#so I guess my next steps are to move both versions of chapter 8 into Google Docs so I can review them at my work desk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bratshaws · 2 years

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goodness gracious 80. brb x oc

i missed using this gif uwu

a/n: I JUST!!! am excited, esp for the next chapter for everything that's going to happen THIS CHAPTER FORWARD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i hope you guys are too ;w;

check out the fic's playlist made by the sweet @wiipes !!

pairing: plus size!oc x rooster

warnings: no warning, just pure fluff because of these two gooberssssssssssss

chapters:

1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25/26/27/28/29/30/31/32/33/34/35/36/37/38/39/40/41/42/43/44

45/46/47/48/49/50/51/52/53/54/55/56/57/58/59/60/61/62/63/64

65/66/67/68/69/70/71/72/73/74/75/76/77/78/79

(pls let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!!)

taglist: @mirandastuckinthe80s @roosterschanelslut @wiipes @lcahwriter @shrimping-for-all @gretagerwigsmuse @frenchtoastix

@lizzie-rdj @fanboyluvr @atarmychick007 @comebacktoearthpls

@peachiicherries @mak-32 @lizziespidiepridie @roosterswifey @ollyoxenfrees @piceous21 @sqrlgrl22 @hofficoffi @lexhalstead3 @lorilane33 @legendarydreamersharkparty @luckyladycreator2 @emilybradshaw @j-6o @louisahale @leobabbyyy @kulicny @winter-run @ktjmac @graciereads

Beatrice couldn’t believe it, she turns thirty…today. Well she already turned thirty at two am since that was her ‘official’ birth time. She didn’t even notice how fast the week went by, she now was thirty, with a new car on her driveway and a sleeping Rooster holding her waist from behind. She woke up a few minutes ago, seeing it was seven thirty in the morning on a Saturday and neither of them had plans of getting up yet.

Thirty.

She was thirty.

She didn’t feel any different, obviously, it wasn’t like those educational videos you’d see in school where the woman goes from twenty to thirty and her clothes change and she now has three kids on her arms. She just…she just felt…like a better version of herself. With someone who loved her and…wow she’d really get a whole new life huh? Beatrice blinked, holding Rooster’s arm around herself, her hair falling over her eyes a bit. “You think way too loud.” his deep sleepy voice says from behind her head, his breathing making the strands of hair move when he speaks.

Beatrice smiles, slowly turning her head to face him, his eyes still closed, but his lips quirked up in a smirk, “I’m sorry.” she whispers, “I didn’t mean to wake you.” her boyfriend’s eyes slowly parted open, crinkling at the corners when his smirk widened.

“I know how you can make up to me.” he murmurs, leaning his head closer so their lips barely touch, “It’s a really good idea, wanna hear it?” she nods, turning fully to face him with his arms still around her waist, “You can start by losing the night shirt, that would be a great way to start my morning.”

Beatrice laughs when he pulls her on top of him, pressing her chin in between his pectorals with her cheeks dusted red, “But…I thought it was my birthday?”

His eyes glinted with mirth, “Of course birthday girl, but that would work both ways.” he whispers with his lips brushing hers, pressing soft kisses to her pink mouth, “Both of us would have a great time.” she chuckles against his lips, cupping his face with both hands, keeping their lips connected in a loving liplock before he mutters something, making Beatrice pull her head back in question, “Happy birthday, baby. How are you feeling?”

Beatrice blinked, thinking about how she should respond to this, biting her lower lip while looking to the side, “I…I feel…” she hums, still considering her words, “I feel fine, I guess it didn’t hit me yet.” one of his hands came up to brush a tangled strand of brown hair behind her ear, combing his fingers through it to get rid of the small knots without hurting her, “It still feels a bit surreal.”

He nods,moving his finger to comb the hair closest to her scalp, carefully, “I get that, it’s a whole new step in life.” he murmurs, watching Beatrice still look a bit conflicted by that, like she couldn’t believe she really reached thirty. “But hey, it’s not so bad.”

“It’s not.” her answer comes with a smile and her cheeks redden just enough for him to grin back at her, “I told you before how I expected my thirtieth birthday to go and now…now it’s nothing how I imagined and I like it!I do, it’s just…I think my brain is muddled up a little bit.”

Rooster makes a sound of understanding, bringing her closer to his lips so he could kiss the curve of her jaw with the hand that was combing her hair petting the back of her neck, “I get that, baby. I do.” he says with his lips still pressed against her lavender scented skin. “But you’ll get used to it as the time goes by, speaking of which,” he gently pushes her aside so she’s lying back down on the bed, pushing himself to his feet, “Time to make you breakfast.”

He didn’t want to let her go, but it was her day and he wanted to give her a good morning alongside the plans they had later that day. Plans that thankfully Evelyn was kind enough to give him the green flag, telling him everything was ready for when they showed up. “I’m going with you–”

“Oh no, no missy. You,” he gestures with his index finger, “Are staying in bed, looking pretty and relaxed and I’ll call you once it’s done.”

Beatrice, while incredibly touched by the gesture, couldn’t help the little pout on her face, “But…”

“I’ll be fast, you’ll see.” he winks, adjusting the elastic of his sweatpants on his hip bones, walking downstairs with the same smile on his face. Beatrice only sighed with her cheek still pressed to the pillow, hearing him talking to Jolene downstairs and the usual sounds of her cabinet doors being open.It doesn’t take too long for the playlist he had saved up on his phone to vibrate on the speaker she kept downstairs.

She smiles hearing I’ve Had the Time of My Life and Rooster following along, undoubtedly throwing some moves while doing so. Beatrice waited a few minutes, then pushed herself to a sitting position, stepping away from the bed and slowly trekking downstairs.

Her smile only widened when she saw Rooster had Jolene in his arms, the pittie’s front paws draped on his broad shoulders as he danced along with her, unaware of Beatrice watching the scene from the doorframe. Jolene looked confused, but she was happy to be involved if her swinging tail was any indication, followed by her tongue wetting Rooster’s cheek in a sloppy kiss.

Beatrice tried her hardest to hold her laughter, but a soft giggle made its way past her lips, making the pilot stop and turn to face her, “Oh no, we’ve been discovered Jojo.” he whispers comically on the dog’s ear, “Now she knows you can dance!” it was hilarious how Jolene’s expression turned from happy to worried as if it was true and she has been a dancing dog all along but now Beatrice found out about it. She wriggled on Rooster’s arms, trying to escape and he lowered her enough for the pittie to walk away.

“Dirty Dancing is one of my favorite movies too.” she comments after a while, Rooster looking at her in surprise, “Maybe I had a crush on Patrick Swayze. Sabrina had a huge Dirty Dancing poster on her wall and I remember admiring him from afar.”

Bradley smiles, “Well,I’m not Patrick–”

“You don’t have to be. You are you and that’s even better.”

He breathes out a soft laugh, crossing his arms over his chest while leaning his lower back on the counter, “I’m flattered.” he smirks, pulling one of his arms to reach towards her, “C’mere. I think this could be the first birthday gift I can give you.” she drops her hand on his, smiling confusedly at his words until he pulls her flush against him “Your own version of Dirty Dancing.”

Beatrice laughs tossing her head back not believing his words, “You are too cute Roos. Honestly I can just be with you, without dancing, and I’d be more than happy.” but of course he’d never leave it like that, especially when the chorus hit. Beatrice squeaked out in surprise, no matter how many times he picked her up, she was still startled whenever he did that, easing down from her fright with a disbelieved laugh, hugging his neck.

“There you go, now you are just like Baby.” he smirks, leaning up to peck her lips and then gently placing her back down on the floor, “But I half expected you to wait a bit longer to get back down.”

“Maybe I missed you.” she shrugs, biting her lower lip with a smile, holding back her laugh when his eyes dropped to it immediately, narrowing playfully before he turned back to what he was cooking, “Can I see what you are cooking?” but he steps in between her and the oven, hiding whatever he was cooking from her view, “Roos!”

He looks over her shoulder with feigned innocence, “What?” he drawls gently, his lips still smiling,”Maybe I don’t want you to see it yet.” Beatrice just huffs with fake annoyance, crossing her arms and then stepping back to sit on the kitchen chairs, “You’ll like it though,I promise.’

“I know I’ll like it, you are a wonderful cook.” his posture changed as his chest puffed in pride, muttering a ‘yeah I am a pretty good cook’ to himself, much to his girlfriend’s amusement, “And I’ll like anything you give me.” Bradley looks back at her sitting down on the chair, the soft fabric of her night shirt riding up her thighs, exposing more of the pale expanse of her thigh for his eyes to see.

He keeps his lids low and irises focused on that bare piece of skin before he looks back at the pan in front of him, “I’ll keep that in mind.” her cheeks reddened at the obvious insinuation hidden within the words, propping her chin on her open palm, watching him move about the stove still humming to the songs being played in the little speaker. Beatrice closes her eyes, loving the deep timbre of his voice mixed in with the song’s vocals, having her own little private show and wishing nothing more than this, it was great. It truly was great.

An amazing way to start her birthday, she couldn’t lie one bit.

Beatrice keeps her eyes closed, hearing him grab a few plates, fill a mug with coffee and milk just how she liked it, “Keep them closed.” his voice shows up suddenly by her left and she has to hold back the jump of surprise, nodding once she fixes herself on the chair, placing both hands over her thighs.

She hears and feels him moving back and forth, arranging the table in front of her as she tries to hold back her warm smile, “Don’t open yet.” she reassures him she won’t, laughing quietly when he kisses her cheek and walks away again, the sound of something ruffling - like paper- calls her attention. “Wait…okay, open.”

Beatrice blinks, trying to gain her focus back and figure out what this blurry of colors was after a few seconds. Her smile widens when she sees that yes, he prepared pancakes, alongside a small bowl of yogurt with fresh berries and her usual morning coffee. But in the middle of everything was a tiny bouquet of lavender and daisies,inside a small vase “What- how did you?” she immediately ignored the breakfast, not because she didn’t care for it but because her heart demanded she grabbed the flowers, “How did you even manage to hide this one from me?”

Bradley shrugs coolly, pulling a chair to sit down while bringing his mug up to his lips, “Well you know, I just had to distract you.” he answers, finishing it with a wink and a soft laugh, “Thought you’d like it.”

“I do like it.” Beatrice’s soft voice replies, lifting the small flowers to her nose, fluttering her eyes closed with a small smile, “You know how much I love getting flowers.” she gently fixes the flowers inside the vase, turning it back and forth to see all the different shades of lilacs and how the daisies went from white to a light champagne color, “It’s beautiful, Roos, thank you.”

He smiles back, sipping his coffee as she digs in her breakfast. Her cute dance that meant ‘i really love this food and I can’t keep myself still’ was still adorable and he noticed she mainly did that with the food that he cooked or if it was something that he liked. It was the little things that Beatrice did that he was just now figuring out even more. “How’s it?”

“Hmm!” she swallows the pancake, washing it down with her coffee, “It’s amazing,Roos.” she replies, wiping her mouth with the napkin by her side, “No complaints.” he smirks more, telling her to enjoy her breakfast while he finished his…until she noticed he wasn’t eating that much and decided that they were going to share it either way, “It’s my birthday and I want to share it with you.”

She had to pull it’s my birthday card…but he wasn’t complaining. Not when she looked at him like that. Mav told him once that he was weak for Beatrice and honestly, he truly was. She still had no idea how much power she had over him, she had no clue how much she could simply look his way and he’d melt like a popsicle on a hot summer morning.

When they finish breakfast, and Rooster tells her that he’s the one washing the dishes and she should just enjoy her birthday, Beatrice sits on the counter right by the side of the sink so they could talk without being too far apart, “You know in a few minutes I’ll get calls from all my relatives wishing me happy birthday.” she pauses, “It’ll be…a lot of calls oh my God.”

“It just means they care.” Bradley chuckles, putting the wet dishes and cutlery on the drying rack by the side. Beatrice nods, biting her lower lip, following the line of muscle from his shoulder to his bicep, watching it move and flex as he cleans everything. “Bea, you need to stop ogling me…because then I’ll just stop this and we’ll have to fix something up.”

“Well…you did say I could make it up to you in some way.” Bradley drops whatever he’s holding into the soapy water, giving her a look with one of his eyebrows up to his hairline, “You said so.”

His eyes narrow playfully, “Give me a few minutes, then we’ll resolve that. How’s that?”

“Sounds great to me.” her cheeks felt so hot she felt she could melt herself, but she watched as Bradley returned to the task of washing everything with her hands tucked in between her thick thighs, still looking at his bicep and the sharp curve of his jawline and the thick column of neck. While admiring him, Beatrice couldn’t help but wonder what the plans would be for that night, he did say they’d go to the karaoke, and she could call Shells if she wanted her to come or even Evelyn so they could have a fun time together, “I’m excited for tonight.” she smiles, “I think it’ll be really fun.”

“It will be a lot of fun,baby,” he says while tilting his head in her direction and winking at her and holding back how much they’d be doing once they got there. Everyone agreed on coming, Michael and Leonardo too after some time of Bradley asking them to keep quiet and not blurt it out to Bea, “I haven’t been to a karaoke bar in years, I think I’m a bit rusty.”

Beatrice gives him a weird look, narrowing her eyes in his direction, “You sung at the Hard Deck quite a few times, I don’t know if I’d consider you rusty.” he chuckles at her explanation, wiping his hands on a rag and tossing it aside after he’s done, “So you know, I don’t think you’d be rusty at all.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm.” he says, finally stepping closer to her since he was done washing everything, spreading her legs to he could step between them, “But, let’s talk about how you could make it up to me, I was thinking that after the breakfast settles we could have a nice, lovely shower.” he murmurs against her skin, pressing soft butterfly kisses to the curve of her jaw, “Where I’d wash you everywhere.”

Beatrice’s face turns red and she giggles, biting her lower lip, “Well it is my birthday.” she whispers, “I’d love that.”

“Maybe a massage too.” he smirks, dragging his lips up her ear, making goosebumps form on her skin “I am really good with my hands.” Beatrice couldn’t even reply because he picked her up under the thighs, Beatrice wrapping her legs around his waist out of habit, giggling with her face a deep shade of red, allowing herself to be carried up the stairs.

They had to go to the karaoke bar exactly at eight, it was the time where mainly everyone would be waiting and the time everything would be just perfect. He was excited for Bea, he knew how much she’d like this and how much it’d mean to her…even if he had to throw some deception along the way.

Shells and Evelyn were ‘too busy’ to join the karaoke night, which made Beatrice feel a little crestfallen, looking down at her phone with a tiny frown on her face, “It’s okay baby.” he tries to ease her sad heart, rubbing the back of his index finger on the side of her face, “You guys can try again some other time.”

“I guess so…I’d’ve liked them to show up, you know?” she drops the hand holding the phone to the side, then places the small device into her bag as Rooster waits for her, “Just…you know, they are my friends.” she grabs his hand when he offers, the two walking up to the karaoke bar, trying to avoid getting hit by the passerby’s that were coming around, “Oh, wow, I hope we can find a spot inside, it looks like it’s full of people.”

“Yeah, me too.” he lies, trying his best to bite back his grin when they wander inside, Bradley walking up to one of the ladies seated at front where they could choose a room to go. But he didn’t have to choose because it was already chosen and closed for. Beatrice, thankfully, is too distracted pulling her phone back out to check that maybe her friends changed their minds and are on their way over. She only looked up when Rooster tugged her hand and told her to follow him, “We’re in luck, we got one spot safe for us.”

“Oh really?” she smiles, her smile turning confused when they wander past the usual small group areas to go up the staircase where the big corporate rooms are, “Oh, ah, wow, and it’s up here?” she couldn’t help but look at her surroundings in surprise. “I thought this are was for big groups or something.” her boyfriend doesn’t reply, in fact he just sends her an amused look and gently places his hand on her lower back, guiding her through the sea of people.

They end up at a large double door with a red sticker on it, a sticker that looked a lot like a party hat. Beatrice couldn’t really ask much, because Rooster opened the door with his free hand - she could see only black- and gently pushed her inside, “Roos what is–

“SURPRISE!!!”

Beatrice yelped in shock, holding onto Rooster’s arm when the lights turned on revealing every single one of her friends in there, with the addition of Michael,Leo, Cynthia,Marina and Derek, all of them inside a large room filled with party decorations and a large plasma screen in the middle of the wall. Beatrice’s eyes widened, trying to get past the shock with a hand over her heart, “What–what–”

“Happy birthday Bumblebea!!” Shells shouted, blowing a pink colored horn that sounded like a dying duck more than an actual instrument. The brunette was still digesting what was happening, furrowing her eyebrows when she saw Shells…and Evelyn…wait a minute.

“Wait! But you guys said you were busy–”

“It was a little white lie so you wouldn’t be suspicious,” Comes Evelyn’s voice from the right, stepping away from Jake to wrap an arm on her friend’s shoulder as a hug, “Plus don’t get mad at us, it was all Rooster’s idea.”

Beatrice looks back at her tall boyfriend, who was now grabbing one of the chilled Budweiser bottles from the tin bucket in the corner, giving her a proud smile, “Roos…you, how did you–”

“It wasn’t easy, I have to admit. Evelyn helped me get this spot for everyone,” the black haired woman nodded in agreement when Bea turned to look back at her, “And you know, I thought you’d like it.”

Beatrice never had a surprise party before, she always wanted one…and now, for her thirtieth birthday she got one. Because her boyfriend organized it - well her boyfriend and her friend - something for her again. Her eyes were so wide they looked like they’d pop out of the sockets at any second, barely noticing when people started hugging her, congratulating her on another year on this Earth.

When she was calm enough, her eyes finally adjusting on seeing everyone and now that they were all taking their places in the comfortable dark blue couches in the room, Beatrice got closer to Bradley with her eyes shining, “Did you really…organize this for me?”

“Of course.” he answers easily, lifting a hand to cup her chin, rubbing the slope right underneath her lower lip, “I thought you’d like it.”

“I…I love it! I’ve never had a surprise party before Roos…this is…'' she turns her head to see her siblings with their respective spouses already getting familiarized with the Dagger squad. Penny was there too, she didn’t think she’d show up since today was Saturday and it was still early…did she take a night off just to come to her birthday? Beatrice couldn’t even help the happy sigh that went past her lips the more she looked, “This is…really the best gift ever.”

Rooster’s gaze softened at the same time hers did, watching her watch the others with a warmth inside those green irises he couldn’t help but keep his eyes on her, dropping his hand from her chin to stuff it into his pocket, “You are welcome baby.” he coos, leaning down to kiss her temple, then her red cheek, “This is all for you.”

All for her.

Everyone was there for her.

She couldn’t even…describe what she was feeling right now, gratefulness? Happiness? All in between and at once? It was near euphoric, perhaps that would be the closest way to elaborate what was running inside her head. “Thank you Brad. Thank you so much.” she whispers, trying her hardest not to cry and destroy her carefully done make up - she did go all out on it that night - sniffling quietly, “No one ever did this for me.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“Yeah…” she was going to marry this man, there was no backing away now, “Yeah you are.”

“Hey! Come on lovebirds! Are we going to start this show or not?”

Both of them turn to where Shells was currently fiddling with the karaoke playlist, everyone else already seated and snacking on the peanuts they usually kept on the center table before every main meal. Bea then turns to Rooster, who smirks and nods his head forward, “After you, gorgeous.”

#bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x oc #top gun maverick #bradley bradshaw x reader

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vixnovacoda · 4 months

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Doctor's Medicine || Chapter 9

Hannibal Lecter x Original Character

Word Count: ~3.1k

CW/TW: NSFW 18+, graphic, disturbing content, dissociation, canon-typical violence.

[Chapter 1][Chapter 2][Chapter 3][Chapter 4][Chapter 5][Chapter 6][Chapter 7][Chapter 8]

[ao3 version here]

When I was young, my mother was hungry and sick. Sick and hungry. Hungry and sick. It never got better, only worse. Worse, and worse, and worse.

“Emma!” she called out to me one day with a reckoning stuck in her throat. I knew then I had done something wrong. Waiting, she stood in the dining room, her once golden hair and clothes a mess – those days she barely bothered. A tiny shoebox sat in front of her atop the table, the top discarded. My feet refused to move closer while a sour smell cut the air, like a mellow death waiting by the corner, ready for the finishing blow. She reached and pulled out the twitching, spasming, struggling creature out, forcing me to look, look at what I’d done.

Mother had found her , our mockingbird. She had fallen ill a few days prior, attacked in the process before I discovered her and since then, I hid her away, so they couldn’t take her away from me and leave her to the horrid fate of death where I’d lose her. Selfish and afraid, I wouldn’t let them. But that didn’t matter anymore. My mother tut-tutted, displeased. “I thought I raised you better.” I went to speak, but she raised a hand; it wasn’t my turn. “Seems as if I will simply have to teach you another lesson,” she said as her grip tightened around the poor thing's neck that was no smaller than her wrist. Whatever strength it had, it tried to flap, it tried to cry only for it to be of no use, and I stood, and I watched how her beautiful grey feathers shone slick with sick and blood under the sunlight next to the diluted gold my mother wore when both hands wrenched, hard.

SNAP .

Stillness fell.

Young as I was, I took it all in as the large painting behind my mother framed her in a new light. She stood in a perfect mimicry of the red robed woman, a bird instead of a heart and dagger, and what was horrid made all the more sense when she spoke, “we must end our loved one’s suffering. Mercy is the greatest act of devotion we can bestow.” And her red hand stained my shoulder as all I could do was stare. Stare because the horror was beautiful; death and mercy was beautiful.

They told me her illness was hereditary. A big word for a little child, but I understood well enough from their wide stares. They were worried it passed onto me. The way I made the bird suffer, the way she killed it without hesitation. In a way, I guess it did. Being sick made my mother ravenous, and she made me starving, the thing left seeping between cracks. An ache that sat in my stomach, begging to be sated; for love; for mercy .

… Love.

Mercy.

Love.

Mercy.

Mercy—

———

“—Emma?” the gruff awkwardness of Will’s voice broke through the painful silence where everything felt… cold and loud and bright. Flashing red and blue lights struck her face instead of the sunlight cradling her in their rays. Gone was the day from years prior, now there was the present night people called reality, and she sat outside, damp steps beneath heeled feet not the marble flooring of indoors. She had done it again.

“I’m alright,” managed Emma, but if she focused, she could feel the lapping mists curling around her form as they laid in wait after their forced departure left her sweating. The lie was so visible, yet it did not stop him from taking the spot next to her. If he was scared, then it didn’t show, and she wished she knew why.

“That painting, you stared at it for a while like it was a piece of the night sky or stained glass when we found the two of you before Hannibal guided you away at Jack’s behest,” he said as if it was his condolences or an offering for the gap widening in her sense of time because if there was anyone who could understand, it was him. Perhaps her lapses were more noticeable than she originally believed.

She released a deep breath, hand pushing red hair strands back before holding her head and the sickening realisation came to the surface. Alex’s body and Emma’s thoughts. A sacrifice and a realisation. Unlike Alex’s tacked on skin, Emma’s mind threatened to burst at the seams in a way that made the smallest sliver of normal bring up bile in her throat. Whatever she thought, whatever happened, it did not change the undeniable fact that her only friend in this life was well and truly dead, not missing. That hope was gone forever.

Will remained static in his spot, staying when he didn’t need to for no reason she could fathom except guilt, just as he did back at Alex’s home. A guilt that bound him to her. A guilt he could barely bear. But, the idle waiting, he still had no idea what to say or what was ‘the right’ thing to say, and she didn’t want to go back into the silence. Someone had to talk about something, so Emma picked the first and last thing that had come to her. “Mercy,” she mumbled. “She was suffering, and he put her out of it.”

“Mercy?” he asked with the look of a man who wanted to argue, jaw tightened, but thought the better of it, biting back his tongue.

“At least, that’s what I saw. I only hope he made it quick and painless.” She, too, bit her tongue so the other weird and insane thoughts did not slip out. Did he hold her gently, whispering in her ear when he made the first cut, or did he blind her before swiftly stabbing the heart in one clean move, leaving her unaware of the death rattle that ravaged her body? Was it a kind beauty or cruel like her favourite mockingbird?

