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blacksparrowheart · 1 year

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Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean Word count: 1558 Genre: Romance Pairing: Jack/Elizabeth Rating: M Content warnings: Death (discussed), sexual content, infidelity (technically?)

One-shot set in the time between saving Jack from the Locker and the crew getting home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “You thought I loved him.” Understanding dawned in Elizabeth, and on its heels, anger. How dare he? And yet, saying the words aloud, something in her was shaken. She tried to push past him to the stairs, ready to storm off to cover her sudden unsteadiness, but he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her up against a pillar.

“If you make your choices alone…how can I trust you?” Will growled in a low voice.

“You can’t,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper. She pushed against him again and this time he let her go - she thought she heard him say something else, but she needed to escape this moment and did not turn back.

“You forgot to deny it.” Will sighed.

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She’d been expecting the fight since Jack had revealed her betrayal on the shores of the Locker. She hadn’t expected to learn that Will had seen the kiss and thought her disloyal this whole time. She hadn’t expected her heart to throb so mightily when “…I loved him” passed her lips. Almost dizzy with confusion and a vague sort of fear, she scrambled blindly to the deck, drifting to the bow. Without a moment’s hesitation, the need to put as much distance between herself and Will propelling her forward, she clambered over the railing and tucked herself into the tiny space behind the figurehead. If she fell asleep and slid off into the water below, well, that would just solve everyone’s problems including her own. She leaned back against the Pearl and was lost to her demons.

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Jack watched as Elizabeth all but fled the hold. His eyes followed her until she disappeared toward the bow, then snapped back to see Will emerge from below as well. He looked around for a moment but turned back when he didn’t catch sight of Elizabeth and vanished again. Interesting.

Jack hadn’t planned to speak to her so soon, maybe ever again if he was honest, but the prospect of trouble in paradise created a ghost of hope in him. He followed Elizabeth’s path, looking for her in the many nooks and crannies along the way - she tended to hide the way a cat might when she was feeling emotional - until he ran out of ship. He was confused for only the briefest of moments before spotting her wedged behind the Pearl’s black angel. She was staring out at the horizon, he thought, face covered in ocean spray, but looking closer - no…she was gazing at the sparrow in the angel’s hand, and those were tears falling fast and hard from her eyes. His gut twisted. He considered walking away; that probably would’ve been the smart thing (you’re a smart man, Jack echoing in his head like a taunt). He’d never been particularly smart about his behavior around Elizabeth, though. He stepped forward.

“Lizzie.”

The quiet voice that broke through her thoughts was the last one she expected. She sat up so quickly she almost fell right off, but managed to catch herself and turned to face the man she thought might never forgive her. Jack was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t name, and it made her already troubled heart leap to her throat.

“Jack, what -” she swiped her hands across her face in an attempt to hide her weakness. He moved toward her and extended a hand.

"Why don't you come back over the railing, darling, there's a good lass," he said, concern hidden behind false condescension. She silently took his hand and did as asked, avoiding his gaze. He didn't know what to think about that - her lack of arguing, her quiet obedience. This wasn't right. Far be it from him not to take advantage, though. She tried to let go of his hand, but he only held on tighter. "Come with me." Wordlessly he led her to his quarters, not dropping her hand until he'd closed the doors behind them. After a second's hesitation, he also locked them, wanting to be absolutely certain they weren't going to be interrupted. He turned around to see her gazing at the hand he'd held. Something in his chest squeezed.

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

She braced herself for whatever was coming. She would've expected vitriol, hate, if not for his gentleness. He called me Lizzie. Why had he held her hand? She couldn't handle kindness, not from Jack, not right now. Not after what she'd done. Not after what she was in the process of realizing, which made what she'd done that much worse.

"Jack, if you're looking for an apology, you won't get it." The words were defiant, but her voice was dull. She was trying to goad him into anger because anger she could take. Anger, well. That was the minimum she deserved from the man she'd left to die.

"Oh, Lizzie. I would never expect one." Jack grinned as he led her to his bed, urging her to sit. He pulled over a chair to sit across from her. "You did what you are best at." She flinched and closed her eyes, ready for any venomous insult he may throw at her. She decided she'd help him along.

"Yes, I suppose to you that would seem the truth. You've always seen me as just a woman, treacherous." She didn't even know fully what she was saying, she was just trying to piss him off until he felt comfortable truly letting his tongue loose. What she got instead was the shock of her life as Jack dropped to his knees in front of her, an intensity in his eyes and a dead seriousness to his tone that she'd never experienced before.

"No, luv. No. First of all, you're far from 'just a woman,' point blank but 'specially to me. Secondly, and I need you to know this in your bones - " he grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him, now. "What you are best at," he spoke slowly and purposefully, "is fighting for the greater good. Don't get me wrong, you're no saint, but you are good. You believe in justice, and while you have your own way of getting there, you have always chosen what is right over what is easy. When you chained me to the mast and left me for the Kraken, you did the right thing." He paused for a moment, and Elizabeth choked back a sob.

"Jack...Jack, as soon as I closed that manacle on your wrist, something in me broke. And even now, even after going to hell to get you back, knowing what it was like for you there, knowing how much I'd hurt myself by doing so, you should know that I would do it all again if given another chance." She buried her face in her hands, unconsciously clinging to his, still touching her chin. "I love you and I'd still do it again,” she finally confessed the truth she’d been grappling with since Will accused her.

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

The words he'd never expected to hear from Elizabeth Swann's mouth left Jack utterly shattered. The whole time she'd been speaking he'd been falling harder for her - of course she'd do it again, and he was so achingly proud of her for that, but love him? Her? Love him? For a heartbeat his thoughts were in chaos while he fought to convince himself that he’d heard wrong. All of that dissolved away when he felt her tears on his skin, and suddenly everything seemed crystal clear.

In one swift motion, he came up off his knees, wrapped an arm around her waist, tilted her face to his, and caught her in a crushing kiss. She was frozen beneath him, and he broke it off quickly, afraid of damaging whatever fragile trust she may have in him. He began to pull away, but Elizabeth grabbed the front of his shirt to stop him. Incredulity etched her face, eyes wide and questioning, mouth still slightly open.

“Jack?” His name was barely audible, and he felt the weight of a thousand questions in the single word. He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, heart in his throat as he prepared to say what he’d previously sworn to never admit.

“Elizabeth, I have loved you since Isla de Muerta. I didn’t realize it until the day you stood on my deck and called me a good man, and the only thought in my mind was that you were wrong…but that for you, I wanted to be.” He held her a bit tighter. “When I realized what you’d done, that you were willing to sacrifice me, I was completely lost. When I called you pirate, it was in awe and reverence, and I was absolutely content to die.”

Silence stretched between them. He felt like he was treading water, unsure if he would be thrown a line or left to drown. He’d never felt for anyone what he felt for Elizabeth, and had never planned to tell anyone, much less her. But she was suffering, and he couldn’t let that continue. He’d take the fallout if she’d only understand that he would never see her as anything less than the most perfect thing on the seven seas. That didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified of her reaction, though.

He’d nearly decided this had all been a terrible mistake when she placed her hands on either side of his face and brought her lips to his.

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

She kissed him like she was drowning and he was oxygen, and he kissed her like she was the sea and he wanted nothing more than to sink into her depths. There was no more said between them for quite a while - words would be necessary later, but right now, all they needed was each other.

Elizabeth poured her soul into that kiss, damned as she felt it was, and clung to her captain as he pressed her back onto the bed. Some part of her knew this was wrong, but she had never felt anything more right.

Jack was cradling her, allowing every possible part of their bodies to touch without putting too much of his weight on her. His hands drifted constantly; stroking her face, running through her hair, floating down her sides to her hips. Responding to his touch more on instinct than conscious thought, she spread her legs to accommodate him better, tucking one knee up. A calloused hand gripped her thigh and she moaned softly. Jack finally broke their kiss, face strained.

“Lizzie, darling. I think we should - well, maybe think a little before we go much further.” It sounded like it pained him to say this, and Elizabeth felt lightning in her blood at the thought of what he was implying. He was right, of course. There was so much that made this a bad idea - there was Will to consider, and the fact that they hadn’t quite escaped the land of the dead yet, which was such a strange thing to remember since she felt more alive than she ever had. Stopping now would be the smart thing, but her body was alight with desires she’d barely known she was capable of, and hang the smart thing. She was just starting to protest when they heard a commotion on deck.

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Jack saw the fight brewing in her eyes and knew he’d lose it spectacularly. It had taken everything he had to pause in the first place. Luckily for the both of them, something seemed to be happening outside, and Lizzie squirmed out from under him to run and see what was going on, snagging a pistol on her way. He grinned - there she was, his warrior - and took a few deep breaths before rolling off the bed to follow her.

The sight that met him was a bizarre one indeed, though maybe it shouldn’t have been, given their locale. Souls. Souls in the water of those lost to the depths. The shades that Davy Jones was supposed to care for, to ferry to the other side, lost in this between place instead. He frowned as he noticed the children. Far be it from him to claim righteousness, but it did make him angry.

He heard Lizzie’s voice and turned to follow it. When he reached the railing, he felt his heart crack. Governor Swann was sitting in one of the small boats, and Jack knew instantly what that meant.

“It’s my father! We’ve made it back!” Lizzie called out to him, trying to get his attention.

“Elizabeth.” Voice soft and gentle, hating himself for what must come next. “We’re not back.” His hand brushed hers, barely. That faint, fluttering touch was the best he could do to convey the sorrow that would have to go unspoken. He watched the joy drain from her face, the desperate denial creep up to replace it. She turned away from him.

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The following days were desolate. Even the sea and the weather seemed to be in mourning as they passed into an endless doldrums. Jack didn’t try to go to Lizzie; she had enough to deal with, and maybe this grief would help her and Will find each other again. He thought back to that night, how she had screamed, how she had fought to leap into the water and save her father, how she had collapsed into Will's arms, sobbing. How they had sunk to the deck while Will comforted her - Will, not him, because that was how it should be. She had chosen Will long before she'd met him, and that was where she belonged.

It was so blasted difficult to stay away though when she looked so broken. He didn't know what to do, knew he couldn't fix this, but that didn't change the fact that he wished he could. He wished he could take her pain away, heal her, but there was nothing he could do. So he threw himself into figuring out the map instead.

He was working on it in his quarters the third night after the ghostly visitors when the door opened and someone came in. Someone who crossed the room almost silently to sit in the chair opposite him at his desk. He looked up to see Lizzie curled up and examining the map. She must have noticed his hands had stilled, because her eyes flicked up to meet his.

"Is it okay if I'm here?" She asked, almost hesitantly. In answer, Jack turned and pulled a bottle of rum out of one of the desk drawers. He passed it to her and watched with a small amount of concern as she drained almost half of it in one pull.

"It's okay," he said, "but I am curious as to why you've come." He kept his voice even, not wanting her to realize how her closeness affected him.

"I didn't want to be alone," she replied, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

"What about Will?" He could've kicked himself for asking, but it was a valid question, and she knew it as well as he did. She averted her gaze. "Ah. Trouble?" He leaned forward slightly, not wishing further pain on her, but curious all the same. He'd never gotten around to asking her what the original problem had been the other night. Other things had distracted him.

"Will and I...I've lost him, I think, Jack." She met his eyes again and seemed to steel herself. "Not that I put that much effort into keeping him, truth be told." Jack's stomach flipped, but he waited for her to continue. "The other night, when you came and found me, I - he accused me of being in love with you. And I couldn't even deny it, because I realized that it was true." Her eyes held fire now, and a new urgency crept into her voice. "Jack. I love you. You. Far more than you could believe possible."

Jack could hardly breathe. This was so much more than he'd ever dared to hope for. Yes, she'd said the words the other night, and they had certainly crossed a line, but he had been content to believe she'd merely felt guilty. Or that she'd snapped out of it when faced with reality again. He hadn't expected her to come back to him again.

"Lizzie. Are you sure?"

"I am more sure of this than anything else in my entire life."

That was all he needed. Jack pushed away from the desk and stood, coming around to sweep Lizzie into his arms. Their lips met as a roar filled his ears, and he spun in the direction of the bed, intent on finishing what he'd started this time.

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Elizabeth found herself stripping layers from Jack like she'd done it a hundred times. In truth, she'd probably imagined it that much, if not more. He was making quick work of her clothes as well, though he undoubtedly had much more experience in this arena than she. Somehow, though, that didn't seem to matter to her. She wasn't worried. She just wanted him, and it was impossible to ignore that he wanted her, too. When she'd freed him of his shirt she began peppering his chest with kisses, flicking her tongue out to taste his deeply tanned skin. She felt his breath hitch and smiled to herself. No, she wasn't worried about her lack of experience.

They were now sitting on the bed, both of them naked. Jack held her at arm's length for a moment and she watched as his eyes slowly traveled her body. She felt heat, so much heat, everywhere his eyes touched. That was nothing compared to what was coming, though. He laid her back with the utmost gentleness and promptly started to explore her body with hands and mouth, pausing occasionally to check that she was still okay. She appreciated the care, but he was driving her absolutely mad, and -

"Is this okay?" He asked as he kissed his way down her belly to the tops of her thighs.

"Jack, if you don't stop talking and get on with it, I'll make you regret the day you were born," she growled. He chuckled darkly and hovered over her, eyes glittering.

"Persuade me."

"You're despicable."

"You're a goddess."

"Goddess? There is nothing holy happening in this room." Her tone was one of amusement, and she gazed at him with heavy eyes, a smile dancing on her lips.

"Just you wait, dearie. I'll redefine holy for you." With that, he dipped his head and showed her the meaning of worship.

#sparrabeth #pirates of the caribbean #potc #one shot #vaguely smutty but like in a sweet way #jack x elizabeth #fanfic #fanfiction

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lavenderangeline · 11 months

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She who holds the spirits

Naruto Fanfiction

This chapter is for everyone to read

Tw: contains slight spoilers from Naruto Shippuden

The spirits of nature and humanity aren't aligned with each other. Everything comes with a reason. But what if you combine two souls into one? We already saw it happen. But nature spirits are different than the tailed beasts...

Also there could be some not so right things about the main story of Naruto. If you notice in this or other chapters something not fitting pls tell me bc some things confuse me and I tend to forget.

I mean Names, places etc.

Have fun reading 🌸

Prolog : Where the spirits live

Long ago, before the ten tails became nine, spirits started to realm in this world.

None of them could've been seen by people. Only those with special abilities could see, feel and sense them. Those who could, became priests and priestess.

But after all the war and suffering in the world, the good spirits got forgotten, still living in our world but not in tune with the humans.

Maybe it is better this way… Maybe it needs to be this way to contain some kind of balance. They've seen everything what the humans did and still do with too much power. Mankind will never have balance - and if the spirits of nature would show themselves, offer even, to make the world a better place… Humanity would do everything in their own power to betray them and use them as weapons… Just as they did with the tailed beasts in this world.

“But Mama-” little Shia said, “humanity can also be good! I believe in them to be better!”

The dim night lamp in Annaisha’s room flickered a little, the girl gave it a little smack and it worked fine again.

Her mother chuckled and gently caresses her little daughters head. “that's right little bird. I just want you to learn what you shouldn't do.” she sighed - “you're such a pure soul. Sometimes I'm very worried about you” Keiko tried to hid what was her true thoughts.

But sadness in her mother's eyes made Anna worried and sceptical but for her own sake she didn't ask bc her mother wouldn't tell her anyways. “now go to sleep sweet sparrow, tomorrow is not also your final genin exam but you also have to do your ceremony.”

Anna gulbed. She didn't wanted to. But she had to… Sadly… mostly because her 6 year older brother wasn't a fit for the spirit- to the disappointment of the family. Anna wasn't the favorite child. She feared subconsciously what would happen if she almost dies like her brother did.

“Don't worry sis-” he said, peaking around the doorframe, his blond hair seemingly red in the dim light. “you'll be fine.” His confidence was something that Anna would love to have.

She hold back her tears, they didn't wanted her to cry. Just to nod and behave. She'll cry when they're in bed.

So- she did nod. She did in fact behave and thanked her brother, wishing a good nights rest. He said goodnight as well as to their beloved mother. After the good night's kiss on the forehead from her mother she hid under her blanket, crying, holding her little moon close-

After a yet again weird dream which felt almost like a long gone memory, she yawns, grunts but has to go out of bed.

In routine she takes her pills, gets up, showers and goes on packing the rest of her stuff into some bags. Today is going to be…

“-the day the new kushina comes into the village. Although I'm going to be her sensei I don't have the time welcoming her yet. You have to stop watching over Naruto and start watching over her.” Tsunade made an maybe too long dramatic pause in her Monologe Yamato was listening to. The hokage of the hidden leaf village soon, in fact today, would've welcome her new student but as much as she'd love to do this at her own… Yamato already looked around and saw this load of paperwork everywhere.

He was perplex that out of all people he was the one watching over the new girl. Yamato already has his hands full with Naruto, him just being the bouncing ball that he is, it was hard enough with one of this kind…. BUT TWO?

Tsunade low-key grinned at the not so amused flicker in Captain Yamato’s eyes. “No worries, she'll be helpful to you.”

His face lights up in surprise, then in confusion. How could be a single chuunin helpful? Of course, there were really talented once out there… But… “how can she be helpful to me?” He asked with a slight suspicion in his voice.

Lady Tsunade looks over some papers on a clipboard. She lays it down and puts it across her large document filled desk. The morning light shining through the windows giving the beautiful woman an onimous shadow into the room. Yamato steps ahead towards her, taking the board into his hands. As he begins to read the document the hokage continues to answer his question.

“She's able to contain, if not- control the nine tails.” Shocked, the tall man looks into the very serious looking eyes of his hokage. “Is that even possible?” The blond woman sitting before him nods. “You saw that it's possible. As you were on your mission to seal away the sanbi, the three tails, the young boy kind of was able to do so. With her it's kind of the same, but more complex than that. She comes here to be my student, wants to learn more about medicine. But - “ Tsunade stands up, hands on the table, Yamato listens carefully yet spellbound to her lips, “with her abilities it is possible for Naruto to get a little bit more peace while training. You also could get a bit more rest. It's saver having her around you as long as Naruto needs to perfect the new technique. She'll be in a different team afterwards.” Yamato is totally flashed by all of this not only information but also that this girls Chakra level on the chart he holds in his hands is absolutely insane. Of course he's not showing what he feels or thinks, only silently reads the Name of this girl out loud

“Annaisha Akiharu”

Well hope you enjoyed, see you next time.

