#not my best work but considering I’ve been exploding to death so much lately which has rendered me unable to art. I like how this turned out | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whatifyoulivelikethat · 3 years

Text

shiver, m | myg

pairing(s): yoongi x reader mentions of jimin x reader, namjoon x reader

summary: Kim Namjoon and Park Jimin set you up after vain attempts to cure your, what they call, chronic high-strung workaholic tendencies. Bleh. As if a date with Min Yoongi is going to help the situation. You aren't going on this date and, even if you did, you wouldn't take him home and fuck him all night. Or admit he was giving you that shiver.

warnings: rated M (18+) for language, slight crack (you tweezed a hair off Jimin's dick); mentions of previous partners and implied smut; smut (fem reader, mild bondage, f-receiving oral, lil bit of a praise kink, doggy); non-idol!AU - music producer!Yoongi x pansexual, softdom!reader, ft best friend and ex-bf!Namjoon, (maybe too) close friend!Jimin, friend!Taehyung

“Look, I like dick, okay? The gender attached to it doesn’t bother me. A dick’s a dick and if you want to put it in me, I’m down, and if you don’t and wanna do other stuff, that’s cool too, I’m just letting you know I like dick–”

“Who are you talking to?”

You exploded, rocketing your desk chair backwards, nearly dropping your phone, gawking at the tall, dark, handsome man with the baritone voice standing in your bedroom door, blinking at you slowly with his brown doe eyes and long lashes, black-brown curls framing his tanned cheekbones and strong brows.

“T-Taehyung?!”

Kim Taehyung raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Why were you practicing a speech about dick?”

You clutched your phone, flapping your jaw loosely, pointing to it, to him, to yourself, rambling nonsense.

“There’s this app and I was writing a message to someone and they were worried about – but I wasn’t sure if it sounded right – and what, why are you here…?”

He raised the other eyebrow. “I want to talk to Jimin about something. He said he was going to stop by later so he gave me your key.” He raised his hand and, there it was, your house key. “Said it was fine if I just walked in.”

Park Jimin… said it was fine… to walk into your apartment? Without asking you first.

Who raised this child?!

To be fair, it was fine. You weren’t upset at Taehyung specifically. You didn’t know him as well as Jimin, who was one of your closest friends, but he was Jimin’s best friend. You trusted Jimin’s choice in friends, but, jeez, he really was lackadaisical when it came down to your personal space. He acted like it didn’t exist.

“Ah… okay,” you said, clearing your throat and placing your phone, screen down, on your desk.

“Why is Jimin hanging out here? You guys dating?” Taehyung asked off-handedly.

You nearly choked on air.

“No, we are not,” you snorted, walking up to him. He looked nice. Taehyung always did. He was casually sexy in his green sweater and dark gray pants. He was the kind of guy who could wear anything and look great simply because he walked around with such calm confidence. “I don’t know exactly; he said we should hang out and watch movies because I’m, how did he put it, a chronic high-strung workaholic who needs divine intervention.”

Taehyung nodded, pursing his lips. “True.”

“Excuse me?” you snapped.

He ignored your outburst. “I suppose he considers himself the divine intervention?”

“Uh, well, yeah, I guess, I didn’t think of it like that–”

“You’ve never thought about his dick?”

You blinked rapidly. “What.”

Taehyung shrugged. “I mean, you guys hang out a lot. And you like dick,” he added, gesturing to your phone, to which you abruptly jerked to stand in front of it so it was no longer in his vision. “You might want to consider seeing his dick.”

“I’ve seen his dick.”

Now it was Taehyung’s turn to blink rapidly. “What.”

You raised your hands in innocence. “He had a hair on his dick.”

“… What.”

You scratched the back of your head. “Well, he had a hair growing on the underside of his dick and he couldn’t get to it so he asked me to help, but you can’t exactly pluck a hair when the dick is limp so I helped him get hard and then I tweezed it off and he was very upset, even though he was the one who asked me to do it so I don’t know why he was so sobby about it, but I ended up putting it in my–”

Taehyung was staring at you, slack-jawed.

You stopped speaking, realizing what you were saying.

Your front door opened.

“Hey, Taehyung! Thanks for leaving the door open for me. Where are you guys? Oh, there you are. What are you guys doing?”

You both turned to look at the cheerful, oblivious face of Park Jimin, his previously blond hair freshly dyed black. He must have been at a hair appointment running late. He sent you both a big, beaming smile.

“Eh?”

"I need you to do something."

"What?"

Once again, someone needing you to do something. Who would have guessed? Just an endless cycle of people asking you to do things. When is someone ever going to ask you what you want to do? Hm?

Hmph.

He shoved another spoonful of red bean ice cream in your mouth and you continued listening because of it.

"I need you to sleep with Min Yoongi."

You choked and had a mild brainfreeze.

"Just kidding, I only need you to go on a date with him."

Not much better.

You gawked at Park Jimin, who continued calmly scooping out another spoonful of ice cream to feed you. As if this was normal behavior. You missed the blond hair on him. Blond-haired Jimin didn't suggest this kind of random bullshit. Black-haired Jimin was evil. His hair was full of secrets.

You know, that kind of person.

Jimin lifted the spoon and opened his plump lips as if he was instructing a child how to eat. You gave him an indignant scowl and he shoved the spoon in the crack of your open lips. That got him a disgruntled tut.

"Jimin, I'm not library book, you can’t let your friends borrow me when they need to look taken."

He rolled his eyes, all the sass and lacking in class. "That was one time, and you know Taehyungie's ex was a persistent bitch."

"Yeah, I had to slap her, remember?"

Jimin's hair has been black then too, when he asked you to help him. Mmmhmm. Help.

"She deserved that slap!"

"But why did I have to do it?" you grumbled. "You can slap a ho. You don't need me."

"I shouldn't hit a girl no matter how much of a lying, cheating scumbag she is," Jimin puffed, angrily jabbing at the ice cream and shoving it into your mouth. You glared at him. Why was he taking it out on you? He was lucky you loved this brand, otherwise he'd be getting slapped right now.

"Oh, but I should, okay, cool."

"You'd slap anything and call it your bitch."

You were about to retort but then you lowered your hand, frowning. "Okay, true, but that doesn't explain why you're pawning me off to Yoongi now."

"Because you need it."

And you snapped your head around to see Kim Namjoon, your ex-boyfriend, now best friend, waltz into your bedroom like he owned the damn place. You did, in fact, give him your key and you were expecting him, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise, but you complained anyway, because that’s what humans do. Complain.

"Is nothing sacred in my home?" you muttered as Namjoon grabbed your desk chair and rolled it over to the bed, sitting down in front of you and Jimin. You were wearing black pajamas with little cats on them and Jimin was wearing the yellow ones with little dogs on them. Button-up shirt and long pants. Same brand and style, different print. Namjoon, however, was wearing a white graphic t-shirt and loose brown trousers with thin tortoise-shell and gold framed glasses that didn't have any lenses in them.

You were very tempted to poke him in the eye but, alas, you had some self-restraint.

"I thought you were going to talk about this last night," Namjoon mused, raising an eyebrow at Jimin.

Jimin suddenly seemed incredibly interested in getting the perfect spoonful of ice cream. "I got distracted."

"Horny. He means he got horny."

A violently large chunk of red bean ice cream was shoved in your mouth.

Namjoon laughed at your near-death expression.

"Don't tell him," Jimin hissed. "That's fucking weird. He's your ex."

"Then why would you do it?" Namjoon chuckled. "For the record, the relationship is no longer romantic, so I would no longer have a say even if it did bother me."

"I... well..." The younger man sputtered awkwardly.

You coughed and beat your sternum, glaring at Jimin. "The hell was that for? I rode your dick!"

Namjoon seemed highly amused and suddenly invested. "Ah, yes, and then?"

"Well, maybe it would have helped the situation..." Jimin said shiftily, eyes darting about as he turned bright red.

"Helped what?" you grunted, rubbing your throat at the uncomfortable sensation of a half-frozen esophagus.

"Doesn't seem like it helped," Namjoon remarked, placing a hand on his chin, still smiling.

You narrowed your eyes. "What are you talking about? All Jimin was going on about last night was how he hadn't had a good fuck in years–"

Namjoon snorted. "Years? Huh, that's odd, I seem to recall you getting laid four months ago at that party."

"That was four months ago and it was terrible!" Jimin whined, shaking the spoon. "And why are you talking about this with her, ahhhh!"

You and Namjoon shared a confused look as Jimin freaked out and snarfed down the rest of the ice cream, completely forgetting that he was using it as leverage to convince you of his grand master plan.

"Was it nice?" Namjoon inquired, diverting his attention from Jimin’s panic.

"Yeah, it was nice to have a partner who wasn't a complete idiot for once."

"That's good. I'm surprised you didn't ask before, honestly. You two are always hanging out."

"Never thought about it. What about you?"

"Ah, I fucked that girl who works at that coffee shop."

"Oh, yeah, the one with the nice tits?"

"Mmm, unfortunately that's about as much good as you can say about that one."

"That's sad. I'm sorry."

"Heh, no big deal, it'll happen when it happens. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that."

"Can you guys stop doing that thing?" Jimin grumbled from his spot on the bed, clutching the ice cream container and surrounding himself with your copious amount of cat plushies, including your one-meter-long giant calico cat. His ears were still red.

"What thing?" Namjoon asked, tilting his head.

"Yeah, what thing?" you echoed, raising your brows.

Jimin rolled his eyes. "I don't get why you guys broke up."

"Pretty simple reason, really."

"I think it's obvious," you agreed.

Jimin looked from you to Namjoon, frowning.

"Well?' he demanded.

You looked at Namjoon and he caught your eye, trying not to smile. "Oh, he wants us to tell him."

"Huh, kinda seems like it, yeah. A little invasive, don't you think?" Namjoon pretended to think, rubbing his chin.

"He is a little bit of a, how to say this, nosy little brat."

"Hello, I am right here?!"

"That's a little harsh. Perhaps more akin to the local neighborhood bird that's always flying around, intruding on conversations with their loud chirping."

"You are very kind."

Jimin looked livid. He chucked one of your cat plushies at your head and you cracked up, falling to the bed laughing. Namjoon shook his head, laughing with you in that rich, full tone with low depth, a little goofy and with a lot of dimple.

"It's a dumb reason, but basically we weren’t feeling that spark," you explained, sitting up and pushing your hair out of your face. "Sure, we could fuck just fine, but it was too obvious that something was missing. We're better as friends."

"You wanna get married if we're both eighty and single?" Namjoon joked.

"Yikes, if I'm eighty and single, fuck, might as well."

"Perfect, always wanted to know how much libido I would have at that age."

"Anyway," Jimin scowled. "Back to the matter at hand."

"Oh, right, what do you think about Yoongi-hyung? He's single and he’s nice."

You rubbed your nose. “Ah, I don’t know him very well. He’s quiet, isn’t he? I get the impression that he’s a chill and lazy guy. Doesn’t talk much.”

Namjoon nodded. “Maybe you need that.”

You made a face. “Why?”

“You are kind of a chronic high-strung workaholic,” Jimin cut in.

You twitched. “No, I’m not.”

Namjoon nodded sagely. “You kind of are. I would know.”

“Ah, don’t do me like that,” you sighed, admitting defeat.

“Did sleeping with Jimin help?” he prompted.

“Why would that help?”

“Wow, that’s really rude,” Jimin snapped.

“But why would that help me be less of a workaholic?” you retorted, frowning. “I’m not following your logic.”

Namjoon rubbed his chin. “Maybe just a date then. With a calm guy. It will be a change of pace and you can get to know Yoongi-hyung better at the same time.”

You twisted your lips. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I think you’ll like him if you knew him better.”

You frowned.

“I don’t want to be passed around your entire friend group like a hot potato, Namjoon. I’m not going on a date with him.”

“Wow, Namjoon, you look a lot like your ex-girlfriend. Is it that new diet?”

Why are you standing here? Why did you agree to this? Why is did people ask you to do things and you do them? Because you were nice, that’s why. Deep, deep down in that frozen glacier canyon you called a heart. Shit. Why couldn’t you just be a bitch? That would make life a whole that easier.

“New diet and a lot of plastic surgery, modelled after the hottest woman I know,” you said sarcastically, turning around to face the deep voice.

“Mmm, I agree.”

You froze a little, seeing Min Yoongi standing there nonchalantly. Black hat with two silver rings punched into it, black leather jacket over a white t-shirt, black jeans with rips at the knees. Nice black boots. Silver hoop earrings and an assortment of silver rings. Yoongi had always dressed well, but it felt strange knowing he still dressed like this even though it was to meet you.

Well, maybe it was just because he was out being seen by people and not you specifically.

“I didn’t know you liked rap,” Yoongi commented, holding up his ticket.

You held up yours. “I like all music. And who doesn’t like Epik High?” You laughed a little. “Funny that you also printed out the ticket. Does that make us old?”

Yoongi shrugged. “I like having a physical copy. For memories.”

“Mmm. Sentimental.”

He looked to the direction of the venue. Then he looked back to you. There was something different in his expression now. You tilted your head. Then you saw his dark brown orbs slide up and down. A strange shiver went up your spine.

Yoongi was checking you out.

And he wasn’t hiding it.

“You look nice.”

You didn’t miss the way the side of his lips curved upwards, giving his words little bit of a dangerous edge.

You looked down at yourself, at the black denim jacket layered over a long black-and-white striped shirtdress. Thick-soled knee-high black boots, because you were going to a concert and wanted to be comfortable. Your mesh silver choker cut into your neck a little from looking downwards. You wore a single ring on your left hand, middle finger.

A silver raven’s skull.

“Ah… should have put forth more effort. You look neater than I do,” you mused, starting to walk.

“Hm.”

You almost didn’t hear his next words.

“If you had put forth more effort, it might have been too risky for me.”

You ticked you head back and found Yoongi smirking at you under his hat, flashing a bit of his white teeth.

“You gonna drink?”

“I told you, I gotta drive.”

“I’m not pressuring you. I’m just confused why you would buy overpriced water.”

You clicked you tongue. “Well, they don’t exactly let you bring your own.”

Yoongi chuckled, taking a sip of his beer.

“And besides, you’re buying even more overpriced alcohol, so you’re worse.”

His eyes slid to yours. “I need it.”

You unscrewed the cap and drank the cold water, feeling it ice your veins. “And I need hydration.”

“You don’t drink because you lose control, huh? Control of what, exactly?”

You shifted on your heels. “I get too oppressive. It’s no good for anybody.”

You usually arrived early to these things, so there was time to kill. There were lots of people around, but for some reason it felt like the only person you could hear was Yoongi standing right next to you. The other people around you were only white noise.

“Namjoon and Jimin say you work too much.”

You clicked your tongue. “Namjoon and Jimin need to mind their own business.”

Yoongi chuckled. There was a dry rasp to it, low and sexy. “You still work at that hospital?”

“Yeah. I work on their software. There’s always something wrong with that outdated piece of shit,” you muttered. “Should really just tear it up and overhaul it, but the superiors won’t do it because it’s expensive. Like it isn’t expensive fixing it every five seconds, but okay.”

“Heh, that’s how that generation is. Outdated.”

You huffed. “Mmm, you can say that again.” You cocked your water bottle to him. “You work at the same music company as Namjoon, right? Producer?”

Yoongi nodded. “Mhm.”

You sensed a little bit of embarrassment for some reason. Then you noticed he was looking at your ring.

“You wondering about this?” You turned your wrist and held it up, water swishing behind it.

“You always wear it. Namjoon give it to you?” he asked, taking another sip of his beer.

You shook your head, laughing a little. “Nah. Different ex.” You looked down at it. “And they didn’t give it to me. They said something to me and it stuck with me. When I saw this ring, I decided to buy it.”

You recalled the quote like it was yesterday.

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door.”

Yoongi blinked at you.

You translated the English from Korean and he raised his eyebrows.

“Edgar Allan Poe?”

You dropped your hand, clicking your tongue. “Basically saying I was a lingering poison of a human being and they wanted to break up with me.”

Yoongi tutted. “Interesting. How creative.”

You rolled your eyes. “What I get for fucking literature majors during university, I guess.”

“But you brought the ring anyway.”

You paused, looking down at the silver raven skull.

“To remind myself to stop fucking literature majors.”

You looked up at Yoongi and his eyes searching your expression. It was suddenly a weird moment, his eyes so solidly on you, as if he could see everything, but that was impossible. Your skin tingled all over, even under your clothes.

“They were insecure, huh?” he murmured.

You shrugged. “Made me question every fucking interaction I've ever had, wondering if I left the wrong impression or could be misinterpreted or some shit. Everything was so messed up.” You frowned, adjusting your shoulder slightly, sighing out the thoughts of the past. “Ah, it was a long time ago anyway. I’ve already erased them.”

“Is that why you broke up with Namjoon?”

You rolled your eyes. “Why does everybody think there’s some big drama between Namjoon and I? Would we still be friends if there was something that serious?”

Yoongi took another sip. “I think I speak for everyone when I say it seemed like you suited each other.”

“Hah, it’s not that we don’t have similarities. Kind of the opposite, really.” You waved a hand. “You know, two people have certain preferences and one of us was always on the bottom and neither of us liked that. Maybe it was him or me, and I love the guy, but not like that. We could fuck and it would be great, but we both agreed there wasn’t that… feeling. That shiver you get with that person. Sometimes I think we only got together because everyone kept pressuring us, saying we should, and not because we actually wanted to.”

“Hmm.”

The lights dimmed and you turned to face the stage.

“What about Jimin?”

“What about him?”

“Heard you plucked a hair off his dick.”

You twitched. “Let me guess, Taehyung told you.”

“Taehyung told everyone. He was a bit drunk.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. “Jimin’s a great friend, but he’s a bit clingy with me. Always wants to be near someone. It can be good for some people, but I don’t think I could take it twenty-four-seven if we were actually dating. Not my type.”

“Do you have a type?”

You shot Yoongi a look as the crowd began to hum with excitement. “Do you?”

Those cat-like eyes gleamed in the impeding darkness, a flash of white from his open-mouthed smirk.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to this date if I didn’t.”

“Did you enjoy the show?”

“Yeah, it was great. Never seen you excited like that, eh, Yoongi?” You smacked him lightly in the arm, smirking. “That’s the most energy I’ve ever seen you have.”

He stuck his tongue in his cheek. His cheeks were lightly pink, although he didn’t seem drunk. “I have energy. I’m just not wasting it.”

“Hmm.”

A short silence as the crowd filtered out around you, but again, even though you were surrounded by people, the only one that seemed to be heard was the man in front of you, peering down at you from underneath his black cap, a small smirk on his lips, tiny flash of pink tongue as he moved it inside his mouth.

“You driving home, yes?”

“Yeah.” You stared into his brown eyes. “Want a ride?”

An eyebrow lifted. “Inviting me to fuck?”

Blunt.

You scoffed. “Nah. I already told Namjoon and Jimin I’m not gonna be passed around their friend group like a hot potato. This was nice though. I enjoyed it.”

He looked you up and down again. That strange shiver went up and down your spine again. He stared you down. You stared back, unrelenting. The world was loud, but this moment was your eyes and his eyes, electricity between them.

Yoongi’s smirk widened.

"I always wanted a beautiful woman to tie me up."

Men. Women. Nonbinary. Agender. Gender neutral. Gender fluid. Didn't fucking matter, people were people, and they always wanted shit from you. Always. It was always about what they could get from you and how they could pretend to be what you wanted to get what they wanted. Everyone always looking out for themselves.

You could respect that.

Just, for once, it would be nice if someone wanted to give you what you wanted.

You cracked your neck and looked down at his dark eyes covered in messy black hair, his pale cheeks less pink now, his head on your pillows and sandwiched in between your plethora of cat plushies, pink lower lip in his teeth.

Smirking.

Wasn't hiding a damn thing.

"Who knew you could be a bad boy, Min Yoongi?"

His smirk widened, tongue between his teeth.

"I'm good when I'm good. When I'm bad, I'm better."

His black cap with the two silver rings was somewhere on your bedroom floor and so was his leather jacket, his shirt, his jeans, and his socks. His pale wrists were tied together with red bondage rope. Yours. You were straddling his chest, missing only one article of clothing.

Alright, you were missing socks too.

No one fucked with socks on. If you did, maybe it was time to reevaluate your life.

“You don’t mind being tied up, hm?” you taunted, sliding out of your jacket, tossing it aside.

Everyone wanted something.

What did Min Yoongi want?

Yoongi let his tongue slide out, dancing in the air. Taunting you back before replying.

“Just because you’re tied up doesn’t mean you’re not in control.”

Your hand paused in front of the button placket of your shirtdress. You traced a button with your thumb, slowly, watching his face. Spread your legs more, lowering yourself, hovering over him. You could feel him breathe under you, patient, humming with energy. He flitted the wet pink muscle, skimming his lower lip, waiting. Dark brown orbs hazed with lust under strands of black.

“You wanna stop after sitting on my face, that’s fine, but you have to at least sit on my face.”

You chuckled. “Yeah?”

You sat down on his torso and he sucked in a breath, eyes flicking down to the darkness still covered by your shirt, then back up to your face. You shifted your hips slowly, smearing the hot, dripping softness on his skin.

“Could just… stop here.”

You scooted upward, drawing a fat line of your juices up his chest and to his neck. You knew how much pressure to apply. Didn’t seem to matter though, because Yoongi didn’t seem to give a fuck. He tipped his head back, pressing his Adam’s apple into your throbbing heat and shuddering in pleasure. His gaze found yours and you stopped, suddenly trapped, a moment of his eyes and your eyes, electricity flaring between them.

“I’m glad Namjoon asked me to take you on a date,” Yoongi drawled, deep voice vibrating your heated, wet core from his throat. “Made me feel less guilty about wanting to fuck you.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Got some weird bro code rules or something?”

He smirked. “Oh, I respect him.” He swallowed and you felt a shiver slide up your spine, feeling the action from your throbbing pussy faster than you heard it. “I just want you more.” Exhale, and you felt the warmth against your shirt, making it flutter. You unbuttoned it slowly, one by one. “Want to see the satisfaction on your face when I make you cum.” Slowly, not parting the shirt yet, letting him see the line of exposed skin. His eyes travelled up and down shamelessly, not hiding anything. He noticed you observing him and grinned.

That open-mouthed smirk, teeth and hint of tongue.

“Come on. Give it to me.”

Voice so deep it seemed to be shimmering through you, dark eyes flashing in the darkness.

Teasing you.

“Gonna make you cum so hard, you’ll untie me and beg me to fuck you.”

You cocked a brow.

“Let’s see.”

You sat on his face.

You felt Yoongi’s smirk against your soaked folds for a second before his tongue slid in, instantly making your thighs tense at the sensation. Hot to hot, wet to wet, no, wetter, your hands on your headboard as his tongue curled inside you, thrusting upwards, drinking the wetness from you, low moan vibrating through your torso and you felt his eyes on you, on your shirt slowly opening, one shoulder gliding down, and you shrugged out of it, suddenly boiling, skin pricking from the heat of his gaze, tossing it aside, leaving you in your black bra.

He tipped his chin up and you gasped, feeling his tongue swipe upward, fuck, a smooth, deft motion, circling your clit. You clicked your tongue and rolled your hips into his face. Yoongi chuckled before latching onto it and sending a burning wave of pleasure through you.

Your nails dug into the headboard, making a loud scrape.

He purred your name against your packed nerves and you drenched his chin, glaring down at him.

Yoongi had the audacity to bounce his eyebrow in response.

Alright, you could admit it.

Going on a date with Min Yoongi was not a waste of time.

You grinded against his face and he sucked and licked your clit at the same time, fuck, moans in his throat, not unaffected by you humping his face, but resolute, focused on his task of pleasuring you, shivering as your hand fitted around his head, fingers tangling in his already messy black hair, roughly fucking his face as his tongue assaulted you, somehow the perfect mix of demanding and servitude, hot exhale on your skin, your juices covering his chin and cheeks, your soft thighs pressed against his face, teetering between suffocating and barely enough breath, closer, closer, the tightness rising within you, looking down as you felt your opening flexing against his chin and his eyes flickered up to you instantly, imprinting the memory of his dark brown orbs overtaken by black pupils staring into yours, lips wrapped around your clit, in the midst of pushing you to the edge.

“Fucking shit,” you hissed. “You’re so fucking sexy.”

Something flitted in his eyes and he looked back down immediately, increasing his pace and you moaned, closed fist against the headboard, but not missing his reaction. A slow smile grew on your lips, hand in his hair relaxing, massaging his scalp.

“You like being praised?” you purred, sweet octave to your voice.

The quickest flick of his gaze before licking your clit furiously as a reply.

Hot sparks igniting your veins, drawing in a tight breath, staring down, putting a little more weight on him, but Yoongi didn’t say anything, not even looking at you anymore, so close. You knew it would only take a little more. You could tell from the viscous slickness that was coating his skin that you had maybe seconds left.

“A handsome face and talented tongue,” you breathed. “No wonder I couldn’t resist you, Yoongi.”

His whimper made you tremble in delight, eyes to eyes, addicted to it, him to you and you to him, and you gasped his name, biting your lip and throwing your head back as your hips rocked into his mouth and spilled onto his face with a wet squelch, fuck, so much even you could smell it, hearing Yoongi groan as it filled his mouth, his tongue shoving into your folds and lapping up the rapid pulses, your throbbing clit on the back of his tongue, pressing into you, his nose in your crotch, one of your hands in his hair and one on the headboard, muscles flexing and quivering with the ecstasy, eyelids closing, immersed in it. Savoring the feeling coursing through your body, from your core to your limbs to your head, filling you with shivers that were unlike anything you had ever felt before.

You removed some pressure from his face, letting go of his head, but Yoongi followed, hungrily licking you all over, nipping at your inner thighs, flinches of pleasure extending your high before going back to your pussy, up, down, side to side, drenching you in his saliva and drinking your cum like it was his fucking life force.

Well, shit.

You opened your eyes, panting.

Damn.

You had a whole speech prepared for Namjoon and Jimin about how setting you up with their friends was a bad idea and how they should mind their own fucking business and now you had to prepare a speech about how you needed your house keys back because you were going to fuck Min Yoongi every second of every day and you hadn’t even had his dick yet.

You looked down at him.

Yoongi’s eyes were slightly unfocused, exhaling heavily against your crotch, staring at it.

“Fuck me, you have a pretty pussy,” he muttered under his breath. “Fuck.”

Half of your cat plushies were on the bed and the other half were on the floor.

“You have an excellent tongue,” you chuckled. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He blinked once and his gaze was on you, half-shyness, half-cockiness, wholly sexy as fuck.

“Didn’t want to make Namjoon feel bad,” he snickered, pink lips shiny with your juices. “You would have left him a lot sooner if you knew.”

You raised an eyebrow.

Something about his tone make you think Yoongi meant it on some level.

You wouldn’t have tried to find out, but now that you experienced it…

Maybe.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

Yoongi gave you that smirk you were beginning to become addicted to seeing. “That all you want from me?”

You laughed, sly and full.

“No, Yoongi, I’m gonna need your dick.”

“I don’t beg, so I’m not untying you.”

“Damn, what a terrible result.”

Yoongi didn’t seem the least bit worried about it.

He sank his nails into your ass and pushed himself in, your hand snaked below to guide him. You weren’t unreasonable, after all. You helped him put on the condom and shoved your tits in his face, rubbing your nipples all over his cheeks, his pink tongue stretching from side to side, eyes on you the entire time, getting harder and harder with the way you manhandled him, moaning into your skin.

Not hiding anything.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he hissed, gritting his teeth, gripping your ass, wrists still bound. He violently smacked his hips into your ass and you grinned, hands now on the bed.

“Mmm, what a nice…” You pulsed, making Yoongi groan. “Hard.” Again, hearing his ecstasy. “Cock.” He scraped your ass and up your back, gasping for breath, desperation in his touch. You turned your head, giving him the reflection of his own smirk. He gazed back, eyes glazed over, torso shuddering from the repeated massaging of his length buried in you, all from your muscle control.

“Hold on, Yoongi.”

Something between teasing and adoration, and you visibly saw Yoongi tremble in excitement.

“You got it.”

You turned back and sank your hands into your pillows, sliding on his stiffness and ramming yourself back onto it, making both him and you groan in unison, rough, deep strokes of visceral fucking, you commanding the pace. Didn’t matter if you were the one on your hands and knees, you used him and he wanted to be used, barely able to grip your waist, moaning your name and fucking you back, loud, sloppy smacks of ass to crotch, flexing your shoulder blades akin to a lioness on the prowl chasing their prey, and you heard Yoongi chuckle, breathing swallow and euphoric.

“Look at this back view, fuck, you are the sexiest woman alive.”

Breathless with desire, smug at having you, in awe of your prowess, all at once, clutching the small of your waist as you clenched around him, the shudders of your walls closing in, painting his crotch and balls with you, his quivering moan trapped in his chest because he could barely get it out. You caught your lower lip between your teeth, feeling him fill you as you pushed back, the rush immeasurable, unfathomable, anchoring your palms into your mattress and growling his name, the smacking of hips to hips, desperation to desperation, a brief reprieve as you snatched a cat plush and jammed it under your chest before you reached back and felt for the end of the rope, unlacing the knot with ease, and Yoongi yanked his wrists free with a swift hiss of satisfaction, grabbing your ass and fiercely fucking you, harder, rougher, just as much for him as it was for you, your name falling from his lips, unable to hide his lust, chasing it, chasing you, and you didn’t let up.