“Well, it wasn’t his intention.” The noise of the world silenced itself to a ringing tone. “He wanted to ensure her suffering. To him, she was a betrayer – your betrayer – and the act she committed needed to be punished in a way fitting her crime. A public humiliation wrapped inside an apology.”

Emma peeked her head out from the depths of her drowning, swirling mind. “Art is subjective, it has many perspectives depending on who is looking at it. My mother taught me that, then Alex reminded me during our falling out. Some see the woman stabbing the heart and only that. They think she’s a traitor to her love. Then there’s others who notice the beast’s heart is cursed and interpret her act as mercy. Growing up, I just thought it was beautiful.”

Taking in her response, Will fell insufferably silent, thumbs fidgeting; analysing, contemplating. Something else laid underneath his surface.

He had seen more than he let on. “What did you see, Will?” Emma enquired as she turned towards him with a need to know, a right to know. But why not tell her? Perhaps he did it to save her or because she was beyond saving and the whole truth could ruin her like it always did to people like them.

She followed his gaze towards the pairing of unlikely people, Hannibal and Marcus, observing the two’s discussion near police tape. “Admiration. The art of a master seeking admiration from his god,” answered Will as the words rattled behind the white prison bars that were his teeth, unsettled; a trace of the Ghost Writer, she presumed.

Watching the psychiatrist and literary agent, Emma couldn’t help thinking about sacrifices with what Will saw sinking in like she could predict what each would say to the situation. God can be a fickle being, requiring certain conditions to be met before one may turn his eye. When the Ancient Greeks wanted the favour of the gods, they were expected to present a sacrifice, the slaughtering of a lamb, perhaps. But there must be blood, for God is bloodthirsty , would be Hannibal Lecter’s response. Humans are God’s mirror. They sacrifice what they might be to become worthy of his image, as you and I both must do , would be Marcus’ response. Different, but yet the point is the same. Sacrifices were how the devout got a god’s attention, akin to a beggar begging passersby for something small that could change their lives, and this serial killer wanted just that.

He was a worshipper creating art, and he had proved he’d do anything for that small glance. But if what worshippers make represent their gods, then was this what she really was? All the bloodshed and gore, the brutality and murder, the horror and cruelty? “Are we the monsters?” Emma asked her sheepish, brown-haired reflection, Will, who must have seen who she hid inside her mind because monsters do not know they are monsters until someone tells them, destroying the cage.

Apprehension seized Will the second he looked at her, each blink rapid. “I… don’t know.” Another omittance. There they sat like ravens atop the boney white ribcage of a carcass, consuming in small bites, the dead filling their stomachs while everyone else watched and manoeuvred around or shooed them aside when their pecks finished cleaning the body clean. He didn’t want to admit it and neither did she. It was easier to pretend; to live in the fantasy of a normal world – hers was falling apart though. The smell of stale death too hard to ignore, and the dream of being beside Alex long lost.

She was gone. Gone because of a betrayal.

Gone for the wrong reason.

Suddenly, what had been beautiful became twisted and wrong. The bile in the back of her throat burned. Filled with a new anger inside clenched fists, Emma rose. “If it was betrayal. If it was done out of malice. Then, ending her suffering wasn’t for him to bestow. He didn’t love her,” came her revelation. It should have been me , was the truth she wanted to admit that seeped in the back of her mind because if it had come down to it, it should have been her mercy; her love.

A surge of heat ran a course through her body, skin tingling as her face reddened, breath quickening and her hands pulled the warmth that straddled her shoulders closer, keeping herself from shivering against the pricking cold. Full of newfound hate, she didn’t realise it until then, when she bunched woollen cloth in her palms, that this warmth protecting her was a men’s coat, like the one Hannibal had previously given to shelter her from the world all those nights prior. He must have done it again upon noticing her dissociative state. How thoughtful. Emma sighed, loosening her grip, attempting to ground herself as he might have reminded her. Normal. Normal, normal. Be normal . She doesn’t face Will anymore, she cannot bear to see how he saw her get too emotional and almost slip again.

Except, wafting up her nose came a sharp musk, intrusive and singeing. Remnants of an aftershave buried into the fibres of the coat. It wasn’t Hannibal’s. No. There was no mistaking Marcus’ cheap, irritating fragrance, the kind one would get from a department store during a sale when they’re trying to convince everyone near them that they now had money (which wasn’t technically incorrect, only it wasn’t his to spend). His was the kind that lingered like mildew, while Hannibal’s was sophisticated, refined; a cedar fragrance that likely came hand-picked from a lavish store with gold signage in the heart of Florence, and looking at the pair, Marcus was the only one without a coat to hide his true messed-up self. The black coat that enveloped her body snuggly was truly his. Her heart filled with rocks. Of course it wasn’t Hannibal’s, however, for the briefest moment some part of her had hoped it was his instead. It would have been more comforting. But that was a delusional thought.

“Are… Are you okay?” consulted Will, brokering the silence.

“That’s a loaded question. Are you okay?”

He avoided her burning gaze, wordless. There was her answer.

No , they were not okay.

But neither sought to leave, not yet. Emma wanted nothing more than to work away the night, and she suspected Agent Crawford wasn’t going to let Will go home for some time until they made a breakthrough in the case. A punishment for not being insane enough to catch a murderer whose numbers are piling up. “So, which book is it this time?” He brought himself to question aloud. A question she had left ignored, forgotten, overlooked.

“Have you read this one yet?” said Price in passing, moving past.

Thomas Fowl trailed behind. “This one? I haven’t read it, haven’t heard of it, in fact.”

Because it didn’t exist.

Because she stopped writing it.

“Hey, guys! You’re going to want to see this,” shouted Beverly from inside the abandoned gala. The boys hurried and Emma, desperate for a peek, ran after and there, with art removed from its frame, flesh unbound, crouched Beverly holding bundles of paper, a manuscript with La Belle Mort ’s finale title clear as day, clearer than Alex’s beady gaze on her. Confirmation sent Emma reeling. The red ink, notes in the margin. “Alex’s original copy. I thought…” muttered her quietly. I thought she threw it out . She should have. She had convinced Emma to stop writing it in the first place, and now here she was, depicted in the same manner as her firstborn’s murder. Then again, it had been some of her best work yet.

Emma covered her mouth, collapsing onto her knees. She felt herself unravelling, bursting at the seams of what she created, her facade(?). If the monster inside her was a separate beast from her, she could no longer tell. Maybe it didn't matter. But it did. A monster is a monster, they hurt people and enjoy it. If people knew then they'd rid themselves of her filth. No . She wasn't like that. She couldn’t. No. No. No. No. No .

No .

She just wanted to live a normal life where someone didn’t look at her weirdly and the world never bothered her. Why was that so hard? Maybe if she closed her eyes real tight and took a deep breath—

Running footsteps. A name called. “Emma!”. “Claire!”.

Claire.

Claire. Emma stood, turning to the police tape at her back as reality melded with distant memory, parquet flooring being replaced by marble and pillars, and there was Alex, hair and clothes half-done, blood painting her cheeks, cavity in chest where white bone opened up to an empty bleeding burgundy spot and crying out for her first born while pushing past the line that stopped the public. She knows this isn’t real. This isn’t what happened, but this is all that is left of her friend in every memory. Her dead body scratching over every version like taking a needle to proofed polaroids, like how people do to those who’ve hurt them. It not being real doesn’t stop Emma from following the memory’s course when a loud sob cut through forensic camera flashes and note-taking as Alex crumbled herself up, unable to look away from the murder hung on the wall and disguised as art. Next, Emma tugged and pulled and twisted her around, switching their positions, so she was the one looking, not her. She shouldn’t have to see her dead flesh and blood. She shouldn’t have to see her own dead body. The ruby gem the living called a heart thrummed on the canvas with a living pulse against the dagger pressed to its tissue folds. Face stretched in all directions and eyes bulging.

“Don’t look, don’t. Just breathe . Deep breaths ,” she reassured.

Beady black pupils stared her down. They twitched. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. Lips of plump red moved on their own accord, compelling her to stay, to look even when it tore her apart to do so. “This is all your fault.” She heard. “I shouldn’t have come back.” A wetness formed against her shoulder as Emma’s own tears fell with each second she stared at the piece of art . Alex sobbed relentlessly, her husband on the other side of the tape, their daughter kept out of reach. It was just them, Emma and Alex. For an eternity it was just them.

Nothing else. The scene changed to reflect that cold darkness.

“Why that case?” was whispered into her ear, moving in sync with the painting and louder than any echo inside their world that collapsed into an abyss. A shiver took over her body as it became rigid and frozen solid. “How could you?” said Alex’s disembodied voice on repeat over and over like the ringing of a phone.

Ring. Ring. Ring. An endless ringing crawled and rattled her brain.

Ring. She knew this wasn’t real. Ring. It couldn’t. Ring. It wasn’t. Ring. It wasn’t. Ring. It wasn’t? Ring. She couldn’t tell; she couldn’t stop hearing it, that noise, that phone. Then. Ring. Emma thrashed. Ring. and tore. Ring. Blood stuck under her nails. Ring. She wanted it to stop. Ring. for Alex to stop. Ring. So she could end her pain. Ring. Anything for her friend betrayer. Ring. Tears and sweat mixed with the gathering blood. Arms grabbed onto hers. Rin—

Red. A distant light refracted the faintest of red in pinpoints from inside the brown irises that pierced right through her soul as Emma blinked. The gloominess of the room sunk in while the fluorescent hallway lights flickered out the corner of her eye. Gone was the abyss, here was what should have been the harsh reality that another gap in time had formed but, cedar hung in the air with a shaven face before hers. “Dr. Lecter?” said Emma, pushing the words from a searing throat, and reality no longer felt all too bad because she knew she was safe .

Although, for a moment she could have sworn that the browns of his eyes appeared as black as the devil’s night, his firm grip more claw than human, like a cat playing with its beaten-up food by holding it down by the tail when, instead, it could easily go for the killing blow than prolong the torture, claws digging at the heart in one lunge. But it was brief. So brief she must have just been seeing things.

That wasn’t real.

This was. Him here, now, here to help.

Not a monster. He could never be, not to her. Monsters don’t help monsters, they destroy them.

#hannibal #fanfiction #fanfic #hannibal nbc #hannibal lecter #hannibal fanfic #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal lecter fanfiction #nbc hannibal #hannibal x oc #hannibal x original character

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spnhunter4life · 1 year

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So Long Version 2 Chapter 9

Word Count: 6.3k

A/N: A couple more cliches thrown in, because why not? Are you ready for them to finally get together yet?

Series Masterlist

Ages 24 and 25 August 2004

I woke up the next morning feeling very comfortable and well rested. I laid there for a little bit before opening my eyes, just trying to wake up more, and realized my pillow was moving slowly up and down. Then I felt the arm wrapped around me. My eyes flew open and I slowly tried to look up to see if Dean was awake yet.

“Mornin’,” he rumbled in a sleep roughened voice when he felt me moving.

“Morning,” I echoed, moving to sit up. “Sorry about invading your space like that. I’m not really sure how that happened.”

“Don’t worry about it. It didn’t bother me,” he assured me.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked, trying to move past the situation and not hyperfocus on it the way I wanted to.

“Just a few minutes.”

I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 8.

“Shit! We need to get going!” I said, jumping out of bed. We didn’t have much time to figure out what was going on here.

“I think we should go back to the conference room first,” I said when we were both dressed and ready to go.

“Okay. Why?”

“If Mallory and Dave are there we can see if we can learn anything from them. If not, we can look around that little office.”

“Alright. I guess that’s a good place to start.”

We took the elevator back down to the first floor and headed for the conference room. A quick peak in the door didn’t show any signs of the two hosts, so we headed towards the office they’d retreated to last night.

“Oh!” Mallory gasped when we walked in the open door. “Hello! Can we help you with something?” she asked politely. She and Dave were sitting at a desk. They didn’t look like they were going anywhere anytime soon.

“Yeah, actually we forgot to grab one of those schedules last night. You wouldn’t happen to have another one, would you?” I asked, the lie coming to me easily.

“Of course!” Dave said, opening a drawer and handing over a piece of paper he grabbed from inside. “Here you go!”

“Thanks,” Dean said as he took it from him, pretending to look it over. “I’ve gotta tell you, this is a really great retreat. Jenna and I were just saying last night how glad we are that we decided to come.”

“That’s great! We always love to hear people are enjoying themselves,” Mallory smiled.

“How long have you been doing retreats like this?” I asked. “I mean, to have something this well set up, you have to have done it before right?”

“Oh, Dave and I have been doing these for a while now. We’ve hosted all the couple’s retreats here since the first one.”

“We actually do these events at hotels all across the country,” Dave added proudly.

“That’s a pretty fun job,” I said.

“It’s so much fun. We love it,” Mallory agreed.

“Well, thanks for the schedule,” Dean said. “We’re gonna go get some breakfast. We’ll see you for the scavenger hunt!”

“So what do you think?” I asked when we were a safe distance away, walking down the halls towards the breakfast bar.

“The fact that they’ve been here every year seems a little suspicious. But if they’re traveling all over the country doing this…”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe it’s just their job and they’re not involved. I guess we could try to look into some of the other retreats they’ve done. See if anyone’s gone missing from any of them?”

“Sounds like fun,” Dean groaned.

We rounded the corner to the room breakfast was served in and Dean immediately headed for the buffet. The room was almost empty, only a few other people scattered throughout. I stepped into line behind him, watching him pile his plate with eggs, biscuits and gravy, bacon, and sausage.

“I’m just gonna say it again. We have to stay in places like this more often,” Dean said. He went and set his plate on an empty table and then came back for coffee.

I just smiled and shook my head as I dished up my own plate.

“It is a nice hotel, isn’t it?” The older lady waiting patiently in line behind me commented. “I never would have thought it could turn into something this nice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well it’s a beautiful place now. It wasn’t that long ago this place wasn’t very popular and kind of run down. Rumors were going around that they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Then, almost overnight things started to get better. Within a month this was one of the most popular hotels in the state.”

“Weird. Did they hire a new manager or something? Someone with more experience who was able to turn things around?” I asked.

“Oh no. The same man has owned this place for going on twenty years now. He manages it himself.”

“Huh. How long ago did it turn into what it is now?”

“Oh, about… seven years ago I think.”

“That’s really interesting. Well, I better go sit down before my husband wonders what’s taking so long,” I smiled, gesturing towards the table Dean was at.

The lady smiled back and waved me off. I grabbed some orange juice and then sat down.

“I don’t suppose you heard any of that?” I asked.

“Not a word. You looked pretty interested though,” he said around a mouthful of food.

“I think Mallory and Dave are off the hook,” I told him. “I’d say the hotel owner just got bumped to the number one suspect spot.”

I relayed to him the information I’d just gotten from the old lady.

“Awesome,” Dean grumbled. “So we’re probably dealing with some sort of pagan god.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“Think about it. The people that have been disappearing have probably been sacrifices to keep this place running. The guy is about to lose everything. He’s desperate. Desperate people do crazy things. He decides to try sacrificing a couple people to some random god in a last ditch effort and it turns out it works. So now that he’s doing well, he schedules retreats. He’s got a group of people to choose from every year. It’s even a couple, a man and a woman. Sounds like a pagan ritual to me.”

“Awesome,” I sighed. “There’s only about a thousand of them. This could take days of research, Dean. We don’t have that kind of time.”

“I know. We’re just going to have to do the best we can,” he said.

We quickly finished our breakfast and then I went back to our room to start making a list of pagan gods that wanted sacrifices in exchange for money or success while Dean went to check out the hotel owner’s office.

I’d only been looking for about twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door.

“It’s me,” Dean said from the other side.

I got up to open the door for him.

“What’d you find?” I asked.

“Nothing. I couldn’t get in. There’s some guy sitting in the hallways where all the offices are and he wasn’t leaving.”

“Okay,” I sighed. That complicated things a bit. The office might have held clues to help us narrow down what god we were looking for. “We’ll just make a list of every god we can find that fits the bill and find a different time to get in the office.”

The next couple hours were spent in relative silence as we looked up every god we possibly could online, writing down the names of ones that could be the one we were dealing with.

By the time noon rolled around we had a pretty decent sized list, but thankfully it was smaller than expected. There were more gods than I realized that didn’t require human sacrifice in order to be helpful.

Dean had also spent a little time looking into the hotel owner. His name was Connor O’Reilly. His parents were Irish immigrants and he’d inherited this hotel from them when they died in a car accident when he was 24. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him, but then again, the real psychos out there usually hid it well.

We went to the hotel restaurant to get some lunch before the scavenger hunt. Once we’d eaten, we headed back to conference room A. We were the last to arrive again.

“Hello,” Mallory chirped. “I hope everyone enjoyed their morning! We’ve got a fun rest of the day planned out for you all!”

“Starting with a scavenger hunt!” Dave continued. He showed us a stack of paper in his hand. “Each couple is going to get their own list of things to find. None of the lists are the same, so you’ll all be looking for different things. You have 45 minutes to find all ten items and then meet back here.”

Dave passed out the papers as well as a stopwatch to each couple.

“Start your time… now!” Mallory instructed. Everybody started their stopwatches and then took off.

“Alright. What do you say we do some real hunting?” Dean asked.

“I think we should spend five minutes at least pretending to be participating. Give everyone time to spread out and not pay attention to us,” I suggested.

“Fine,” Dean huffed. “Five minutes.”

We managed to find two of the things on the list in those five minutes and then we decided to go try and get into the offices again.

There was no one around to see us slip into the now empty hallway. We walked all the way to the end, stopping at the one labeled ‘Manager.’ Dean quickly picked the lock and we slipped inside, quietly closing the door behind us.

A quick scan of the room showed a couple of big filing cabinets and no computer. This guy was old school then. Dean and I each headed to a filing cabinet and started digging.

“This started seven years ago, so skip over anything from before then,” I said to Dean as I flipped through the well organized folders to more recent years.

I skimmed through employee files, renovation details, bills, tax information and countless other papers he’d filed away, but I wasn’t coming up with anything useful.

“Find anything yet?” Dean asked. He had finished going through all the more recent files in his cabinet and was going through the desk and searching the room for anything that might give us a clue.

“No, nothing.” I sighed and looked at the stopwatch. “We’re supposed to be back to the conference room in a couple minutes.”

“Can’t we just skip it?” Dean asked.

“No, because then they’ll come looking for us. I don’t think there’s anything left to look through here anyway.”

“Fine,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”

We started walking for the door, and that’s when I saw it.

“Dean, wait.” I said.

“What?” he asked.

I’d missed it on the way in because I hadn’t stopped to look at the walls. But hanging right next to the office door was a picture that I recognized. A group of warriors in a line, facing a large figure who was dunking a man in a cauldron. Above these warriors was another group of warriors, these ones on horseback, riding away from the large figure.

“I know which god we’re dealing with,” I told him.

“How?”

“That picture,” I said, pointing to it. “That’s a Celtic god called Teutates.”

“We must have looked up hundreds of gods today. How can you remember one specific one? Based off of a picture?” He questioned.

“I remember a few. He just happens to be one of them. And I’ve seen him before when I was doing research with Bobby.” I answered.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. How do we kill him?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But at least we know who we’re dealing with now. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out how to kill him.”

“Let’s get the rest of these stupid activities over with so we can finish this hunt,” he said, opening the door enough to check that the hall was clear before we stepped out, relocking the door behind us. We’d only made it a few steps when the click of high heels sounded just outside of the hallway we were standing in.

Possible explanations for our presence here raced through my mind, but before I could decide on the best one, Dean was pushing me up against the wall. He grabbed my arms, wrapping them around his neck and then put his hands on my waist. This all happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to ask what he was doing.

Then his mouth was on mine. I froze. I could feel his lips moving, trying to get me to respond, but I could barely even manage to remember to breathe with the way my brain seemed to be short circuiting. The footsteps got louder and seemed to filter through my shock.

I felt my hands reflexively tighten a little in Dean’s hair and I had just started to kiss him back when we were interrupted.

“Excuse me,” a female voice said. Dean and I broke apart at the sound of it. “You’re not supposed to be back here.”

“Sorry,” Dean apologized. “We were just…” Whatever excuse he had been about to give her trailed off at the unimpressed look she was giving us. “Leaving,” he said.

He grabbed my hand and quickly walked away, out of the hall and towards the conference room.

“Dean,” I said when I regained the ability to speak. We were almost there. Not a good time, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“Not now,” he told me.

I didn’t want to let it go, but I knew I had to. For now at least. We walked into the room to see that, for once, we weren’t the last ones. James and Stephanie still weren’t back yet.

“That was pretty fun, wasn’t it?” Julia asked us, coming to stand beside me.

“Uh, yeah it was great!” I replied.

“How’d you guys do?” She asked.

I didn’t get a chance to answer because James and Stephanie came back at that moment and Mallory and Dave were immediately ready to move on.

“Okay! I see everybody’s back. Is there anyone who managed to find all of their items?” Dave asked.

Four sets of hands went up.

“That’s great! And how many did you find?” Mallory asked Stephanie and James.

“We got nine,” Stephanie said. “We were trying to find the last one when we realized we were out of time.”

“Nine out of ten is still impressive!” Mallory assured her. “And what about you two? How many did you find?”

“Um, well… we only found two,” I told her.

“It’s this one’s fault, really,” Dean said as he slung an arm around my shoulders. “She got a little bit distracted.” I frowned, wondering where he was going with this. We could have just told them we were really bad at scavenger hunts. “She just loves interior design so much. We spent most of our time looking at the furniture layout and pictures and woodwork.”

“I can’t help it,” I shrugged. “It’s just so interesting.”

“Well that’s ok,” Mallory said. “As long as you were having fun together. That is what this retreat is all about.”

“Everyone please put the items you collected into this basket,” Dave instructed, setting a large plastic basket onto the table. “And we’ll move on to our next activity!”

I didn’t want to move on to the next activity. I wanted to talk to Dean about what just happened a few minutes ago. I wanted to finish the case too, but that had been bumped from the top priority slot.

“I’m sure you’re all familiar with the newlywed shoe game. We’re going to be playing that, but with a slight twist. The couple who answers the most questions the same wins a free couple’s massage for tomorrow morning!” Dave explained.

“So if everyone could please take off one of your shoes and hand it to your soulmate, and then take a seat across from each other,” Mallory said, gesturing to two rows of chairs positioned back to back.

“You answer them all correctly, I’ll get a few wrong,” Dean whispered to me as we handed over our shoes. Neither of us wanted to win the couple’s massage, but we also couldn’t get them all wrong. I nodded in agreement and we both sat down.

It turned out they had a long list of questions. It took about twenty minutes to get through them all. I was getting pretty bored and fidgety by the end. The questions weren’t difficult and they kept my focus squarely on Dean, right where I didn’t want it. I wanted to keep myself distracted and my mind off of that kiss until we were able to discuss it. Unfortunately, couple’s retreats weren’t really designed to let you not think about your other half.

“Well that was a lot of fun to watch!” Mallory cheered when it was finally over. “The couple who agreed on the most questions is… Hannah and Tristan! Congratulations you two! Enjoy your free massage!” She held out a free massage coupon which Tristan accepted with a smile.

“Alright. Now, if you all think you’ve been having fun so far, just you wait. The next thing we’re going to do is my favorite part of the whole weekend!” Dave announced. “I’m going to ask you to help us move everything to the edges of the room. We’ll need a lot of space because we’re going to be teaching everybody some fun group dances next!”

I heard Dean’s quiet groan beside me. We all worked together to move the tables and chairs up against the walls and then Mallory disappeared into their office, coming back with a speaker and an ipod.

“The first step to learning any dance is to learn it without music first,” Mallory told us. “Dave and I will demonstrate one step at a time and then we’ll go through it slowly while you learn it. And then we’ll move on to music!”