Lavender🌸

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killmebutneverinsultme · 2 years

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@sonofirishseas continued from here:

Much as he had to be grateful for; having at least SOME command of the Pearl and having Sparrow in his life once more with neither of them holding daggers behind their backs…it was moments like these Hector missed the relative peace of having the ship to himself.

He looked up from his book and blinked at the blustering man, chirping and squawking like the animal he so aptly took his name from. “What the devil are you–?” But before he could get it all out, the man was in his face, continuing to bluster. For once, leaving Hector rather speechless.

His brow furrowed, lip curling back as he was about to ask Sparrow what sort of foul rum he’d gotten into and bloody poisoned himself with because he was more raving mad than usual, when the colorful pirate grabbed him closer and promptly planted his lips against his.

Well…that was certainly different.

Sparrow was turning on heel the next moment, almost smacking the taller man in the face with his hair as made to storm away. Hector stood there blinking and mute for a long second…

And then reason gave him a swift kick in the ass and sent him into motion, striding on far longer legs than Jack, and managing to catch hold of the man by the back of his jacket and yank him back, spinning him around and knocking him off balance until Hector had to catch him to keep him from going over on his ass. “As assuming as I know you find yourself to be, Jack, I don’t care to be interrupted so rudely, nor have ye smashing yer face into mine on a whim without so much as a warnin’. I’d ask if ye were drunk, but I can taste it.” He pulled Jack up right but didn’t let go of him. He didn’t look near as annoyed now as he looked at the darker man. In fact he looked almost as mischievous as Sparrow. His hand snaked back and threaded through a bit of Sparrow’s thick dark hair and pulled him in closer. It was not a threatening, harsh sort of pull. But rather the firm one of a man who wants a lover closer to him. “If yer goin’ to kiss someone, ye ought to do it proper, ye git.”

He pulled Jack in and returned the kiss. Not the hasty peck that Sparrow had given him before trying to escape but a real kiss. One that lingered for a heartbeat or two, lips slotted together warmly, firmly.

And then just like that the greying ginger released his catch, stepping back and giving Jack room to breathe. But there was no denying the little twinkle in his eye. “That’s how it’s done.”

An indignant cry attempted to leave the younger captain as he was seized, his hands scrabbling for a weapon lest he need to defend himself. Before he could understand what was happening, Jack found himself teetered off his feet, held up only at Barbossa’s discretion. As usual he masked his fear with an angry frown, demanding the meaning of whatever Hector was doing and why this felt more like a dance than the fight he had half-expected.

Jack continued to look baffled as he was drawn up again, only to catch a wickedness in the other pirate lord’s gaze. “Mmnn-!” Sparrow blurted when taloned fingers hooked into his hair, preparing to get into a scuffle. What Barbossa said next threw that out of his thoughts. No more so than what he did.

He tensed at once, shocked, before he let — for just a few seconds — his frame surrender. So this was what it was like, to have his attentions, to belong to him for the most fleeting of moments, to be desired by him..

And all too soon, Jack remembered himself. However much he might want to explore this, he realised this was in front of the crew, and he was being humiliated just as much as he had done so to Hector.

Flushing, Jack huffed, seizing anger despite the confused feelings under the surface. “I know damn well how it’s done. How dare you kiss me!” he blustered loudly, as if he hadn’t made the same offense. “I should have you brigged for this or strung up by your ankles. Never have I seen such intolerable presumption! I’ll be in my cabin!”

With that, Jack stalked off as he’d planned, but it was more of a stomping run.

#he blushy and experiencing complications XD #t: kissing game #v: tbd #sonofirishseas #sparbossa

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oogaboogasphincter · 3 years

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A Magpie, a Goose and a Sparrow Walk into a Found Family Trope (Ezra x f!reader)

Summary: A nightmare caused by trauma he endured before and on The Green haunts Ezra one night, his fear bleeding into reality. Under the fog of sleep, he hurts you, thinking you are the monster that is endangering you, Cee and himself while on your next trip. He apologizes by doing something that terrifies him: opening his heart up to another person.

Word Count: 10.7k+ (holy shit i deeply apologize for putting my readers through this agonizingly long junk)

Rating: M (mature) just to be safe (some pretty intense themes but i don’t think there’s anything too explicit)

Warnings: non-fatal manual strangulation and bruises from it, swearing, sexualization of two adults, mild references to sex, mild allusions to sexual arousal, discussion of trauma and its effects, Prospect (2018) spoilers, some argument, hair braiding, one (1) ✨neck✨ kiss, one use of (y/n), sprinkles of that sexual tension we all love, a resolved ending!

Author’s Note: first off, thank you SO much to @martinsmomo for this request!💜💕 this was so creative, i hope i did it justice :). second, AHHH!!!!! my first piece ever!!! i haven’t written anything on my own time for my own enjoyment since i was like 13, which may or may not be apparent by my comma splices, repetitive sentence structure/word choice and disagreeing verb tense💀. the thought of i have no idea what i'm doing never left my mind while i was writing this, but i just tried to go with it and have fun :). ALSO, i had so much fun reading all of the lore about the world that Prospect (2018) takes place in. Here is a link to a pamphlet about a lot of stuff that is featured in the movie, which i used while writing this piece. i highly recommend you check it out! i tried to stick to as much canon stuff as i could, but 🦋The Blue🦋 is something that i made up. also this is not beta’d, i just wanted to throw this into the void and see what happens✨. i also also want to point out that in no way am i trying to romanticize or sexualize domestic violence. i know that the subject matter in this piece can be triggering, and even though the violence wasn’t intentional and it’s resolved through love, i don’t want it to be misconstrued as something that it’s not. with that being said, i hope you enjoy it! :)

gif by @anakin-skywalker

A grunt stirs you from your deep slumber. Your eyes open easily, a treat that you weren’t given often due to the dryness of the pod’s recirculated air. The inside of your shared galactic chamber is as dark as your mind; no illumination to shine on your thoughts and wake them up or to show you how Ezra is doing. You know the grunt had come from him, as the only other passenger was his adopted daughter, Cee. You turn in your pilot’s chair, looking over your shoulder to try and make him out through the impossible darkness.

Parcel-Class Planetary Drop Pods were designed to fit only two travelers, however the three of you had decided to embark on your next journey together. To save on costs, your partners opted for a model without cots. Being the gentleman that he is, Ezra insisted that you and Cee sleep in the pilots’ chairs. He had thrown a few blankets on the cold, flat floor and had proudly announced, “Sleeping quarters fit for a king!”, eliciting pitiful laughter from you and Cee.

Now, your eyes can’t find the sad bundle of warmth that is his sleeping figure. He is a restless sleeper, and every time he made a noise that was more than a good-natured hum or a soft swish of rearranging his blankets, you would wake and turn to make sure that he was okay. You would do the same for Cee, but she was a fantastic sleeper. Not too deep, not too light, and never made a peep. You turn back around, giving up on trying to spot Ezra in the dark, when you hear another grunt.

This one is louder than the last.

You turn back around yet again, your own blanket falling off of your chest and into your lap. Eyebrows furrowing together and eyes squinting, your pupils strain themselves to find any shred of light to let you see. The noises increase in abundance and volume. Ezra’s sleeping fit has transformed from a halfhearted rustling to an aggravated clamor in less than a minute. Your eyes stay on the dark patch of space where you know his “bed” is situated while Cee arises from her sleep. Her chair lets out the slightest creak as she follows your gaze and attempts herself to see what all of the commotion is about. She asks you, “Is he okay?” Ezra answers her with an irritated growl through his teeth. You say to her, “I don’t know, I can’t see him, should we-”

Your suggestion of waking him up is cut short as two hands wrap around your throat. The hands twist your head to face forward, and you’re greeted with Ezra’s sweat-slicken face. Instinctively, you grasp at his forearms in an effort to ease the constriction of your neck.

Cee screams, “Ezra, let go of her!”

He defies her command and puts one of his knees in between yours on the seat of the pilot’s chair and leans closer to you. The brown eyes that you had grown to love now bore into yours with unwavering menace as the pads of his fingers press harder into the sides of your neck. His palms are flush with your larynx, threatening to crush it. You want to let out sobs of heartbreak, but are unable to. He’s restricted your actions to only being able to watch him attempt to strangle you. Your fingers aren’t able to get a grip on his limbs due to his angry sweat and your panicked claminess. Your mouth hangs open as his is shut tight, his jaw muscles stuttering with intense rage. He starts to growl through his teeth again, but a flash of light turns it into a howl.

His entire body falls back, his hands losing their purchase on your neck. You suck in a harsh breath and lean forward as Cee grabs your hand and pulls you out of the pilot’s chair. In her other hand she grips a Boscelot Frontiersman: the source of the light that had extracted Ezra’s shriek and drilled its way into his thigh. He sat on the floor in front of your chair and laced his hands just above his injury, throwing his head back and wincing.

Cee puts some feet in between the two of you and guides you across the floor to the other side of the impossibly small pod. Hoarse coughs begin to rise from your surprised larynx, accompanied by trembling of your entire body. Cee, still holding you by your arm with one hand and the Thrower in the other, yells your thoughts at Ezra, “What the fuck was that for?!” She flicks the lights on, allowing everyone to see each other’s face for the first time all night.

Ezra stares at the two of you in disbelief. Both brunette and blonde strands of hair are stuck to his forehead with sweat, eyes depressed from the subsiding adrenaline, his whole body drenched in distressed perspiration. You and him lock eyes, even through your flailing about as you continue to choke on air and delicately place your own hands over where his just had you in a vice grip. He knows what he’s done as soon as he sees you. He begins to cry and opens his mouth to start an apology that can never be adequate, but Cee hurls a field kit at his head. It hits him and he takes the blow without complaint. His devastated eyes keep to your bloodshot ones as he opens up the kit and starts to treat his justified wound. Cee stares at him with aggravation, and so do you, but her expression is void of confusion.

You are confused as all hell. What could have possibly made him do that? He seemed to be having a nightmare, but that didn’t give him the excuse to nearly strangle you to death.

Your coughs and stress start to dwindle as all of you sit there, not saying a word, the only other noise in the room being Ezra opening and closing medical supplies. He squirts a sanitizing solution over his wound, hissing, and then he takes out a Patch Gun. This sets your heart racing. The strangling was unpredicted and almost successful, would he get up once he was healed enough and try to do it again? You push yourself back against the wall and keep your widening eyes on him as he sprays the medicated foam into the hole the Thrower had burned through his trousers. He squeezes his eyes shut, winces intensely, and then fails to keep a painful wail inside his chest. You’ve seen him treat himself before, and usually his next step is to throw more than the recommended amount of pain relievers into his mouth and chew on the tablets, redirecting the pain from his injury to his mouth. He doesn’t do that this time.

Instead he throws the used Patch Gun to the side, closes the field kit and pushes it Cee’s way. He breathes your name out of his mouth, causing you to retreat further into the wall. You bring your legs to your chest and wrap your hands around the back of your neck, resting your elbows on your quaking kneecaps. Burrowing your face into the cavity you’ve created, you start bawling. Pain sears your throat, and is only intensified by your sobs, but you can’t help it. You’re absolutely terrified. Ezra says your name again, genuine with care, in an effort to get you to look at him. You shake your head once and continue to gasp into yourself. Cee startles you by touching your shoulder, and she quells your worries, “He won’t do it again.”

Her five simple words plant a seedling of peace in your heart, but it is nowhere near close to blooming. You don’t look up as she gets up and goes over to your pilot chair and grabs your blankets. Her footsteps return to you quickly, and within moments her warm, calm hands are draping the fabric over your shoulders. She rests her chin on your shoulder, moving with your heaves. A softening tone takes over her beautiful voice as she murmurs “It’s okay”s, “I’m here”s and “You’re safe”s into your blankets. Before you know it, your body succumbs to the overwhelming desire to heal mentally, emotionally and physically with sleep. Your trust in Ezra may be broken right now, but you know that Cee will watch over you. Despite her lack of size and experience compared to Ezra, you know she has the upper hand on him intellectually. He may be full of wondrous prose, a never-ending vocabulary and sharp wit, but Cee has had him in the palm of her hand ever since they met. You can sleep knowing that she can protect you and herself, if need be.

You peek out underneath your arm to qualify to yourself that Ezra is in no shape to attack again.

He sits where he landed when he fell, slouching with exhaustion. His eyes sparkle with tears of regret, his eyebrows quirked in a way that reads “There aren’t enough ways to apologize, but I’ll try every one until you forgive me.” You close your eyes, lay your head against the wall and beg the Sandman to bring you all a night of peace as you rest until the Sun comes up.

The pale blue morning light penetrates your eyelids and alerts your brain that it is time to get up. You awake to find Cee and Ezra sound asleep, her in her pilot’s chair and him in his “bed”. You are still huddled up against the wall, opposite to Ezra, and look upon him with a wary gaze. The fear he inserted into you last night makes your nerves feel like static, but at the same time you can’t help but be relaxed by his presence. It’s obvious he didn’t cause any more damage during rest of the night, so maybe his eyebrows were telling the truth: that he is sorry.

The muted sunshine washes his complexion out and dulls the warmth that his chestnut locks hold. It makes the blonde patch in his hair and the arc scar on his cheek glisten cerulean. His expression is relaxed, eyelids fidgeting under the controls of REM sleep.

The sound of Cee’s alarm clock distracts you, and moments later her hand reaches out and pushes the ‘stop’ button. Awakening limbs appear above the back of her chair, accompanied by a yawn. Your eyes dart to Ezra. He’s still asleep. She turns to you first and smiles, “Are you alright?” You nod once, return her smile, and you both turn to the slumbering man. She says, folding her blanket, “He’s fine. Calmed down after you fell asleep. He said he had a nightmare that you had turned against us. He said he wants to apologize but understands if you don’t want to speak to him.” You sigh through your nose, glancing over at him, “That’s okay. I think I would like some time away from him though. Just to process things, y’know?” Cee turns to face you, “That’s what I figured. I told him that.” You look at her and nod once.

She gets up and stretches again, folded blanket still in hand. She puts it on her seat and looks up at you excitedly, “Want to come look for aurelac with me today?”

“Definitely.”

Her face lights up with a wide smile and you mirror her reaction. Getting up and dropping your blankets to the floor, you go over to the compartment in the wall that holds your equipment. You take out what you’ll need - suit, helmet, air filter and a few Slurry Packs - and close the latch. The door slams shut harder than you intended, the resulting crash jolting Ezra awake.

A shy, apologetic smile graces his face as he meets your eyes, and you return the expression. You were still tightly wound, but were ready to start dispelling the fear, and that began by being cordial with him. His smile fades when his eyes lower to your hands and take in what you are holding. He gets up off the floor and inquires, “What do you have all that for?” His expression is neutral, but you worry that you will anger him by telling him what your plans are.

He had made it very clear since you joined him and Cee that he did not want you to prospect. He had told you that it was too dangerous of a task in itself, let alone the implications that came along with it: bartering, lying, gambling, stealing, killing. He didn’t want you or Cee to be subjected to any any of the horrors that accompanied prospecting, but Cee had been stubborn about her desires and had proven her abilities. She was great at prospecting, possessing an attention to tedium and an unwavering sense of calmness while performing the task. For a man who seeps with wisdom, Ezra wasn’t all that good of a prospector. He had the tendency to lose patience and cripple under pressure, which sometimes led to compromised digs.

“I’m going to look for aurelac deposits with Cee.” You nudge your head in her direction and she smiles at Ezra. He waves his hand dismissively, “That’s all fine and dandy,” now pointing a lazy yet warning finger at you, “But don’t you dare let prospecting dance upon those beautiful brain waves of yours.” His comment irritated you. You had never shown any signs of true disobedience to his wishes, besides the casual sigh of boredom or the bratty roll of your eyes. The words also set your heart aflutter. As you try to hide your blush and bury your annoyance, Cee says to him, “We don’t be doing any prospecting if we can’t find any aurelac.” His head tilts in agreement. He pads over to you and gingerly puts a hand on your shoulder. He had sensed your irritation and repeats his mantra of why he doesn’t want you prospecting, “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

Your anger became fiery again. Shoulder jerking to flick his hand off, you jab at him, “Because I’m safe in the confines of the pod?”

He points a finger at you again, this time accusatory, “That was purely an accident. Do not take it as anything but.”

Cee commands, “Both of you, stop, now. I’m not dealing with this all day. It was an accident. An inexcusable one, but an accident.”

Your and Ezra’s eyebrows had shifted to take on the same irate slope, however you both decide to just let it drop. You visibly signal your concession by dropping your shoulders and Ezra reflects you. He spins on his heels to open his own equipment hatch, and you turn to the wall yours is on. You all face the walls and change into your suits, a ritual of trust and time efficiency you decided on when the three of you agreed to work as a group.

Once dressed, you exit the pod, Ezra being first and Cee being last, and embark on your daily journey. The Sun had retreated behind some dark grey clouds. The sky was a royal blue, the ground was greige and the dark foliage that surround you drips with dew. You were stationed on the Blue Moon, an orbiting moon in the Bakhroma System. This place wasn’t highly traveled like its permanent sister (the Green Moon), due to the popular aftermath of the Aurelac Rush. Although Cee and Ezra had been there and left, many people in the galaxy still went to try and scoop up some valuable remains. Unlike The Green, The Blue wasn’t known for its abundant aurelac deposits, which is precisely why your partners chose to come here.

Their original plan was to travel to The Blue with just themselves, but while on a stop to Puggart Bench you had entranced Ezra while Cee tried to scope out her old friends and catch up with them before she set off on another mission. Demonstrating your eagerness to explore the galaxy and your expansive knowledge of it, Ezra decided to add you to his partnership. It didn’t hurt that you also tried to express your attraction to him, complimenting the rugged floater on his impressive vocabulary. He had complimented you on your willingness to listen to his ramblings, and it had been love ever since. Neither of you had come out directly and said “I love you”, and you hadn’t partaken in any physical affection, but your yearning for each other could not be more understood. His adoration for you only deepened when he saw how you interacted with Cee. Being closer to her generation than Ezra’s, you were able to connect with her like contemporaries. However, you were far enough away from her age group to the point where Ezra couldn’t act as a father figure to you. This duality made you irresistible to him.