“Yoongi, fuck, yes, your cock feels so fucking good, fuck!”

Deep, intense, powerful, everything you were and everything he was, and it all crashed down, stealing your breath, pleasure clawing up your spine and taking over, lungs suddenly emptied with the force of each hard pulse of pleasure snaking upwards to fill the void, squeezing him so hard that you weren’t sure if that was voluntary or not, your joined inner thighs trembling and dripping, sweet slickness sliding down, drenching you and Yoongi, his groan piercing the air and cutting through your thoughts. His cock twitched and jerked, pumping thick gushes of cum and swelling the condom inside you.

Fucking shit, did you hold your breath? Everything lightheaded and hazy, reaching up and slapping your hand against the headboard, sucking in a lungful of air and rocking your hips back, riding the wave. Your felt Yoongi’s grip on your waist tighten, his pants so heavy you could feel the weight of his exhale on your back, heating your skin.

Snarl in your throat, definitive.

“I need this cock, Yoongi, need you and this perfect cock and I’m going to use it until I’m done.”

Rolling your hips, listening to his wanton moan at your words and the sensation, the messy squish of your movement, clenching around the sensitive head, slow, tight, your fingers curling to a fist, his name on your lips, low and seductive, and he responded in kind, your name in the same tone, drunk on the moment, the feeling, the power you had over him.

His nails in your back, creating long lines down your spine, and the shiver you got with that person, dancing up and down your vertebrate, unmistakable.

Yoongi gave it to you.

“Hey, so how’d it go–whoa!”

You popped your head out of your mountain of cat plushies and glared at the offender who burst into your bedroom. Who the fuck was that?

Guess.

“Jimin, do you know what personal space is?” Yoongi muttered from beside you, lifting himself on his elbows to peer disapprovingly over your naked shoulder.

“He doesn’t,” you mumbled, flopping back down.

“So… went well?” came Jimin’s cheerful and teasing voice from the doorframe.

You heard a cat plush get thrown like a cannonball.

“Ow, fuck, okay, I get it, hyung!” Jimin cackled, stumbling down your hallway. “I’ll come back later!”

“Don’t,” Yoongi snapped back, grumbling as he slid back down on the bed.

“You better pick him back up later,” you warned, referring to the plush.

“You dumped half of them on the ground so we could sleep.”

“No, they fell because we were fucking.”

You opened your eyes to see Yoongi smirking at you. There was a cat plush next to his head. One of your favorites. You picked it up and bonked him in the head with it. He made a disgruntled grunt and flinched away from it, ending up closer to your face. Eyes to eyes, electricity between them. You smirked, matching him, leaning in, arm curving around his head.

Tapping the tuxedo cat plush on his shoulder.

His breath against your lips, lust and fondness, not hiding anything.

“Hey, Yoongi.”

“Hm?”

Playing along, a willing participant in your games, one eye open, as if he was winking at you.

“I like you. You’re mine.”

He chuckled, a little raspy, a little embarrassed, and a lot amused.

“Sit on my shoulder, my raven. I’ll never ask you to leave.”

masterpost

#yoongi x reader #yoongi smut #bts smut #yoongi x you #min yoongi x reader #min yoongi x you

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wicked-mind · 3 years

Text

The Ghost of You

The Ghost Of You

Summary: Y/N pulled Bucky out of a lot of dark places after Steve was gone. But when Y/N dies on a mission, he starts seeing her ghost. Is she haunting him for her death, or is she here for some other reason?

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings: Death of Y/N, sad Bucky, sad-ish ending. This is basically just sad. Oh, and there's a few swears.

Note: Let’s just say I’ve been stuck in my feelings these past few days. My mom passed away a couple months ago and I just needed to take that grief and put it into some sort of writing.

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“Are you almost done? I’m starting to pile up bodies!” Bucky yelled towards Y/N as he continued to knock out enemy agents, throwing them on top of each other. He had ran out of ammo when they entered the large glass building so he had to resort to hand to hand combat. The building wasn’t supposed to have this many agents, but Bucky and Y/N never backed down from a challenge.

Y/N laughed at him, “Yeah, Buck, I’m almost done. Patience is a virtue!” She said with a smile as she watched the computer screen in front of her continue to download the information the team desperately needed.

Bucky rolled his eyes at her comment, “Patience is not a strength of mine, hurry it up! We gotta get out of here!” He yelled back to her, kneeing another agent in the stomach which followed with a punch.

“Three… two…one… We got it!” Y/N said, unplugging the flash drive from the computer and tossing it to Bucky who tucked it away in a zipper of his jacket. She looked at the pile of bodies then back to Bucky, “You weren’t kidding, what a nice pile.” She smiled at him, “C’mon, Soldier.”

The two ran down the hallways, trying to avoid as many enemy agents as possible. They entered a suspiciously empty hallway, slowing their speed as they looked around. Every other hallway and floor had dozens of agents, why was this one different?

Bucky looked at Y/N, “I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.” He muttered, “I’ll go on ahead, check it out. You check the rooms.” He said before starting to walk down the hallway. He paused and looked back at her, “And please, be careful.” He said with a halfway pleading look before returning his focus ahead, his eyes scanning for any movement.

Y/N nodded at his plan, “Don’t worry, Buck. I got it.” She replied, watching him make his way down the hallway for a moment, then returning her attention to the doors. She opened the first one, it was empty. Second door, nobody inside. The third door gave Y/N a bad feeling. She stared at the doorknob for a moment, pulling a blade from the sheath on her thigh. She slowly turned the knob.

CLICK

Bucky turned immediately at the sound, “Y/N! Don’t!” But by the time he got the words out, it was too late.

BOOM

The door was rigged with an explosive and as soon as Y/N started opening it, the bomb on the other side exploded. Y/N was thrown back from the door, her back hitting the glass window with enough force to make it shatter. She fell through the window, her hands grasping for anything but only grabbing air. Then everything was black.

Bucky tried to run quickly down the hallway towards Y/N, but the blast sent him flying back down the hallway. He quickly stood, “Y/N!” He screamed out as he looked down from the 13th floor of the building, seeing her body below. Y/N had blood flooding around her body as she laid face up. Her eyes were open and staring back up at Bucky lifelessly. He knew in that instant that Y/N was gone just by the way her eyes looked up at him.

six weeks later

Bucky could swear he was being haunted. He kept catching glimpses of Y/N’s face everywhere, but when he took a second glance she was always gone. He blamed himself for her death, thinking of every way things could’ve been different. Maybe he should’ve been in charge of the doors. He could’ve survived the fall, and if not, at least Y/N would’ve survived. She was always a better person than him anyway. He had always admired her ability to find the light in dark situations. She had always been patient with him, especially when they first met. It took Bucky about a month to respond to Y/N with an answer other than ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ She trained with him in silence, always had an extra cup of coffee for him without needing a thank you, and always made sure he was in the right headspace for missions. The two became close friends. Sam was always teasing Bucky that there was something more than just friendship between the two but Bucky always denied it with a grumble even though he sometimes thought the same.

Bucky laid in his bed, sweating underneath the thin sheet as he had another nightmare about the day Y/N died. Every time he had this nightmare he tried to be quicker. Tried to get to her in time to stop her, but it always ended the same. With Y/N thirteen stories below, staring up at him lifelessly. He jolted awake in a panic, taking a few deep breaths and wiping the sweat from his face.

“Another nightmare?”

The voice caused Bucky’s blood to run cold. It was Y/N’s voice. He would know that voice anywhere. He turned his head slowly to see her sitting in the chair beside his bed, twirling a knife through her fingers with ease. She had a soft smile on her lips towards him as she usually did. Bucky rubs his eyes, blinking to see if he was still dreaming. But there she was, just sitting there like she hadn’t died six weeks ago.

“Y/N… How are you here?” Bucky asks, still in shock with what he was seeing.

Y/N shrugged, a small smile still on her lips, “Hi, Sweetness. Nice to see you too. No how are you? Nice knife you got there? You’re spinning it wrong?” She teased, but seeing no reaction she shrugs at his question, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m a ghost.”

“Are you haunting me?” Bucky asks in almost a whisper, his eyes staying locked on her.

Y/N narrows her eyes at him, the smile still on her lips, “Do I seem scary and haunting?” She asks in a soft voice and a tilt of her head.

Bucky shook his head, adjusting himself on the bed. He kept the sheet over his lap as he swung his legs over the side to sit on the edge of the bed facing Y/N, “No, not really. I mean, I’m not scared.. I just kept seeing your face everywhere and now you’re.… Here.”

“I don’t think I’m here to haunt you. I don’t have anything to haunt you for anyway.” Y/N said, standing from the chair. The knife had disappeared in thin air from her hands. She moved to sit next to him, looking up at him through his messy dark hair, “Maybe I’m here because you need help. And as you know, I’m very helpful. I’m pretty much your best friend.”

Bucky watched her. She talked and walked like Y/N. Even had the same knife tricks as Y/N. He wondered if he was going insane from grief, but at least he got to see her again if he was, “I kind of deserve the haunting part. I could’ve survived that fall, it should’ve been me checking those doors. Should’ve known better.” He said, looking down to his hands on his lap.

Y/N frowned a bit at Bucky’s reaction. This was something she helped him with when they were getting to know each other. She tried to show him not every bad thing was his fault and he couldn’t control everything but now he seemed to be slipping back into his old ways, “Don’t do that, Buck. It’s not your fault.” She reminded.

Bucky wanted to smile at her encouraging words. It was the same thing she always tried to tell him when he went to the dark places in his mind, “Even as a ghost you’re still trying to help me. Thank you, doll. But I still feel the guilt of it.”

Y/N moved to stand in front of him, grasping his attention, “Well, we will just have to work on feeling guilty for something you had no control over.” She said, placing her hands on her hips as she did when she would lecture him about such things, “It’s 2:30 in the morning. You should really try to get some sleep, I know you haven’t slept well since that day.” She said softly, returning to sit in the chair by his bed, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here.” She promised gently, the knife reappearing in her hand as she twirled it between her fingers.

Bucky watched her carefully, knowing she was right. He hadn’t slept well since that day and had only managed to get a few hours of sleep a night. He laid back on his bed, turning so he could face her as if to make sure she didn’t go anywhere. He watched her for an hour fiddle the knife through her fingers, a small smile on her lips. Bucky considered again if he was losing a grip on his mind from grief and guilt, but she felt so real sitting there watching him. He wanted to think she was real, but somewhere in his mind he knew the truth. Y/N was gone and this was the ghost of her.

When Bucky awoke, as promised, Y/N was still sitting in the chair waiting for him with the knife still spinning between her fingers. She gripped the knife to a halt when she saw his eyes open to look at her, “I’m still here.” She assured with a small smile, before standing and started pacing the room, “Okay, so I’m thinking a little sparring with Sam because I know it’ll make you feel better to kick his ass, after that you’re gonna need a good breakfast, then maybe a nice walk so we can talk about your feelings because we both know you aren’t going to share your feelings with your therapist.” She said, listing off the agenda.

Bucky smiled as he sat up. It was just like Y/N was alive again, always making an agenda to keep them busy for the day to keep his mind out of darkness. He couldn’t help but feel a little relief that he was seeing the ghost of her, or what he thought was a ghost. It was like she was still with him, “I’ve learned to never go against your plans.” He said softly, standing and pulling on some sweats and a grey t shirt that he could spar in, “You coming or what?” He asks as he walks towards the door.

Y/N smiles, she still had the ability to boss him around, “Of course I’m coming! You know my favorite part of the day is morning sparring. Punch the sleepy outta ya.” She beamed as she followed closely behind him down the hallways until they reached the training room. She stood at the edge of the ring, bouncing on her toes and throwing a few punches in excitement.

Bucky almost laughed at Y/N as he watched her bounce on her toes, but stifled it as Sam walked in. He was curious for a moment if Sam could see Y/N also, but when he walked right by her and didn’t acknowledge Y/N, Bucky had his answer about that. She was his ghost and his only.

Sam narrowed his eyes at Bucky. Something was different today and he couldn’t figure out what. Things don’t happen over night to turn a man form a sulking mess into someone who seemed almost normal. Well, normal for Bucky. Sam wrapped his knuckles as he kept an eye on Bucky, trying to figure out what he kept looking over at by the ring, “Everything alright, Buck?” He finally asked as he entered the ring.

Bucky snapped his attention to Sam, following into the ring, “Yeah, everything’s fine.” He said shortly, wiping the emotion from his face. He circled so he could see Y/N behind Sam out of the ring. He tried to keep from smiling as she made faces at the back of Sam’s head, she would always do that when she was alive when Sam pissed her off. Bucky kept flickering his eyes to Y/N, who kept yelling out hints to him of what Sam was going to throw at him next. The edge of his lips even curled a little to smile as she encouraged him.

When sparring was done, Bucky stood by Y/N until Sam was gone, before turning to her with a grin, “You’re right. Kicking Sam’s ass does make me feel better.” He said as he unwrapped the tape from around his knuckles on his flesh hand.

Y/N smiled at him, nodding, “I’m always right, remember?” She said with a laugh as she folded her arms, “Okay, next on the list, breakfast.” She said, then wrinkled her nose, “But first, you need a shower. I may not be able to smell you due to the fact I’m a ghost, but I still remember what you smell like after sparring.”

Bucky chuckled and shook his head at her, looking down. Of course she was making jokes, she was always making jokes trying to get him to smile or laugh, “Of course I’m going to shower, I’m not an animal.” He said, starting to walk out of the training room.

Y/N followed him, “Your name is Bucky, it’s not that from off from animal.” She teased as she walked with him. She paused at the outside of the bathroom door, “I’ll be out here. Don’t worry. I think you’re stuck with me.” She said with a smile.

Bucky looked down at her outside the bathroom door, listening to her talk. He hadn’t tried to touch her yet, he was a little worried of how he would react if his hand went right through her, “I won’t be long.” He said, before disappearing through the door.

Y/N stood in the hallway leaning against the wall. She watched Sam walk by on the way to the kitchen to start to make breakfast as he always did. He made the best breakfast, it was something Y/N missed as a ghost. She turned her attention to the door as Bucky came out, all cleaned and dressed in fresh jeans and a black shirt, “Sam’s making breakfast, c’mon.” She said, nodding down the hallway.

Bucky nodded and walked with her to kitchen, going over and grabbing a cup of coffee and plating himself up some bacon, eggs, and pancakes. He sat down in his normal seat, looking over to see Y/N staring at the bacon as if she wanted some. He watched her even try to sniff it.

“Well that sucks. Can’t even smell the bacon.” Y/N muttered before making her way over to stand by Bucky, “You enjoy that bacon. Every last piece. And a few extra for me.” She smiles at him, a knife reappearing in her hand and twirling it through her fingers quickly. It was something Bucky had taught her. He knew all the tricks with knives.

Bucky smiled a little at her comment, picking up a piece of bacon and taking a bite off of it as he looked at her, making a small ‘mmm’ sound of enjoyment at the taste. Sam raised an eyebrow at this, trying to figure out what he was doing.

Y/N scowled at him, “Rude, James. Rude.” She said, “I have a knife. It may be a ghost knife but it’s a very sharp pointy knife.” She said as the speed of twirling the knife through her fingers quickened.

After breakfast, Y/N walked outside the perimeter with Bucky, her hands behind her back with her fingers interlocked as she walked, “So, this is the walk where we talk about your feelings. Tell me about your feelings.” She said, looking up at him from the corner of eyes.

Bucky sighs, he wasn’t looking forward to this part of the day. It was always something she had to drag him to do when she was alive. Y/N made him get everything out into the open so it wouldn’t eat him alive, “I don’t know, Y/N.” He muttered, “I don’t know what I’m feeling. A lot of guilt and grief.”

Y/N pursed her lips together as she listened, nodding slowly, “Okay, talk to me about it. Tell me how you feel.” She said, an encouraging smile on her lips as always.

Bucky didn’t talk for a moment, just kept looking ahead as if he was focused on the view. He finally broke the silence with a sigh, “I lost everything. I found Steve again, but now he’s gone too. Then I had you but because of a stupid decision… you’re gone.” He looks over at her, his eyes filled with sadness as he remembered watching Y/N being blown through the glass with panic in her eyes, “When I looked down from the window at you… You were staring up at me, but I knew you were gone from the look in your eyes. That image haunts me. It should’ve been me that was blown out that window. Or we should’ve just gotten out of there. I made that wrong call.”

Y/N nodded as she listened to his words, keeping a steady pace with him as they walked, “You can’t blame yourself for everything, Bucky. Shit happens and even if you are a super soldier, you can’t save everybody.” She looks over at him, “I don’t blame you at all. It was a terrible accident. Death is very difficult. When my mom died, it felt like my world was over. But everyday after she died, the sun still rose and the birds still sang and I hated it. It felt wrong that the world kept turning without her. I hated every person I saw, wondering why it had to be her and not someone else. I felt jealously anytime I saw another person with their mother.” She paused, looking down at the grass. She had told Bucky her mom died, but never anything more about how it felt, “It felt like I had died too and they just forgot to bury me.”

Bucky looked at Y/N as she spoke, his eyebrows pulled together as he listened. He didn’t know she was affecting this hard by the loss, she never let it show. He wanted more than anything to just embrace Y/N into his arms, “I didn’t know it was like that for you, I’m sorry.” He said softly, realizing Y/N was always so busy focused on him that he didn’t see the grief she went through.

Y/N shook her head and gave him a small smile, “It’s alright, Bucky. You’ve been through more grief than probably anybody on the planet with what you’ve gone through. It’s alright to feel lost and scared about the future. But if you don’t keep moving forward and trying to make everyday better, then you’re, in a way, letting down those you’ve lost. They would want you to continue for them. I want you to continue living for me.”

Bucky stopped walking and looked at Y/N. He understood what she was saying to him, but it was easier said than done, “I’ll try, Y/N.” He said gently, honestly. He even offered a small half smile towards her.

Y/N smiled at his words, “Good. Now let’s finish our walk.” She said, continuing her strides. They talked about their past time together as they walked, laughing at memories they shared. Eventually, they went back inside and Y/N sat with Bucky as he ate dinner. She, of course, judged him for having a sandwich for dinner. Claiming it was strictly a lunch food and that Bucky was going to have to at least learn how to cook something.

After dinner, Bucky went back to his room with Y/N, watching as she laid back on his bed and spun the same knife in her hand. Bucky sat on the edge of the bed as he watched her, “Why are you always spinning that knife?” He asks curiously. Since he started seeing her, she always had that knife twisting between her fingers.

Y/N looked over at him, tilting her head slightly at his question. The knife came to a stop with the blade between her index and middle finger, “You don’t recognize it, Bucky? You’re gonna hurt my feelings.” She said with a soft smile.

Bucky narrowed his eyes as he examined the blade. He didn’t recognize it at first, distracted by the fact he was seeing the ghost of Y/N. But when he got a better look at it, he knew immediately, “That’s the knife I got for you after you asked me to teach you all my knife tricks… When you made me admit we were friends.” He said softly.

Y/N nodded, “There you go.” She said, looking at the knife that rested between her fingers, “I like to think this knife signifies everything between you and I. It was the start of our friendship, when you finally started opening up to me.”

Bucky stared at the knife, memories flashing through his mind from when he taught Y/N how to twirl it between her fingers effortlessly. She became almost as much of an expert in handling knives as he was from teaching her. He remembered the first time she cut herself as she tried to twirl it between her fingers, almost taking her ring finger off. Bucky was so concerned that he stitched her finger up himself and lectured her about always knowing where the blade was if she was fiddling with it. He smiled slightly at the memories as he laid back on his bed beside Y/N, turning on his side so he could look at her. Bucky suddenly felt sadness creep through his body seeing her laying there next to him. He wished she was real, he wished he could reach out and wrap his arms around Y/N. He was still scared to try and touch her, worried if he did she may disappear. As he stared at Y/N, Bucky suddenly realized why Y/N’s death was hitting him so hard. He had never told her how he felt for her because he didn’t really know until she was gone. It’d been a long time since he felt any sort of spark, but somewhere in him he knew that he loved her.

“What’s on your mind, Sweetness?” Y/N asks curiously, the knife disappearing from her hand as she turned on her side to meet Bucky’s blue eyes.

Bucky’s lips twitched into a small smile for a moment as she called him ‘sweetness.’ It was something she always called him, “Guilt, I guess.” He muttered over to her.

Y/N raised an eyebrow at him, “Guilt, huh? What about?”

Bucky sighs, “Guilt about all the things I’ve never told you.” He paused before continuing, keeping his eyes on Y/N’s face, “I have so many things I never thanked you for. Things I never told you because I didn’t realize them until you were gone.”

Y/N could see the sadness in Bucky’s eyes, but she kept a small smile across her lips, “I’m here now, Bucky. You can tell me.”

Bucky looked away from her for a moment, staring at the white sheet on the bed, “What if I tell you and you disappear?” He asks. He was worried Y/N was here to listen to his unfinished business and when he got it off his chest, she would disappear.

“Even if you can’t see me, it doesn’t mean I’m gone. I’m always with you, Bucky.” Y/N said softly to him, “I promise I would never leave you on your own, you know that.”

Bucky looked back to Y/N’s face. The way she looked at him, it made his heart feel heavy. He was realizing she was here because he needed to say how he felt. He reached out his right hand to touch her face, pausing before he got close enough to touch her. He was still scared she would disappear at his touch. Bucky swallowed his fear and continued his hand closer to Y/N’s face. To his shock, he could feel her cheek with his finger tips. His mouth parted a little in disbelief that he could feel her as if she was still alive and laying next to him in the bed. He pressed his palm to her cheek, stroking her skin with his finger tips. Bucky could feel some tears stinging his eyes as they welled up, “Thank you for never giving up on me, believing I was a better man than I thought I was.” He whispered to her.

Y/N smiled at his touch, lifting her own hand to touch his that rested on her face. She nodded slightly at his words, “You are a great man, James. Always remember that.” She paused as she watched some tears roll down Bucky’s cheeks, “Now tell me.” She whispered knowingly.

Bucky knew what he needed to say and what Y/N wanted to hear. He lifted his head from the pillow, looking down at her. He leans over, pressing a soft kiss to her lips, “I love you, Y/N.” He whispered against her lips.

Y/N kissed him back, lifting her hands to wipe away the tears from his cheeks. She pulled back from his kiss, “I know. I love you too.” She told him with a comforting smile, “Now let that guilt go. For me please.”

Bucky nodded to her request. He would try for her, he would do anything for Y/N. He kept his hand pressed to her face, not wanting to let go in case she would disappear when he removed his hand. The way Y/N spoke, it sounded like she was going to leave and as much as Bucky wanted her to stay this way forever, he knew he had to let her move on.

Y/N could see the gears turning in his head, she could see the worry in his eyes, “Don’t worry, Bucky. I’ll always be with you no matter what.” She promises to him, her finger tips brushing some of his hair away from his eyes.

Bucky listened to her words. They were genuine. He felt relief as he realized Y/N would always be with him, even if she wasn’t alive anymore. He promised himself he would carry her with him in everything he did. He leans forward again, feeling her soft lips against his. But as he felt her kiss him back, he felt her fade away. When Bucky opened his eyes again, Y/N was gone. He blinked a few tears out of his eyes as he stared at the pillow where her head had laid. Y/N may not be there anymore, but in the place where her head once rested, the knife Bucky had given her laid waiting for him.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky fanfic #bucky fanficion #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanficion #winter soldier x you #winter soldier x y/n #winter soldier x reader #winter soldier fanfic

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cicissketchbook · 3 years

Text

Y’all wanna read my Apritello story?

So sometimes when my artistic drive is down, the writing bug will come bite me. I’ve been working on an Apritello story for awhile that currently has three chapters that are up on my Patreon. Eventually I’ll post it publicly, but I want my patrons to have early access. Anyway here’s an excerpt from the first chapter.

It’s kind of angsty.

The summary is, April invites Donnie to join her for a long weekend at the farmhouse, which sounds romantic until you consider that she’s been plagued with visions of his accidental death and is desperate to stop it from happening.

To say there was tension in the air was a drastic understatement. Truthfully, things had been tense for a while. Blame it on cabin fever, or perhaps they were outgrowing their sewer lair, but the brothers had been quick to jump down each other’s throats.

Leo was especially on edge, and not unlike how it had been since they were kids, his mood had set the tone for everyone else. One thing that differed from childhood though, was that he had been butting heads with Donnie, while Raph remained a mostly neutral third party.

There was the knowledge that they were getting older and they all had desires to get out there and live their own lives, and then the realization that doing so wasn’t really possible for them in the world they lived in. They wanted what any young adults would want, but they were mutants. The world still saw them as freaks. They couldn’t lead normal lives the way they wanted to. They knew this, they had known this all their lives. They had all been on the same page about it. They realized that living their lives in the sewer, at least most of it, was probably in the cards. April had always contested this idea, believing that the world would accept them in time. It’s not like people didn’t know mutants existed, but the turtles weren’t willing to take the risk. It’s not like they couldn’t go out and do things like they always had, but leaving the nest for good just wasn’t feasible. And they were content with this. The sewer was all they’d ever known. They’d always been together and they were happy to always be together.

But like all families, arguments were inevitable. Familiarity breeds contempt, after all. And they were accustom to bickering. But… it was different now. Leo seemed ready to explode at the drop of a pen, Raph never seemed to be able to find enough alone time, Donnie felt like he brought more to the table than the other three combined, and Mikey… sweet Mikey was such an incurable optimist that he sought to find the positive in every situation, but they knew he did this to mask his depression.

If asked what they were arguing about today, the simple answer would be that they were all just getting on each other’s nerves. Donnie couldn’t even remember how the argument started because they fought about trivial things so frequently, but he remembered the thing that Leo said that set him off.

“God, why is it so hard for you to just do your part? Why do we have to pick up your slack?”

Donnie was silent for a moment, almost unsure he’d heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, you never fucking help out with anything!” Leo’s tone implied that there was something else he was upset about that he wasn’t speaking of.

Donnie, by his best effort, kept his voice calm and composed. “I’m sorry, are you referring to three days ago when I didn’t help clean up the disaster in the kitchen because I was literally putting the microwave back together? Or perhaps last week when you left a mess for me to clean up that you all made while I wasn’t even here? And then you got mad when I didn’t?”

Leo seemed to get more aggravated at the mention of Donnie not being there, but continued on. “C’mon man, there are four of us that live here, it’s really not asking too much for everyone to help clean up around here.”

“Dude, I clean up after myself more than anyone. The difference is, when I make a mess, it’s in my lab rather than communal space and-“

“Oh, right, I forgot. The huge space you have that’s your’s. That none of us have.” Leo turned to their other brothers who sat near by. “Hey Raph, other than your tiny bedroom, do you have your own creative space that you can do whatever you want in? Mikey, how about you?”

Raph hadn’t spoken, but seemed invested in the exchange his brothers were having. It was impossible to tell who’s side he was on. Before Mikey could speak, Raph stopped him and said firmly, “Leave us out of this, man.”

“So now your mad at me… because of my lab?”

Leo paused, not making eye contact, before he huffed. “No.” He admitted quietly.

Normally, Donnie was used to these arguments making little or no sense, but Leo seemed genuinely angry and he couldn’t understand why.

“Bro, what is up?” He demanded. “Why are you actually so upset?”

“I just…” Leo started. Donnie could tell there was something he didn’t want to say. Leo crossed his arms and turned away from his brother. “I just want to know… where your priorities are.”

“My priorities?” Donnie was trying not to lose his patience. He had no idea where this was coming from nor where it was going. Which meant one of two things. Either there was something his brother wasn’t telling him, or this was in fact going no where. Like, this had started out a fight about cleaning duties, and now he’s talking about priorities. If Leo did have a point, he wanted him to hurry up and make it because this argument seemed like a waste of time.

“It just…” Leo blew another huff through his nose. “It just seems like… you are… distancing yourself from us, Donnie.”

This statement completely threw Don for a loop. He hadn’t expected that at all. “What in the world are you talking about?” He asked, truly bewildered by the turn in conversation. “Because I don’t want to clean up messes that aren’t mine? Like what the hell-?”

“No, obviously it’s not that. It’s alot of things.” Leo spoke quieter now, not as impassioned.

“Well, I would love to know what those things are, because I am completely lost here.”

“You never want to hang out with us anymore, and when you do, you act like you’d rather be doing anything else-“

Donnie cut him off with a humorless chuckle. “We’re brothers, we all get on each other’s nerves.”

“And I get that, but we do all still live together and we all need to contribute to the household chores, and you’ve just been acting like you are so far above doing any type of housework that doesn’t directly effect you.”

“Well, excuse me Leo, sorry if when it rains and the power get knocked out and I have to go topside by myself in the cold pouring rain to fix the power line, I don’t also want to have to mop up the leak in the kitchen when none of you did anything to help!”