“We’re going to teach you three different dances,” Dave continued. “We’ll spend half an hour on each one, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right away. They’re pretty simple dances so we have plenty of time to work on each. Now I want everybody to line up. Ladies on one side, gentlemen on the other, and leave some space between the lines.”

And so we spent the next half hour learning the first dance. It was the kind of dance full of skipping and turns and switching partners. We would complete a series of steps with one partner before moving to the next person, doing the steps again, switching partners again and so on.

At the end of the first half hour, we were instructed to take a water break. I was sipping from a bottle of water when Dean came to stand next to me.

“What do you think the odds are that someone sprains an ankle and we can be done with this?” He asked humorlessly.

“It’s not that bad,” I told him. He looked at me, surprised.

“You’re enjoying this,” he said accusingly.

“So what? It’s fun,” I said a little defensively.

“I didn’t even know you liked to dance,” he said. I just shrugged.

“Neither did I.” I hadn’t been any more excited about this particular activity than Dean was. I was surprised how much I was enjoying it.

Break over, everyone moved back to the center of the room to learn the next dance.

We were on to the third dance, just about to try it with music when the woman from the front desk peeked into the room, saying there was a call for Anna and Ethan. They excused themselves and we finished the dance minus one couple.

I was slightly out of breath when Dave stopped the music and called an end to the dance portion of the day. A phone rang in the office, and Mallory left to answer it. I’d had a lot more fun than I expected and the dances, simple as they were, had been sufficiently distracting enough for me to forget about Dean kissing me. That is, until I looked over to see him talking to James and smiling, and my eyes focused on his mouth.

“Bad news,” Mallory said, coming back into the room. “Anna and Ethan won’t be coming back. They got a call about a family emergency and had to leave. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t still have fun, right?”

Dean and I looked at each other. So the human sacrifices had been chosen and taken already. We needed to get moving. And fast.

“We figured we’d do something a little more relaxing after all of that work everyone just did. As I’m sure you are all aware, there’s a lake just behind this hotel. There are a few kayaks available for rental, and we’ve got the next hour booked!” Mallory told us.

“Oh, you know what? I’m actually terrified of being on open water.” I said the first excuse I could think of to give us a chance to get away.

“It’s a pretty small lake. There’s no big fish or predators of any kind. Perfectly safe,” Dave assured me.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s just a phobia I’ve had pretty much my whole life. We’re going to have to sit this one out, but you all have fun! We’ll be able to keep ourselves entertained.”

“If you’re sure,” Dave said. “Alright, everyone else, let’s head outside. If you have anything on you that you don’t want to risk falling into the water, I’d leave it here.”

We watched everyone file out of the room and then started planning.

“What are we going to do?” Dean asked. “We don’t have the slightest idea where to start looking for them. And we don’t even know how to kill this god yet.”

“I know. But we can’t just let them die. We might have to figure it out as we go.”

“Figure it out as we go? We can’t help anyone if we’re dead,” he argued.

“I don’t know what else to do! We don’t exactly have time for research. Besides, who says he’ll even actually be there?” I pointed out as an idea occurred to me.

“Why wouldn’t he be there?”

“Think about it. Back in the day when sacrifices were the norm, the god didn’t show up on your doorstep to watch the sacrifice. It was just something you did and then the god would give you some sort of benefit in exchange. Why should this be any different?” I reasoned.

“That’s risking an awful lot on a maybe,” he said. Then he sighed. “But I guess you’re right. I don’t see that we have much of a choice. Alright, where do we start looking for these guys?”

“Well, from what I remember, sacrifices were made to Teutates by drowning the victims in a large vat of liquid, like in that picture in the office. Nobody knows for sure, but the theory is that they used ale.” I paused for a second as a realization struck me. “Which would explain why I found an order for a vat of ale every August. How did I miss that?” I groaned. “I just assumed it was for the hotel bar.”

“The ale was shipped here?” Dean asked.

“Yeah. Which doesn’t mean he couldn’t have moved it afterwards. But he wouldn’t be able to move it on his own.”

“Plus it would make more sense to do it here. Otherwise he has to find a way to either sneak two unconscious people out of the hotel or lure them out with him. That would put him as the last person to see them before they vanished, which I imagine is a risk he wouldn’t want to take,” Dean continued piecing things together.

“So they have to be here somewhere,” I concluded.

“The basement?” Dean suggested. “I didn’t see any mention of renovations done down there. It could be an area that no one uses. Or not often enough for it to be a concern.”

“Let’s go,” I agreed.

We had to stop at our room first to grab weapons. We didn’t know what we were walking into for sure and it would be foolish to go in unarmed. Dean grabbed a couple guns that he was able to hide with his jacket and I grabbed two knives that I tucked into my boots. It was better than nothing.

We took the elevator back down to the first floor and then went to the stairwell. The elevator didn’t go down to the basement. We went down the flight of stairs and stopped at the heavy basement door while Dean picked the lock. He handed me his second gun and I gave him one of the knives and then we stepped in.

The basement was a mess. The concrete floor was littered with all kinds of junk, everything from old pieces of furniture and musty books to rolls of wire and broken shards of glass. The concrete was broken and crumbling in places. It was dim down here too, only a few of the lights still working.

The room we’d stepped into was open and huge but, aside from the junk, empty. There was another door on the other side of the room, left open. From inside I heard a breathless voice begging to be let go.

“Jenna, wait!” Dean whisper yelled as I rushed in without checking my surroundings first. I was worried about getting to Anna and Ethan on time.

They were hanging upside down from a machine that had an arm that lifted, lowered, and moved side to side. They were suspended over a metal vat that stood about waist high and was covered in carvings. Their hands were tied behind their backs and the machine had been lowered just enough that they could lift their heads out of the ale, but it would take a lot of effort. They would run out of energy quickly, and then they’d drown.

I ran towards the machine to lift them out, but as I was climbing into the seat I felt a sharp stinging sensation in my left side, just below my ribs. I cried out at the pain and turned to see a man holding a knife.

He was probably in his mid forties and in shape. But he didn’t know how to fight. I was able to easily block his next attack and aim a well placed kick to his chest that sent him stumbling back straight into Dean. Dean quickly disarmed the man and pinned him up to a wall with a knife pressed to his throat.

“Get them out of there, Jenna,” he instructed.

With a hand held to my side to try and stop the flow of blood I could feel streaming down, I climbed into the machine and looked over the controls. I quickly figured out how to move Anna and Ethan safely away from the vat. I lowered them as far as the machine would go, going as slowly as possible when their heads came close to touching the floor so they wouldn’t hit them on the concrete.

Once they were laying flat on their backs with their feet still in the air a little bit, I climbed back down and used my knife to cut the ropes.

“Alright, get out of here,” I told them when they were both free.

“What are you gonna do?” Ethan asked.

“You’re gonna call the cops and we’re gonna keep an eye on him until they get here,” Dean answered. “Now go!”

They ran from the room.

“So. Connor,” Dean said conversationally. “Where do you get off on killing people? And all to keep some stupid hotel running? If you ask me, you should have cut your losses and moved on.”

“My parents spent every dime they had to open this place up. It was the most important thing to them. I wasn’t just going to sit back and watch it fall apart,” Connor spat.

“Right. So naturally you decided human sacrifice was the way to go. Because isn’t that everybody’s plan B? Something’s not going my way, so I’ll make a sacrifice to some random god and see if that makes things better,” Dean retorted.

“He’s not some random god. Do you even know what Teutates means?” He asked.

“No. And I don’t particularly care,” Dean said.

“It means ‘god of the people.’ He takes care of us. My family has worshiped him for generations. In fact, we were one of the first families to live under his protection,” he said proudly. “How else would I have gotten the sacrificial vat?”

“The sacrificial- So what you’re saying is, in order for the wish granting portion of your little setup here to work, people have to be drowned in that thing specifically? It can’t just be a barrel of beer or something?” Dean asked.

“Of course not! The offering is sacred! The container it’s offered in must be sacred too.”

“Oh buddy. I’ve gotta tell you, I’d like to just take care of you myself and not wait for the cops.” Connor stiffened at Dean’s clear threat. “Luckily for you, I think it’ll be a much bigger punishment for you to live and watch your hotel go back to being bankrupt. Jenna, cover him.”

I moved to stand next to Dean and aimed my gun at Connor. When I was in position, Dean climbed up into the machine. He turned it on and used the arm to knock over the ancient vat. Ale spilled out in a wave, covering the floor. He drove forward, pushing the vat in front of him until it was pressed up against the nearest wall. Then he kept pushing the heavy machine forward.

“What are you doing?” Connor screamed. “You’ll break it!”

“That’s the idea,” I told him.

He tried to take a step in Dean’s direction and I moved my gun in front of his face.

There was the horrible sound of bending metal. Dean backed up and the vat fell to the floor, crumpled in on itself. He ran it over a few times for good measure until it was unrecognizable.

“That should do it,” Dean said, climbing out of the machine and coming to stand by me. “How you doing?” He asked, nodding to my side. I’d switched the gun to my left hand and was using my right to keep pressure on the injury.

“Fine,” I told him.

“How long do you think until the cops get here?” He asked.

“I don’t know. Pretty soon I would imagine.”

“I’d rather not be here when they show up. I just want to get out of here,” he said as he grabbed the discarded rope off the floor.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

I kept my gun pointed at Connor as Dean tied his hands and feet. Turns out the gun wasn’t really necessary. The man just sat there, despondently staring at that lump of metal on the ground.

“Alright. Let’s go,” Dean said.

We walked out of the basement and took the stairs up to the eighth floor. I wish we could have taken the elevator, but we couldn’t risk walking through the lobby while my left side was covered in blood.

Back in our room we quickly packed our bags. I was about to head out the door when Dean stopped me.

“Let me take a look at your side,” he said.

“Later. We need to go.”

“Jenna, you’re bleeding a lot. I need to check it out.”

“If we don’t leave now, we might not get out before the cops show. I’ll be fine for a little bit longer,” I told him.

“Fine,” he sighed. He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a clean hand towel. “At least use this. And you should probably change your shirt quick.”

Not wanting to waste more time arguing, I grabbed a different shirt out of my bag and went to the bathroom to change. I quickly wiped away the blood that hadn’t dried yet and pressed the towel to my side under the shirt. I balled the old bloody one up and stuffed it in my bag.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said.