Back to the present, you gaze at the back of his helmet intently, waiting to see what his plan of action for the day is. The Green requires visitors to wear air-tight suits and breathe through air filtration systems at all times because of harmful spores that float in the atmosphere. The Blue’s spores are far less harmful, and helmets can be taken off for 45 minute intervals, but the three of you only took them off when the confinement of the helmets became a little too much. The glass window of Ezra’s helmet swivels to you and he asks, “Split up, hourly check-ins, reconvene for lunch?”

As you’re thinking of your answer, you notice his eyes dart repeatedly up and down your body. You can tell by the way his mouth is slightly parted that he isn’t assessing your body language to predict your response. He’s thinking about all of the ways he would devour you for apology’s sake.

You look to Cee in the middle of your answer, “Sure. I’ll go with Cee today.” She smiles at you and turns to him. His mouth closes and he looks down to fiddle with his radio with thick-gloved fingers, “I’ll be on channel one.” Cee says, “Okay,” and beckons you to follow her as she sets off on a worn path. You and Ezra look at each other one more time before you turn in opposite directions and begin your divergent treks.

Catching up to Cee by jogging, your steps slow to match her pace once you are by her side. There’s silence between the two of you for a little while as you weave your way through trees of varying heights, eyes keeping to the ground to spot humps in the dirt. Humps gave away the location of aurelac deposits. A couple of slips were shared between the two of you as you climbed over hills and shuffled through valleys, the forest floor littered with puddles. What The Green has in vegetation, The Blue has in water. There were multiple lakes, some touting depths that are only achievable by advanced marine technology. Rainstorms are common, but they never grow to something like a hurricane. Everything was doused in a blue hue, whether it was the air, the water or the plants. The spores in the air resembled stagnant raindrops, peculiar in the way that they seemed to stay in their place in the atmosphere.

Cee broke the silence, “So, are you okay?” You know exactly what she is referring to and answer, “Yeah. Still a bit shaken up and confused, but other than that I guess I’m fine. I can feel bruises where his hands were.” She turns around to look at you and you lift your chin for her to see. She grimaces and says, “Yeah, you can see where each finger was and everything.” You look down, feeling disappointed that the event even happened. You ask her, “So he had a nightmare about me?” You watch the back of her helmet as she nods, “Yep. He just said that he thought you were going to endanger the three of us. He didn’t say in what way, really, just that you were a threat.” You take a moment to process the information and then fire off another question, “So, I have nightmares too, but I don’t act on them in real life. So why did he do what he did? Is there, like, an underlying feeling of distrust that he has for me, or...?” She started shaking her head halfway through your last sentence, “No, no, not at all. It’s just that The Green was so traumatic that I can understand just how vivid nightmares about it can be. And even though I don’t know much about what he went through before I met him on The Green, I’m sure prospecting was just as dangerous as it is now. I wouldn’t be surprised if at one point, or at a million points, someone that he trusted backstabbed him. But it’s nothing personal against you at all.” You nod and take in her words, trying to reassure yourself that you can trust him, even though he had done everything he could to prove you otherwise the night prior.

Cee stops and turns to you, chuckling, “If anything-”

A short sound on your radios cuts her off, and Ezra’s voice comes through the speakers, “How are you little birds coming along?”

Cee answers, “Fine. No deposits yet. What about you?” She grins at you, not forgetting to finish her comment as soon as he leaves the two of you alone.

“Nothing. I’ll be shocked if we stumble across any hint of a deposit today. Like every day. Over and out.”

You look at her, eager to hear what she has to say. This only widens her smile, and she rolls her eyes as she begins, “Like I was saying.” You both laugh as she continues, “If anything, you’re the best thing that’s happened to him. I’ve never seen his eyes light up so much at anything like they do when he looks at you.” You blush and look down at your feet shyly. She gives you a playful shove and knocks you out of your butterfly-ridden trance. Her tone changes serious as she sighs, her pitch dropping a little bit lower than normal, “You really don’t have to worry about him hurting you or me. He’s just fucked up from our time on The Green. I am too, but I experienced it in a slightly different way, and deal with it differently too. I mean, I lost my father, but he killed two other people. It got us out of there, but that’s probably going to haunt him for the rest of his life. And since it was recent, he’s still trying to figure out how to handle the whole thing. I’m not making any excuses for him, because he didn’t have any reason to attack you, regardless of any dream, but he seriously wouldn’t do that under any other circumstances.” She puts an assuring hand on your shoulder and smiles. You smile back and nod once in understanding, saying, “I believe you.” She pats your back, and you both turn to continue on your walk. A few moments pass, and she lets out another laugh. You teasingly ask her with a smile on your face, “What is it now?”

“I mean, it’s obvious that Ezra’s been through some shit, because the guy’s fucking weird as hell.” Your helmets are filled with your cackling as thoughts of the strange man play out in your head. Cee jokes, “I mean, little bird? His confusing speech pattern in general? Someone who talks in crosswords is either an ancient person who is trying to be clever in their last days because that’s the only form of strength they have left or just some asshole who finds enjoyment in verbally tricking people.” Another few moments of giggling pass before she ends with, “And what’s with the drawl?” She turns to you, the injuries in your throat burning from laughing so hard, “Have you ever heard someone else, in the entire Bakhroma System, talk like that?” You shake your head while wheezing and she says, “I haven’t either. So how did that weirdo even get here?”

The surrounding forests may be quiet, but the inside of your suits are filled with the joyful laughter of two friends who continue on their merry way to find some aurelac.

What yesterday lacked in aurelac, it made up for in emotional gains. You had spent the rest of the day with Cee, strengthening your tender bond, exploring the terrain that The Blue had to offer. Ezra kept to his promise and checked in on you two hourly, making sure that you hadn’t run into any other travelers or went too far off the grid. Your group hadn’t crossed paths with any other citizens of the galaxy since you landed, which didn’t surprise or disappoint any of you; the three of you needed some peacetime for regrouping.

You start today by scanning the pod’s dashboard of lights to make sure nothing is out of order. Because of his contempt to the idea of you prospecting, Ezra had assigned you to be the pod’s programmer. Pods were cheap to rent, so they were justifiably subject to malfunctions. Given that Cee and Ezra were tasked with mapping out The Blue and harvesting aurelac, you obliged to take the responsibility of operating the astronomical vehicle. The other job you had been given was keeper of the harvested aurelac. Once in its containers, you were to check on the gems every day and make sure that none had cracked during transport. The problem is that you haven’t had any luck at finding such valuables. It has been documented that The Blue does contain aurelac, but that it is extremely difficult to find. However, the average gem on The Blue is thrice the size of that which The Green holds. So the size and abundance differences are a lawful tradeoff.

While you’re analyzing a digital screen on the dashboard, an expressive yawn escapes a man’s mouth. You twist to see Ezra stretching his arm out, eyes and nose scrunched in delight at the wringing out of his muscles. A smile graces your face as you take in his exaggerated display of awakening, and he mirrors your smile when he opens his eyes. His arm relaxes at his side, and a raspy morning voice greets you, “Hi.” You smirk at his unadorned statement and say back, “Hi.” He holds your gaze for a moment before turning to pick his mechanical arm up off the floor next to him. After losing his arm on The Green, his prospecting abilities fell drastically. He had to take out a loan to pay for the artificial limb, but it would restore his talents, so it was a fair deal. That’s why the three of you had gone on this mission, rather than building your friendship on Puggart Bench: to harvest aurelac to repay the loan.

Cee grabs both you and Ezra’s attention as she wakes with a start. Getting up and out of her pilot’s chair, she merrily folds her blankets and marches over to her equipment hatch. You and Ezra share a look of bewilderment, and he questions, “Good morning?” She flips around to you both, forgetting that you were in the pod with her. She cheers, “Good morning!” Reading the two confused expressions that watch her, she explains, “I want to go and look at this area that we missed yesterday. It has a lot of hills, so maybe that’s an indicator of more deposits. I was going to look at it yesterday, but then we came together for lunch, and I completely forgot about it until now.” Noting that she is the only one in the pod that is anywhere near awake, she asks both you and Ezra, “Is it okay if I go by myself?”

Memories of the last 36 hours flicker in your head, discomforting your nerves. It’s not that you don’t trust Ezra, but you don’t trust Ezra. The outburst that he had the other night frightened the shit out of you, and you’ve been wary to interact with him at all, let alone without Cee present to diffuse the situation if it got too tense. The fear he had shoved upon you was still fresh, but the excitement in Cee’s face and your tiresome brain convinced you that it would be okay. Maybe during this time alone you could patch things up with him. Him and Cee had given you a general rundown of what had happened on The Green when you first met, but you could prod Ezra about the details. Hopefully you could uncover some explanations to his night terrors.

You look over at him to gauge his reaction to her proposition, and he’s staring at you with puppy-dog eyes. His mouth is turned up in a soft smile, and you can’t help but grin at the way his hair is still unruly from his sleep. Suddenly you feel a pleasant heat between your legs, and you can’t tell if it’s just your body waking up or the overwhelming desire to pepper a million kisses over the sleepy man’s face. Refusing to admit to yourself that the latter is the true culprit of your wetness, you shake your head slightly to rock you out of your trance and say to Cee, “Yeah, that would be fine.” Ezra’s smile at you widens before he turns to Cee and inputs, “I concur. Like always, just be sure to watch your surroundings carefully. You’ll find us here when you return.” She nods once and turns to her equipment hatch, signaling you and Ezra to turn to yours as well to give her some privacy as she changes. Once changed, she closes her hatch, puts her helmet on and departs, “I’ll be on channel one. See you guys later!” You and Ezra both give halfhearted waves, still too tired to formulate any meaningful words. The door to the pod closes behind her, and you are alone with Ezra.

The anticipation of being alone with him made you more anxious than how you feel now, letting your eyes fall to the man still on the floor. He’s already looking up at you, the lazy smile still pulling at his cheeks. The desire to invite yourself into his bed, wrap yourself in his blankets and limbs in order to match the warmth that is flooding your genitals, and doze off into a lustful nap tries to take over your mind. You fight it with everything you have and make your way over to your pilot’s chair. Positioning yourself so that you’re facing Ezra, he simply asks you, “Hungry?” You nod your head and he reaches behind himself. His hand reappears with a Bits Bar, tossing it to you. The only sounds that fill the pod are the crinkling of the wrappers and your respective chewing. Although you’re both preoccupied with eating, Ezra’s silence is deafening. He tended to drop his confusing lingo when talking to you, since he wasn’t trying to trick you. He hadn’t had the courage to reveal his true feelings to you yet, which will be so poetic and heartfelt it will make you sick to your stomach, so he stuck to simple statements. He wanted you to note the difference between his conversations with you and other people, so he made it a very clear point to forgo his prose and expansive vocabulary. He wanted you to note that he revealed his truest sentiments to you and tried his best to hide them from others.

The peaceful nature of the morning encouraged you to bring up an irritating topic with him, “I only want to prospect because I want to help you guys.” He tries to keep his eyes on his food, knowing that looking into your eyes will ignite his possessive and protective nature, “I know that. And it doesn’t matter how many motives you come up with, birdie, there will never be a time when you’re in my care that you will prospect. That’s the extent that I will let this conversation fester to.” His dismissive demeanor infuriates you. You fire back at him, trying not to let your tension leak into your voice, “I’m not Cee. You are not my parent or my guardian, you’re my partner. So there’s no social expectation that I have to submit to your desires.” His irritation grows, entertaining his fingers by folding the wrapper, “That is technically true. But a good partner will never put their partner at risk. And I have deemed it risky for you to prospect.” His retaliation sets you off. You didn’t want this to turn into an argument, but you also don’t want to back down from this. Your eyebrows crease together in frustration, your arms cross and your mouth sets itself in a frown.

He looks up from his distraction and becomes infuriated by your look. Now he’s pissed. He begins a verbal knife fight, “Maybe if you had experienced what it’s like to have a shitty partner, you would appreciate my efforts to protect you.”

“I’m not ungrateful.”

“In a way, you are. You abandoned everything you had on Puggart Bench once you met me and Cee. You had friends, a nice family, a stable living situation, a good education. Don’t blame me for a position that you put yourself in.”

“First of all, that’s how it looked to you. Second, a good education in prospecting! Maybe if you weren’t staring at my ass every second of every day, you would have asked me what I was studying. I can probably prospect better than you can.”

“I’d find pure, mocking enjoyment in seeing you try to harvest. I would bet my life that I can prospect better than you can, even with my impediment!” He motions to his mechanical arm.

“You wouldn’t have the impediment if you weren’t so fucking devious! And don’t even get me started on the arrogance, or the fucking pretentiousness!”

Your overheated exchange comes to a halt when the pod’s door opens. Cee climbs in, and you and Ezra try to mask your fury for each other as much as you can. She acknowledges the two of you and says, “Just need an air filter.” The atmosphere turns awkward as you watch her get what she needs out of her hatch. She’s leaving as soon as she came in, and you hold up a parting hand and say, “Be safe. Have fun.” She tilts her chin at you, and Ezra chimes in, “Be safe, Sparrow.” She exits, disappearing into The Blue.

Her interruption quelled the fire that burned between you and Ezra, subsequently drowning you in a wave of guilt over your words. Ezra’s looking down at his hands, shadows keeping his expression unreadable. You uncross your arms in defeat as you feel tears gather on your bottom eyelids. Opening your mouth to apologize, Ezra puts his hand up and directs, “Don’t apologize.” You protest, “But-” He cuts you off, “Don’t. Apologize.” You audibly sigh and sit back in your chair, not facing him anymore. You wish you could just kiss him. It would shut the both of you up and finally bring your shared, passionate feelings to the surface. Instead you opt to stare at the program board in front of you. How sexy. Such allure. You roll your eyes at your own naivety.

Both of you sit and replay all of the moments that led you to the peak that you sit atop, questioning how to safely start the descent. You decide to break the silence with a neutral topic, “Why do you call her Sparrow?” Staying turned away from each other, Ezra answers, “Well, now that I have two little birds in my life, I have to distinguish them.” Your heart glows at his comment, but it’s not enough to wipe the somber expression off of your face.

“Why Sparrow though?”

“She’s adaptable. She’s been able to keep a sane mind while traveling through Puggart Bench, The Green, The Ephrate, The Blue. The presence of others doesn’t deter her from her work, yet she’s not aloof to their existence.”

His musings entertain you. Your anger begins to become a thing of the past as you get off of your chair and sit down on the floor a few feet away from him. Being on a literal level playing field only increases your ease.

“What are you?”

He smirks, “A magpie.”

“I should’ve known.”

You share a bit of laughter before he explains, “I’m intelligent in trickery. I take pride in my illusions, but that’s not all I possess. Once I find my mate, I become protective of them, sometimes to the point of absurdity. A magpie male and female share the brunt of building a nest; as all great relationships should split the responsibility of reconciliation equally.” Regarding his last sentence, he raises one eyebrow at you. You stretch your legs out so that the soles of your shoes touch his.

“Magpies mate for life.”

You break your eye contact. You have grown shy from his pointed allusions, so you playfully fiddle his feet with yours. A moment passes before he says, “You’re a snow goose.” Confused, you look up at him, “A snow goose?” He nods enthusiastically, “Yes, a snow goose.” You shake your head, giggling, “I’ve never heard of those.” He leans forward with shock, “Really?” “Yep.” He shakes his head once and stands up to open his equipment hatch above you. He pulls out a book and sits back down, this time beside you. All About Birds. You assume the birds are alphabetized as you watch him flip the book open about 4/5 of the way through, and he presents you with a page: “Snow Goose”. Amused by the fact that he wasn’t lying, you let out a laugh. He laughs with you, “My Goose needs to brush up on her avian animal knowledge.” A minute has to pass before the cackling subsides. Then he paraphrases, “Snow geese are another adaptable bird, preferring to travel in packs. They roost mainly in bodies of water: marshes, ponds, the like. Ringing true to stereotypes of the general breed, they are very territorial of their property once they claim what is theirs. Snow geese have a brilliant white coat, which I equate to your magnificent aura. They are similar to magpies in that they mate for life.”

You look up from the book and are greeted with chocolate eyes glazed in infatuation. Thighs and arms pressed together, you turn to rest your chin on Ezra’s shoulder. Flickering eyes go back and forth between his eyes and his lips, signaling to him that if he wanted to kiss you, you wouldn’t object. He inserts, “Snow geese also don’t lack in paying homage to their reputation of being loud bitches.” You gasp and lay a swat on his chest as he chuckles away at his poking. After he has had his fill of laughing, you return to your resting place on his shoulder and let out a sigh.

A few quiet moments go by before you look up at him and admire the handsome, irritating, brave, stubborn, loving man who are you enamored with. You reach your hand up and comb your fingers through his hair once, twice. He leans into your hand as you continue to brush his locks, “Ezra?” He hums, eyes closing rapidly from the lulling pleasure you’re giving him, “Mm-hm?” You whisper, “I’m sorry.” A stark contrast from earlier, he allows your apology. He opens his eyes and they’re dripping with honest remorse and helpless romance, “I’m sorry too.”

Yesterday didn’t amount to what you had originally planned to accomplish, but it was still a good day. Despite all of the insult hurling and badmouthing, you and Ezra ended the day on a nice note. Getting to the bottom of his nightmares could wait for another time. You both had needed a day of fun together to put aside your hostilities before you embarked on discussing trauma. Cee had returned without a problem, hands void of aurelac but filled with notes of The Blue’s landscape.

You wake up, startled, All About Birds slipping off of your lap and onto the floor. You had sliced it out of Ezra’s dormant fingers after he had fallen asleep, your curiosity piqued from his earlier paraphrasing. Cee’s awake and bustling about in the pod, trying to find something, anything, to eat that isn’t a Bits Bar or a Slurry Pack. As you lean over to pick the book up from the floor, you catch Ezra’s eyes on you.

He’s standing at his equipment hatch, doing some much needed cleaning up. He’s a traveler who believes in organized chaos, that putting things in their “right” place takes up too much valuable time.

