt lighter now. She had a rather long walk down to think on it. Through the blur of her tears and the warm, bright glow of the morning light, for a moment, she saw him— not the crystal, but the man that had taught her how to bake a cake, how to wield a weapon, how to be the woman she had become, smiling at her.

When she blinked her tears away, he was gone. But then, he had never been there at all— and that was okay. He was happy, on that far flung somewhere he used to tell her stories about. Just as he had always wanted.

“Happy nameday, grandfather.” Lyna said to him, and left.

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv #5.0 spoilers #5.3 spoilers #shadowbringers spoilers #Crystal Exarch #ffxiv Lyna #idk how this one ran away from me the way that it did but it Did and I'm okay with this

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mirkwoodshewolf · 4 years

Text

Burn; Current!Roger Taylor x reader

*Author’s note*

In light of Hamilton coming out on Disney+ today (watched it earlier this afternoon and WAS BLOWN AWAY!!!!!) I wanted to post this for awhile but never had the time nor did I think I was going to but I then thought screw it I'll post it in light of Hamilton. So this fanfic goes around "That would be enough" (If you haven't read that story GO READ THAT CAUSE SPOILERS!!!) but this time it's in YOUR POV. Plus this song had some heavy inspiration for a sequel-ish part of that fic. So I hope you all enjoy it and have a safe and happy 4th of July to my fellow American readers :)

You can read pt.1 here -------> READ ME

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@simonedk

@platawnic

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queensdivas

@geek-and-proud

@kairosfreddie

@queendeakyy

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I sat there in the pub trying to enjoy our victory at the Grammy’s with my Hamilton fam, but what Roger had told me just clouded my mind and it was all I could think about. He was my dad. All this time I really did have a father, a freakin Rockstar legend no doubt. The man I had come to idolize out of all the four members of my favorite rock band was none other than my dad.

What if he was lying? Maybe he know about this all along? Maybe he kicked my mother aside as soon as she told him? So many questions were buzzing through my mind. So many what if’s and maybes that I almost was about to just start bawling right there in the club.

“(Y/n)? You okay?” I felt a hand at my shoulder and when I turned around there stood Lin. His brown eyes filled with concern.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You sure? You looked really out of it for a second there.” Said Renée.

“I’ll bet she’s still just star struck from having to sing alongside her favorite rock group. Am I right?” Daveed teased as he wrapped an arm around me and poked my cheek teasingly.

“Yeah how did it feel to be up there with Queen themselves (n/n)? You’ve always raved on about how you wished to perform alongside them.” Leslie said.

“Oh it was—amazing.” I trailed off. “Excuse me.” I removed Daveed’s arm from my shoulders and walked out ot eh club to try and get some air.

Once outside I was automatically hit with the cool winter LA air. I took a left to the side of the club and leaned up against the wall trying to compose myself. Of course I wasn’t gonna tell the guys what Roger just told me, no. This was my mess and they don’t deserve this gossip, but I’ve got to see whether Roger Taylor was either playing me for a fool or if in fact he really is my—father.

In the weeks that went by after the award season was done, I called up my mom’s brother and sister, my uncle Bobby and aunt Jodie to finally see just what the truth was. I first arrived at my aunt Jodie’s home down in Sioux Falls and knocked on the door. The door opened after about five seconds and there stood my aunt Jodie, sheriff of the Sioux Falls police force.

“Hey, there’s my Tony award winning niece.”

“Aunt Jodie you know I didn’t win the award.”

“I don’t care you were denied that award. I’ve heard the album and I saw the show the day it came to Broadway and you were sensational!” I smiled and thanked her with a hug. “Come in, I was just making some coffee before I headed out to start my shift.”

“Oh well if you’re too busy we can talk later.” I said as I was gestured inside.

“Nonsense, besides I’m the sheriff I can come in whenever I want.” She bragged. I shook my head playfully at her as she went into the kitchen and got the coffee poured out. “So, you said over the phone that you wanted to talk about your mom, right?”

“In a way.” I said as I took one of the coffee mugs she soon came in with. She and I sat down in the dining room and she said.

“Okay. What’s going on?”

“Look I’m just gonna cut to the chase. Is Roger Taylor my father?” her eyes widened and she gulped noticeably.

“Wow. That is cutting to the chase.”

“Aunt Jodie please. I’ve—been literally freaking out about this ever since he told me after the Grammy’s……”

“Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. You mean you actually met him?”

“Is it true?!” I demanded. Aunt Jodie set her mug down and sighed heavily.

“God (m/n) you should’ve told her the truth.” She muttered into her hands as she buried her face into them.

“So it is true? Roger Taylor really is my dad?” she turned to me with solemn eyes and took my hand in hers.

“Your mom and Roger were a couple. And they seemed really happy with each other, even from being across the world from each other most days until one day she did move to London with him. God I could’ve sworn they would’ve been married by the end of the year. But you mom showed up at my apartment one night, drenched in the storm that was here that night with a heartbroken expression.”

“So—did he…..dump her? Break her heart?” I snapped lowly.

“Truth be told, your mom left him.” I looked at her in shock. “Yeah. It was also when she told me that she was pregnant. With you. Roger’s child.” She said as she stroked my cheek. I turned away from her and I said as I stared at my mug of coffee.

“Why the hell would she lie to me all these years?”

“Believe me sweetie. Your uncle Bobby and I tried to convince your mom to tell you the truth. Especially once you heard your first Queen song. And—” But before she could finish her statement, her phone rang. She picked it up and answered in a firm tone, “Sheriff Jodie……yeah. Okay. Alright I’ll be there soon.” She hung up and sighed heavily. “Sorry sweetie, the team needs me to do a press interview and it can’t wait any longer.”

“I understand.” I said solemnly.

“Here.” She spoke after a moment of silence. She went over to the living room where she kept all her books and reached the very top of it and pulled out a scrapbook. “Take this.” She handed it to me.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Your mom got into scrapbooking while she was up there. It—has all the pictures of her and Roger together. She told me to hide this shortly after you were born, but I think now since you know the truth, you should take it.” She held it out to me and I took it. “You know, if you don’t wanna wait for me. You can see your uncle Bobby. He might have some things to tell you.”

“Wait, uncle Bobby knows about this too?!” I said aghast. “Did the entire family know about this too? Did grandma and grandpa know about this too?”

“No. Just Bobby and I as her siblings. In fact your grandfather tried to keep your mom away from Roger when they started seeing each other. Said that he was no good for her.” With that she forced herself to leave the house so that she could meet for that press interview.

“Mom—why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” I sighed as I left aunt Jodie’s place and headed 30 miles north to meet my uncle Bobby over at his place.

I arrived at his home/garage shop and we were both sitting down in the kitchen. He was currently eating a steak and potatoes and he even asked if I wanted anything but I told him I didn’t have the appetite to eat. I then explained to him everything that I had found out and it was then he gently lowered his fork filled with mashed potatoes and he said grimly.

“So you met your old man?”

“Got to perform with him actually. I know you really don’t do award shows except for the CMA’s but yeah. I performed alongside Queen and Adam Lambert at the Grammys back in February.”

“And he told you that he was your father?”

“Yeah. Aunt Jodie gave me mom’s scrapbook. Would’ve told me more but she had to do a press junket or something like that.”

“Always busy that little sister of mine.” He sighed solemnly. “Listen sweetheart; when your mom first started seeing Roger I knew a bit of his playboy rep. Then again what rockstar back then didn’t have one? I just told her to be careful. Sure I wasn’t all that thrilled with her dating a Brit but I couldn’t stop her. But when Jodie called and told me that she had come back home pregnant with you, I wanted to drag her ass back there and have her tell Roger what had happened.”

“So she left—because of me?”

“Of course not sweetie. Her reason was because of the fact that Queen was finally rising to the heights they had dreamed of. She—she was honestly scared of what Roger would say if she told him. Jodie and I tried to convince her but you know your mama. Stubborn as an ox. Much like yourself.”

He stood up and went to open a drawer and pulled out a small rusted box. He set it down before me and he told me.

“While your mom could never physically tell you the truth, she tried to see if she could write you a letter. She wrote one every year on your birthday, but could never find the heart to give them to you. She also even wrote some letters to Roger.”

“Let me guess, and she entrusted you with this like she did with aunt Jodie for the scrapbook.”

“There’s also this.” He left and grabbed an envelope from the kitchen cabinet where he would usually keep bills at. “This…..was the letter she wrote on her deathbed. She entrusted me to give this to you when you were ready. Well, guess now’s a good time as any.” He handed me the envelope and I held that along with touching the lid of the box to reveal hundreds maybe thousands of letters.

I tried to keep the tears at bay from the hurt I was feeling in my chest. Uncle Bobby was silence for a moment before he said to me.

“Take your time when you read these letters.”

After a couple of months of finally going through all the letter my mum tried to write to both Roger and myself throughout the years, and finally able to see every single picture of her and Roger together I was numb.

I was the only one left up on stage since everyone decided to go out to eat for their lunch break before tomorrow tonight’s performance which would in fact be Lin’s last performance with us on stage. I took out one specific letter that was actually written just a few days before my mom finally died of cancer, the letter that she was actually able to finish completely with supposedly the right words she needed to tell me.

I had read this letter so many times that I could recite it almost as easy as my lines and the songs from Hamilton. I sat down at the edge of the stage and looked down at it before taking out my phone and went through my rehearsal track and found the instrumental version of Burn.

Much like I had done once before when I was betrayed by my ex-fiancé at the time I was to star in the show when it first came to Broadway, I sung Burn aloud to myself filling each verse with as much emotion and betrayal I was feeling inside.

However unlike before, I couldn’t help myself but mix up some words to what I would normally sing on stage.

Play video

*Me*

I saved every letter you wrote to us From the moment I read them I knew you were his He said you were his Which makes me his

Do you know what aunt Jodie said, When we saw your first record arrive? You said, be careful with that one, love He will do what it takes to survive

You and your words flooded my senses Your sentences left me defenseless You built me palaces out of paragraphs You built cathedrals

I'm re-reading the letters you wrote to me I'm searching and scanning for answers in every line For some kind of sign And when you were mine The world seemed to burn. Burn.

You published your works to the world You told me of How you brought my mom into your bed In clearing your name You have ruined my life

Do you know what uncle Bobby said When he heard what you'd done? He said, she’s partnered with an Icarus He has flown too close to the sun

You and your words obsessed with your legacy Your sentences border on senseless And you are paranoid in every paragraph How they perceive you You, you, you!

I'm erasing you both from the narrative Let everyone wonder how (Y/n) reacted When you both broke her heart You have torn it all apart I'm watching it burn Watching it burn

The world has no right to my heart The world has no place in your bed They don't get to know what I said I'm burning the memories Burning the letters that

Might have redeemed you both

You forfeit all rights to my heart You forfeit the place in his bed You'll sleep in your office instead With only the memories of when you were mine

I hope you both

Burn

“I haven’t heard you sing that song with that much emotion since your ex fiancé cheated on you.” I turned around and there stood Lin. He took off his newsies hat and said. “You sure you don’t wanna tell me what’s going on? We’re all worried about you.”

“Just—some personal family drama Lin. You wouldn’t understand.” I said as I sat back down at the edge of the stage.

“I may not get it. But I am willing to lend an ear, if you’d like.” He said as he came up and sat down close to me. His shoulder brushing against mine as his legs mimicked the same way mine were swinging.

“Why do you always have to make me succumb to your charms Lin Manuel Miranda?” he shrugged while giving me the puppy dog eyes. I looked down at my letter before handing it over to him. “You can read it out loud if you’d like.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s better than just you reading in silence. My thoughts will just attack me if there’s silence.” He took the letter from my hand and proceeded to read it.

“‘My darling (y/n). I’ve written this letter over a thousand times in both versions. I could never find the right words to say but with my time coming to an end, you deserve to know the truth. You know how you’ve always loved the songs from Queen? Well, it would seem fate has decided to let you hear them for you see your father is known other than the drummer of Queen.’ Whaaaat?”

“I know. In fact Roger Taylor himself told me he was my father right after the Grammy’s. That’s why I was late to celebration. I didn’t want to believe him, thinking he was a senile old man trying to mess with me. But—hehe turns out he wasn’t. I’ve got pictures from my mom’s scrapbook that she made while she was in London of her and Roger together. All domestic like or her being in the studio with them. And then my uncle shows me some of the many letters she’s tried to write not only to me but to Roger himself about this whole shitshow. So yeah Roger Taylor’s my long lost baby daddy. Surprise!”

“My god.” Lin said after a long pause. “No wonder you’ve been out of sorts lately. I can’t blame you.”

“I’m so confused Lin.”

“About what exactly?”

“Everything. My mom lied to me for so long. Not only to me but apparently to Roger as well cause my aunt Jodie said he never knew. But then again I feel this—utter hatred for Roger because he could’ve told me sooner the moment he found out. Or maybe it would’ve been better had he never told me at all. I mean—I never knew I had a dad. I always believe he never cared about me or my mom, or died of a drug overdose or whatever. It feels like—my whole life has been nothing but one big lie. My entire family knew this secret and yet I find out now almost 30 years later that my father is Roger Fucking Taylor. My idol and favorite member of my most favorite rock band!”

“That is seriously a lot to take in. I mean—if I were in your place I’d be reacting the same way. Lost, betrayed, confused, heartbroken.”

“I just—why would she lie to me? I thought we told each other everything, and she goes and hides for all my life of who my real father was.” I sighed heavily. “You know; I used to always come up with the worst scenarios of why I never had a father. It’s all ranged from the basic ‘you get rid of the baby or I’m leaving you’ scenario. To overdosing or whatever. Or just dying of cancer or some shit like that. But no he’s been living his life as a Rock god. I mean—I should hate him but……he never knew. But then he did, how?”

“Well from what I can tell, and from the pictures you’ve shown me of your mom, you both look similar in a way. But your actions is what really makes you like your mom. I’ve seen all the plays she’s been in as a dancer or ensemble and you have that same fire as she did on the stage. It’s like—you both were made for it.”

“But I guess I get it from both of them.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Still I—I feel so angry with her for lying to me.”

“And it’s okay to be angry. And like you said, Roger didn’t know either. He was kept in the dark about it just as much as you were. But maybe when you got to know them along with Adam it might’ve brought some memories back.” He scooted closer to me and allowed me to rest my head on his shoulder.

“What do I do now?” I asked defeated.

“Well there is one option, but you’re not gonna like it.” We looked at each other and I said.

“You’re right I don’t.”

“But you’ve got to. (Y/n). you can be angry about this but don’t stay mad about it forever. Remember he didn’t know either. It’s not like he packed up and took off. Just tell him how you really feel. I’m not saying you have to accept him and call him dad as soon as you see him. Just—tell him you want to take things slow. Maybe go out for coffee or well tea since he’s British.” I softly laughed at that last remark. “Now there’s that fabulous smile my Eliza is known for.”

“Nice touch calling me my character’s name.”

“I know my Eliza like I know myself.” He shrugged.

“You know that’s Renée’s line right?”

“Yeah I know. Remember I wrote the script.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. C’mon Alexander, I’m hungry and we’ve got an until rehearsal.”

“Sure thing, let us spread our wings and fly away.”

“Okay now you’re just showing off.” I playfully shoved him as we left the theatre and went to go get lunch.

After another couple months, which made it four months since Roger Taylor told me the truth, I found myself in London to where I had told Roger and discussed with him with what I was feeling. He said he was willing to go at whatever speed I needed in order to process this whole thing.

One day after seeing them perform at MSG, Roger and I were sitting together at Central Park right by the Balto statue having a cup of coffee together.

“So what’s new with you my dear?”

“Well…..I’ve been giving this some thought. And—I think it’s time I announced my leaving of Broadway’s Hamilton. Maybe even leaving Broadway all together.”

“Really? What made you decide that?”

“Well. Truthfully I’ve been thinking about……moving to London.” He turned to look at me and I turned to face him. “Now before you say anything I know I should be thinking about this but I have. My aunt and uncle don’t even live remotely close to me so there’s nothing really tying me to New York. And also, I was—hoping that now that Queen’s done with touring for now, maybe you and I could……spend more time together.”