“Okay, you keep bring up specific instances, but I’m talking about in general-“

“No, you’re talking alot of nonsense is what you’re doing!” Donnie’s lack of patience was starting to show. “First you’re mad that you think I don’t clean enough, then you’re mad that I have a lab and you don’t? Then you say I’m distancing myself from you all…?” Donnie stood and made a move like he was going to walk away. “If you have something to say, Leo, you better just say it because this whole conversation seems like a waste of time to me. It’s late and I’m tired, so make your point, or I’m going to bed.”

“Are you distancing yourself from us because of April?”

Donnie had already started walking away, as he didn’t expect Leo to actually have a point, so he was halted to a standstill at his words. “What does she have to do with anything?”

Leo looked away again, like he didn’t actually want to have this conversation. After a moment, he sighed and continued without making eye contact. “It just seems like… I mean… I thought we were all on the same page here. We’ve had this discussion, a long time ago. We aren’t…. Human. We’re getting older and it makes sense that we’d want to start living our own lives, but… we can’t. Not really. The world doesn’t accept us, so staying down here is just how it has to be. I thought we had agreed on that. That no matter what the world thought of us, no matter that we can’t lead normal lives, at least we all had each other. But… now it seems like you have other plans, Donnie.”

He finally looked at his brother and Donnie could see the emotions in his eyes. Nothing of what he said had been new information, of course. Donnie knew, painfully well, that the world saw them as freaks and being “normal” was not a luxury they’d ever be able to have. Alot of their friends were at the point where they were starting to branch off, which didn’t help. Karai and Shinigami were currently back in Japan. It was just a visit, but the kind of visit that lasted for a month or two. Casey had gotten a hockey scholarship for a different school than the one April attended. He was trying to go pro, so he poured all his time and attention into practicing. He still came around, but not like he used to. Mona Lisa had left Earth awhile ago, also with promise to return, but they hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks. They were sure it was just a new mission she had, but that didn’t make Raph feel any better. April was the only one who still came around all the time. With most of their enemies gone, everyone was moving on and it felt like the world didn’t need them anymore.

The pain in Leo’s voice would’ve normal made Donnie want to hug him, but it was the accusation that he couldn’t get over.

“Leo…” He gestured non threateningly with his hands. “Why are you acting like I’m not literally living down here in the sewers right along with you? And I still don’t see what April has to do with anything-”

“Okay, I’m going to jump in here.” Raph said unexpectedly. “Look, Dude, I know we don’t… we don’t say it enough but… we would be up schitts creek without a paddle without you.” He crossed the room to give Leo a lighthearted punch in the arm. “Wouldn’t we, Leo?”

“…Yeah.”

“So because of that, the idea of you leaving is…. It’s scary.” Raph admitted. He was going to say something else, but Donnie interrupted.

“I’m not going anywhere! What in the actually hell are you guys talking about?!”

Leo rolled his eyes, apparently getting annoyed again. “Don, can we please stop pretending like you’re not going to marry April and then move in with her?”

Donnie froze. To say they touched a nerve was an understatement. April was his best friend, but truthfully, it was very painful to be her friend sometimes. His feelings for her were still just as intense as ever, but for different reason now. In his youth, he’d maintained a kind of innocent hopefulness that they would someday be together, and he never even really thought of the details of how. He knew, even back then, that it wasn’t that simple and when he really thought about it, nothing about it made sense. Which is why he didn’t think about it. Now though, after some soul searching and dropping into a deep depression which he was starting to get better from, he’d resigned himself to the reality that she would never be with him. He’d accepted it, and told himself that it was enough to just be her friend. But the truth was, that pain never went away. They had such a close friendship, they had developed such a level of comfort with each other, but he knew it would never be enough. The idea of never seeing her again was unbearable, but to be so close to her, knowing that it was as close as he would ever get… it was torture. He didn’t care though, he just couldn’t let her go.

What really hurt was when she would talk about the next stage in her life. She was in school now, but with her grades and what she was studying, she could go anywhere. She wanted to travel, she spoke of it often. She never made any committal remarks about moving away, other than when she talked about the farmhouse and saying how expensive it is to live in the city. Her dad had signed the property over to her for tax reasons, and she would’ve inherited it anyway. She wanted to renovate it.

He was only vaguely aware that Raph and Leo were still talking.

“It’s not like we’re mad at you for finding love, that’s not it at all!” Raph was saying, obviously more concerned than Leo about ruffling his brother’s feathers. “It’s just, we need to be realistic about what would happen if you weren’t here.”

“Yeah, and the reality is, frankly, I think we all feel left behind by our friends, but we didn’t think our clan would be breaking up as well!” Leo threw his hands up, finally letting his true feelings out. “I mean, all we have is each other, we’re the last of the Hamato clan! I can’t let this clan die, I just can’t.”

“Why do you guys feel the need to do that?”

They stopped, taken aback by how low and serious Donnie’s voice was. He was done barking, he looked ready to bite.

“Do what?”

Donnie’s chest felt tight and he had to taken in a sharp breath through his nose to keep his cool. “Why do you guys feel the need to not only remind me of my unrequited feelings for my… our best friend… but now, you’re holding it against me?”

Raph looked concerned at first, but then sighed. “Donnie, c’mon, don’t act like you wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to get out of here. April isn’t going to stay in New York forever.”

The statement, while probably true, hurt to hear. “What does that have to do with me?” He said, quieter this time. “I can’t help what April does.”

“Dude, she is literally planning her future with you in it. Have you not noticed that?” Leo nearly screamed. “You have the opportunity to get out of here and do something with your life, and we’ll be-“

“No she’s not!” Donnie shouted back. “Are you guys smoking crack or something? Don’t say that shit to me! April doesn’t…” He paused, his words getting caught in his throat. “April doesn’t want me. I thought we’d been over this.”

Mikey, who hadn’t yet spoke, immediately picked up on how much pain Donnie was in. “Hey guys, let’s just drop it, yeah?”

Leo pressed on as if his youngest brother hadn’t spoken. “Maybe she didn’t five years ago, but she sure as shit does now.” He didn’t seem bothered by Donnie visible cringe. “I mean, dude, you’ve spent the night, alone at her house.”

“So has Mikey. And Raph once, I think.” Donnie said quietly, and Raph nodded in confirmation. “And she’s spent the night here a billion times, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Mikey and Raph didn’t sleep in her bed.” Leo said accusingly.

“I did.”

They all paused and turned to the youngest brother. Raph spoke. “You did?”

“Every time I go over there, I sleep in her bed.” Mikey said matter-o-factly. “Whenever… whenever I’m sad, she let’s me come over and… she’ll listen. She doesn’t try to offer solutions, she doesn’t try and tell me things to make me feel better, she just… listens. And that’s what helps me the most. Then we watch funny videos.”

None of them commented at first. They all knew Mikey struggled with depression, but he rarely, if ever, talked about it. They all had told him at some point that they were there if he needed to talk, but he never came to any of them. One might of thought that hearing that his brother shared a bed with April might make Donnie jealous, but quite the opposite, it made him very happy and appreciative to hear about it. It made sense that Mikey would be more comfortable talking to April than to any of them, and to know that she had been there for him was comforting. Donnie wanted that for his brother.

“See?” He said finally, more to Leo than anyone else. “April… she’s there for all of us. She cares about all of us… I’m not special.”

“Donnie, don’t say that.” Mikey offered and rose from his seat to place a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Donnie placed his own hand over Mikey’s and squeezed it, staring at the floor. “She cares about you the most. More than you know.”

“Mikey, please, please don’t.” He said through his teeth. “I can’t… I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation right now. You know how long it took me to accept the fact that I was kidding myself by thinking there could ever be something between us? Of course you guys know, which is why it is so baffling to me that you feel the need to do this.”

“So if April wanted you to move away with her, you wouldn’t do it?”

Raph punched Leo in the arm again. It was a strange thing, to see Raph scold Leo for being insensitive. Donnie had had enough though.

“I’m out of here.” He turned on his heel and heading towards the turnstiles.

...............

Yes, it’s NSFW, of course it is.

#TMNT 2012 #apritello #donatello #leonardo #raphael #michelangelo #mikey #raph #leo #donnie #apriltello #tmnt #fanfiction

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tlbodine · 3 years

Text

The Horror Genius of Five Nights At Freddy’s

I’ve been playing FNAF: Help Wanted VR on my Oculus Quest lately (a birthday present to myself -- I know I’m late to that party!) and it’s reignited in me my old love of this series. I know Scott Cawthon’s politics aren’t great, but I don’t think there’s any malice in his heart beyond usual Christian conservative nonsense -- and I think he stepped down as graciously and magnanimously as possible when confronted about it. Time will judge Scott Cawthon’s politics, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about what makes these games so damn special, from a horror, design, and marketing perspective. I think there’s really SO MUCH to be learned from studying these games and the wider influence they’ve had as intellectual property.

What Is FNAF?

In case you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the last seven years, Five Nights At Freddy’s (hereafter, FNAF) is a horror franchise spanning 17 games (10 main games + some spinoffs and troll games, we’ll get to that), 27 books, a movie deal, and a couple live-action attractions.

But before it exploded into that kind of tremendous IP, it started out as a single indie pont-and-click game created entirely by one dude, Scott Cawthon. Cawthon had developed other games in the past without much fame or success, including some Christian children’s entertainment. He was working as a cashier at Dollar General and making games in his spare time -- and most of those games got panned.

So he tried making something different.

After being criticized that the characters in one of his children’s games looked like soulless, creepy animatronics, Cawthon had his lightbulb moment and created a horror game centered on....creepy animatronics!

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Genius of FNAF’s Horror Elements

In the first FNAF game, you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a sort of ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese establishment. The animatronics are on free-roaming mode at night, but you don’t want to let them find you in your security room so you have to watch them move through the building on security camera monitors. If they get too close, you can slam your security room doors closed. But be careful, because this restaurant operates on a shoestring budget, and the power will go off if you keep the doors closed too long or flicker the lights too often. And once the lights go out, you’re helpless against the animatronics in the dark.

Guiding you through your gameplay is a fellow employee, Phone Guy, who calls you each night with some helpful advice. Phone Guy is voiced by Cawthon himself, and listening to his tapes gives you some hints of the game’s underlying story as well as telling you how to play. A few newspaper clippings and other bits of scrap material help to fill in more details of the story.

Over the next set of games, the story would be further developed, with each new game introducing new mechanics and variations on the theme -- in one, you don a mask to slip past the notice of animatronics; in another, you have to play sound cues to lure an animatronic away from you. By the fourth game, the setup was changed completely, now featuring a child with a flashlight hiding from the monsters outside his door -- nightmarish versions of the beloved child-friendly mascots. The mechanics change just enough between variations to keep things fresh while maintaining a consistent brand.

There are so many things these games do well from a storytelling and horror perspective:

Jump Scares: It’s easy to shrug these games off for relying heavily on jump scares, and they absolutely do have a lot of them. But they’re used strategically. In most games, the jump scares are a punishment (a controlled shock, if you will) -- if you play the game perfectly, you’ll never be jump-scared. This is an important design choice that a lot of other horror games don’t follow.

Atmospheric Dread: These games absolutely deliver horror and tension through every element of design -- some more than others, admittedly. But a combination of sound cues, the overall texture and aesthetic of the world, the “things move when you’re not looking at them” mechanic, all of it works together to create a feeling of unease and paranoia.

Paranoia: As in most survival horror games, you’re at a disadvantage. You can’t move or defend yourself, really -- all you can do is watch. And so watch you do. Except it’s a false sense of security, because flicking lights and checking cameras uses up precious resources, putting you at greater risk. So you have to balance your compulsive need to check, double-check, and make sure...with methodical resource conservation. The best way to survive these games is to remain calm and focused. It’s a brilliant design choice.

Visceral Horror: The monster design of the animatronics is absolutely delightful, and there’s a whole range of them to choose from. The sheer size and weight of the creatures, the way they move and position themselves, their grunginess, the deadness of their eyes, the quantity and prominence of their teeth. They are simultaneously adorable and horrifying.

Implicit Horror: One of the greatest strengths to FNAF as a franchise is that it never wears its story on its sleeve. Instead of outright telling you what’s going on, the story is delivered in bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself -- creating a puzzle for an engaged player to think about and theorize over and consider long after the game is done. But more than that, the nature of the horror itself is such that it becomes increasingly upsetting the more you think on it. The implications of what’s going on in the game world -- that there are decaying bodies tucked away inside mascots that continue to perform for children, that a man dressed in a costume is luring kids away into a private room to kill them, and so forth -- are the epitome of fridge horror.

The FNAF lore does admittedly start to become fairly ridiculous and convoluted as the franchise wears on. But even ret-conned material manages to be pretty interesting in its own right (and there is nothing in the world keeping you from playing the first four games, or even the first six, and pretending none of the rest exist).

Another thing I really appreciate about the FNAF franchise is that it’s quite funny, in a way that complements and underscores the horror rather than detracting from it. It’s something a lot of other properties utterly fail to do.

The Genius of Scott Cawthon’s Marketing

OK, so FNAF utilizes a multi-prong attack for creating horror and implements it well -- big deal. Why did it explode into a massive IP sensation when other indie horror games that are just as well-made barely made a blip on the radar?

Well! That’s where the real genius comes in. This game was built and marketed in a way to maximize its franchisability.

First, the story utilizes instantly identifiable, simple but effective character designs, and then generates more and more instantly identifiable unique characters with each iteration. Having a wealth of characters and clever, unique designs basically paves the way for merchandise and fan-works. (That they’re anthropomorphic animal designs also probably helped -- because that taps into the furry fandom as well without completely alienating non-furries).

Speaking of fan-work, Scott Cawthon has always been very supportive of fandom, only taking action when people would try to profit off knock-off games and that sort of thing -- basically bad-faith copies. But as far as I know he’s always been super chill with fan-created content, even going so far as to engage directly with the fandom. Which brings me to....

These games were practically designed for streaming, and he took care to deliver them into the hands of influential streamers. Because the games are heavy on jump-scares and scale in difficulty (even including extra-challenging modes after the core game is beaten) they are extremely fun to watch people play. They’re short enough to be easily finished over the duration of a long stream, and they’re episodic -- lending themselves perfectly to a YouTube Lets Play format. One Night = One Video, and now the streamer has weeks of content from your game (but viewers can jump in at any time without really missing much).

The games are kid-friendly but also genuinely frightening. Because the most disturbing parts of the game’s lore are hinted at rather than made explicit, younger players can easily engage with the game on a more basic surface level, and others can go as deep into the lore as they feel comfortable. There is no blood and gore and violence or even any explicitly stated death in the main game; all of the murder and death is portrayed obliquely by way of 8-bit mini games and tangential references. Making this game terrifying but accessible to youngsters, and then marketing it directly to younger viewers through popular streamers (and later, merchandising deals) is genius -- because it creates a very broad potential audience, and kids tend to spend 100% of their money (birthdays, allowances, etc.) and are most likely to tell their friends about this super scary game, etc. etc.

By creating a puzzle box of lore, and then interacting directly with the fandom -- dropping hints, trolling, essentially creating an ARG of his own lore through his website, in-game easter eggs, and tie-in materials -- Cawthon created a mystery for fandom to solve. And fans LOVE endlessly speculating over convoluted theories.

Cawthon released these games FAST. He dropped FNAF 2 within months of the first game’s release, and kept up a pace of 1-2 games a year ever since. This steady output ensured the games never dropped out of public consciousness -- and introducing new puzzle pieces for the lore-hungry fans to pore over helped keep the discussion going.

I think MatPat and The Game Theorists owe a tremendous amount of their own huge success to this game. I think Markiplier does, too, and other big streamers and YouTubers. It’s been fascinating watching the symbiotic relationship between these games and the people who make content about these games. Obviously that’s true for a lot of fandom -- but FNAF feels so special because it really did start so small. It’s a true rags-to-riches sleeper hit and luck absolutely played a role in its growth, but skill is a big part too.

Take-Aways For Creatives

I want to be very clear here: I do not think that every piece of media needs to be “IP,” franchisable, an extended universe, or a multimedia sensation. I think there is plenty to be said for creating art of all types, and sometimes that means a standalone story with a small audience.

But if you do want a chance at real break-out, run-away success and forging a media empire of your own, I think there are some take-aways to be learned from the success of FNAF:

Persistence. Scott Cawthon studied animation and game-design in the 1990s and released his first game in 2002. He released a bunch of stuff afterward. None of it stuck. It took 12 years to hit on the winning formula, and then another several years of incredibly hard work to push out more titles and stoke the fires before it really became a sensation. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, don’t give up. You never know when your next thing will be The Thing that breaks you out.

If you want to sell a lot of something, you have to make it widely appealing to a bunch of people. This means keeping your concept simple to understand (”security guard wards off creepy killer animatronics at a pizza parlor”) and appealing to as wide a segment of the market as you can (ie, a horror story that appeals to both kids and adults). The more hyper-specific your audience, the harder it’s gonna be to find them and the fewer copies of your thing you’ll be selling.

Know your shit and put your best work out there. I think there’s an impulse to feel like “well, nobody reads this anyway, so why does it matter if it’s no good” (I certainly have fallen into that on multiple occasions) but that’s the wrong way to think about it. You never know when and where your break will come. Put your best work out there and keep on polishing your craft with better and better stuff because eventually one of those things you chuck out there is going to be The Thing.

Figure out where your target audience hangs out, and who influences them, and then get your thing in the hands of those influencers. Streaming and YouTube were the secret to FNAF’s success. Maybe yours will be BookTube, or Instagram, or a secret cabal of free librarians. I don’t know. But you should try your best to figure out who would like the thing that you’re making, and then figure out how to reach those people, and put all of your energy into that instead of shotgun-blasting your marketing all willy nilly.

You don’t have to put the whole story on the page. Audiences love puzzles. Fans love mysteries. You can actually leave a lot more unanswered than you think. There’s some value in keeping secrets and leaving things for others to fill in. Remember -- your art is only partly yours. The sandbox belongs to others to play in, too, and you have to let them do that.

If in doubt, appealing to furries never hurts.

Do I take all of this advice myself? Not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a lot to think about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat The Curse of Dreadbear.

#horror analysis #writing advice #fnaf

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jasontoddiefor · 3 years

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Title: Ructare florem tristitiae

Summary: Allen Walker’s feelings bubble up his throat, flower petals spilled on his father’s grave, for the Akuma, who will never get proper burials. Ructare florem tristitiae, Cross Marian diagnoses, grief flowers.

Parasitic type Exorcists never live for long; carries of Hanahaki should die even quicker.

Allen is determined to make the best of it.

Rosa bracteata

His name was Allen, his father was dead, and he’s choking, drowning in his grief, spilling his guts in the graveyard. His shoulders shook and he heaved until he collapsed, fingernails clawing at his skin until they left red scratches. Metal in his mouth as he vomited roses that, under all the blood from thorns tearing up his throat, were white.

“You want me to retrieve Mana Walker?” the grinning clown asked, curiously staring down at him.

Another rose petal fell from Allen’s mouth as he screamed his father’s name.

Ornithogalum umbellatum

Cross was too late.

His mistake couldn’t be any clearer, standing in front of Mana’s grave, holding a casket that was bound to be empty, looking at a child that was meant to disappear. Allen’s face was covered by blood, and thus Cross did not pay any attention to the flowers surrounding him as he picked Nea’s host up and carried him to safety.

The little brat never should have been caught up in this war of theirs and Cross almost wanted to laugh at the irony of a Noah’s host being so deeply connected to Innocence, it took over his body. Laughing, drinking, and sex would certainly be better distractions than screaming in rage and lashing out at a kid that couldn’t be blamed for any of this, but right now, Cross couldn’t afford to do either.

All he had left were the curses he could hiss under his breath as the child screamed himself hoarse from the pain, choking until Allen threw up on him, the remains of lunch and flower petals ruining his shirt.

“Fuck no,” Cross exhaled, fingers twitching for a cigarette. “Since when does the brat have fucking Hanahaki?”

Mother only huffed. “Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you know since you watched him?”

“Well, he certainly wasn’t spitting up little snowdrops when he was running around with Mana!”

No, when the two clowns had been traveling together, Mana had been the one choking on the same red poppies he’d always cried for his brother. Fucking Nea, this better be worth it. From a scientist to an Exorcist to a nanny for traumatized little Noah hosts, who pissed their bedding.

“Those aren’t snowdrops,” Mother said, picking at the few flowers Cross had cleaned off the blood. “Aren’t you a bad priest that you can’t even recognize these?”

“Why the fuck should I recognize any flowers—”

“Stars of Bethlehem!”

Cross turned to the door where Barba was standing with Allen’s clean sheets, pointing excitedly at the little flowers. “Those are stars of Bethlehem. I’ve always wanted to decorate with them for Christmas because of the name, but they’re pretty sad flowers.”

Sad flowers, huh? “What do they mean?”

“Atonement,” Barba replied. “And reconciliation, guilt, and fear.”

Sighing, Cross leaned back in his chair and grabbed the entire bottle of wine. “Of course, the brat has grief flowers.”

Parasitic Innocence and Hanahaki? Nea better woke up soon, or the boy might die before he had the chance to erase him.

Calendula officinalis

Allen’s new Master was a bastard, so unlike Mana that he wanted to scream and return to his grave, spill more father’s day gifts and stars. But if he returned to Mana without having saved a single soul, he could never forgive himself.

And thus Allen stayed, carried his bags, found a routine with his Master, wondering when he’d finally learn how to use his Innocence against those Akuma.

“Hurry up, stupid apprentice, we’re going to be late.”

“Late where—” Allen froze as his gaze stopped at a lone man in the crowd and his left eye suddenly exploded in pain as his vision changed, shifted, and the man turned into a shadow, a skeleton wrapped in chains and guts, screaming, tearing at their constraints, begging for salvation.

Allen fell to his knees, his father’s screams echoing in his mind as he began coughing, struggling for breath, orange blooms landing on the dirt road.

“Allen— what are you doing!?”

His Master’s voice thundered through the air, commanding and another note he couldn’t identify.

“The man,” he stuttered out, swallowing down the bitter taste, the copper. “The man, Master, he’s like— like Mana!”

Cross’s head whipped up just in time for the man to see them.

And then all hell broke loose.

Tagetes erecta

The marigolds continued to haunt Allen until he learned to swallow down the blooms even as he fought against the Akuma.

No matter the Akuma’s level or origin story, orange petals always begged to leave his mouth. It made their stay in India more taxing than any other, marigold garlands covering the streets at all times. How strange that a flower that had always represented pain and grief to him was celebrated here so. Allen had met quite a few people suffering from the same ailment as him, though the taste of their hurt was a different one; unrequited love, fear, hopelessness – the number of emotions that could evoke Hanahaki seemed to be as varied as the stars above.

Allen had never known which one Mana had suffered from, but his flowers had also never changed, blooming for the same purpose and person.

He stared down at the abandoned bowl, his arm still aching. He had been so careful that any of the marigolds he brought Narain were not stained by those expelled by his body. But now, covered by the Akuma’s blood, it hardly seemed to matter.

They looked just the same.

Mentha arvensis

Allen’s introduction to the Black Order was chaotic. From his meeting with the angry Japanese Exorcist he absolutely did not want to work with ever thank-you-very-much to the confusing words and touch of the guardian Hevelaska. Komui, his superior, seemed like a fun and kind man, one Allen wouldn’t mind working alongside.

This place truly felt like it could become home if one were to believe Lenalee. Allen even had his own room that was his to do with as he liked, given that he didn’t destroy it. That certainly was an entirely new experience.

Allen hadn’t really had a home in a long while, though, when he was just feverish enough, feeling more like a child than an Exorcist, he would consider his Master’s coat on his shoulders shelter his home.

Not that he’d ever admit that to the man out loud.

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Komui asked, looking over Allen’s file, hopefully not cringing too much over Allen’s handwriting. Just because he had gained dexterity didn’t mean that his handwriting was particularly great. “Your personal data isn’t exactly precise.”

Allen tried to keep his smile in place, but he was well aware that his life had gaps. The entire first half of his childhood was one giant black hole, and as much as Allen sometimes wanted to solve that particular mystery, he was sure he hadn’t forgotten for no reason.

Mana’s memories had been full of empty spaces, and that for a good reason too.

Allen still remembered his screams when his nightmares overwhelmed him, begging for his brother to save him, forgive him, stay by his side eternally.

“I’m sorry,” Allen apologized regardless. “I know my background is not that easy.”

Komui only smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Allen. We care more about your own welfare now than anything else.”

His throat tickled and he desperately wanted to believe Komui, perhaps a bit naively too as his childhood self would condemn, but he tasted mint and knew it was for naught. Komui might care, God, the man had given everything so he could be here with his sister, but that didn’t speak for the entire Order.

“There actually is one more thing,” Allen admitted. “I have grief flowers.”

Komui’s eyes widened, fear and pity flashing through them. “How long?”

“Since General Cross took me in,” Allen said, knowing that for most, that would mean he was as close to death as he could be. “But I have it handled. My Innocence keeps me steady and heals my lungs.”

It was probably not as good of a reassurance as the man was hoping for, but it was all Allen could give. As always, he was lacking.

Lathyrus odoratus

Dealing with Innocence always interfered with his sickness. His own shard kept him healthy enough to continue on even if the number of flowers he’d displaced over the years should have long since killed him.

“What the hell, moyashi?” Kanda shouted as Allen doubled over in front of Lala and Guzol, covering the sand with blood, baby’s breath and sweet peas. Baby’s breath was nothing new given the presence of Innocence. Allen had filled Maria’s casket with it multiple times already, but he knew the sweet peas were for Lala, the sentient doll, and her dearly beloved human, her accommodator.

“Let her sing,” Allen begged through the pain, wheezing, still pathetic and weak. “Let her sing, please.”

And they remained as they were.

Gypsophila paniculate

God’s true apostle was a little girl that made Allen freeze. No matter how much he wanted to fight, to protect the world he had learned to love with his father’s smiles and jokes, he couldn’t anymore, his eye destroyed, bleeding.

Time running out and out and out until—

Rewind.

Miranda’s Innocence, baby’s breaths on his tongue, was as cruel as it was kind, giving Allen more time to fight, to understand, to choke down the marigolds as Road ordered the self-destruction of the Akuma and he watched that screaming soul disintegrate.

He knew there would be a price to pay.

The Noah’s door, a checkered form that seemed so familiar, closed and Allen stumbled back to Miranda’s side. Sweet reassurances were all it took to get her settled, to allow time to return to them.

Allen blacked out with a cough so deep, he thought he was crying at Mana’s grave again.

Papaver nudicaule

Lavi was curious by nature. It was the reason Bookman had picked him in the first place. Their kind needed to be curious, interested in the world, but only ever as its silent observers. Bookman Junior could recite his entire lecture on the topic, the ever repeated ‘know your duties’. Junior knew that he wasn’t Bookman’s first apprentice, and given how much Bookman insisted that Lavi stayed impartial, he knew there was a story to discover, history to inherit someday.

But for now, he had to chat up the Destroyer of Time.

“Nice to finally meet you,” Lavi said with a mild smile. “Yu-chan already told me so much about you!”

Kanda had been unusually chatty, complaining about Allen Walker for minutes, which was as good as ranting for an hour for normal people. Lavi had learned a lot about Allen during that time, mainly his sickness being of interest to Junior. The number of people suffering from Hanahaki was low enough that they had yet to find a proper cure or cause.

There were enough speculations, the church was particularly fond of going on about Eve and Lilith, Eden’s curse, but it was as good an explanation as a shrug and a disinterested ‘I don’t know’.

Although, perhaps, remembering the glass of flowers in his coat pocket, a cure had been found, just not one readily available for the masses.

“Here! Miranda collected them for you. It’s tradition in Germany to save them.”

Lavi handed Allen the glass full of yellow poppies before the youth could protest, waiting to see what his reaction would be. He had already gathered that Allen was used to his sickness, had learned how to live with them.

These flowers should not surprise him.

And yet they did, the boy almost dropping the glass when he saw what was inside.

“Poppies,” Allen breathed, his face twisting into shock, the kind of which Lavi had never seen before. “But they’re Mana’s—”

Mana Walker, the father that had been turned into an Akuma.

Lavi had to hold back a grin.

This was bound to be interesting.

Roseanne giganteus carnivorus

Roots took ahold of Allen’s heart and lungs and he reminded himself repeatedly that Mana loved him, that he had friends now and a home, that he was cared for. His father may have cursed him, but only so Allen would have something to live for so that he’d continue and not plant his roots at his father’s grace and let his body decay to feed the soil.

“I never wondered if Akuma could love,” Allen confessed to Lavi while Krory was still knocked out, head resting against the window of the train. “I thought them incapable of forming positive relationships unless they were modified.”

“Modified?” Lavi echoed, keen eyes, fake smile.

Took a liar to find another.

Eliade had felt something for Krory, even if it might just have been possessiveness, staking her claim on her victim and prey, waiting for the Innocence to get strong enough that its destruction would be interesting.

I love you, Mana’s words rang in his ears.

The flowers settled.

Glaucium flavum

The Exorcist cheated them right out of their money, and if Tyki didn’t feel like there was something familiar about the boy, he would have ripped his Innocence and heart out right there. He’d learned restraint, how to curb Joyd’s hunger. It had been insufferable when he’d still been a child, giving in to pleasure much too quickly.