You smile up at him shyly and as you sit back upright with the book in your hands he says, “Did you find any specimens that better suit us?” You shake your head, “No, you were pretty damn spot on with your choices.” He flashes a smug grin, one that paints your face pink with amusement. Cee plops down in her chair with a huff of defeat, unwrapping a Bits Bar. Ezra hears her and says, “(Y/N) and I will take today’s assignment, Cee. You’ve warranted yourself a break after your ingenious expeditioning yesterday.” She says, “Good, because my legs feel like jelly.” The three of you laugh and you get up and rush to your equipment hatch. With your and Ezra’s friendship on its way to restoration, you were excited to find what the day would hold. The two of you get dressed in a flash, and you tell Cee before putting on your helmet, “We’ll be on channel one, like always.” She sticks a thumb up from behind her chair, and with that you and Ezra are on your way out of the pod.

The rays of the Sun today are periwinkle, streaming through small gaps in the overhanging vegetation. The air is tinted royal blue, the trees shimmer with teal sparkles, the soil a shade of navy. You inhale deeply as if you can smell the fresh air through your air filter, imagining a place where you could be with your gang without all of this clumsy equipment, without giving up the majesty that this landscape has.

Ezra snaps you out of your daydream, “Where to today, Snow Goose?”

You pull out a map from a pocket on your back and scan it, looking for any uncharted territory. “Let’s go west today. There’s a big chunk of land that we haven’t documented yet.”

He nods and begins your quest by turning to the left and walking. You follow him, folding the map and keeping it in your hands. Little conversation is shared between the two of you for the first bit of the journey and the silences aren’t awkward. The majority of your time is spent looking up, admiring the scenery as the Sun comes up and illuminates more of the land. Different hues of blue are unearthed as light reaches deeper crevices: the underside of leaves show turquoise veins, the inside of a hollowed tree trunk boasts a purplish-blue hybrid. The puddles on the ground vary in shape, size, depth and color, and are scattered about the ground in an oddly methodical fashion.

After a while of marveling at the sights, you regret getting dressed so quickly. You hadn’t brushed your hair properly, and the braid you had put it in was loose. Rubbing against your helmet with all of your head turning, the braid had fallen almost completely out of his shape and it was threatening to combine with your sweat to mold to your face. You instinctively put your hands to your helmet to try to push it out of your way, but you are met with glass resistance. Ezra, peeking over his broad shoulder to make sure he hadn’t lost you, notices your frustration, “Let me help you with that.” You furrow your eyebrows at him and wave off his help, “No, it’s okay. I’ll deal with it.” He shook his head quickly and spins on his heels, looking around and spots two conveniently placed tree stumps, one behind the other, that will accommodate te his fantasy. He gestures to them, “Have a seat, Goose.”

You stand there, not wanting to indulge in the dream. This was just as much of a dream for you as it is for Ezra. He watched you, everyday before you went out of the pod, braid your hair and willed that one day it would be his hands that would twist your smooth locks. And everyday you braided your hair, you would envision him standing behind you, concentrating hard on his handiwork, his hot breath cascading down the back of your neck, his knuckles grazing your back. Ezra starts walking over to the stumps and motions for you to follow.

You obey his command and sit down on the seat in front of his, scooting back so that he doesn’t have to reach very far to touch you. A depressing gasp fills the air as you detach your helmet and set it in your lap. Ezra’s gloves appear over your shoulder, “Can you hold these for me?” You were already turned on enough by the thought of him braiding your hair, now he would be braiding your hair with naked fingers and you got to hold the battered material that guarded those impossibly large hands almost everyday? Yeah, this is an illusion. You wait to wake up from your slumber. but are reminded that this situation is very real when Ezra’s fingers reach around your head to brush the sweaty hairs out of your face. His touch is gentle, unlike from the incident a few days ago. Now that you aren’t fighting for your life, you can take in the small, romantic details that you didn’t notice before. The pads of his fingers are rough but not scratchy. You see his fingernails, neatly trimmed and free from any sort of grime. How he pulls off that sorcery while being a prospector, regardless of the gloves, you will never know.

You tense as his fingers glide over your bruised neck, collecting your hair and bringing it all to your back. He holds your hair in one hand while the other stutters on a bruise. He senses your unease and strangles out, “I’m sorry.” You grip his gloves a little tighter, trying to fight your tears from spilling, and shake your head slightly, “It’s okay.” You’re ready to move past it. It’s important to remember that it happened, but you’re ready to rebuild your relationship. Like he jabbed at you the other day, leaving Puggart Bench had been tough for you. You worry that your leaving left behind permanent scars that would impact the relationships you had there. Ezra and Cee feel like the only friendships that you can count on to last. You need them.

Knocking you out of your despair, Ezra pulls your hair to one of your shoulders and rests his chin on the other. He turns his head so that his breath spills across your bare neck. He runs a finger lightly across a bruise and asks, mouth millimeters away from your skin, “May I?” You nod, and he plants an imperceptibly light kiss on your neck. You let a tear dribble down your cheek, wiping it away as quickly as it ran.

A thought enters your mind: my god, his lips are soft as fuck. The combination of the softness with the tickling of his patchy facial hair was heavenly, if not orgasmic. You giggle at your own thoughts* (*thots), intriguing Ezra, “What is it?” You decide to be transparent, “Nothing, it’s just that your mouth is soft as fuck.” A hearty laugh erupts from his chest, “Now I don’t want to put an end to your seductive observations, Goose, but I want this to be an innocent affair.” You smile and sit up straight, letting him know that you are willing to drop the flirtation. For now.

His fingers separate your hair into three sections and he says, referencing the other day, “As a treaty to our battles, I would like to clarify that I don’t think you’re ungrateful.” A soft smile graces your face and you input your own treatise, “And I don’t think you’re arrogant or fucking pretentious. You are a little devious though.”

He chuckles, “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be the scoundrel that I am, now would I?”

You shake your head no. No, he wouldn’t be the scoundrel that you are not so secretively in love with. As you sit there, enjoying the limited amount of time you are allowed with your helmet off, the details of your dreams prove to be true: you can feel Ezra’s concentrated breath warm the nape of your neck, his knuckles tap your suit when he twists your hair a certain way. You yearn for the day that you will be able to touch each other, feel each other’s true weight and texture, without the suits getting in the way.

“So, if you’re so good at prospecting, why don’t you tell me how you do it?”

His tone is playful and your situation could not be more peaceful, so you decide to indulge him, “Well, first you have to find a deposit, which is usually indicated by a lump in the ground.”

He verifies your first step, “Uh-huh...?”

“Then you want to pour a solution into the deposit’s hole. You don’t want to pour too much though, or else it could cause an explosion.”

Ezra’s hands stop. You turn and ask him, “Is everything okay?” He nods, his eyes first staring off into the landscape and then refocusing once they land on you. He continues to involuntarily nod as he says, “That’s what permitted Cee and I to escape The Green. She threw an entire pint of solution into a deposit. Nearly blew the entire place to bits.”

You feel rude when you realize that your mouth is hanging open in shock. You close your mouth and words about his time on The Green tumble out of his, “I am devious, indeed. But there were people--beings--there that would make me look like an angel. I take responsibility for killing Cee’s father because he tried to hijack my stash. A man’s work is no petty thing, Goose. I ended up having to kill two others there, in the end. I overestimated our luck after the first one, thinking that it would’ve been a simple escape. I killed the other mercilessly. You see now, Goose, the dangers that I encountered on The Green alone. I would never be able to forgive myself if I allowed you into harm’s way, and you became a tragedy.”

You reach a hand out and cup his face, which he leans into. He still holds onto your hair, your braid halfway done, and you say, “I was ungrateful, and I’m sorry for that.” He shakes his head once, taking your hand from his face and kissing your palm, “Now you see why I wanted to strangle you in my nightmare. I dreamt that you were someone else, some other thing, that was threatening to drag our trio back to that wretched land.” You both breathe out a shaky laugh, trying to lighten the mood. Even though it was nervous, you are glad that the both of you are taking some steps in the right direction.

He clears his throat and sits up straight, “Now, after you dodge an eruption, what is the next step of prospecting?”

You face ahead and let him continue your braid as you speak, “Next you want to remove the husk from the deposit, and cut the cord that connects the two. Then you want to remove the inner membrane from the husk.”

He quizzes you, “And what’s inside the inner membrane?”

“The aurelac gem.”

“Correct. Continue.”

“Then you want to cut out any blisters, but if you cut too carelessly you could puncture it, which will release acid. If that happens then the gem ceases to be worth anything.”

“That’s where my expertise usually falters.”

“Finally you want to remove the gem from the inner membrane, douse it in fazer solution, and you have your stone.”

He tests you again, “What is the purpose of the fazer solution?”

“To stabilize the gem and increase its clarity. Higher clarity grants higher payout.”

He pats your shoulder twice and ties your hair off with the hair tie you used for your loose braid, “Fantastic job, Goose. Couldn’t have explained it better myself.” He stands, walks around your stumps and holds a hand out to you. You take it, even though you were perfectly capable of getting up yourself. You got to hand him his gloves, and he stops you, “Wait a minute.” Both of his hands come to the sides of your face and push a few stray hairs behind your ears; the finishing touches to his masterpiece. You can tell he did a good job without having to look at it, since it didn't feel too loose or too tight, and the problem you had before was now solved. His tongue darts out and runs the edge of his bottom lip before he takes a step back, throwing his hands up, “Voila!” You giggle, eliciting a smile from Ezra wide enough to make the skin around his eyes crinkle in happiness. You hand him his gloves, which he puts on before you both secure your helmets back to your suits.

Ezra checks in with Cee, “Everything alright, Sparrow?”

A few seconds pass before she answers, “Yep, just listening to my music. Everything alright on your end?”

“Affirmative. We’ll be staying outside for lunch. Over and out.”

Ezra’s eyes gaze into yours for a brief moment before they move past your shoulder, eyebrows raised and mouth agape. You ask, “What?” before turning and following his stare. A patch of undisturbed soil, littered with lumps. In his rush by you, Ezra grabs your hand and pulls you along with him as you run to the potential aurelac deposits, laughing at his enthusiasm. He halts at the brink of the field, choosing which one he wants to dig up first. You suggest, “Why don’t we start from the outside and work our way in?” He nods, “That’s a great idea,” and drops to his knees. You stare at the mound in front of him as you sink down to the ground, pulling out your map. You mark where this field is located as he preps his harvesting tools. Once he’s prepared, he sighs and takes your hand, “Do you want to help me, Goose?”

You nearly spring to your feet with excitement, “Would I ever!”

He beams at your reaction and begins the process by clearing the dirt away from the mound to reveal the deposit. “How about for this first time, you just hand me the tools?” You nod, taking this as slowly as he wants to, “Whatever you’d like.” He grins as he cuts a hole in the deposit, knife already in hand. “Solution,” he requests. You hand him the bottle and he does the honor of pouring it over the deposit. A white steam emits from the hole, and he reaches in and grabs the husk. “Let me cut this cord, you can do the next one.” You agree and watch as he cuts it with his knife. He places the husk on a flat patch of land and requests his next tool, “Scalpel.” You hand him a Ralon Crusader Laser Scalpel and watch him work.

Laser scalpels are primarily used for precision work, like this step and the removal of blisters, while any generic knives will do the job when cutting the cord or opening up the deposit.

You watch as he makes an incision in the husk, handing you back the tool once he’s done. He wrangles the inner membrane out of the husk and holds his hand out. You know that he wants the scalpel back, and you give it to him. He flashes you a smile for your readiness, but then hands you the scalpel back. You take it, confused, and he says, “I’d like you to cut the blisters off of this one.”

Your pupils narrow and your muscles grow tense. You know the steps of prospecting backwards and forwards, but you had never carried out a lab experiment, let alone prospected aurelac in the wild. Ezra lays a gentle hand on your forearm, “I have eternal faith in you, Goose.” You move toward the membrane and turn the scalpel on. Ezra holds it steady for you as you go to remove the blister. There’s only one, which is a slight relief. You plunge the scalpel into the membrane, thinking that the skin would be thicker, and a hiss greets you. You pull back as the membrane deflates and an amber liquid seeps from it, the hissing never stopping. Your mortified eyes look up into Ezra’s and you immediately apologize, “I’m so sorry, Ezra, I thought that-” He raises a hand, “It is not a big deal in the slightest, Goose. I’ve never come across a prospector that didn’t puncture the membrane, or fail to mix the fazer solution correctly the first time.” He senses your lingering humiliation and grabs your shoulders, turning you even more towards himself, “Really, it’s fine.” You want to melt into his hands, crawl into his lap and just hide there until you feel better, but you know that you have to move on.

He points to the mound behind you, “Let’s try that one.” You stay on the ground and move the tools with you, while Ezra stands and walks over before he squats. You hand him the knife, watch him repeat the process and hand him tools as he needs them: slice the deposit, squirt in the solution, remove the husk, sever the cord, open the husk, take the membrane out. He looks to you, “I want you to try again.” Turning the scalpel on, its vibrations feel more vigorous against your heightened nerves than they did last time. Ezra assumes his position of securing the slippery pod, and you begin cutting. Again only one blister, you circle the blemish with the blade. Once the circle is complete, Ezra reminds you, “It’s easiest to pull it off with your fingers.” You follow his directions, turning the instrument off and setting it to the side. You pull on sticky flesh, and the part that you cut comes off easily. Ezra sighs, “Incredible.” Sliding his fingers in between the membrane and the aurelac, he pulls the rock out and discards the pouch. He calls for the fazer solution, which you hand him and watch as he washes the gem with it. Another hissing sound can be heard, much quieter than the one that came when you punctured the membrane. He holds the aurelac up to the blue Sun, and both of you observe, amazed, at how the light shines through the gem. Aurelac is an amber-hued stone, sometimes with ripples in the color, encased in a foggy crystal. The blue light complements the orange shade of the gem exquisitely.

Ezra turns to you, eyes bright with satisfaction, hands muddied with gristle, “Superb job, Goose!” He leans into you, helmet shields touching and reaches forward to kiss your glass. You smile and laugh with him in gratification. You can’t wait to harvest the rest of the mounds with your partner.

A warmth you have never felt before bestows itself to you this early morning. It flourishes in your heart and subsequently pumps through your body, reaching from the crown of your head all the way down to the soles of your feet. It stretches from your ribs to the ends of your fingertips, running in cycles back and forth. The cause of this pleasure was not from the large aurelac haul you had pulled yesterday, but from the man that you harvested with. Ezra’s arms encircle you, heavy with sleep. You’re swaddled in his blankets with him, the depths of sleep tempting you to fall back down to their level of subconscious. The Sun hasn’t risen yet.

You had crawled into Ezra’s awaiting lap after Cee had fallen asleep the night before. It wasn’t that you felt like you had to hide your feelings from her, but the dynamic still made you feel a little bit awkward, even with Ezra’s reassurance and Cee’s encouragement to pursue him. You would feel more comfortable if she were to wake up and find the two of you in your designated sleeping arrangements, and not in an amorous yet innocent entanglement of limbs.

You can practically feel a rainbow sprout from your chest as you look up at Ezra, finding delight in his relaxed expression. His hair is messy not from the tossing and turning of a restless night’s sleep, but the enamored strokes of a yearning partner’s fingers. The whirlwind of malachite butterflies in your stomach nudges you away from sleep. You press your hands into Ezra’s chest, where they have been resting, and turn to nuzzle your nose into his collarbone before you start to slip out of his embrace. Gently lifting his arms off of you in an effort to keep him asleep, you fail. He cups the side of your face and rubs his thumb back and forth against your cheek a few times before he lets his arm fall to his side. He gives you a smile of understanding, allowing you to leave him only because he will dream about holding onto you for forever once he drifts off again. You give him a playful boop on his nose before you stand and trudge over to your pilot’s chair, sinking down into your own cold blankets. You try your best to recreate the heat you just deserted by bundling yourself up tight, but it’s not the same. However uncomfortable, you quickly succumb to the temptation of sleep.

The true morning gives rise to an energetic group of prospectors. Still joyful about yesterday’s collection, you, Cee and Ezra are enthusiastic to stroll around The Blue again and see what else could be in store for you. Stretching in your chair, Ezra grabs your raised hands and leans over the back of your seat. You look up into his eyes and he greets you, “Good morning, Goose.” You smile and tease, “Good morning, Magpie.”

Cee blurts out, “Finally, you give her a nickname too!” You and Ezra laugh as he releases your hands, and you turn to face Cee at her equipment hatch. “I like Magpie too. Very fitting,” she raises an eyebrow at Ezra and he shoots you a wink. You get up to fold your blanket, Ezra glides over to his own equipment hatch, and Cee says, “You know, I say you guys last night.” Your face instantly beats red, and Cee notices, “No, it’s fine. It makes me happy to see a couple that can get over obstacles and love each other through it all.” You still feel a bit embarrassed, but shrug it off.

A word she chose makes you question Ezra, “Are we a couple?”

“Of course. We’ve always been partners, haven’t we?”

Suited up, the three of you enter The Blue. After your daily assessment of the land (beautiful, as always) you turn to Cee and wait for her direction. She had mapped out the majority of the Blue Moon the day that you and Ezra stayed inside the pod, so you trusted her guidance the most. Ezra asks, “Where to today, birdies?” Cee analyzes the map before pointing to an area, “This block was filled with hills. It didn’t look like there were many deposits, but then again I’m not the best at spotting them.” Eager to start, you ask, “Which way do we go?” Ezra glances at the map, points to the right and commences your expedition, “This is the way.”

💘taglist: @pascalpanic

#ezra x reader #ezra prospect x reader #ezra prospect #ezra fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #ezra x fem!reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #pascalitos #found family trope #prospect 2018

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isnt-it-loverly · 4 years

Text

little birdie//five hargreeves

Warnings: tried a new pov and it did not go well

Summary: When Five lands in the Sparrow Academy, he must convince one of them to help him reset the timeline.

Word count: 1540

Author note: part two is out find it here

part three, part four, part five

“This is not your home,” Your father spoke, “this is the sparrow academy.”

You smirked ever so slightly at his words. Your entire life you had been prepared for this, the day that they would come and threaten everything that your family held dear. This was everything that you had worked for. Soon it would all be over, and you would finally have your chance at normal.