We took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out the door. There were two police cars in the parking lot. We kept a casual pace as we walked to the Impala and loaded our bags. Then we climbed in and Dean drove away.

~~~~~

Half an hour later we checked into a room at the first motel Dean found at the first town we passed.

“Okay, let me look at your side now,” Dean said, coming in from the Impala with the medical kit.

I grabbed the hem of my shirt to lift it and show him the injury, but stopped. This would expose my tattoo to him.

“When are we going to talk about it?” I asked.

“Talk about what?” Dean set the kit on one of the beds and came over to me, reaching out to grab the hem of my shirt. I backed away.

“About the fact that you kissed me.”

Dean looked at me, startled. Had he forgotten or just not expected me to bring it up?

“Someone was coming. We had to have some sort of excuse for being back there. It was the only thing that made sense,” he answered, reaching for me again. I backed away again.

“Jenna. Let me look at that,” he ordered.

“It was not the only thing that made sense. I came up with about five reasons for being there,” I argued.

“Like what?”

“Like we got lost. Like we just came down the hall to see if there was anything there for the scavenger hunt. We could have hidden in one of the rooms or just kept walking and acted like we were supposed to be there. That usually works.”

“Well I didn’t think of any of that,” he said.

“I don’t believe you,” I told him. “You’re the fastest thinking guy I know. You always have a whole list of excuses ready to go.”

“Would you let me look at your side before you bleed out?” He snapped.

“Not until you answer my question,” I insisted. “Why’d you do it?”

“Why does it matter?”

This might have just been a convenient way to avoid him seeing his own name tattooed on my body and dealing with what would follow. I was still sticking with the theory that he had a different soulmate and I wasn’t sure how he’d react when he found out he was mine. I didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness and pity that would follow.

But I also just really wanted to know the answer. I knew the kiss wouldn’t have meant to Dean what it did to me, but there was a reason he did it. Not knowing why would be torture.

“There doesn’t have to be a particular reason. I just want to know,” I said.

He clenched his jaw.

“You really wanna know?”

“Yes.”

“The truth?” He questioned.

Obviously, I wanted to say. But that wouldn’t help the situation.

“The truth,” I confirmed.

“You might decide you don’t want to stay with me anymore if I tell you,” he warned. No, begged. He was pleading with me not to make him say it.

“There is nothing you could possibly say that would make me want to leave you. We’ve been over this,” I told him.

He paused for a minute, thinking it over.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He gave me a few more seconds to change my mind, and when I didn’t, he continued.

“I did it because we were on this case. As far as everyone around us was concerned, we were married. I’ve never been in a situation before where kissing you was a valid excuse for being somewhere we weren’t supposed to be. And I just figured I might not get another chance. And I’ve wanted to kiss you for… a long time. So I took advantage of the opportunity.”

I couldn’t even imagine what my face must look like right now. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. I was shocked beyond belief and I felt so much happiness and hope building in my chest that I thought it might burst. Dean cleared his throat.

“That’s my end of the deal held up. Now it’s your turn. Let me see your side,” he said.

To be honest, I hadn’t formulated a plan yet, but I’d had no real intention of letting Dean take care of it. I couldn’t let him see the secret I’d carried for so long. It still made me nervous. After this many years, finally telling him what he was to me was a terrifying thought. But now, with this giddy, hopeful feeling, I let myself consider the possibility that he belonged to me the way I belonged to him.

So, slowly, I lifted my shirt up, exposing my side up to my ribs. I dropped the towel I’d still been holding to the wound. I watched his eyes zero in first on the bloody gash in my side and then lower. To the four letters sitting there in thick black ink. He inhaled sharply and his eyes shot to mine.

Chapter 10

#supernatural #fanfiction #dean winchester #original characters #original female character #soulmates #soulmate!au #dean winchester x ofc #dean winchester x soulmate!ofc #so long v2

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jungshookz · 4 years

Text

CHAPTER FIVE; The dust.

(1) it begins; (2) a cry for help; (3) the investigation; (4) the basement

Player has chosen: [A] Follow Namjoon!

“oh, god, okay-!” you bounce up and down on the balls of your feet in an attempt to hype yourself up, “okay, i can do this, we can do this-!”

you grip tightens around your little flashlight as you shine it down the hallway, but it doesn’t seem to do anything which doesn’t make you feel very confident in the choice you’re about to make

“come on…” you grumble, shaking the light from side to side to see if that does anything

it’s almost like the darkness is absorbing any kind of light

great!

so you’re about to run down a dark hallway and you literally can’t see anything

“Y/N-!”

the haunting echo of namjoon’s desperate cries makes you jump and you shake your head quickly before puffing your cheeks out and letting out a breath

you have to follow namjoon!!

by the time you run back to find the others, he’ll be long gone!!

there’s no time!!

“I’M COMING, NAMJOON-!” you holler, forcing any semblance of doubt ouT of your mind before suddenly bursting into a sprint

the sound of your shoes slapping down against the floor bounces off the walls around you

you feel like your heart is about to burst out of your chest

it doesn’t take very long for the darkness to completely consume your vision, and you find yourself speeding up thanks to the copious amount of adrenaline currently coursing through your veins

“piece of shit-!” you curse, hastily tossing the useless flashlight over your shoulder when you realise that it’s doing nothing to help you

you feel the breeze blowing past your face and your hair whipping behind you as you continue to run

you have no idea where this hallway leads to or if it even ends because you feel like you’ve been running for way longer than you should be

like you feel like at this point you would’ve crashed into a corner or something

is this just.., an eternal hallway?!

once again: WHO designed this damn house?!!?

“Y/N, HURRY-!”

“HOLD ON, NAMJOO- oH-!” a gasp slips past your lips when you suddenly find yourself stumbling to the ground

you let out a groan when your knees collide with the marble floors before your palms smack down on it

and when you look up-

what the hell?

“what the hell?” you breathe out, your eyes widening when you realise that you’re…

you’re back in the kitchen.

“what the hell-!” you scramble up onto your feet before turning to where the corridor-

you feel like bursting into tears when you see that the corridor’s been replaced with a wall

oh god

okay

okay!

what should you do now?

“find everyone, i-i should find everyone-” you nod to yourself before turning back to head to the swinging double doors, “f-find everyone, and then we’ll save joon together-”

you run out of the kitchen to head back to the main area, slowing down your pace when you see that no one’s at the meeting spot

it has to have been more than twenty minutes

“guys?” you breathe out, reaching out to run a hand through your hair

you said twenty minutes and everyone HAD to be be back here, no exceptions!

could it be that,.,.,.

that the house is taken the others, too?

“oh, come on…” you place your hands on your hips before looking up at the chandelier, “come on!”

you’re tempted to just call out for the boys, but you feel like attracting attention to yourself isn’t exactly the best idea

and-

“y/n, there you are!”

you spin around to see jungkook and a couple of the others walking towards you, “we’ve been looking all over for you!”

you smile for the first time since being here when you see that taehyung, yoongi, hoseok, and seokjin are trailing behind jimin and jungkook

that’s good

that’s good, because now all you have to do is find namjoon together (you’re never going to suggest splitting up ever again) and then you guys can get the hell out of here

it’s probably the wrong moment to think of this, but you feel a little disappointed knowing that you’re going to have to give up your starbucks coupon

you were going to treat yourself to a venti the next time you went to starbucks and now you’ll have to pay full-priCE

…damn

maybe you should’ve paired up with jimin

taehyung was a useless teammate!

“you guys! oh, thank god.” you breathe out, bending over and placing your hands on your knees, “you have no idea what i’ve been through-”

“we’ve been through exactly what you’ve been through,” hoseok chirps, shuddering before wrapping his arms around himself, “this house gives me the creeps!

“we can’t leave just yet because we still haven’t-”

“no offence, but you look winded-” yoongi snorts, tilting his head, “what, did you just run a marathon?”

“no!” your breathing is still a little shallow but your heart has calmed down significantly now that you’re here with the boys, “i just-”

“i’m pretty tired. there are a lot of staircases in this house!” seokjin butts in, wincing as he shakes his legs out, “i mean, seriously. why not put everything on one level? that’s what i would’ve done if i built this place.”

this is getting ridiculous

if everyone would just shut up for one second so you can explain the vERY important situation, that would be really nice!

“okay, yeah- can you let me-”

“hey, by the way- why’d you abandon me in the kitchen?” taehyung frowns before swinging his bat so it’s sitting up over his shoulder, “some teammate you are.”

“what?” you shake your head in disagreement, slightly confused as to why taehyung’s acting so casual about the mysterious disappearing corridor

you can’t help but wonder if… maybe everyone’s been experiencing different versions of the house?

does that even make any sense?

taehyung says that you abandoned him - maybe the house made him think that you abandoned him

“you abandoned me! one second, we were in the kitchen. the next second, you weren’t there anymore. that’s not how a team works, y/n-”

okay

you don’t have time to figure out the ins and outs of this terrifying maze house because there’s currently a broken, floppy-armed namjoon somewhere who needs your guys’ help

“i didn’t abandon you- look, there’s no time-!” you wave your hands in front of you, “there’s no time, we have to go and save-”

“before you say anything-” jungkook holds his finger up to shut you up before stepping aside, “look who we found!”

your heart immediately drops to your stomach when namjoon steps out from behind him, looking perfectly fine

what?

how is that possible?

“nam- but-” you stammer, slowly raising your hand to point at namjoon, “b-but i saw you-”

“jungkook and jimin told me about the competition…” he smiles at you before holding both perfectly functioning and not at all dislocated arms behind his back, “i wanted you and tae to win, but you guys were taking forever!”

“i guess this means jimin and i are the best team ever.” jungkook kisses his teeth before shrugging, moving aside when namjoon turns to reenter the huddle, “what can i say? you should’ve stuck with me.”

“looks like i get to keep my strawberry flavoured condom.” jimin giggles, “and that starbucks coupon of yours…”

you tune out the sound of jimin’s voice as you look around at everyone

something isn’t right

well, you already knew that something isn’t right with this house, but now…

you glance at hoseok, noticing that he no longer has a smile on his face - he stares off into space with a blank expression, his eyelids blinking lazily

five minutes ago, you were with namjoon in that basement

your eyes trail over to yoongi, who coughs into his fist before clearing his throat quietly

he opens his mouth and reaches up to grip his face with one hand before moving his jaw from side to side

crack-crack-crack

four minutes ago, you were leaving that basement with namjoon and finding it weird that the corridor had suddenly returned

taehyung and seokjin are both shifting in their spots, twitching and occasionally scratching at their skin every now and then a little too aggressively for your liking

in fact, they’re scratching themselves so hard that red marks are starting to appear in their skin

three minutes ago, you were desperately clinging to namjoon - and feeling his arms dislodge from their sockets - because something in the darkness was yanking him away from you

and when you look over at namjoon, you’re more than uncomfortable to see him standing as still as a statue, staring directly at you with a small smile on his face

he’s not blinking either

two minutes ago, you were chasing namjoon down a dark hallway only to end right back up in the kitchen

you feel your stomach starting to do flip-flops when you look down, noticing that jungkook’s hand doesn’t seem to be lining up with his bones - the flesh is all loose and wrinkly - you jump when he suddenly reaches down to yank down the sleeve of his sweater so that most of his hand is covered up

one minute ago, you ran back to the main area and turned to see 7/8 - or, 8/8 boys walking towards you, all looking perfectly fine

“y/n? what’s the matter with you?” jimin stops mid-ramble before frowning in concern, “is everything okay?”

and since when did jimin have such sunken, grey bags under his eyes?

you swallow thickly when it hits you

not only is something not quite right with this house-

something isn’t quite right…

with the boys.

“yes!” you blurt out, feeling your heart beginning to pound in your chest again, “everything’s fine. sorry! i’m just… just a little hungry, i guess. haven’t eaten in hours.”

“ah. i see.”

you feel the blood drain from your face when you start to notice small specks of dust floating around the group of boys, and your eyes flicker to the side to see if there’s dust anywhere else

the dust seems to just centre around them and nothing else

okay

don’t panic

do NOT panic

act normal

as far as you’re concerned, your only goal now is to get yourself out of this house

“well, we should-” your voice wavers a little and you clear your throat, “now that we’ve found everyone, we should probably get out of here.” you turn on your heel before heading towards the two large doors - that you’re assuming and hoping to be the front doors - speeding up a little when you hear the boys start to move

“we should!” jungkook chirps, “…or we could stay.”

your shoes screech against the marble floors as you come to a halt

you turn your head slightly, “and why would we- why would we do that?”

“don’t you wanna stay here?” taehyung takes one large step to the side so that he’s standing on the right side of jungkook

“we could play hide and seek!” jimin offers, taking a large step as well so that he’s on the right side of jungkook

“i don’t… i don’t want to play.” you reach out for the doorknob and give it a twist, “i wanna go. i-i wanna leave.”

it doesn’t budge

you grab the other knob before trying to turn it as well - even going as far as to yank at it - but you try to stay calm because you don’t wanna show the boys how desperate you are to get out of here

the other one doesn’t budge either

you feel a lump growing in your throat when you realise that you don’t know how to leave this hous-

“you can’t leave without saying goodbye, first.”

what?

you turn around slowly, unsettled to see that the boys are now standing in some sort of arrow formation with jungkook in the front

their faces have now changed - they look like themselves, except their skin is paler, their eyes are impossibly wide, and their mouths are all turned up in a smile that basically goes from ear to ear

“g-goodbye to who?” your voice is barely above a whisper and you step back to press yourself up against the door when they take one step forward together

“goodbye to Her.”

you can hear jungkook’s voice as clear as day, but his mouth isn’t moving at all and is just frozen in that hideously wide grin

more and more speckles of dust begin to swirl around them and you find that you’re unable to look away from their faces

they just look so…

so creepy

“wh-who is… who is…” your chest starts to rise and fall a little quicker and you wrap your fingers around the knob blindly before giving it another twist, “who are you talking about?”

“oh, y/n… don’t you see? She has been waiting for you.”

all of their heads suddenly snap back so they’re all looking at the farthest corner of the room and you lean over a little to look as well

“oh, god.” you whimper upon noticing a shadow emerging from the darkness, “what the fuck?”

more and more dust starts to appear around it, and you can see it slowly becoming a three-dimensional figure

it suddenly leaps forward before crouching down, moving in a way so that the bones in its shoulders seem to be shifting

it rises to its feet slowly before leaping once again

“She wishes for your smile…”

you hear jimin’s voice in place of jungkook’s and you quickly look back over at the group

he’s the only one looking at you, while the others are still facing away

he tilts his head slowly before hooking two fingers into either sides of his mouth and stretching his mouth into an even wider grin, his skin almost comically elastic

“and your smile, She shall get.”

the shadow starts to move faster, almost prancing from one random spot to another

you can feel it staring directly at you even though it doesn’t have any eyes

“no, no-!” you press yourself up harder against the door and blindly reach behind you, the knob now rattling from how hard you’re twisting and pulling at it

She’s coming for you

and She’s coming for you now.

What do ÿ̴̧̭̝́͂͆o̶̫͇͓͂̂̇u̸̺̟̟͆̋͘ ̵̞͊w̴̠̦̹̓̏a̶̜̱̾͋̑n̵͔̖̰̄̈́t̵̥́̔͝ ̷̥̜́̆to do?

> [A] RUN! Why are you still standing here? Get out of here now!

> [B] STAY AND FIGHT! You’ve kept yourself alive for this long - you can (probably) take her, right?

Place your vote ḥ̵̗̀̑̄ẽ̸͓̻̾̇r̸̮̿͘e̶̙̐.

You have one hour.

Good luck.

#choh2020 #choh2020 drabbles

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capricornus-rex · 3 years

Text

A Shadow of What You Used to Be (11)

Chapter 11: Set in Motion | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

Requested by Anon

Summary: There is another! Years after young Anakin Skywalker departed Tatooine, his mother Shmi delivers a second child—this time, a daughter. Whilst the circumstance of the girl’s birth remains unexplained, Irele Skywalker has yet to choose the true path between those laid out for her.

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

A/N: Hi guys, I’m slowly getting back on my feet mentally. I hope I didn’t disinterest you guys with how long I’ve taken to write stories. If you still stayed to tune in to the story despite the dramatic change in my posting schedule, A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU GUYS!! I’ll keep writing to make this story interesting.

Requesting to be tagged: @heavenly1927

Also in AO3

Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 | Previous: Part 10 | Next: Part 12 | Masterlist

12 of ?

17 BBY

A day after her full medical examination, the Anathema charted a course to the western arm of the Mustafar system.

For the first time in a near-month, Irele officially can wander around the ship. The first thing she did with the privilege was to find her way to the bridge, with HY-L33 by her side. Despite her plain-looking clothes, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

She approaches the viewing pane of the bridge, a spot that most officers were accustomed to seeing Vader instead, and watches the bluish-gray moon come into size as they pass through the Imperial blockade. She didn’t listen to the standard exchange between officers from each end, her gaze remained on the moon. She allowed herself to close her eyes to get a feel of the planet—she felt it cold and brooding, and yet it was brimming with life. She started to guess what kind of terrain it had too, probably volcanic rock, she thought; but the closer the ship got, she realizes that it was mostly water.

Unaware that she’s connecting with the planet’s essence through the Force, to her, it felt like frolicking around someplace new and unexplored; for this particular moon, she could feel the cold water seawater freeze the nerves under her skin, she could the faint light of the bioluminescent creatures thriving in the depth as if like starlight, and the strong current that nearly swept her off of her feet. Her eyelids shot up.

“What is this place?” she asked no one in particular.

“We are approaching the moon, Nur, Lady Irele.”

Irele turned her head to the side to see who answered: a young uniformed officer with black hair neatly cropped at the sides. He donned the exact same garbs as his colleagues, the only thing that differed was the badges pinned on his left chest—which was relatively fewer than the seasoned admiral.

The same officer didn’t go far from her; as the Anathema got into the moon’s exosphere, he escorted her—along with HY-L33, whom she insisted to be allowed to follow her—to the hangar where the shuttle Zenith awaits its passenger. Irele made herself comfortable in the main cabin, furnished with only a small round table surrounded by a booth, across it is a slab meant as a bench for other passengers.

The girl’s curiosity grew at the same time the moon scaled in size as they descended into the atmosphere. At first glance, she’d think the gray and black surface would be high cliffs; the Zenith cut through the clouds, revealing much of the land mass, she leaned in by the window to find that there was none. All of it was water. The only other terrain that existed there was the fortress that sat in the middle of the ocean, it was practically an artificial island in its own right.

“What is that?”

“That is Fortress Inquisitorius, Lady Irele.”

“What’s in there?”

“This is the standard lodge and training grounds for Inquisitors.”

It’s the first time she’s heard the word, though she’s absolutely sure that she is none of that.

“Why am I being brought here?”

A pause came upon the droid, HY-L33’s neck whirred as to bow her head.

“My apologies, neither captain nor crew have uploaded their ship manifest into my database.”

Irele made a mental note to request for HY-L33 to have special privileges if it involved her. That is, if she can even make one.

The fortress’s peak pierced through the sky like a spear, standing tall and as deep as the ocean floor. The pilot gently curbed around, allowing Irele a closer look and all of a sudden she felt weary.

–

Irele exited the Zenith and was then passed over to another officer, though much older and appearing to be perpetually vexed by this fool’s errand. Nevertheless, the escort officer walked Irele and HY-L33 through the fortress. It was a metal maze underwater.

The vibrant blue of the underwater life reflected a sheen over Irele’s widened eyes. Mouth agape, she had forgotten that she was in such a foreboding, ominous place. Never has she ever dreamed in her entire life that she’d see a place this blue, after living of seeing nothing but golden-brown sand that stretched up to the ridges where the twin suns hid.

The escort officer kept on blathering about where was what, schedules—her schedules, specifically—of her routines and training sessions. Irele was having none of it, she walked by the glass wall staring at the shoals that swam past her. Her distracted giggling caught the attention of the officer and he snapped.

“Lady Irele, did you hear what I just said?!”

The poor, startled girl’s shoulders jumped and her heels sprang. She froze in place.

“S-Sorry, I was looking at the water…”

The officer sighed and switched his tone, “Would you want me to arrange a tour in your own personal pod, young lady?”

It didn’t take a genius to see that the officer’s words were drawling with a harsh breed of sarcasm. Irele’s fists balled so tightly that her fingernails dug curves on the skin of her palms. She glowers at him, refusing to speak. The escort rolled his eyes and sighed, further irritated by this mundane task given to him.

“Puh! Children!” he scoffed under his breath as soon as he turned away from Irele and continued.

Eventually, they arrive to a viewing room with a wide window that spanned from left to right. Irele was reluctant to stand beside the escort, the latter thought likewise so he stepped back himself. Below the viewing deck, Irele witnessed something intense, brutal, and oddly fascinating.

Two individuals, armored head to foot in sleek black, both wielding weapons but each a different kind. One held a pair of rods, and the other a weapon in the same fashion as a hammer. Violet electricity crackling along the ends of the weapons sparked at every collision and strike each fighter made.

Irele pressed herself against the glass when the fight was getting good. She didn’t place her bet on anyone, she had never seen a graceful, calculated fight such as this—even though this is a normal sparring session, to keep these fighters’ wits and skills sharp. The dual wielder eventually wins after staggering his opponent with a flurry of attacks.

“Come now, young lady, it’s time I bring you to your quarters.”

She looks away from the viewing pane and then to the escort, her expression served enough as a question asking for elaboration, though he didn’t humor her with an answer—even if she actually asked.

Her room in Fortress Inquisitor was a bigger version of the one she had in the command ship; and so she had to adjust all over again, but seeing that it was no different either way, getting used to the room was somehow easy.

“Well, HY-L33, I guess we’ll be staying here for a while.”

“Indeed, Lady Irele. I will be here to assess you medically if you are fit for your regular training sessions assigned in your schedule.”

“Why am I going to be trained? Are they gonna make me an Inquisitor?”

“In a way, Lady Irele, yes. But you will not be named an Inquisitor.”

“Then what’s the point of training me? I get that I will need to learn how to fight but for what?”

HY-L33 stood silent and incapable of answering her master’s questions. Irele apologized for barraging the droid with questions that may not have been—as she now mockingly calls it—“not uploaded into her database.”

Irele took rest for the day, not knowing what’s in store for her in the coming days.

The pawn now moves.

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dennou-translations · 4 years

Text

Kagerou Daze VIII: Chapter 8

Children Record -side No.7-

Please feel free to message me about possible corrections. If you can, consider supporting the creators by purchasing the official releases in Japanese or in English. In case anyone is feeling generous: Ko-fi | PayPal. ( ╹◡╹)っ’･*

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If “not forgetting” was the prerequisite for “having memories”, what was a “memory” once forgotten called?

I roamed my thoughts, not telling anyone about the “recollections” that I seemed dangerously close to losing.

The “goodbyes” that seemed to burn our chests, the miraculous “reunions”, the “future” that we’d reached our hands out to while readying ourselves for certain death – no matter how much we cherished them, it’d be a disappointment if we ended up forgetting everything.

“Forgetting” didn’t leave even loneliness behind. As if nothing had ever existed from the very beginning, the forgotten recollection would lose even the name “memory” and be gone without a trace. It was an utterly absurd story. No matter how dear our memories were to us, we couldn’t build a fence around them. We would fail to recall even the reasons to try remembering “memories” that were truly forgotten.

Right, we were there because we’d been “continuously forgetting”. By stepping over the dead bodies of memories that we couldn’t remember, we were moving forward one way or another.

That was the only thing I didn’t want to forget.

“He~y, you awake?” an insensitive voice echoed through the madder-red-dyed classroom.

Sitting in the last row next to the window and having been watching the slowly darkening diorama-like cityscape, I turned toward the owner of the voice. Illuminated by sunset glow, Ayano’s face was openly peeking at me from the seat in front of mine.

For starters, it was all too questionable that the concept of “sleep” would exist in this ambiguous world, where we were both alive and dead, so I wondered if she was joking.

No, that was suspicious. She didn’t seem to be thinking anything.

“There anyone who sleeps with their eyes closed?” as I asked rudely, I turned back to the cityscape out the window.

At the corner of my line of sight, Ayano shrank back a little. Seeing her that way, it looked to me like Ayano had started to get a slight inkling of things. I wasn’t trying to be mean to her or anything, but to be frank, I was irritated.

“C-Could it be... you’re angry at me for not going to you for advice?” Ayano asked with upturned eyes, stirring lightly in dread.

“About what?”

“Erm, like... I came over here by myself without asking for your opinion.” Hanging her head after saying so, Ayano flickeringly peeked at my complexion.

Well, she was mostly right.

At the very least, I didn’t hate her. She’d seemed friendly with me for some reason, and it hadn’t been just one or two times that I’d watched over her studies. Of course, given that we were a guy and a girl, I thought it was appropriate for each of us to keep a secret or two from one another. But even if that much was okay, as friends, I totally thought we had a relationship where one could rely on the other and be relied on whenever we were faced with great distress.

Still, this.

Hn, well~, there sure are things about her that I’ve never heard of from the Mekakushi-dan guys! Why, she went around on her own to investigate Clearing, and dear me, all her younger siblings had superhuman abilities, so she tried to enter Kagerou Daze alone after making up her mind – the more I dig, the more bargain sales I get of stuff I was never told before.

No, it wasn’t like I was vexed that she had kept it all a secret from me, or that I wanted to know Ayano through and through, or anything of the sort. Absolutely not. It’s just that, as her friend, I felt resentment at how she had done things in a reckless way without taking herself into consideration.

When I glanced at her, Ayano reacted to my gaze and her body shrank back uneasily.

Dammit... Acting like a little puppy...!

Trying to take advantage of my conscience would get her nowhere. Who knew how badly my heart had ached because of her during these two years?

Other men might end up easily forgiving you, but Shintarou-san isn’t the kind of skirt chaser who’d yield to that. Shintarou-san’s been severe lately.

“Well, things are the way they are. Even if I judge you at this point of the game, there’s no helping them.”

How regretful. Shintarou-san does wind up easily forgiving a girl when she fidgets at him.

Perhaps thinking that I was going to scold her or something, Ayano stared blankly at me for a bit, and then gave a faint smile, looking apologetic. “You’re as nice as ever. That’s why you ended up here, Shintarou.”

“Shaddap. You’re the same as me, aren’t you?” leaving my inward gags aside, I used rude language to dodge the embarrassing mood.