But the three Exorcists right in front of him were taunt and temptation.

And still, Tyki resisted, especially once he got close enough to that white-haired menace to catch his scent. He’d excused himself after one round, saying he needed to freshen up. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it also wasn’t the truth.

“You smell like flowers, menino,” Tyki commented, watching as the boy quickly wiped blood from his mouth, something yellow disappearing down the drain. “Hanahaki?”

Fraude A flinched, looking like he’d been caught in the act. The cheerful if devious demeanor from before had all but faded away, leaving behind an exhausted teenager. The bags under his eyes were heavy, and the Innocence in his hand must be sucking away at his lifespan as well.

What wouldn’t Tyki give to turn that crystal into dust, play savior for this damned child.

“It’s not contagious,” the boy said immediately, probably thinking that Tyki was one of those fools who avoided flower bearers like the plague.

“I know,” Tyki said. “Don’t worry about it, menino. You seem to be doing as well as you can. I want to ask about your sickness if you don’t mind.”

The boy eyed him suspiciously but nodded.

“The child we have with us, Eeez, he has Hanahaki as well. His family threw him out because they could not afford to care for his health.”

Not that Tyki and his friends could afford his treatment either. Whenever Eeez, Momo, and Clark slept, Noah’s third disciple reached far into the lungs of the boy and ripped out the flowers stealing his breath, drenched his fingers in blood to see the child take another pathetic breath.

“Oh.” Understanding flashed over Fraude’s face. “Which kind?”

“Fear,” Tyki replied and there was so much to fear for weak little human boys in a world as cruel as theirs. “And you?”

“Grief,” the boy said, almost apologetic as if he’d trade his variant for a chance to help Eeez. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t offer you any help. My method of coping won’t work for him.”

Flores de tristeza and an Exorcist, the boy was truly detested by fate.

“I understand.” Oh, he did. That parasite leeching on the boy’s lifespan kept him alive, healed him over and over again so he could keep fulfilling its cursed mission. Tyki wondered what his lungs looked like, whether they were entirely scarred over. “Thank you still, menino.”

Aquilegia atrata

Lenalee was excellent at reading people, even if she couldn’t keep up with Lavi. It was a skill she had learned out of necessity during all her attempts at escaping the Order, searching for weaknesses in her guards, moments where their attention slipped just enough for her to throw herself out of the high towers they kept her in.

No matter how much Allen lied and cheated and smiled, Lenalee could see that it wasn’t true.

And that he was putting too much pressure on himself.

Surrounded by all the Akuma, hunting down Allen’s Master, the fall was inevitable.

Lenalee just hoped she would be there to catch him when it was the time as Komui had been there for her.

Dianthus caryophyllus

Innocence was good and holy.

God’s dearly beloved crystal, sent to save humanity.

Allen had known this deep in his heart, had clung to it when the appearance of his arm had still made him insecure because it gave him purpose. He was not so foolish as to think himself special, one of God’s chosen, but he chose to believe that Innocence mattered.

That it was kind and protected.

“I’m sorry,” Suman Dark apologized under tears he could not cry as Allen kept on screaming, begging him to live and go on, no matter how much the Innocence was eating away at him.

This couldn’t be true; it shouldn’t happen. His own Innocence would never do this to him, had it loved and protected him even against his own father. Yet it was failing him when Allen tried to dig through the violet butterflies, the violent pain. His shoulders trembled terribly as he swallowed down the sharp taste of carnations burning him as much as the artificial insects left nothing of Suman behind.

Cercis siliquastrum

“Fraude A?” Tyki exclaimed, surprised, though he knew he shouldn’t be. He had known that the tristeza boy had been an Exorcist, these plagues liked to flaunt it after all, with their shiny expensive uniforms, and he’d known that they’d eventually clash on the battlefield.

He had just, foolishly perhaps, hoped that it would be a fair battle, one where the boy could give it his all despite his failing, scarred lungs.

Allen Walker.

How pitiful that his name was on Tyki’s list.

“Don’t worry,” Tyki told him. “It doesn’t hurt.”

His words weren’t even a lie, and Tyki knew he could very easily put the boy to rest without him feeling a thing, and yet, he couldn’t help explain his work, act it out, because he wanted to leave his mark on his victim, have Allen Walker grieve flowers for him.

So Tyki crushed his hand, his Innocence, destroyed it with Dark Matter, let the Tease bite into his heart, and left the boy in tears.

Taking his dying breaths, unable to spit any flowers for Tyki. With a grin, he reached deep into the boy’s lung, retrieving judas tree blooms and a silver button.

How sad.

Tyki had hoped for poppies.

Bellis perennis

Allen lay on the ground, his Innocence above him as mist as he struggled for breath. It had never been this bad before. He couldn’t remember a single time where his flowers had been coated in so much blood, he couldn’t tell which kind it was right from the bat.

“You can’t overdo it,” Fo told him, rolling back on her feet almost playfully if not for the severity of the situation. “Your Innocence isn’t healing you anymore.”

I know, Allen wanted to reply. I know, I know, and it is all my fault.

He only wanted to continue on, do as he always had, push through the pain, and fulfill his purpose. Why was it so difficult, why did he struggle so much? Did his Innocence think him a betrayer, nothing worth saving anymore?

Please, he begged into the quiet, his flowers for the first time since he’d started blooming posing a threat to him. I just want to do my duty.

He grabbed his bloodied flowers with his one good hand and thought about springtime and Mana teaching him how to make daisy chains.

Tagetes lucida

Marigolds were comforting, almost. Allen could feel his throat put itself back together, healing as his body still decided to punish him. He wondered whether the other parasitic Exorcists had felt like this as well, torn between being weapon and host, beloved friend and tool.

He wondered what it might have been like for Maria to be the host of Innocence and spit flowers whenever she needed her throat to sing.

He wondered what her Innocence’s name had been once upon a time before it had become nothing more than Grave of Maria.

(Wondered whether his Master loved him enough to turn him into a doll to be used for battle as Allen would want.

Whether Cross Marian loved him too much to do so.)

“Tell me where my friends are,” Allen ordered and the Akuma complied, truth tasting like marigolds and poppies.

Rosa bracteata: Macartney rose – white rose, typically given to fathers

Flower list

Ornithogalum umbellatum: Star of Bethlehem – atonement for crime, reconciliation, guilt and fear

Calendula officinalis: marigold – pain and grief

Tagetes erecta: marigold

Mentha arvensis: mint – suspicion, lack of trust

Lathyrus odoratus: sweet pea – goodbye, departure

Gypsophila paniculate: baby’s breath – innocence, pure at heart

Papaver nudicaule: poppies

Roseanne giganteus carnivorus: Rosanne from canon

Glaucium flavum: poppies

Aquilegia atrata: purple columbine – driven to win

Dianthus caryophyllus: yellow carnation – disdain, disappointment, rejection

Cercis siliquastrum: judas tree – betrayal, unbelief

Bellis perennis: daisy – innocence, purity, new beginnings

Tagetes lucida: marigold

#dgm #allen walker #tyki mikk #lavi #cross marian #d gray man #fanfic

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theres-an-impulstor-among-us · 3 years

Note

I read your Grian and Zed oneshot and could I pretty please get another one (maybe a sequel, maybe not) with Worm man, Poultry man, and EX? We need the sidekick boi here too ;3

I’m so sorry this is so late! I’ve had a rough couple of days and this one ended up being a lot longer than I expected lol but anyway, here we are! Hope it’s good!

…

Sitting on top of the billboard in the shopping district are Hermitcraft’s two superheroes, keeping an eye on the goings on. It seems to be a fairly quiet day, however; the last person either of them saw was Scar disappearing into the town hall over an hour ago. But the two are just having fun hanging out up here, so they continue keeping watch over the district, while munching on the half stack of golden carrots Grian brought with him.

“Soo… which one of us is the sidekick?” asks Grian out of the blue.

Zedaph shoots him an amused look. “Why does one of us have to be the sidekick? Can’t we be partners?”

“I mean, yeah, true. But if one of us HAD to be the sidekick, which one would it be?”

“Probably you, cuz I’ve been a superhero a season longer than you.”

Grian pauses. “Honestly, that’s not the answer I was expecting but it does make sense.”

Zedaph gives a laugh. “Good. Trust me, we don’t need a sidekick. If I was on my own, maybe I’d consider getting another one, but a partner is even better than a sidekick.”

In the ensuing pause, Zedaph realises what he said. Unfortunately, Grian has also picked up on it. “Another one? What do you mean?”

“Ah…” Zedaph clears his throat. “Doesn’t matter.”

“No, I wanna hear this. You had a sidekick?”

Zedaph searches his brain for either an excuse to not reply or a false explanation that Grian will buy. When he finds neither, he gives a quiet sigh. “Yeah, but it didn’t end well. Or start well. Or go well for that matter.”

“Oh, jeez.” Grian frowns sympathetically. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Look, let’s just say I was naive and I thought he was good but he wasn’t. I came out of it looking and feeling very stupid, so I’d rather not have a repeat of that.” After a moment, he gives a smile. “That’s why I’m glad I have a partner who I already know and trust.”

“Aww.” Grian nudges him with his elbow. “Do you mean me?”

Zedaph snickers. “Nope, sorry, I mean Professor Beak. Best partner I’ve ever had.”

Grian exaggerates a pout and gently strokes the parrot sitting on his shoulder. “Wow.”

But as he starts to say something else, he spots a familiar figure walking through the shopping district. His face lights up. “Oh, look who it is! Zed, c’mon, I gotta introduce you to this guy.”

He jumps down from their perch and rushes towards the person, followed closely by a curious Zedaph. “Hey! Hey, EX!”

The figure turns and that’s when Zedaph recognises them with a jolt. That name, coupled with that familiar red helmet… It can’t be… can it…?

He quickly scoots behind a tree as Grian stops in front of the person, beaming. “Hey! It’s been a long time!”

Evil Xisuma, now going by the name EX, smiles at him. “Hey, Grian. Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“Grian? I see no Grian here,” says Grian innocently.

EX chuckles. “Oh yeah. Sorry, Mr Poultry Man. You out here patrolling?”

“Yup! Keeping watch over the server with my new partner!” Grian turns to introduce Zedaph to EX but frowns as he realises Zedaph is gone. “Uh… Zed? Where’d you go?”

“Wait…” EX freezes as they recognise the name. “Zedaph…?”

Grian spots his friend hiding behind a tree a few blocks down the path. “Zed, what are you doing?”

Realising he can’t hide any longer, Zedaph slowly emerges from behind the tree and approaches the two, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Hello.”

Grian frowns, sensing the tension between them. “You know EX already?” he asks slowly.

Zedaph holds EX’s gaze for a moment but has to turn away. “Yeah. I knew him a long time ago.”

EX shifts their feet awkwardly, causing Grian to step forwards, clearing his throat. “EX goes by they/them pronouns now.”

Zedaph glances at EX, who looks away from him. He wonders whether EX was too scared to correct him themself. Has it really been so long that EX can’t be as open around him as they used to be?

Finally, he turns back to Grian. “They used to be my friend but that was a long time ago.”

“It WAS a long time ago, wasn’t it?” EX says quietly.

“Just over three years. Since we last teamed up, anyway.”

EX sighs quietly. “Listen, I’m sorry I left you. I was just feeling so guilty that you believed I was a good person and I couldn’t continue that lie, but I couldn’t exactly tell you the truth either, could I?”

“I only believed you were a good person because that’s what you told me,” Zedaph retorts. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not angry at you anymore, I’m angry at myself. For being so stupid as to not realise why you were able to break me out of that prison so easily.”

“Oh.” EX hesitates, realising now why Zedaph is being so careful around them. “When did you find out?”

Zedaph’s shoulders slump. “After X banned you. I begged and begged him to reconsider but he refused. You have no idea how long I cried, how many sleepless nights I had, when X told me the truth about you. My friends got hurt because I was too naive to realise that the person I was calling my sidekick was actually a villain.”

“Zedaph, you- you have every right to be angry at me for that,” EX says quietly. “But I’ve changed now, I promise.”

“I can vouch for them,” Grian chimes in. “They’ve been helping me with building projects on and off for a couple of weeks. During that time, they told me a bit about their past and I can tell they’re not who they used to be.”

Zedaph gives his friend a look. “Did they tell you about their shared past with me?”

“No, they only-.”

Grian breaks off, glancing from Zedaph to EX, as the penny finally drops. “Oh… EX is the former sidekick you were referring to, aren’t they?”

Zedaph and EX both nod slowly.

“I was a far better sidekick than I was a villain, honestly,” admits EX quietly. “I feel like I took to being good much quicker than I did to being evil.”

“You did,” Zedaph agrees. “But that still didn’t stop you from getting yourself banned.”

“I-I’ve made some mistakes, that much is true. In fact, a LOT of mistakes. But that’s exactly what I’m back here to do: I’m here to prove to myself, Xisuma, and the rest of the server that I can be a good person.” They clasp their hands together in an anxious gesture that Zedaph recognises from when they worked together. “And I want to prove it to you too, Zedaph.”

Zedaph hesitates, watching his old friend with a conflicted look.

At that moment, however, Grian and Zedaph’s communicators go off with three messages in quick succession.

<Xisuma> trapped by Wither!!!

<Xisuma> one heart no food left!!!!

<Xisuma> help!!!!!

“Looks like this is your chance to prove yourself,” Grian says, patting EX on the shoulder. “Xisuma needs our help and we’re gonna go save him. Coming?”

EX doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes, I’m coming. Let’s go.”

…

The group follow X’s given coordinates to an underground tunnel in a remote part of the server. As they get closer, they can hear menacing sounds, followed almost immediately by a loud explosion.

“Uh oh!” Grian picks up speed. “Quickly, guys!”

They burst through an opening in the tunnel, only to find themselves immediately confronted by a half-health wither.

“Move!” Zedaph screeches.

He shoves EX to one side and Grian dives to the other as the wither fires a burst of exploding skulls at them.

As EX scrambles to their feet, they spot Xisuma squished into a small gap in the wall, clutching a clearly cracked shield in his hand. His eyes widen visibly as he spots his evil counterpart.

EX winces. They’re not supposed to be here; they were banned several months ago, and Xisuma knows that. He is the one who banned EX.

But before they can interact with their counterpart, they’re forced to duck under another burst of skulls and scramble for a safe nook on the other side of the cave.

Meanwhile, Grian and Zedaph are hacking away at the wither, but they’re making slow progress; the wither keeps attacking back, forcing them to retreat to avoid getting hit.

“X, get outta here, quickly!” Grian yells.

Xisuma hurriedly squeezes himself out of the crevice and dashes for the exit to the cave. However, because of his low health, he knows he has to be careful on the uneven rocky ground.

Just as he gets to the cave mouth, his foot drops into a small gap created by one of the wither explosions and his ankle rolls, causing him to pitch forwards with a yelp.

“Xisuma!” Zedaph screeches, as he and Grian are forced to retreat to avoid a barrage of skulls.

Unexpectedly, the wither twists mid-air and fires off three skulls. The first two sail over Xisuma’s head but the third is heading straight for him.

A split second before it hits him, EX dives in front of him and takes the skull to the back, propelling them past Xisuma and into the stone wall of the cave.

“EX!” Zedaph screeches.

“Zed, look up!” Grian yells suddenly.

Zedaph does so, just in time to see Grian tossing his sword back to him. Taking a deep breath, he leaps up and forward, catching his sword mid-air, and brings the weapon down on the wither. The critical hit takes the last bit of its health.

He lands neatly on the ground and uses EX’s fallen shield to protect himself and Xisuma as the wither explodes in a burst of light.

As Grian rushes over to help Xisuma, Zedaph dashes to EX’s side. The wither effect has worn off but EX is clearly still in pain; even though Zedaph can’t see their face, their muscles are visibly tense.

“EX, can you hear me?” Zedaph asks worriedly. “Are you alright?”

For one horrifying moment, there is silence. Then:

“‘M fine.”

Zedaph breathes out in relief. “Jeez, you scared me. What were you thinking? You could’ve died and we both know you won’t respawn.”

“I-I wasn’t thinking.” EX sits up, with Zedaph’s help. “I just… acted.”

“Well, you saved me from a painful death,” says Xisuma, giving his counterpart a sympathetic look. “I just don’t understand why you would save me, after our history.”

“I, um…” EX hesitates. “I was inspired to be a better person recently, and when I saw you were in trouble, I just… didn’t let myself hesitate.”

“Really?” asks Xisuma in surprise. “Who inspired you?”

EX gives a small smile. “Two friends who mean a lot to me. But…” They pause, taking in a deep breath. “I know I’m not actually meant to be back here, so I do completely understand if you ban me again.”

To their surprise, Xisuma immediately shakes his head. “I’m not going to do that. For one thing, you just saved my life. But more importantly, I sensed a change in you the second I saw you today, Exy. A very positive change. If these friends of yours on Hermitcraft caused that change, then there’s no way I’m gonna stop you from being around them. But I WILL be keeping a close eye on you, of course.”

“O-Of course.” EX covers their visor with their hands, eliminating any chance that the others might notice the tears that have sprung to their eyes. “Thank you, Xisuma.”

Xisuma places his hand on his counterpart’s shoulder. “No, thank YOU, Exy.”

He glances at Grian and Zedaph, who are watching together a few blocks away. “You two superheroes better get back up there and change before someone notices you’re missing.”

“I want EX to come with us,” Zedaph responds. “Please.”

Xisuma watches him steadily for a moment before nodding. “Okay. I just need to do some admin things to make sure their code isn’t still recognised as being banned, so they’re able to respawn in this world if they die.”

“Thanks,” says Zedaph gratefully. “Could you also let the server know of the situation?”

“Will do. Careful on your way back.”

The three make their way back up towards the surface, leaving Xisuma behind in the raggedly destroyed hole.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asks Zedaph, noticing EX shivering.

EX nods. “I’m fine. Just leftover wither effect, that’s all. I’m used to floating around in the void, not having the life sucked out of me.”

To their surprise, Grian chuckles. “Being back on Hermitcraft, you’re gonna have to get used to all kinds of effects. But hey, don’t worry: we’ll be here to help you through it.”

“All of it,” adds Zedaph warmly, slinging his arm over EX’s shoulder.

A smile slowly spreads over EX’s face as they feel the warmth of being enveloped on either side by two friends. For the first time, they feel safe and cared for. They’re about to start their new life on Hermitcraft.

And there’s no two people he would rather start it with.

#hermitcraft #grian #zedaph #evil xisuma #Vaunna writes

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thebmatt · 3 years

Text

FFXIV Write 2021 Prompt #22: Fluster

Fluster – make someone agitated or confused.

Aetherytes were constantly busy. You learned pretty quick to move away from one as soon as you manifested next to one, lest someone suddenly appear next to you and knock you both down.

Old Man Franks, tired as he was, almost forgot this, and only barely missed being clipped by an arriving Roegadyn armed with an enormous spear on his back.

He quickly moved out of the plaza and cast a quick glance about, and then raised his hand to his ear, activating his linkpearl

Rheika’s voice answered him. “Heya Franks. You get to the Toll already?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I take it you’re not?”

“Not yet. Fearless isn’t answering her ‘pearl, so Dahk and I went to her place. Ranaa said she and Makoto went to the Sekiseigumi HQ, so we’re headed there. Turns out she left it at home. Again. Anyway, go on in and figure out what’s going on, we’ll be there as soon as we find her. “

“Copy that. Hopefully whatever this is can be resolved fast. I need to catch up on some sleep.”

“Did you stay up all night working on cross-world portals again?”

“I admit nothing, see you soon.” He disconnected the link before she could chastise him further and headed into the Seventh Heaven bar. A few of the regular patrons tossed greetings his way, which he returned as best he could in his sleep-deprived state,

The bouncer who guarded the door to the Rising Stones nodded at him and stepped aside. Franks strode in, turning to shut the door behind him quietly. Darn thing tended to slam, he’d been meaning to install something to slow it down. Maybe after some rest today.

“All right, Tataru, what is this emergency…about…” Midway through his sentence, he’d turned to face the room. Sitting at one of the table were Tataru, Y’shtola, and someone who shouldn’t be there. Someone who couldn’t possibly be there. Because she was dead.

Standing up at the table, hand over her mouth and tears streaming from beautiful sea-green eyes that he hadn’t witnessed in years, was a viera woman that happened to be the spitting living image of the woman he’d married so long ago.

She dropped her hand, looking for all the world as happy as the day they’d wed. “Hello, my love.”

Twelve forfend, it sounded like her too. “What the hells is this? No…you’re dead, this is some kind of trick!” He pointed a shaking finger. “You’re a godsdamned Ascian, you HAVE to be! How the hells did you make someone look like her??”

She ran to him. “Darling, no, it’s me, I swear it!” She moved in close, trying to embrace him, but he backed away, shock and anger on his face.

“Fandaniel, that you? Because you just crossed a fucking line, you piece of filth, and I’m going to make you regret it!”

The woman looks over to Y’shtola, panicking. “He…what’s happening, who does he think I am?”

Y’shtola has already moved next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and holding the other with her hand. “Aleister, I swear to you on my life, this is not a trick. Do you remember how Rheika unmasked Elidibus, by tricking him about the Amaro? It proved that an Ascian can’t access memories of their hosts, do you recall that?”

He had stopped backing away, but his eyes didn’t waver from the woman who looked like his wife. He nodded.

Y’shtola looked to her. “Tell him something that only you would know. Something you’d never reveal under even the gravest duress.”

Her eyes danced back and forth, considering, thinking. Finally, they widened and she smiled again. Closer and closer, she approached him, but now he didn’t move. Could….could it be?

She whispered in his ear and he cried out in joy. His world faded, and there was nothing more than the woman in front of him. He pulled her in, crushing against her. Her arms wrapped around his back and pulled in just as strong. So many sensations, so many memories flooded him, and he took all of them in. The scent of her, the feel of her living body preseed to him, the sound of her voice as she whispers her love between sobs. He could not reply, too overwhelmed to cry and breathe.

Tataru moved next to Y’shtola, unable to take her eyes off of the embracing pair. “It…it really is her.”

Y’shtola nods.

“But…how?”

“I think that story is best told to us from them. Once everyone has joined us. I think our resident Old Man may finally be ready to open up, since the loss that caused him so much pain is no longer lost at all.”

Finally, Franks was able to catch his breath and he pulled back to look at her. He kept her close, arms wrapped around her waist, as though he feared she might vanish into mist if he let go. For her part, she likewise kept her arms solidly behind his neck. “Gwen….I…I don’t understand. They…multiple people told me they saw you get taken by Sylvanas’ death squads. We…” He hiccuped. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he kept going. “We scattered when we heard you got taken…that’s, that’s how I ended up here.”

She smiled. “They were right. I was put in with dozens of others, taken to a camp somewhere in Hillsbrad, couldn’t tell you where exactly. We were lined up. Living prisoners had their names taken, checked off a list, then executed right then and there. Some were….were fed to the soldiers. Others to plaguehounds. But for whatever reason, they didn’t kill the Forsaken. Maybe she had sentimentality about us, or maybe she planned to do it later, but we were just shoved into a makeshift prison and left there. We got food occasionally, but no interaction otherwise. Just neverending boredom. Zenjulin and Beskar finally found the place and killed off the few remaining loyalists that still manned it, freeing us.”

She shuddered. “By that point, the Banshee had fucked off to…wherever it was she went. I don’t know. Zenjulin explained it, but I wasn’t listening very well. Or he was missing details, I don’t know. Anyway, he said that our allies were being brought back together to stop her and whatever else she’d brought with her, but that you were still missing. I told them I refused to do anything until I found you. They understood, and I started tracking your movement. Which was hard, because you’d concealed them well, but eventually I made it to Stranglethorn and discovered the cave, the one Y’shtola tells me you came to that same one and it brought you here.”

Franks looked over to Y’shtola, who smiled. “I went there to take some readings, and found her emerging out of the cave. Once I realized who she was, I brought her straight here and had Tataru contact you.”

“Thank you.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing to thank.”

Franks looked back to Gwen. “I… gods, Gwen, you look like the day I asked you to marry me. Even despite all the years, both living and dead, I recognized you right away. I…I actually hallucinated last night…I saw you. Worked for too long without sleeping again. You looked…almost exactly as you do now.” He chuckles. “You uh…you didn’t have these, though”.

He reached up to stroke the fur of her ears. She made a very happy noise at the touch. “Okay, those are definitely a little sensitive, good to know.” She cuddled up against his shoulder, enjoying the sensation.

Eventually he stopped and pulled back again, looking her over. Everything was the same, her long graying hair, two green eyes, one slightly darker than the other, on a heart-shaped face. Everything save the ears. He vaguely recalled the shape of her human ears, but they were no longer there.

She giggled. “I…I don’t know what changed me or why it gave me my youthful body with these ears, honestly. You, though, you look a little bit older than the day you asked me to marry you. Maybe…around our 10th anniversary, I’d guess? Bit more white though, not that I mind. That haircut’s definitely a lot better, someone’s been taking care of you on that front, I see.

She placed her hands on his arms, rubbing them appreciatively. She moves them to his chest and down to his abs, sculpted like they’d been in his younger days from long hard hours of farmwork. “And I see you’ve definitely been taking care of the rest of you. Been way too long since I’ve seen these muscles.” she purred.

Franks laughed nervously. “Well, um….you get a second chance like this, you tend to appreciate and take care of things you took for granted…before.” His hands slipped down to her hips.

Their eyes met, growing lidded. Slowly, he ran his hands up her sides, appreciating every ilm of her curves, ghosting the sides of her breasts. He pulled her close, and their lips met in a kiss they’d not been able to share in decades.

Memories of all of their favorite intimate moments with the other flooded their minds, and both had a realization that those moments could now not only be remembered, but now relived. The rest of the world had long been forgotten and their kisses and touches became more heated when the world suddenly reminded them that it was still there.

“Ahem”

The pair broke, looking in the direction of the voice. The other Warriors of Light and the senior members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn had all entered and were staring at the pair in varying levels of confusio

Rheika spoke up. It had been her voice that broke into their moment, Franks realized. “I hate to interrupt your moment, I swear I do, but uh…didn’t we have some kind of emergency? Also, um, who is this? Not that you don’t deserve to kiss someone that gorgeous, but I feel like I’m missing part of the story here.”

Franks laughs. Both he and Gwenefyr have turned beet red having realized just how much of a crowd their reunion had attracted. “Ah, yes. Um, well, everyone…allow me to introduce you all to Gwenefyr Franks. My…not quite late wife, as it turns out”

She giggled at that. “Hi, everyone. Y’shtola’s told me a little about you all. I…think I recognize at least some of you from her stories.”

Franks looked over everyone. Thancred, Estinien, and Alisaie weren’t even masking their suspicion. Dahkar, Alphinaud, and Rheika wore expressions of shock. Fearless looked like she was going to explode with joy. Urianger just looed perplexed.

It was Thancred who stepped forward. “Franks….are you sure? I mean, we’ve seen the Asicans puppet dead bodies before..

He immediately shook his head. “No, no, I thought the same thing. But remember, Elidibus didn’t have access to Ardbert’s memories so Y’shtola asked her to tell me something only she would know. It…it’s definitely her.”

Gwen took his hand and looked to the gunbreaker. “Thancred, right?”

Thancred nodded.

“Y’shtola told me you’d probably be the hardest to convince. I don’t know what to say or do to prove to you that I’m not a…..Asican, was it? But I’ll do whatever it takes to prove it to you. To all of you. Because I’m not going anywhere.” She looked up to her husband. “Right?”

He looked right back to her, his eyes sad. “I…don’t think I can go back there again. Not if it means…going back to the way our forms were.Are you…okay with that? With leaving it all behind? I promise, this place is…it’s worth it.”

She nodded. “I don’t think I can either. Azeroth has taken enough from us. And the others…they told me they won’t be surprised if we don’t return to the fight. They’re prepared to keep working towards the dream, but they’ll have to do it without us. I’m not going anywhere without you, love. We have a second chance at actual life and I’m not going back to a world without it or without you.”

Alphinaud speaks up. “Apologies, but did you say Azeroth? I’ve not heard of such a place.”

Franks nods. “Yeah. That’s….that’s the other reason I’m pretty confident she’s not an Ascian. And it’s a story most of y’all long overdue for hearing. And now that I have…gods I can’t believe I have you back…ahem. Well, there’s just no point in hiding it anymore. Gather round…time I told the full story of where I….where we are actually from.”

#Final Fantasy XIV #FFXIV 2021 Writing Challenge #oldmanfranks #Aleister Franks #Gwenefyr Franks #Rheika Aliapoh #oh I am so happy I got to write this reunion.#I tried writing the time they were reunited in WoW and it just felt unnatural and weird.#This is so much better

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nurseofren · 3 years

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Keeping Your Promise - Chapter 27 (NSFW)

Read on AO3 | Read on Wattpad

Read Chapter twenty-six

Title: There is No Redemption

Words: 7.4K

Summary: Happy trail worship? Happy trail worship.