Number five, he had called you. Much like your umbrella counterpart you were deadly. All you had to do was to look into his eyes and he would be yours to control, you’d have all the information you would need to take them down.

You watched intently as they pleaded with Number One. How curious, you thought.

You almost felt bad for them, how they whined like little lost children. You couldn’t help but watch their Number Five intently. He was young like you. Instinctively, you pushed up your sunglasses to make sure that they completely covered your eyes, and wondered if his power came with a price too.

Soon your father called each of you by number. Then tension in the room was thick, and it was easy to see that it made the Umbrellas uncomfortable. They all flinched as their number was called, just as your siblings did. Maybe they weren’t so different from you after all.

“Number Five!” Your father's voice rang through the air.

Five took notice of you, as he had for all of his newfound “siblings”. He watched intently as you straightened your jacket, and placed your glasses in the side pocket. Bewilderment took over as he noticed your eyes. They were such an unnatural shade of blue, deep like the ocean and endless like space. He also took into account your age as well. So young and innocent appearing, but with a number like 5- he knew your looks were deceiving.

Reginald called you forward and asked you to demonstrate so they could see the academy’s peak potential.

“Yes, father,” you spoke timidly. The sound was quiet and didn’t carry very far, but yet still obedient and full of determination. Your gaze soon set on him.

Five felt a cold feeling wash over him and his knees buckle. Crumpling to the ground, he gasped, “What are you doing?”

He couldn’t look away from you no matter how hard he tried. You knelt down and placed a cool

hand on his cheek. It was soft and gentle, the feeling matched your innocent physique. “This will be over soon, try not to fight it. It will only make it worse,” he heard your voice but no movement or sound came from your lips. That’s when it dawned on him, that you were in his head.

“No,” he choked. There was an ache in your heart, something about this felt wrong. However, this was always the part you hated most, the fear in their eyes as you took over.

Fire danced across the rubble of your newfound surroundings, there was nothing but destruction as far as the eye could see. The worst part about it was the fact that you were entirely alone and incredibly scared. The academy was reduced to ash, and crimson stains filled the street. The burgundy jacket you sported was now a navy blue, picking up a shard of glass you see Five’s reflection staring back at you. This is a memory? You look for any signs of life in the rubble, for anyone or anything that might still be clinging on to life. The only thing you found were the lifeless bodies of everyone you loved- no he loved, sometimes the feelings could get confusing. Yet you felt what he felt, everything from the guilt to the regret to the grief. It was the worst you had ever experienced. Taking a shaky breath, you lean against the rubble, biting your lip as hard as you can to distract from the pain this remembrance had caused.

“Its awful isn’t it?” a voice called. Your heart dropped into your stomach, it was just supposed to be you here. You turned to see Five staring at you. Rendered absolutely speechless you quickly touch your face and realize that your features are your own. This was impossible, he shouldn’t be here. The fact that he had slipped through your grasp angered you beyond means.

“How are you doing this?” You ask through gritted teeth. Five was amused, you had much more spunk when Reginald wasn’t there to control you.

“I’m not as dense as your average Joe, once I realized what you were doing I knew I had to divert you here before you had full control. I needed you to see this,” he explained. You looked around at your surroundings once again, there wasn’t much to look at other than death and destruction. Why was this the first thing he wanted you to see? He noticed the look of puzzlement on your face and decided that it would be best to take things slowly.

“Do you have a name?” He asked. He searched your eyes carefully, they were full of confusion, and yet he could tell that you were intrigued.

“Five,” you answered. “That’s your number, If you’re going to be in my head we might as well get on a first-name basis,” He retorted.

You looked down solemnly, “That is my name. Father said names made us weak and that they would place divides in us. But when we were kids we used to pretend to have names. I would always choose (Y/n). What about you?”

“I thought the same thing my-” he cleared his throat, “our father did when I was younger, thought I was above my siblings so I never chose one. I’m just Five, but I think it kinda suits me,” he finished with a small smile. His warm emerald eyes looked at you and your heart melted. They were so sad and you could tell that there were a million stories hiding behind them. Eyes were the windows to the soul, and suddenly all your malice towards him melted away.

“This what we were trying to stop. The big Dooms Day of 2019, but it appears my family and I have a knack for royally screwing shit up. We apparently got ourselves unadopted,” he explained. Five made his way over to you, cautious to make sure he didn’t frighten you away. You may have not realized it yet, but you could’ve put a stop to this little rendezvous whenever you wanted. He wanted you to listen, no, he needed you to. He sat next to you and pointed to the remains of the academy.

“That was our home too, I’m sure we had very similar childhoods. The training sessions must have been interesting with you around,” five said light-heartedly. You knew what he was doing, trying to distract you from your purpose. But you liked the company, it was nice to be able to talk to someone outside your family.

“‘My power is very hard to control. When I was a little girl, I could get stuck. I’ve lived a thousand lives, been so many people. That’s why I look so young, while I’m out of body… I don’t age, don’t hunger, never thirsty. Just still like a statue,” you explained. It was too much information, but who was he going to tell. It felt so right to sit with him, and you knew your secrets were safe with him.

“I got trapped in this hell for forty-five years when I returned to my rightful time- I miscalculated my equations. One decimal off and now I’m going through puberty again,” he said with a sad smile. He looked at you, and suddenly his smile faded. You searched his eyes and they were full of sorrow and regret.

“I need your help, (Y/n), this timeline is wrong. This could destroy the fabric of reality, everything could cease to exist. My family, yours, the entire world gone. This is the new apocalypse. If we don’t fix this… I’m afraid this may be our future,” Five explained solemnly. You heart welled when he called you by a name, it had been so long since someone had treated you like a person and not a tool for extracting information. You gulped as the information played over in your head again. This is exactly what your father had warned you about, they always brought the end with them. You stood quickly and backed away from the boy.

“(Y/n) please, you have to believe me,” he pleaded. Before he could say anything else, there was a flash and the warmth rushed into him. He looked up to see you towering over him, sapphire eyes brimming with tears.

“Well Number Five,” Reginald spoke firmly, “what did you learn?”

“He knows something about the apocalypse, I think them being here causes it,” you replied meekly. All your kindness and bravery you showed Five was gone, your father had a way of doing that to people.

Reginald stood and cleared his throat. His eerie presence loomed over the room and all fell quiet. “Sparrows, kill them,” he instructed.

#five x reader #number five x reader #five hargreeves #five hargreeves x reader #number five x you #the umberella academy

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scarymoosh · 3 years

Text

half-light

contains: crumbling angst and a spoonful of hope

word count: 1001

a/n: hi hello! have a very ooc xiao and a ganyu that makes xiao feel. really just my mind saying words and concepts I think sound good together lols

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He’s known her for as long as he remembers.

Looking at her now, seeing the way her messy hair falls back into a natural ponytail, bangs bouncing with each step she takes, his mind fails to recall a time when that pale shade of blue wasn’t in his life. It wasn’t just any shade of blue either. It’s not the kind he fights under like the sky, nor over ocean waters. It doesn’t come when winter blows in from the north or in the hands of a cryo vision holder. It belongs to Ganyu and only her, Xiao thinks.

Not only just the blue, but the red and the black as well, dark colors which take the shape of two horns which protrude from her head. It is a striking contrast to the bright hue of her hair, and a reminder of the kind of blood that flows in her veins. She’s half human and half adeptus, yet she walks gracefully, with poise, and balance, as if the weight of being part beast didn’t weigh down on her head like those horns do, like how those horns should.

He wonders how she can go about living, walking as if she’s doing it on clouds, as if she’s been freed from the strings that tether her to earth. The differences between them. His mask that sits atop his hip chains him to responsibility, and although the kind Rex Lapis put him under is different, Xiao can’t help but feel burdened still.

The feeling tugs down on his already heavy heart, but as soon as Ganyu stops in the middle of the balcony to take a gentle glance around, a part of him lifts when her amethyst eyes find his amber ones.

She smiles. “Xiao, it’s so nice to see you.”

Inside, his chest tightens. Maybe it was the way she made it look so easy. Maybe it was the way she looked at him like nobody else ever had before. Regardless, Xiao gives a curt nod in response. “Ganyu.”

By this point in time, being in her presence should feel as natural as the instinctual beat of his heart. They’ve known each other for millennia, yet now that he’s finally come to train her does he feel a distant comfort slowly crawl back into his soul. Mortals were a pain and she was half of one. But the other half of her that strived to live up to being an adeptus…now that was someone he has come to respect. Slowly, but surely.

Xiao hasn’t fought alongside anyone in ages. With most of the adepti either gone or retired, it was mainly up to him to protect the common folk, to uphold his end of the contract. And he thought he was in it all alone.

What took you so long? He wants to ask so desperately, feeling himself edging towards the brink of anguish. The more he broods on it, the more he feels like he’s suddenly about to burst. Why didn’t you come sooner?

But as he stares at her and she stares back at him, gentle eyes regarding him with such empathy, he keeps it inside along with everything else, behind the cold façade he wears like his illuminated mask. Because being able to see any sort of vulnerability from the guardian yaksha was like catching lightening in a bottle, nearly impossible.

Everyone around him has either died or disappeared. He detains people from a distance in fears they’ll be gone one day too, swept up in the torrent of death either by his doing or something else’s. If anything, the ever-thickening wall between him and the world was not because of strength verses weakness, was not because of mortal verses immortal. It was the one – and only – truth: survivor’s guilt.

The notion nearly makes Xiao tumble as he jumps off the roof to meet Ganyu halfway. He’s outlived the most horrendous mission of his life and given the blessed opportunity to atone for sins he did not mean to commit under a brand new name. Though, Xiao remains to carry shame, disgrace and remorse with him as though he was bound to such negative memory and emotion like a contract.

But if Xiao thought carrying the past was heavy enough, he wonders how Ganyu feels with the weight of two worlds resting upon her dainty shoulders. After all, she’s so gentle, always checking up on the zombie child and her little sparrow friend, and working under that Tianquin Ningguang and the Qixing, all the while maintaining her utmost respect and devotion for Rex Lapis. Xiao cannot comprehend how she even stands, how confused her mind and body must feel day in and day out, struggling to discern just who and what she truly is.

Despite that, she’s still standing before him right now in this very moment, with flushed cheeks and shining eyes that catch the warm glow of the hallway behind him. She’s still breathing so evenly, seemingly without a worry in the world. He tries to focus on the rise and fall of her chest, to read between the lines of each bated breath, wants to discern her secret of being able to keep it all together and still live despite it all.

Ganyu is strong, Xiao realizes. She is so very strong. Stronger than him in ways he could not even imagine. Strong enough to take on the rush and stillness between the two parts of her being that should not have even been one. Her very existence was a force that went against the universe’s rules, and here she was, pale skin nearly gleaming in the half-light as though she was meant to stand out yet belong.

Blue is the color of sadness. How ironic is it that her hair is tinged with it because Ganyu is anything but. She’s a cryo user, but being in her presence makes Xiao feel warmer than he should.

The thought makes him scoff.

Maybe the winds are changing.

#genshin impact #genshin impact xiao #genshin impact ganyu #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact drabbles #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact angst #genshin impact fic #genshin impact x reader #xiao x ganyu #xiaoyu

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waiting-for-motivation · 4 years

Text

of numbers and names

summary: Some would say that the Umbrella academy and the Sparrow academy are complete opposites. But they are more similar than some would think.

request: SPOILER ALERT FOR THE LAST EPISODE OF SEASON 2! Alright, so I’ve had this idea for a Diego Hargreeves fanfic but i never have the motivation to write it myself so imma submit it. The reader is a part of the Sparrow Academy and one day the umbrella academy just pops into their living room. Ben and the others are obviously not very welcoming but the reader feels sympathetic for them and convinced Reginald to let them stay for a little while. Eventually all rooms are taken and the reader has to share her room with Diego. (Obviously lmao) Just lots of fluff. (And maybe being best friends with klaus, because who doesn’t want to be best friends with klaus. He’s amazing) Hope you like my idea! I couldn’t get it out of my head since i finished season two! ~ @jannieka394

pairings: Diego Hargreeves x Reader

warnings: SPOILER, angst, fluff, Reginald (!?)

words: 1546

a/n: I hope you like it because I don‘t want to disappoint you. You are such a lovely person!!

MASTERLIST REQUEST RULES

“Each of you will stay with one of my siblings. That was one of dads conditions. The other one was a dinner at 6 pm“, the strange female explains to the members of the Umbrella Academy. They follow her upstairs and to their rooms.

“This house has enough rooms for all of us. Why should we share a room with you or your siblings?“, Five asks and the moment these words leave his mouth, the female turns around. She has a sweet smile on her lips.

“Because he doesn‘t trust you.“ She turns towards Diego. “He trusts you the least. That’s why you stay with me.“ The female opens the door to her room and nods at her siblings behind the Umbrella academy. Immediately, they go to their own rooms followed by the strangers.

Diego takes a deep breath and follows the female. He realizes that they are now in his old room. It looks different but it still reminds Diego of his childhood. His brown eyes widen. The female lives in his room must mean that she is the replacement for him. She is number two of the Sparrow academy.

“Why are you helping us?“, Diego asks confused. The female was the first one to speak up and even wanted to have a word wtith her dad in privacy. After thirty minutes they came out of his office and the female led them through the academy. And now they are here, in Diegos old room, in her room.

The strange female sits down on her bed and looks at the man in front of her.

“Because I felt sorry for you. I can read minds and yours were filled with so much anger, fear, confusion and sadness that I had to help all of you. Besides, if one of you plans anything I know it right away“, she explains and starts fiddling with her hands.

In truth, she doesn‘t know why she helped these six people. Maybe because she was raised to help. Maybe because she felt a certain connection to them.

“Thank…you“, Diego whispers. He leans against the wall next to a window and looks outside. It looks normal, not like he is in an alternative timeline.

“I‘m going to get you new clothes. I don‘t think dad will like the grungy look at dinner“, the female says, sits up and leaves her room without another word. The door closes silently behind her.

Diego takes his time to look at the room he is in, his room. A shelf is filled with books, just like he had one. The mirror is smaller. No knives are either sticking in the wall or laying around.

On the desk filled with papers and more books, Diego finds a box full of money. He raises his brows because that was the first thing he did to escape this hell of a home. As a seventeen-year-old boy he saved as much money as possible. The strange female seems to plan an escape too.

A thought fills Diegos mind as he looks in the mirror. He remembers his mom helping him with his stutter in front of the mirror. Maybe she is still alive.

The door opens loudly and gets closed as quickly as it was ripped open. Klaus is standing in front of Diego, staring at him with wide eyes. He looks as if he went through hell.

“Diego! I‘m so happy to see you! This alternative Ben is scary and cruel and so unkind. Can we please change roommates? She was so friendly…“, Klaus says as he walks back and forth through the small room.

The moment Diego wants to say something, the door opens again and the alternative number two is standing in the door frame. She stares at the two men with a pile of clothes pressed to her chest. Slowly, she closes the door again.

“Who is Ben?“, she asks as she places the clothes on her desk. Her eyes focus on Klaus, and she finds the answer to her question. “Number one? Why would you call him Ben?“

Klaus and Diego look at each other.

“What do you call him?“, Diego asks and watches the female raise her eyebrows.

“Number one“, she answers and walks past the men to sit on the windowsill. She looks as if she saw a ghost and that’s probably the truth. A small glimpse of Diegos memories showed her a loving mother she never had.

“You‘ve got no names?“, Klaus asks in shock and looks at his brother then to the female.

“Of course. They have no names because mom gave us ours. They only have dad. He gave us the numbers“, Diego realizes and swallows hardly. He can only imagine how hard it must have been for the female and her siblings to grow up without love and affection, only with cold numbers and a heartless dad.

One single tear escapes the females eyes. As quickly as possible, she wipes it away and stands up.

“You have to go back to number one. He will give you clothes for the dinner“, she says with a slightly shaking voice. Klaus nods and leaves the room, even though he wants nothing more than to give this poor soul a hug.

The female presses the clothes to Diegos chest and returns to the window, sitting on the sill. She stares out of the window, wanting to give the man his privacy while changing.

“It’s a good idea to leave the academy, believe me“, Diego says while he takes off his harness full of knives, then his jacket and shirt. The female on the sill wants to look at him with anger and confusion in her expression, but she doesn‘t want to hurt his privacy.

“What would you possibly know about that?“, she asks with an annoyed voice.

“For a person who can read minds, you ask a lot of questions“, Diego states with smile on his lips and number two can‘t stop herself anymore. She stares at him with anger in her (e/c) eyes. Only incidentally, she notices his muscular chest.

“But if you want to know. When I was seventeen, I left my family and this hell of an academy behind. I started my own life and it was the best decision I ever made“, the man explains while he buttons his new shirt. The female stares out of the window once again.

“But you need a name out there, in the real world“, Diego states and starts to think of a name that would suit the pretty female on the windowsill while he puts on the black trousers. “I‘m going to call you (Y/n).“

A smile forms on her lips, and she looks at the man in her room once again. For some time they stare and smile at each other.

“I‘d like that. Thank you, Diego“, (Y/n) whispers.

It’s midnight when Diego returns to their shared room. (Y/n) is waiting for him in her bed, holding a notebook as well as a pen in her hands.

The Sparrow academy ate dinner together with the Umbrella academy. But then their father told them to go to their rooms. He wanted to talk to his alternative adoptive children alone.

Diegos gaze is lowered and his shoulders are hanging. The female on the bed could swear she saw tears shine in his brown eyes. But the moment Diego actually looks at her, his sight is clear.

“How did it go?“, (Y/n) asks, although she is pretty sure Diego will ignore her. There is no way he is going to open his heart to her.

“This dad is even worse than the one I know“, Diego says as he sits down next to the female, grabbing the sheets. There is so much anger, sadness and rage inside him.

(Y/n) sits up so that she is seated next to the man, the notebook and pen in her lap. Hesitantly, she takes one of Diegos hands.

“I know. Sometimes I believe he is an alien, so heartless and cold“, the female says with a small smile on her lips. Diego laughs and makes her heart swell because she helped him forget the cruelty of their father for once.

“I don‘t understand how you could stay here for more than thirty years. What convinced you to stay?“, Diego asks confused.