“I would like that very much.” He said with a warm smile. “I just hope you aren’t doing all this just for my sake. Like I told you before, I’m willing to go at your own pace.”

“And I thank you for that Roger. Truly I do. But…..I gotta stop giving into this anger that’s been festering up inside of me. After all you didn’t know about my mom being pregnant when she left you. And—I guess I just need some time away from home.”

“If you need a place to stay until you get on your feet. Or for even longer than that I will not say no to it. You can stay with Sarina and I. We’ve got more than enough rooms.”

“Thanks……..dad.” he looked at me surprised and he said.

“You—you actually called me…..”

“I figured it was about time I did so. I—hope I didn’t make things….”

“No, no, no, no, no not at all love.” He hesitantly reached up towards my face before he finally placed it up against my cheek. I closed my eyes and leaned into his palm. “God. You’re—the perfect mixture of both your mother and myself.”

“You know, Daveed always teased me about just how much I looked like you when you were in drag for the I want to break free music video.” He laughed.

“Oh god that was a fun day on set. Probably one of my favorite videos to shoot.” I smiled softly at him and leaned up against his shoulder and said.

“Do you think they would’ve liked me? John and Freddie I mean.” I felt Roger sigh heavily and he said as I felt his arms wrap around me.

“There’s no doubt in my mind Freddie would’ve tried to spoil you. And John, I’d bet he’d be trying to turn you against me.” I softly chuckled and embraced my dad and nuzzled my head into his shoulder.

The two of us hugging each other finally sitting together as a real father and daughter.

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btswrckd · 4 years

Text

Hunting a Hybrid V

Black Panther!Hybrid Jungkook x Fem!Reader

Summary: Four years after it’s made illegal to acquire hybrids as pets, you’re approached by the daughter of your former employer to hunt down one that had been gifted to her

Warnings: slight violence, mentions of past abuse, poorly written smut

A/N: A lot is happening this chapter and it’s not as clean as I hoped it would be but tomorrow is Christmas and I really wanted it to be up. As you guys know, I’ve been busy with a new job and didn’t have much time to work on this fic but I’m hoping you guys will enjoy anyways. Also if you’re like me and love to listen to music while reading, I was listening to Can You Hold Me by NF and Dynasty by Miia. Much love!

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The red and blue lights flickered against the beige house, illuminating it and many others around. People, neighbors, stood along the street in a crowd and a few women breaking off into their own little cliques to whisper amongst themselves. Hands covered their mouths as if they weren’t so obviously speaking of the swarm of cop cars parked outside your home, their husbands off to the side and speculating just what the hell was going on.

Sangchul stood gruff with crossed arms, nodding his head at the information being passed on to him by one of the few officers on the scene. His shoulders stiff at the sound of your voice, scream piercing through the crowd and footsteps heavy as they pounded against the asphalt behind him.

You were late coming home, 15 year old you grumbling and kicking rocks along the path you walked, Yoongi at your side and teasing you for losing track of time. Pouting as he ruffled your hair and said to be careful gathering your things, you shook your head and gave his shoulder a light punch. You noticed him wince slightly and dropped your head in apology; ever since training with your grandfather, both you and Yoongi noticed how strong you came to be, but this is what Sangchul had taught you to be and Yoongi never questioned it aloud. Not that you’d tell him the truth anyways.

“What the hell is that?” You asked, noticing the red and blue flashing lights just up the street. You noticed the mob of people as they turned to look at you with sympathy, anxiety creeping your spine and your stomach dropping to your feet. Bile rose in your throat with each step you took, the chatter and people fading into the back as you neared the house surrounded by police officers and an ambulance. The door looked as if it had been kicked in, the wood splintered from the force, and covered in yellow ‘caution’ tape. Your breath shuttered as you stepped off the curb, taking note of your mother’s car in the driveway. “Mom?”

Yoongi tried to snag your elbow before you went any further but his own father had clapped a hand to his shoulder, shaking his head in response to Yoongi’s glare. His head whipped back around at your shrill scream, the word ‘Mom’ being screeched so loud it made a few cops jump and try their best to stop you from going into the house.

Stumbling as your knees gave in, you allowed yourself to be caught by the officer standing with your grandfather, hot tears streaming down your face when the paramedics stepped out the front door with a gurney and what you prayed was not your mother in a body bag. “Mom!”

The officer winced when you clawed at his arms to break free from his embrace, nails digging into his skin but his hold was strong, tears springing to his eyes at hearing you cry out to your mother like a lost child. His bottom lip trembled at your tear stained face, throat raw from screaming and body going limp with exhaustion, he whispered his apologies into your hair. He knew better than to become emotionally involved but you were still just a kid whose own grandfather wasn’t doing much to comfort you. As he turned to shoot a glare in Sangchul’s direction, his grip faltered and you broke away from him to sprint into the house.

Other officers tried to restrain you, but you were quicker than them, more agile in your movements to dodge their hands. Finally reaching the front door, the bile in your throat came out full force at the sight of blood, too much blood to be just your mother’s. The red splattered across the walls painted a very gory image of what could have happened, your father’s body finally catching your eye and giving you a glimpse of what looked like claw marks.

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

You sat up quickly, short of breath and feeling as though someone had been trying to smother you in your sleep. Sweat clung to your still naked body and soaked your sheets making you grimace and throw them from your body. Leaning over the bed, you slipped on a bra, panties, and a tank top. The rustling of sheets alerted you to Jungkook also coming to and jumping up in panic when he couldn’t feel your body beside his.

“Hey,” His voice was soft and comforting as he felt your nerves on overdrive, your anxiety seeping out in waves. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” You lied, trying your best to calm the rapid beating of your heart and rising from the bed to cross the room, “Just a nightmare.”

“Another one?” Jungkook was understandably concerned, he himself waking with night terrors, but none leaving him as shaken. Even before his parents’ deaths, he had always been treated badly because he was a hybrid so he learned to adapt. But something about your nightmares made him uneasy, the need to protect you from them greater than anything he’s ever felt.

“Kook,” Your voice broke through his thoughts as you faced the dresser and braced your palms against it, “Do you want to know why I became a hunter?”

He held his breath and stared at your back, watching your shoulders tense and arms tremble, signs that you were crying. It left an ache in his chest.

You took in a huge breath before turning to face him, leaning back against the dresser, and closing your eyes to recall that very night so long ago. “The night my parents died, I had been out with Yoongi because I was going to stay the weekend at his house. My dad had business out of town and was forcing my mom to go with him. When I got home that night, there was all kinds of cop cars up and down our block, and our neighbors were standing around outside. They crowded our house...” You couldn’t finish your sentence, the words dying on your tongue and the memories so vivid it was as if it all happened yesterday.

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“Y/N,” Sangchul’s voice caused a shiver to run down your spine, blood running ice cold at the lack of emotion in his tone. Of course he didn’t care that his only son and daughter-in-law were just murdered. Why would he?

You were on your knees, hands braced on the floor as you heaved, the acidic taste of vomit still present in your mouth. Eyes shut tight and the pain squeezing your chest, you shook your head as if it were going to erase the images.

“Y/N,” Sangchul’s tone was harsh as he tried to get your attention by gripping your elbow tight and tugging you to your feet, turning your body to face him. “Calm yourself.”

You looked at him as if he’d grown two heads, disgusted and confused by what he meant. Hot tears streamed down your face while you scoffed, “Calm myself? Do you see what’s happened here? Are you blind?!”

“Do not,” He hissed and brought your face close to his, “speak to me that way. Of course I see what’s happened. Your parents were attacked by a beast.”

“A beast that looks both man and animal,” Sangchul clarified when your brows drew together, not yet processing what he was saying, “A hybrid, Y/N. One of those things did this to my son and your mother.”

“No,” You shook your head, refusing to believe any of it, “No, one would never. Hybrids...they’re not like this.”

“Yes they are. They’re savages whose violent nature cannot be tamed. Hybrid’s are unnatural and have no place in this world. And one did this to your home.”

“No!” You pushed at your grandfather’s chest hard, bringing your hands to your hair to tug at the strands as if trying to pull them all out. “No, it’s not true!”

Sangchul quickly engulfed you in a hug if only to keep you from causing more of a scene, “Of course it is, Y/N. They did this and we will find it. You will make it pay for what it has done.”

“The p-police will handle it, grandpa,” You pulled back, bringing your hand to your face to wipe away the tears, “can we please just go?”

“The police?” Sangchul growled and placed his large hands on your shoulders, comforting to an outsider but a warning to you, “You think any of these imbeciles will be able to find that hybrid? You think they’ll hold it accountable for what its done? No, Y/N, only you can make it pay. You deserve that much.”

“I don’t want to make him pay.”

“An eye for an eye, Y/N,” He insisted, grip tightening on your shoulders, “blood for blood, you know this. That’s the cardinal rule for hunters and you must uphold that.”

“I don’t want this.” You shook your head with fresh tears leaking down your cheeks and buried your face in your hands. “Please don’t make me.”

Sangchul was becoming frustrated, pulling you close once more to whisper, “You know what happened to your grandmother. You know a hybrid murdered her before you were even born and I never got the chance to see it hurt the same way I did. But you can. You can make it hurt just as bad and you’ll feel so much better once you do. I promise you, Y/N, that when it’s done and over with, you won’t even remember that hybrid. You’ll sleep peacefully knowing you avenged your parents.”

You never wanted to be that way, never wanted to hate the hybrid race because they were different and your grandfather despised them. You always believed hybrids were beautiful and misjudged simply because their appearance wasn’t of the normal standard. A chance encounter when you were a mere 5 years old convincing you that they meant no harm to anyone. You’d become lost in a crowd during your family’s weekly grocery shopping, becoming frightened of all the many strangers passing by without offering help to a little girl. Scurrying up and down aisles, panic began to settle in until you bumped into a friendly stranger with an even friendlier hybrid. The two helped you find your mother and the hybrid had playfully tapped your nose, making you giggle through the hiccups that developed while crying.

There was a raging hate your grandfather always carried for them and you never thought you could feel the same way...until now. You spared a glance at your father’s body being zipped into a black body bag just like your mother’s and decided...

Hybrids were not beautiful and they were not your friends, they were animals. Beasts that fooled you into believing they could be anything but what they were; feral and dangerous. You were wrong about them and you weren’t going to allow yourself to be blinded any longer.

Sangchul watched what little sliver of light you held die out. A smirk spread across his lips at the darkness swirling in your eyes, your jaw setting and nostrils flaring in rage. It was done; you were finally broken enough to train properly, to track and kill without remorse. You were finally ready to become the hunter Sangchul could never teach Donghoon to be.

“Everything okay over here?” The previous officer asked as Sangchul led you to his waiting car. His hands rested on his belt, studying you for any more signs of distress.

“Everything is fine, officer,” Your grandfather leaned in to read his name badge, “Kim. Ah, a fine name. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must take my granddaughter somewhere safe.”

“Of course,” Officer Kim nodded but never took his eyes off you, wanting so badly to prevent that from happening. He waited until your eyes finally met his to say, “I’m very sorry, sweetheart. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call and ask for me, okay?”

He had known your mother for quite some time now after he answered a domestic abuse call some months back. Officer Kim approached her discreetly and asked for the real story, and once the truth was out, he began to help build a case against your father. He was the only one convinced that a hybrid couldn’t do any of this but the evidence suggested otherwise. Something about all of it, including Sangchul’s odd behavior didn’t sit well with him.

“And we thank you for the offer,” Sangchul answered before you could, “But that’s what I’m here for. Come now,” He gathered your hand in his and led you away from what was no longer your home. Glancing back at you, he stopped a long time acquaintance on the force that was on the scene and leaned in close to whisper something into the detective’s ear, slipping a rather hefty roll of money into the man’s hand.

“Where are we going?” You asked when he joined you in the car, eyes peering suspiciously at that same detective stopping officer Kim from getting any closer to the car. “Why did you just slip that detective money?”

“We have to leave town,” Sangchul sighed heavily, “and we won’t be able to return for a very long time. That detective is doing me a favor by making sure we’ll never be found.”

“Why aren’t we staying here to catch the hybrid?”

“You’re not ready,” He explained through grit teeth, frustrated at your series of questions. “Training every once in a while after school isn’t enough anymore. You need more time.”

“And exactly how do you suppose we find it if we don’t stick around?”

“You will,” Your grandfather promised eerily, “once you’re training is over, you’ll find it.”

Twisting around in your seat, you searched for Yoongi, finding him trying to chase the car down with no luck, his legs nearly giving out as your grandfather pressed harder on the gas pedal. You could see him cup his hands around his mouth to shout something, but you never heard what it was, instead lifting your hand to wave goodbye.

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

“My parents,” You continued, “weren’t a happy couple. My dad would beat my mother every night. Just because he could. He liked making my mother feel inferior, making her feel as if she was nothing. Donghoon was a man that strived on the fear of others, especially her.”

Jungkook waited with bated breath, the realization that you were about to bare all for him, your past, finally sinking in.

Pushing away from the dresser, you faced him and caught the pity in his eyes and you almost laughed; Jungkook had very obviously endured more than you ever have and yet he still felt sorry for you. You never shared your story with anyone, not even Taehyung, and a small part of you was ashamed that you’d kept it from him. You trusted Taehyung with your life but why you chose to keep your past a secret was still a mystery to you. You supposed it was more that you never had anyone to share it with until Tae, but could never bring yourself to do so after seeing the fear in his eyes from one of the many jobs you pulled.

“He abused alcohol, my mother, drugs,” You tugged on the end of your hair, a nervous habit Jungkook picked up on, and let out a mocking laugh, “Never me though. No, I...I was too precious to hurt. But my mom, the woman who birthed me, she was okay to toss around like a ragdoll.”

“Did you ever,” Jungkook wasn’t sure what he was trying to ask, just that he needed to speak, “tell anyone?”

“No,” Finally settling on the bed, your hair fell in your face to hide the feeling of shame at keeping it a secret. “You see, just because my dad never hit me didn’t mean I wasn’t scared of him. He had so much power because was so successful in everything he did. Accusing him of something like that...it would have never worked in mine and my mother’s favors. No one would have believed us but I guess that never stopped my mom from trying.”

“Somewhere along the many, many years of abuse, she finally had enough courage to tell someone and started gathering evidence against him. I never found out who helped her, but my dad caught wind of it because my grandfather had ears everywhere. A detective found the file on my father and told him all about it. That night Donghoon went home...he killed my mom. I guess after his rage induced outburst he saw what he had done and for a split second, felt remorse. But then, panic set in and he didn’t want to have to face what he’d done or the kind of questions to come if he were to call the police. So, like a coward, he called my grandfather to cover it up and make plans for us to disappear.”

Jungkook felt sick to his stomach, he’d seen plenty of humans do some disgraceful and vile things but none quite like your father.

“My grandfather said he wouldn’t clean up my father’s mess for him.” Your eyes glossed over with tears, gaze still on the floor and it was like you were in a trance as you told Jungkook everything. “He took that same hammer Donghoon used on my mom and killed his own son. If you thought my dad was awful, Sangchul...he was a different kind of evil. He took a knife and slashed up their bodies to look like claw marks. Any untrained eye would believe the story he told about a hybrid breaking into the house. That night, he was able to convince me that hybrid’s were just things. That they deserved to be hunted just like any other animal.”

“If you knew,” Jungkook tried to process what he’d just heard, tried to understand why you never said anything and feeling a lump forming in the back of his throat, “why didn’t you tell the cops?”

“Sangchul was a master manipulator,” You explained, finally turning to him and bringing your legs onto the bed to rest your chin on your knees, “he always knew just what to say when he felt like I was slipping through his fingers. He was able to cloud my mind enough to hide what he was; a monster. It wasn’t until just after my 18th birthday that he told me what happened that night and what he’d done. He was really delusional enough to think that I would actually thank him. That I was enough like him to believe what he did was a favor. He was right to think I’m just as cruel because really, in a lot of ways I was. Am.”