ST Rambles: Hello readers, I hope you enjoy this part. I am in my final semester for my ADN and cannot promise even monthly updates at this time. Please, please, please comment your thoughts because I don't want to produce content that is not enjoyable. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

[MASTERLIST] || BANNER / @elmidol

Stress enveloped your skull in throbbing pain, Karmen’s six-hour rundown stinging your senses and drawing you inward. Halfway through, you had already begun to feel the excess of information take its toll; Zag’s voice – unpleasant in small doses – grated into you, each word coming too fast and leaving too soon. Thankfully, no doubt to cover herself, she had left you with a thumb drive; it summarized everything she’d mentioned.

After the ordeal, when she left by the sharp click of her heels, you understood why it was recommended to arrive two days prior to the initial hearing: you were utterly and dreadfully exhausted. After unpacking – ensuring easy access to your favorite socks and keeping Snoke’s letter tucked into the back drawer of a desk – you had sat in bed for an hour trying to refresh with the thumb drive’s contents; you’d were determined to be prepared for tomorrow’s shift at Canto Bight’s recovery wing. If nothing else, you would not make a fool of yourself during your practice here. This you swore to yourself.

At some point you had drifted to sleep, waking to find your cheek stuck to the datapad that’d been propped up before you. The sunset woke you with a searing ray of light, screaming fuchsias and hazy purples warming your outstretched arm as they cast through open curtains. The breeze rolled off of the bay and tickled loose hair over your nape, a deep breath stretching your lungs awake before you unfurled from yourself.

The radar at your wrist indicated Kylo Ren was near but not in his quarters, probably not inside the building. It was a confusing feeling – the unsteadiness you felt when revisiting your earlier interaction, the vagueness of his words contradicted by the certainty in which they’d been delivered, but simultaneously this calm in your chest since you had left him. Although you had no idea what he’d gone on about, or what in time meant, his mere presence – the fact that he was near and would continue to be – allowed you these glimmers of peace.

Not since Starkiller. Not since Snoke. Not Mason and his baseless confidence, no matter how much you wished to latch onto it; not Talia, who had helped you back from your darkest moment. The only things that stilled you were the known proximity of your master, and the nature of the words he’d earlier spoken. You’d felt it that recent night on the Finalizer, how it lingered in your muscles just before you’d dozed off, how it seemed his presence had scared your nightmares away.

However ridiculous and backwards, Kylo Ren – the one whose pain is printed on your skin, who led a slaughter just strides away from you – had become a constant. It was never what you had expected, but when you thought of the trial now, what eased your nerves was nothing less than the raven-haired warrior whose face was slashed with midnight hues of pain.

Much like you, you’d come to realize, he had survived Starkiller, and the event changed him. Though you could not know for sure, you began to wonder if what had gone on had not only left him with the wounds that’d wet your skin, but perhaps ones that were deeper – ones that were not so visible. Something happened before that explosion, something more than whatever fight had earned him that scar.

You shook your head; this was too much to think on right now. With a throw draped over your back, you trudged through the room and out into the chill of your side-balcony. This sky held more beauty than any you’d ever seen; you watched the sun descend, spying a domed, octagonal pavilion at the far left of the side gardens. It dripped with violet-petaled ropes and emerald ivies, was supported by scalloped columns entwined with twinkling blooms welded from gold, the whole stage centered around a sunken fire pit.

Considering for a moment, you saw it would have a better view of the sunset, and you’d been cooped up since arriving. It was a quick decision, catching view of a spiral of stairs that led to the grounds, but only after noting the pair of doors a few paces left of your room’s. They were closed, and the inner curtains seemed to be shut, the room behind them dark. Empty.

No, Kylo Ren was not here, but – a thumb over your radar – he was not far. Somewhere off on his own business. Training, maybe. At least, that’s what you supposed kept you from traveling with him, the thought frustrating. Maybe – no, undoubtedly – he would never admit to it, never show it, but he was still recovering.

Ten days ago he was in a medically induced coma talking about someone named Ben and how he’s dead. Bacta works wonders, but it means nothing if a patient is noncompliant with post-operative restrictions, like swinging around a plasma sword for hours on end, or doing trial runs with the Force – which, although you knew little about, one could easily assume it put strain on the body.

Maybe you were wrong and your master was completely fine, maybe the Force aided in healing. No matter, you worried; for him, mostly, never forgetting how he appeared in that medbay, but also for yourself. It was clear that you cared for him – for fuck’s sake, when you thought you’d never see him again you wanted to tell him you loved him – and you knew his pursuits could very likely be the death of him. Stubborn as you might be to acknowledge it, so long as he was okay and not recklessly shredding through healed wounds, so long as he returned to you, you could rest somewhat soundly.

Hugging your blanket, tighter when the wind blew, you wandered down to the courtyard’s trim lawn, along the overflowing flowerbeds that brimmed with brilliant colors, until you met the few steps that led to the pavilion’s stage. Flames shocked you when you stepped onto the eight-sided base, your presence triggering a hidden system. The rectangular pit exploded into a rainbow of fire, thin veils of flames ascending elegantly into an ordered myriad. The pit was massive, consuming the base but for a few paces from each support.

Much like everything else, the pavilion was grand in size and decoration; the hearth’s hues danced along the draped flora, at least ten paces separating each gold-threaded pillar. Everything here was explicitly luxurious, so big and gorgeous. You wanted to settle into it, but it was temporary, and you would not know how fatal that fact was until it was too late.

Farther out, flames rippled over the bay; the sinking heat of the sun endeared your skin, the warmth at your back growing in distance as you gave in to the silent call of the scorching sky. First tracing the tip of one of the gold leaves woven to a pillar, admiring the detailed stems and ridges, you curled up against the column’s wide base. Head caressed by the smooth, cool stone, knees curled close to your chest, you were glamored by the water’s rhythmic sway, wondering if you would ever have the chance to feel it on your skin.

It took little effort to keep Karmen’s lecture from your thoughts, too lost to the burgundy of dusk that bloomed as the sun wilted toward the bay. A stillness surrounded you, and then you tuned into the chirping whispers of bugs that remained hidden with the fall of night. It did not bother you in the slightest, their distant songs a reminder of your life before the academy. A passing thought, fond amusement lazily humming in your chest – there are no crickets in space.

You remained folded against the pillar for some time, watching night creep over the city, more grateful for the heat on your back as warmth waned, the moon climbing higher with each lulling minute. The stone iced into your cheek. You went to leave, but your commlink buzzed at your waist, and you knew it would be wiser to keep this particular conversation outside.

Elbows to your knees, you ruffled a hand through your hair, closed your eyes, and answered Mason’s call. “How’s your day, McCarty?” There was no use in starting an argument if he had moved on from earlier.

“Probably better than yours, if I had to guess.” He sounded chipper. It was a relief.

“Well, what went on? Where’d you go? Who’d you see? What’d you eat?”

“I’ve really just been hanging out at the house since getting here. Caught a nap, which was nice. Soto sent me a transmission detailing updates on a few patients.”

He wasn’t hostile at all. Hopefully it meant he was done being weird. “I also got a nap. Which, agreed, is definitely nice. Especially after being kept in a room with Zag for six hours and trying to keep my head from exploding.”

“Six hours? With Zag? Are they trying to get you convicted of murder?”

You shared a laugh, scooting along the stone floor and peering up to the ceiling. It was tiled with mosaics, the fire’s vibrant colors reflecting off of it and shifting along the intricate designs. The view of the city was wider from this position, distant lights shimmering in windows that peered into whatever parties were undoubtedly happening.

“She isn’t that bad. It’s just her voice. And I barely have a handle on anything other than the fact that I have my first shift tomorrow, and then two days after that is the initial hearing. And I don’t even want to think about that to begin with, so…”

“Well,” he sighed your name, “I’ll be there. Bright and early, just like you. Wearing my second-best attire, saving the very best for the official trial, of course.”

“Jeez, that’s another thing, right? They fly us out here, put me up in some military-grade villa, but they give me nothing to wear, are aware that my residence just exploded on Starkiller, and then still say I can’t wear my uniform. I just find that a bit unfair. But that’s what I think, which we both know has not mattered since the very beginning of all this. I don’t even know why I expected anything different. I’ll just have to request transport to the shops or something. And then make credits appear out of thin air to pay for it.”

With notably increased enthusiasm Mason said, “Actually, I, uh, I was going through the house earlier and there’s actually a lot left over from my family’s recent trip. You’re free to come over and take some stuff back to your embassy if you want.”

“Alright, first – not my embassy, and if we’re calling it anything, I vote palace. Seriously—” you stared at a trellis that overflowed with wild blooms of every shade of red, the dead, fallen petals mocking you in the familiar way they pooled beneath. “—this place is too beautiful for any of the old businessmen who stay here. It’s actually ridiculous.”

“So it’s not homey, after all?”

A bellowing laugh came from the center of your chest, echoing up to the domed roof and into the growing dark. “No. No. Not homey. Not quaint. None of that. Just giant and spectacular.”

“Well, whatever it is, do you want to come over and grab some clothes?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. That’s a lot better than spending credits I don’t have. Although maybe I’m worrying for nothing? Don’t they forgive your debt when you die, anyway?”

Mason did not laugh, did not even speak, and your amusement fell into alarm. An edge menaced along each pointed word when he spoke; “Maybe they’ll forgive your debt, but I won’t forgive you for dying.” He grunted in rejection. “You’re not dying, so I don’t know why we’re discussing this.”

Silence swallowed you both, and for a moment you could hear him trembling, hear the shakiness of his breath. A sharp exhale startled your hand from your ear. And then it was quiet again. He cleared his throat, and you noticed how thick it had become. Was he crying?

“Mason, you need to tell me what’s going on. And don’t say-,”

“Nothing is going on. It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Funny, because when you say that, when you tell me we’re fine when I didn’t ask, it makes me think the exact opposite.”

He sighed, but at this point there was a good chance it was more exasperation or fuming than anything else. “I’m not having this conversation when I can’t see you.”

“Well, I’ll just turn my transmission on and we can-,”

“No.” Clipped, barked. Final.

It concaved your chest. Mason had never spoken to you like this. Your teeth scraped at your bottom lip. “Should I be worried?”

He paused. “No,” as it gritted through his teeth, your name was contoured with wisps of ire. An ounce less of restraint and whatever he was holding back would crack this hardened, taut façade.

The worst came to mind. All you could manage was a terrified whisper, “Are you revoking your seat to testify? Is that what this is about? Am I about – fuck – am I about to- I can’t lose you. I can’t-,”

“I told you. I told you I will be there.” Frosted fury swept through his following pause. His flat tone was laced with quiet hurt when he next said, “Do you really think I could do that to you? Leave you in the dust like that?”

“No. I guess not.”

“You guess not,” he thought aloud, a long drag of breath crackling into your ear. “I’m glad that you’re settled in, and… good luck during your shift tomorrow. You don’t need it, I know, but nonetheless.”

He was dismissing you. You hated it. “I’m not hanging up until I know we’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” he said simply, too fast. Mason cleared his throat. “Request transport for the morning after your shift. You can shop around the closets and after, we can order lunch and… and we can talk. About things. Everything.”

It was apparent he would not give anything more away, but you knew from his flat tone that whatever it was, was detrimental to him. Or you. Or both.

“Yeah. I’ll put in the request after shift tomorrow.”

Another long, aching silence. You listened to his breath, trying and failing at ignoring the knives in it. The line remained silent, the hanging static a backdrop to the hidden, harmless creatures humming in the night.

“I love you, Mason,” you prompted, teeth catching your trembling lips, time choking you with every halved second that trudged along.

It killed you, every inhale adding to the weight in your chest, every empty, wordless moment he spent cutting into you with a silent blade.

Another second and you turned back to the heightening tide of the bay, the clear night sky dying it a deep navy. Even as you tried to focus on the waves that foamed along the distant shore, there was no sound louder than Mason’s nonresponse.

“Goodnight,” Mason said, small, far enough away that it splintered through your heart like ice wedged through rock.

“Good-,” the line went dead, the static dying, a night-kissed wave crashing in your periphery, “-night.”

The iridescent veils of hearth rippled before you now, turning away from the seemingly infinite expanse of water. Even so, you shivered, and you were sure it had nothing to do with the weather. Tucking your commlink into your waist pocket, loosing a long-kept breath, you stood from the stone and clasped your blanket over your shoulders. With a final glance, chin to your shoulder, you appreciated the beauty of your first night here.

Whatever awaited you tomorrow, the next day, and in the weeks to come? It would remain. For now, just this one moment alone, you could pretend that everything was okay. Just for a moment.

A soft touch brushed your shoulder, but when you turned to meet whoever it belonged to, you found there was no one around. But a light caught your eye, one that had not been there before. Maybe that interruption to the dark captured your attention, but not at all was it what kept your gaze above the gardens.

Through the clear night, a breeze danced through the flora, glittering scarlet petals into the shadows. Above those dwindling rubies, leaning over the balcony’s curve, was Kylo Ren. Behind him, the golden light of his quarters caressed his back, small fragments draping over the sharp, toned muscles of his shoulders. He was staring down to you, his gaze laving along your figure, eyes those of a predator aware their prey was no match for them. The ever-heightening moon was all that lit his front, but it was enough. No, so much more than enough. Entrancing. Captivating. Beguiling.

Light cascaded along the taut strength of Kylo’s abdomen, his broad, thick chest emanating with the smooth white of the dusk’s sun. Once more, like it always did, the scar skating through his features kept your attention. From a distance it was less intrusive, but its presence sank your heart like the sun had wandered into the sea.

A whip of night air pushed his hair back to tease his ears, his head slightly cocking to the side when you found his eyes again. There was no color to them, none that you could see so far away, but you felt their heat slink along your lips, then your neck, over your chest, and lower still. When they claimed yours once more, they were sculpted with steadfast steel, strong and slithering, ordering your compliance to the smoking promises beyond.

Without noticing, that chill from earlier had left you, and you gathered the blanket so it hung from your forearm. Kylo held you with his eyes, the fire’s warmth falling away when you stepped off the platform and wandered, in leisure, down the steps and into the plush lawn. A dew was readying to form on the grass beneath your bare feet, the coolness welcome under his blazing attention. One step, two, another, and a final; small, shuffling, like you were hypnotized – truthfully, you could have been, but there was none but your own intent in the steps that carried you closer to him.

Only when he straightened to his full height, standing away from the balcony’s edge, did you halt your advance. He paused there, watching you, so gracefully still you were unsure of his breathing. From his new position you could no longer see his hands, but – you could feel them. A pressure along your cheek, your heart stammering at how its span so completely matched his own, and then around your throat, dizzying when it teased your carotids. Breath shivered from your slack mouth, catching when that – his – ghosted touch skimmed down your sternum and pushed into your rib cage.

Kylo made no sound, but when the night’s quiet scattered around your faint, gasped moan – feeling the whispered hands smooth over your hips, around the front of your thighs – you saw his jaw flutter, darkness and moonlight tangling when he gave you one final glance. The phantom touch left, a feline smirk flickered along his lips, and when his brows descended and veiled those deep, deep eyes, Kylo turned and sauntered out of sight.

But you understood his message, the silent one that only his body spoke, and you knew that his leaving was not goodnight, but an invitation. One you fully intended on accepting.

The trees swayed above you, the beds of perfectly spaced flowers blowing with the gentle breeze and combining with the sea behind to fill your head with the salty, fresh aroma of a Canto Bight night. Each step you took along the patterned grass shimmered anticipation through your veins, heady, wanton thoughts brimming in your mind.

The cold stone that marked the ground level’s patio shocked through you, wet crimson petals that had pooled below the trellis now clinging to the soles of your feet. You did not have time, or at least were desperate to not waste any, to pluck them off, allowing them to travel with you as you led them up the curved staircase. As you climbed the steps, you stole a fleeting glimpse of the bay; from this height the city’s nightlife sheened along the shore, a few private ships zooming above the skyline and carrying their passengers to events unknown to you.

Events that you could not have cared less about, not when you arrived to the second-level balcony, not when you saw the swaying curtain beyond Kylo Ren’s open, waiting door. No, those events meant nil, exceedingly so when you found the beginnings of a trail leading into his room, the first crumb that of pooled, discarded athletic pants.

Instant, overwhelming chills clamored about your skull, the blanket draped over your arm joining the black bottoms when your limbs went wobbly. Through the wind-swept gossamer you spied the second addition – one long, impossibly large, black sock – and when you came closer, the cool of night waning as you met the threshold, your heart thrummed louder at the nearing shaft of light that fled the refresher’s entrance.

Heated tiles warmed your first steps into Kylo’s room, the coquettish curtain kissing the tip of your nose before the door at your back locked shut in near silence. You brushed past the veil of fabric and took in your surroundings, quite different from what they were earlier. The golden rays of morning had since been overridden by soft panes of night, only the moon reflecting onto the light tile, not a single star to join it. The bed’s canopy remained shut, its thin sheets cascading around the bed so there was ample space to walk within its soft confines. And from that canopy, from the circular track above, bloomed delicate, mild light; it melted midway down the canopy, fading to nothing before it breeched the polished ivory below.

Another step and you noticed the trail of scarlet, dew-drop-covered petals you were leaving in your wake. On the step up from the bed’s level lay a second sock, so you padded to it, and tuned into the sound of heavy, rushing water that became louder as you delved further into the dimly lit room. This level was dark save for the glow of the open refresher; you followed that light like a lost vessel in space, hands trembling as you passed through the sitting area with soundless strides. Finally, as you’d calculated at the earlier bareness of his chest, you found the piece of clothing that signaled your final destination lying at your feet.

Atop the refresher’s threshold lay a pair of black boxer-briefs – unfolded, just as they’d appear fresh off the heated, muscled body from which they’d come. A smile played at your lips, remembering how the pair he’d so generously provided you the morning after you’d first slept next to him had hugged your hips with subtle compression. Those, unfortunately, were undoubtedly obliterated with everything else that had exploded with Starkiller.

Kylo Ren was nowhere within view, but running water tucked behind a corner to your left, and when steam swirled around an inlet that bordered a sleek, unbroken wall of ash-grey tile, your lungs lit with need, with want, your thoughts only focused on the body and man that waited for you just beyond view, just out of reach. Suddenly you became aware of how overdressed you were, so you turned to your right and found a mirror that ruled its own wall and plucked open the top button of your uniform.

The fogged silver expanse provided a blurred, softened outline of your near-bare body, scalding goosebumps scraping up your neck at the thought of Kylo’s slicked, dripping body. Hands hooked behind your back, you loosed your bra and smoothed the straps down the sides of your arms. And then all that covered you were the lack-luster panties the Finalizer had provided all those months ago, but they soon joined the small pile at your feet, leaving you naked and anticipatory and adamant.

Plopping your watch onto your clothes, you squared your shoulders, fixed your posture, and approached the heat of the hidden shower. Its warm embrace evoked such a calm through you, first loosening your shoulders, then steadying your breath.

Beyond the smoke hued barrier was a chamber of luxury, the water cascading from above like it came from an invisible storm cloud; its volume suggested a harsh pressure, but, stepping beneath the jets that seemed to span the entire stall, your skin was graced with the pleasant fall of a spring shower. Looking up, blinking through the misted warmth, you found the navy night sky peering down at you through the clear glass ceiling.

All light but that of the moon left the stall, and when your attention shifted down, you saw him through the sheets of water that kept you apart. The air was thick with fog and mist and night, but he remained the most devastatingly gorgeous person you’d ever seen, ever known. You needed him to be closer, you needed to be closer to him. No matter if you’d been with him those few nights ago, and though you’d spoken just hours ago, there was a tautness that tightened as your steps brought you to him.

Arms at his sides, stance strong and confident, Kylo Ren was a stride away from you, and you stopped. Inky black hair dripped down his neck, and his mouth was set in a flat, unreadable line, but all you could think of was how it felt you were seeing him for the first time all over again. He was different now, body scarred and worn from the passing of time. You did not stare at the red and black that had only been there for such a short time now. You appreciated it.

Kylo observed you, and a measure after your gaze followed the ebony ribbon rested in his countenance, you lifted a hand to it. He tensed and you caught his eyes, giving him a small nod before the very tip of your fourth finger kissed the start of his scar. You watched him, vaguely aware of your hand slipping along the marked path through his brow and down his cheek. Breath pushed from him in eased waves, his eyes danced between yours, and when you reached the line of his jaw and tapped your finger to the raised, pinking skin there, you closed your eyes and leaned up on your toes so you could press an aching kiss to it.

That tenseness that’d clanged into him at your touch was instantly gone, the heated streams above not a match to the stifling relief that fogged from his nares. So near to him, a second hand pushing through wetted, onyx locks, you remembered how he’d stared up at you on the Command Shuttle, how unreadable his expression was when his new scars had still been fresh wounds.

Your touch found the tail end of his healing flesh, and you swallowed down a thick, betraying sob. “Why did you believe me?” you whispered, not looking up to him. “When I told you I hated you and I wanted to quit. When I said,” you winced, “when I called you a bastard and said I wished I could forget you. Why didn’t you fight it longer?”

Kylo was quiet for a moment, body still but not reluctant to the steady meandering of your fingers. Something haunted him when he said, “Irredeemable bastard, if you’ve forgotten.”

“No,” your throat bobbed, “I haven’t. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day. Any, any part of it.” Looking up at him, you smoothed your hand over the scar settled into his shoulder. “After that morning, after everything, why did you believe me?”

“You were saying goodbye,” he murmured, like he’d mulled over that day time and time again and never considered the possibility. “Before Takodana. You knew. He’d gotten to you by then.” A note of betrayal sharpened his tongue, a snarl lighting when he referred to Snoke.

The hand that wasn’t tracing circles along his scarred muscles now toyed with his ear, the tip of your index finger molding to the curved pinnae. “Kylo,” just a breath, nearly drowned by the water ricocheting at your feet, “answer me. Please.”

Smooth, low, he began, “Because who could-,” he swallowed, considering you before starting over, “Because I’ve never known anyone who didn’t hate me. And I’ve always been a bastard. So when you said those things, after that morning, after you’d ran through Starkiller to tell me and kept saying them…”

Memories fluttered behind his eyes, and as their burning brown centered glittered against the navy night, you lifted your hand so you could hold his face, hold it like a parent would caress their child’s tear-sodden cheek. Kylo blinked back to you and you comforted the purpled skin beneath his eye.

He did not want to voice the answers you sought, but you watched as, piece by piece, you dented one of those walls he’d erected in that time-stained interrogation room. Perhaps it was a hopeful thought, but you swore you felt him ease into your hand.

“I stopped fighting because only a fool counters the truth of his life.” Kylo’s throat bobbed, his deep, shadowed gaze swallowing you whole. He caught your hand and led it flat along his broad chest, and then to the panes of his abdomen, placing it over the bruised, raised flesh of the scar you’d yet to explore. “I believed you because there was no reason to doubt you.”

The showering heat from above shielded that which was blurring your vision. He believed you because he believed those things of himself. After seeing him wear so many masks, physical or phantom, you saw it in his eyes that he still thought those things and had for his entire life.

And then it made sense, and the realization dragged jagged, thorn-wrapped talons through your heart. You whispered through the water, wondering if you were speaking only for yourself when you said, “That’s why you didn’t look inside my head. You didn’t think it would show you anything different. You didn’t think I could ever feel differently.”

You ran your thumb along the uneven ridge of the scar forming over his side and tucked your other arm around his waist. With the force that kept moons anchored to their planets, you pulled him in and nestled into the notch of his breastbone.

Through your teeth, “You are not a bastard. Or irredeemable,” your fingers dipped to the center of the healing tissue, “I’ve learned that we make the choices we think are best, and if that’s true, if I believe it? What do either of us have to be redeemed for?”

Kylo said your name, clear as the night that loomed overhead, and a patient finger tipped your chin up. “Nothing. Because there is no redemption for those who do not want it.”

Intensity hardened his face, and once more you felt that sense of equality between him and you. Long fingers smoothed into your drenched hair, and you found a prompt in his brow. Sighing, lungs stuttering, you asked, “What, then, if not redemption?”

The hand that he’d set over yours shifted to your hip, thick fingers prodding at your flesh. Kylo’s touch left your chin and the pad of his thumb rolled over the faint scar that cut into your hairline, a twinge of pain lighting at the memory of its origin; it had healed days ago, but you would never forget the sound of it cracking open when Robbie knocked your skull against the durasteel door.

Kylo stopped musing when he heard you wince, his eyes meeting yours in a stark, unwavering gaze. He smoothed over the blight a final time and proceeded to skate his fingers along your jaw, his thumb coming to rest over your bottom lip. Similar to this morning, yet colder and with a quiet fury breathing beyond his eyes, he looked at you with solidarity.

Calm, sure, adamant, Kylo said, “Retribution.”

A moment to process was spent in his gaze, studying how unbreakable it was, swimming in the shadowed hazel that poured into you. Kylo’s eyes flicked to your lips, and before he could look away, you leaned up so you could reach his own. The swirled hair at his nape slithered through your fingers when you swept you hand from his abdomen and up his torso. Massive, enveloping hands trailed praise along your body until they were mirrored under your breasts.

Exploring his skin, your fingers took residence over the small of his back, digging red trails along the slick surface. You moaned into Kylo’s mouth when a capable hand claimed your supple chest and kneaded into you. He growled in response, a predatory sound that rippled through your nerves and tightened deep, deep in your belly. The pliant pads of his thumbs circled your nipples, the very tips of his nails flicking upward before he added his forefingers and pinched the sensitive peaks to his will.

Kylo mouthed the hinge of your jaw, the bridge of his nose slipping along the bone until you surrendered your neck to him. He hummed against your artery, sucking away the beaded moisture that’d collected for the past few minutes – or had it been hours? Time evaded you further when the schemes of his tongue at your throat delved deeper, revealed themselves further when he laved at your clavicle, shifting between kissing and biting and marking as he made his way to your breastbone.

His muscled back flexed as your fingers routed to his front, dipping low until you found the haze of soft, wet hair that grew from his pelvis. Kylo continued his endeavors and pulled you in by the curve of your back so he could bare your chest to him and run his nose under the base of your breast. His need for your body was evident in the way he bent you to his will, cradling your back so he could have you, but also permitting a sense of safety in the relentless strength that flowed from his forearms through to your marrow.

Near limp in his hold, you tread your fingers down his pelvis and savored the feel of that patch of hair, feeling his pulse beat beneath it, reveling how water collected and fled in such a slow, teasing manner. His chest was to yours, so you felt, rather than heard, the pleasure vibrate from him, deepening when you grazed the very foundations of his hardening shaft. He breathed into your skin, mouthing at your breast and sucking painful paths as he went. The heat of his mouth melded around your nipple, and he bit, and even when you winced and writhed with satisfied hurt, Kylo kept on; not until you were sure he’d drawn blood did his teeth – their unique ridges now throbbing into your breast – leave you, replaced by the salve of his plush, scorching lips. The body of his tongue was structured with adamant, laving over your pebbled peak until poems of pleasure groaned from the depths of your chest.

He leaned you back up and shifted his attention to the remaining half of your body, but you needed him just as much, and you wanted to litter his body with the same pleasure he’d given yours. So, snaking your hands to his jaw, you kissed the hinge opposite to his scar and pecked harder and longer, sucking at his skin like the blood that bruised would grant you eternal life. Falling to your knees in a steady, unrushed descent, you kissed every inch of his abdomen, every bump and ripple of skin that was present around the mending injury. With eyes peering up, hands cherishing the fronts of his thighs, you tongued the scarred tissue and watched him shutter with ecstasy, eyes half-lolling, mouth slackening for a second before he swallowed down whatever satisfaction would have left him.

You teethed at the soft, raised skin, watching him, content when a guiding hand pet down your slick hair. Shifting to his middle, you hummed from one hip bone to the next, feeling the tickle of hair that fled from his naval and dispersed in an even, thick layer of black atop his pubis. Hunger ravaged your throat and you nuzzled into the soft bed of obsidian hair. A kiss to it, then a nip, and then the tip of your nose swirled around the dark patch, his cock twitching at the side of your face.

Anchoring your eyes to his yet again, you dragged the flat of your tongue through the maintained, drenched hair and pushed both your hands along his inner thighs. The muscles beneath your touch sang, streamed just as fluidly as the droplets that were trickling down your spine. Pulling away from him, you faced his cock and observed how it bobbed with your eyes on it, watched it strain for friction when your hands teased both sides of his base, sifting through the dark curls beneath.

The moonlight painted his shaft with subtle, breathtaking contours – a shadow cast under the spongey ridge of his head, light glinting off the misted moisture that’d caught on his flushed shaft. Each prominent vein cast a winding whisper of darkness just a measure from the next. It hypnotized you, the way they overlapped and crossed at points, bulging out from his cock and shifting with each throbbing pulse of blood that clamored through him.

Curious fingers flitted along the heavy, hot column of flesh, tapping it and listening to the thickening breath from the man watching you through ravenous eyes. A smirk curved your mouth, and you peppered a light, whispered kiss to his slit, pushing his cockhead just so it met your teeth, and leading your lips away so the teasing burned through him. You pulled a hand away from his leg and sat back on your calves, taking a breast into it and kneading as he had before, plucking your nipple through each space between your fingers.

“A teasing little whore tonight,” he purred, voice thick.