“Family.“ (Y/n) smiles at the man, holding his hand tighter. “I might not have a loving mom like you had, but I have my siblings. They are grumpy and unfriendly and stupid sometimes, but they are my sisters and brothers. I don‘t know where I would be without them. They are my family.“

Diego nods because he understands her. After fighting the end of the world twice and traveling through time, he is closer to his siblings and would do anything for them. Because they are his true family now.

They say nothing for some time. (Y/n) lets herself fall onto the mattress, her legs dangling over the side of the bed. She closes her eyes and feels the weight of another body next to her.

“Technically, you are my family too, you and your siblings. So I‘m going to help you. If dad decides to banish you from the academy, I will follow you.“

#diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves x reader #diego hargreeves imagine #diego hargreeves oneshot #diego hargreeves one shot #diego hargreeves x y/n #diego hargreeves x you #diego hargreeves angst #diego hargreeves fluff #the umbrella academy #sparrow academy #umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #sir reginald hargreeves

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mooncustafer · 3 years

Text

Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.

#wonderfulxstrange #@laughingpineapple #twin peaks #@laughingpinecone

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thr-333 · 4 years

Text

Mismatch- Part 17

Bio Dad Bruce Wayne Month 2020

“Push me off the roof you coward!”

First< Previous > Next

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“So do you want to be Batman or should I?” Marion brings out the two outfits identical in every way except size.

“It’s not actually dressing up,” Marinette scolds fixing her hair.

“Well then you single handedly ruined halloween,” Marion grins coming up behind her, “Everyone wears them for it,”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Marinette watches him warily in the mirror, prepared to defend if-when he makes a move to mess up her hair.

“So Batman or Robin?” Marion holds the outfits up, dangerous close to her head.

“I don’t care,” Marinette stands up, spinning around, using the chair as a shield.

“Coin flip then,” Marion drapes them over the chair, “Oooh foreshadowing!”

“Please tell me you're going to take this marginally seriously?” Marinette leans back on the dresser as he fishes for a coin.

“You’re starting to sound like our manager,” Marion flips the coin with extra flare, “Heads,”

“You should thank Kate for setting this up,” Marinette catches the coin before he can, “Tails,”

She takes the Robin outfit from the chair, ducking Marion as she passes.

“You know I don’t think Kate wants to see me,” Marion takes his outfit behind the opposite curtain, “She's pretty stressed something will go wrong,”

“In Gotham?” Marinette pokes her head out the curtain on the other side of the room.

“I know, crazy right,” Marion also peaks through the curtain, “Where would she get that idea?”

“Who knows?” Marinette cheekily grins before ducking back behind the curtain.

“If we get attacked again I think we might give aunt- I mean,” Marion pauses pulling on his grey turtleneck, “ugh, this is hard,”

“Mari, the outfits are designed for easy use,” Marinette teases, tone sounding half hearted even from this distance.

“What are you calling her in your head?” Marion pulls the turtle neck down all the way.

“Selina,” Marinette answers, as he shrugs on his hooded crop top over the turtleneck, split into two colours to make a vague bat-shape. “Although I just avoid saying it out loud,”

“Great minds think alike,” Marion pulls on his grey leggings, that Marinette had thankfully made into thermals.

“I’m the only great mind here,” Marinette teases, Marion lets out fake gasp as he pulls a pair of shorts over his leggings, “You just like to copy,”

“How dare you!” Marion pulls the curtains aside dramatically, Marinette doesn't even look up from where she's putting on bracelets, “Dishonour! Dishonour on you, Dishonour on your kwami! Dis-”

“Hey!” Tikki flies out of the backpack.

“Sorry Tikki,” Marion looks away from the fuming Kwami, trying to avoid her by pulling on his black and blue boots.

“It’s ok Tikki,” Marinette finishes putting green and gold bracelets up to her elbows, “He’s just trying to be funny,”

“And succeeding!” Marion corrects, smoothing a mask over his eyes.

“Ah-ha,” Marinette stands, black and yellow scarf flaring out at the back.

“You know I don’t think she agrees,” Marion stage whispers to Plagg from his bag.

“Ah-ha,” Plagg says in the same tone, as Marion is pulling on his black gloves.

“Traitors, all of you,”

“Hey look,” Marinette bumps his shoulder, nodding towards someone.

“It’s Jason,” Marion whispers back excitedly, moving to wave.

“MCD doesn't know him,” Marinette grabs his arm, “Let’s hope this isn’t as awkward as it was with Chloe,”

“I thought that was fun,”

“Of course you did,”

"Hi," Jason approaches nervously, completely different to how Marion's met him before, it's cute.

"Oh hello, stranger," Marion grins, ignoring the kick from Marinette, he'll be careful, it's fine he's got this, "Whats your name?"

"Jason," Oh my God he's blushing!

"Jasin," Marion repeats pretending to write on what he was handed.

"Um…." Jason looks like he's about to correct Marion, this will be perfect- "yep,"

Fuck fuck fuck i though he would correct me fuck, Marinette help! Marinette rolls her eyes at his pleading look.

"Jason, CD," Pointing to the page without writing, "son,"

"Ohhhh Jason,” Marion says, as if he had come to some amazing realisation, Marinette looks like she wants to slap him, “haha, sorry, of course, I just didn’t hear you right, because I don’t know your name, why would I know your name? It's-"

Marinette rightfully cuts off his rambling with a swift kick, that both knew would never actually hurt him. At least Jason looks just as embarrassed as him, neither quite knowing how to start the conversation back up,"

"How about we take a picture?" Marinette says, their saving grace.

"Yeah, that would be great," Jason fumbles for his phone, Marion hopes his mask will cover his blush, as he remembers what Jason had said about him at dinner, the only reason he was blushing.

They take a nice picture together. Then one where Marion throws bunny ears behind MDC. She swats his hand away and he pushes her out of frame. The next picture is one of him and Jason with Marinette rising up, like a threatening blur in the background.

"Aw thats a nice picture" Marion looks over Jason shoulder, they were meant to be with the next person already but they were a design hopeful, babbling to MDC about her designs, "You should send it to me,"

"Of course," Jason seems flustered with his proximity, enough so that he didn't see Marion's trap.

"Great heres my number," Marion quickly writes it down on blank piece of paper, a picture seeming a bit too narcissistic at that point.

"...Waut,"

"Well you have to send it to me someway," Marion shrugs, conveniently ignori-forgetting that pictures were sent through his social media all the time.

"Right... right," Jason seems to be in a bit of a daze when Marion sends him off, standing next to Marinette as the fan leaves.

They watch Jason leave. Marinette starts giggling when he almost runs into a wall.

“Are you ok?" Marion asks, partly for the security guard who was waiting for their ok to send the next person up.

“You are such a dork,” She breaths through her upcoming laughter, “I think I need a minute,”

“Fine but if I get a hopeful fashion designer I’m telling them your new direction is crocs,” Marion huffs, not really insulted, but if he didn't act it she would only up the anti.

“Do it and your casket will be made out of crocs,” Marinette threatens ineffectively, walking to the backstage door.

“I kinda want to see that,”

“You’d be dead,” Marinette calls from the door.

“Minor issue,”

Marinette waves him off, which could have been an aborted swat. He watches as the crowd nearby begin whispering, some offering others to go first to stall for time. Marion plans to shove this in her face next time Marinette claims she isn’t popular. He’s about to take a camera out for evidence when one of the groups, fast tracked but the crowd, approaches.

Marion goes to do his more basic greetings when a gun is shoved in his face. The group made up of armed men surrounding him, one holding a camera.

“Smile for the camera,” The figure pulls his coat back, revealing the frankly disturbing face of the Joker.

“Oh it’s you,” Marion keeps a blank face, evidently confusing him, “Any chance two-face will show up?”

“.... No?” Marion fights to keep his composure as the crowd are threatened by the remaining thugs, pushing them to the ground.

“Pity, what a waste of good foreshadowing,” Marion shrugs casually, that camera is probably filming.

“What,” Marion supposes its a rare thing to see the Joker taken aback, but watching a group of armed men storm backstage distracts him from the sight.

“Nothing, I just made a brilliant joke earlier and you're sort of ruining it,” Marion makes exaggerated gestures, testing his limits, the guns follow him but don’t shoot. “Anyway are you here for an autograph or what?”

“I’m not-” He watches the Joker's face twist in gruesome realisation, “you’re trying to stall me,”

“Stall you from what?” Marion tries not to make his scan of the crowd obvious, “Please go in depth,”

“How about on the way up to the roof?” Chilling smile, but Marion is too used to fear to let it get to him.

“Oh goodie, I hear it has wonderful views,” Marion claps his hands, probably getting weird looks from the goons hiding behind masks, but who are they to judge?

He’s guided to the elevator. The Joker making the mistake of not tying his hands, or gagging him. He feels Kaalki and Plagg tense in his pocket.

“Huh, no elevator music,” Marion observes as the elevator starts to rise, “I just kind of expected it at this point,”

“You are strange,” Marion makes the mistake of glancing over, the Joker does not seem perturbed by that fact.

“You’re telling me that?” Marion tilts his head, “Actually that's quite the achievement,”

The Joker starts to go on about his plan, something about throwing MCD off the roof in front of the crowd for whatever reason, he’s not really listening. No, instead he’s made his own plan. There's no way Marinette was caught, not when she has no one to look after. She must be somewhere in the building, probably as Sparrow. It’s best if Sparrow and Songbird are seen near their other identities as little as possible, so he had to deal with the camera. If she saw the footage, which was probably being broadcast (a brilliant idea, really, no problems with that) she would intercept them. The best position would be on the elevator, but he had to buy time.

The cameras closest so he strikes, hitting it out of the goons hand, mid sentence. In the split second confusion he hits the number panel, lighting up all but a few.

“Huh, that was easy,” Marion says with genuine surprise.

“And here I thought you were being a good hostage,” Marion feels several guns press against him, but it’s only the pistol with the Joker at the end that worries him.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Marion smirks cockily, the threats turning more violent.

No, not threats, promises. Marion debates calling on Kaalki, while he’s still able too. It wouldn’t be great for a miraculous to be seen in a different country, but better than the one that can teleport than Ladybug. If Marinette couldn’t stop them in time she would surely turn to Ladybug and pick him up as he falls, right in front of the crowd and cameras. Not great.

There were other heroes in Gotham, they both knew. And if it was just him at stake he would put faith in them. But it’s not. He’s Chat Noir and there's not enough time to train a new Black Cat, not anymore.

The elevator finally reaches the top. Marion braces to help Marinette fight on the other side of the door. It opens. There’s no one. Great, great, great .

“Well, well, well why don’t we see what's behind that mask and carve up your pretty face, hm?” Joker leads him close enough to the edge of the building that anyone else should be scared.

“That sounds counter productive,” Might as well try plan b, he should have come up with one, but as is he’ll have to wing it, “Weren’t you going to throw me off the roof?”

“Eager aren't you?” Not really “After, promise,”

That grin paired with the knife inching closer should scare him, but honestly the only thing that truly scares him anymore is someone going for his ring, or Ladybug’s.

“What's the point? I’d be dead soon anyway, sounds like a waste of time,” Marion debates adding a yawn to match the tone, but it seems like overkill.

“A few screams are never a waste of time,” Marion is backed up further to the edge of the roof, able to see the fretting crowd below.

“Sounds to me like you just don’t have any confidence,” Marion says with all the sass he can muster, which is a lot.

“Oh, do explain,” The knife inching closer to the edge of his mask encourages the opposite, but he was never much good with warnings.

“If you really believe your plan will work and I wouldn’t be saved by I-don’t-know, Batman?” Yep that strikes a cord, probably not the best cord to strike with a knife in your face, oh well his wounds will heal soon anyway, “Then you’d throw me over the roof, a few cuts doesn't matter much when your dead,”

He can see the gears turning, debating if there's merit to his bullshit or if it’s just that. Honestly Marion doesn't know either.

“Revealing my identity and stuff is just a way for you to feel like you’ve won when Batman beats you,” He carefully doesn't emphasise the ‘when’, making it sound casual, like a given fact, “Cutting my face is just admitting you think the heroes will win,”

Just a little bit more. He’s almost pulled off plan ‘b’ for bat-shit crazy. He has the horse miraculous in his grip, Kaalki won’t like it but it's hard to put glasses on in mid air.

“Besides, won’t the mask leave a bit more impact?”

Hook. Line. Sinker.

“You really think the Bats going to save you huh?” The grin is unnerving, so Marion matches it with one of his own.

“I do,” He challenges, chin tilted up, “do you,”

He hears a cackle that would have surely appeared in his fear toxin dream if he heard it before. He’s pushed, vest twisted in the jokers grip, trying to stay balanced on the very edge.

“I like you kid,” And yeah, by that smile it’s not a good thing.

“Goodie,” Marion says sardonically, ignoring the shouting below, probably because his torso is all the way off the edge.

“Make sure to scream,” He feels the grip loosen, not having the natural response to grab onto something.

“I won’t,” he sends one last smirk as he’s dropped, weight sending him off balance and off the edge.

He’s in free fall and knows the screaming is not his own. He’s too busy debating the right time to transform. The street is getting closer and closer, no staff or grappling hook to save him.

“Klakki!-”

The air gets knocked out of him at the sudden change in directions. He can feel the arm and hears the glass shattering. For all the speed of a few seconds ago he is not expecting the quiet that follows. He’s leaning forward against someone's chest, both crouched down inside the building he just fell from. He recognises the shade of red first, Marinette had spent weeks with it pinned up all over their room and Marion has been wearing it ever since. He relaxes.

“Are you ok?” He gets pulled back from the chest, his complaints are cut off, a gloved hand tracing over his cheek, he feels the sting so it must be cut.

“Yeah I’m fine,” Probably not convincing, since his crush is the closest he’s ever been and Marion is almost the same shade of red.

“You’re fine?” The disbelief is clear and it takes Marion a second to realise why.

“I mean… Oh no! Trauma!” Marion tries to fall dramatically but the arm still on his back catches him.

“Good thing you’re a popstar not an actor,” Marion feels relief at the stiff atmosphere relaxing.

“Excuse you,” He snaps back up, poking Red Hood’s chest, smirking, “I’d make a wonderful actor,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Red Hood looks away, as far as Marion can tell with the helmet, “You sure you’re ok?”

“Yes, are you?” Marion stresses, remembering that he broke through the glass.

“... what?” Red Hood's full attention comes back to him.

“Are you ok?” Marion tries not to get annoyed at the answer, humour then, “After all breaking through a window isn’t much fun,”

You idiot you can't use his line on him ! Not in different identities! What if he figures it out?!

“Yeah.. yeah," He looks away again, "I’m… great,”

Marion smiles, guess things did turn out great in the end.

“CD!” Marion jumps out his skin, both suddenly realising how they looked and stand, Marinette runs right up to him, “Are you ok!?”

“Yep I’m… great,” Marion exchanges a private glance with Red Hood as Marinette frets over him.

“Thank goodness,” She sighs, shoulders sagging, then coming back up to hit him over the head, “Then why are you such an idiot!”

“Natural talent?” Marion rubs the spot, she put some Ladybug strength in that one.

“At least you’re good at something,” She sighs, brushing her hand over the spot.

“Rude,” Marion pouts, even as his head feels better, and his cut is startling to close up.

“If every things ok then,” Red Hood says awkwardly, “I’ve got a clown to go beat up,”

I Forgot!! How do you forget that! Marion yells at himself When your crush saves you from falling to your death…. Less romantic than it seemed in the moment.

“Have fun….” Marion waves, increasing the awkwardness ten fold, “dear god, I am an idiot!”

He groans into Marinette's shoulder after Red Hood left.

“Yes, but blush later, we need to be ready to provide backup,” Marinette pulls him out of the room stepping over broken glass.

“Uh- yeah! Right! lets go,” Marion snaps out of it, running after her.

“You are such a mess,” She insults as they jog, or with their speed, sprint up the stairs.

“Of all people you don’t get to call me that,” Marion needn't remind her of how she spilt orange juice all over herself at breakfast.

“... You just fell off a building, I was talking about your clothes,” Marinette has on her, ‘you’re an idiot’ face, well practiced that one.

“Oh,”

“But yeah you are a walking disaster,” She speeds up.

“Hey!” Marion sprints after her.

They reach the roof, not as out of breath as they should be.

“I thought I told you to stay put?” Red Hood snaps, alone on the roof.

“You didn’t,” They chorus coincidentally.

“I thought you had common sense,”

“We don’t,” They chorus on purpose.

Red Hood just shakes his head, probably smiling under the helmet.

“So the Joker escaped?” Marinette is the first to wipe the grin off her face.

“He was gone when I got up here,” Red Hood shrugs, “Waiting on intel,”

Probably from oracle.

“I didn’t say thank you!” Marion realises, not used to being the one saved.

“You don’t have to,” He looks away again, “Just doing my job,”

“But I want to,” Marion walks into his line of sight “So thank you,”

“Yeah well… thanks too I guess,” He looks away again and it's starting to get annoying.

“For what,” Marion leans over enough that he should be in sight, but he can't see his eye to confirm.

“I like the outfit you designed off me,” Marion freezes, almost stumbling over, “The interview was… entertaining,”

With that killing blow, a grappling hook is sent out and Red Hook is whisked away.

“.... Hey, can I borrow your miraculous?” Marion says blankly when Marinette comes to stand by him, “I need to wish myself out of existence real quick,”

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

Taglist:

@technicallyburninggarden @fusser90 @misslenamooney @superbwhispersconnoisseur @biodad-bruce-month @nalu-ismyjam

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fic #bio dad bruce wayne #Bio Dad Bruce Wayne Month 2020 #Mismatch #Marinette #marinette is mdc #twins au #vigilante au #pop star au #bio dad au #bio! dadbrucewaynemonth2020 #b!dbwm2020 #Maribat #mlb

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i-did-not-mean-to · 3 years

Text

Black - Chapter 9

This chapter was super hard on me and I'm not confident in it...

But here it is anyway...

Fandom: The Hobbit

Characters : Thorin X OC

Rating : Mature

Warnings: Smut, struggle and a lot of changes of heart

Bringing his hand up, he slowly brushed his fingers through her hair a few times before slinging them gently around the nape of her neck and holding her there.

Whispering her true name, the one she had divulged that first night in her hut, he tilted his face slightly, brushing his lips across her brow. “Oh, sweetling.” He sighed.