My bodily sense of time told me that it had been approximately one or two days ever since I was swallowed by Kagerou Daze. Still, in an environment where I could get neither sleepy nor hungry, there was probably not much meaning in relying on body sensations.

According to Haruka-senpai, there was a huge gap between here and outside regarding the flow of time. I had a rough idea of it from listening to Hibiya talk about how “the same day had repeated over and over”, and sure enough, there was no logic or reason to it. It indeed didn’t seem like I had been wrong about this being a world removed from common sense.

“But I was really surprised. To think Shintarou would be fighting together with everyone.”

“I was the last person who could’ve imagined something like that. Working my ass off to read deep into things for someone else’s sake just isn’t like me...”

“Nope, you’re wrong. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt that it’d turn out like this. That Shintarou would do his best to protect everyone.” Ayano added, “That’s why I couldn’t tell you anything” at the end, shying out.

So she had expected that I’d fight.

Well, it wouldn’t not be inevitable that I’d get myself involved in this as long as Momo was an Ability User, but she shouldn’t know that Momo was an Ability User in the first place. If so, I couldn’t believe right off the bat that she had anticipated things would turn out like this, since I was “someone unrelated” to her in the end.

Hm. Wait a minute. Hahaan, don’t tell me...

“Could this be consolation for a ‘non-Ability-User’ like me?”

By some sort of karma, everyone I’d been involved with in high school had become an Ability User. Yet I was the only one who was still a newborn Bambi until now. I didn’t think hatefully of that, but I wondered if she didn’t think of me as inconvenient, since I was the sole person who hadn’t gotten his hands on an Ability out of our group of four friends.

Regardless, Ayano responded to my sarcasm-mixed words by shaking her head furiously. “I-I’m serious! I saw Shintarou fighting even in my dreams!”

“Hoh, what kinda dream was that?”

“Erm. One where Shintarou was standing coolly in front of everyone and flashily defeating the boss. You were wearing a bright red full-body unitard with the sunset on your back, saying, ‘Sorry for the wait! Here’s the unmatched super hero!’ and swinging an iron ball with a chain...”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!! What sorta perverted bastard is that?!! That ain’t related to Abilities by a single millimeter, and actually, it didn’t become true at all, did it?!”

Halfway tending to trip, Ayano, who had been imagining me swinging around an iron ball, abruptly returned to reality. “That’s true. Gee, I wonder if it was in a different dream...”

“More like, just how often have you dreamed of me...?”

It was repulsive to think that I played an active role inside her brain clad in a transformation suit of sorts. Nevertheless, Ayano herself said something spine-chilling, like, “M-Might’ve been pretty often...” with her face turning red for some reason.

“B-But y’know, there are many Eye Abilities, so it’s not weird that there’s a power like sharing a future, is it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised no matter what comes up at this point, but are you the Ability User who can see this future?”

“No way! I’m totally not that!” resolutely denying it, Ayano made an X using her arms with a smack.

“Then isn’t this theory a bust?! Don’t try to justify the version of me that’s haunting your brain. First things first, take off the unitard!”

“Eeh?! If the unitard is off, the cool part is gone...”

“Eh, then wasn’t I unnecessary from the start?”

How tiring.

Aah, I was remembering it. You’d need a huge amount of effort to talk to her; about as much as when talking to Ene. It was a meaningless conversation, almost as if we were speaking just for the sake of “speaking”... Not knowing to settle her tone down even after dying made her a terrifying fellow.

But these aren’t pointless conversations like the ones of back then, I guess.

Precisely because she had died, she had played a major role in the fight of the outside world. As proof of this, she earlier had talked about what had been concerning her for a bit.

Praying that it wouldn’t be a fruitless conversation, I opened my mouth, “Just now, you said your Ability isn’t the power to see the future, right?”

“Ah, yup. I did.”

“Then, what Ability did you get?”

Silence.

“Aah, that’s right! I had to talk about it!!” Pushing the chair with a clatter, Ayano stood up all of a sudden with vehement vigor.

“Hyan!!” and I, exceptionally surprised by it, fell backward while letting out an uncanny cry. Splendidly hit the back of my head. If this weren’t the inside of Kagerou Daze, it would’ve been an accidental homicide.

“Uwaah! Sorry, sorry! Well, about the Abilities...”

“W-Wait a minute, your tempo is too fast; at least lemme fix up the chair.” I frantically got up from the floor, putting the chair back in place with a rattle.

Just trying to have a proper conversation with her was that exhausting. Most likely, by the time she finished introducing the topic, my soul would have eroded and disappeared.

“Well, then.”

“Yeah.”

We pulled ourselves together and re-started the conversation.

“I think it’s better for me to begin explaining from the time I came to this world... to Kagerou Daze.”

“Sure. Got any confidence that you can explain it decently?”

“N-Not much, but... I’ll do my best.”

That’s the spirit. Let’s hear it.

“See, it’s about the day... when I did that thing on the rooftop.”

“W-Wait a minute. Can’t you stop talking this way? It’s too lighthearted, kinda like—”

“Geez~, and here I’d finally come up with a good explanation! Be quiet and listen!” Ayano flat and moderately hit the desk.

She was mad at me. I listened in silence.

“Right after I entered Kagerou Daze... I met a girl named Azami.”

“Azami”. The originator who had birthed the Abilities and the first victim of Clearing’s plot.

I used to have no idea about what had happened to Azami herself after she transferred Abilities to people on the outside, but this meant that she had been staying in Kagerou Daze while retaining her consciousness. I couldn’t think that Ayano would lie on purpose. If they had met, then that was probably the case.

“She was really weak. Until that point, she’d been existing as a spiritual body with the power of Stirring, which she gave to Takane-san, but then it was gone too, so it seemed she was at her limit.”

“I... see. So Enomoto became Ene after that.”

“Yep, yep. My, how can I put it...? Takane-san got a-all bright after that, huh?” Ayano seemed to be choosing her words most carefully out of respect for our senior, but as expected, the strain at the edge of her lips didn’t fool anyone.

Rejoice, Enomoto; your dear junior saw it all.

Perhaps having noticed my grin, Ayano said, “L-Let’s leave that aside” and resumed the talk, tending to tumble. “After losing her physical and spiritual body, Azami had only one power left. That was the Ability I received,” saying so, Ayano pointed at the corner of her eye.

“The last one... I also didn’t know about this.”

The “Ten Abilities” cited in Azami’s diary were mostly referenced by name. However, no matter how many times I counted, there were only nine names in it. Those nine Abilities applied to the powers residing in the people outside. In other words, the one residing inside Ayano was the Tenth Ability, which hadn’t been listed in the diary.

Tapping with the finger that was aimed at herself, Ayano spoke with slightly wavering words, “This is a bit of a weird Ability. It’s got a nature that’s a little different from the other Abilities, so to say; it’s an Ability that sprouted from Azami’s ‘heart’, like... Would you understand if I say it’s a power created from the feeling of ‘wanting to convey’?”

“Nope, don’t get it at all.”

“Thought so.” Ayano exhaled a prolonged sigh with a “haah~”.

My, you sure are doing your best for someone so bad at explaining stuff.

“Ah, that’s right. Then wouldn’t it be better if I did it like this?”

One instant.

Almost as if shaded with sunset glow, Ayano’s dark brown hair was pregnant with a dense orange color. That was the activation of an Ability, which I had witnessed countless times. Still, the “sense of pressure” that seemed to be released from Ayano’s two eyes was nearly non-existent.

“Y’see, I think it’ll probably the easiest way for you to understand if I do it like this... Can you accept it?”

Ayano’s words and the movements of her lips incited a natural nod from me.

“Thank you. Then, I’ll ‘convey’ it to you, ‘kay?”

The color that appeared to be swaying inside her irises flared up all the more intensely. Unable even to blink, I simply surrendered my body to the persuasiveness of those orbs.

“Favoring Eyes.”

I was in a dark place. There was no right, left, up or down. It wasn’t cold or hot.

It was that kind of place.

“You’ll disappear, won’t you, Azami?” a voice rang throughout the complete darkness. Even if I chased for the voice’s owner, I couldn’t find her.

And there was one more voice. It came closer as if to nestle with me, word overlapping upon word, “Yeah. I am glad I could talk to someone like you in my last moments. More than anything, I am sorry for not having been able to do a single thing for you all until the very end. Truly, I am sorry...”

“I don’t want you to cry, ‘cause I’m also holding back from doing it.”

“I-I am not crying. It was just snot that came out. Besides... my ‘memory’ has already been delivered to your heart, right?”

“Yep, it has. Azami, I’ve definitely received your ‘memory’. That’s why I’m not lonely anymore.”

“Is that so? Then I am relieved. In the future, this ‘memory’ might be useful for something. The ‘memory’ is not me but the precious ‘feelings’ I had when I was alive.”

“Really, you’re right. I can understand your ‘memory’... as if it were my own. You’ve been doing your best to live on for such a very long time, huh, Azami?”

“Ugh... hic...”

“Aah, sorry. I didn’t say it out of thinking about making you cry.”

“That’s not it; that’s not it at all. It’s just... I’ve never even dreamed that someone would say something like this to me.”

“You’re a real crybaby, Azami. It’s okay; ‘cause I-I... surely won’t forget...

“What, but aren’t you also crying?”

“E-Ehehe. We’re together on this, huh?”

Silence.

“It is already time. Lastly... I will leave this with you.”

“Egh...”

“It is my ‘heart’... the power named ‘Favoring’. It is the power to convey ‘feelings’ and ‘memories’... Surely, if it’s you...”

“Hic... u-ueeh...”

“Welcome back. Did it get properly conveyed?”

“Yeah, it did.”

The color of the classroom dyed in scarlet was unfading, softly enveloping my consciousness as I was pulled back. It wasn’t like I’d been “shown” or “told” anything, yet a memory of Azami and Ayano’s encounter found itself inside my head as if it were logical.

“Shintarou, could it be you’re crying?”

“I ain’t crying. It’s just snot that came out.”

Ayano stared at my face for a bit, and perhaps realizing the meaning of those words, she gave me a shy smile.

I started thinking about Ayano.

The environment encircling her when she was still alive was wretched to the point of making me sick. To think that she had lost her precious mother, that her father – who used to be her only foundation – went through a transformation, and that her siblings and school seniors were taken as hostages. It wasn’t the kind of story that would only go as far as making your insides boil.

And so, Ayano had jumped from the rooftop, entering Kagerou Daze through cutting her own life short. Kano had made guesses about it; that as a result of linking her mother’s notes to Clearing’s plans, she had probably thought she could hinder Clearing’s plot of “gathering Abilities to make a Medusa” if she got her hands on one of the Ten Abilities.

Through my meeting with the Mekakushi-dan guys and connecting the pasts that each of them had talked about, I had arrived to the true motives behind Ayano’s actions. I had been accompanied by inevitable rage. That was why I’d sustained myself on that rage and fought. I’d been beating the hell of out this shitty world, which had been making people like them – who were living in desperation – into fools, pushing ridiculous absurdity onto them, and trying to rob them of even their future.

And the outcome of that fight was as one could see.

There wasn’t a single means of salvation, and neither was any miracle going to happen. The plan I’d come up with through milking my brains out also hadn’t served to save everybody. There was really nothing more worthless than the fact that, if there was just one thing I could do, it was to talk to my dead friends.

Nevertheless, even if I died, even if I rotted, there was one truth that I couldn’t escape from. Outside of Kagerou Daze, the Mekakushi-dan guys were even now fighting against the enemy. Just because I’d died, there was no way I alone could put an end to it on my own accord. And it seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking so.

Ayano and I looked into each other’s eyes, and as if confirming one another’s wills, we exchanged words.

“Must keep it up until the end, huh?”

“Yeah, it ain’t over yet.”

At Ayano’s unfaltering words, I was convinced of one thing. Most likely, she and I were imagining the exact same conclusion for this battle.

In the first place, this fight had pre-existing conditions thrust into it from the beginning. The enemy was an immortal Ability itself, and the only one who could control it – the Medusa – didn’t exist in this world. So long as the enemy was immortal, if Mary didn’t turn into a Medusa and make it powerless, the Ability Users would all be brutally killed, no matter how much they ran or tried to buy time. Still, for Mary to become a Medusa, she had to draw the Abilities out of the Ability Users.

In other words, from the very start, the development where all of us would survive didn’t exist in this battle.

It was a cruel story that nothing could be done about, but it was the “reality” of this struggle. As long as we couldn’t all survive together, we couldn’t puff out our chests and claim that “we won”. And, albeit being aware of these prerequisites, everyone from the Mekakushi-dan had thrown themselves into the fight.

If only we’d managed to figure everything out sooner, faster.

It was too late for being frustrated over that or anything else at this point. Because, right now, everything had come to the moment just before the end.

Still, there was only one thing. It was a mere possibility, but there was something left in our hands. It was liable to turn out as meaningless, but if we hadn’t fought, we would never have been able to get our hands on it. Just as there was no “victory” for us in this battle, as long as we had that thing, there was also no “defeat”.

After all, the goal we carried was not to “win��.

“I left just one thing behind on the other side,” saying so, I took a cellphone out of my jersey’s pocket, put it on the desk and tilted my neck at Ayano.

“A phone? I think it won’t connect with the other side, though...”

“If you think on ordinary terms, that’s how it’d be. Except, there’re guys who ‘ain’t normal’ on the other side.”

It didn’t even serve as an all-or-nothing, and it seemed suspicious that it’d be as much as a one-in-a-million chance; that was the kind of bet it was. And even if it became true, that didn’t mean it could knock down the enemy. Simply for the sake of grasping an “extension”, I’d entrusted one last wish to that girl.

“Even if you thought it out, you normally wouldn’t do something like that.” Perhaps having understood my anticipations, Ayano gave me a strained smile.

“I might’ve stopped being ‘normal’ too.”

Seen from the sidelines, me betting my own life not for the sake of surviving or fighting, but merely for “choosing”, probably came off as an abnormality. And so, I ruminated inside my mind for our clichéd purpose, which we had decided upon in that hideout.

Our child-like objective of “not giving up on the future no matter what”.

#kagerou project #kagepro #mekakucity actors #kagerou daze #kisaragi shintaro #kisaragi shintarou #tateyama ayano #shinaya #azami #summer time reload #jin #novel #my translation

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mrsdobrik · 4 years

Text

CHAPTER 13:

Both David and Y/n were anxious about their next date, it had officially been a month from their first date and now all of these questions about the future were beginning to arise.

David had planned to take Y/n to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens to do something special for their first month together, even though nothing was official yet. He could feel himself catching feelings for her, but he didn’t want to rush into things.

He was sitting in the Ferrari when he saw Y/n approaching the car. His eyes almost popped out of his face at the vision of her in a stunning cream colored dress with a low back. She looked like one of those glamorous english women who drink tea at exactly 5pm. Which was great since that is what they were going to do. And she pulled it off effortlessly, it didn’t look forced or costumy or too formal, it just looked like her. Or a version of her that made David want to be less than proper.

“Wow! You look stunning” David said feeling slightly uncomfortable in his black jeans and crew neck.

“Thank you!” she said before leaning in to give him a quick peck. “I love this dress but I don’t get to wear it often since it’s not appropriate for school.”

“I might have to give you more excuses to wear it” David said, pulling her into a deep kiss.

It was about a forty five minute ride. They always enjoyed riding in the car next to each other as much as going on dates. Laughter filled the air as Y/n poorly sang and acted out a bunch of songs.

Y/n was incredibly excited once she found out what they were doing, she was definitely more of a tea than coffee girl. They strolled down the gardens taking in the beautiful scenery, first holding hands but slowly getting closer and closer till she was holding his waist as his arm rested on her shoulder.

You know that expression about stopping to smell the roses? That is exactly what they did through the whole afternoon, until finally they sat down for tea. Watching her laugh and eat pastries as the sun shone down on her face David felt like his heart was about to jump out of his chest and all of his worries about the future faded away for a little while. There was nothing he could do, he had fallen for her and there was no going back.

As for Y/n, she had decided even before the date had started that she wouldn’t push it, she would just let things fall into place on their own and stop worrying about the future.

“Would you like to come to my place after this?” David asked.

Y/n just nodded with her head smiling at him.

…

Later that day, the Ferrari pulled into David’s driveway and Y/n could feel herself getting more and more nervous. She knew none of the guys would be there but Natalie would and even though it was something small it felt like a huge step.

“Shall we?” David said as he turned the engine off.

Y/n got out of the car and took a deep breath. She looked around, absorbing her surroundings. The place felt familiar from the videos, but in person it felt even more special like you could feel the history of the house in the air.

David led her to the door and opened it for her. Being in his house felt surreal, dating David felt normal because he was so normal around her it was easy to forget who he was but going into his house, the place where most of his videos took place was otherworldly. It was the first time it sunk in that that was actually David Dobrik, not just David the sweet guy who took her on amazing dates and hugged her tightly through tough times, but David Dobrik, YouTube star. It felt like there was this new side to him she was yet to unveil.

Her eyes grazed the awards all lined up one next to the other and stopped on the clickbait sign before moving on to the couch.

“This feels so weird, I feel like I know the place, like I’ve been here before. It feels like going into a movie set would, I guess.”

“What do you think?” He asked

“It’s bigger in person.” she said her eyes still wide taking every inch of the room in. To tell the truth she did feel slightly intimidated, like she wasn’t supposed to be there. She walked over and ran her fingers over the couch, it was a lot to wrap her head around.

Suddenly, Natalie came out of her room yelling

“Dave is that you? Are you back already? I thought you would be…” She cut herself off when she saw Y/n.

“Nat this is Y/n, Y/n this is my assistant Natalie.” David said even though he had already introduced them before at the diner.

“I am also his fucking friend.” Y/n smiled remembering her saying the exact same line in a vlog a while back.

“I know we met before but it is so nice to finally meet you and be able to talk to you!” Y/n said excitedly.

“Ughh I know! David won’t shut up about you! I’ve been dying to find out more about the girl who has my best friend whipped.” Natalie said to Y/n, knowing David would hate it. They truly were like brother and sister.

“Ohh, wow, so you’ve been talking about me huh. Am I so great you just can’t stop thinking about me?” Y/n said teasingly.

“Yeah, honestly. I just can’t seem to get you out of my head.” He said before leaning in to kiss her.

“Well, great! Because I can’t stop thinking about you either.”

“I think I’m going to puke.” Natalie said, making a face to show her disgust. “Will you stay for dinner?”

Y/n looked over at David not knowing what to answer.

“Yeah”

“Do you want me to cook something?” Y/n asked, knowing how much David had come to enjoy her cooking over the past few weeks.

“YOU COOK??!” Natalie said before pulling Y/n into a tight hug “David look at me, do not fuck this up. Do you understand??!”

Yup. Natalie’s love for food was no joke.

“Natalie, what is wrong with you?” David asked, laughing.

“What is fucking wrong with me? Maybe the fact that I haven’t had a home cooked meal in almost six months since your mom made goulash!!”

“Well, what would you like Nat?” Y/n said amused by the interaction between them.

Y/n ended up making pork chops and mashed potatoes. She could have gone with something just a bit more gourmet but didn’t want to push David too far out of his comfort zone. Natalie was really happy with the food and the conversation during dinner was great.

After dinner they watched a movie and Natalie fell asleep on the couch. Dave woke her up so she could go to bed and came back to the livingroom to find Y/n picking up her stuff.

“It’s pretty late Dave, I should get going.” she said sadly “I had a great time today, it was perfect, thank you.”

“Wait, you don’t have to go! Please stay, I’ll sleep on the couch if you don’t want to share a bed.”

Y/n debated accepting his invitation in her head. She wanted to stay and cuddle but she didn’t want to impose.

“I don’t know Dave, I think I should go home.”

“Nooo, pleeease, I am not letting you,” he said, grabbing her waist and pulling her into a really tight hug. He started pouting and making puppy eyes at her.

“God, you are more immature than my 8 year old students, is little David going to throw a temper tantrum?” She said giggling at his attitude.

“Yes I will, unless you stay.”

“Fiiiine, I’ll stay and we can cuddle, you don’t need to sleep on the couch, it’s not like we haven’t slept together before.”

David raised an eyebrow at her. They hadn’t slept together in like “sleep together”, but they had cuddled and fallen asleep with each other before.

“I said cuddle, you pig” she said, hitting him lightly in the arm.

#david dobrik #david dobrik x you #david dobrik x reader #david dobrik x y/n #david dobrik imagine

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wizardofrozz · 3 years

Text

Put to the Test

Summary: An unwelcome guest makes an appearance after Roz is kidnapped right out from under the team.

Warnings: swearing, past trauma, violence, angst

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC

A/N: This chapter is a little short so I’ll probably end up posting the next chapter later today too!

Chapter 8: Guess Who’s Back

Steve POV

The quinjet circled the compound; Tony was tentative to land and let Bucky off. Sam jumped with Nat and Clint, getting them to the ground safely, and more importantly, getting Sam away from Bucky.

“Shuri fixed this!” Tony pointed to the stoic man sitting at the back of the quinjet. “The Winter Soldier is gone, or he’s supposed to be! Why is he back?” Tony was getting more upset.

“I don’t know, Tony! I don’t think the Winter Soldier is back in the same way he used to be. The trigger words don’t exist anymore, but that doesn’t mean a part of Bucky’s brain can’t default back to that mindset. Nothing this catastrophic has happened since he was in Wakanda, so we have no idea what the Winter Soldier did to Bucky’s brain. What if this is a defense mechanism?” I rubbed my temples, trying to understand the situation myself.

“If there are no trigger words, then how do we get him back! I can’t land and have him run off; Ross will kill him this time,” Tony was pacing now, periodically glancing at Bucky.

“Get Sam up here with a sedative. If we can get him asleep, it’ll buy us time to figure something out,” I whispered, doing my best to avoid Bucky hearing us.

“Got it,” Tony said, his mask snapping into place again. After a few minutes, Tony opened the quinjet door, and Sam landed, handing Tony a vial. The only movement Bucky made was to turn his head and look at Sam; I expected to see rage, pain, anger, anything but his eyes looked like endless black holes. He turned his head again and continued starring at nothing; Sam looked uncomfortable and quickly jumped from the quinjet again, his wings shooting out from his back. Tony loaded the vile into a slot on his arm then glanced over at me. “Hopefully, this works,” Tony sighed.

“We don’t have another choice,” I stated, walking with Tony towards Bucky. “Hey buddy,” I whispered, slowly reaching towards him.

“Are we landing?” Bucky’s voice was low, not threatening but unemotional.

“In a few minutes,” I reassured, hoping he didn’t turn to look at me.

“Just waiting for them to move a few things around on the hanger,” Tony said, trying to move closer without Bucky noticing. Suddenly Bucky winced as Tony injected the sedative into the side of Bucky’s neck; Tony quickly moved away. Bucky shot out of his seat, rage trained solely on Tony; Bucky took one step before falling on one knee, struggling to push through the sedative. A few more seconds passed before he slumped forward, barely catching himself on his hands; he finally lowered himself to the floor. Tony and I both let out relieved sighs before quickly landing the quinjet; we carried Bucky through the hanger, deciding to shut Bucky in one of the interrogation rooms.

“Hopefully, this should hold him,” I sighed as we locked the door.

“There is no way out other than this door,” Tony stated. “FRIDAY give me constant updates on Barnes. Keep cameras trained on him at all times,” Tony said as he turned away from the door.

“Yes, sir,” the AI’s voice filled the small hallway.

“What are we going to do?” I caught up to Tony, following him towards the kitchen. Nat, Clint, and Sam were standing around the room, all deep in thought.

“Try and talk to him first. It seems like he might be a more docile version of the Winter Soldier. Not too murdery, at least. He’s going to look for her, but maybe if you can reach the logical part of Bucky’s brain, he won’t go rogue. Ross is already about to throw us in jail if we even get a parking ticket so, we can’t let him just runoff. Try to get him to work with us instead; you, Clint, and Nat can go with him to find her. The four of you should be able to track her down before she has the baby,” Tony was pacing the kitchen, rambling on.

“I’ll try to talk to him when he wakes up,” I sighed, desperately trying to rub away the headache blooming between my eyes.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Sam whispered from across the kitchen. “I didn’t know,” he kept his gaze down.

“It’s not your fault. Bucky will try and blame you, but you had no idea; none of us did. In the state he’s in right now, I don’t even think he remembers he blamed you,” I tried to reassure Sam, but I could see the guilt etched all over his face.

“Let me know if I can help at all,” Sam muttered before trudging off.

***

When Tony, Nat, Clint, and I wandered back to the interrogation room, Bucky was sitting in a chair, facing the wall.

“Bucky?” I spoke into the intercom next to the door.

“No, but he’ll be back,” he said flatly, not bothering to turn around.

“What does that even mean?” Tony asked, looking between Nat, Clint, and me.

“I have no idea,” I sighed, pressing the intercom button again. “What do you mean? You shouldn’t even be here. We made sure all of Hydra’s control was eliminated,” I stated, watching his body language.

“Naïve of you to think Hydra created me in the first place,” he stated, turning his head enough for me to see the side of his face.

“What? What are you talking about?” I almost yelled. I watched as the Winter Solider stood, slowly turning towards the glass; he started to pace around the room, mulling over his thoughts.

“Everyone has their own version of me,” he said as he ran his flesh fingers over the gold accents on his metal arm. “New arm,” he mumbled to himself, twisting his arm as he inspected it.

“Elaborate,” Tony said into the intercom this time.

“When you experience trauma or pain, doesn’t it feel like another part of you almost takes over? A way to help you cope with what happened,” his voice was low, rough; it almost sounded like someone else was using Bucky as a puppet.

“So what? You’re his subconscious?” Tony quickly asked.

“In a way,” he wandered over to the glass, cocking his head. “Hm, new hair too,” he said as he ran his hand through his short chestnut hair. “I’m the part of your friends’ brain that is supposed to help him process trauma, but Hydra weaponized me for their benefit, created a new personality in his head. That’s why no human can ever be the perfect soldier. Humanity gets in the way,” he was trying to see us through the one way glass as he spoke.

“That’s why Bucky knew me when he saw me for the first time. He didn’t know why but he recognized me,” I had started pacing the room.

“I didn’t know who you were. Regardless I’m still Bucky, so his memories are still in there,” for the first time, I could see the pain in his eyes. “Your friend was starting to come to the surface again. The memories of you where overriding me,” he said before turning away from us again.

“So you’re not out to kill anyone?” Tony asked, shrugging when I shot him a dirty look.

“I don’t follow anyone’s orders anymore. That doesn’t mean I’m not out for blood. Bucky wants her back; I’ll do whatever is necessary to accomplish that,” he answered, lazily pacing the room.

“We can’t let you run off to find her. Ross will kill you without a second thought. You need to work with us,” I pleaded, rubbing my temple with my free hand.

“Fine,” he sighed.

“Excuse me?” Tony said, his eyebrows pulling up towards his hairline.

“I’m not stupid. If this is the only way to get her back and not die, then I’ll do it. I would like to go back to hiding spot; mundane, daily life isn’t for me,” the Winter Solider said, stopping in front of the window again.

“Your hiding place?” Nat asked, stepping closer to the glass.