Jungkook’s ears twitched when your voice dropped to a whisper, “I’ve only ever been taught to be one thing, Jungkook. And that’s never changed. The person I became is the person I will always be.”

His whole body stiffened, tail whipping back and forth and anger building in him. Anger at your father, your grandfather, and even you. Hunters tore his family apart and he thought it would be easy to forgive them, but your confession at being unable to change your habits made him sick. He moved away from you, hair covering his eyes and the way they glowed bright green.

“You have to understand something, Kook,” Your breath hitched at the distance he quickly created, watching his chest rise and fall in uneven breaths. “I kept hunting because Sangchul taught me that I could never trust anyone. Even after I learned the truth, that stayed with me. Those hybrids that I tracked down for people like Hyungsik, I never forgot them, not for one day. But I did what I thought I had to and I regret it all of the time. I know that trying to save them now won’t make up for what I’ve done.”

“Then why even bother trying?” He sneered, canines elongating and becoming visible at his irritation as he began to dress himself. “Most of them are dead already. You won’t be saving many from the prison you put them in. I understand that hunting them was a part of your past, but it doesn’t have to be now. You’re choosing to let it be because you’re scared that this might actually work and you don’t know how to handle being happy.”

Your gaze stayed on the bed sheets as Jungkook strode to the door and stormed out, choosing to stay put in the room and keep your distance. You understood why he was angry and took his harsh words without interruption because he was right. If everything worked and you were actually able to free the hybrids in Nam’s home, you’d no longer have a purpose. Hunting was your everything and without it, you didn’t know what to do with yourself, it’s why you agreed to hunt down Jungkook in the first place.

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

“Oh, you’re up.” Taehyung blinked at Jungkook stewing on the couch, tail bristled and ears flat against his head. He peered down the hall to your closed door as Seokjin came up behind him.

“Are you alright, Jungkook?” Seokjin questioned and shuffled to the panther carefully. “You seem agitated. What happened?”

“We got into an argument.” The younger boy explained simply and felt Taehyung’s defenses rise at the possibility of you being hurt again. “She’s okay. Physically, at least.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Taehyung took a step towards Jungkook but Seokjin put his hand up to stop him.

“Not now, Taehyung,” He kept his voice level so as not to rile either boy up any further, “go check on Y/N and Jungkook and I will head back upstairs for a few days.”

Taehyung didn’t hesitate to turn on his heel and stalk down to your room, not even bothering to knock and instead let himself in.

“She said,” Jungkook began to tell Seokjin, “that she’ll always be a hunter. And that it won’t ever change.”

“Do you expect it to?” His senior asked seriously as he sat on the coffee table across from him, “Y/N has hunted for a very long time. Just as you’re a predator, in her own way, so is she. That nature isn’t easy to forget.”

“She’s not even going to try!” Jungkook huffed and ran his fingers through his long hair and hanging his head in defeat.

“She’s willing to risk her life to free the hybrids in Hyungsik’s home, isn’t she?”

“But will it really be over?” He whispered more to himself than Seokjin, “Will she really just stop hunting because Hyungsik is in jail? If her nature can’t be forgotten...then was I wrong to trust her?”

“Jungkook,” Seokjin frowned and reached to pat the younger on his shoulder, “trusting Y/N will have been the best decision you made in the end. At least for me, it will be. Don’t forget that I too chose to work for Mr. Nam because I was desperate. You still trust me, don’t you?”

“I…” Jungkook struggled to find his answer; he did trust Seokjin, but his feelings for his senior weren’t exactly the same as his feelings for you. He even went so far as to claim you even after you expressly said he needed to be sure, and he was. Is. Isn’t he?

“Come on,” Seokjin rose to his feet and led him to the door, watching Jungkook’s ears twitch at your voice coming from the room and his lips curl into a growl. Opening the door, he made room for Jungkook to stompy by.

Jungkook’s fists curled into balls as they hung at his sides, Taehyung’s voice carrying down the hall explaining that the panther has chosen to stay in the apartment above and your response being ‘it’s what he wants’ causing a harsh pain in his chest. You really weren’t going to fight him on the need for space.

Seokjin pulled a note from his pocket to leave on the kitchen counter with the words ‘I called detective Kim and he said he’s free for most of the week’ scribbled on them before following Jungkook to the elevator that seemed to be taking forever. As he rode in awkward silence next to a pissed off hybrid, he could only hope Taehyung had better luck finding out what happened from you.

Once on the floor above, Jungkook swiftly stormed to one of the empty rooms and flopped down on the bed. Head buried in the pillows, he ignored Seokjin’s questioning knock and the concern in his senior’s voice. He could already feel the pull of his mark coming from Taehyung’s apartment, the desperate need to be at your side burning a hole in his chest. But he wouldn’t go, not yet, not until he had enough time to sort out his thoughts.

Hybrid hunters were notorious for being ignorant about the hybrid race, believing humans were superior in every way and showing it in the way they chose to treat hybrids. Even now after the laws were passed, people still looked down on him and his race, disgust written all over their face. Jungkook was sensible enough to acknowledge that not all humans hated hybrids, some viewing them not as pets but as friends, sometimes even more. Seokjin was one of those people. Hoseok and Taehyung were those people. You, on the other hand, were in between; not hating hybrids but not seeing them as more than animals either, despite your many claims of regret.

Jungkook hissed as his chest burned; you were in pain, upset and possibly crying. There was nothing that he wanted more than to comfort you, hold you in his arms and soothe the pain inside. Tears sprung to his eyes as he resisted the urge to do so, claws sinking into the mattress beneath him as he gasped out his own agony.

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

“How is she?” Yoongi questioned from his side of the phone, the chattering of his bar patrons nearly drowning out Taehyung’s response.

“She says she’s okay,” Taehyung sighed and picked up the paper Seokjin had left, “But I’m pretty sure she kicked me out of the room so she could just cry to herself. You know better than I do that she’s not really going to tell me what the hell happened.”

On his end, Yoongi scrubbed his hand down his face, pushing Hoseok away when his friend all but squished his own cheek to Yoongi’s in hopes of hearing the conversation.

“And Jungkook?” Hoseok blurted out and Yoongi winced at the volume of his question.

“He went back to the apartment upstairs. Seokjin hyung promised to stay with him until this blows over, if it blows over at all.” Taehyung stalked around the kitchen, opening his cabinets to pull out two glasses and set them on the table. He pulled a pitcher of water from the fridge as he heard the door to your room open and close. Trying to hide the frown on his face, Taehyung noted the red that brimmed your eyes, “The detective he talked to said he was going to be free this week so we’ll meet up with him.”

“We won’t be doing anything,” You slumped in the chair at the kitchen table and fiddled with the glass, “I’m going to see if he’s actually trustworthy. You’re going to stay here and out of my way.”

“Why?” Taehyung demanded and set his phone on the table after placing the call on speaker, not expecting Yoongi to chime in and agree with him that you needed backup.

“Because I said so.”

“We’re not teenagers anymore, I’m not as afraid of you as I used to be.”

You rose a brow over the glass brought to your lips, “Tae, if this goes south, I don’t want you or anyone else near it. That’s the deal.”

“No way.” Taehyung shook his head and crossed his arms sternly, “I’m not letting you meet with him alone. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, I think out of the two of us,” You waved a hand between you and your best friend, “I’m better at handling dangerous situations. Look, Tae, I’m tired of arguing with everyone, just do what I say and stay here.”

The table shook with the amount of force you put into slamming your hand on the table as you stood up, grumbling under your breath the entire way back to your room.

Taehyung jumped at the sound of Yoongi screaming ‘yah!’ from his side of the phone, trying to get your attention but failing. He sighed heavily and propped his elbows on the table, folding his hands in front of him. “This whole thing with Jungkook is concerning.”

“I’ve been saying that since the beginning.”

“Anymore fighting with him is just going to cause Y/N to distance herself from us more.” Taehyung ignored Yoongi, thinking out loud and wanting to bang his head against the table. He really thought he’d seen a change in you after meeting the panther but now he’s not sure what he should do. Removing Jungkook from the situation wouldn’t help, not with his mark very clearly embedded in your clavicle. Any further distance would only make it harder now that Jungkook had claimed you.

He tugged at his hair, the strands sticking out in every direction before he dropped his forehead to the wood of his kitchen table, groaning in frustration.

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

“The hell do you mean there was no evidence left behind?” Kim Namjoon scolded the forensics team. “You’re telling me this whole scene was wiped clean of everything?”

He stood in the middle of an abandoned house, a lioness hybrid’s dead body separating him from the team. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took another look around what used to be a family room but was now covered in dust and mold. “Find me something.”

“What’s the big deal?” One of the crew scoffed, “it’s just an animal, detective, it’s not like it was anything important.”

“Watch yourself.” Namjoon growled, advancing on the much shorter man and towering over him, “Just because they’ve got animal DNA doesn’t mean they’re to be written off, understood? She may not have been important to you, but somebody out there is missing her, so if you’re done being a fucking prick, get back to work.”

The man shied away from Namjoon’s glare to comb the room once more despite having found absolutely nothing the first time around. Namjoon glanced down at his watch and cursed; they’d already been there too long for his liking, especially given that the whole place had been wiped clean to keep anyone from finding out what happened. He also had another case he was working on, one no one else knew about so he couldn’t exactly just leave the scene without a proper investigation.

“Yo,” His partner and long time friend Jackson clapped his shoulder, “look man, why don’t you head back to the precinct before one of these guys loses his teeth? I’ll handle things here.”

Namjoon smiled at Jackson’s joke and shook his head, “You sure? They don’t seem to be trying very hard and I just want to make sure---.”

“I’ll make sure everything gets done, bro.” Jackson assured him, “I promise we’ll go over this place all day if we have to. Just get out of here before Jay pisses his pants, okay? Dude’s scared of you, so give him a little peace and quiet and he might actually find something.”

“Fine,” Namjoon conceded and let Jackson steer him towards his car where he hopped in and watched his friend march back to the house and basically cling to Jay in order to make sure they were being thorough. He let out a small chuckle at his friend’s silliness and pulled away from the street they’d blocked off.

It was the first body he’d seen in weeks and couldn’t help but wonder if this was a stashed hybrid that the owner could no longer risk being found. She had no form of identification on her and she didn’t come up in missing persons, so he could only assume that she wasn’t a registered citizen, which meant she was being kept away from the public. There was bruising around her ribcage and signs of sexual abuse and he shuddered at the thought of what this poor girl went through.

The drive back to the precinct was quiet except for the occasional chime of the dispatcher coming in through his scanner. Namjoon rubbed at his tired eyes, squeezing them shut as he sat at a red light and felt the obvious signs of a migraine beginning to form at his temples. He needed sleep but the file he’d been gifted from his father lingered in his mind, opting instead to spend his nights under the dim glow of his bedside lamp reading over the death of Y/L/N Iseul. A 40 year old woman whose body was found along with her husband’s in their home, allegedly attacked by a hybrid but Namjoon’s father never believed it.

The case haunted his father and Namjoon remembered the many nights his parents would argue over the obsession his father carried over it. When he was a child, Namjoon didn’t understand the big deal about the case when it had already been closed. As a teenager, he remembered berating his father for being forced to retire much too soon because he couldn’t let it go. Now as a detective himself, the case was indeed strange to Namjoon, especially after it was coupled with another file on the woman’s husband accusing him of long term domestic abuse. The file had never been seen by anyone other than himself and his father and Namjoon found himself thinking about it non-stop.

The loud honk coming from the car behind him startled Namjoon as he jumped in his seat, pressing down on the gas pedal rather harshly after finally spotting the green light.

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

You watched as Namjoon sighed heavily and stalked through the precinct to his office, the distraction of one of the officers needing his signature giving you the opportunity to slip inside.

Closing the door, he felt a slight change in the atmosphere that alerted him to your presence. Namjoon quickly drew his gun, twisting around to aim it smack dab in the middle of your forehead. His mouth parted in surprise at the stoic look on your face, his forefinger curling around the trigger as your hand came up to gently push the barrel of his gun away from you.

“Not very friendly of you, is it, detective Kim?” You smirked as you leaned back against his desk, crossing both arms and legs.

“Not very friendly of you to sneak up on me, is it?” He was cautious, keeping his gun tight in his grip but aiming it at the ground rather than you. “How did you get in here?”

“The door,” You nodded towards the aged wooden door as if the answer was that simple when in reality his question was how the hell you ended up in his office. “Just walked right by desk after desk. Not a very observant precinct you guys got here.”

Namjoon set his jaw, bringing his gun up to you once more, clearly tired of your games and quite rattled by your calm exterior. Anyone able to slip past dozens of armed officers and trained detectives was not to be taken lightly. He watched your tongue poke out against your lips in an attempt to hide your smile; you were amused by something and it chilled him to the bone.

“Relax,” You chuckled lowly, uncrossing your arms to prop them back on his desk, “I don’t think your Captain would be too happy if you shot an unarmed civilian in your office, would he?”

“If you’re who I think you are,” He pulled his finger from the trigger, switching on the safety to his gun and pushing it back in his holster, “then you’re not unarmed.”

“You’re more than welcome to draw your gun again and find out,” Pushing yourself from his desk, you turned and plopped into the chair, listening and using the reflection from the silver picture frames on his desk to watch as he rounded it and sat opposite of you.

Namjoon ran his hands through his already messy hair, smoothing it back before opening the file that had been sitting there long before you arrived. “I didn’t think you’d come to me. From what Jin hyung told me, I didn’t think you’d ever set foot in a police precinct.”

“What Seokjin told you,” Your hardened voice caught him off guard, any hint of playfulness long gone, “Or what you hoped? You know how dangerous I am and it won’t be easy to pass off as simply defending yourself if anything goes wrong. After all, who’s going to believe someone like me could overpower you?”

His hands froze in the middle of turning over a page in the case he was looking over, his eyes locking with yours and he wondered just how long you’d been lying in wait for him to come back. He was surprised to find how cold your stare was compared to a minute ago, the stiffness in your posture suggesting you were done being friendly. “Did you look at this before I got here?”

“No.” You chuckled at his shoulders slumping in ease. “You’re not very prepared, Kim, that’s not a good look for you. Maybe you weren’t expecting me so soon, but you were expecting to run in to me at some point this week.” Resting your elbow on the arm rest of the chair, you propped your chin in the palm of your hand, pursing your lips.

Namjoon let out a frustrated huff of breath, “The file I have here has a missing persons report from when you were 15, but there’s another that says your grandfather took guardianship of you after your parents’ death.”

“My grandfather had powerful friends everywhere,” You offered this bit of information to clear up his confusion, “He didn’t want us to be found so he called in some favors.”

“Until his body was found three years later in the forest of your hometown, allegedly mauled by a wild animal.” He had dug deeper than he first let on, his tone implying there was more to the story.

“Why do you care?” You countered, lips curling into a devious smile once more, “My grandfather had quite the reputation, he was no stranger to criminal activity and if you’ve looked into me, then I’ve no doubt you’ve already gone through his records. You’ve already made up your mind about me, detective Kim, because you believe I’m just like him. And judging by the way you’re yet to look down at the paper in your hands, you’ve committed my file to memory, which means you’ve combed over it for hours. Am I wrong?”

Namjoon was at a loss for words, not expecting you to have been as hyper aware of him as he was of you. He swallowed audibly, truly shaken by your quick assessment, and dropped his gaze to the paper in his hands because he had studied it from the second he obtained it to now. He poured over your grandfather’s activities because his father had left the file to him, comparing them to Donghoon’s file until the night of his death. Not long after Sangchul’s death, his father began building a file on you, but there was no record of your existence after the age of 15 so not much was there. Both he and his father had gone restless nights staring at the investigation report of Sangchul’s death and the autopsy report that was suspicious but not enough to truly be bothered with since his supposed only next of kin was also dead.