“Yes?” Her breath was dancing on his skin, calling to him incessantly and he felt like he was suffocating. He needed the sweetness of the air that escaped her soft lips in quiet pants, and yet, he knew he was not entitled to this.

“It is something you can give away but once, Faith.” He warned, not sure if he was still only referencing a chaste kiss.

“There is nothing I hold that I would not give to you, my king.” She said, bringing up her empty palms alongside his body.

“Don’t tempt me, woman.” He muttered, scraping his fingertips along her hairline, and hearing her utter low mewling sounds.

“Am I? Tempting? At least a little bit?” A new note crept into her voice, a hint of power tinging her breathless, joyous surprise.

“If you only knew. Always bewitching me with your sweet words, traipsing around half-naked and fragile as an autumn leaf, singing to the earth and the sky.” He mumbled, almost angry at her for having that effect on him.

Part of him wanted to take what she offered greedily, push her down and ravage more than her mouth, but her eyes were full of trust; he could not take advantage of her ignorance.

“I am young in the eyes of your people, I know it well, but for my own people, I am a woman grown, a woman past her prime already. I am not afraid.” She said in a hushed voice, pressing in closer. It had been too long since last she had found any release; it would have been unseemly to do so with him only a stone’s throw away, but her body yearned for it.

“You’ve talked about a kiss.” He sounded confused and slightly alarmed.

“Yes.” She smiled, tilting up her own face in invitation, holding his burning gaze that swirled with silver stars dancing on a night sky. “I am feeling very brazen tonight.” She admitted. “But…” Her voice faltered when he didn’t move.

“Maybe you’ll have to touch my hair after all so at least one of us doesn’t lose their courage.” He smirked and sighed when her hand slid into his hair, her long, narrow fingers carding through it tenderly.

“Courage restored. Now, how do you rule, Thorin-king?”

She gave one of his braids a playful tug when his eyes drifted off into the distance, his brows furrowing with thoughts she couldn’t fathom. “You’re the one who offered me something…” She reminded him in an inviting whisper.

“I did not expect you to ask for something that would be so…risky.” He murmured. “Are you afraid of a maiden, warrior-king?”

“No.” He sounded half-offended, and the other half was most probably a lie. “My neck starts to hurt…” She complained lightly, sighing when his broad hand cupped her head tighter again to support it while she stared up at him.

His face drifted in and out of focus, unbearably beautiful and marked by the deep contemplative mood he seemed to be in.

“You asked for it, woman.” He grumbled warningly as if he feared that she’d change her mind after all and run into the solid door like a trapped bird as soon as he came any closer. She hummed her agreement, letting her head rest against his palm trustingly.

It was the lightest of brushes; her king, her master, her friend let his lips glide over hers for a second, with so little pressure that it felt like warm velvet being pulled along her aching skin, and before she could even reciprocate, he was gone.

Her eyebrows shot up in silent indignation. Was that all she was worth? “Was this kiss a gauge of your fondness?” She asked.

“It was a translation of my respect for you.” His teeth clacked shut with an audible sound of frustration. “What would you have me do, woman? Crush you like a sparrow?” He sounded definitely exasperated now. Faith knew that men could be fools and, in this moment, she realised that even mythical dwarven kings were no exception to that rule, so, plunging her hand back into his hair and clenching it into a fist, she pulled his head – that she would have believed was made of wood if she had not known that it was carved of stone – back into her reach and pressed her lips on his.

He could keep his gifts of gold and his respectful distance, she thought while her body roared like a fire under her writhing skin. A smell of tobacco and leather, interlaced with fresh air and warm stone, pervaded the space and, in an almost dream-like trance, she picked up on hints of pine and sandal wood. Pushing in even further, Faith traced the stubborn line of his lips with her tongue and breathed in the tortured sigh escaping them.

Her whole body was arched against his as she tried yet again to fling her whole weight, and every ounce of strength she had, into her physical dealings with a dwarrow, only to have him stand firm and unmoving as if rooted to the ground.

Within the blink of an eye though, the impossible, the inconceivable happened and Faith witnessed the melting of stone when Thorin, the impassable, brought his other hand up to cup her behind, lifting her higher and returning the urgency of her kiss.

There was heat bleeding into her skin, radiating in pulsating waves from his body, and Faith clawed at the tunic he was wearing still, desperate to feel the beating of his heart.

“Woman.” He rumbled again, low in his chest, and she gave his hair another tug, much less gentle than the first ones.

His hand held her up perfectly, so she slung her legs around his midriff, one hand clawed into his tunic and the other holding on to his mane as if she was riding a wild horse bareback.

“Say my name!” He demanded again as she gasped for air, drowning in his eyes, and unwilling to move away for longer than a second for fear that he’d decide that he had enough of her kisses. Despite his actions, she could feel him hold back and pull away; he seemed a ghostly visitor more than an actual person in this second, and she half-expected to wake up bathed in cold sweat any moment, her sweet dream dissolving in the morning mists.

“No titles, just my name. Say my name!”

She whispered his name, blind to anything but his beauty, deaf and dead to the world. He brushed away a strand of her own hair and smiled: “Your first kiss was not supposed to be anything like that, sweetling.”

Regret tinged his voice; she could hear the sadness of the old when seeing the young squander gifts they sorely missed themselves.

“It should have been sweet.” Thorin brushed his thumb over her cheek where the remnants of her injuries painted dying rainbows on her skin and touched his lips almost reverently to hers for a second. “It should have been cautious.” This time, he lingered a little longer, intensifying the delicious pressure and sucking ever so gently on her lower lip. “It should have been seductive.” He went on varying the constellations of his lips on hers, a tantalising dance of sensations and movement.

“It should have been with someone you care about.” He spoke against her lips. “It should have been given freely and not coerced by duty.” She shot back, biting down on his lower lip teasingly.

“Coerced? Oh, sweetling…” He chuckled. He had hesitated, sure, but it was not as if he had thrown her off as soon as she tightened the reins she had wound around his senses and mind. Even now, her legs ensnared him, and her hand was clenched in his hair and yet she had the audacity to speak as if he had outright rejected her.

“And I do care about you.” She added, softer, nibbling tenderly on his skin which made him shift under her, shivering with suppressed urges that set his blood ablaze. “Do you?” He sounded doubtful. Of course, she liked him well as a friend, she had said so many times and, unlike most of her kind he had met, she seemed to understand and respect his status amongst his own people, but did she care for him the way women cared for those they let kiss them?

“Your sister might be right, and you ARE a vain creature.” Faith laughed. “Demanding to hear your own name and to be showered with praise and compliments.”

“She said that? Hmmm, we’ll have words.” Thorin grumbled, looking thoroughly displeased with this piece of news.

“Thorin, I do care for you, and I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me again rather than have words with your sister.” Faith purred against his skin. “Let go of my hair, woman, so I can bolt your door. It would be very unfortunate for both of us if someone tried to have a conversation with you…only to find me half undressed and you wrapped around me like ivy.”

Faith untangled the silken strands from her fingers but kept the pressure of her legs steady. “Alright.” Thorin shrugged, moving over to the door as if she was naught more than a cumbersome garment, his hand warm and solid under her butt.

The bolt was driven home with a dull click that echoed in Faith’s head.

“You are not that undressed at all.” Faith commented, feeling her own shift move inexorably up her thighs with every step that he took. “I thought you were afraid to see me undressed? Bad luck and so on?” He cocked one eyebrow.

“I have luck on my side.” She replied with a smile, wrapping one of his braids around her finger and kissing the tip of his nose.

He had to laugh about that but getting off any more of the many layers formal clothing demanded was rather a difficult enterprise with a woman slung around him and clinging to his body like yet another coat. “If you permit then?”

It was a miracle that his tunic had not just fallen to ashes and dust, crumpled between his burning skin and hers, he thought as he shrugged out of it. “Oh, great creator, I shall have to make adequate sacrifices.” Faith hissed under her breath.

“You are hellbent on ruining the both of us, huh?” Thorin laughed darkly as he saw her lick her lips in quiet contemplation.

Every thought of fatigue fled Faith’s mind as she beheld what could only be described as marvellous; he looked like the princes her nan had described in her fairy tales, like a character out of a bed-time-story for adults.

With her off his chest, quite literally, Thorin could catch his breath and realisation ran like ice through his heated blood; her swollen lips and her gleaming eyes screamed of the trespass he had been about to commit.

“Let me pour you some wine, Mistress. You wanted to talk, let’s talk.” Thorin picked up a carafe and handed her a sturdy mug, filled to the brim. “I do not want to talk, Thorin-king, you…you’re half naked. What is there to talk about?”

He was stalling, Faith realised. “Am I that repugnant?” She took a deep swig of the slightly sour wine that made her tongue prickle. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, woman.” Thorin said slowly, sitting down on the bed so he wouldn’t be towering over her during this tremendously important conversation. It would have been too easy to let himself be caught up in her warm beauty; the door was locked, they were alone and there was a bed…but she deserved better and, as he knew what this would possibly entail and what she risked, it was his responsibility to steer her away from a fatal mistake.

It felt like tearing out his own guts and throwing them into the fire, he had to admit, but he would not falter, he would not give into the greed that was the curse of his bloodline and the bad reputation of his people. Not if he could help it.

Looking down at his bared chest, he realised how close he had come to being seduced and how strong the spell he was under really was, for him to undress haphazardly in a woman’s room, throwing over decorum and years of training.

He should have been able to restrain his own needs and urges better; it was shameful how much he yearned to kiss her again until the rising tide of lust would wash both of them away, along with all the better judgement and the common sense that held him back now.

“I will leave this place in hopes of reconquering my homeland, I need you to be safe in these halls.” He sighed. “I cannot ruin your name. I cannot leave you soiled, exposed to the gossiping of vicious tongues.”

“Nobody needs to know?” Faith cocked her head. He laughed wryly: “They would know, darling. It…what you have in mind is complicated, especially between someone as frail as you and…well, me.” He gestured at his broad chest.

“I might hurt you, and Faith, I’d never risk injuring you. You have to understand, I care too much for your well-being.”

“I understand.” Faith tried hard to swallow the tears that were welling up against her will or better judgement. “Don’t cry, sweetling, ghivashel, don’t!” He felt like a villain, but how could he make her understand that there was an actual threat to her safety? She felt rejected, of course she would, she had all but explicitly offered him her maidenhood and he had stepped back.

Did this make him a liar? He had willingly given in to her kisses, he had reciprocated them, and now he wouldn’t see this through for oh so many reasons that she could not fathom.

It pained him to think that she might believe, if even for but a moment, that it was a lack of attraction on his side that made him pull back. If he could have, he would have shown her the extent of his despair that was throbbing almost painfully against his thigh; yes, he might have brandished the angry, red proof of his desire for her, but he didn’t think that it would allay her pain and confusion. Contradicting feelings and desires swirled heavily in his mind and soul, and he sighed.

“Come here, darling one, come.” He beckoned her to him and embraced the torture of having her nestled on his lap, pulling his fingers through her silken hair, and breathing in her sweet smell. It would have been simple to let her believe that he did not want her, but he couldn’t bear lying to her. “Don’t think for one second that I do not want this, you, us.” He started.

“One day, we’ll have time, oh so much time, sweet one.” He promised. “My life is running out already, Thorin-king, my time is short compared to yours.” She contradicted him vehemently. “Soon, I swear. I shall make haste in my conquest. I will fulfil your every wish, I promise, once Erebor is reclaimed and I know that you are safe and cared for.”

She was not secure here; she was a stranger, a foreigner, and he was afraid that once he left with most of the people she had learned to trust, there would be considerable danger to her life and sanity. Her good name and her integrity would both attract suitors and keep unsavoury characters away from her, or at least, so he hoped. He could not destroy that layer of literal protection, stripping it from her in selfish voraciousness when she needed it most.

“Thorin-king…what if you get lost again?” She asked quietly. “I will find my way back to the right path. Neither storm nor contrary forces shall stop me.” He replied calmly and she believed him.

“In that case, add me to the spoils of your imminent victory, darling king.” She stepped up to his sitting form and rested her cheek against the crown of his head tenderly. She did not see the fire that his boiling blood drove into his eyes upon hearing her sweet, selfless willingness to risk her hale body and her social standing to be his; the torturous need of his life and limb were burning bright within him. God, how he yearned for her, for everything she offered and everything she didn’t yet know she could give to a man. He wanted that sweet mouth on his body and her tender words in his ears while he covered her like a blanket, protecting her, taking her to a world she had never been in before and stay there until the end of time.

Taking off her shift, she stood, naked as the day she had been born and turned in the golden light of the fire crackling in the hearth. “This is what I offer, now and every other day, Thorin-king.” She said in a low, trembling voice.

“You asked me before and I repeat: when you call for me, I shall come.” – “You are beautiful.” He sighed; her beauty in the warm glow of the flames mesmerized him and, once again, he felt himself totter at the edge of control.

His hands closed around her wrists, pulling her close once more and he pressed his lips against her collar bone in wordless adoration. Her soft moan drove him half to distraction, but this was neither the place nor the moment for those thoughts and actions. He wanted to have time and a place that was his own; he wanted to have her, oh desperately so, but he would lay her down on silk and furs and caress her without the looming shadow of impending doom nipping at his heels.

First, he would have to prove himself worthy of her faith and his people’s hopes before he could allow himself the reward of getting lost in her flesh; but, oh, how hard it was to say no to the alluring softness of her skin and the dizzying smell of her arousal. He would carry the memory of her self-forgotten kisses across the plains and the mountains, safe within his heart and burning within his veins.

This one thing though, this one gift, would not be ripped from her, hastily, in passing, casually; no, he would honour her and her sacrifice duly, he would spend hours coaxing the sweetest of sounds from her and he would revel in them.

“So are you, Thorin.” She smiled at him with all that affection he had learned to cherish so deeply. “Will you still call me beautiful me when I am king? Will you let me have then what nobody ever had before and never give it to someone else?” The words were out of his mouth before he could take them back. A terrible fear had taken hold of him; it was not possible, it was not right, it was not decent to deflower her here and now, but still, the idea of someone else claiming that privilege pained him like a poisoned blade thrust ever so slowly between his ribs. It might have been unfair, but he wanted her to know that it was out of respect for the gift she offered that he had declined. He needed her to promise to hold on to it until they were reunited.

“You are my friend, Thorin, and I’ve cared for you wandering, I’ve respected you poor, and I shall admire you victorious.” She answered cryptically, pretending not to hear the underlying meaning of his words.

She would be willing to be his in ways she would never be anybody else’s ever again, Faith knew, but her life was short, and he would have to find a proper queen sooner or later. He was emotional now, that was to be expected, the most important quest of his life was about to begin; a way to right all the wrongs, a redemption, a rewriting of history. Too many half-truths had been spoken recklessly, too many things had transpired that had not been planned, and he had no idea what he was talking about in this moment; she could forget, she would forgive, it was not in his nature to lead people astray and give them false hopes. Not him.

Inner turmoil, that was the explanation for his words, he was merely relieved to be back with his family and apprehensive of the long road ahead to the Lonely Mountain. Also, he clearly had a different notion of time.

She knew not what he expected to happen on his quest, she did not understand why he’d doubt her eternal adulation of his person, but she was too vulnerable and too scared to probe any further. There were other things that needed to be resolved first…

The end of the long wanderings, a return home…she had been wrong to distract him from this singular purpose that would define more than just his own fate. She wished she could promise him what he wanted her to say, but dwarrows lived long and they had a good memory of broken vows and false oaths.

How could she have promised him more than her affection when it was worth nothing? It had been so easy for him to rebuff her, and she would have to nurse this wound in private; the sting of it ran deep and its ragged claws burying deep within her soul were a pain that was new and shocking to her. Still, she did not withhold words he had asked for out of petty vengeance; he seemed so sure that he knew about risks and dangers she was unaware of, well, she was painfully conscious of realities he seemed to wilfully ignore, like the fact that she might not live to see the day he was crowned king.

Lie, to ease his mind, to give him courage, a voice inside her head whispered, but she loved him too dearly to do him wrong like that. He might well turn out to be her first and her last lover if he did not tire of her before her life expired, but that meant nothing in the grand scheme of his glorious purpose and his illustrious life. They had both tried to make this situation into something momentous, something memorable, and they had both failed miserably, shipwrecked on the rocks of social conventions, the promise of dark times ahead and physical incompatibilities. How ridiculous it all sounded!

Then again, he had been more gracious and generous than her, swearing that he would bed her once Erebor was reclaimed. If, Faith thought, if Erebor was reclaimed within her lifetime and if he survived the ordeals that would become necessary, then he might reconsider taking her as a lover; one of many, one in a long line of lovers, or, worse, the only one. One he would lose too soon and that might leave scars on his soul, no, he did not care for her in that way, no matter the inflection of his raw voice.

He had never sworn fidelity to her; he had merely asked for hers. She should have said yes to that, ignoring what it meant for her and how extensive that oath would have been, but she had been too afraid to promise more than she could offer.

Silence fell between them, filled with words unspoken and desires unfulfilled.

“I have stayed too long already.” Thorin got up jerkily, grabbing his clothes, but she stayed his hand.

“Let me see what you’ve promised me, give me something to hold on to while you’re away.” She was a hypocrite, but she needed this much more than him. The months apart would feel longer to her, and she would think of him as there was nothing else to think of, while he would be too occupied with his great deeds to spare her any thought.

“Woman.” He shook his head but took off his breeches and his small clothes in swift, almost despondent movements.

She gasped, breathless, amazed. He really did look like he was hewn from the most elegant of stones, his body made up of strong, broad planes partially powdered with dark hair. As she directed her eyes to that one part of the male anatomy that had occupied so many of her maiden dreams, she revised her original assessment. This had not been a mason’s work, this was a sculptor’s doing; no matter how fine the chisel, such beauty and delicate curve could only be achieved by painstaking moulding of the wet clay.

How she longed to run her own palms along the smooth surface again and again until she could feel the perfection manifest under her fingertips. She had of course seen parts of him undressed, bits and pieces, flashes of skin and wounds, but this was different; this was unapologetic nakedness in all its glory, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the strength of his limbs.

“Glorious!” She exclaimed and touched her forehead in a sign of devotion he had observed in some of the men he had met.