You hummed, pleased you were getting to him. “I’m your little nurse, remember?” The tip of your tongue teased circles into his frenulum. “And you are my master. Isn’t that right? Master Ren?” Fuck, the title even got to you, cunt fluttering with the hope to be overflowing with him.

“Good girl, teasing whore, nasty slut? Little nurse? You have so many names now.”

“And all of them belong to you.”

You teased his tip and finally laved a flat tongue on the underside of his shaft, flicking it side to side and gripping into his structured, rippling thighs. Something animal, completely primal, roared in his throat, and sooner than you knew, Kylo Ren had joined you on your knees, the weight of his cock slicking down your middle and slapping up to your slit when inertia bounced through it.

A masterful tongue slipped into your mouth and licked your hard pallet, next dropping down and pushing against the side of your own tongue. A muffled moan – one that you were unsure was his or yours or both – clouded through the shower’s downfall. But then a throat-thick huff, aggressive and impatient, gnarled through the air and you were spun on your knees so your back was flush with his chest.

“Yes,” he rumbled, “they do all belong to me.” A possessive hand pushed you into him with might, taking residence in the valley of your breasts. “Your names, your body. Everything.” His hips canted, and the tip of his cock knocked against your clit, fire billowing in your belly, quicker and deeper now.

“Everything,” you echoed, finding his free hand and guiding it so it lay over the permanence etched into your thigh. “I’m- everything. It’s yours. I am yours.”

Unrelenting digits bruised more marks around the one he’d made prior, and when you felt his cock fall in line with your entrance, you thrust into him as he did the same, and you took all of him, at once, in one, fluid, aching motion. An unabashed cry echoed euphoria throughout the moonlit stall. Before you could fully recover from the first thrust, his hand – the free hand that didn’t remain under your own, clutched to your thigh – dipped into your folds and that blooming fire from earlier mushroomed at the graze of his thick digits against the buzzing nerves.

Thrust after thrust after thrust, fucking into you and filling you to the brim and then some each time, knocking the air from your lungs and burgeoning those sweet spots within with each paced, violent pass. All of that pressure combined with the winding circles and strokes he racked your clit with, you felt the breath of climax rise first in your chest, and then upward into your throat.

Kylo was panting by your ear, sucking the skin behind, clutching you to him so it became uncertain where his body ended and yours began. You hooked your arm above your head and clutched at his drenched tresses, flailing for a better grip and settling on clasping your hand onto the back of his neck.

“I feel you,” he groaned.

“Feel me,” you huffed.

“I know you.”

“know me.”

“You’re mine,” your name was laden with yearning claim, lilting from his tongue so it caressed your mind, body, and soul all in one fell swoop.

“Yours,” you heaved, “all, yours.”

You came. Simple. Body swimming in the schemes his fingers and cock and tongue and voice forced into you until it became too much. A few thrusts more and his pace faltered, cum spurting against your walls and dripping out of you as more and more left him. Full lips pressed fleeting, lulling praise into your nape, your shoulder, until he angled your head to his and branded his lips to yours.

Spent, emotionally and physically, you fell into him and enjoyed the image of his legs framing your own. But then your eyes lolled shut and you simply breathed, settling into this moment as best you could, and tried to memorize the tide of his chest slicking against your back.

Barely aware in the vague, misty stall, you only realized that Kylo had begun cleaning you when he guided you back to your feet to rinse you free of soap. Even then you just leaned into his chest and let the jets spray silken streams down your skin. And then you were wrapped in a heated towel and cradled in his arms, leaving the steamy refresher and coming into the gentle atmosphere within the golden gossamer canopy.

With less than a word, maybe a breath, the light from above waned to nothingness, and the room was black save for the glinting eyes that studied your own. The towel discarded to the floor, you now lay beneath the thick comforter and linen sheets of Kylo Ren’s bed. Both naked, you huddled together in the center of the expansive mattress, legs wrapped together in an impossible knot, each breathing in the other’s warmth.

Ease trickled into your muscles, and you shifted so your forehead could rest in the heat of his chest.

“What changed? From the other night?” you yawned. “What convinced you? About Snoke.”

He was tired, too, you knew, the hand tucking you into him tracing lazy, distracting circles into your back to keep him from sleep. “Perspective, really. Seeing things clearly for the first time in… Seeing things clearly.”

For now, fatigue caressing you, that was an answer you could accept. He’d given you more of his mind tonight than ever before, and you did not care to mar that fact with a half-wit interrogation. Perhaps you would listen to him this time, given how little you potentially had left, and do as he’d said this morning.

Trust me first.

It was sound advice, and not worth questioning on the eve of your first shift on Canto Bight. So you nuzzled into him and giggled when the tip of your nose nudged that black healing ribbon over his collar bone.

“I like your scars,” you hummed.

You could not be certain, sleep plunging you into its riptide, but just before it pulled you under, you swore you heard the fatigued rumble of Kylo Ren’s voice whisper, “I like yours too.”

#keeping your promise #st kyp #kylo ren #kylo ren fanfic #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x you #kylo ren smut #angst #fluff #ao3 #wattpad

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inactivepersonnnnnn · 4 years

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Markiplier played the newest game from the Henry Stickmin series (Completing the Mission) and I’m crying it’s so good-

(Me just gushing over stuff after the cut because I don’t want to spoil and I typed out so much stuff)

The Henry Stickmin series lets plays were one of the first videos I’ve watched from Mark. Why is this a big deal? If I hadn’t watched them, believe it or not but my life would probably be so much different from how it is now. So, seeing him playing a game from the series gave me MASSIVE nostalgia. Also has made me realise that I’ve been watching his content for five years which frankly is amazing.

If you don’t know the Henry Stickmin series, you better play/watch a playthrough of them before reading because I’m going to spoil it so much. From what I know, the remaster of games 1-5 as well as the newest one is found on Steam but the original 1-5 are on Newgrounds and Stickpage.com. (Technically there are 7 in the series but whatever)

I really like the references in this one (mainly because I got a lot of them) and they were hilarious. The Undertale reference made me laugh a bit, I think I would’ve liked it more when I was Undertale trash 5 years ago. The Minecraft references were pretty good, the one where Henry was bridging to the rocket made me laugh waaay too much. Them making him go ‘oough’ when he died was a good nod to the old death sound.

Aside from that, the text on the fail screens have just been amazing. I specifically remember the drill fail where it said something like ‘haha drill go brrrr’ as well as the part where they downgraded the animation and said the budget ran out.

The choices this time were awesome. I LOVE the fight scenes. I don’t really watch anime but I really like how they put in one of the characters just talking during the fight and explaining everything. The funniest part for me though would be when you pick the barrel, Henry and Ellie get shot up, and you need to do a combo with Charles and the choice ‘Grab’ just makes him give you a high five before you fall. That fail had me laughing so hard it hurt. It’s probably one of the funniest fails along with Henry 360 no scoping Ellie, Charles crashing the helicopter, and the dancing distraction (all from Fleeing the Complex).

The callbacks to the previous games were also really heccing great, the dancing distraction fail was one of my favourites and I love how they made it work this time. The teleporter too, the entire scene was so well made and I love how Henry didn’t even want to use it because it screwed him over so many times. Oh! I almost forgot, in one route, the fail screen says ‘Henry will remember that’ which is a really nice nod because it references the text you see from the Ghost Inmate ending when you leave Ellie behind (’Ellie will remember that’)

I also really love how the characters from the government, the tophat clan, and the wall all appear in the game. It’s just- I love it, so so much.

Ellie and Henry’s dynamic is also really, really good. It reminds me of Joe and Cleo’s (Hermitcraft) dynamic. On his own, Joe’s chaotic but he makes it work in his own way. On her own, Cleo feels more organised and logical. Together, they do stupid things. (Terrible summary but give me a break, it’s late and I’m tired but I wanna finish this) I just really, really like their friendship and I find it so great that they’ve only known each other for like what- a day or two? And, Ellie trusts him enough to follow through with his plans even when she doesn’t fully understand them.

Okay, Ellie and Henry are great but can I just gush about Charles?

Best. Character. In. The. Game.

Him with his plans back in Infiltrating the Airship and Fleeing the Complex were enough to make me love this guy but Completing the Mission just made Charles SO GOOD. I love his chemistry with Henry (plus Ellie) and his dialogue is absolutely hilarious. Seriously, he probably has the best lines in the entire series.

Also, he is SUCH a good friend. He’s only met Henry either once or twice (depending on the endings) but in the Valiant Hero ending, he seemed perfectly fine with exploding because Henry was safe and the mission was complete. And, his final lines DESTROYED ME. His dialogue was all written out in the captions but the voice never completed it.

When watching the video, I legitimately CRIED for Charles’ death. Markiplier did NOT leave enough time to just process and get over his death. In that ending, Charles died a hero but it was so SAD. His final lines- oh g od.

“We did it though. We got' em. Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greates-”

...

That being said, favourite ending (and the one I consider canon in my head) is Triple Threat. I want an ending with both accomplices alive please.

I’m still not over Charles’ death aaaaa-

#henry stickmin #charles calvin #ellie rose #late night salty

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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Part 13 of the other side AU concept! I am going to eventually pull these apart into parts one (Devil’s in the Details) and two (Carry the Fire) and do edits/rewrites to the extent they meet my standards for going up on AO3 as chaptered, titled fics, but I don’t currently have the mental and emotional energy for that. (Have you...met January 2021?) In the meantime here are my in-progress playlists, if there’s interest: Devil’s in the Details and Carry the Fire.

About 5.8K below the break.

Zeb got up to keep watch, since he had the best ears of the group; Kanan took his place on the tree root and Ezra leaned back to keep his head tipped against Kanan’s knee, barely able to comprehend that single point of connection. Kanan’s presence radiated through the Force with startling solidity, as if after years of shadows someone had suddenly turned on a light in a dark room. Ezra had to fight back his urge to roll around in that strength like an overjoyed Loth-cat in a patch of sunlight.

“I don’t know exactly what happened when the Chimaera went down,” he said eventually. He hesitated, not wanting to get into the fact that at the time he had still been locked in his cell. He didn’t think he could get away without telling them that at all, but he didn’t want to lead off with it if he could help it. “I wasn’t up in the bridge – Thrawn and Pellaeon didn’t really want me near anything important. What I heard later was that the Vong tricked the Scylla and the Charybdis – they’re the only other ships left in the Seventh – into leaving the Chimaera, and once the cruisers were out of reach they hit the Chimaera with everything they had. Their ships aren’t like ours,” he added slowly. “They’re living things, for one – I have no idea how that works. They’re not shielded, but they’ve got some kind of – of miniature black holes that move around on their ships, swallowing up most shots before they can get through at all. Dovin basals, that’s what they call them. TIE pilots don’t know how to deal with them – ship gunners either, for that matter. I don’t know how they work; the Chimaera’s scientists were trying to figure it out.”

He glanced over at Sabine in time to see her eyebrows snap together, obviously trying to work it out for herself without even having seen one. She still had the piece of broken beskar in her hand, like she couldn’t comprehend what had happened to it.

“The Chimaera had already taken a lot of damage by the time the Vong started boarding,” Ezra went on slowly. “Zafira – that’s the death trooper captain – let me out around then, but I was never on the bridge or anything. I guess Thrawn had the idea that the Vong ships might not be able to survive in atmosphere since they’re alive and they live in space, so he started bringing the Chimaera down into the planet’s atmosphere.”

Sabine whistled softly. “Did it work?”

Ezra shrugged. “You saw the Chimaera.” He was quiet for a moment, remembering the desperate battle in the narrow corridors of the star destroyers – lights flickering as power was cut off, then restored, emergency notifications about hull breaches still blaring out absurdly over the sound of blasterfire and Vong war cries. He would have given his right hand for his lightsaber.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat and went on, “Thrawn sent Pellaeon and some of the other bridge crew to the auxiliary bridge so that they weren’t in the same place. I know they were arguing about it – I think Pellaeon wanted to evacuate and Thrawn still thought he could win.”

“Zeb and Chop and I searched the bridge,” Sabine said. “There wasn’t much of it left. We had to get into the communications room computers.”

Ezra nodded. “Yeah. I was with the death troopers – we ran into Pellaeon on his way down to the auxiliary bridge and stayed with him. The Vong took Thrawn, the rest of the bridge crew, others – there’s no accurate count on how many died and how many the Vong took captive.” He resisted the urge to say that as far as he was concerned, the Vong were welcome to keep Thrawn; with his luck they’d team up and that was the last thing he wanted or needed. “No one was in the auxiliary bridge when the bridge went; by the time we got there it was too late to pull the Chimaera up. Pellaeon ordered the evacuation then; the Vong were already pulling out. I guess they got what they wanted. By then the Scylla had come back; Charybdis was still trading punches with the Vong out in space.”

He pulled his legs up and rested his chin on his knees. He didn’t think he would ever forget the sight of the Chimaera crashing, which he had seen from one of the evacuating gunships. The shock wave when the star destroyer had struck the ground had tossed the gunships around with toys; two of them had crashed into each other and exploded. Even the Scylla, making a reckless atmospheric approach in an attempt to save as many of the Chimaera’s crewmembers as it could, had been thrown aside. Ezra never wanted to give Imperial any more credit than necessary, but the fact that Commander Kisujo had kept the Scylla from crashing was probably a minor miracle, especially given how much damage the cruiser had already sustained.

“Pellaeon went back afterwards to look for survivors,” Ezra said eventually. “There weren’t any. There were Vong hunting parties all over the place, though, seeding their blasted worldshaping plants.”

Hera stirred. “Those are the plants all over the Chimaera? We thought the ship must have been there for years until we got into the computers.”

Ezra nodded. “This planet is already pretty close to what they like in a world –” He gestured at the jungle that sat heavy and waiting all around them, “– but I guess they do it as a matter of course whenever they’re grounded for a while. Change the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the groundwater, destroy anything that looks like technology, enslave the natives – I don’t think this place has any, though.”

“So what are you doing out here?” Zeb asked over his shoulder.

“Looking for the Vong,” Ezra said. He rubbed his aching shoulder, where a Vong warrior had slammed him into a bulkhead on the Chimaera, and which had gotten further banged up when the shock wave from the Chimaera’s crash had tossed them his gunship around like confetti. Getting thrown into that tree hadn’t helped it either, nor did it help that it was the same shoulder he had been shot in six years ago. “Pellaeon thought he’d send someone who actually had a chance at making it back. And who he didn’t mind losing,” he added sourly. “TIE patrols spotted the Vong camp out this way – or the one who made it back said so, anyway. Pellaeon wants Thrawn back for some reason. And the rest of the crew, I guess. Even if they’re Imps they don’t deserve what the Vong will do to them.”

He fell silent, thinking about some of the holos he had seen of Vong-controlled planets the Chimaera had found. He had only been allowed groundside on one of those occasions, when Thrawn had decided he wanted to see what a Force-user would make of it, and he’d wanted to claw his own skin off within minutes of touching down.

“This isn’t the invasion fleet,” he said eventually. “I don’t know where they are. Thrawn thought it was some kind of advance scout fleet to figure out how hard the Vong would have to hit the Empire.”

Hera exchanged a look with Kanan over Ezra’s head. Sabine and Zeb both swore, Sabine in Mando’a, Zeb in Lasat.

“What?” Ezra said. “What did I miss? Uh, besides everything that happened in the last six years. You can just give me the highlights.”

Sabine rested the piece of beskar on her knee and ticked them off on her fingers. “Tarkin’s dead, Vader’s dead, the Emperor’s dead, Alderaan got blown up, the Empire’s in pieces but Palpatine still tried to destroy it from beyond the grave, the New Republic’s being run by idiots. Did I forget anything? Oh, the Jedi are back but all they do is argue about doctrine.”

Kanan sighed. “That’s an oversimplification.”

“Wait – what?” Ezra said.

“Not everyone on the Provisional Council is an idiot,” Hera said.

“Wait, what?” Ezra felt like he had just been hit with a very large brick. “Palpatine’s dead?” he said, focusing on that.

“Probably,” Zeb said. “Skywalker’s the only one who saw it happen.”

“Who’s – wait, like Anakin Skywalker? But he’s –” He stopped abruptly, remembering what had happened on Malachor.

There was an awkward silence shared between Kanan and Hera; Zeb and Sabine just looked at each other and shrugged. Sabine said, “If Palpatine was still around there wouldn’t be a dozen warlords – mostly former Imperials – running around trying to carve up the Empire between them.”

“Yeah, and maybe the Provisional Council would stop arguing with each other,” Zeb grumbled.

“The Jedi?” Ezra said a little wildly.

“Yeah, all three of them,” Zeb said.

“I’ll explain later,” Kanan said quickly. “It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the Death Star,” Sabine said. “Mark one and mark two.”

“The what?”

“Let’s focus on our current situation, shall we?” Hera said quickly.

“Don’t even get me started on Mandalore.”

“I’ve always tried not to!”

“Hera went to another universe.” Sabine considered. “And she has a baby.”

“What?” Ezra almost fell off the tree root twisting around to look at Kanan and Hera.

Hera bit her lip. “Jacen’s not a baby, he’s six,” she said. She looked at Kanan and smiled, soft and fond. “He’s back on Ryloth with my father.”

“I need a drink,” Ezra muttered, then, louder, “Congratulations. Wait, you, went to another universe?”

“Kanan too,” Sabine said. “Oh, Ahsoka’s back too, but that was a while ago.”

Ezra rubbed at his forehead. “Okay, can we catch me up later?”

“The relevant part is that neither the Imperial Remnant nor the New Republic is in any position to repel a full-scale invasion,” Hera said. She sighed. “The only reason the New Republic let us come out here – officially, I should say – is because there have been rumors about Thrawn for years. If he’s in contact with anyone in the Remnant –”

Ezra shrugged. “Believe me when I say that I’m the last person Thrawn ever talked to. About anything.”

“How much of the Seventh is left?” Kanan asked.

“The Scylla and the Charybdis are the only ships left, and they both got pretty beat up in that last fight with the Vong,” Ezra said, thinking back. Pellaeon didn’t tell him much more than Thrawn did, but he had seen the makeshift command post in the Scylla before he’d left. “Everyone’s taken pretty heavy losses since Lothal –” He looked up suddenly, his heart in his throat. “Lothal –”

“Fine,” Sabine reassured him quickly. “Ryder’s governor again, everyone’s fine, Loth-cats as far as the eye can see.”

Ezra’s shoulders slumped in relief. Eventually, he said, “At least ten thousand back at Chimaera Camp and on Scylla and Charybdis, but I don’t think they’ve got more than fifteen thousand left altogether. I guess it depends how many the Vong took off the Chimaera.”

Kanan drew in his breath sharply. Ezra couldn’t blame him; the Chimaera’s full muster was for forty thousand, but it hadn’t held that many people since well before the purrgil had reduced it substantially. Most star destroyers, Pellaeon had remarked once, seldom held a full muster unless they were expecting to go into battle; in the normal course of things a star destroyer simply didn’t actually need nearly ten thousand stormtroopers who would do nothing but take up resources and start fights.

“That many troops plus the cruisers is enough to give any of the warlords a leg up on the others,” Sabine said practically. “Even without a star destroyer – or Thrawn, for that matter, I can’t see him letting Isard or Zsinj hold his leash.” When Ezra frowned at her, she clarified, “Those are two of the warlords running around making trouble. Isard used to run the ISB, Zsinj is just annoying.”

“He’s gotten a lot of people killed,” Zeb said harshly. “That’s more than ‘just annoying.’”

Sabine made a gesture of apology. When Ezra looked uncertainly between them, Zeb explained, “Before I volunteered for this, I was with New Republic Special Forces – the Pathfinders, not the droppers. The droppers are all crazy.”

Ezra filed that away to ask about later.

Kanan and Hera shared one of those silent moments of communication that Ezra had been so familiar with half a decade earlier, then Hera said, “We’ve stayed here too long already. Ezra, were you on your way to or back from the Yuuzhan Vong encampment?”

“To. I know about where it is. And I can’t sense the Vong –” He glanced at Kanan and saw the older man’s nod, acknowledging that it wasn’t any fault in Ezra’s command of the Force, “– but I can sense the captives they’ve got. And what they’re doing to this planet.”

Kanan nodded again, his expression grim.

“Will you take us there?” Hera asked. “We’d better see this, and then we can decide what we’re going to do. Regardless, the New Republic has to know.”

Ezra nodded, a little puzzled at the odd tone in her voice, then realized abruptly what might be going through her head right now. “I’m not one of them,” he said. “I didn’t switch sides. It wasn’t all awful, but I spent most of the past six years in a cell except when Thrawn decided to haul me out in case having a Force-user around helped. No one on the Chimaera ever forgot whose fault it was they were out there,” he added, gritting his teeth against the sudden quaver in his voice. He touched a finger to the white streak in his hair; it was probably invisible in this poor light, but it was part of the reason he kept most of his hair cropped short these days. “I got this the last time some of them decided I should pay for that and shot me in the head. That was the fourth time someone tried. Thrawn executed a hundred and thirty-seven people for it, including all the death trooper officers.”

He heard Zeb’s growl, low and furious, and the leather of Sabine’s gloves creak as she closed a fist.

“I’m not an Imperial,” Ezra said, fisting his own hands against his knees. He had nightmares about that day sometimes, about getting dragged out of his cell and down to the starboard hangar bay; the death trooper commander, who had been in charge of the attempted lynching, had wanted as many crewmen as possible to see it. Ezra had heard later that there had been a significant number of the conspirators who had wanted to execute Thrawn as well, blaming him for bringing Ezra onboard, getting them lost in the Unknown Regions, and attracting the attention of the Yuuzhan Vong. As it was, Thrawn, Pellaeon, and most of the other senior officers who weren’t also in on the conspiracy had been locked in one of the conference rooms before they had managed to get out. He had found out later that Thrawn had actually wanted to execute more of the conspirators, but had decided not to under the circumstances. As a result Ezra had spent most of his time in the medbay worried that one of those who had escaped the executions would come after him to finish the job.

He looked at Kanan, knowing that he would be able to sense it even if he couldn’t see it, and added, “I’m still a Jedi.”

“I know,” Kanan said, reaching down to squeeze Ezra’s shoulder.

Ezra felt something tight inside him unknot. He reached up to grasp Kanan’s fingers, feeling sick with relief.

“I believe you,” Hera said. She looked over his head to Kanan, who nodded in response. “I believe you,” she repeated. “We’ll have a job of it convincing New Republic Intelligence, but let’s not borrow trouble before we have to.”

Before they left, Ezra found his sniper rifle and the sheared-off barrel. He handed the barrel to Sabine so that she could inspect the severed edge, comparing it to the dead amphistaff, and broke down the rifle until it was in its heavy blaster pistol configuration. He packed the rifle components away rather than leave them there; the machinists back at Chimaera Camp would either be able to repair them or use them for another purpose. The pistol went on his belt in the holster he had brought in case he needed to use it in that configuration.

Sabine returned the barrel to him and regarded the amphistaff’s corpse thoughtfully. Ezra had already tried and failed to get his vibroknife out of its neck, to his disgust.

“Can I take this with us or can they track it?”

“No idea,” Ezra said. “It’s never come up before.”

“Don’t take the risk,” Hera said.

Sabine sighed regretfully but admitted, “I’m guessing this isn’t the last time we’re going to run into these things.”

“The Vong are worse than grass ticks,” Ezra said, looking around until he found where he had dropped his night vision goggles. When Zeb reached for them, Ezra shook his head and explained about the amphistaff poison, which had already eaten through the lenses and left a brown patch on the ground where the goggles had lain. Ezra wouldn’t touch them again; he had seen too many people die from a drop of it on bare skin. It ate through stormtrooper armor only a little more slowly than it did cloth. At least five people from the Chimaera had had limbs amputated where they must have touched somewhere it had been, even if the venom itself was no longer visible.

“I’m really starting to dislike these things,” Zeb growled.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Ezra said. He looked around until he saw the thud bug that the Vong warrior had thrown at him early in the fight, and found it lodged into the thick bark of one of the nearby trees, which must have prevented it from returning to the warrior the way most thud bugs did. The fact that it hadn’t taken a chunk out of the tree impressed him, since he had seen them rip holes in durasteel plating a few times. That must have been very hard wood.

He pointed the thud bug out to Zeb and Sabine; Kanan and Hera were talking quietly to each other a little ways away. “We’ve been calling them thud bugs – they’re some kind of beetle; they can change their gravity somehow to hit incredibly hard. The Vong throw them – razor bugs too. That name’s probably self-explanatory.”

Sabine fingered a scratch on what remained of her armor. She looked oddly unbalanced without the missing portion of her breast plate, which she had stowed in one of her hip-pouches. “Ran into a couple of those. Lightsaber goes through them,” she noted, glancing at Kanan.

“Does it go through the armor?” Ezra asked curiously, hoping the answer was yes. He would feel better to know that something did.

She and Zeb both shook their heads. “Kanan’s real good at finding soft and tender places, though.”

Kanan turned his head at the sound of his name. Ezra felt the flicker of his attention at the edge of his mind; he hadn’t been listening in on their conversation. He was exquisitely aware of Kanan’s presence now that he knew the other man was there; if he had been paying more attention he might have realized when the Ghost arrived in-system. As it was, he had had his mind focused on the area immediately around him, trying to make certain that the animals and plants of the planet would tell him the Yuuzhan Vong crept up on him. He hadn’t flung his mind wide into the Force. No one on the Chimaera was Force-sensitive; the Empire screened even the weakest Force-sensitives out of the service.

He might have been more concerned about the way his awareness of Kanan’s presence was blotting out his awareness of the rest of the Force, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Kanan was here. All he wanted to do was creep over to Kanan’s side and bask in the sheer strength of his presence in the Force, like a Loth-cat in a patch of sunlight.

They left soon afterwards. Ezra took the lead with Zeb, wishing for the night vision goggles but knowing he didn’t need them. Even before Malachor he had trained blindfolded with Kanan – which he still remembered vigorously protesting at the time – and afterwards he had worked twice as hard at it, even though he had never told Kanan as much. He didn’t need his eyes when he had the Force, and with all his attention on the Force, the planet itself would tell him if the Vong were approaching, let alone Zeb’s sensitive ears and nose. Zeb had confided to Ezra that this planet reminded him of Lasan before its fall – Lira San, he had said, was nice enough, but somewhere between too similar and not similar enough to be comfortable for long. If Lira San was anything like, Ezra didn’t want to visit; he had already had enough of jungle planets and this was the only one he had been to.

He pushed his awareness of Kanan’s nearness to the back of his mind with a force of effort. Six months ago he had woken up from a sound sleep, shocked and shaking and knowing that some essential truth of the universe had just changed. Since it had happened he had touched that knowledge a hundred times a day, trying to work it out without having any way to do so. He had spent long hours in meditation, reaching out into the Force and falling just short every time. He had thought he might go mad with frustration. Thrawn, who never missed anything, had certainly noticed, even if Ezra had refused to say what had caused his sudden discontent. If Ezra had thought that there was any way he could get back to known space on his own, he might have made a break for it. He had considered it – Thrawn had certainly made the point enough that as a Force-user Ezra should have been able to – but by the time he had nerved himself up for it the Vong had begun hunting them in deadly earnest.

Being back here with them felt odd.

Ezra had certainly dreamed about it enough times, and if he hadn’t been so aware of his bad shoulder he might have thought that he was back on the Chimaera, sound asleep. He knew it was a danger, too; that his awareness of them ran the risk of distracting him at a crucial moment. As much as he pushed his knowledge of their presence away, trying to keep his mind only on the simple facts rather than the emotions involved, he knew he was putting them all at risk. He had to trust that between the five of them, they would be able to tell if Vong warriors searching for their missing patrol approached.

It took the better part of three hours before they reached the edge of the jungle. Halfway through, Ezra and Kanan both sensed the passage of another Vong patrol – sensed the wildlife and plant life reacting to it, rather – but the warriors were far away and showed no sign of approaching them. Dawn was filtering through the forest canopy in a gray-green haze as they ghosted up to the edge of the tree line. Like the path Ezra had taken earlier, the jungle ended barely a meter short of the cliff-face, forming a kind of bowl around the valley below. Ezra eased forward on his belly, pulling the riflescope out of his pack. He could sense the passage of another Vong patrol on the rim of the cliff, but it wasn’t near enough to be concerned with unless they were here for a while. He didn’t intend to stick around longer than he could help it.

The valley below boasted a kidney-shaped lake with large patches of some kind of plant life growing on the surface – Ezra reached out curiously with his mind and winced when he realized that they were Vong rather than native. The jungle around it had been cut back to make space for what he thought were either structures or grounded ships, all of them looking out of place here – not quite the right color or texture, with shapes that were subtly off enough to make him wince. He counted several dozen that looked like enormously oversized snail shells, a kind of orange-y green with a faint oily sheen to them. Something else, as large as a cruiser, he thought might be a grounded ship; its material was something like coral, or at least that was what it looked like through his riflescope.

Figures moved through the structures and ships – a few he recognized as Vong warriors, each of them unique in their vonduun crab armor; others were Vong from the different castes. He could sense humans down there, the prisoners taken off the Chimaera, but couldn’t spot them.