“You’re right, you know?” You broke his train of thought, watching as he nearly jumped out of his skin after forgetting you were even there, his head whipping up to observe your face and brows furrowed. “I’m very much like Sangchul, and you’re right to assume how dangerous I am. My grandfather’s death was a godsend, detective. He was an evil and vicious man, and you should really be grateful that he doesn’t still walk this Earth.”

“You killed him,” He breathed out, hands trembling as he debated whether he should draw his weapon again or hear out the rest of what you had to say.

“His son killed my mother so I simply returned the favor,” Rising slowly from your seat, you stuffed your hands into the pockets of the oversized jacket you borrowed from Taehyung. “You can arrest me if you’d like, though I don’t think you’d get very far without concrete proof. The cameras in your office have been disconnected so my confession wasn’t caught.”

“What?” Namjoon glanced around to check the security cameras hidden in the corners of the room to find they had in fact been tampered with. His eyes fell back on you, jaw clenching at having been bested in his own damn office. It suddenly dawned on him that he couldn’t feel the weight of his phone in his back pocket anymore, panic rising as you produced said phone from your jacket, dropping it to the ground and taking care to stomp on it violently. “Fuck.”

“Seokjin said he trusted you,” You kicked the phone across the floor, listening to it glide across the tile underneath his desk until he stopped it with his own foot, “and I’d like to think I can trust you too since we have a common enemy.”

He rose his brow, hands fisting on his desk and shaking with rage, but he stayed silent to allow you to go on. He was tempted to arrest you for destroying his property but he was actually impressed with how you managed to swipe the phone from his person without notice. He always had a sinking suspicion Sangchul had been murdered, not attacked. Sangchul’s case went cold and though it had truly looked as if he’d been attacked by an animal, Namjoon never bought it. Given your particular set of skills, it was quite clear what had really happened. Namjoon wasn’t all that surprised to hear you say your father killed your mother since the file his dad kept hidden documented what kind of person Donghoon really was.

“Nam Hyungsik,” You dropped the piece of paper Seokjin had given you on Namjoon’s desk, “has at least a dozen hybrids still in his home and I’d like to help you get them out.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“I want a specific hybrid to be protected until this is over,” You didn’t hesitate to mention Jungkook, your hand unconsciously coming up to rest on the twin holes in the juncture of your neck. His mark almost burning under your touch, the need to be close to Jungkook becoming desperate. “Dr. Kim and the people you’re about to meet...I don’t want them to be a part of this.”

“What does this hybrid have to do with Hyungsik?” Namjoon skimmed through the list of names on the paper you provided.

“Hyungsik’s daughter hired a few hunters to find him for a pretty hefty reward and I’ve been keeping him safe.”

“Where?”

“Out of sight.”

“Right,” Namjoon sighed and figured he shouldn’t have even bothered to ask given the lengths you were willing to go through to keep this particular hybrid safe. “Are you one of the hunters that was hired?”

You scratched the back of your neck, palm resting against it afterward to massage the tension building there. “Will you help or not? You weren’t exactly my first choice when it came to handling this situation but Seokjin insisted.”

“Taking down someone like Hyungsik won’t be easy, it’ll take time.” He scrubbed his hand down his face, wincing at the bold lettering of deceased next to most of the names on the list.

You nodded in understanding, taking his answer as proof that he’s willing to help. “Hyungsik is under the impression that I’m still looking for this hybrid so we have a window of maybe a week or two until he wants to meet up again if I haven’t delivered before then.”

“Good,” Namjoon nodded and pulled out one of his desk drawers to tuck the papers in it and slamming it shut. He watched your shoulders tense at his not so secret hiding place, “I’m not keeping these here, only while I’m in the office and then they go everywhere with me.”

Turning on your heel, you made for the door, hand on the knob and ready to turn but his voice stopped you, the low timbre making you hesitate as he asked-

“Why didn’t you tell anybody?” He wondered, “If you knew your father killed your mother, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Nobody would have believed me,” You didn’t face him, the memories of that day flooding back and you refused to show him how affected you still were. The image of 15 year old you, desperate and pleading flashed before you, your grandfather’s stone face as you became hysterical burned in your mind, “My father was a pinnacle of society, loving and doting out in public but behind closed doors…”

Namjoon’s features softened as he pitied you for having a rough childhood, something he didn’t quite understand because he’d come from a loving home with supportive parents. He knew that not everyone was as lucky, but he didn’t know how hard it could be for someone else either.

“There was never any record of abuse against my father,” You weren’t sure why you continued, but chalked it up to needing to tell someone the truth after hiding it for so many years, “An accomplished man like him? No one would take my mother’s side if she tried to accuse Donghoon of abuse. He was a drunk, Detective Kim, and one night he simply snapped and couldn’t stand the sight of her, so he killed her. And like a coward, he chose to call his father for help only to have his own life taken by the very man who raised him.”

You still faced the door, body practically vibrating with rage at the memories, grip on the door handle so tight that your hand shook, “My grandfather manipulated every cop on the scene that night and convinced them that a hybrid attacked my parents. His hatred for their race was no secret, so he did everything he could to make sure I hated them too. It wasn’t until Sangchul thought I’d been brainwashed enough that he told me the truth about what happened that night.”

Namjoon caught your eye as you looked over your shoulder, door knob rattling in your grip, “An eye for an eye, Kim. Maybe not for people like you but for monsters like me, that’s how a score is settled.”

His mouth went dry and his stare bore into your back as you pulled open his office door and walked out like you hadn’t just resembled a cold hearted murderer. His fellow detectives and officers all glanced back into his now open office and he waved his hand dismissively to signal that he was okay.

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

“You sure you don’t want anything a little heavier?” Hoseok offered as he set down a glass of water in front of you; he and Yoongi had inventory to go over before opening for the night so they’d spent their day at the bar.

“Didn’t you hear?” You snorted as you lifted the glass to your lips and took a long gulp, “Tae put me on an alcohol ban after a messy assignment a few years ago.”

“He’s just looking out for you.” Yoongi grunted over a couple of cases of liquor he carried in from the back. “You know, since you didn’t allow us to do it.”

You rolled your eyes playfully as Hoseok snickered and made his way to the back room to carry in more boxes. “That wasn’t my choice.”

“You still could have found me after your grandfather died.” Yoongi braced his hands against the bar top, his eyes flicking down to the mark on your shoulder. “How are things with the panther?”

“It is what it is,” You tried to play off your argument with Jungkook but he knew enough about you to call bullshit. He also knew it wasn’t a good idea to push any further because you’d only shut him out if he did.

Yoongi watched your elbow come up to rest on the bar, your chin propped on the palm of your hand. He reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear, “You’re so stubborn, little one. The kid’s hurt that you said you won’t give up hunting. Why aren’t you giving it up?”

“Hunting’s all I know,” You swallowed the lump in your throat, leaning into his touch as the back of his hand skimmed down your cheek. “After this is over, what purpose would I have, Yoongs? It’s not like I can just get a normal job.”

“Why don’t you become a bounty hunter?” He suggested, smiling softly at the way your eyes closed in content at his touch. “You’d definitely be the most successful with your tracking skills.”

“I’d have to out myself as a hybrid hunter,” Moving away from his hand, you took another drink from the glass in front of you, “not many people respect us these days, you know?”

“Your knowledge on hybrids is what will make you the best.” Yoongi picked up the bar rag Hoseok had left to wipe down the counter, “As much as those people don’t want to believe it, hybrids are capable of committing crimes. Some of them have chosen to live up to the stereotype that they’re just wild animals.”

Your head lolled from side to side, the tension from earlier becoming too much to hide anymore. A lot of it was because of the separation from Jungkook, but he was yet to speak to you and you weren’t one to give in either. It wasn’t in your nature to surrender and the throbbing pain of his mark should have been enough to send you running towards him but you wouldn’t allow it to control you.

A low whistle coming from the doorway caught your attention, the deep chuckle was familiar as your back straightened and glanced to Yoongi. His jaw was clenched and grip tight on the rag in his hand.

“We’re closed.” He growled as you pulled on Taehyung’s jacket and zipped it up to keep your new company from seeing Jungkook’s mark. “Get out.”

“I’ve been looking for you, Y/N,” Suho’s voice was smooth, relaxed in the way he greeted you. He was always good at keeping his composure and you found it admirable whenever you met on the street. Truthfully, he was the only hunter who was able to stand tall before you without being intimidated as much lately.

As you peered up from the glass in front of you to the mirror behind the shelves filled with liquor, you counted two more people flanking either side of Suho. Tipping the glass to your lips, you gulped down whatever water was left and twisted all the way around on the stool you occupied.

“I haven’t been hiding,” You matched his sinister smile with one of your own, “Your tracking skills were always shit. No wonder you can’t find the panther.”

“You haven’t found it either,” Suho hissed and balled his hands into fists, taking a step closer as his men did the same. “The bounty’s still out for it and believe me when I say I’m going to collect that money.”

“Yeah?” You tilted your head playfully, both mocking and riling him up at the same time. “Good luck with that.”

“I said we’re closed,” Yoongi interrupted before things got out of hand, “Leave, Suho. Xiumin and Kai not tell you about my warning the other night?”

Suho nodded while kissing the back of his teeth in a small ‘tsk’, “With their busted lips and swollen faces it was a little hard to understand so it might have gotten lost in translation.”

“Wanna hear it for yourself?” You stood from the bar stool before Yoongi could grip your shoulder to keep you in place. Tensing as his two goons stepped in front of him, you smirked; of course he wouldn’t go head to head with you. Suho never physically fought with you if it could be avoided, his hand to hand combat skills were nothing compared to yours.

“Damn it,” Yoongi muttered under his breath, listening for Hoseok stumble around in the back and praying he didn’t come out any time soon. He turned to make his way to the back room, trusting that you can handle the situation since getting involved and helping you out wouldn’t be welcomed. “Y/N, don’t make a mess.”

The tall man to Suho’s left you recognized as Chanyeol came at you first, rushing forward and throwing his fist out. You stepped back, gripping his forearm in the process and turning to smash his head into the bar top. He groaned, knees wobbling as he fell to the ground with his hand pressed to his now broken nose.

Suho pushed Kyungsoo forward, cursing Chanyeol’s failed attempt at landing a solid hit. Kyungsoo swung violently, his hands heavier than they look, narrowly missing your face as he threw punch after punch. His footwork was quick and he was able to keep up with you much better than Chanyeol could. Unfortunately for him, his footing became misplaced and you were able to catch him off guard by ducking to swipe at his feet. Kyungsoo grunted as he fell to the ground and quickly tried to scramble up but you were already atop him, knee pressed down on his shoulder with one hand fisting the front of his shirt.

Raising your fist high, you brought your knuckles across Kyungsoo’s face in five solid hits, blood smeared across your hand and all around his mouth and nose. You looked up to his boss, jumping back before Suho could get his hands on you and kicking your foot out to hit him square in the gut and send him stumbling to his knees. You made a mental note to thank Taehyung for insisting you wear your steel toe boots instead of regular sneakers. Chest heaving unevenly, you stepped around Suho and slid one hand up the back of his head while the other cupped his chin.

Suho began to panic after falling to his knees and feeling you take your position, clawing at your arms but your grip was strong. He looked to his members frantically, a silent plea passing between them but they were injured too badly to even move. He felt your breath at his ear and winced when you jerked on his chin slightly.

“You were no match for me when you first got in the game, Suho,” You seethed and looked two his men sprawled on the floor before him, writhing in pain, “and you’re no match for me now. Stay the hell out of my way.” Releasing him, you stepped back to plant your feet and give yourself enough momentum to thrust your knee forward, sending Suho to his hands.

“Bitch,” He spat as if he hadn’t been struggling against you a moment ago. “You think you’re so fucking great, Y/N, but the truth is that you’re worn out. A hunter with your magnitude of skill quitting after the laws were announced? You’re a coward that couldn’t take the heat.”

Rage shot through you like never before as you kneeled in front of him, gripping his chin tight in your hand and bringing his face close, “You used to be so scared of me, Suho.” A wicked grin took over your face before you could stop it, feeling his body stiffen as your free hand trailed underneath his shirt and up to his rib cage. His skin burned underneath your touch, muscles tensing as your finger traced a rather nasty scar along his midriff. The amount of fear you incited in him now that he was on all fours and at your mercy was unmatched when he met with other hunters.

Tears gathered in his eyes, his body shook in your hold, and a single tear slid down his face as you leaned in to whisper against his lips, “Don’t forget who gave you this scar. I was much too nice that day and today. Take your men and leave before I reopen this old wound and gift you a few fresh ones.”

You rose to your feet with your fingers still wrapped around Suho’s chin and heard the sound of the back door swinging open as Yoongi and Hoseok stepped out to see what happened. You caught his eyes flicker to the two men behind you and sunk your nails into his skin, hissing as he grunted, “Don’t make me regret letting you live.”

Suho gasped when you threw his head to the side, hearing Chanyeol scramble to his feet and attempt to wake Kyungsoo. He kept his gaze on the floor and waited for the taller man to gather his friend, turning on his heel to storm out of Yoongi’s bar with trembling hands. Outside, his hand drifted up to his torso where he felt for the scar over his t-shirt; he remembered that night quite well.

“I’m sorry. You’re asking me to what?” You snorted at Choi, hearing the rustling of Taehyung on your right and knowing he was equally amused.

Choi Sungil sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose; he had somehow made the mistake of hiring on both you and Suho for a job and suggested you partnered up instead of rampaging through the city in competition with each other. “Just work together. I can’t afford to pay you both separately.”

You tsked and shook your head, eyeing Suho standing to your left, “He’s a rookie, Choi. You really think he’ll do me any good? He’ll only slow us down.”

“Suho’s reputation is established well enough now. Besides,” Sungil gave Taehyung a once over and sneered, “I heard you were taking strays now.”

“Watch yourself.” You warned through grit teeth and took a step in front of Taehyung as if to shield him from the man’s view before turning to Suho. “I’ll take the newbie but his blood is on your hands if he doesn’t come back alive.”

Sungil nodded in understanding and waved his hand dismissively; he really couldn’t be bothered with what did or didn’t happen to Suho so long as you delivered on your end of the deal. “I want that lion, Y/N, don’t disappoint me.”

Taehyung took your cue to leave but heard your footsteps slow the closer you got to Suho and he turned to see you whisper something into his ear. Most likely a warning for him not to screw up or it was his head.

That night Suho was in charge of staking out the home, making sure the perimeter was clear and there would be no interruptions. You and Taehyung managed to slip inside to secure the lion hybrid for Choi and were close to getting away cleanly but Suho had managed to miss one little detail; the fucking idiot didn’t warn you that the hybrid’s family returned early.

You and Taehyung had been caught and had to fight your way through the hybrids but Taehyung had been injured in the process. Because Taehyung had gotten hurt, you spent the remainder of the night alternating between taking care of him and beating the shit out of Suho for screwing up.

He remembered trying to fight back, remembered the sting of your blade as it pierced his skin, all the while promising that he wasn’t the only going to be paying for what happened to Taehyung.

“Boss?” Came Chanyeol’s nasally question, snapping Suho from his memories and causing the older man to scramble for their car.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here and regroup,” Suho snapped at him and peeled away from the curb.

#hunting a hybrid fic #jeon jungkook smut #bts hybrid au #jeon jungkook fic #bts imagine #bts fanfic #bts smut #jeon jungkook imagine

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secret-engima · 4 years

Note

(Whispers) FFXV ten years younger AU; Noctis is like, 10yrs younger than C!Noct. How do you think that would work out???

HGFDSDHGFDS WAIT WAIT WAIT.

I’M CONFUSED.

Do you mean that Noctis is BORN ten years later and the plot still kicks off? Or that Noctis time-travels and ends up ten years younger. I’m gonna assume you mean the former so here we go. I’m sticking this under read more because I am going to RAMBLE LIKE CRAZY.

-The wedding is not a thing. Because Noctis is TEN.

-It is quite possible that he never got attacked by the Marilith, because by the time he was eight, Tenenbrae might have already been invaded.