The roaring fire in his veins was not abated by the expression on her face though, there was that ever-present admiration and the respectful awe, but he could also read hunger and unveiled desire in her eyes that drove her to squirm deliciously.

“Can you now see why this would be a potential risk to your health?” He asked, cocking one eyebrow; maybe, he was indeed a tiny tad vain, but she could not even open doors on her own, how would she support his weight or welcome him inside of her?

“I can see that…” Faith whispered, approaching him like a wild animal, one hand outstretched in front of her. She advanced until her hand landed squarely on his chest, tangling her fingers in the coarser hair in the same way she had done with his mane before.

“Sweetling.” He murmured, moaning under his breath when her body pressed up against his: warm, soft, and very alive.

“I do understand.” Faith went on, kissing his neck just underneath the line where his beard ended.

“Faith…” He groaned, his hands wrapping around the small of her back, even though he was not sure if he was trying to push her away or pull her closer still. “Thank you for this. I shall treasure the memory.” She whispered against his skin while her fingers slid into his hair and raked across his scalp.

He would not go back on his word, Thorin swore to himself, but it wouldn’t hurt either one of them to kiss her again. At least he hoped that it wouldn’t because, already, his mouth was on hers, plundering her sweet surrender shamelessly.

Her hands tightened and he could feel her legs clenching in waves. Convinced of his own strength, he dared to let his own hand cup her mount and had to discover how wrong he had been. She was drenched. This would take every ounce of self-control to step away from, even more so because she whimpered into his mouth while pressing eagerly against his palm.

Time was flying, he had been on his way out of her room, he tried to cut through the red mist overtaking his thoughts. How had he ended up with her sex weeping all over his skin while he sucked in her whimpering pleas like a drowning man the saving air of the surface?

This was not the way it was supposed to be, he thought, she deserved more than messy kisses in an empty room. “Sweetling.” He sighed…and cursed.

It was but the slightest of caresses, so light it might have been a gust of wind, but there was no draft in the room and one of her hands had disappeared from his hair. “May I?” She breathed against his lips, smelling, and tasting of tart wine and sweet submission. He wanted to shake his head and ended up nodding, dazed. His teeth clacked shut with the violence of an earthquake as her fingers danced along his length, searching, as if she was a blind person trying to identify an unknown object.

He was not a youngling; he had known handsy encounters in dark corners, but her beatific smile unfurling as her eyes fluttered shut drove him half-mad; he was torn between the rising need to just possess her and damned be the consequences and the urge to lay the whole world at her feet.

“So warm.” She mumbled to herself, visibly happy to have discovered the secret of manhood and to have the opportunity to explore. Thorin had to consider as well that she had no idea what this felt like for him; he had been on the road with her for a considerable time, thinking about her, seeing her half-naked and now, she was in his arms, her fingers wrapping and unwrapping around his cock. He would not make a fool of himself, but it became increasingly harder to swallow the sounds of desperate need bubbling up at the back of his throat.

As the low grunt broke through his defences, she shrunk back, asking if she had hurt him somehow. Her…hurting him…What a ludicrous idea. “No, sweetling, but you make it really hard not to break all the sensible resolutions I have just explained in detail.” He chuckled darkly, struggling to regain the upper hand over his baser needs.

“I am sorry, I am being indecent.” She murmured quickly, hiding her hands behind her back. “You’re not. I…I wish we had time.” He let his forehead sink against hers before pressing a tender kiss on her brow.

“At least now you know how desperately I desire you. I shall leave for Erebor soon, I cannot wait to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and bed you in a way you deserve. Wait for me!” He whispered, his hands caressing her cheek gently.

Faith knew that she would wait until her hair started fading to white and her eyes were no longer able to make out the outlines on the horizon; whatever time was granted to her would be spent keeping a watchful eye on the sky to make sure not to miss his missive. “I shall.” She promised, that much, she could swear easily.

“Oh, this will be a long night.” Thorin groaned, as he tried to wrangle his body back into his clothes. “Do not close the door, I have to be up early, and I do not care to wake the whole settlement.” Faith called out to him, slipping between her sheets.

“You are naked, woman. I will not leave your door open. Especially…” He waved at her heated face and her rosy body, flushed with the fire he had kindled within her. If he could feel her heat, who was to say that someone else would not wander this way and be less scrupulous than him?

“Do NOT lock me in.” she pleaded quietly. “Wait there! Don’t move!” He barked and disappeared, fully dressed again. Within a few minutes, he was back, carrying what looked suspiciously like a sleeping roll. “What are you doing, Thorin-king?”

“I will guard your door like that blasted dragon sleeps on the treasure of my family.” He grumbled, sitting down on the flimsy-looking piece of fabric.

“You cannot do that!” She exclaimed, propelling herself out of bed, dragging the sheets behind her and kneeling in front of him to stare at him severely. “You have seen me sleep on the ground, woman, do not act surprised! Beds will be a rare commodity on the road to Erebor as well…I can stay here without dying.” He laughed.

“You are king here; you cannot sleep in front of my door. You need your bed. I’ll be fine.” She promised, encircling his bulging biceps with both her hands, and giving it a tentative shake that made him cock one eyebrow in confusion.

“Mistress, you don’t want your door closed and I don’t want to find you despoiled and bleeding in the morning. So, I will stay right here. Don’t worry, if I get too tired, someone else will take over for me.” He assured her, caressing her wild hair tenderly.

Not only does he intend to sleep on the hard floor, Faith thought, but he also planned to stay awake for the bigger part of the night. Stubborn, headstrong dwarf!

#hobbit #thorin oakenshield #oc #before erebor #before the quest #light smut #struggle #black #difficult chapter #sex is hard #I'm so sorry

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dragonrajafanfiction · 3 years

Text

Yggdrasil

"Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Toyama sat in his office behind a cup of tea across from his patient Tigre.

Tigre had been absent for two weeks performing entry exercises for Battlefield Training level 1. He'd performed exceptionally well, surpassing the students in his troop and complying dutifully with the strict schedule and regiment. At this point, not only was he physically able, but now he had experience in shooting, keeping watch, and setting up camp. He looked more tan, a bit stronger, more energetic. He kept decorum, but every time he saw him, he couldn't help but feel happy at his success.

Tigre had two more weeks of academic pursuits before returning to Battlefield Training for the next round. Toyama had been seeing him for his weekly counseling and needed to catch up with his mental health after missing a session.

Tigre took a deep breath, turning the delicate tea cup in his scarred hands. "I've been thinking a lot about where I come from. I didn't really care before. But people ask me questions like: where am I from? Who is my family? Where did I go to school? But all I remember is the cage. I should have memories growing up. Like going to school. I didn't learn to read and write in the cage. Who taught me? I don't know my real name. My real name is not Tigre. That's what they called me."

Toyama listened carefully. "Do you think these questions are important?"

Tigre was thoughtful for a moment. "No. That's not it. They're not important. I just don't want to tell people I lived in a basement all my life. I don't want to say that I don't know my real name. I don't know where my parents are…"

"But this is the truth." Toyama said gently. "How do you feel when they ask you these questions?"

Tigre thought about this and Toyama pulled a tissue from the box next to him and offered it to him.

"Sad…" Tigre said, wiping his face.

"What do you feel sad about?" Toyama asked.

"Just not knowing. I don't have anything to say… they ask who your parents are, you say I don't know and they… they look at me like they're sorry."

"That makes you feel sad?" Toyama asks. "Or are you sad before then?"

"Um…" Tigre tries to think. "Starting out, I never thought about my past. But now I'm afraid that every time I meet someone, they will ask questions like that. I'll already start getting sad before they ask that."

"So you feel bad in anticipation…"

"Yes. That's it."

Toyama nodded and made a note. "So when you meet someone, you feel sad because you feel like you can't open up to them about your amnesia. Then they ask about it. You tell them. They feel sorry, and then you feel sadder. Because they're sad."

"That's the gist of it."

"How do you think that is affecting your social life?"

"Probably not good. It's not easy to meet new people. I don't want to talk about myself."

"Understandable." Toyama was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, and, as though to signal a change of subject, he switched legs.

"Have you tried to remember?"

"Yes." Tigre licked his lips. "I remember hearing a big crash and seeing Chu Zihang walk out. I called him brother. Before that, I was lying down in the chains. I…"

Toyama kept quiet, making notes.

"I remember… fighting. Killing something or someone. Their faces were distorted. But I don't remember when that was. I remember people calling me Tigre, but they are just shadows in my mind."

"You don't remember doing anything else? Only rescue, fighting, lying down… and the shadows?"

Tigre sat still. He tried to focus. He was recalling images from his captivity. But he couldn't understand what order they went in. They called him Tigre… when? He killed that creature… but when? How long was he stuck down there? Which image came first? His memory was like two mirrors facing each other creating an endless array of identical reflection.

"What about before your confinement? Do you remember anything?" Toyama asked.

Tigre closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to think of a memory of his childhood. He tried to remember life under a bright sun and a blue sky. The feel of the warmth of the day on his skin…. and was struck with a sudden wave of nausea so intense that the tea he just drank bubbled into his mouth like a geyser. He rushed to the trash bin, knocking over his chair, and barely made it in time.

Toyama watched him gagging helplessly and stood up. "Do you need help?"

Tigre was shaking and struggling to catch his breath. Toyama knelt next to him. "It's okay. Just relax." He handed him a tissue to help him wipe his face. "Did anything come to mind?"

"No… nothing."

Toyama pulled Tigre's hair back to keep it from going into the vomit. "It's not a failure. We will find a way to recover your memories. Every attempt is progress. I'd like to propose something… I'd like to get a scan of your brain."

Tigre gave him a fearful look. "Will it hurt?"

"No. But I think we can both agree that just the act of remembering something forgotten shouldn't have this reaction right? This reaction is more physical than mental."

A few hours later, Tigre is back in the clinic, in the lab on the fourth floor where they had the MRI machine. Tigre was lying on his back listening quietly to music and staying as still as he could.

Toyama stood in the room behind the imaging machine and the technician operating it sighed in irritation. "None of the images are clear."

"Is he moving around?"

"No that's not it. I'm getting interference in the magnetic resonance. Does he have any metal on him? Or any implants?" The technician asked.

"Implants…" Toyama whispered. Could something have been implanted in Tigre? Something blocking his memories? "Can you see any implants?"

"I can't see anything with these terrible images! I have to stop the test." He clicked a few times on the program to abort the test. "Oh come on… what is happening…"

"What's wrong?"

"The computer screen just froze!" In the next second, the computer switched off and all the lights went out.

Red emergency lights from a generator came on. "Tigre… stay where you are, I think… ah the communication system isn't working either." The tech said.. "I'll go get him."

From the technician booth, there was a window. So Toyama saw the technician enter the room. He had barely gotten three steps in when the man abruptly collapsed to the floor and began convulsing.

Toyama started to hurry down but stopped. If he entered the room would he start convulsions as well? Tigre was not moving. Was he dead?!

Power suddenly returned to the room and the man stopped his seizures and lay still. Norma's voice suddenly came over the loudspeakers. "A very strong EMP was detected in this building. Agents are in route to investigate. I am assessing the damage. "

EMP? Electromagnetic pulse? The MRI machine was smoking!

Toyama rushed down to help the technician, kneeling down close. His eyes were rolled back white and he was breathing bloody foam.

Tigre had slid out of the MRI machine and looked stunned at the scene. "What happened?"

"You're alive! Thank God. Here, call for help."

Toyama tossed him his phone. He expected Tigre to catch it but it fell and cracked against the tile floor. Tigre just stared at him. "Who are you?"

Toyama felt the blood rush from his face.

Tigre looked at him in confusion. "Where am I? What is this place."

Toyama stood up. "No…" His voice trembled. He stepped towards Tigre in a daze. "No!"

Tigre backed away until he could back away no further. "Stay away!"

Toyama's eyes suddenly blazed yellow. While it was true that students could not use Yanling on campus, due to the nature of his work, Toyama would need special access to his Yanling at all times. A top secret method of defeating the Alchemy matrix that suppressed Yanling was granted him. So even though no one on Campus could use theirs, he could use his.

He stared into the wide and frightened eyes of Tigre and dove into memories that were already fading, burning to ashes like trees in a wildfire! Memories of them together in the hospital. Memories of his first day of school.

Burning fury burst from Toyama and he opposed the force operating on Tigre’s mind in a single burst, roaring like an angry lion and rushing in the fight. Such a reaction may have struck many as unexpected. Toyama was a gentle soul. He was a professor, a psychologist and a priest, but he was also a member of the Secret Party and a Hybrid. The trail of blood he left was invisible, the battles were fought on the stage of the mind. He’d erased family, friends, lovers, precious moments. So long as they were contaminated by memories of dragonkind, those thoughts were his to slaughter.

For the first time, this peerless psychological warrior was being tasked, not to destroy but to protect. He planted himself in the middle of this mental obliteration and started to rebuild it. Tigre didn’t understand how much Toyama knew him. He’d walked these neural pathways more ways than he could count, like a woodsmen in a forest, he knew the trails of the memories he created. He rebuilt them.

“Who are you?” He demanded this mental fire. “What are you?”

He received no answer, only a corresponding increase of force, like a bull locking horns with him. As their strength collided, Toyama received a vision that he’d never received so far. This was alien, not native to Tigre’s mind. An outsider thought.

A great tree, shrouded in mist, grew out of the desert. It was so tall that it pierced the cloud cover. Toyama watched in wonder as the white gleaming speck of a 777 passenger plane looked like a sparrow flying through its branches. At the base of the tree was a black dragon, but the dragon was dead. One of the tree’s roots ran through its eye socket. “Yggdrasil?”

Toyama could feel his own hands squeezing Tigre's arms tight while the other man struggled. Brainwashing was supposed to be a painless process. You were not supposed to be able to perceive the changes. Tigre didn't realize he was forgetting everyone around him a few moments ago. He had just failed to recognizeToyama. But now that he was both forgetting and having memories restored at once, he was trying to pull away and crying in fear, unable to control his own thoughts as two powerful entities struggled for custody of his mind.

Toyama held on to him. He regretted the trauma he was no doubt inflicting. Even though he was not religious, he worked in the Church on campus as a junior priest and knew how to pray. For the first time he actually did. He was up against something powerful, otherworldly. Even if Tigre would never trust him again, he prayed that he could at least remember him! The force that was erasing his memories was relentless, but it wasn't smart. It didn't try to figure Toyama out. It just erased memories in the same pattern once he restored them. Toyama could learn that pattern.

So long as Toyama safeguarded those memories, the attacker couldn't advance. The memory of meeting Chu Zihang the first time, waking up the first time in the hospital, the 3E exam -- these were the main points of interest to this mysterious entity. Toyama stood as a bulwark against them, and instead attacked this tree. Where is it?

Tigre's mind suddenly shut off and he slumped against him. Toyama's mind was kicked abruptly back into his body. Toyama felt unbearably hot and thirsty. Sweat dripped onto the linoleum floor.

Toyama reached up and felt Tigre's pulse through his neck. Though he was pale and limp, Tigre was still alive.

If there was really something implanted in his head, there should be a mark, a scar. Toyama carefully started running his hands over Tigre's scalp, looking for any deformity. His fingers ran over a small series of ridged right on top of his head.

Toyama tilted Tigre's face toward him to see and pulled his hair back with his thumb and forefinger. A scar, in the shape of an Alchemy rune? It was a perfect circle in a circle. Like an eye!

At this moment, members from the Executive board rushed in and surrounded him. “I’m alright! The situation is under control, but I have an urgent message for the school board! This is a serious situation!”

Toyama made sure that Tigre was moved to the 5th floor. “I’m sorry. But you have to be returned to quarantine. I don’t know if you can hear me...” Toyama whispered to the unconscious Tigre.

He raced back downstairs towards the library. He climbed to the second floor and burst into the door. The library was like a beehive that had been struck. It was full of workers trying to reconnect with everything that had been knocked offline by the EMP blast. Schneider and Guderian were watching. Who know where Manstein was.

“I need a word.”

Schneider looked at him in surprise. His shirt was wrinkled, and transparent against his chest and his hair stuck to his forehead.

“Guderian get our systems back to normal.” Schneider strode away and Toyama didn’t wait, immediately leaving the room to a side office.

“Here, it’s not much but at least wipe your face off.” Schneider offered him a tissue box.

“I’ve finally figured Tigre out. Tigre is not a dragon. He’s a hybrid. But there is something in him that is dragonkin. That is what is erasing his memories. I suspected something physically wrong with him for a long time. So I had an MRI scan done of his head. But when the scan began, a huge EMP blast exploded on campus! When I approached him, he acted like he didn’t know me. So I used my Yanling to peer in his mind and something else was there. Another thought, thoughts that weren’t his. These things were pruning his memories.”

“I dove into the mind of that thing and I saw a memory of a tree. A great tree in the fog. So big that a plane flying by looked like a bit of office paper in the wind. And at the roots of the tree I saw a dragon but it was dead.” He flipped over a piece of paper on a desk in the office and pulled the cap of a pen and held it in his mouth while he drew. I thought, Yggdrasil, but it’s not Yggdrasil. I believe this is a dragonborn thing.”

“Is it controlling him?”

“It’s erasing his memories for a purpose. It was after all memories of dragonkind in his brain. It didn’t seem… conscious. I didn’t adapt strategies, it kept going after the memories… like a zombie, mindlessly trying to eat his brain.” He finished his drawing and leaned on the desk. “I know that dragons can sense the thoughts of humans and can either attack or evade. So this sort of behavior isn’t unheard of. A dragon can manipulate the thoughts of humans. After all.. I can. I defended his mind as best I could. But as for now I’ve returned him to the quarantine area of the clinic to make sure he’s safe.”

Schneider rumbled. “An unfortunate turn of events.”

“I feel bad for him and for Chu Zihang. I know rescuing Tigre meant a lot to him.”

Schneider froze.

Toyama chuckled. “I know that boy too Schneider. He’s a kind person. He was happy to save Tigre and followed his progress because he cared. You kept Tigre alive for his benefit right?”

Schneider sighed softly.

“But we have to … face reality.” Toyama hung his head, leaning on the desk. “If that thing is in his head and it can’t be removed… it will likely kill him at some point. Even if we’re not forced to kill him.”

Schneider walked over and placed one hand on his shoulder.

#Dragon Raja

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