Sabine and Hera eased up on either side of him, Hera with a pair of macrobinoculars and Sabine with her rangefinder lowered. Ezra didn’t have to turn his head to know that Zeb and Kanan were hanging back, keeping watch against a Vong patrol.

Keeping his voice barely more than a whisper, Ezra pointed out the grounded cruiser-analogue, then the coralskipper starfighters that passed by overhead before landing alongside the starship. He hadn’t seen them in person before, just in holograms.

“Fast?” Hera asked him very quietly.

“About the same as a TIE, I think,” he murmured back. “They’ve got dovin basals – miniature black holes – like the cruisers, too, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Hmm.”

He had to grin at the hint of considering challenge in that syllable. If anyone could not only outfly a coralskipper solo but also shoot it down – the TIEs and handful of remaining TIE Defenders had to go after them in swarms – then it was Hera.

After a brief moment of hesitation, Ezra reached out with the Force, sorting through the thousands of human minds as he searched for the alien one. He couldn’t sense the Vong and their living tools at all.

“Thrawn’s there,” he said after a moment, not bothering to conceal his disappointment the way he had done when Pellaeon had asked him to find out if the grand admiral was still alive. He was pretty sure Pellaeon had been able to tell his feelings anyway, but it was the principle of the thing; Pellaeon was fully capable of having him shot as more trouble than he was worth.

Sabine snorted softly. “Might have saved us some trouble if he was dead,” she grumbled.

“Tell me about it,” Ezra muttered back. He peered through the riflescope again, letting the Force direct him. The shell-structures seemed to be where the prisoners were being kept, Thrawn among them. He couldn’t tell exactly which one Thrawn was in, but he supposed that when the Imperials went after him they would probably want to break all their missing troops out as well, since it would be about as much trouble. Unless Pellaeon tried to make him do it on his own, of course, Ezra thought, and started to grimace at the thought before he realized abruptly that that was no longer an option Pellaeon had.

He was reaching back reflexively for Kanan before he even realized he was doing so, his mind brushing against Kanan’s in the Force for a brief instant of reassurance. He felt Kanan’s response as if his master had gripped him briefly on the shoulder, calm and collected, though he knew Kanan hadn’t moved from his sentry position. Ezra turned his face down, his eyes burning with unshed tears.

Sabine elbowed him gently. “Hey,” she whispered. “It’s all right. We’ve got you.”

Six years ago Ezra might have said something like you took your time about it, but he just nodded. If they could have come sooner they would have, and if they had come sooner, then Kanan – Kanan might not be back. Six years in the Unknown Regions with Thrawn and his merry band of sociopaths was a sacrifice he was happy to make for Kanan’s return.

They watched the Vong camp for another two hours, watching the mist burn off the lake as the sun rose. Some of the lower caste Vong went into the shell-structures, probably to feed the Imperial prisoners; none of the Imperials came out. Ezra did a rapid estimate with the Force and came up with somewhere between three and four thousand prisoners, which he supposed would make Pellaeon happy; the worst case scenario had been that all the crewmembers unaccounted for from the Chimaera were dead. Hera didn’t look thrilled when he conveyed this information to her.

“Well, we’re not putting them all on the Ghost, that’s for sure,” Zeb grumbled; he was close enough to overhear.

All Hera said was, “I suppose we’ll have to talk to Captain Pellaeon.”

Not long after this exchange, Kanan said softly, “There’s a patrol about two klicks west of us. We’d better clear off, if you’ve got all you need.”

“Not all we need, but all we’re going to get, I think,” Hera murmured. The three of them retreated from the cliff face into the cover of the jungle.

Ezra got to his feet, wincing at muscles that had gone sore after two hours lying on the ground. Kanan was still sitting cross-legged on the forest floor, facing away from them with his eyes closed and his expression calm. Ezra was barely aware of stepping towards him until he found himself reaching down to touch Kanan’s shoulder, wanting to reassure himself of Kanan’s presence. Kanan turned his face up towards him, opening his eyes, and smiled. Ezra drew his hand back, embarrassed, then grabbed Kanan’s forearm to help pull him to his feet, the hard edges on Kanan’s bracer digging into his fingers.

Despite their precarious position, Ezra still rather wanted to drape himself on Kanan’s neck and weep.

Hera came up behind him and put a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before Chopper decides to take the Ghost and come find us,” she said.

Ezra nodded, then nearly had a heart attack as Zeb ghosted out of the jungle to join them; his purple fur and green bodysuit and armor blended in perfectly with the foliage. If this was true of all the Lasat Ezra was definitely never going to Lira San.

They left silently, moving through the undergrowth with surprising delicacy for the size of their group. Ezra, reaching out with the Force, found the passage of the same Vong patrol that Kanan had sensed. If the disappearance of the patrol they had killed had been noted, it wasn’t evident from the way the Vong had acted. Ezra would have thought that they would have had better security, but apparently not. Either that, or the Force had led them to avoid it on their approach.

The sun continued to rise steadily as they made their way single-file through the jungle. Zeb took point this time, with Sabine just behind him. While Zeb blended into the forest around them, the sunlight through the tree canopy dappled Sabine’s armor as she moved through it; Ezra couldn’t decide what colors it was and suspected he wouldn’t know for sure until they were back at the Ghost. Kanan and Hera brought up the rear, nearly soundless though Ezra was excruciatingly aware of Kanan’s presence.

After a sleepless night and a fight with the Vong, not to mention the intense emotion of the past few hours, he was so tired that he was nearly delirious with it. Everything had taken on a slightly bright edge; he could have fought if he had to, but he was just as glad for the moment that neither the Vong nor the native wildlife crossed paths with them. After almost a full day out here, he was also extremely aware of the fact that he had spent most of the past six years locked in a cell, with only occasional breaks to go nearly get killed, either by the Imperials or by whoever they happened to be fighting at the moment. He was almost tired enough that the cell was starting to sound appealing.

The day wore on, the heat and humidity growing steadily. Ezra kept his weary eyes on Sabine’s gaudily painted jetpack in front of him; it wasn’t the same color that it had been six years earlier – he would have been shocked if it had been – but the basic winged design was more or less the same, though he could spot differences. He was so focused on that to stay on his feet that he didn’t realize they had reached their destination until the flicker of movement behind transparisteel caught his eye.

Ezra stiffened, his hand going to his blaster. It took him a few moments for his gaze to focus; he was expecting nothing more than the endless expanse of forest, not the Ghost parked in a clearing just barely large enough for the ship. He stared blankly at the ship, unable to believe that it was actually here after so many years.

Kanan closed a hand on his shoulder as the ramp unfolded. Chopper, apparently unchanged from the last time Ezra had seen him, appeared at the top of the ramp, waving one of his manipulators and shouting in annoyance about how they had gone for hours, they could have died, how dare they leave him all alone. He stopped midway through his tirade, apparently having spotted Ezra.

Kanan pushed Ezra forward gently. Hera was walking past him, her own shoulders slumping with weariness; Sabine paused to turn on one foot, her gaze traveling over the clearing. Zeb was already on his way up the ramp with a comment to Chopper.

Ezra took one step forward, then another one. Chopper came down the ramp towards him as he reached it, chirping a cautious question.

“Yeah,” Ezra said. “Yeah, it’s me.”

He started to kneel down so that they were on the same level, then overbalanced and sat down hard instead. Chopper rolled up to him, close enough to touch but not doing so. Ezra reached out, hesitating for an instant before he laid his hands on Chopper’s chassis. The metal was warm to touch, the pain smooth beneath his fingers except where it was starting to chip away. He could feel the hum of the droid’s inner workings against his palms.

“Yeah, Chop,” he said again, and started to cry, his head bent forward against Chopper’s dome so that none of the others could see. “It’s me. It’s me.”

#other side au tag #cut scenes and concept writing #as always comments are appreciated #there's less in the details playlist because I'm working on the fire part of the story at present

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sohotthateveryonedied · 3 years

Text

I Die Without You (ch. 1)

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Conner stands in front of him now, putting Tim at eye-level with his chin. When Tim doesn’t look up from his notes, Conner blocks the data sheet with a translucent hand. “You’re being a dumbass. You need to start taking care of yourself again.”

Tim turns away. “Yeah, well, I need my best friend back more. You should be all for that, so would it kill you to shut up and let me work?” Fuck. He needs a pill. He takes one from the handful he keeps in his utility belt and swallows it dry, ignoring Conner’s damning stare.

Conner Kent has been dead for three months, two weeks, and six days. “Initiate cloning attempt number twenty-one.” Tim can feel eyes on his back, burning through the skin and searing his spine. If he didn’t already know that ghosts can’t use heat vision, he might be concerned. “I can feel you judging me.” “Good. My face is sore from scowling.” Conner is leaning against one of the room’s glass pods, his arms crossed over the torn S-symbol on his chest. His normally carefree atmosphere has been replaced with an air of judgement—a mile leap from the Conner Kent who was all brass and thunder, jokes and lifting contests with Cassie. It makes Tim feel like even more of a creep than he already does, skulking around in the basement of Titans Tower with Conner’s eyes on him the entire time. The shame of his actions has weight now, getting heavier with every advancement he makes. He resents Conner’s presence as much as he needs it. Craves it. “You need to stop this,” Conner says, not for the first time. Tim doesn’t look at him. He prints out the latest data report in a foot-long sheet. There must be some component to the cloning process that he’s missing. Some bonding agent he hasn’t considered. “Then drag me out of the room.” “I’m serious, Tim. You passed the point of crazy, like, two weeks ago.” “Since when is saving a life considered crazy?” “Since there’s no life left to save. I’m dead, Tim. And yeah, it sucks, but there’s nothing we can do about it. You can’t keep working like this.” “Watch me.”

“You’re killing yourself. You realize that, right?” If Tim could walk away knowing that Conner wouldn’t just follow him like a worm on a string, he would. “When’s the last time you ate? The last time you slept? Do you even know what day it is?” “January.” “This is irresponsible. It’s stupid. If Bruce knew how far gone you were, he’d take you off active duty for a week. Probably longer.” “Which is why he’ll never find out.” “That’s not the point, Tim!” Conner makes no audible footsteps, but Tim can sense when he comes nearer, like a tugging sensation in his stomach. Tim has his own gravitational pull, it seems; any ghosts in the area are drawn towards him like magnets. He can always feel Kon, no matter how far away he is. Conner stands in front of him now, putting Tim at eye-level with his chin. When Tim doesn’t look up from his notes, Conner blocks the data sheet with a translucent hand. “You’re being a dumbass. You need to start taking care of yourself again.” Tim turns away. “Yeah, well, I need my best friend back more. You should be all for that, so would it kill you to shut up and let me work?” Fuck. He needs a pill. He takes one from the handful he keeps in his utility belt and swallows it dry, ignoring Conner’s damning stare. He’s been needing more, lately. He hadn’t noticed until Conner brought it up a few days ago, but Tim has upped the dosage to six, seven pills a day. He tries not to think about what’s changed. Even if he is using drugs to cope with the circumstances the universe has thrown his way, it’s not like he would be completely clean, otherwise. Feeling like his grief is miles away with every dose is just a happy side effect. It’s manageable. Conner shakes his head. “I can’t believe you.” “What am I doing that’s so wrong?” “The fact that you shouldn’t be doing this in the first place. I’ve accepted what happened. Why can’t you?” “Maybe I don’t want to accept it.” “Do you really think that bringing me back to life is going to help anything?” “Don’t you want to be alive? To see Clark again, Cassie, Martha, everyone who loved you? Don’t you want that?” “Of course I do.” Tim throws his hands in the air. “Then why are you fighting me on this? How can you stand there and tell me that I’m not doing the right thing when I’m trying to accomplish something that’ll make everyone happy?” “Because it won’t work.” Conner materializes in Tim’s path again, forcing Tim to look at him. It’s painful to see the open wounds on once impenetrable skin, the smoldering edges of his t-shirt. Instead, he focuses on Conner’s face. Unblemished. Untarnished. Just as it was in life. “Tim, even if you find a way to make this cloning stuff work, I won’t be there. You have to understand that. You’re too smart not to. It’ll just be another cheap copy of the original, like Match and Bizarro. But me—the real me? I’m staying right here, dead as hell. You can’t change that.” Tim waves a hand. “That’s just a minor setback. Once I get the cloning process perfected, all I have to do is call up Constantine or Zatanna and convince them to help me figure out how to restore your soul. You’ll be back in a brand new body, and everything will be back to normal.” “Do you hear yourself, man? You sound like a crazy person. You sound like Lex.” “I don’t care.” “You should!” Conner explodes, his eyes glowing with radiation he can’t unleash. “You should fucking care! What, do you think I’m going to come back to life and pretend that the cost of it wasn’t you destroying all the good parts of yourself? Do you think I’ll just forgive myself for that?” Tim shrugs. He should be feeling more, but the meds have kicked in by now. A pleasant hum runs through his blood. “That’s exactly what I expect. It’s what happened with Jason, remember?” Tim goes back to the computer to upload the latest attempt report. “You don’t remember being dead, just blinking out and blinking back in. Everything that you experienced while you were gone, it all gets erased. You won’t even remember this conversation.” Conner shakes his head. Tim would be lying if he said the disappointment on his face didn’t make his stomach twist. “This isn’t right. I care about you too much to sit back and watch you lose yourself like this.” “Do you think I want you here, watching me fall apart? I know how crazy this looks. I know I must be breaching every ethical code in the book. And I would give anything to make you go away long enough so I can work in peace, but I can’t control that. The ghosts stay, whether I like it or not. So if you can find a way to check out on your own, then be my guest.” Tim turns back to the computer, his eyes stinging. He takes another pill. Conner sighs. Tim can feel him hovering behind his shoulder, a mop of messy black hair in the corner of his eye. Tim shivers when Conner touches his shoulder. “I miss you, Tim. I’m sorry my death broke you.” “Yeah. Me too.”

READ THE REST ON AO3 BECAUSE IT’S A LONG ONE.

#tim sees ghosts au #tim drake #conner kent #superboy #superman #red robin #robin #batman #idiot duckboy #timkon #fanfiction #fanfic #dc comics #batfamily #batfam #teen titans

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kerra-and-company · 3 years

Text

spiral

The first three months after Zhaitan’s defeat. (Or, the story of how the person widely considered “the best at emotions” was once absolutely horrible at managing her own.)

Warnings: depression, self-harm (in a very Kerra-specific way), feeling worthless, cognitive distortions (Kerra gets an idea into her head that is just...inaccurate)

Word count: 4466

I’ve been trying to work on this fic for a while, and it’s been really hard because Kerra’s my OC whose mental health issues are closest to my own. But it’s done now, and I’m sure it’s not perfect, but I’m proud of it, and it means a lot to me. So, here you go; hopefully this speaks to someone else, too.

(and @mystery-salad because forever ago you mentioned that you’d be interested in seeing this fic concept if I ever wrote it!)

It happened in the span of a single moment.

Trahearne had finally, finally joined the party. Rel had gotten his lute from who knows where and was taking song requests. Destiny’s Edge was talking and laughing, and she even saw Caithe smile. Everywhere Kerra looked, her friends and the rest of the Pact were drinking, chatting, relaxing, or dancing.

And, for once, no one was watching her.

So she tilted her head back, letting the sun and confetti (who brought confetti?) cover her face, giggling at the unfamiliar touch of colorful paper scraps. She spun around, arms outstretched and eyes closed and, miraculously, managing not to hit anyone.

It was pure, utter joy combined with I’m done, I did what I was made for, I’m done and I can just be me—

Kill the dragon.

Kerra stumbled. That couldn’t be right. Zhaitan was dead, and her Hunt was—

Kill the dragon, her mind insisted.

The world didn’t stop. It would have been easier if it had. Instead, the celebration continued, with laughter and Rel’s music as omnipresent noise.

It took everything in her not to scream.

****

The Pact wanted to lift her up on a pedestal for what she’d done. And she didn’t deserve it, so she had to leave.

She wrote notes to each of her friends and left them near their things, going mostly unnoticed as she slipped out of the party. Thank you for everything you’ve done, she said. I am going to where I can help the most, and that’s not here right now. I’ll come back.

I love you.

****

Her first stop was Caledon.

Cern was pleased to see her and told her stories of his new recruits taking down a particularly large troll in the swamps. Tatli and Cueyatl welcomed her into the Hazupl camp, and a few sylvari were there, too, talking to the hylek young. Llew gave her updates on Astorea—the defenses were holding, though Nightmare Court attacks had increased of late.

The only place she stayed overnight, though, was the Weeping Isle. Eona hugged her, congratulated her, and asked after Rel. She gave bare-bones information, took care of some wave riders, and fell asleep in the same guest room she’d taken earlier that year.

In her dreams, she walked a bloody battlefield, utterly alone. She saw so many dead faces, along with the living who mourned their losses. With each one she spotted, a memory flashed. Minei and Cio screaming and fighting to get back into the fortress on Claw Island. Ceera calling her “Commander of death.” Elli’s expression as she tore into the Risen marksman. Tybalt imploring her to trust him. Trahearne asking the Pale Tree for forgiveness as they closed the gate to Fort Trinity. The hate in Tiachren’s eyes slowly turning to fear as he died.

And above it all, the incessant drumbeat of this is your fault, your fault, your fault. You were Commander and this wasn’t what you were meant for and so every death is on your head and yours alone because you made a mistake. You pursued the wrong Hunt, and you will look at what you’ve done.

The land and the bodies went up in smoke, and she welcomed the flames even as she burned, too.

Come morning, Eona found Kerra’s bed neatly made and the Commander herself long gone.

****

In Kessex, the bandits put a price on her head.

In Sparkfly, the krait learned to flee from her on sight.

In Brisban, the Inquest cursed her as their labs exploded.

Sometimes, those she helped asked for her name. She began introducing herself as Lin. It felt…maybe not right, but right-adjacent, and it gave her a sense of distance.

Sometimes, they asked her to stay—an asuran krewe who appreciated her particular brand of dragon expertise, a rough-edged gladium who saw a kindred spirit, and a small human boy who watched her train the Claypool militia with wide eyes, to name a few.

She never stayed more than a few days. It tore her apart each time.

She slept less and less.

****

Felix worried more about her with every passing day.

Kerra could feel it, and she wished he wouldn’t, but she didn’t have the words to calm him.

“You can leave, dearheart, if this is too much,” she said once, softly. “You can leave if…if I’m too much.”

Not too much, never, Felix insisted, bumping his head into her thigh and letting out a deep purr. But you’re hurt. I want to help.

“You can’t.” It came out too sharp, and they both winced. “It’s…I’m not scratched, or stabbed, or corrupted. I didn’t break a bone.” I wish I had. I wish this pain was visible. I wish I had scars for all of them.

Some nights, she considered giving herself those scars.

That doesn’t make you not hurt, Felix insisted.

Kerra had nothing to say except but I deserve it, and she knew Felix wouldn’t want to hear that. So, she just pulled him onto her lap and against her chest, burying her face in his fur, eyes dry.

****

Her thoughts wouldn’t stop chasing each other in circles. Her Wyld Hunt pulsed at the back of her mind constantly, like the beginning of a headache.

Kill the dragon.

WHICH dragon? she’d scream back. It never answered, no matter how many times she asked.

But she could function on two hours of sleep a night. She could fight. She could help.

That’s all that mattered.

****

She stopped at the Black Citadel for provisions. She’d intended to avoid Rytlock, but one of his subordinates spotted her at a vendor’s stall and (as politely as possible) dragged her to his office.

“Commander!” Rytlock said, happily standing up and pushing his paperwork to the side. “Thought you were back at Fort Trinity.”

“I was,” Kerra said, just a little too shortly. “I’m on my way to Hoelbrak.” Not entirely false; she was indeed heading in that general direction.

“On foot?” Confusion. “You didn’t waypoint or take an airship?”

“I wanted to take the scenic route.” A small smirk, and, again, not entirely a lie.

“Fine by me.” Rytlock grinned, his smile very full of teeth. “Don’t suppose you’d care to help me take out a Flame Legion post before you leave?”

“I’d be happy to,” Kerra said, smiling back and inclining her head before turning on her heel and walking out the door. Felix followed close behind.

“Commander!” Rytlock shouted after her. He muttered something about “I was saying we’d go together,” but Kerra was halfway down the stairs by then and barely heard him.

The outpost was empty within three hours. Kerra was gone in four.

****

She’d stopped shielding her mind somewhere along the line. She couldn’t remember exactly when.

Emotions swirled through her, positive and negative and in-between. Most of them left, but their imprints remained.

She kept fighting. She kept killing, when necessary, and the pain grew and grew and grew. Her burden. Hers. Deserved, she thought.

She racked up invisible scars by the thousands.

****

As much as she told herself the pain was necessary, it also was exhausting—which is how she got her first serious injury since leaving Orr, forcibly bringing her spiral to a halt.

She was at Victor’s Point with a man named Gareth and his three children. Said children had performed some sort of ritual to summon a bear. The ritual instead managed to summon several dozen bears, and soon the homestead was overrun.

While Felix helped Gareth take down a particularly large bear, Kerra heard a scream from the nearby shed and whipped around, running as fast as her legs would carry her across the snow.

A child she hadn’t met yet, a small one with short white-blond hair, was cowering under a workbench. They held a pen in their right hand like a dagger, jabbing it in the direction of yet another bear trying to stick its head under the table. It growled at them, showcasing its set of sharp teeth.

Not wanting to risk hitting the child, Kerra unsheathed her dagger and leaped on top of the bear. But she’d underestimated its ferocity and overestimated her remaining strength, and it threw her off, slamming her into the stones of the nearby fireplace.

Holding her head, she tried to get up, but its claws gauged deep marks across her chest, and she dropped her dagger at the sudden spasm of pain. She scrambled backwards, shielding the child with her own body as they screamed. Felix roared somewhere in the distance.

She struggled to stay conscious as the bear reared up on its hind legs, trying to figure out if she could muster up enough energy to kick it in the stomach. But she didn’t have to.

A blue shield appeared around her—guardian magic, she thought deliriously. Logan? The mace that whacked the bear in the head was decidedly not Logan’s, though, and Logan wasn’t that tall, and his skin wasn’t that dark. But whoever this was, the child was safe.

“Hey, stay awake!” a voice called out urgently as her eyes slid shut. She heard a distinct crack in it and felt the owner’s concern for her. Funny, she thought in an unappreciated moment of irony, for them to care so much about someone they’ve never met.

****

Kerra must have dreamed, then, but all she remembered was what woke her up—yet another whisper of kill the dragondeep in the back of her mind.

She sat up with a jolt, nearly whacking her head on the beams above her.

Her savior was talking in hushed tones to Gareth nearby, but whatever they were saying was immediately drowned out by Felix, who meowed loudly and started purring at the top of his lungs. He gently butted his head against her shoulder. Thank you for staying. Don’t leave.

“I’m—” she coughed, clearing her throat and trying to ignore what felt like the worst headache of her life. “I’m okay, ‘Lix, I’m okay, I’m still here.” She gently laid a hand on his flank, and he turned his head and licked it with his rough tongue, making her laugh weakly and then wince as the action sent a flare of pain through her body.

“You sure you’re okay?” her mysterious savior said, approaching her bedside. “You hit your head pretty hard.”

“I heal fast,” Kerra said, meeting their eyes. They were tall, but their face was young. “Thank you for your help.”

“No problem,” the tall child said. “I’m Braham, he/him. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Lin. She/her is fine. It’s nice to meet you, too.” A memory slotted into place, and she gasped, frantically looking around for her weapons. “Are the children all right? How long was I unconscious?”

“Easy!” Gareth said, holding his hands up in a calming gesture as he approached. “Yes, all the children are safe, and you were only out for about an hour or so.” He coughed meaningfully, and a snow-blond head peeked out from around his legs. “Mikkel is a bit shy, but he wanted me to thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Mikkel,” Kerra said, her eyes softening as they met the child’s. “You were very brave, you know.”

The boy squeaked and hid again behind his father’s legs. Gareth just laughed. “I daresay he was! But that thanks comes from me as well, young one. We were lucky to have you with us today.”

“The thanks is appreciated, but unnecessary, Gareth,” Kerra replied, dipping her head a few inches. When she lifted it back up—slowly, struggling against the pounding in her head—she found Braham looking at her curiously. But he shook his head, seemingly dislodging whatever thought he’d had, and nodded.

“I’m glad you’re okay and that I could help, but I gotta get going,” he said, standing up.

“Where are you headed?” Kerra asked, leaning back slightly against the pillows.

“Hoelbrak,” Braham answered, frowning. “I need someone to help me defend my hometown, Craigstead—it’s been invaded by some group calling themselves the Molten Alliance. I figured asking Knut Whitebear was worth a shot.”

Kerra frowned, too, both at Braham’s words and at the implication of his tension and fear. “Who else did you ask?” And why didn’t you try Hoelbrak first?

“Tribune Brimstone. He didn’t believe me.”

“What didn’t he believe?”

Braham’s face closed, but she could feel his flare of anger; it wasn’t directed at her, though, not really. “With all due respect, sylvari, it’s not really your business—”

“I know Rytlock,” Kerra interrupted, ignoring Gareth’s shock and the way Mikkel’s eyes lit up. And though the last thing she wanted was to go back to Rytlock or any of her friends and hurt them again… “I can help; I’ve convinced him to get off his…behind…before. Let me help. What didn’t he believe? That your town was under attack?”

She could tell Braham wasn’t quite convinced that she was being honest, but he sighed and shrugged. “That, and the fact that my full name is Braham Eirsson. My mother—” He said the word with a disgust Kerra didn’t understand. “—is Eir Stegalkin.”

Kerra blinked. “Your mother is who?”

Braham crossed his arms. “You heard me.”

“No, I did, and I believe you—sorry. I just…” She trailed off, took a breath, and continued. “I know your mother, too, then. And I’m aware that I can’t move much at the moment, but if Whitebear doesn’t agree to help you, come back and find me. Either I’ll convince someone to help you, or I’ll do it myself.”

Surprise mixed with persistent disbelief and gratitude. “Okay, then. You’re an odd one, Lin.”

She laughed, dry and short, absorbing the flicker of pain that came with it. “So I’ve heard.” As he headed to the door, she added, “You better come back and at least let me know how things go, okay?”

It was Braham’s turn to laugh, though his was more sincere. He did a goofy half-bow-half-salute and said lightly, “You’ll be on my way, so sure thing, boss.”

****

Kerra wanted to leave. Gareth and his wife and his children were absolutely lovely, and she didn’t deserve any of it. But she was trapped in bed, healing. Careless.

She slept most of the time, waking up only to eat and pet Felix and thank Mikkel for bringing her water. Part of her wished she could just stay asleep, and part of her was absolutely desperate to move, to get out, to go anywhere but here where she was a burden and could do nothing. Always, constantly, back and forth.

I need to move.

You can’t.

I need to help.

You can’t do that, either.

I need to be worth something.

But you’re not.

I need you to shut up.

But I won’t.

I…I need my friends. And I need Trahearne and Caithe.

But you left them. They’re probably all angry with you.

You don’t know that.

And even if they’re not, you don’t deserve them.

…

Am I wrong?

****

On her fourth day at Victor’s Point, Kerra received a visitor.

Raised voices outside woke her. She rolled over to face the door, bringing her knees closer to her chest under the blankets.

“—asked you to state your business, sylvari.” Gareth’s voice. He was on edge and slightly angry.

“And I told you, I’m looking for Kerra. Is she here or not?”

Kerra’s eyes flew open in shock and recognition.

“There is no one by that name staying here,” Gareth replied. “I strongly suggest you try the next homestead.” A feeling of preparedness, as if his hand was on the hilt of his weapon.

Before she could think it through, Kerra called out, “Nisha?”

A brief scuffle and a shout, and the door banged open. Nisha’s clothes looked wrinkled, though still passably clean, and xe stood as tall as ever. And xe was scared and upset and relieved and so many other things that Kerra didn’t have the brainspace to work through.

Felix, however, didn’t have that problem. He leapt forward, and a very startled Nisha caught him in xyr arms. Xe stumbled backward into Gareth, who burst out laughing, animosity gone.

“Well, all right then! Lin, I see you know this person. Is it fine if I leave you two…” He glanced at a very loudly purring Felix, eyes twinkling. “Or you three to catch up?”

Nisha’s gaze caught hers and locked in, like the sight on one of xyr rifles.

Say yes.

Say no.

Say yes.

Say no. Say NO.

“Yes,” Kerra choked out, quiet but audible.

“Wonderful! I’ll be outside if you need me.” The door softly clicked shut behind him.

Silence for a few beats. Three, two, one.

Kerra took a deep breath and straightened, sitting up fully. “Hey,” she said tentatively.

Nisha gently set Felix down, a fierce edge in xyr eyes. Felix curled up next to the bed, eyes darting between the two.

“Hey?” Nisha repeated incredulously. “Hey?!”

Kerra flinched, and Nisha snapped xyr mouth shut with an audible click. When xe spoke next, xyr tone was flat. “Where have you been, exactly?”

“Helping people,” was all Kerra could say.

Nisha exhaled, frustration seeping off xem in waves. “My apologies. I should have phrased that better. Why did you leave Fort Trinity?”

“To help people,” Kerra repeated, helplessly.