“I am part of your friend; I’m not meant to sustain a life outside of protecting his psyche now. I want to find her so I can leave,” he sighed again, turning his back to us as he leaned against the window.

“Do you want anything while we figure out a plan?” I asked.

“Water and something to eat, your friend is horrible at feeding himself. I assume you’re leaving me in here indefinitely,” he stated, glancing over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, but he just waved it off. “Someone will bring you food,” I turned to Clint, jerking my head towards the kitchen.

“Wonderful,” the Winter Soldier said in a dry, flat tone. He pushed off the wall, making his way back to the chair he was sitting in; he lowered himself down, resuming his staring contest with the wall. I removed my finger from the intercom button, realizing the conversation was over.

“This is so fucking weird,” Tony mumbled, massaging between his eyebrows.

“You’re telling me, but when I think about it, it makes sense. There’s a part of your brain that protects you from basically having a mental breakdown if something bad happens. Bucky’s just has a little bit more personality than the rest of us,” I said, watching the motionless body of my best friend on the other side of the glass.

“Barely,” Tony snickered.

“Let’s go figure out a plan,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes at Tony.

Series Masterlist | Chapter 9

Taglist:

@criminalyetminimal @kendallthesimp @marvelfansworld

#bucky #bucky barnes #the winter soldier #winter soldier #bucky x ofc #bucky barnes x ofc #james barnes #james bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #super soldier #hydra #sergeant james barnes #sergeant barnes #hydra experiment #black widow project #red room experiment

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klaumiel · 3 years

Text

You are all I’ve got ,Damien.//Chapter 8: First date

It was a middle of the night, I got woken up by noises outside. Every Friday night my neighbour

use to have parties until early mornings. Usually, that wouldn’t bother me, but that night something else brought me out from my sleep. Like for the last few nights Damien’s arm was around me, he held my hand every night, he wouldn’t fall asleep if I wasn’t next to him and as soon as I moved he would wake up and check if I’m around only then he could go back to sleep. But that night was different, what really woke me up was his hand squashing mine very hard I could feel my fingers getting numb, his hands were shaking, heart pounding in his chest right next to my ear, his breath was fast and deep, his chest and face were wet from sweat.

I carefully released my hand from his, to don’t wake him up suddenly. Moved myself closer to him and gently placed my hand on his cheek, but before my hand reached his face, he jumped up with the scream, he was terrified.

‘Maya?!’ he said with a terrified voice, desperately waving his arms looking for me.

‘Shhh… I’m here’ I sat up next to him rubbing his shoulder. He quickly wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer. I squeezed him tight, making sure he knows I’m there with him. His heart still beating fast ‘It was just a nightmare… It’s OK’ I said, rubbing his back, trying to calm him down. His muscles were so tense, and his embrace was strong, a little bit too strong. I placed a small kiss on his neck, pulling his head closer to me, he buried it in my hair, trying to calm his breath. I knew that asking him what happened is the worse that I could do. We sat in silence on the bed for a good few minutes.

‘I am sorry baby’ he whispered with his face still buried in my hair, his voice was breaking.

‘It’s OK… just relax’ I said gently scratching the back of his neck ‘just try to relax.’

I looked at the clock it was three in the morning, I could hear loud music from the house next door. I had so many thought in my head, I knew it is going to be hard for him, after everything he went through, all the horror he saw in prison. Being alone for seven years, with nobody to properly talk to, nobody who could show him at least a bit of warmth and love. Just left by himself after losing his father, everyday thinking about death.

I remembered our afternoon in town and recalled all the moments, how uncomfortable he felt in the shopping mall, holding my hand all the time, scanning everything and everyone, avoiding any eye contact with everyone who wasn't me.

Only after going through all these moments, I understood how stressful that must’ve been for him, how much he was trying to hide it, for me to feel good. I started to feel horrible, how did I let that happened? I should’ve known. We should’ve taken it slow, one place at the time.

A few minutes later, he slowly let go from the strong embrace, I cupped his face rubbing his cheeks with my thumbs ‘ Damien, I am here for you. No matter how hard it will be, you have me. You can talk to me, I won��t judge you … I can only imagine how hard it is for you … but we will get through this, I promise ‘ I said, his expression softened.

‘You are a real angel, baby. I would die if I’ve ever lost you’ he said softly resting his forehead on mine ‘Yesterday was a bit stressful, I didn’t realise until we walked into the mall. It was so crowded … I … I felt like everyone was looking at me like everyone knew my past like everyone knew I just came out of prison… like there were all judging me. I know it’s not true, but still...’ he said, looking away.

‘Honey, I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have taken you there so soon. It was very selfish of me … I should’ve asked you first.’

‘Maya, stop blaming yourself again. Is not your fault… I shouldn’t be such a coward.’

‘Damien, you are not a coward. You just came out of prison, and you are trying to adapt back to everyday life. It takes courage to take that step, you’ve been through hell and yet here you are. With me, being the most precious and loving man I ever knew. You just need a little help to get back on track… and for that you have me… we will take it slow.’

‘Thank you’ he whispered

‘If you want you can stay here today, I will go to dad’s party by myself. I won’t be long. They will understand.’

‘No!... I mean… no, it’s fine I will go, as long as you are there I will be fine’ he said, grabbing my hand.

I nodded with a smile. At this moment it was clear to me, he didn’t want to be alone. Anywhere but not alone.

We laid back, Damien put his head on my chest, holding my hand.

‘Try to relax’ I said, interlocking his fingers with mine, stroking his head to help him relax.

He fell asleep very quickly, I stayed awake just in case if he needed me again.

We were getting ready to go to my dad’s birthday party. I decided to ask Shaun to come over to pick up the cake and take it with him, but this was just an excuse. I wanted Damien to meet him first before everyone else, so it would be easier for him later on.

‘Could you help me with the zip’ I asked ‘ I love this dress but is a complete pain to zip up.’

‘I course’ Damien smiled, turning to me, he moved my hair to one side and zipped my dress ‘You look so beautiful in purple.’ He smiled, looking at me in the mirror.

‘And you look smoking hot’ I smiled, turning myself to face him, I took a step back and looked at him ‘Damn boy!’ I said, fanning myself with my hand. He looked amazing in a tight patterned light blue shirt, neatly tucked in his dark blue jeans, two buttons were undone, showing just the right amount of skin to make me feel warm inside. His hair with usual fringe, only he could pull a fringe like that.

‘Is it ok? I don’t want to look like I am trying too much’ He asked, putting the belt on.

‘It’s perfect’ I smiled, but inside I just wanted to rip all those clothes off, suddenly the doorbell rang. I took Damien’s hand ‘Are you ok?’ I asked

‘Yes,’ he smiled and kissed the tip of my nose.

I ran downstairs and opened the door.

‘Sista!’ Shaun smiled from ear to ear, Angel was standing next to him. She looked even more beautiful than the first time we met.

‘Get it you...’ I said hugging him ‘ Hi Angel, how are you doing girl’ I smiled and hugged her.

‘Do you have coffee?’ Shaun asked, entering the kitchen.

‘Yes, there is some left in the machine, help yourself’ I said gesturing Angel to go ahead ‘ Mi casa es su casa’ I smiled

She looked around the living room ‘You have a beautiful house, very homey’ she smiled

‘Thank you, I try’ I saw Damien coming down the stairs, I could see that he felt uncomfortable, but I let him do it the way he wanted it. I smiled at him reassuringly.

‘Hi, I am Angel… lovely to meet you. Damien right?’ I felt relieved when she approached him first and pulled her hand to greet him. She was so sweet.

‘Hi, Angel … Nice to meet you too’ Damien smiled and shook her hand, Phew, one down.

‘Damien!’ Shaun shouted from the kitchen, put the mug with the coffee down and approached us ‘ So good to finally see you in the flesh… I’m Shaun, her better version’ he laughed, pointed at me, and embraced Damien patting him in the back.

‘You wish’ I laughed

‘Nice to meet you Shaun’ he smiled, returning the embrace, he looked more relaxed already. I knew that Shaun would make met a lot easier for him.

‘Now... Maya, bad news’ Shaun said, grabbing his mug.

‘What happened?’ I asked a bit worried

‘Unexpected guest arrived this morning for dad’s birthday ‘ he said, sitting down on the sofa next to Damien. ‘ Uncle Rob’

‘Are you kidding me?! What does he want?... this guy has balls to show up like this’ I was furious, uncle Rob was my dad’s younger brother who’s the best qualities were insulting everyone any chance he had.

‘Apparently, he couldn’t miss his brother’s birthday, well, but most likely he needs money again. Mum said that his lover kicked him out, and he has nowhere to go.’

‘I am guessing she kicked him out for cheating?’

‘Well, obviously … what I am trying to say is...’Shaun turned to Damien ‘ he can be a bit of a dick sometimes, he loves insulting people and… Maya is his favourite target, but as you probably already know she is a tough cookie, so they usually argue.’

‘ I just hate sexists, and he is a dick! If you trying to tell me to keep my cool, you can forget it… ‘

‘Maya, dad will be there to handle it, I am just trying to warn Angel and Damien… just ignore him.’

‘Don’t worry about me, it takes a lot for me to lose my shit, prison is the best place to test your patience and teach you to deal with dickheads. He can say what he wants about me, but if what Maya is saying is true, he better watches his tongue. I hate when someone talks shit about women, mostly the ones close to me.’ Damien said, looking at me with this soft loving glance.

‘Bro, I can tell you already that dad will like you … it’s like hearing him. Exactly the same words, ’ Shaun smiled, I could see a relieve in Damien’s eyes. He was anxious about meeting my dad, mostly because of his profession.

‘Listen, I don't want to kick you out but time is running, mum is probably waiting for this cake’ I said

‘You are right, she is all stressed out already. Meeting both Damien and Angel the same day. You know her she wants everything to be perfect…we better get going sweetie’ Shaun smiled at Angel extending his arm to help her get up. ‘See you there soon.’

Once the door closed after them, I turned to Damien and smiled.

‘I am fine baby’ he smiled before I managed to even open my mouth.

During the drive I told him about my family, all the small details that I missed before, he asked me a lot of question, I knew he wanted to impress them. He insisted on stopping by the florist and buy my mum flowers, he also insisted on me to wait in the car.

We arrived at my parent's when I turned off the engine I saw Damien getting anxious, rubbing his hands on his trousers taking deep breaths. I’ve put my hand on his and squeezed gently.

‘Just say it, and we will go back, whenever you feel is enough, just tell me.’ I said

He took a deep breath ‘ Let’s go, I can already smell the barbeque’ He smiled and opened the before we managed to approach the house my mum jumped out with a massive smile on her face.

‘Oh my god, look at you! ‘ She ran and kissed my cheeks and turned to Damien ‘ Welcome sweetheart, it’s lovely to see you here. I am so happy that everything worked well’ she smiled

‘Is good to meet you, Mrs Clark’ he said, passing her the biggest bouquet of lilies that I think she ever received.

‘ Oh, stop it! Call me Alicia… I hate all these formalities, make me feel old ‘ she laughed and kissed his cheek.’ Come on, come in, you two.’ She wrapped her arm around Damien and squeezed gently, resting her head on his arm for a second. I knew she would welcome him like that, but for some reason seeing it I felt so good. But can he handle so much love at once? Wasn’t that too much?

We walked to the garden where my dad and Shaun already discussed their opinions about how to handle the grill.

‘Shaun put oil on these burgers. Do you want your lady to eat charcoal?!’

‘Richard!’ My mum called him, he turned and smiled when he saw us.

‘Sweet muffin! Look at you so pretty!’ He kissed my head, he looked at Damien who tried to hide his nerves. ‘ And you must be Damien… ‘ he said, turning to him.

‘Yes, it is good to meet you, Sir’ Damien pulled his hand towards my dad, who grabbed it firmly and pulled him towards him and embraced him. My dad wasn’t a lot taller than him but was definitely bigger and stronger ‘ Welcome in the family, son… I am glad you are here in one piece.’ I could hear my dad saying to him. I wasn’t expecting my dad to react like this.

‘Don’t call me Sir again, I’m Rick’ he laughed patting him on the arm ‘ Come with us, lets the ladies have their gossip, and us men deal with what is important… food, looks like my son seems to have a problem with handling the grill’. Damien looked at me when my dad pulled him towards the barbeque, I nodded with the smile, he looked like he didn’t expect such a warm welcome.

I decided to leave them be and join Mum and Angel on the swing for a little bit of chat.

‘Hello, ladies’ I said and sat on the swing opposite them poring myself a bit of sangria.’ And uncle?’ I asked, not seeing him anywhere.

‘He decided to go and buy better alcohol, he doesn't like what we have, he prefers cheap beer ‘ Mum said unimpressed, she hated uncle Rob he was always a liability for Dad when his parents died, never helped my dad looking after their little sister. He never appreciated anything my dad did for him only asked for more. ‘ And how is he ?’ Mum asked, pointing at Damien.

‘It’s been only a few days, but he is doing well, slowly we will get there’ I said looking at him having and conversation with my dad.

‘Maya, what are you not telling me?’ She knows, of course, she knows.

‘It’s nothing mum, I’m sure this is normal but … he is having nightmares. Yesterday I took him to the mall, and I thought it was okay, but last night he told me it was too much to handle… I feel so horrible, I should’ve known’ I said, lowering my voice.

Angel sat next to me ‘He will be like this at the beginning, it’s normal. You just need to pick up his pace and be there for him. A lot of ex-prisoners suffer from trauma, but as soon as they get help and support the easier will get. He seems to be doing ok, he is stressed that’s understandable, but he doesn't look like he is troubled … you are worrying too much, he will be fine … actually … he is laughing at Shaun’s jokes …that’s not normal’ she laughed.

‘Oh my, Shaun’s dad jokes’ I rolled my eyes.

‘The point is sweetheart, by worrying so much you crate the problem. Just see what happens, take it day by day as it goes’ Mum smiled at me ‘ I am delighted that you two are finally together, he looks like a good man. Like someone who will look after you and always respect you, and that’s what we all looking for.’

Suddenly I saw my uncle entering the garden with the crate of cheap beer

‘I just hope that Dad will handle him today’ I said quietly to Mum

‘Me too sweetie, me too’ she said

My uncle was tall and skinny, the complete opposite of my dad’s appearance. His hair as always in a messy bun always looking like a cheap rock star, with that stupid smile on his face.

‘Oh! Who we have here!? Two new faces! ‘ He shouted, approaching Damien. I got up ready for the confrontation, they greeted each other when I approached, uncle turned to me ‘Maya, look at you, looking better than last time we saw each other’ he said turning back to Damien not even waiting for my response ‘ be careful with this one mate, she can be difficult, always have something to say when not asked .’ He laughed, but nobody else did.

‘At least I have something constructive to say, not just insults’ I said already boiling inside.

‘Yeah sure… and where is your bird Shaun is she hiding from me?... shy one huh? I know I have that effect on women’ He spotted Angel talking to mum ‘ Holy shit boy, that’s a fine chick… you did well’ I could see Shaun losing his shit, dropping the spatula and taking a step towards uncle, my dad stopped him with his arm also fuming.

‘Rob! You’ve been here three minutes and managed to insult my daughter and Angel. You are not in the pub. Behave or get the fuck out of here! I will not tolerate this in my house, you are talking about my daughter, so mind your fucking tongue! …’

‘Chill brother I was just messing around’ he, said, grabbing a beer and walking off.

Damien rubbed my shoulder smiling at me ‘ Burgers are ready baby, you said you were hungry’ he said, passing me the plate.

‘Let’s all sit down and eat’ My dad said, taking the rest of the food to the table.

After dinner we all relaxing, my uncle was already drunk. We were all waiting for the bomb to drop.

‘So Damien… do you have any ideas on what you want to do now? Any plans?’ My dad asked, pouring him another beer.

‘Well, yeah… I had plenty of time to think. I have a few ideas, but we will see. First I need to find a job and then start making plans’ He said a little nervous but definitely a lot more confident than before.

‘Any job in particular?’ Mum asked

‘I would like to find something in the kitchen, for a start. I know that nobody will hire me without proper education plus with past like mine will be more challenging, but I would like to be a professional chef.’

‘So no fixing bikes?’ Shaun asked

‘No, this is my old life. The past, my dream always was to be a chef in my own restaurant or own my own food truck. My pop use to push me to go to gastronomy school, but back then priorities were different, business was more important than my education.’

‘Well, I have a perfect place for you to start’ my mum smiled ‘ my friend owns a restaurant in town and is currently looking for a station chef, his current employee is opening his own business and is leaving in a couple of weeks. The place is a few minutes from you, also as far as I remember he is offering training and some kind of scholarship in his school. Is this something you would be interested in ?’ she asked

‘I don’t know what to say… well yes that’s exactly what I am looking for … I think… I didn’t have a chance to do any research about what do I really need. I was more prepared to wash the dishes from the start, to be honest.’

‘ I will give Leon a call tomorrow morning and give him your phone number, you can always go for a test day and see how you feel with it. Leon is a lovely man, very patient and collective, and I know that he will like you.’ My mum smiled

‘Thank you, Mrs Clark’ Damien smiled and looked at me, his eyes were sparkling with happiness.

‘Alicia!’ She shot him an angry glance and smiled right after

‘Alicia, thank you, Alicia… I am really grateful’ he said a little embarrassed but happy.

Uncle Rob let a loud burp and pointed his finger at mum ‘Are you seriously sending him to this henpecked idiot? He lets a woman run his restaurant… Pathetic… He is going to teach the poor chap the wrong things…’

‘Says someone who is playing away from home every chance he gets and treats his women like garbage ’ I said angrily

‘If a woman doesn’t obey needs to be put in her place, and is not your fucking business what I am doing!’ he raised his voice, looking at me aggressively, Damien clenched his fist under the table, he was about to say something, but I’ve put my hand on his to stop him. He immediately relaxed, and we both looked and my dad who got up from his chair with an angry expression.

‘I had enough of you bullshit Rob! You are not going to speak to my daughter and my wife this way! Get the fuck out of here right now, or I will get rid of you myself! You show up without any explanation like to your own house with the attitude and insulting everyone… I don’t want you here… get the fuck out!’ My dad approached him and lifted by his shirt, pushing him towards the door. We could hear them arguing by the front door.

‘I am so sorry you had to see this, he wasn’t invited’ my mum said a little embarrassed.

‘Shaun warned us beforehand, so we were kind of prepared, and you shouldn't apologise is not your fault’ Angel said calmly

‘It’s all done mum…let’s just enjoy the rest of the evening’ rubbed her shoulders.

We spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing in a family-like atmosphere.

My parents announced that they are going on an extended holiday around Europe to have some alone time. Damien was a lot more relaxed, he got along with Shaun and Dad very well. It was a relief to see him happy, enjoying himself with the family.

Next day I woke up alone, Damien wasn’t in bed. I looked at the clock it was 1pm, we came back very late the night before so I wasn’t surprised that we slept late. I got up and walked downstairs expecting Damien to be there, but it was too quiet, I didn’t hear him. Instead of him on the kitchen table, I found a massive box of pink roses and lilies beautifully decorated. He remembered I loved pink lilies!

Next to the box was a note. I instantly recognized his handwriting, I told him how much I liked it when he showed me a notebook with his poems the other day. I picked up the note and a huge smile built on my face.

‘’The blaze of sunshine touches my face,

As I woke up with your thoughts, I can’t erase

And then outside the window the view I start to gaze ;

Tryin’ to solve the mystery as complex as a maze

How is it that you are real?

My dreams never created something like you.

I still have to pinch myself, because I’m amazed you are true.

Be ready at 3pm :) ‘’

I stood in the dining room with a massive smile on my face, unable to believe my luck.

How a man who went through so much horror in his life can have so much love in him, so much sweetness and kindness? And how is it possible that I love him every day more and more… how much more it could be?

I got ready and sat in the living room, waiting for Damien. It was a hot summer day, I had no idea what he was planning.

Suddenly I heard a loud noise outside the house, I picked up my bag and run to the door.

I saw Damien climbing off the motorbike taking off his helmet, he looked at me with a smile running his hand through his hair. He talked with my dad the night before about buying it, I didn’t think he would do it the next morning. This man doesn't stop to surprise me.

I ran to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing deeply, he smelt so good. His fresh citrusy cologne mixed with the smell of hot engine and leather, giving him this sexy sharpness.

‘Thank you for the flowers… and the beautiful poem’ I smiled when finally pulled from the kiss.

‘Better get used to it … this is just a starter …’ he said with a cocky smirk running his fingers on the small of my back.’ How do you like my beast?’ He asked, patting the seat of the bike.

‘ I love it …you look very sexy with it.’

‘Are you ready for our first date?’ he asked

‘Date?! … You didn’t tell me … I am not wearing proper clothes for a date.’ I said, pointing at myself just in shorts and a blacktop.

‘You look perfect… just grab a jacket might get a bit blowy …and It’s at least an hour ride.’ I smiled, and I ran back to the house to grab a leather jacket.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked

‘Surprise’ he smiled, passing me a helmet, and sitting on the bike. I sat behind in and wrapped my arms around him ‘Comfortable?’ He asked, rubbing my leg with his hand.

I nodded and held on him tight when he started the engine, and moments later were on the road. The familiar feeling of freedom filled me, the speed, wind, adrenaline all this reminded me of the times when I was riding with my Dad, but this time felt different, better. I could feel Damien’s heart pounding under my arms wrapped around him. Only then I understood how much he loved it, why he spoke with so much passion about it, he missed it and finally after all this time he had it back.

After a long drive on the hideaway we turned to the unmarked rough, woodland road, from a distance I could see the sea. At the end of the woods was a small road, wide enough only for the bike, that led to the small beach. We stopped next to the rocks, I took off my helmet and instantly smelled the freshness of the sea.

‘Is this…?’ I asked looking around

‘Yes… this is the beach I told you about’ Damien said extending his arm for me, I took his hand, he led me through a small bit of sand towards the small cave, big enough to shelter from the intense sun.

‘Damien, this place is beautiful ‘ I said looking around, the beach was really small and cosy. Completely separated from the rest of the coast with small cliffs around it, absolutely magical.

‘I thought that you might like it’ he smiled ‘ I got everything prepared’ he added unpacking the bags that he took from behind the rocks.

‘Did you come here already today?’

‘Yes, I brought everything before coming for you … it’s a date after all… I thought this will better than a fancy restaurant, I know, you are not a fan of fancy places’ he said, placing the blanket in the shadow.

‘Honey, you have no idea how much I love it here, I take this million times over any fancy restaurant.’

‘I know…’ he said gently grabbing my hand ‘ Come here’ he said, pointing at the blanket and pulling me towards him‘ I brought some food, drinks and wine’ he laid everything down.

‘Well, I didn’t bring my swimsuit, so I hope nobody will see me here … but I am not going to sit here in these clothes’ I smiled taking off my shirt, boots and shorts.

‘I didn’t want to give away the surprise, I got you a swimsuit’ he smiled passing me a small bag.

‘You really thought everything trough didn’t you?’ I smiled undoing my bra, he shot me a mischievous glance.

‘You know what, I changed my mind, give it back … You look better without it ‘ he said, reaching for the bag.

‘ Hey!… not everything at once, I want to enjoy a bit of sun. Plus as far as I can see you are still in your clothes … how fair is that?’ I laughed and pulled away.

‘Fair point’ he said with the cocky smile and took off his clothes, leaving only shorts.

‘That’s better.’ I smiled, but I couldn’t hide the blush on my face. Can he stop being so fucking hot! He spotted where my eyes were travelling and decided to change the subject, he knew I didn’t want to go there yet.

‘You know… yesterday was great. I was shitting myself the whole morning, but when we arrived at your parent's place, and I met everyone, I really relaxed… I think last night helped me a lot. You have an amazing family’ he said, opening the wine.

‘I am happy to hear that, my Dad likes you … And my Mum is absolutely in love with you … they are good people, they always have good intentions. Well, I can’t say that about uncle Rob, but everyone else loves you.’

‘I delt with guys like him all my life, I usually would’ve just ignored him, but he insulted you and your mum, and that’s something I can’t accept … nobody has rights to insult my girl without facing the consequences…the only reason I didn’t show him my fist was your Dad being ahead of me.’

‘Uncle Rob has a big mouth but is a pussy, it’s a waste of time on him… he was a liability to my dad all his life…but let’s not talk about him, better tell me more about this place … how often you used to come here?’

Damien poured the wine into the glasses, he was silent, clearly deep in his thoughts, he passed me the glass and smiled.

‘First, let’s make a toast’ he raised his glass

‘For our first date.’

‘First of many’ he smiled, and we clinked the glasses ‘ This place used to be my escape from daily life. Not many people know about it, you can’t just drive a car here… For a little while, I used to come here every Saturday to clear my mind, forget about all the shit that was going on around me… I missed this place, and I am glad that it didn’t change a bit… because now I can share it with you’ he said, holding my hand.

‘ I am feeling honoured to be here, this place means a lot to you, and you decided to bring me here… thank you’ I looked in his eyes, his expression was soft and sweet. That look I could only see when we are alone, only when he looked at me.

‘Did I ever tell you how much I love you?

‘Yes, but I don’t think I will ever get tired of hearing it.’

‘Seriously … I mean it, Maya. To be honest, sometimes, I think I love you more than I love myself.’

‘Damien… I … I love you too, I wasn’t sure at first… but the thought of losing you, and your long silence, the unknown of where are you, if you are OK…that pain just proved to me how much I actually love you… and now I have you with me and… this feeling grows stronger every day… I have no words to even describe it…I never felt like this before.’

He leaned towards me, rubbed my cheek with his thumb and kissed me gently pulling me closer ‘ I just want you to know that from the moment I stepped out from the prison my life, the life that you saved, became yours… and no matter what future will bring remember that it will always be yours.’ His lips pressed on mine and pulled me on top of him, as much as craved him, as much as wanted to go further, I didn’t want to go there yet. I needed to see his other side. I knew that those sweet little moments are the only thing that could help him with his fears and nightmares.

‘Fancy a swim? I smiled getting up ‘ Last one in the water swims naked’ I laughed already running.

‘Ok.. you asked for it !’ He laughed and ran towards me, in seconds we were surrounded by warm waves wrapped in each other's arms enjoying every moment. I felt like the happiest person in the world, I didn’t want that day to end. The happy smile on his face was the most precious view in the world.

We sat on the sand watching the sunset, Damien’s legs and arms holding me from behind, my head resting on his chest.

‘Do you remember your promise?’ I asked gently marking circles on his leg.

‘Of course… I remember all my promises… which one in particular?’

‘You said something about a dream you had … us, here … you said something about showing me this dream.’

‘Oh yeah?... wasn’t that you saying that we will recreate that dream?’

‘Maybe was me … maybe you… does it matter?’ I turned my head towards his biting my lip.

‘Alright … we better get started then’ he shot me a cocky smile before kissing me deeply ‘ but remember … this was my dream.’

‘I am all yours’ I whispered into his mouth, he pulled me closer wrapping my legs around him, seconds later we were naked, laying on the shore waves, hitting our bodies while we moved as one completely lost it each other’s touch, forgetting the whole world around us.

I didn’t know what future had planned for us but one thing I knew for sure, he was the only person I wanted to share it with.

#Damien #damien jones #lovelink #lovelink damien #lovelink fanfic #damien jones fanfic #fanfic

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snowdice · 4 years

Text

Little Kestrel (Actual Part 13)[Birds of Different Feathers Series]