-That or the invasion was delayed until Noctis got there, which means Luna would be 22 when she meets Noctis and Ravus is 26 so both are WAY more mature and comfortable in their own skin/morals by the time the invasion happens. Ravus does not beg Regis for help but instead helps with the evacuation, Luna is not dumb enough to stop and let the MTs take her, Sylva may or may not still die, but at least she doesn’t take a flame-thrower to the face (might still get stabbed by Glauca).

-Also Gladio is there because he’s like- 21 at this section of timeline and has taken his Crownsguard oaths. Ignis is there too.

-Imma go with my petty side and say that with two adult oracles, an adult Ravus (who was no doubt trained to be a deadly guardian of his sister), a Very Angry Gladio, and a semi-homicidal and reckless Ignis, Glauca has a Bad Day. Maybe dies, maybe not.

-Luna and Ravus escape with teeny Noct and Regis and take sanctuary in Lucis and denounce the Nifs for what they’ve done (Sylva too if she isn’t dead? Which she might be) and the world goes on something of a mass riot because the reason they didn’t attack the Oracles before was for fear of what the public would do if they found out.

-They’re called consequences you morons. You poisoned your cake now eat it.

-Luna and Nyx are a thing. Because Noctis is way too young to even consider it and Nyx finds this feisty Oracle woman who demands to be trained in the glaive with her brother to be Really Hot.

-Luna becomes the Glaive healer, using the Kingsglaive’s movements to disguise her own from the empire so she can still help people.

-If Glauca is still alive, he Glauca tries something as Titus and is murdered by one very angry Luna and one Super Angry Ravus who now has LC magic on top of whatever brand of magic male Nox Fleuret can use (yes I know oracle magic is a girl only thing but MAGIC, the boy has to get something even if its not healing based) because he joined the Kingsglaive.

-Ravus maybe becomes the new Captain of the Glaive? Either him, Nyx, Libertus, or Luche, who is not a traitor because I’ve grown to like him.

-Noctis loves his Shield and his Oracle Sister and Big Brother Ravus, Luna can feel destiny bearing down on them and often cries in private because Noctis is TEN.

-With the world rioting in fury over the truth of what happened in Tenebrae (which I HC in canon was never leaked because the two royals were being held hostage and the Tenebraen people either didn’t know or where being blackmailed into silence with the lives of their beloved royal children), the Nifs take some serious damage to their power base.

-Nifs offer a ceasefire with Lucis to begin “making reparations” with the Tenebrae line and Lucis two years after the invasion.

-Regis smells a rat.

-The rat looks like Ardyn.

-Still, he DOES have little choice but to accept, BUT with the Oracle’s healing and the world public on his side, Regis has way more leverage in this treaty, demands territories be returned and stuff (Galahd included).

-Nifs agree to the terms and come for the signing, Regis doesn’t send Noctis out of the city because as bad as his feelings are, Noctis is TEN and Ignis and Gladio are just young adults.

-The Nifs still pull their invasion nonsense because- well- NIFLHEIM. The Emperor is pretty power mad at this point and is like “if we crush Lucis the dissenters will shut up out of fear”.

-It’s pretty intense. Fire everywhere, traitors making trouble (NOT in the glaive, the Glaive were lured out of the city with leaked reports of a fleet to get them out of the way, it’s corrupt Nobles and disgruntled citizens that do this).

-Without Glauca there, Regis doesn’t die, but he DOES probably get injured and separated from his son, whom Ignis and Gladio take and flee the Citadel, trying to escape the chaos.

-In the chaos of trying to flee the city, they bump into a rookie Crownsguard who just took his oath like- a WEEK ago and he helps them evacuate the prince with his crack shot aiming skills and his knowledge of the city’s back streets (”I like to take photos of the alley cats okay????”)

-The four end up outside the city, separated from all backup, in a hotwired car that Ignis took (”Since when do YOU know how to hotwire a car?” “Since I thought the skill might come in handy now shut up and watch the road”).

-Insomnia doesn’t fall, but the Empire is freaking stubborn and starts a siege or something, so the bros can’t get back in, and since they encountered some Crownsguard traitors in the chaos so they don’t trust anyone outside their foursome and they’re being actively hunted by the Empire ...

-Who’s up for a road trip?

-Also Regis probably thinks Noctis is dead because Angst and is furious beyond words and Luna smuggles herself out of the city to go wake up the Astrals and ask what to do now only to find out from a really vague Gentiana that the Chosen Lives so she’s off doing that solo adventure playing Hot-Cold with the bros as they run around trying not to get spotted by Nifs and figuring out WHAT TO DO. HELP.

(and this is the point where I could either make this a horrible tragedy about child kings and sacrificial lambs but I hate sad endings so I won’t so have some crack-flavored Fluff instead)

-Cor smuggles himself out to join the search but Ignis is doing his job a little Too Well so nobody can find these bros as they run around and Noctis ends up befriending Titan through the sheer power of his Cute and then Ramuh comes down to see because the Chosen isn’t old enough to take on his destiny except oh look. BBY. and his Granddadly instincts are roused for the first time in Millenia and so now the group has a doting Grandpa showing up at random to give advice and Smite People.

-Noctis continues to befriend just about Anything That Breathes as Big Bro Gladio, Brother Ignis, and his new Brother Prompto cart him around the wilderness of Lucis trying to figure out how to get safely back in Insomnia when there is a siege happening (the Siege is keeping the Glaives busy btw, which is why they aren’t out in force looking for Noctis).

-At one point Noctis gets separated from his bros in like- Lestallum or something and is wandering around freaking out when he bumps into someone. “Sorry,” he sniffles, trying hard to be dignified but also is so close to crying. The figure turns and ... looks at him. He doesn’t like that look.

-Noctis, who has been repeatedly told that he is in danger and needs to keep a low profile, starts to duck away from the man, afraid of being spotted, but then the man is in front of him, blocking his way and there are no other people around and Noctis is shaking and terrified, magic sparking under his skin as the man REACHES for him with a leer- and Noctis sobs and his magic reaches out instinctively in search of help-someone-please-PLEASE-

-A sword goes through the man’s chest, pinning him to the wall and suddenly there is a stranger there. A stranger with crackling, snapping magic that coils around Noctis, old and deadly and wounded but not- not evil. The new stranger turns and looks at Noctis, something cold and confused in his gaze, and maybe Noctis should be terrified of this man with red hair and tacky clothes and what looks like black makeup that’s all runny like he’s gotten it wet or been crying, but all Noctis can think is that someone rescued him, someone is HERE and that man has magic just like Noctis so he must be safe and-

-Ardyn feels like the wind has been knocked out of him less because of a scrawny ten year old cannoning into his waist in a desperate sobbing hug and more because- because-

-He hadn’t expected the Chosen to be a child.

-He had known, conceptually, that Regis’s son was very young but that- that was different from seeing it. From feeling young, immature magic latch onto his in desperation and needy trust and looking down at this tiny child who was already sobbing his heart out into the waistcoat of a MONSTER.

-The Chosen King is a child.

-And Ardyn can already feel two Covenants burning under the boy’s skin.

-The Astrals mean to make a CHILD their sacrifice? They will not even wait until he is grown?

-And Ardyn is not ... sane really, but no matter what he tells himself he still has standards and underneath the screaming of the scourge the old Healer King, the older brother who did more to raise his sibling than their father ever did, rears its head and snarls NO.

-Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto, who are all losing their minds over getting separated from Noctis, find him sniffling but content on the hip of a strange hobo-like man who smiles false smiles and says nothing with a great deal of words and somehow inserts himself into their group and never leaves. Noctis doesn’t WANT him to leave and the three are terribly astonished when Noctis blurts out that this poor man is sick and has magic like Noctis, but his sickness makes him tired and cranky.

-Ardyn is trying not to laugh to the point of tears over such a SIMPLE explanation of the Starscourge.

-Anyway to make an already stupid long ramble shorter, Noctis cutes his way to victory by melting the heart of the Accursed into going “Mine. My Nephew Now.” The Empire overreaches and gets it’s back broken by mass riots and Lucis’s defense and Altissia and Tenebrae both rising up in a bid for freedom, Ardyn gets medical help from a Very Confused Luna and they end up curing the Starscourge through the Power of Cute and the Power of Spite (aka Noctis and Ardyn) and then come back to Insomnia with a defected chancellor in tow who is now fully cured and mostly sane again and utterly devoted to his cute nephew.

-Regis is too grateful at finding his son alive and well despite prophecy to really care about the ex-Chancellor happily passing Noctis candy under Ignis’s exasperated eye every time Noctis looks the slightest bit Cuter than Normal.

#SE asks #oliverslewty asks #And A Child Shall Lead Them verse #Secret Engima Rambles

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queerchoicesblog · 4 years

Text

After The Storm

Folks, here’s the second suggestion (thanks a mill @scottishqueer) for the wlw writing project. Inspo is fleaky lately but I want everyone who sent ideas to know that I’m working on them: I’m just a bit slow to write! But I hope you will enjoy this.

A little note about this series set in the Italian Renaissance. I chose a location very dear to me and - hopefully - a bit unusual: Ferrara, the city where my grandparents lived and my mom was born. I love that place and I’ll probably go back there in August: I still remember my grandpa taking me to the Castle (I have a picture showing little me proudly sitting on a pile of cannonballs in the internal stone garden on a sunny day), the Cathedral and the palaces around town. I incorporated them all in the story.

Ferrara was also one of the capitals of the Italian Renaissance, a Duchy ruled by the House of Este, a princely family, linked with several contemporary royal dynasties, including the British royal family. They were notorious patrons of the arts and innovators (through architeractural projects like the one called “Addizione” they were precursors of modern city planning); Duke Alfonso, who makes a cameo in the story and was the third husband of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, was a patron of Ariosto, a famous poet to whom - ironically - my high school was dedicated. So yeah, I added a personal to this miniseries.

If you do happen to like this miniseries, please consider spreading the word!

Previous series: Ancient Greece

__________________________

The rain has finally subsided. When I wake up at the very first lights of dawn, only a faint rattling against the windows can be heard, a testament to the storm an unkind wind blew from where the sea lays and roars. I cherish the feeling, the newfound sweet peace after the howling winds of the night. My beautiful little boy is resting by my side. My poor Tommaso: my little angel has been unwell for days, I have never seen him shed all those tears since the day he was born. He cried and cried until his screams of fear and pain were barely audible and none of us knew what to do. Even Riccardo, my ever-absent, ever-busy husband, worried and urged the presence of a physician with great haste, concern written all over his face. I've never seen him like that before. Tommaso is our only son, too beautiful and young to surrender to a hideous disease and leave this world. If I allow myself to dwell into these thoughts, oh that would be enough to kill me! Seeing my boy suffering was almost unbereable: his desperate cries pierced right through my heart as I held him close, impotent yet hopeful that my presence could provide him a little comfort. Mum is here, my love, fighting and suffering with you.

It's an indescribable joy and relief to wake up this morning and see him sleeping peacefully after the agony and the storm. Tommaso is afraid of thunders and dark skies, I hated the rainstorm for being so unmerciful and throwing new fears to my troubled little prince. I wish I could have blown it away like Aeolus but I do not detain such power over the natural elements.

I gently stroke his head, a feather touch: God forbid I wake him! I almost cry but I manage to refrain myself: my sobbing could disturb his heavenly slumber and I don't want him to see me crying. I'll greet him with a smile when his eyes open up again and nuzzle his belly before covering him with kisses from head to toe. Tommaso loves it and I'm sure Riccardo won't object for once, not after what we've been through. I really thought I would lose my angel.

Thankfully, Lady Death spared him or so it seems. When he wakes he looks back to his usual self, no sign of the cruel pain torturing him. He gets all happy and excited underneath my kisses and eats with a good appetite. He simply looks a bit more abashed and tired than usual but it's understandable. I'll follow the physician's advice and ask my maid to get eggs and cook one of those soups and creams I had too when I was recovering from giving birth. That will hopefully help.

Seeing him happy again makes me forget about the events and mundane meetings I have missed over the past few days since he got ill. I love attending them but it all became suddenly so meaningless when my son lost his light and health. I must remember to save a prayer and make an offering for his miraculous recovery. And I can get the report of the latest happenings at court from my dear friends. They sent notes inquiring about Tommaso and I am glad to let them know the fortunate turn of events.

They visit me the day after. I have many friends here but Maria and Virginia are special companions to me. Maria is the oldest of the group, she has two sons already in marital age, but she has been good to me since I first walked into the castle. She comes from one of the wealthiest noble families in town: she's an institution at court and it meant so much to me that she took me under her wing when I was the new girl here, the young bride of "the most skilled diplomat that has ever served the House of Este". She has her ideas and a temper, of course, we don't agree on everything but she's been a sort of mentor to me and I will always be grateful to her for that: all I know about properly living at court, well I owe it to her. Virginia is about my age, another "pupil" of Maria. I like her: she's a bit shier and meeker than our friend and she has a little boy too so I'm sure she fully understood my anguish.

Apparently, I didn't miss anything important as I guarded Tommaso with my life. Same old rivalries between dames, the yet unconfirmed gossips about the Duke marriage plans, how displeased the jealous favourite looked even if she denied her irritation. Good old court life. I comment that there is still so much going on in our fair Ferrara: the Addizione is proceeding and rumour has it, the palace the previous Duke commissioned for court entertainments, Palazzo Schifanoia, is being renewed and expanded. It goes without saying that it is bound to be a work of unprecedented beauty. I don't remember who was saying so but I know the Duke and his passion for the arts so I find it hard to doubt.

Virginia claps her hand and notes that actually yes, I missed something. Speaking of arts and artistic projects, do I remember when rumours of an external artist joining the enterprise spread? Well, it happened! Now, that I think about it, I remember...Riccardo mentioned it one night as we came back from a music gathering. Apparently, our most brilliant architect, Biagio Rossetti, the genius in charge of bringing the Duke's vision to life and into art, requested another artist to join his brigade. If I got it right, it should be a talented colleague from Florence, Sir Davide whatever...I forgot his surname. He served the House of Medici and excelled so brightly that our fair Biagio summoned him as his right hand. Allegedly, our architect - or , God forbid!, the Duke himself - is unsatisfied with how the projects are proceeding and firmly believes that a fresh set of eyes and hands will benefit the future glory of our Duchy.

"The new architect arrived - when was it? Oh yes, the day after you informed us that poor Tommaso was ill, you definitely missed" Virginia explains.

He looks nice: a handsome man, who knows how to behave himself at court, a true gentleman. I tease my friend asking if she has already put her eyes on him. Virginia blushes a little before protesting: of course not, she would never do anything like that, not to her Carlo, she's a married woman and loyal. Maria interrupts her.

"Oh stop it: as if that would be an impediment!"

"Well, ideally it is!"

"Yes, but only ideally, as you said" Maria laughs. "My young girl, you should know that everyone at court has affairs sooner or later. We'll get you a lover too one day"

"Maria, you're incorrigible!" Virginia giggles, pretending a shyness that is no longer there, replaced by a hint of mischief.

Maria just shrugs, picking up a cherry from the bowl my maid laid on the table.

"Just experienced. So believe me when I tell you we all need the thrill of a secret affair in our lives...otherwise what is left to us? We would die of boredom!"

"I cannot vouch for Maria's theory but you said it yourself, the Florentine architect is here now and he's a handsome man..." I add, winking, to join the conversation.

"You'll vouch for my theory too, dove. Give me time and I'll get yourself a lover too" Maria exclaims.

"...Before a fair lady of the court catches his eyes and bewitches his heart" I continue, addressing Virginia as I prevent Tommaso from climbing up the table on his hunt for cherries.

My friends exchange an amused look.

"Oh but he's married, Emilia!" Virginia explains. "He didn't travel alone, his wife followed him here too. We met them both"

Ah, that's unexpected! I have already pictured a handsome bachelor joining our court but that's good to hear. As much as I enjoy the company of my friends and the other dames, I have noticed though the years that new companions are a blessing. A little novelty, even if momentary at times, could have the same effect of fresh air on a hot summer day. Otherwise, we would die of boredom, as Maria said, referring to lovers. I wouldn't go that far but a new lady in town could be good news.