“Why couldn’t you help people there?! I-I—” Nisha’s face twisted, though Kerra could see xem struggling to hide it. “You left us! And you didn’t say where you were going, not even to Trahearne or Caithe or my brother.” Xyr hand clenched into a fist, gripping and bunching up the fabric of xyr pants.

She had let them down. They were mad—at least Nisha was, and if xe was, probably everyone else was, too. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she started, “I’m s—”

“Do you have ANY idea how SCARED we were?!” Nisha shouted.

Kerra’s world screeched to a halt.

Wait. What?

“We could have lost you, and we would have had no way of knowing! You could have died, or disappeared, and none of us would have been able to do anything to stop it! We were terrified for you! And not because you’re not capable,” xe added hastily, brushing away tears on xyr own cheeks, and she’d made Nisha cry, she’d done that to xem, she’d hurt xem— “You are perhaps the best fighter I’ve ever met. That doesn’t mean you can’t die.”

Something cracked in Kerra’s heart.

“Why do you—what about all the people who died because of me?” she shouted back, her voice breaking. She threw herself out of bed and onto her feet, the blankets falling in a disorganized tangle behind her. “What about them?”

“What—we were fighting an Elder Dragon! People were going to die!” Both of Nisha’s fists were clenched now. “And I hate that, but it’s the truth! If you’re saying that you think we could have made it all the way to Zhaitan with no casualties—”

“No, no, I’m not, I—all their deaths are my fault!” Kerra’s tone made Felix’s ears flatten, and she ignored Nisha’s rush of utter shock. “I don’t understand why you’d want to find me!”

“Why in Tyria would they all be your fault?” Xyr brow furrowed, and xe took one step towards her. “I disagree with the basic principle, but even if the deaths were entirely on the Pact leadership, shouldn’t they also be Trahearne’s—”

“NO!”

“Why not?!”

“BECAUSE I WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE THE COMMANDER!”

The room went dead silent. Kerra abruptly realized she was breathing hard and sat down on the edge of her bed.

“I was given a Wyld Hunt to fight and kill a dragon, Nisha,” she said, staring down at her hands. “The Pale Mother and Caithe both told me that the dragon was Zhaitan, but it clearly wasn’t, because Zhaitan is dead, and my Wyld Hunt is very much still there. Which makes this the wrong path for me, and therefore every action I’ve taken that’s led to where we are, with so many dead, is my fault. I should have figured out I was targeting the wrong dragon, I should have done better, I should have…” She trailed off, overwhelmed.

Silence again. When Kerra looked up, she met Nisha’s eyes, staring directly into hers. Sadness. Anger. Frustration.

Xe cleared xyr throat twice before speaking. “You write your own future, Ker. You’re not beholden to that one.”

“But Mother told me—”

“Mothers can be WRONG!” The fabric of Nisha’s coat tore with a soft ripping sound. But just like with Braham, the anger wasn’t directed at Kerra.

“I was given this Hunt by the Dream!”

“Shoots and thorns!” Nisha yelled, xyr voice cracking. “Why are you so certain you chose wrong, that you made some sort of mistake? You can still complete your Hunt! You can go after all the dragons! And you know why you have that option?” Desperation. Determination. “Because of everything you’ve done, because you’re the Commander, whether or not your Mother and the Dream originally thought you should be! You took down Zhaitan! You proved that Elder Dragons can be defeated, and now you don’t have to fight them alone!”

Xe took a deep breath. “Yes, people died, and it’s horrible.” New tears pooled in xyr eyes. “I…I still miss Sieran. But their deaths are not all your fault, and you saved so many lives, too, and…and I brought these.”

Xe shrugged off xyr pack and fiddled around inside it, pulling out a stack of papers and dropping them on Kerra’s lap. She just blinked.

Nisha sighed, more out of frustration with xemself than with Kerra. “Can you just look at them, please?”

Kerra spread out the papers, making sure to catch a few stray sheets before they fell to the floor.

They were notes, every single one of them written in a different hand. In a quick scan, Kerra saw Caithe’s graceful but clear cursive, Elli’s “i's” dotted with little hearts, and Minei’s deliberately blocky print. She looked back up at Nisha.

“What…what are these?”

“It was Rel’s idea,” xe said, now looking anywhere but Kerra. She could feel xem trying to rein in xyr emotions, though it was a bit late for that. “You gave us all some, so he thought that, if I could find you, I should give you some from all of us.”

Words upon words upon words. Her eyes were drawn to them as if by a magnet.

From Demmi: Thanks for believing in me.

From Cio: You saw past the fire, and you’re one of the few.

From Trahearne: You are the reason I didn’t give up, little sister.

From Shashoo: Quaggan believes in you, Commander!

From Riel: You do good work, agent. Keep it up.

From Elli: Keep fighting, Kerry. You’re damn good at it.

From Minei: They’re not saying why we’re writing these, but you better come back so I can thank you in person.

From Caithe: You showed me new purpose, Valiant. Thank you.

From Rel: You’re my best friend, Ker, and I love you. Stay safe.

And there were more, from soldiers she’d talked to once or sparred with or comforted, and some from people she’d never met. They said thank you and you led us to victory and you saved me and you were a friend when I needed one and many, many variations.

Nisha coughed, and when xe spoke, xyr voice was thick. “I didn’t write one. I’m not a writer. But thank you, Kerra. You’re the third friend I’ve ever made, and I’m so glad I met you.”

“Can I hug you?” Kerra blurted, nearly cutting xem off. She didn’t expect xem to say yes, but she desperately hoped—and then the notes were being carefully placed on the desk, and Nisha was next to her on the bed with xyr arms around her, and Felix was purring loudly from his spot on the floor as he told her I love you, too.

Kerra hugged xem back tightly, hiding her face in xyr shoulder, and they stayed that way until both their shirts were soaked with tears.

****

An indeterminable amount of time later, Kerra pulled away, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I can’t do this on my own, you know,” she said, the corner of her mouth pulling upwards. I can’t go back alone. I won’t feel better if I’m alone. I need help, and I need my friends, and maybe that’s okay for me, too, just like it’s okay for everyone else. She met Nisha’s eyes. “Will you stay with me?”

“I just found you,” Nisha said, quiet but firm. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Kerra smiled in earnest, then. “Good. Because you can’t do this alone, either.”

“I beg your pardon?” Nisha said, eyebrows raising. Surprise. Indignance. Acceptance.

“Neither of us are okay,” Kerra said, thinking of Nisha shouting about mothers (and Nisha shouting at all, when xe always stayed so composed). “And we have other people—other friends, our siblings—but…” She felt her glow flare, warming her face. “I’ll help you, when you need it, and you’ll help me when I need it. That’s the deal.”

“I wasn’t aware we were making a deal.” Amusement. Warmth.

Kerra dipped her head slightly, never breaking eye contact. “We are.” Her smile grew. “You know,” she said cheekily, “you really shouldn’t question your Commander—”

“You are aware that I’m not technically part of the Pact, right?” Nisha interrupted.

It was barely even a joke, but it shattered whatever tension remained. Kerra burst into slightly broken (but still genuine) laughter, the calm after the storm. She felt Nisha’s happiness and saw xyr grin, and it pushed back the flood farther.

It was just enough. For the first time in weeks, she pulled up her shields, shutting the world’s emotions out. It was a relief and a letting go, and she almost started crying again, but Nisha’s presence held her together.

She was far from okay—the drumbeat of it’s all your fault and the Hunt’s repetition of kill the dragon were still very much there in her head. But people cared about her. She had proof of that, though she still didn’t understand it. She was important to them, so she had to keep herself safe.

Maybe someday she’d be able to do that just for herself.

For now, she’d take the help, and she’d start to heal. And when Braham came back, she’d leave, with Nisha.

But it was all right to stay here, just for now. She was safe, and she was loved.

And she felt like she was home.

#gw2 #my fics #kerralind #nishannai #please do heed the warnings folks #guild wars 2

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twilightknight17 · 3 years

Text

We’re at the end of the road, folks.

And god damn, I feel so validated by my Sojiro characterization. Wow. Thanks for basically making me canon for ten more seconds, Atlus. XDDD

So when last we left our intrepid heroes, they were laying at the bottom of the Jail of the Abyss, because Ichinose is an asshole. So we had to fight our way back up, carrying Sophia’s unconscious body. Which wasn’t that bad; the Jail isn’t very big. We left Sophia at the door to keep her safe, and then charged back into the hall of the Ark to hack Ichinose’s exploding crystal box thing.

Ichinose doesn’t understand why we came back.

So, yeah. I guess like... bizarro-world Maruki? Maruki wanted to alleviate suffering by granting everyone’s wishes. EMMA’s going to make it so that people can’t wish for anything.

After a kick-ass hacking battle set to the new version of Rivers in the Desert, Ichinose yells at us about our right to judge. Why should humanity keep this painful world, just because WE’RE strong? Just because we’ve never screwed up or suffered?

Which, clearly she has no idea who the fuck she’s talking to.

We’ve worked too hard to listen to that kind of bullshit.

Ichinose proclaims that “humans don’t need hearts” and charges up the laser crystal to blast us again, and Sophia steps in to block the attack. She’s still fighting Ichinose’s control even though Ichinose insists that she’s just a faulty prototype.

Apparently Ichinose created Sophia in the first place because she spent a lifetime being called a heartless doll, so she made an AI to help her learn about the heart.

I think you’re the problem, but not for the reasons everyone else is saying.

But she got angry when Sophia started asking questions of her own and basically tossed her aside, until EMMA found her and dropped her into the Shibuya Jail.

And Sophia, unlike her creator, has learned and grown, and is tired of being given orders. She’s ready to make her own choices.

That is certainly a persona.

I gotta admit, they got me. I was wondering why Sophia didn’t have her arcana yet, but for some reason, I also wasn’t expecting her to get a proper persona. I’m now wondering about the implications of someone being able to code an AI capable of developing a soul that can summon a persona. There’s a zero percent chance that Ichinose had any access to plumes of dusk, which are the reason that Aigis and Labrys gained enough consciousness to have personas. So Sophia is legitimately a miracle piece of technology.

Pandora is an interesting choice, but I dunno if I can articulate that beyond a surface-level, “Oh, because she’s Hope, and Hope was still in the box.”

I swear to god, every major villain in this game is trying to be Goro Akechi. For the last goddamn time, we don’t kill people. Get up, Ichinose. We’re leaving.

Ryuji literally grabs her by the arm and drags her out, because she’s trying to stay behind. Which just confirms for me that if Goro hadn’t put up that bulkhead door, we’d have dragged his stupid ass out of the Ship, too. XD

Back to the real world, and Tokyo is blacking out, and the Tower is losing its shit.

The metaverse is fusing with reality, the Tower is becoming the Tree of Knowledge, and hell yes we are climbing this tower after all!

Morgana points out that this is the same thing that happened last year, and Zenkichi freaks out a little bit.

You’re lucky you moved to Kyoto, sir. You missed quite a bit.

I love these kids, though. They’ve got so much black humor about this whole god thing.

The metaverse encroaching on reality means that everyone has to cram into the bus in their thief gear. Zenkichi, please. Your hat. Sir.

I love climbing this tower. I’ve been here, too! Also they have butter. XD

I was expecting the Mementos version of the lower observation deck, and instead I got some weird amalgam between Mementos and Azathoth’s boss chamber.

We had to fight Metatron as the guardian of the last elevator, which is another parallel to Yaldabaoth’s archangels. And then it’s up to what I guess used to be the high observation deck to fight the big box.

EMMA insists that all humanity wants is to let it give them all the answers, and it throws them into some sort of alternate fog world full of the voices of the public.

The Thieves are all separated, trapped in the fog. Each of them has to find their way out, and they realize that the fog of the Desires is protecting EMMA. EMMA knows exactly how calling cards work, so they won’t work on her. Instead, the Thieves decide that they need to send the calling card to the public, so that they’ll become aware of their desires again and the desires will crystalize.

...oh come on, Atlus. We’re right in the endgame.

One last hacker battle to break into EMMA’s server room in the tower, and Futaba and Ichinose manage to hack EMMA itself to deliver a calling card to everyone at once.

Love you, Zenkichi. We’ve taken out two gods already. We’re good.

Confronting the Ark again reveals a bunch of freaky tentacle arms grabbing the desires, and then the box turns into some sort of massive figure that looks sort of like Yaldabaoth, except less robot and more seraphim. It literally names itself the Demiurge, so I feel like EMMA may be drawing something from the lingering dregs of Yald’s influence? It’s cool.

Clearly no one told you what happened to the last false god that thought it knew what was best for humanity. ;) “Hope binds humanity to misery” is bullshit.

After a... not very difficult first phase, the Demiurge reveals its true form, and we split into three teams to take out its support orbs (modeled after the sephirot) and the main body.

I really liked the setup for the last boss. The teams were the first instance where it was really apparent that the whole team was fighting together. Each of the three battles was happening concurrently, and destroying the orbs has a concrete effect on the main fight. I wish we’d gotten to do things like this more often, especially during the Shadow Thieves fight.

That said, the main body was actually the easiest part of the fight? All the attacks were really telegraphed, and not particularly hard to avoid. Except for the spear jab.

But it finished off with a full-team all-out attack, and that was awesome.

The desires began to return to their owners, and we get to bask in a job well done once again.

Upon returning to the real world, it’s the next morning. Sophia’s happy that she got to be a hero, Zenkichi’s heading off to properly arrest Owada, and the rest of us need to head home, because we were supposed to be home last night. Zenkichi can’t figure out why we consider him a phantom thief, since he “only joined [us] to use [us]”. Which is silly. The Phantom Thieves are built on the bonds of friendship and stalking! It’s too late, Zenkichi. You and Akane have been adopted.

I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get to tell Akane the truth. That would have been great.

Atlus personally reaches out and pats me on the head, because Sojiro has the absolute perfect reaction to his kids coming home after a nationwide manhunt for them.

I feel so valid making him serve Lavenza coffee and be completely nonplussed about a guy marrying Death. I love him. We’re so lucky to have Sojiro. XDDDD

The next day, the kids have a celebration party for their victory, and learn that Akira is going home the next day. This kid needs to catch a break. He can’t even have a few days to relax with his friends. X’‘‘D

Everyone goes to see off Akira, though we detour to Shibuya to meet Ichinose. A news report shows that Owada was successfully arrested, and apparently Ichinose tried to turn herself in to the police, and they didn’t believe a word of it.

This is just highlighting my issues with Maruki. Even if he doesn’t think he did anything wrong to society as a whole, he never apologizes to them for what he put them through. Especially Akira. Ichinose turns around and helps them stop the final boss, and her last scene is her apologizing to the Thieves and trying to make amends for her actions. Maruki’s last scene is... “If things get bad, you can start over like me! Now we’re even!” We are not.

Sophia leaves to help Ichinose learn about the heart, Akira promises to come back for winter break, the Phantom Thieves go their separate ways once again, and the credits roll.

I’m gonna leave my final impressions in a different post, because this one is long enough already. So... look forward to that?

#Li plays P5Scramble #one more post incoming

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ghostmartyr · 3 years

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/clears throat/ so, Immi, I hear you like the locked tomb, which is fantastic! from one person also escaping the snk series into TLT to another, what did you think of the characters and plot in HtN? are there any things you're most excited to see when Alecto comes out in 2022?

-pats lifeboat- This baby can fit so much trauma.

SPOILERS, naturally.

With another paragraph informing the curious that unspoiled is the way to go into HtN, since if you aren’t lost and confused, are you really reading Harrow the Ninth?

I read it all in one day, and that was a choice. It does mean my memory and understanding of what all went on is slightly dependent on someone else on the internet exploding over a particular set of paragraphs and explaining their significance to me, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

HtN disappointed me on one front in that I was hoping seeing more of Harrow 1.0 would help out any future fic endeavors. On everything else, like the first one, being told the story is such a good time that I’m willing to wait on a full comprehension of where it’s going.

I also really like second person.

What I loved most about HtN is how even without Gideon mentioned until very, very late in the book, you can feel her absence everywhere. In the wrong bubble flashbacks you’re commanded to examine the strangeness, but even in Harrow going about her day, the isolation and the wrongness of it decorate her every action. She’s alone, and she shouldn’t be, and the loss she’s unaware of bleeds into a constant echo of grief.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated absence as a narrative tool so much. Obviously griddlehark hours go hard once they start in HtN, but even before then, there is so much power to their connection that looking into a world where it never exists still manages to punch you in the heart with how much each one inhabits everything the other is.

The whole series is amping me up with a few thoughts on loneliness, honestly. Gideon and Harrow grow up alone on the Ninth, save for each other. It takes leaving for that to be any kind of good thing. The first book is tag team Among Us with everyone in their little clusters, slowly learning what other people are about as they all drop dead.

The second book has a different vibe and different plot things going on, but it’s similar in that the protagonist gets thrown into a world they don’t fit and have to put on a show. Only now there are even fewer people to familiarize with, with that number correlating directly to how they all killed the person closest to keeping them from being alone.

Lyctorhood is taking the person dearest to your heart and trapping them there forever while they’re stripped of everything that made them who they are.

...Also Ianthe is there.

Gideon, Mercy, and Augustine are the last Lyctors standing after 10,000 years. There were only seven, starting out. Sixteen acolytes who came to the First. The only pair who didn’t succeed in condensing themselves is separated from the pack and sent to live away from their peers on a tiny planet that no one has anything good to say about.

Alecto is John’s -- who even knows, past A Lot, and he puts her to sleep and locks her in a prison no one but he can get past.

God has seven friends. More if you want to count the people in the Cohort, but realistically, he has seven friends. Then they keep dying.

Harrow spends HtN in a spaceship with five people.

One is trying to kill her.

One ordered that one to try to kill her.

Two could not care less about the useless baby Lyctor.

One is Ianthe.

There is no real endgame. There is surviving life, and life has become a game of running as far away as possible so you don’t share your ruin upon your inevitable death.

It’s bleak and sad.

Harrow’s healthiest relationships are with dead people, and some of them she didn’t know at all in life.

Reiterating it, the most plot significant bit of the world is finding someone else in the world, swearing yourself to them, and smashing your souls together until you’ve lost the connection entirely.

My brain’s not in the best place so I can’t do more than gesture loudly at it, but a few people have mentioned that the series’ thesis is a counter to Ianthe’s statement that love is acquisitive.

Harrow tightens her hold around Gideon until Gideon would rather she just strangle her and get it over with, all things considered. It fucks them both up, and when they start working to get past it, circumstance wraps a chain around both their throats.

The necromancers who become imperfect Lyctors have all acquired their cavaliers, and besides the cav, it kills that bond.

Harrow’s rejection of that is why Gideon’s soul is still in the world of the living (and John blood).

She has spent her entire life eating pieces of Gideon to keep herself a horrid imitation of whole, and when she is finally offered that, she refuses.

Grief and how Harrow just can’t are active elements of the book, and Magnus gives her more therapy in five minutes talking about it than she has ever had in her life, but the reason why that isn’t the end of Gideon is because, unlike all the other Lyctors, Harrow turns the offer down.

With the exception of Babs and Ianthe, the relationship between cavaliers and necros about to do the Lyctor thing is cavaliers promising to burn for an eternity while their necromancer lives off the fumes.

Fuck that is Harrow’s response.

Cytherea says, in the aftermath, that they had the choice to stop.

Harrow stops.

A lifetime of doing exactly what Gideon is telling her to do with her death, and Harrow chooses to stop.

Harrow remembers Ortus’ poetry. She regularly sees her congregation off to their deaths. She keeps Gideon’s glasses. She views Palamedes, head exploded and all, as an infinitely better person than she is because of the quality of his exemplary character. She pulls Gideon the First from the incinerator on the night she plans to kill him.

Kiddo has so many fucking issues, but somewhere, she has learned to respect people for being people. That’s why she and Gideon are the heroes of the story, ultimately, and Ortus saying that they’re heroes worthy of the Ninth doesn’t fall flat. They’re actually trying.

Where that puts us for Alecto, I don’t pretend to know.

Since the first book is the temptation of an end to isolation, only to have it snatched away, the second book is the continuation of isolation with a few promising sparks of human connection that pave the way for hope...

That leaves the third book to shed the isolation and allow the connections to thrive.

With Gideon and Harrow MIA.

I know that the books kick things up into high gear in the final acts each time, but if they’re both gone for the majority of the book, no matter how much fun it is, I’m going to miss them. They’re the core leads, and I don’t want to be without them in the final part.

The 2022 release date has aged my soul. I deliberately planned my GtN read to land a month before HtN came out, then suffered when that was delayed. When really that was nothing at all. I hate waiting.

(Insert note that I’m very glad they aren’t forcing Muir to rush anything out. It’s been a rough time, but also, just in general authors should have the opportunity to create the best versions of their art they can, so the extra time hurts, but it’s obviously for the best.)

What I’m most excited for is probably the cover art. The first two have been awesome, and the artist said he’d likely do print sales for all three when the third’s revealed. My wallet cries but my heart does not.

What I dare not be excited for is the potential for Gideon and Harrow meeting again and perhaps hugging. In their own bodies.

I’d take other bodies, but ideally, y’know.

Also I would love for Harrow to finally meet her popsicle girlfriend.

I doubt it would be a wholly positive experience, but by golly I want it. Maybe they could hug too. It would probably kill Harrow again, but who doesn’t expect several people to die again in the third book?

However it plays out, I’m expecting to enjoy AtN. The writing’s the sort that I’ll happily follow wherever it goes. For everything else, there’s fanfic. The only real worry I have is the whole book will be narrated by Ianthe, and while I mentally groan at that, I actually find Ianthe’s commentary delightful, so even in the worst case scenario I’m having a good time.

Thank you so much for the ask.

#Harrow the Ninth #Gideon the Ninth #The Locked Tomb #asks #oh I don't have an ask tag for the tomb yet #should work on that #tl;dr #viva la pluto

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robertsheehanownsmyass · 4 years

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https[://]www[DOT]google[DOT]co[DOT]uk/search?q=robert+sheehan+gifs&prmd=inv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWn_uH5N_sAhXxuXEKHdyrA-QQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=412&bih=682&dpr=2.63#imgrc=f-cKey07M3Rq0M&imgdii=Rex6q-okbEq4KM

Klaus x reader where the both of you are just confused as hell? Any direction with it i just think its amusing haha 💘💗 love ya

Sheehanoween!

Into the Woods

Klaus Hargreeves x Reader

Warnings: smut, language. I settled for Klaus being confused; I hope this does the trick!

The weather forecast for Memorial Day weekend looked wonderful, so you decided you were going to drag your boyfriend to the mountains to go camping. Klaus had never gone camping, however, so when you suggested it, Klaus only looked at you as if you had just turned a funny color.

“Why would I want to sleep outside on purpose?” he said. “I used to have to do it after I got kicked out of the mansion and I’d rather not repeat the experience.” He finished with a soft chuckle; his usual deflective technique when referring to his difficult past.

“Yes, but this is different…” you countered. “The sun and fresh air and scent of nature, ah, it’s wonderful. It’s good for the soul and might help your peace of mind.”

Klaus rolled his eyes.

“Ok look,” you sighed. “If we go, I’ll pick a really secluded spot and we can spend the majority of the time mostly naked.”

“And what time will we be hitting the road?” he replied amenably, and you burst out laughing.

*********

You chose a flat, shady spot to set up the tent on a secluded lakeshore, and twenty minutes later you stepped back to admire your work. "Not bad,“ you said appraisingly.

"Haven’t you done this before?” Klaus asked.

"Yes, but it’s been ages. I’ve been dying to get back out here.” You took a deep breath, closing your eyes as you inhaled the sweetness of the air.

Klaus nudged your arm and you looked over at him. He waggled his eyebrows at you. “Ready to break it in?”

“We did have a bargain,” you smiled, and the two of you stumbled into the tent whilst clumsily pulling your clothes off.

After you finished undressing– which you practically had to do on your knees because the tent ceiling was so low– you collapsed onto the sleeping bags in a tangled heap. You began to kiss each other fervently as Klaus hummed softly in a low pitch; obviously he was quite aroused.

"I can’t wait any longer,” he murmured into your ear. "I have to have you now.“

"Do it,” you said breathlessly. “Take me.”

He raised himself on his knees and pushed your legs apart. He snaked his hand between your legs and began to massage you, his fingers gently brushing your clit. He slid two long fingers inside of you, and you were slick with moisture immediately. He smirked mischievously as he pulled his fingers out of you. "I see you need no further preparation,“ he cooed. All you could do was shake your head in response.

He lowered himself back down between your legs, and grasped his cock to position himself at your entrance. In one fluid motion he sank inside, burying himself to the hilt, and ground his hips in a circular motion. You moaned, and he began to thrust, not at all gently. You began to moan louder as his pelvis slapped against your ass audibly, and before long you were nearly screaming. You rode out one intense climax as he fucked you, and your second was rapidly approaching. In bed back at home, you had a habit of reaching back and grabbing a bar from the headboard during moments of intense pleasure, and you instinctively reached up to do the same at that particular moment.

Unfortunately, you were in a tent and not a bed, and the headboard was really a bar holding the tent up. When you arched your back, cried out, and reached back to grab it, the entire tent collapsed on top of you. Your cries dissolved to giggles, and Klaus breathlessly cried, "Ah fuck!” He didn’t stop banging you, however. “I’m… gonna… oh god,” he panted, and exploded into you, his thrusts becoming erratic as he pumped.

When he was finished, the two of you lay there panting, covered with the collapsed tent in a heap. Klaus started to chuckle, and the chuckle progressed to full-blown laughter. The two of you laughed together for several moments before he slid out of you and tried to raise himself to his knees. "Shit! Fucking tent,“ he laughed, and the sight of him trying to struggle free of the nylon made you laugh even harder. "You shut up,” he scolded jokingly, “are you going to lay there or help?”

You managed to disentangle yourselves from the tent and stood naked looking at the mess. “Oh for crying out loud, let’s do this again,” you laughed, and the two of you set about the process of putting the tent back up. Fortunately it was a warm day, and your nakedness didn’t present a problem.

“Fancy a dip in the lake?” Klaus asked when you were finished with your task.

“Klaus, no. You’re crazy. It’s still spring– that lake will be cold as shit.”

“But it’s so hot out! C'mon, how bad can it be,” he pleaded. It was true; the day was quite warm for late May, and you were a little sweaty from your recent exertions. You knew better though. A warm spring day in the mountains did not mean the water had reached a pleasant temperature yet.

You gestured to the lake. “See for yourself.”

“Very well, I will. You can go ahead and miss out on the fun.”

You laughed. "Oh I’ll have fun watching. By all means proceed, oh daring one.“

He did precisely that. In the absence of a dock to jump from, he settled for running toward the water at full-tilt. He plunged in; feet splashing in the shallow water at first, then slowed as the water reached his torso. He pushed slowly onward for a couple of steps before stopping. The water had reached his chest, and he slowly revolved to face you. His face was slack with shock, his eyes bulging. "Juh-jesus,” he stammered. “Jesus fuck! This water is fuh-fuh-FREEZING!”

“I told you that,” you said calmly.

Klaus frantically splashed his way back to shore, and he stood before you; naked, dripping, and covered in goosebumps. "G-g-g-god damn,“ he said, teeth chattering. He wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. "You weren’t joking!”

“Of course not,” you said resignedly. “The air may be warm, but that water was probably fifty degrees at best.” You went back to the tent and retrieved a blanket. "Since I knew swimming was a really bad idea, I didn’t bring towels. This will have to do,“ you said, as you wrapped him in the blanket. You threw on a T-shirt and shorts, and began to gather wood and twigs with which to start a fire.

"You’re never going to let me live this down, are you,” Klaus asked as you busied yourself with getting the fire started. You laughed.

“Definitely not. You should see yourself. Fortunately hypothermia shouldn’t be an issue. You were only in the water for a minute, and it’s warm out. Nevertheless, you should sit by the fire for a bit.”

Klaus’ shivering began to taper off as he sat huddled in the blanket by the fire. He looked at the lake whimsically. "But the water is so inviting,“ he pouted.

"I know,” you said. “But much in the way a venus fly trap is irresistible to flies, that shit will kill you. Camping in the wilderness is fun, but you need to keep your wits about you. These are just the things you learn.”

“Consider myself taught,” Klaus said.

The sun was beginning to sink below the trees by the time Klaus was dry and dressed in dry clothes. The timing couldn’t have been better; as the sun dipped lower, the temperature began to drop as well. You lit a couple of lanterns and retrieved a bundle of food from your pack.

After finishing your snack, you walked back down to the water. You watched the spectacular sunset as you sat between Klaus’ legs with your back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around you. “Wow, it really did get chilly,” he said, rubbing your arms with his hands.

“Like I’ve said–”

“I know, I know,” he laughed. “It’s still spring.”

You chuckled. "Did you have a good day?“

"Sweetheart, I’ve been taken to the wilderness, had a tent fall on me, nearly froze to death, and I need to hide my food in a tree to prevent bears from coming to eat me.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have to do it again,” you said, dejected.

“Silly girl,” he said, and turned your face upward so he could kiss your lips. "I’m having the time of my life.“

#klaus hargreeves x reader #robert sheehan character fic #sheehanoween #the umbrella academy fic #drabble #smut

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