I messed up and published chapter 14 as chapter 13. This is the actual chapter 13 and what I put out yesterday is chapter 14. I guess you get a bonus update this week. XD

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan & Patton & Virgil (future Virgil/Patton but not in this story)

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton, Virgil

Appear: Thomas

Mentioned: Janus

Summary:

It was supposed to be a quick job either way. Either Virgil would assassinate King Thomas of Prijaznia or he’d be caught and get executed. Yet, when Virgil gets the wrong bedroom and gets caught by Prince Logan and his future royal advisor, Patton, the job ends up getting way more complicated for the 14-year-old. He also ends up sleeping in a (actually pretty comfortable) closet for a few weeks…

Notes: Implied/referenced child abuse, assassination attempt, knives, torture mentioned, captivity, teenagers being really dumb

This is a prequel to Kill Dear. I wrote it 100 words at a time on my blog, but this is the edited version. If you want to see how it was crafted, look at the tag proofread stories.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 is this one Part 14 because I messed up and published that chapter first on accident.

Logan was able to quickly set up the station for making protection charms. Patton had always liked making them, though he often used his more as fun accessories than for protection. The one he was going to show Virgil how to make was a very simple low level one used for little more than to keep bugs off of yourself and, in the event of a well-made one, alert one to imminent danger by changing temperature. It was a nice thing to hold in the middle of the night if one was frightened by real or imagined threats. It would be warm to the touch when one’s environment was safe; he thought Virgil might appreciate it.

He and Patton decided to wait until Virgil woke up naturally which only took about 30 minutes. Then, Logan brought him to his set-up supplies. He explained briefly the process for making a protection charm. “I will be the one performing the enchantment for today,” he told Virgil. “I will show you how to make your own later, but I thought seeing how to make them would help with the learning process.”

“Plus, it’s fun!” Patton said.

Logan flashed a smile at him. “And that as well. I’ve prepared a small number of possible pendants for you to choose from. You can choose the shape and color, then we will put on a custom engraving, as well as decorations.”

“Glitter! Glitter! Glitter! Glitter!”

“Yes, Patton, everyone knows you’re going to choose glitter,” Logan said, amused, “but why don’t we let Virgil decide for his own pendant?”

“Fine,” Patton said, “but mine will be glitter.”

Logan grabbed the box of blank pendants and offered it to Virgil. “Choose whichever one feels right,” he suggested. Virgil moved forward and looked over the box. “You can touch them,” Logan said. “In fact, I would suggest it as it is meant to be held when it’s done, and you may as well get a feel for it.”

At his prompting, Virgil did. He reached into the box and shifted a few to the side. Eventually, he started picking a few up. “I like the crescent shape for holding the most,” he said, holding a blue one up, “but I don’t know.”

“What’s your favorite color?” Patton asked.

“Oh, um,” he mumbled. “I dunno.”

“Well here,” Patton said, reaching for the box. He dug through it and pulled out every single crescent moon shaped pendant and lined them up. “What do you fancy?”

Virgil considered them all for a long moment and then tentatively pointed the purple one out.

“Great!” Patton said. “Then, we’ll use that one.”

Virgil nodded and Patton picked up the pendant to drop it into his hands. His fingers curled over the shape and he seemed satisfied by the choice, so Logan turned to Patton. “Your turn,” he said.

Patton happily grabbed out a heart shaped blue one, but then paused and exchanged it for a purple one. “We match!” he said.

Virgil smiled slightly at his enthusiasm, and Logan dug out a blue crescent moon shape for himself. “Now that you have your base, you get to choose the engraving.” He opened up the instruction book to the correct page and showed it to him.

Virgil looked over the two pages of designs with careful focus. He wavered between the spiral sun and the flames for a moment, but eventually settled on the flames. Patton chose the interlocking hearts design as anticipated; it was his favorite, and Logan chose the spiral sun design for himself.

“Now, I’m going to engrave this design onto yours,” Logan said getting out the thin pen like instrument and dipping it into the slightly glowing bottle of potion he’d set out. “In the meantime, Patton will show you what we have for decorations.”

He was careful to get the symbol as perfect as he could and then started on Patton’s. Patton apparently managed to corrupt the boy because both of them came back with brushes and glitter to add as decoration.

Logan shook his head and handed them their freshly engraved pendants. “Apply the glitter how you like,” Logan said, moving on to his own engraving. Once he was finished, he selected some glow in the dark paint to decorate his own.

Once he’d finished decorating his own pendant, Logan looked up. “Are you finished?” he asked.

“Yep!” Patton said, shoving his pendant at Logan while Virgil nodded. Virgil had been far less enthusiastic than Patton, having carefully brushed glitter into the flame design only whereas Patton had haphazardly covered his own all over with glitter. Logan took both pendants.

“This,” Logan said, bringing over a different potion, “is used to make sure the decorations never fall off. It basically allows the other substances to become a part of the stone. “It isn’t too dangerous, but I’d suggest you stand back for the moment.”

Virgil stepped back farther back than was strictly necessary and gave the potion bottle a wary look. Logan moved all three pendants to the prepared surface (else they ran the risk of also getting stuck to the table) and put on gloves, having learned that magically gluing rocks to ones hands was not fun years ago. Then, he carefully drizzled a bit of the potion onto each rock. The rocks fizzled loudly, and Virgil gave off a startled yelp before toppling over flat on his face with his wrist glued to his sides.

“Oh no, honey,” Patton said immediately crouching next to him. “I’m sorry. We should have warned you about the noise.”

Logan wasn’t sure what type of action he’d tried to take when the sound started up, but whatever it was, it had caused him to move his arms fast enough that he’d activated the binding potion and it snapped his wrists to his side, overbalancing him.

Patton’s hands hovered over the startled boy, but he didn’t touch. After a few moments, it was clear that the magic keeping Virgil’s hands at his side released because his hands slowly crept forward to push himself up, so his face wasn’t planted against the ground. His eyes still looked incredibly startled.

“Are you alright?” Patton asked.

Virgil blinked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.

Logan took his words as permission to move without risking startling him more. Virgil’s eyes bopped back and forth between him and Patton a few times as he crossed to his wall of potions and grabbed one.

He also selected a clean cloth from a basket on his way over to them. “A light healing potion,” Logan explained as he knelt in front of Virgil. He uncorked it. “May I?”

“I’m fine,” Virgil said with a frown. “I’m not even bleeding. It’s barely anything.”

“Which is why it’s a light healing potion,” Logan said. “You are sure to bruise with the way you hit. This will prevent it and make it stop hurting.”

“Okay,” Virgil agreed after a moment. Logan dribbled a bit out onto the rag. After a moment of thought, he touched the damp part of the cloth with his own finger, just to quash any fears that it would harm him.

“It will tingle slightly,” Logan warned. Virgil tilted his head to let him dab it onto his nose and the light scrape on his face. His nose scrunched up and he moved to rub the sensation away quickly only to have his arms slam back to his sides.

Patton caught him so the sudden involuntary movement didn’t cause him to fall back, and then giggled when Virgil titled his head to what could only be described as pout back at him.

“Aw, poor thing,” Patton cooed, reaching forward to rub a hand across the top of his nose and then his forehead where the potion had been applied for him.

“Better?” Patton asked.

“You’re really bad at this being captors thing,” Virgil commenting, willingly leaning back into Patton. Patton just smiled happily.

Logan took the bottle and got to his feet, before returning it, and then glanced at the pendants as Patton helped Virgil to his feet. The pendants had stopped fizzing, so Logan felt okay reaching in and grabbing them all.

He handed both Patton and Virgil their pendants when they walked closer to the table.

“And now for the actual enchantment,” Logan said. “For today, I already prepared the potion up to the last step as it has to sit for a few hours, but I will show you the last step and eventually teach you everything if you are still interested.”

Virgil nodded, but said. “No more noises?”

Logan smiled. “No more noises,” he confirmed. Then he pushed forward all of the ingredients he was about to put in the pot for Virgil to study one by one before putting them each in it in the correct order. Then, he demonstrated how to stir it correctly and told him how many times, though he doubted he’d be able to retain all of the information from this one demonstration. “There,” he said, setting down his spoon. “Now we just all put our pendants into the pot, and they should be ready in 25 minutes.”

Logan showed Virgil around his potion’s lab while they waited, explaining what certain pieces of equipment did and a bit about his organization system. Virgil followed him around, looking at the things he pointed out curiously. He, however, got very distracted when Logan showed him one of the experiments he’d concocted. It was a thick liquid that was super attracted to itself and would form a small ball that could be disturbed by touching it. He seemed to like the sensation of squishing it down onto a table… over and over and over again.

“We should get him a ball of yarn,” Patton said out of the corner of his mouth. He may have been enjoying watching Virgil play with the substance more than Virgil was enjoying playing with it himself. And that was saying something.

Eventually, however, the pendants were finished, and he dragged Virgil away from his new toy to show him the finished product.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Is it supposed to be warm?” Virgil inquired.

“Yes,” Logan replied. “It’s temperature changes based on if the magic on it senses a threat or not. Warmer temperatures mean you are safe.

“Oh,” Virgil said softly, hand squeezing around it. “I like it.”

Logan found himself smiling. “I’m glad. It’s yours.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“If you would like, I’m sure Patton has some suggestions if you’d desire a way to keep it attached to your person. He in particular likes to make them into necklaces or clip them to his clothing.”

Virgil looked over at Patton and nodded shyly. Patton immediately perked up. “I’ll go get some supplies!” he said.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 14 Part 15

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #character thomas #virgil sanders #little kestrel #adriana writes #birds of different feathers #not pieces fic #implied/referenced child abuse #assassination attempt #knives #torture mentioned #captivity

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megabadbunny · 4 years

Text

No Place Like Hohm (8/8)

“Ready?” the Doctor asked Rose.

She beamed at him. “Ready.”

***

(Aka the obligatory post-GitF fic, for anyone else who ever wondered what might have taken place between a trip to France and an adventure in a parallel universe.)

***

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Chapter 8

This time, Rose smiled as she stepped outside into the city. The planet Hohm looked much the same as it had a few days prior—clear blue skies, three moons shining overhead, colorful pennants waving lazily in the breeze, white buildings practically glowing in the sun—but there seemed to be a little extra pep in everyone’s step, as the people and horse-people bustled about their business. Maybe Rose was just imagining it, but she didn’t think so.

“So,” she said, a grin spreading across her face as she turned to Dyana and Vareem. The two of them grinned at her in return, standing tall and proud in their elegant ceremonial Council robes; it was a look they were both well-suited-for, Rose thought. “Ready for your next adventure?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Dyana firmly, as Vareem said, “Not even a little bit,” and they both burst out laughing.

“At least we look the part,” Vareem chuckled, plucking at her robes. “That counts for something, right?”

Rose laughed. “Absolutely. That, and confidence, and cleverness, and a good heart. Luckily, you two have got all four in spades.”

“Oh, stop,” said Vareem. “You’re making me blush!”

“And if all else fails, you can always take the Doctor’s advice and just walk about like you own the place,” Rose told them. “Cos, I guess you sort of do, now?”

“And it’s about time we left you to it,” piped up the Doctor’s voice; Rose turned to see him waltzing lazily in her direction, Mickey following close after. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Dyana frowned. “You’re not leaving already?”

“Of course we are,” the Doctor said pleasantly. “We’ve done about all the damage we can do round here, best leave it in the hands of the experts now. Besides, you’ll be far too busy to notice us being gone, what with your planet to rule and your people to help and your rotten system of oppression to dismantle.”

“And don’t forget about the Championship, while you’re at it,” added Mickey. “Might want to consider taking a sledgehammer to that thing.”

“Actually,” Vareem replied hesitantly, “we’re thinking we might keep it.”

Mickey’s eyes widened in alarm and Rose and the Doctor both stared at her, nonplussed. “Come again?” asked the Doctor, eyebrow arching sharply.

“Look, much as I hate to admit it, the Council was right about one thing,” said Dyana. “There’s a lot of money in the Championship. The Council was a bunch of greedy prigs about it all, but that money could really help our people—boost our economy, lift the town out of poverty, get everyone back on their feet.”

“And make technology available to everyone who wants it,” Vareem interjected.

“Besides, the idea of the Championship isn’t bad—it’s just the way the Council ran it,” Dyana continued.

Mickey and the Doctor didn’t look convinced, but Rose was patient. She nodded at Dyana and Vareem, urging them to continue.

“See, this time around, no one’s gonna be forced into anything. It’s all voluntary. You pay to get in, or you sponsor someone else getting in, or you pay to watch it all live,” Dyana explained. “And there’s no deadly weapons, no bride-prizes, no killing. Just people competing against other people. Just regular sports, really.”

Vareem nodded. “The groundwork’s already all laid out. A couple of easy adjustments and you’ve got something that’s, y’know, actually fun for everyone involved. We’ll just recenter the event on showcasing everyone’s athletic skills, just for the prestige of it.”

Mickey’s face lit up at that. “So it really is your planet’s version of the Olympics!” he laughed. “That’s pretty awesome!”

“It is indeed,” added the Doctor, beaming. “Well done, you two! Really well done.”

Dyana and Vareem both laughed, Vareem shaking her head, smiling shyly. But Dyana quieted down before too long, her expression growing thoughtful. “Seriously, though,” she said, her voice deep with sincerity. “Thank you all, for everything you did for us.”

“Absolutely,” Vareem chimed in. “Thank you so much!”

“Rose, you especially,” Dyana added, taking Rose’s hands in hers. “Just—thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for?” Rose laughed. “I hardly did anything!”

“Not true,” Dyana told her firmly. “See, my sister and I had been planning things for ages, yeah, but when she—after—”

She swallowed, eyes clenching shut, and Vareem grasped her shoulder, humming in sympathy.

“After my sister was killed,” Dyana started again, and her voice only shook a little, “I was just...lost. I didn’t know what to do, except go on with the plans we’d made. I felt like I owed it to her, to try. I mean, she died trying to make things better for the two of us. For everyone in the city, really. So if I couldn’t carry on for me, I could at least do it for her, you know? But I was just going through the motions. It didn’t feel like anything was possible, without her. I’d lost hope. Truly.”

She squeezed Rose’s hands, tears welling up in her eyes. “Then I met you, and I saw how hard you fought for everything, no matter how bad things seemed to be, no matter how helpless or hopeless. You kept pushing on. You never gave up. Not ever.”

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You helped me have hope again, Rose.”

Feebly, Rose started to protest—she didn’t deserve such praise, really she didn’t—but her gaze flickered to the Doctor to the Doctor’s just briefly, and she was surprised to see him softer than usual, somehow, a warm grin playing across his face. Like he knew something, maybe, that Rose didn’t.

Like maybe Dyana was right.

Rose’s smile deepened, and she felt a prickle of moisture behind her own eyes. “Thank you,” she said quietly, squeezing Dyana’s hands in return.

“I just thought you were sort of neat,” Vareem interjected and the three of them laughed again.

Brushing away her unshed tears, Rose lunged for Dyana and Vareem, looping her arms about both of them in a snug embrace. “You’re both brilliant, you know that, right?” she asked, hugging them both fiercely. “You’re gonna do great things here. You’re gonna make your sister proud.”

Both women hugged her back, just as tightly. “I really hope so,” said Dyana.

“Well, I just so happen to know so,” piped up the Doctor, “because I’m fairly certain we’re about to enter Hohm’s New Enlightenment, more or less.”

“Hey, now!” protested Mickey. “Are we allowed to say things like that?”

“Oh no, not at all,” the Doctor replied. “Anyhoo! Time to hit the open road, put the pedal to the metal, we’re burnin’ daylight here. Time’s a-wastin’.” The Doctor clapped his hands in illustration. “Let’s get this show on the road. Chop chop!”

Mickey and the Doctor both turned toward the TARDIS, but before she had a chance to move away, Dyana reached out to Rose for another hug. Rose happily accepted, squeezing tightly.

“That Doctor bloke’s hopelessly in love with you,” Dyana whispered in her ear. “You know that, right?”

Rose’s mouth fell open in response. Dyana pulled back with a saucy little wink. Rose’s cheeks flushed hotly in a way that had nothing to do with the sun beaming overhead.

“Stay out of trouble, yeah?” Dyana added, grinning cheekily.

Stepping back, Rose laughed. “No promises,” she said, hands spread wide as she stepped closer to the TARDIS.

“That’s my girl!” Dyana called out, and Vareem blew her a kiss as the TARDIS doors closed.

“That’s it, then?” Mickey asked once they’d entered the Vortex, after the central column stopped grinding and the TARDIS calmed to its usual soothing hum. “We just pop in, have a bit of an adventure, then boom, we’re done, off to the next thing?”

“That’s it,” said the Doctor happily. He bounded round the console as he pressed a button here, threw a lever there. “All round the universe, anywhere and everywhere and everywhen and everything in-between.”

“Never a dull moment, huh?”

“Not with Rose and the Doctor!” the Doctor replied.

“And Mickey,” added Rose, laughing as she climbed up the stairs to the console.

“If you insist,” said the Doctor, and Mickey rolled his eyes. “Now the only question is: what next?”

Rose made a show of pretending to consider as she rounded the console, slowly approaching Mickey. “What, or where, or when?” she asked the Doctor, her tongue peeking out between her teeth.

“Any and all of the above,” said the Doctor, grinning. “Astrion’s still on the table, you know. Or Kabos Prime. Or ancient Egypt! Ooh, ancient Egypt. Who doesn’t love a good sarcophagus every now and then?”

Laughing, Rose nudged Mickey’s shoulder with hers. “Remember your Egypt phase, when you first saw Indiana Jones? This’d be right up your alley, I reckon!”

“Well, yeah,” said Mickey thoughtfully. “But what about you, babe?”

“What about me?”

Mickey shrugged. “You said one day, remember? One day, and then you were going home. Back to the Estate.” He crossed his arms, leaning back on the railing. “You still wanna go home?”

It took a second for the words to sink in, for Rose to remember. Her grin faltering just a little bit, Rose glanced over at the Doctor, before she had a chance to think better of it. Normally he might be fussing about the console right now, making a show of being busy while he pretended not to overhear such a conversation. But now, his hands were still, his attention focused solely on her, his face carefully impassive. Neutral. Watching. Waiting.

(Some things, Sarah Jane had told her, are worth getting your heart broken for.

Rose wondered if those words had been meant for the Doctor, as well.)

She smiled.

“Nah, we can always squeeze in another trip or two, or three,” Rose told Mickey, after a moment. “I’m not in any rush,” she said casually, looking at the Doctor.

The Doctor grinned at her, that soft, quiet grin, again, same as the one she saw before. She thought she might see something loosen in him, just a little bit.

“Quite right, too,” he replied softly.

“All right, cool,” said Mickey, blissfully oblivious to the exchange that had just taken place. “So, ancient Egypt, then? I’d love to see the pyramids. Or a real-live pharaoh, even!”

“Excellent!” the Doctor laughed. He flipped a few switches and the central column lit up, starting its telltale grind and groan. “Ancient Egypt it is, then! You lot ready?”

“Ready!” called Mickey.

“Ready?” the Doctor asked Rose.

She beamed at him. “Ready.”

“Fantastic,” said the Doctor. He pulled a lever on the console and the central column glowed golden, churning; the TARDIS shook and groaned all around them, sailing on the waves of the Vortex, on and out to the next adventure.

The Doctor whooped. “Allons-y!”

***

Find me on AO3! ❤︎

#picandchips #ficandchips #tenrose #tenxrose #ten x rose #it is probably not a great time of night to post this #but i spent the last like 6 hours updating the artwork and I WANNA POST NOW BY GUM #XD #post-gitf #post-gitf fixit #fluff #mbb fic #rose x ten #rose tyler #tenth doctor #mickey smith

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on-fic-writing-spree · 3 years

Text

Chapter 8: Virgil’s First Goodbye

Word count: 1390 words

Notes: angst up ahead, don’t worry, it gets worse next Chapter

Next Chapter: Before You Go

Find the rest of the chapters here!

——————

Thomas had been accurately aware of the sides existing. He understood nothing about them, and hadn’t tried to really yet. But at some point, Roman and Patton had popped up, offering ideas to Thomas for a new video series. It gave Thomas the time to evaluate his decisions, learn more about himself, as well as create family-friendly content. Of course, Virgil had listed all the million reasons they shouldn’t do it, but they were ignored in the end.

The sides had played their roles, some more enthusiastic than others. But it wasn’t long into the series that Thomas had a major breakup. Now of course, Thomas had had his breakups before.

But never with morality actually being there.

Morality took the breakup... pretty hard. Roman was able to be mostly okay with it, still upset of course, but it was nothing new. She had all the memories of previous breakups too. Morality didn’t. It was behind the scenes when Morality had decided on a name, quiet and fidgeting while he was taking to Roman. “I think I want to be called Patton...” he had decided on. “I don’t just want to be morality, or the dad guy anymore. I want a name too.”

Roman already knew why for the name decision. It was just part of... wanting to feel real, honestly. When something tragic happened, that seemed to be when the sides would feel the most real. Of course, she accepted Patton’s new name with ease, though she had to correct herself every so often. Patton didn’t reveal his real name for a while though, partially because he was cut off, or because it just didn’t get brought up.

Patton wasn’t the only one who changed in the group either. Virgil, as it played in more and more videos, began to notice how much it wanted to be like the others, be a part of them. But Roman seemed to make it a solid deal that she would not tolerate it, not for a second. She didn’t want Virgil coming back. It was too much for her to have to look at Virgil knowing it was just a shitty version of Logic. A mistake, a mistake that Roman had made, and Virgil didn’t even know it, though Virgil certainly got the idea that it wasn’t wanted.

So between Patton’s first real heartbreak, and the tensing situation between Roman and Virgil, Logic was really the only one left unaffected thus far into the series. Deceit and Remus were mostly affected simply by... Virgil’s obvious desire to go back to the others. Deceit didn’t know it was really ‘going back’ nor did Virgil, but Remus knew why.

Remus didn’t know what hurt more, knowing that Virgil wanted to leave, or knowing that Roman wouldn’t dare to even try to get it back. Both tore Remus apart. On one hand, of course he wanted Virgil to stay! He didn’t trust that Roman wouldn’t hurt him again. He didn’t want to see Virgil get hurt, especially not with all it took to get Virgil to where it was a now. But Roman didn’t even want Virgil back, and Remus could really only imagine what that had to be doing to Virgil.

Virgil stood in the doorway to Deceit’s room, fidgeting slightly. Deceit rarely left his door open, but every so often, he’d know when something was off, and leave it open, as if to say he was there to listen. Being honest, Deceit didn’t want to. He knew, of course he knew, but he wished he didn’t. And to hear it from Virgil would only cement it, only hurt him worse.

Still, he has his priorities, and Virgil was certainly his biggest one.

So without so much as looking up from his spot, he had told Virgil to come in and take a seat. Virgil stepped into the room cautiously, taking a spot near Deceit’s bed, but not on it. Which was odd, Virgil hadn’t done that since it had first met Deceit. “I know something’s bothering you. Talk about it?” Deceit prompted, biting his tongue after, his fangs piercing his tongue. He could taste blood.

Continuing to fidget, Virgil took a breath before responding. “I want to leave,” it murmured quietly before glancing up at Deceit. “I want to leave, and go be with them, and Patton made an offer, and I don’t know? Maybe I can help Thomas more that way too?”

Shaking his head some, Deceit sighed softly. “You don’t have to justify yourself, Virgil. It’d hurt less if you just left,” he answered. He didn’t really believe that in the slightest. He felt like Virgil owed them some sort of explanation, but he did know it’d hurt more to hear it. “You should talk to Remus before you leave. He knows you’re leaving. He’ll be happy for you. He just wants you to be happy you know...” Deceit knew it was a bit of guilt-tripping, but dammit, Virgil was going to leave them! Virgil should know it’s going to hurt. Deceit stayed as calm as he could, but honestly, he was angry. And could you blame him? He and Remus had done everything for him, and Virgil was just going to leave at the drop of a hat. Virgil gave a quiet nod in response before heading to go find Remus, hearing Deceit’s door slam behind it. It tensed for a moment before letting out a breath and heading towards Remus’s room.

It’s okay, it convinced itself, hand resting on the doorknob to Remus’s door, they’ll understand. And they would, of course, but that didn’t mean they’d be happy about it. It pushed the door open, its eyes catching Remus’s. “Hey,” it breathed out.

Remus shifted to put their guitar to the side. They had been learning for a just a couple months now, but oddly had mostly kept it to themself. “I know what you want to talk about,” he said, flashing a sad smile at the other. “It’s okay. I’m not going to stop you. I’ll make sure Deceit doesn’t either... but I think there’s something you need to know before you go,” they murmured. “Come sit down, we’ll talk a bit, okay?”

Virgil let out a breath they didn’t know they were holding in, stepping over towards Remus. Remus gestured for Virgil to sit on the bed before Remus stood up out of their seat and moved to sit on the bed next to it. “I guess it’s a good thing I blurt things out because I don’t have the slightest clue where to start with this,” they muttered. “Virg, what’s the earliest memory you have?” they asked.

Thinking for a moment, Virgil took a second to respond. “Deceit teaching me something about clothes. I don’t remember what though, but I kept stabbing my finger with the needle if I remember correctly,” Virgil answered, smiling some at the memory. “Why?” it asked.

“There’s a few days worth of memories you don’t remember,” Remus looked back to Virgil, and they couldn’t help it. They knew they couldn’t tell Virgil the truth, it’d hurt Virgil way too much, and Virgil deserved to be happy. So they came up with a quick lie. “Deceit and I aren’t exactly like you. We always knew you’d find a different place that you’d fit in better. If that’s with the others, we want you to go, to be happy, okay? Just promise me you won’t come back if you don’t want to,” they decided on. They couldn’t tell Virgil that Roman never wanted it. Besides, Remus had seen the look on Virgil’s face, and it wasn’t hard to figure out Virgil liked Roman more than it should’ve. Remus was sure that was Roman’s fault, and they were even more sure that it’d kill Virgil to know Roman never really wanted it.

Virgil cracked a slight smile at Remus’s supportive attitude, though they were certainly confused by it. They wrapped their arms around Remus tightly, tearing up slightly. “Thank you, Ree, for everything,” they choked out.

Remus wrapped around the other tightly. They didn’t know how many moments longer they’d have like this, and the thought itself made Remus want to cry, but Remus knew better. They could save it for when Virgil left. They wouldn’t let Virgil feel guilty for wanting to leave.

——————

Tag list:

@genderfluidmoma

@sinuous-scakt

@youremotionallystablefriend

@alinatheanimelover

#sanders sides #remus sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #creativity sanders #deceit sanders #dark creativity sanders #morality sanders #Princey sanders #anxiety sanders #logic sanders #Janus sanders #fanfic

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welcometothebookreport · 3 years

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In 2020, I read 40 books (with maybe a few more to be added after I post this) after discovering my love of reading all over again. I am not a very hard reader to please, so it will be rare for me to rate a book with a low score, so I doubt you’ll ever see any criticism from me. So, here we go!