"Oh, nice! A potential new friend. We should invite her to join our next sewing meeting and get to know her. As well as the hottest gossips from Florence, that is! What do you think?" I smile.

Surprisingly, the expression on my friends' faces is unreadable. Did I say something wrong? Was I too straightforward? Oh gosh, I hope they didn't take my enthusiasm as personal displeasure of our sewing meetings or their company! I better get this right.

"So, how's the new lady?" I inquiry nonchalantly as I prove myself in the funniest faces I can master to make my child laugh.

I succeed: Tommaso claps his tiny hands and laughs until he's out of breath.

"Oh, don't even get me started with her!" Maria dismisses my question but I know her long enough to know she can't wait to tell me what she thinks and maybe more.

"Nothing much, she keeps to herself. Not quite the talker" Virginia shrugs.

"Ah, she's way more tolerable when she keeps her mouth shut anyway!" Maria intervenes again and I'm sure she's not done with just that.

"My my, it seems you took quite a dislike for her" I giggle, exchanging an amused look with Virginia.

"I couldn't help myself, my dear" Maria continues, fanning herself as if to cool down her mounting anger. "Another boorish yet arrogant Florentine"

"The Florentine are always so full of themselves" I concede, cradling my son in my arms.

"Then she must be the Queen of them all" Maria barks a throaty laughter. "She looks so...so high and almighty: 'oh no, I'm afraid we don't play this game in Florence', 'I don't know what it means, we don't have this word in Florence', 'Florence here and that'. Believe me, sweetheart, we were trying to be kind to her but she's impossible! She acts like royalty but she's the wife of an...architect"

She pronounces the last words with evident displease. I can't refrain laughter: she's always been such a snob! I comment that she certainly sounds like...something.

"Oh but you'll have the disgrace to meet her soon enough!" Maria exclaims. "You know that our Duke is so fond of artists, he will certainly invite them again at the next dinners and balls"

"Speaking of the ball" Virginia intervenes to prevent her from keeping ranting. "What will you wear at the Masquerade Ball next month? I ordered a most extravagant costume yesterday, I can't wait to show you-"

We spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the upcoming events at court and the latest trends, gossiping about what we suspect the other dames will wear.

Ah, I missed my friends and our conversations...

#wlw writing #wlw writing project #original work #wlw miniseries #lgbtqa+#italian renaissance

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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I saw your version of the Titans (way back, I was playing with Search) and I was wondering, what would Tim be? Especially since Nightwing and Flamebird encapsulate what a phoenix is so well. Obviously now they correspond to the World Forger and the Anti-Monitor, but your thoughts on the third generation?

So I believe you’re talking about the posts I’ve made about Jason’s age-group of Titans and lineup in an AU - That’s from a series I’ve bee working on for ages, called “Kings of the Sky” (which refers to all the Batfamily, not just Dick and Jason or even just the boys. Title comes from a story I have Dick tell that his grandfather told him, about why before he was married and he and his wife became the original Flying Graysons, in this AU’s history, when he was a solo act, he was billed as “Daniel Grayson, the King of the Sky!’ Just lofty, pretentious-sounding showmanship on the surface, something the aristocrats he performed for were happy to introduce this lowly commoner as, laughing all the while, but Daniel as I’ve made him out to be, had a particular fascination with names for specific reasons, and everything they could mean and be while not being what they seemed. So even as they laughingly billed him as such, they never got the real joke, which was passed down as a kind of family tradition that only Daniel’s family, the Flying Graysons, all Kings of the Sky, and then from there Dick’s second family, were really the only ones to ever get the way he intended it. There’s no such thing as a King of the Sky, of course, that’s the joke….but at the same time there is, and that’s the secret, because just because someone else looks at the name and pictures it as something its not, and thus says it can never be, doesn’t mean that for those who use that name, it means something very different, and that they very much are.

This AU goes divergent from the moment Dick gets involved in the Garzonas situation and weighs in, so Jason doesn’t go to Ethiopia because he never even goes back to his old apartment, desperately seeking some feeling of family to connect to. He has no need to here. And the second installment is about the aftermath of the Brother Blood storyline and addressing Dick’s non-adopted status at the time, and various other things, and then by the third installment, it starts introducing Jason to other friends his own age and gathering together his future lineup of Titans, mentored by Dick’s and who will be a kind of mentors to Tim’s (and Duke’s) in time as well…..and also starts to delve into the ACTUAL AU storylines of this series, once its thoroughly departed from canon at that point and I’ve sorted out my issues with Bruce’s reaction/belief about Garzonas and Bruce’s non-presence during the BB story and aftermath and the adoption issues.

So by the third installment, Bruce is no longer getting yelled at by his sons about how to parent the other one and is doing the actual Batdad parenting and things start up with Jason’s Titans and storylines and Dick slowly becoming aware of the Court of Owls and their involvement in his family history and their plans for him (and just how many of them or their children/future Court members have been around him in galas and parties and various encounters throughout his childhood in Gotham). As well as bringing in the other members of the Batfamily one by one (or two by two in Tim and Duke’s case in this AU).

BUT for the most part, aside from the individual storylines, this AU is about family history. And not just Dick’s, even though he’s my fave and primary focus - I have an obnoxious need to be THOROUGH (read: obsessive) and a disgusting need to be FAIR (read: YOU get a storyline and YOU get a storyline and EVERYBODY GETS A STORYLINE!) and also just anal.

So its about the Batfamily being an actual family instead of dysfunctional occasional roommates, but its also how that doesn’t take away from their original families or experiences or their importance in shaping them, just as none of them by virtue of being their ‘original’ families take away from the importance of their second found family. Its all one and the same, family is family, their families are their families all at the same time and there don’t need to be all these partitions. So Kings of the Sky has a particular relevance to that not just for Dick, but in that its secret meaning to Daniel and how it described him and his family, all the way down to Dick, also ends up describing Dick’s second family, and there’s nothing coincidental or by chance about this, because the point is family is CHOICE and names only mean what you choose them to mean, what YOU see them as meaning.

So this AU could just as easily have been titled something like Family History, even though almost all of the members of their first families that come into play here do so in flashbacks and stories the Batfam tell each other about their first families and that their families told them. So Daniel Grayson and the start of the Grayson family line is hugely relevant and delved into, and not just for its connection to the Court and their storyline. Dick’s paternal grandparents here lived well into their eighties, because why the hell not, did canon say they couldn’t? did I ask? no and no. So his grandmother died when he was like two, and his grandfather a few years later, but Dick does remember a little bit and so Daniel’s lifelong quest to find out where he really came from, who he really WAS, becomes Dick’s mystery to solve once and for all so he can finally put that to rest for his grandfather and find some closure with his first family and not feel like he’s forgotten or abandoned them just because he’s so fully embraced his second one as being his as well.

Only instead of solving the mystery being for Daniel’s sake, its really about what he finds being for his own sake, because as Dick’s Grandpa used to tell him: “A man who knows himself knows his own name,” and as Dick finds that even without ever definitively getting his answers while alive, Daniel was actually born to a Crowne and named himself King and knew who he was all his life and lived his life truly, and that’s the real answer Dick needs to realize that Cobb and his words and intentions mean nothing to Dick because Dick is not a Cobb and would never choose to be, he’s a Grayson and the Graysons have all, always to the last one, been who they choose to be and not a damn thing else, certainly never what anyone else believes them to be.

And Dick is Nightwing throughout this of course, except for one pivotal storyline towards the end of the series, where he and Jason go deep undercover as supervillains for awhile, and during that part of the series, Dick uses War Shrike as his name, and for those wondering, yes this means Boone is around and hugely relevant to this series in specific ways. And of course, he goes back to being Nightwing after.

And Jason never goes to Ethiopia because he never goes back to his apartment building that time, but that doesn’t mean he never finds out about Sheila and goes looking for her, but when he does he’s not 15 and desperate for family, he’s 19 and on a road trip with his BFF Grant Emerson aka Damage who has his own questions about his unknown real family, but both HAVE families by now and don’t NEED more, they just want to know who’s out there and potentially close the book on that one way or another, which is a very different thing and different story, but also, fuck Sheila, and all of that will still come into play but Jason’s not alone this time and not so lonely he can be crushed by her not being the mother he in Ethiopia thought he needed her to be. Also, Sheila comes from a family of her own, and just because fuck Sheila, doesn’t mean there aren’t more relatives out there that aren’t just The Worst.

And Jason is Robin in the first few installments of this series and then becomes Flamebird and usually most likely teamed up with Dick when they’re not with their individual Titans, and thus neither are ultimately off doing solo acts elsewhere and being lonely loners who actually hate being lonely. Except of course for the undercover storyline, at which point Jason uses the name Gray Jay, a kind of bird usually known for or referenced as being thieving and unpredictable and unexpectedly dangerous despite its size (Jason never went into the Lazarus Pit here and so isn’t as huge as he is in canon, he’s on the smaller side due to his early life’s malnutrition. Living with Bruce helped him catch up enough that he’s not TINY tiny, but he’s still smaller enough that this particular mantle fits him a little better than it would his massive canon depiction). And then of course after that Jason goes back to being Flamebird.

(And the eternal drama that is the years long gay love quadrangle of DOOOM that is Jason and Tom Bronson and Ray Terrill and Todd Rice all being young dumb and gay and not even actually sure which of the other three they actually LIKE they just know that its possibly more than one of them but its definitely not all of them which why they are NOT a fucking polecule, shut the fuck up Courtney - Courtney Mason aka Anima - and never WILL be but are definitely a love quadrangle instead and a very confusing one and also dont call it that Dick its not that its NOOOOOT.)

I still have no idea how this even came about, I didn’t plan it, Lilith just sort of accidentally (hah) instigated it via meddling slash deliberately plotting while bored and chaotic and it was just too much fun to stop so I just haven’t yet and possibly never will. Also, Dick and Cass have WAY too much fun with it as well, particularly Cass, since there is ammunition against Dick in the form of “Shut up and go suck face with your assassin boyfriend”/I DONT EVEN LIKE BOONE LIKE THAT, JASON, GOD, SHUT UP, HE’S MY NEMESIS, UGH DO YOU EVEN KNOW ANYTHING YOU’RE SUCH A LOSER UGGGGGH, but of course it wouldn’t be fair to NEVER get to retaliate against Cass, so they eventually catch wind of her tripping and falling on her face because she forgets how movement works when crushing on a certain heroine, no its not Steph, its more one of those things where the other one is older enough that its not endgame and more of a crushing on one of your older brother’s friends which means they’re always around and oh no what if they FIND OUT THAT WILL BE SO EMBARRASSING I MIGHT ACTUALLY DIE but also NOOOOOO DONT FIGHT WITH MY DUMBASS OLDER BROTHER THAT MEANS YOU MIGHT STOP COMING OVER ALL THE TIME AND I WONT SEE YOU ALL THE TIME AND I MIGHT ACTUALLY DIE.

The….unique form of sibling interaction shared by the three eldest Batkids here ratchets up a DEF-CON danger level at that point. They are all armed then, and just desperate enough to use that ammunition if you press them.

So yes, Cass ends up the third to enter this family here, and Lady Shiva and everything there will play out much differently and she’s still not Mother of the Year or even like, good, but she is MORE than she is in canon here, and like, there’s actual depth and HISTORY there and also, there’s not with David Cain though because fuck that guy, just kill him, who cares where he came from just drop him in a hole and assume its the one he crawled out of in the first place. Pttthb. Loser.

And here Babs still is crucial in mentoring her even if she ends up being brought into the family and adopted by Bruce much sooner than in canon and it being Dick and Jason and Cass for awhile as the three Batkids. So Cass is there when Jason is still Robin for a couple more years, only moving to Flamebird when he’s around eighteen, and so she becomes Batgirl as Babs becomes Oracle, and is pretty much Batgirl all the way until she ends up becoming Black Bat (and Steph takes her place as Batgirl after previously being Spoiler. Steph’s around fairly early too, and not actually a member of the immediate family as things get better with her and her mom, but she delights in referring to herself as ‘that chick from Full House who doesn’t live there but is always there anyway, whether CERTAIN PEOPLE like it or not, and no I don’t know her name Bruce, its not like I watched the show, I’m not EIGHTY, what does any of that have to do with anything?)

And also in between Batgirl and Black Bat, Cass also partakes in the undercover storyline, just showing up uninvited in a persona she’s crafted for the mission and calls Black Swan, and War Shrike and Gray Jay being so startled and obviously a little freaked by her unexpected arrival, and her being ticked at her brothers for leaving her behind, RUDE, and them being sufficiently cowed and guilted by her wrath, that it all adds up to the other villains as being evidence that clearly she is the boss and they are her advance minions. Which mollifies and satisfies Cass immensely, and leaves Jason grumpy that their mission was hijacked and also his sister is The Worst, and leaves Dick temporarily disgruntled because This Whole Thing Was His Idea DAMMIT but then five seconds later finding it hilarious because Dick is a chaos connoisseur and he has an appreciation for whimsy and the unexpected.

Snippet from that fic’s outline:

“I can’t believe you not only gate-crashed our extremely sensitive and delicate undercover operation, but you completely hijacked it as well! This is so typical,” Jason grouched.

Cass simply swept ahead of him and strode down the hallway with lethal grace. “Silence minion.”

Jason spluttered behind her and she grinned to herself. He really made it too easy sometimes.

And Tim’s debut is delayed by the non-death of Jason and happens very differently as do things with his first family, too much to get into, but all of that is very relevant to the Family History theme of things, and in this AU he and Duke are actually the same age because what is Tim’s age anyway, what has Tim’s age ever been anyway, does anyone anywhere at any time actually know Tim’s age because I swear it is a quantum anomaly that randomly fluctuates at any given moment and eats brain cells that dare try and pin a number on it. And Duke and Tim are both in different foster care placements and have never met when both decide to become Robin after Jason becomes Flamebird and Robin is seemingly gone from Gotham, and its just Batman and Batgirl having father-daughter-kicking-supervillains-asses bonding nights.

Because its not like in canon, but still, its unsettling, its weird, all the kids Duke and Tim both know feel it just the same. There’s always been a Robin in Gotham for as long as any of them remember at this point, there’s SUPPOSED to be a Robin, Gotham NEEDS Robin just as much as it needs Batman, and they’re not surprised adults don’t get that, because adults have always had Batman and he’s THEIRS and even if he’s there for the kids too, Robin is FOR the kids, HE’S theirs, and look, there just needs to be a Robin, okay?

So Duke and Tim both decide well if there’s not a Robin and there’s gotta be a Robin and nobody else seems to be doing anything about it, hey, here comes Robin! At the same time. And then drama and conflict and chaos happens, and Duke and Tim end up taken in by B doing as B does, and they both end up Robin and alternate patrols so one can have a life while the other has Batman-bonding-and-bad-guy-battling time. With Duke most often being the daytime Robin and Tim the night time Robin, though there’s rarely any confusion from them both being named Robin, because Duke’s costume is more yellow and Tim’s is more Red and people pretty much always know which they’re talking about and if further clarification is needed, they just refer to them as Red and Yellow. Not Red Robin or Yellow Robin, more like “Wait, which Robin did you say was there? Oh it was Red.”

And so they’re Robin, and are about ready to graduate from that when the undercover storyline happens, so they temporarily take on the older two boys’ mantles for them so as to keep anyone from being suspicious and wondering where the hell Nightwing and Flamebird are these days anyway. So Tim is Nightwing for awhile and Duke is Flamebird, but then Dick and Jason take back those mantles which Tim and Duke happily relinquish and replace with their new mantles, at which point Tim is Kingfisher (too much plot stuff and family history stuff has to happen before an explanation of this would make sense at this point) and Duke is something like Blue Heron, I’m still fidgeting with that one because it doesn’t quite fit but none of the other options I’ve gone through yet are better. But its definitely a Blue bird and not like a Bluejay or anything like that, it has to be something like a Crane or Heron or a bird with certain connotations along similar lines to theirs, because Duke’s family history is hugely relevant here too (and largely made up by me like Daniel Grayson’s, given the scarcity in canon) but if you look around you can probably find a bunch of meta about how I feel Duke’s powers COULD be linked to Blue Lanterns in a lot of very specific ways even if I don’t think canon is going there.