A few things before I start: There are three series in this list (but technically only two, because I’ve only read Serpent & Dove so far) but I’ve limited myself to no repeat authors. That must have been the hardest part for me. Since Jessi went the extra mile and ranked them in order, I’ve decided to make myself suffer the same. And while most of these were not published in 2020, they were read in 2020.

I am (sometimes) a picky reader, but any book that is on this list, I have loved. I chose not to rate them because honestly, they would have all been high. I give ratings easily, and try not to pick things apart even for books I truly did not like.

Please keep in mind that I do my best to add trigger warnings, but you should always check for certain triggers before reading. Triggers vary for everyone.

10. Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Warnings: There’s a male character that’s a creep and you’ll spot him as soon as you crack this one open. This tale deals with Peyton being sentenced to prison, and their mother practically glossing over what he’s done by victim blaming.

I have read Dessen’s books since I was 13 and I truly still enjoy her stories as much as I did then. While this was a re-read for me, it’s a tie for my favorite book of hers. It’s tied with Along For the Ride.

Sydney is left in the aftermath after her older brother, Peyton, is sentenced to prison after a drunk driving accident that paralyzes a boy. Formerly in his shadow, Sydney struggles to discover what it is she wants, and how she wants to be seen as her own mother seems to gloss right over her. It’s a YA read that always feels like more than the romance that originally interested me.

9. Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin

Warnings: Misogyny. The church and religion plays an extremely heavy part of this plot, which was hard for me to get into. It’s clear that some characters do not value women in their actions and words toward Lou. It made me uncomfortable in spots because I just wanted to get past it, but I plan to read this one again since I know that it won’t bother me this time! Still, there is: violence in parts, religious zealots (in case that’s something that makes you uncomfortable like it did me), derogatory slurs toward women, and again, misogyny.

I finished this one two days ago, and I sincerely cannot wait to dig into the sequel. Lou is a witty, snappy character that was such a breath of fresh air from the normal. You usually see the male lead that’s a bit crude, a bit quick to pull the trigger, and the one that’s harder to crack. Is that what happened here? Absolutely fucking not. Shelby Mahurin took something I loved, enemies to lovers, and kicked its ass. Forced marriage? UM YES. A witch and a witch-hunter? Mortal enemies? Characters that can never possibly love each other? DONE DONE DONE.

It’s hilarious in parts. Serious when it needs to be. A bit spicy too, while not a lot, which I certainly appreciate. Reid’s character development is a wonder to watch, at least for me, and by the end of the book, I am so in love with him that I don’t know what to do with myself. I have so many annotations for this novel.

8. The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller

Warnings: There’s a fair bout of murder. Women are expected not to take lovers before marriage while men are not held to the same standard. Gross. Allessandra is continually underestimated so let me say: let the women do the work.

It’s called the Slytherin romance we’ve been waiting for, and I agree. While this is a shorter read, and a standalone, I was pleased with it. Both characters are incredibly ambitious, but it’s Allessandra that steals the show. The plan? To enter the palace, woo the king, and then kill him in order to take his kingdom. She’s wicked in all the ways I love.

I loved this book, and each page, but this was the line that will make me return to it: “I’m not a trollop,” I announce to the empty room. “I’m a sexually empowered woman, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The Folk of the Air Series by Holly Black

Warnings: Aside from murder, there’s nothing that stands out to me as a trigger.

A series! The first! There’s something interesting about this series for me, and it’s that I didn’t fall in love altogether, all at once. It was gradual, like wading into water until it went right over my head. By the final fourth of The Cruel Prince, I was fully invested in this world and I absolutely needed to know how Jude and Cardan would become, well, Jude and Cardan.

As a YA series, I was not expecting the sheer amount of mystery, political intrigue, and plot twists that came with this series. However, I never knew what was going to happen, and if I did guess what was coming, Black had at least two more twists to send me for a loop. The Queen of Nothing was likely my favorite book of the series, with The Wicked King as a close second.

6. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Warnings: Discussion of attempted non-con assault, forced disclosure of sexuality

I laughed until my eyes watered and I nearly cried in this book. Delightfully funny, and snappy, RW&B delivers on everything I didn’t know that I needed. I had never read a book where LGBTQ was represented in such a positive light. As someone raised in a more conservative household, I’ve known my own sexual orientation for a long time, but this book made me feel like I could relax in my skin because this story was stunning.

Alex and Henry left me with so much hope that it’s impossible to ever put the lid back on. I’m so happy I read this.

(oh, god, we’re in the final five.)

5. The Caraval Series by Stephanie Garber

Warnings: Physical and emotional child abuse.

I could dedicate multiple posts to this series. Maybe I still will. While this is at number five, it’s my favorite series I’ve ever read. If I could only have one series to read for the rest of my life, I would choose this one. Hands down. Full stop. These characters live in my head constantly and I would give an obscene amount of things to read it all over again for the first time. I actually read this with two of my closest friends in our many book club, and we all loved it.

Doused in magic, this world is unveiled to us with excellent descriptions. Truly, Garber owned my heart within a few chapters. Scarlett is the elder sister, Tella the younger, and if you don’t love Tella by the end of Caraval, I promise you will. I know because I was skeptical, but here I am. I’ve said it to my friends, but Scarlett is the one who holds my hair while I have a hangover. Tella is the one that helps me start the bar fight.

With non-stop turns, and magic, everything comes to life on these pages. And the romance, the romance. Please, please give me my great love in this style. It’s not too much to ask for, is it?

4. Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

Warnings: loss of sibling, loss of parent, alcoholism, mention of infidelity, mentions of previous physical and emotional child abuse.

Mae sent this recommendation to me, and I devoured all of Kemmer’s books post-haste. Declan and Juliet fall in love without knowing who the other is, while also not liking the real version of their penpal. Juliet has lost her mother, and she’s treading water, but not well. Declan has suffered in the years that follow a family tragedy, and he’s not adapting to life with his new step-father.

But he opens with CemetaryGirl (Juliet) and it’s raw in the best of ways, and the openness between them that eventually moves from their bubble to reality is one of the most pleasing things to read. I’ve read it twice this year. I will read it again next year too.

I also read this twice this year and will for sure be reading it again in 2021.

3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Warnings: Child abuse.

This was another novel that I fell in love with as I went, and that’s definitely because of the non-linear narrative. It was a little confusing, but I’m going to read it again someday since I know everything now! I read this to follow-up to Caraval with my book club pals, and it’s just what I needed to leave Caraval behind. Marco and Celia are incredible and I absolutely believe that the ending of this novel is one of the best endings I’ve ever read.

My book club has not finished this book entirely this so I’m not sharing any spoilers, but I would like to share one of my favorite quotes. “What did you wish for?” “I wished for her.”

2. Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Warnings: Cuba is in the middle of a revolution, and it’s tense in parts. There are some bittersweet elements and I think the parts of the ending are like the punch in the gut you need in order to wake you up and remember to live.

This was my first read once I really dug back into this hobby in August. It was picked by Reese Witherspoon for her book club, and she always picks good books. This is a dual timeline romance, and mystery. It’s an absolute stunner of a book. It’s a dear favorite to me now. I’ve never been to Cubs, or heard stories, but Cleeton manages to make you feel like you’re right there feeling saltwater spray across your face.

The romance made me feel breathless, but truly it’s the strong familial ties that make this such a beautiful gem. It leaves you with hope even in the dark and with love in the absence of it. I could scream about this book for the rest of my life, which I absolutely intend to do.

Favorite line? “You’re going to be difficult to walk away from, aren’t you?” “I hope so.”

1 In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren

Warnings? There are none that strike me. This is a lighthearted read that pulls at the heartstrings, but it’s by no means short on the laughs. And, I’m sorry for the long wall of text below.

In A Holidaze is the story of a woman stuck in her ways of never going after what she truly wants until a stray wish lands her in a time loop over the holidays. It's only after repeating the same day a few times that she quite literally says "fuck this," and starts living for HER. I really expected this to just be a Hallmark kind of read, but it was SO MUCH MORE. You should read it, even if it's after the holidays.

It's witty, and heart-wrenching, and it's just everything I didn't know I needed. Mae is snarky, and brave when she figures out that there is nothing stopping her, and the romance is - GODDAMN. Andrew. I need an Andrew and a fan.

It's not quite a love triangle, which was what I expected and I was so pleasantly surprised. I have grinned like a goddamn fool all day. I have giggled all day in front of customers, and my co-workers. I have nearly CRIED in my bedroom when my heart fell out of my ass and landed somewhere near my ankles, because hello, it's gonna get you.

This is going on my yearly re-read list for the holidays.

In the two days since I’ve finished, I’ve convinced my two friends in book club to read it, convinced Jessi to order it from Book of the Month Club, convinced another friend to read it, and bought it for Mae on Christmas day because her library had a six month hold and that was simply unacceptable.

#kelseyreads #2020 Top 10 Reads

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thenightling · 4 years

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Differences between The Sandman graphic novels and The Sandman audio drama

Besides the obvious fact that one version of the story is told with pictures and written text while the other is told as an audio play here are some of the actual differences between The Sandman graphic novels and The Sandman audio drama.

This list does not contain every difference between the comics and audio drama but it contains all the ones I can recall over a month later after having listened to The Sandman audio drama.

At this point I have listened to the whole thing all the way through once, Sleep of the Just (Chapter 1) twice, Imperfect Hosts (Chapter 2) three times, and bits and pieces of the rest over again.

As we proceed, know that each chapter of the audio drama usually correlates with an issue of the original Sandman comics.

I do not mind most of these changes but I did feel that they were worth noting.

1. (This one was apparently a mistake). Though the importance of the binding circle was described in the audio drama, as was Alex’s wheelchair, the description of Alex’s wheel accidentally breaching the binding circle around Morpheus’ crystalline cage was not described in the audio drama. This impacts the story in that either we are to just assume the circle was broken at some point “off camera”, lost its power at Roderick’s death, or never really was part of what was containing Morpheus at all. As I am a bit of a purist I choose to pretend it just happened “off camera.” I wish a little narration was inserted to correct this though. I’m being petty...

2. At least twice in the first chapter of The Sandman audio drama we are told that Alexander Burgess and Paul McGuire are lovers. In the original comic this was only heavily implied and not out-right confirmed until The Sandman: The Kindly ones. This is definitely a positive change.

3. The Sandman audio drama quite specifically tells us that Doctor Destiny (John Dee) is actually the son of Roderick Burgess and not Ruthven Sykes. Sykes is listed as his father on the DC Wikia. I always had a suspicion that he and Alexander Burgess may have been brothers but thought my math was poor.

4. The story that introduces Hob Gadling (Men of Good fortune, issue 13 of the comics) is moved to Chapter 10 of the audio drama. This is another change I actually appreciate as I happen to love this story and like that now it stands alone instead of interrupting The Doll’s House. I never minded the interruption but now it seems to flow better.

5. The story of Elemental Girl (Facades) is issue 20 of the comics but moved to chapter 19 instead so that the audio drama could end on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Personally I was never a big fan of Facades, it’s probably my least favorite stand-alone Sandman story but I love A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I think that’s a much better spot to end on. This was the right decision, in my opinion.

6. Small details are changed at The Serial Killer convention. Nothing that changes the story too drastically but make it slightly more palatable to modern readers / listeners.

7. There is a new scene of one of The Corinthian’s victims realizing that none of them can see (and they are still quite alive) and The Corinthian announces that he is eating their eyeballs. It is sincerely disturbing, perhaps more so than any of the original illustrations.

8. The T. S. Elliot line “I will show you terror in a handful of dust” that was used on original 1988 advertisements for The Sandman gets used seamlessly in the story as early as the first issue. Needless to say, I liked this.

9. Virtually no one directly calls Morpheus The Sandman in the audio drama. This is a little odd but not necessarily bad. He is called Lord Morpheus or Dream of The Endless. In fact the original scene of Alex finding Morpheus listed in the Paginarum Fulvarum (Yellow Pages) is altered to accommodate this change of using Lord Morpheus and Dream of The Endless in place of some other titles. In that scene in the comics he was originally “Kinge of Dremes.”

10. Some accidental subtle changes to Death’s characterization. Death comes off as more distracted while Morpheus is trying to tell her what he has just done and been through. I realize this was partly to describe to the reader that she was picking a flower and playing with it but it unfortunately impacted how her personality came out. It was like she just didn’t care. And Death, herself, takes over the narration, including some rather cruel sarcastic narration commentary during the scene where the stand-up comedian dies. This is a bit of a criticism but sometimes changes like that influence how you see a character. Also why did she sound slightly disgusted when Morpheus asked where they were going next and her reply was New Jersey? It’s a common joke for those of us who were raised in New York but it doesn’t really fit Death.

11. Between chapters 5 through 8 I could pretty much sense DC corporate overlords looming overhead and determining how certain canon characters must be described or not described. Even in chapter 3 there is a change with John Constantine, a small one, but it’s there, nevertheless. This is one scene that was changed for the audio drama. The story ended with Morpheus agreeing to deal with Constantine’s nightmares for him in the comic but I guess since Constantine having nightmares became a thing in later comics by different writers they had to acknowledge that Morpheus couldn’t get rid of them forever somehow...

12. Morpheus is now given a little magick word to say when unlocking a door. It’s used twice. I believe it’s "âpreté." This is added for obvious reasons.

13. This is one that bothers me a little bit. Jed Walker’s foster parents are referred to as his “step parents.” This is a common mistake. A step parent is someone who marries your biological or legal parent. A foster family is not a step family. Foster parents are often temporary and are paid by the government to look after the foster child. Foster parents have not legally adopted the child. Sometimes the lack of official adoption is solely because the birth parents are still alive and have not relinquished the rights as parents. Most foster parents do have good intentions. Foster parents are often NOT evil abusers but much like the negative literary depictions of orphanages (which lead to America renaming most of them “Group homes” instead of actually improving the bad ones...) it has become a common trope in fiction writing.

In misusing “Stepfather” I see this mistake often in comics, such as in Marvel where Odin has been called both Loki’s Foster Father and Step Father. He’s Loki’s adoptive father. Laufey wanted nothing to do with him. And Odin is not being paid by the government to look after him. Nor has Odin married one of Loki’s birth parents. He adopted him. The distinction can be very important to many people.

Similarly I got annoyed by the 1999 DVD and VHS re-release of Labyrinth because the back of the box called Toby Sarah’s step-brother. Canonically Toby is her half-brother, not step-brother. A half-brother means he is her brother by the genetic biology of one parent. A step-brother means he is her brother because his parent married her parent and there is no genetic connection. It is an annoying and common mistake. Yes, you can have a deep emotional bond with step-family but the terminology matters to many people.

And there you go. All the changes to The Sandman that I can recall from comic to audio drama. Most are petty, some are good, some not so good. But unlike the many articles claiming it’s a word for word transfer, I’m obsessive enough to have noticed the differences.

#The Sandman #Neil Gaiman #Neil Gaiman's The Sandman

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hereyougopeanutbutter · 3 years

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Winners

Pony stays in the other section of the building. She said it was a different Panda division but when I asked her what it looked like she texted back ‘worktables with beds, there are about 24 others and no one talks’

The same as in my section. There are 20 of us. And about 50 writing tables. I’m in the front on the left, close to the door. The walls are covered with brown wooden panels dating back to the previous century I believe, in the corner long rectangle speakers and on the front wall two ShunSha LED screens which tell us the weather and switch to the Panda statement, our commitment to Panda and the recognition we will get if we get through. I turn my eyes away. I better focus on what I need to do.

In the morning, they serve breakfast on the side of the room, on large tables. White and brown bread with marmalade, peanut butter, and chocolate sprinkles with butter on shelves. Slices of cheese and bacon in plastic containers. Same at noon. For supper, big pans of stew are rolled in, with whitebread and spoons.

We are not allowed to go to the sleeping section after 8.30 am. In the evenings, everybody crashes on their beds, grabs their cell phones, some bottles of alcohol or other drinks, some smoke cigarettes from the windows in the toilets. I don’t pay attention to them, most of the time I’m in bed right after 8 pm.

In the morning I eat my sandwich, I like the marmalade and I eat a sandwich while I prepare a peanut butter and gelly one for while I’m working. It’s not allowed but they let me. I also keep my phone with me while working.

“Reached 40,000” Pony texted, “revision going well?”

“Edited up to six chapters, think I’m going to make it.”

“Good. Good. Think of you, go go go Pigtails, love you”

“Need help?”

But Ponytail doesn’t answer. 40,000 words and only 3 more weeks to go.

In the morning the fear that filled my heart the evening before comes up almost instantly when I wake up. I dreamt about her, how we were swimming in the roaring waters of the Mississippi. “M-I-S-S-I-S-S-P-P-I,” she said as water gulped in her mouth. “Pony, you need to swim, cut the crap” I shouted. “M-I-S-S…” but she didn’t get any further, the part of the river was loud and I had a hard time pulling her up above the water and keeping alive myself.

My little sister, Justine, the tiny baby born when I was four. Her body frame stayed small and frail. When she was young she started calling me Pigtails instead of Amanda. I liked pigtails in my hair. Tamara became Pinky, Tamara loved her pink leggings. She asked Justine how we should call her and Justine fluttered the peaking hair on her head. Mom had tried to created ponytails on either side of her head. “Ponytails!” And from that moment on we were there, ponytails, pigtails and pinky, later Pony, Pig and Pinky.

“You’ll get it done?” I text. The ward comes in slamming the bell and just to avoid the noise everybody walks to their working tables to start up their word processors, ugly old Dynamics. Mine hums during the day, I listen to it as the clicking of my keys moves along.

“Get started sunshines, poop out the books and go for the million!” the ward shouted as loud as he could over the bell. “People are anxious for your books, com’on, we’re halfway there, three more weeks!”

My phone buzzes “I might”.

On the wall the screen turns on, bright white, two of them showing one image, the table with the chair, cut in half by the black plastic borders of the SunShu. But we know. Fear sets in the group, we all look around and count. We are still with 20. It must be from the other group. I look at my phone but the ward is still close and he might see me. My fingers slowly tick on the screen ‘y-o-u 0-k-a-y?’ and press send. Pony sends back a ‘y’

The Panda declaration about how we signed up for writing the next bestseller comes up. How we committed to a good sellable story and how the first draft was due in 6 weeks with at least 100,000 words. Panda would help us. Panda guarantees sales of 50,000 copies to all Panda members around the world and oh just so you know Panda has 31,000 active daily accounts. Daily

“We will change your life” it then said. One sentence. “And you agreed we could have it if you fail”

I don’t recognize the person. She fights the two men who hold her upper arms, we hear ‘No, no!’ but the men guide her to a table where her head is pushed down on the table. A third person behind the chair walks up and pushes the muzzle again the back of her neck. I close my eyes and try not to hear the echoing bang.

My editing work goes in trembling episodes that day. The killings. The killing is a condition. Panda’s idea of motivating. I think of my mother. I think of Pinkytail and Ponytail, Pinky who went into options trading, and Pony who said she could write a winning Panda book but said last week she was struggling, I can’t worry about her because I need to get my book done.

This is my second run. I got through the first run and went home. They all hugged me. The money, Panda’s money was in my bank account already, 99,000 dollars. Pinky hugged me and we both cried. We didn’t tell Pony but let her tag along when we picked up mom’s wheelchair, the three of us in the truck, singing and laughing. Pony cried when I paid for the wheelchair in the store, asking ‘where did you get the money, where did you get it?’ and I said I finished a Panda session. Pony burst out in crying. Couldn’t stop. Even in the car home she kept saying ‘That’s where you were, I was wondering what happened. You could have been killed Pigs, don’t ever do that again!” But I hugged her and we both cried. We bought cranberries at the farm store and we ate ice cream on the bench, we overlooked the land and the sun shone, we looked at each other and there was nothing more than love and gratitude. They didn’t know I had already signed up to go back. The edited version – once approved by Panda – would pay me $499,999.-.

Enough to buy mom and all of us a new future. We could move.

The next day, I wake up refreshed. I am not sure what has caused this but I decide to take the sweep of energy and get to work at my desk. The others complain and wipe their eyes, two of them pout about not hitting their targets but I block it out. Two double sandwiches, one with cheese and bacon, the other a peanut butter and gelly sit on my desk. I work through two chapters stringently blocking out the ward with the bell, blocking out my hunger and my tea getting cold. I read the words and weigh them in my head, re-create sentences and my muse works in the background, it’s just him and me. When I take a sip of my tea I notice it’s cold. I take a bite of my sandwich, afraid I will lose the zone I’m in if I eat more. I write like I did when I was younger, pumping out words that came to mind, the movie continued endlessly and went as fast as my fingers could keep up. For my mom. My mom, I see her at her sewing machine, winding a bobbin and working on my favorite blouse.

Before lunch I have 8 chapters done. They bring in the lunch, the bread, the bacon, and the cheese. I ate my breakfast about an hour ago but I’m hungry again.

“They brought me in,” Pony’s text says.

My hands tremble. Pony got her warning. “How far are you?”

“40k”

I look at my phone. She was at 40k yesterday, she was supposed to be at at least 50,000 words.

“You said you could do it”

“I’m scared Pigs”

Fear fills my gut. I panic. They read her work last night, they always do. Based on their algorithms they have determined Pony is in the danger zone and she needs to make up at least 50%. There is one next warning. I think of Pinky and the story I was writing on at home.

I looked to the others in my room. Some are comfortable. With headphones in and others biting their nails as they write, some panic, some pound out the words. I text Pony but she doesn’t answer back.

I eat lunch. My brain is on overdrive. I walk around the room, it’s air-conditioned but the weather outside is warm. Then Pinky texts me. I cannot look at my phone at the lunch table when the staff is there so I need to get to my desk. I chew quickly and glob down some tea. I try to make it look casual as I walk to my desk and start to type a document so it seems I’m back to work.

Pinky says: “I sent you the story, does Pony know how to decrypt? If they find out…” I see the paperclip friendly blinking in a corner. I only have to resend it to Pony. But then the door opens and Simone steps in, she looks at me with an iron smile saying ‘Come with me please’. I freeze. The others are silent and I don’t know what’s wrong. I go into the office where I signed my contract with Panda, I remember sitting here, the pen on a chain is still there.

“We are following your progress, Amanda. You are doing very well and we wondering if you’d be done by next week at this pace?”

I look up to Simone. There must have been a beautiful woman at one point I guess. Now she turned older. And less caring.

“Don’t I have 2 more weeks?”

“You do, you do. But we can get in print quicker if you want”, Amanda twists her pencil, “there could be a bonus.”

I’m silent.

“You’ll get 50,000 more”

I overthink the situation. Suddenly I don’t care about the money anymore and grab all my courage “How much does it cost me to get Pony out?”

“And your work is done?”

Is she going to say they’d take my book and we both walk? I would agree. But no matter how hard it is to stay quiet, I say nothing.

Simone doesn’t need to talk this over, she makes the decisions herself. I wonder if she is maybe the manager of Panda Books herself. She says, “Finish her story as well?”

I do the math. Two weeks and some days to finish the story. They read Pony’s story so I have to go with that, I can’t change it. I think.

Panda publishes the “Dead Man’s Anthology”, the stories from the killed authors. Unfinished stories. It sells like crazy, sometimes better than the books of the winners. Panda is in for the money. The killing is a marketing tool for them. They are the only ones with a license from the government on the condition that Panda pays the family of the writers 30%.

If I can’t produce 30,000 words per week I’ll die. With Pony. While we came here to save our mother. Get a better life. If we were to stay over the weekend I’d have to finish my book and write another 5000 words on Pony’s story. My answer not only determines the rest of my life. Pony’s as well. And the rest of the family.

Then Simone looks up. “It looks like you don’t have to decide Amanda, your sister has committed to finishing the story, I just got the message.”

“Committed?”

“She is at work right now and their ward says she’s doing good.”

I leave. Get back to my desk, the others look at me. I was never aware Pony was there until she texted me on the first day, four weeks ago. I was shocked. She said she had hoped she would in my group but Panda put her in the other group. Panda made publishers aware that they had two of the Peterson sisters writing stories and there were betting games on who would sell the best books. But Pony wasn’t a writer. Pinky read hers once and said it was fluff. She wouldn’t survive Panda’s One Million Dollar Writing Camp. But on the first day already had 30 million viewers per day. Sales skyrocketed. Said Pinky.

‘Why are you here?” I asked

“I want to help you. Do what you do”

“You’ll get yourself killed”

“You didn’t get killed.”

And I almost wanted to write ‘I can write’ but I didn’t. I didn’t sleep that first night. My sister Ponytails was here too, I tried not to get sick but it cost me 2 days to stop thinking about Pony.

Pony didn’t answer my texts after my meeting with Simone. I finished my book four days early and Pinky kept me in the loop about the contest on the outside. Bidding was way up in my favor.

I make the last revisions to my story. The bright white screen comes on every day but I ignore it. I push the ear-thing inside my ear every time so I can block it out. I block out the ward in the morning as I revise my story.

Pinky tells me Pony and I are tied. I block that out as well, this is madness, I will never sign up for a Panda writing if we make it out alive.

On the last day, the screen comes on but now it’s black.

We look at each other, 17 left from our group.

From the screen in high definition I can hear Pony ‘I couldn’t make it. Go Pigtails, go’ and the click is silent but deafening. I scream, I cry, They killed Pony? They killed my sister! We were tied!

My book sells well.

Pony’s sells better. It was the only one sold as a separate book. Pony’s share floats into our bank account.

Panda’s show brings in millions.

My family moves. We do get a better house, and my mother gets better. We bury Pony, Pony gave us a better life. Pony outsmarted us all.

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