And this isn’t to make Duke a Blue Lantern, but rather here is similar to Alan Scott being imbued by the Starheart in the 40s while in Gotham, and basically ending up just like a Green Lantern but unaffiliated, and having children who inherit similiar powers to him and wildly different powers than him at birth, due to how the Starheart changed him. So here, at the same time that happened to Alan, there was another similar object that crashed into Gotham that same night, and that imbued Duke’s maternal grandmother with all the same abilities as a Blue Lantern, but again, no affiliation to the not-yet-existing Corps. So Duke’s grandmother and her previously-unknown-even-to-him story has a lot to do with certain installments just like Daniel’s story has to do with Dick’s story, as well as the revelations about Duke’s mother Elaine having powers (like we at least have been told she does in canon) and thus where his own come from, even if by this point in the family lineage they’re not exactly like a Blue Lanterns and have their own distinct aspects as well.

And then Damian is there in time to take over as Robin after Tim and Duke, and he’s still Robin by the end of the series, so I don’t have anything firm for his later mantle.

ANYWAY, those are the names, if you want some excerpts from the series, included below are:

1) Snippet from the outline of the as-yet-unwritten story where Duke and Tim join the Batfam, which is basically kinda like my usual not!fic manner of writing, where its a bunch of scene snippets and dialogue that aren’t meant to be the final story or even likely to be in the final story, but rather serve as a placeholder for me to preserve my ‘feel’ of what I want a scene or dialogue or interaction to be like when it first pops into my head and I want to be able to recall it when I get around to actually wriitng it.

DUKE AND TIM (AND ALSO DICK AND JASON AND CASS BEING SIBLINGS WHO ARE WEIRD)

So they run into trouble eventually and then when running from trouble they run into each other and they’re like….huh. Awkward. And then they decide well, might as well both run from trouble in the same direction, I guess. So they do.

“Did you have a plan for dealing with these guys?” Tim yelled at Duke. The other boy looked back over his shoulder briefly and gave what would probably have been a half-shrug if he didn’t awkwardly try to barrel-roll over a car two seconds later.

“Umm, sorta?”

“How sorta are we talking about? Maybe the two of us together could fill in the gaps in the plan and come up with one full plan?”

“Uh yeah, no, its not that kinda sorta. I meant sorta in the sense that I thought I had a plan but it didn’t work and that’s why these guys are after me. Sooooo…”

“Not helpful, basically.”

“Yeah. Pretty much. And hey, I don’t hear you offering up a plan! Did you even have one at all?”

“Uh….I mean I kinda didn’t think I was likely going to need one because I sorta figured some kid running around in a mask basically making a nuisance of himself was the sorta thing that was bound to attract Batman and I was just pretty much running around until that happened, and then I’d make a case for how I obviously need training and Gotham needs Robin and if its not me its likely to be someone else trying eventually anywayso why not be me?”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“I know, that’s why I never said it was a plan! It was mostly….more…idea-ish.”

“I’m just saying, I thought *I* was doing this wrong, but at least I had a plan! I mean yeah, it might have ended up with me accidentally busting in on what I thought was a bunch of Riddler’s henchmen setting up some kind of clue thing, only it was actually a bunch of Intergang type guys with alien space guns or some shit all dressed up as Riddler henchmen for some reason? Idk what they were trying to do honestly, but so yeah I might have ended up running away on foot from like twenty of them and some kind of hovercycle -”

“I’m going to cut you off there and say wherever this is going its probably not the superior vantage point I think you think you have.”

(Something like that.)

Meanwhile, Batman was not going to be coming because he’s off on a JLA mission. However, in his absence Dick and Jason are in town filling in, and they finished taking out the bad guys several blocks back and caught up to whomever was running from them, figured out the situation and are currently sitting on the edge of a rooftop watching them realize they’re totally lost and trying to figure out where to go from here. Mostly because Dick and Jason are incredibly amused listening to their back and forth and also just…this whole situation.

Dick justifies not piping up to let them know they’re safe now by saying this is good intel gathering so we can offer Bruce our assessment as to whether they’re gonna try and keep doing this whether we train them or not, and also how they handle this whole being lost situation. Not knowing they don’t have to run anymore isn’t going to hurt them and really, this is a good field exercise almost.

Jason justifies not piping up by saying this is fucking hilarious and I will hurt you if you end this any sooner than we have to, I deserve this, I had a rough week.

Which is right around the time that Cass pipes up from where she’s been lurking unnoticed behind them this whole time: “Oh no. Was it Tom? Or Ray? Or was it Todd?”

And she does it right in Jason’s ear so he kinda aborted-shrieks and almost falls off the roof except Cass is ready for that and grabs his arm to steady him.

“I hate when you do that!” Jason growls in an attempt to cover up how badly she got him and also because he hates when she does it which is why she does it a lot. Again, they don’t hate each other at all, but they do seem to act like it a lot, and neither of them is entirely sure why. They kinda just started doing it and have each been trying to get the other back ever since and ended up locked in an unending spiral of gotcha-gotchaback, except, y’know, Batfam style.

Dick occasionally picks sides just to muddy the waters. And then he randomly switches sides without warning, so neither of them ever wants to risk getting too peeved at him even when he’s helping the other, because that might push him fully over to the other side and leave them permanently outnumbered, so they’re kinda stuck, which is exactly as he likes it, lol.

“Why are you Satan,” Jason hisses dramatically as he gets up and stomps over to the other side of the roof to sulk, lest she almost knock him off again. Its not the almost falling part that bothers him, its that she’s the one that snatches him to safety each time. She’s like a freaking cat toying with a - yeah not going there, just blaming Selina. Knew them hanging out was going to be bad news for me SOMEHOW, he gripes.

Cass just shrugs and smoothly sits down cross-legged right where she is, grinning Cheshire-cat style at him from there. “Childhood trauma,” is her answer.

Except: “Great, and now you’re stealing my comeback on top of it?! Is nothing sacred to you?”

Another shrug. “Haven’t decided yet. Babs is still helping me explore my options. We’re going alphabetically and we’re only on the E-religions.”

“God, you’re the worst. I can’t believe you ruined sisters for me.”

“You already used that same line last week when you came out of your room still half-asleep and she was just sitting directly across from your door waiting and staring unblinking and you yelped and dropped your laptop on your toe, and then cursed so loud that B came running around the hall thinking we were being invaded,” Dick reported idly, still perched in the same position he’d been in all along, and still watching the boys below them. “Just in case you thought no one noticed when you recycle.”

“I noticed too,” Cass added solemnly.

“I have no siblings,” Jason intoned. He threw up his hands dramatically and then loudly jumped down to the street below with a little help from the fire escape. It drew both Duke and Tim’s attention and they startled before realizing it was Flamebird. And that he’d landed on the street and was stalking past them while barely acknowledging them. And that that was Nightwing standing on the roof now with his hands on his hips yelling after him.

“Oh, reeeeeeal subtle. You’re not having fun anymore so you gotta make sure nobody else does either. Wow, the Brat-like behavior, just JUMPED out of the shadows with that one!”

And that was Flamebird not even turning around and just yelling back. “I HAVE NO SIBLINGS!”

And also they were both pretty sure that was Batgirl crouched on the roof next to Nightwing now, and she was…..sticking her tongue out at Flamebird’s back? No, Batgirl very much definitely was sticking out her tongue, that wasn’t in doubt, it was more just….very unexpected to see.

What was happening right now?

CUT TO:

Eventually Tim and Duke have inevitably worn down his resistance to training them by insisting they’re gonna keep doing this and if its not them its gonna be someone sooner or later anyway, because you guys may not know this but Gotham’s gotten used to Robins by now and it freaks people out not to see one and Robin’s as important as Batman really and there needs to be a Robin and its not just us that will think so like look at the fact that already two of us had the exact same idea, huh? And also, we’re gonna keep doing it anyway, sooooo….there’s that.

And then Cass vouches that they’re both 100% serious about that.

And then Dick vouches that as a former determined daredevil kid that was absolutely going to keep doing the same thing no matter whether you’d helped me or not, B, I also am of the assessment that these two mean it all the way.

And not to be left out and just to have something to contribute but also grumpy because his brother and sister are picking on him and he’s eighteen going on ten, Jason throws in: “And my assessment is that they both definitely seem dumb enough to keep doing this without help anyway and they definitely need help or they definitely will die, I’d give it a month, month and a half tops.”

And then Bruce dryly thanks his children for their contributions, their keen insights in this matter have been absolutely invaluable, he has no idea how he would make a decision here without it.

“Oooh, a rare sighting of Bat-snark in the wild. Someone call Nat-Geo quick, maybe he’ll do it again,” Dick says.

Bruce sighs. Duke and Tim look like they’re trying to decide if they’re allowed to be amused or if that’s also part of some weird Bat-test that they’re probably taking without even knowing it.

So Tim and Duke move in, start training together, and then also get sent to school together and it takes a month or so of settling in before they decide whether or not they actually are happy about this. There’s a period of deciding they’re supposed to be bitter rivals who snipe at each other back and forth across the dining table at every available opportunity, but that changes the first night Dick and Jason come back from the Tower since Tim and Duke have moved in and where Cass is also home instead of at the Clocktower with Babs.

Since all three of the older Batkids, upon seeing Tim and Duke squabble at dinner, decide to obnoxiously coo about how adorable it is watching the kids play. Which pretty instantly cements Duke and Tim as realizing their best chance of surviving the sudden acquisition of three older superhero ninja foster siblings who all can be as obnoxious as they are dangerous but also as much as they are - Duke and Tim are convinced - all quite insane.

A belief further cemented the next morning, with all three of them having spent the night at the Manor as well. Treating Duke and Tim to their first Saturday morning episode of the Cass and Jason show.

In this episode, Jason emerged from his bedroom in his pajamas still but warily peeking his head out first to look both ways down the hall before deciding it was clear…..and then makes it just almost to the end of the hallway leading to the stairs, when Cass drops down from where she’d been waiting perched above the other side of the door, in such a way as to suddenly fill the doorway just in front of him, hanging upside down suspending herself just with her feet wedged above the doorway, all while keeping her hands crossed her chest, a dead-eyed expression on her face, and with her tongue hanging out like she’s some kind of vampire hanging upside down in mid-slumber.

Jason shrieked and stumbled back a foot before catching himself and shoving two fingers in a cross shape in her direction.

“Demon! DEMON! Goddammit, I abjure thee, that’s supposed to fucking do something about having a demon sister, now what the fuck does it take to banish you!?”

“Can’t be banished,” Cass informed him, still upside down. “Can be bought though.”

Jason halted. “What?”

“I’m really surprised you never figured it out,” Dick said from his room further down the hallway. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms casually crossed.

“Why did you think she never goes after me?”

Jason swiveled back and forth between his siblings suspiciously, trying to scry both their inscrutable (and in Cass’ case, still upside down) faces for signs they were telling the truth. “You’re telling me that Little Miss Monstrous has been a pain in my ass from day one and the reason she’s never so much as eked a single boo in your direction is you’ve been bribing her all this time?”

Dick shrugged. “Its all about getting in on the ground floor.”

Jason squinted, still unconvinced. “Nuh-uh. No way. You’re just fucking with me. Like if this is for real, what have you been buying her off with?”

Dick smiled beatifically. “Cuddles and hugs.”

“NO! NO! Bullshit! I am NOT falling for this crap again, you are not gonna get me this way this time. I call BS, fuck you, nuh uh, you’re lying out your ass and your ass-face.”

“Wait, what is this this I did before? What are you talking about?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Is this about the Care Bear you had when you were fifteen?”

“Shut upppppppppppppppp, I didn’t have a Care Bear then, you’re such a - “

“Oh, I dunno, I’m pretty sure there’s some holiday photos from that year that would say otherwise, pretty definitively in the form of you and your Care Bear….”

“That I only had because you literally just gave it to me as a present solely so that you could claim that I had a Care Bear when I was fifteen, you douchebag!”

“Just because I gave you the Care Bear didn’t mean you had to keep the Care Bear and hold the Care Bear and love the Care Bear, Jay. You chose to do all that.”

“I only kept the damn thing because you’re an asshole who lied about it being a family heirloom so I felt like I had to or I’d be a total jerk. Is nothing sacred to you?”

“I didn’t lie! It is a treasured family heirloom! Its the first Care Bear I gave to my little brother to teach him the important and valuable lesson that Care Bears - say it with me now - “

“Finish that sentence and they will never find your body.”

“CARE!” Cass shrieked from behind him before jumping on Jason’s back and bearing him down to the floor in an undignified tangle as she splayed atop him like a starfish and he stared up at the ceiling in a kind of strangled frozen fury, like there was so much emotion he wanted to process he’d overheated and now was stuck like that until he cooled down.

That was when Dick leaned over him and solemnly added one final thought, as though it was a crucial addition of the gravest importance:: “A lot.”

Jason’s eye twitched.

Dick’s eyes went wide in response. “Uh oh. He went to the Danger Zone. Run Cass. We’ve unleashed the dogs of war!”

Cass was off and on her feet in a second, taking off down the hall like a rocket. “Not the dogs of war!” She yelled.

Dick was only seconds behind her when behind him, Jason rose like an eruption, growling wordlessly and sparks practically flashing from his suddenly flinty eyes. He charged after them like an enraged bull.

“Kenny Loggins wouldn’t want this!” Dick yelled over his shoulder as he rounded the doorway and vanished. Jason rounded it in hot pursuit.

“Poison Ivy won’t even be able to make compost from what’s left of you when I’m through!”

The yelling and running vanished into the distance. Duke and Tim finally looked at each other blankly.

“What?” Tim asked. Duke shrugged helplessly.

A door opened at the end of the hallway. Bruce stuck his head out. “Is it safe?”

Tim just stared at him.

“What?” Duke asked.

*****

2) Excerpt from the first installment, “Teachable Moments,” part of a story Dick retells as he remembers his grandfather and later his father telling it to him.

Further context for this:

In my Grayson family backstory headcanons, Daniel has a lifelong strange fascination with names, that grew out of his personal unsolved mystery of where he came from. The only thing he ever knew was that he was left at the circus in a blanket with Daniel embroidered on it, and was taken into be raised there, and by the time he was old enough to ask questions about himself, he knew everyone at the circus had known him to be called Daniel Grayson since they first met him as a baby…..but what he could never find an answer for was who decided to name him that and why. Per canon, we saw his father William Cobb hand him to Haly’s grandfather to be raised, and he told Haly’s grandfather to call him Grayson.

So I expanded on this and so in the context of this series, Daniel of course eventually wondered where Grayson came from if no one knew where he was from, and Haly’s grandfather claimed he didn’t name him that, and refused to elaborate further…..which left Daniel with the fact that he was left at the circus and introduced to the others there as baby Daniel Grayson by Haly’s grandfather, who then later denied to Daniel being the one to pick the name and give it to him, but also denied any knowledge of where he came from.

So Daniel always knew he had to be lying about ONE of those two things, with the lie most likely being the second thing….but he could never get him to admit it, or prove it, and that kinda always haunted him in a way. And so, his fixation with names grew out of never knowing where his came from or how he came to have it, and this line from something he said once kinda sums up his obsession with it:

He’d joke about how it was itchy, like it never felt like it fit him right, and Grandma would fondly scoff and say he just thought it was too boring and plain. But Grandpa being Grandpa, he’d just take that and spin it into an agreement, further evidence he was right.

“Grayson is what you’d name a man you thought should go unnoticed and be overlooked, he’d say. “And I am not that man.”

Because that was his real problem, the thing he could never shake….he didn’t care about the name itself, because as the below excerpt touches on, he found a way to make his name work for him, to feel like it did fit him and was part of who he was by choice, by intention. He defined his name, rather than let his name define him. Its the reason the Grayson family colors, as originally worn by him, are the brightest hues he could fit together, a deliberate attempt to make him, and by extension his family’s future generations….the exact OPPOSITE of what their name denoted. He didn’t mind being a Grayson, or regret it, AFTER he took ownership of his identity despite his lack of answers and seized it, put his own mark on it, made it his….because no matter the intention of whomever gave him that name, he didn’t have to be defined by it the way they meant him to.

BUT, the fact remained that even after making his own peace with his name and claiming it as his own, definitively, regardless of any one else’s view of it….he could never shake the feeling that given the vague circumstances of his arrival at the circus and mysteriousness of where he came from, that his name “Grayson” wasn’t just random choice and didn’t just get picked out of nowhere by someone, nor did he think it was actually his family name before him, given that everything else about his origins suggested an attempt to shroud where he came from, making it unlikely that they did all that just to have him still grow up with his actual family name. So from a pretty young age, he always had this feeling that the name Grayson was PICKED to be given to him, specifically, and that this was done with a reason, it was MEANT as something…..and gut feeling due to everything combined, was the quote above. He always believed someone named him that because he was meant to be unseen, unnoticed, slip through the cracks without anyone ever paying attention…..

And its not his name itself Daniel took issue with, it was someone thinking they could just DECIDE he and his life were meant to be lived unnoticed, nothing but gray. And so his whole life he kinda devoted it to defying that idea, even if he never knew for sure, and he basically pursued the spotlight to do the complete opposite of that. He trained to be an acrobat, sought out teachers on his own, so that he’d have a way to stand out rather than just help various acts backstage, and in time he became Daniel Grayson, the King of the Sky, Haly’s star solo act until he married and he and his wife became the Flying Graysons, and then John and Mary and finally Dick as well.

EXCERPT FROM “TEACHABLE MOMENTS:”

“But there is no King of the Sky, Dickie,” he’d said to me then with a wink. “That’s the joke, you see? No one can claim the sky as theirs, no one can own it. Send your armies to claim it in your name and all you’d see is legions of empty-handed fools all grasping at air! There’s no way to draw your borders, no foundation on which you could build any walls. And where would you even put your throne?”

“He’d laughed then, mischievous and wheezing, as he recalled all the courts the circus had entertained back in its glory days, when Europe’s nobility would always each host some circus or troupe or performers at various festivals. All the kings and queens for whom he’d performed his signature feats, who’d show him off to their most important guests afterwards. The ones who had been invited specifically so they’d see that this court held only the grandest of celebrations, that they and their guests were entertained by only the very best of the best.

“Oh, but they were always so eager to introduce me by title,” he’d said, rheumy eyes still somehow keeping their sparkle. “There they were, kings and crown princes, pushing me forward and telling their guests to come greet me, this commoner they were all too glad to proclaim royalty no different to them. After all, any king can present his guests with an entertaining spectacle, but how much grander is the king who hosts the spectacle of being entertained by another king? Ah, but they were always more than happy to elevate me if but for the night…in doing so, they elevated themselves as well. Up we all went, all without feet ever leaving the floor!”

“Names can be such a funny thing, don’t you think?” He’d sort of mused that, stroking his chin like he was pondering some great mystery. “Meaning nothing and everything all at the same time. That’s a powerful trick. Useful too, if you can master it.”

I know I started giggling then, just because as far back as I can remember, names were always kind of a…almost a passion of his, I guess you could say. It was just this thing he did, it was like he could never just let a name be. There was always some trick to a name, he’d insist. You just had to find it. Its why our family colors were red, yellow and green, as a matter of fact. All in only the brightest hues of each, combining to make us the complete opposite of the Gray in our name.

‘The crowd comes in to see the acrobat named Grayson, what do they expect from just the name? Drab, unremarkable, likely to be lost in the shadows, from just the sound of him. But then he dives off the platform in a burst of colors impossible to miss and the crowd gasps, expectations shattered in an instant….and from there, they think, what more surprises might possibly await? And already you have them at the edge of their seat, eyes caught by the colors of a costume its impossible to lose sight of. You command their attention, you’re unencumbered by their assumptions, and they’re yours from that moment on….and all of that from just a pop of color, a warning that you are not what they thought….and a name. A Flying Grayson, up above as expected, yet unexpectedly the brightest thing in the sky. An inherent contradiction. An impossible sight you can’t help but to see.’

“Anyway, so there I was,” Dick said, straightening up and shaking his head with a slightly rueful smile, as if to physically pull himself out of the undertow of memories tugging him further away from where he’d begun. “Already giggling just from his little chin-stroking act as he started talking about names, because I knew he was bound to say something silly next, just from that. And he’d jumped a little, and turned in his armchair to face me directly and with his full focus, because Grandpa thrived off of an engaged audience like nothing else.

“Yes, a powerful thing, a name,” he’d continued after a moment that was either a dramatic pause or me thinking anything longer than ten seconds might as well be the same as an hour, at that age. “But a tricky business, naming things, as you first have to know what a thing is, before you attempt to claim it by naming it what it is not. And being named can just as easily be a powerful trap, of course. If a man doesn’t know himself well enough to know he is not what a name claims, he can wind up stuck in a cage that’s not sized to fit him. Simply because he doesn’t know he has more than enough room to slip free of it if he tried.”

“Then he leaned down close enough to me to whisper, and looked around as if checking we were alone before dropping into a raspy whisper like we were conspiring. “But a man who knows what he wants and knows what he’s capable of, and can put the right name to both….that’s where the real magic is. Do you know what kind of power your name has?”

“Richard means lion-hearted,” I remember reporting after some thought. And that he blew a raspberry right after that like he was the five year old of the two of us, but then, Grandpa was just like that sometimes. “Yes, yes, true enough,” he said, making a face like he’d tasted something sour, “But I don’t mean the one your father picked most likely to spite me for naming him John in the first place. No matter how many times I tell him I had nothing to do with that, I lost the right to name him in a card game with your Grandmother. Although for the record, I still maintain I didn’t lose, she just cheated. But I still have no idea how she did it so I have to respect that, I suppose. But no. Not that name. The one your mother gave you.”

“And of course then I knew he meant Robin, and said so, and he asked what that meant to me. And I remember thinking long and hard about that one, because as I said, I knew even by that age what Grandpa was like on the subject of names, and so I was sure there was some kind of riddle or game in what he was asking, I just wasn’t sure where. So finally I just referred back to what my Mom always used to say, about me being born on the first day of spring, and being her little Robin. And he just nodded, and then he asked: And do you remember the first time you called yourself Robin to someone else, and why? What you said then?”

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

But its mostly by the third installment of this series that things start simmering on the long-term Court of Owls storyline throughout this, which is where all the stuff with the Grayson backstory comes into play.

Because in finding out about Cobb and the Court of Owls and their connection to his family and intentions for him, and fighting all that and dealing with the implications, the thing is….in the process Dick of course ends up finding all the answers that his grandfather spent his whole life searching for.

So its about how the Court of Owls and Cobb’s actions and plans have affected Dick’s whole family through three whole generations, now that Dick is its endgame and he can see the full picture……which among other things, allows Dick a kind of closure for a lot of stuff with his first family. He’s finally able to solve the mystery Daniel was haunted by, and gain a big sense of validation from it, because in doing so he affirms that he and his family line aren’t really defined by their connection to Cobb, or even really the result of Cobb and his actions.

Because knowing Cobb’s intentions, knowing that HE named the Grayson family line and what it was supposed to mean….even though Daniel never got his answers while he was alive, Dick’s able to put all of that to rest in a lot of ways by realizing that his grandfather might not have ever gotten the specifics…..but he still got it right. Dick can now affirm that his grandfather guessed right as to what the person who named him Grayson meant for it to mean, meant for him to be. But Dick knows now too, that without even knowing that for sure, his grandfather managed to do all the right things in exactly the right ways to defy those intentions and spit in the face of what he was ‘supposed’ to be or do. As did John then, as well, and now as did Dick.

And so Dick can say with full certainty that no matter where his family comes from originally, the Grayson name was never defined by what the Court interpreted it as….but as the Graysons defined it for themselves. They are what they made themselves to be, and Dick can see himself in that, his choices reflected in the ones his father and grandfather made before him, all without knowing just what exactly it was they were defying or anything like that….they did all that naturally, just by virtue of being who they were themselves, who they chose to be. And that ultimately, is what the name Grayson means to Dick….the same thing it always meant to his father, and what it always meant to his grandfather at the very beginning of their TRUE family line, the only one THEY actually claim NAME to.

The true history of Dick’s family, his first family, the true legacy of The Flying Graysons, the Kings of the Sky, is an entire century of every last one of them going “FUCK YOU, WE DO WHAT WE WANT” to ‘their ancestor’ William Cobb and the entire Court of Owls, every day of their lives.

3) UNEDITED SNIPPET, from the (as of now) eighth installment, “Its a Long, Long Way to Tipperary,” from a scene after Dick has found out everything there is to find out about Cobb and the Court’s history and how it involves his family. This is Dick talking to Jason and Cass, relaying one of his last memories with Daniel. Not edited, needs chopping, but general sentiment/idea is mostly finalized:

“Names have power,” Grandpa said to me, on one of the last days I remember with him before he passed away. We were sitting outside in folding chairs and watching the stars, until he got too cold and we had to go in. But while we were out there, so much of what he said…I didn’t really understand most of it at the time. Honestly, even what I thought I understood, I realized years later wasn’t really right. I could follow the words but so much of what he meant, I didn’t even begin to understand until I happened to look back to that night years later.

Because even though I was mostly lost then and there, for months by then I’d heard my parents talking when they thought I couldn’t hear. I’d seen him doubled over coughing more and more frequently, how tightly he clutched a blanket around him when it wasn’t really all that cold. I may not have fully known what was coming but I knew on some level that something was coming to an end.

And I remember him talking so fast that night, words spilling out so quickly in a confusing mess like he couldn’t take the time to shape them properly and just had to get them out….I remember soaking it all in, as much as I could, knowing that it was important even if I didn’t know what it even was, or why. Like I was trying to just….absorb it, make it a part of me the way it almost felt like it was bleeding out of him. I don’t know that the thought, the image of him dying that summer, of soon being without him, I can’t say whether that actually ever occurred to me. I just know that I knew urgency, and I knew Grandpa was only urgent when it mattered, so I listened without understanding and somehow managed to store most of it away.

I could be crediting myself with too much intuition and I was just lucky, but….I don’t know why this so hard to describe. I don’t know why I’m trying to describe it, why that feels important, I just know that it does and it did. He wasn’t talking to me the way he normally did, when he’d always stop and make sure I was actually following him, asking me questions to make sure I understood what he was trying to say…..maybe that was what made the difference. Because it wasn’t just that he was talking fast, but without pausing, that’s what was the strange part. Not trying to make sure he was understood, or even caring….just trying to get it out of him, like what was most important was just that he said it and it was heard. Maybe just so he knew it wouldn’t die with him.

So I remember it all, or at least most of it, enough of it. I’d honestly gone years without even thinking of that night before I did remember it and finally try to think back to what he’d said and see if I could recall any of it, make any more sense of it now than then. And maybe that’s what baffles me. How I could have found all of it tucked away in the back of my mind somewhere when I’d forgotten I even put it there at all. It feels….it never made sense to me. That I remembered. I shouldn’t have been able to, not in so much detail, after so much time, not when there were so many other things I couldn’t even place. And yet there it all was, and right when I most needed to hear what he’d said to me that night. The things nobody else could have told me because nobody else knew the secret language of names that he seemed to speak, that he’d spent his whole life learning all so that maybe he could somehow in that find his own name.

“Names have power,” he said. “They can be magic in the right hands. A man who knows who he is knows his own name. And the things you can do with, the doors that can be unlocked…oh, Dickie, my boy. There’s a door to anywhere if you can speak the right name when asked for a key. But its not enough to just say them and throw them around, its not the sounds, the words, its what they are. You can’t pretend to know a thing, to know yourself. You have to really, truly know. But once you know….for a boy as bright as you, there’s no end to the possibilities.”

“So here’s what you must always remember, the real trick of it all…..names have power. But the power isn’t in the name. The power is in what you decide it should be. You can’t claim a name and therein take its power, you see….because you have to be the one to put power in the name first. You have to look at it and see what you want it to be. And only then claim and make it yours, and everything that comes with it. Your father named you Richard, though he calls you Dickie, you were born a Flying Grayson and thus you always will be, and your mother named you her little Robin, born on the first day of spring. And all of these can be you, because no one is just one thing. And yet none of them are you unless you claim them to be.

So if you are to be Robin, as your mother named you but is only you if you choose to say yes that is me…..before you claim it fully, before you truly make it yours, you have to look at Robin and what it will be when you choose to be Robin. You have to see Robin not as even your mother sees her Robin, but as you see your Robin.

That’s the danger and that’s the trick.

You can’t claim Robin while seeing only what someone else sees, and think that by claiming it you’ve claimed its power….instead you’ve just claimed a trap, donned a self that doesn’t suit you because it is not you, only something someone else thought could be you.

And by accepting that Robin, claiming that name and everything that comes with it….you will never be free to be more than whatever they thought you could be. There is no power in that, no potential, no freedom…..just the limitations you’ve accepted as your own, because someone thought you limited by such things, and yet you agreed that they were right when you claimed the name….but only the name as they shaped and imagined it to be, instead of you on your own.

So who is Robin? What power do you see in that name? Don’t reach out and seize it the moment someone sets it forth in front of you, assuming that is all it can be, when the truth is you will only ever then be as big or small as they imagine, and yet you can just as easily be as vast as you can dream.

Never claim a name if you haven’t first looked at it as you first see it, and then imagine it bigger, and then imagine it deeper, and then imagine it greater, and keep going until you can’t imagine any more. And only then will you know what that name is…..when you say this name is who I truly want to be.

Robin is a bird, yes, Robin Red-Breast, a creature of spring, of the air, of new life. You can claim that and make it yours but first…..what else could Robin be?

Can not Robin just as easily be Robin Hood or Robin Goodfellow? Couldn’t you be? And why even be just one, when you can be all three?

No man is ever just one thing, and any man who thinks that he is has more dreaming to do. Or else he’s already trapped by a name of someone else’s making, and all the confines that came with it.

Your mother named you her little bird, and maybe it fits you because you were born to fly, or maybe you were born to be Robin, and you simply chose to fly. Who can say? Who can say which Robin is the most you, other than you?

So be Robin, in as much as you imagine Robin to be. Be the bird that flies, or the champion of the poor, or the merry trickster whom even kings fear. Or be all of them in one….there’s power enough for all of that in just that one little name….so long as you put it there first.

Its that simple, and its that tricky. There is no in between. You are whatever name you claim as you. But you must know what it is as well, because it isn’t enough just to know yourself as you are…..when the name’s the thing, that which says who you WOULD be, the you that you WANT to be, that you claim THIS, this is me.

If you remember nothing else, Dickie, Richard, Robin times three or however many more Robins you might be…..

If someday you say I taught you nothing else, there’s nothing else I gave you, left for you to take with you wherever you go, hear me now, and remember this, even if only this:

No matter how well you might think it suits you at first, the name you claim because it fits you as you are, will never be more than a trap.

The power in names, the true power…..only comes from claiming the name that fits the you, that you would dream yourself to be.

Many kings of the earth have laughed as they introduced your family as Kings of the Sky throughout the years, but the jest they don’t get is for all their riches, they were the ones content to claim titles and riches that leave them trapped on the earth, confined within borders of their own makings, sealed behind walls they chose to erect between them and everything that was not theirs and thus would never be. But a King of the Sky soars above all of that, needing none of that…..because the sky has no end, and is so much vaster than any of that could ever be.

If you would someday choose a crown, my little Prince of the Sky, never seek yours on the ground. Reach for one bigger than the ground could ever hold….only that could ever fit all that you might someday be.

#long post

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