Did you know you can take the Blood Starved Beast in the Hunter's Nightmare (DLC) for a walk? It'll even attack the enemies with you! Thanks to the wiki for this information.

My nocturnal serenade

Tw; Sukuna being Sukuna I guess. Angst!

Do not copy or steal my work please

Sukuna/Sorcerer!Male!Reader

Note; I had this story in mind for a long time. Probably will make a part two! I just wanted some angst with our favourite curse.

Summary; Facing your tomb, Sukuna still remembers you a thousand years later. Yet, you still find a way to surprise him.

~~~~~~

Standing there, on the doorstep of your tomb, stuck in a kid's body, Sukuna felt strangely numb. Of course, he knew you could not still be alive after a thousand years. After all, you were nothing but a mortal.

His mortal.

His sworn enemy.

His greatest and dearest lover.

Your smell and the sound of your heartbeat haunted every second of his awakening, leaving a hole in his existence. Freedom had, somehow, lost its taste. Because what was freedom if you weren't here to fight him? To taunt him and force him to surpass his own limits?

Sukuna almost grunted, feeling Yuji poke at his cheek where his eyes normally opened. The kid was a pain in his ass. Somehow the damn kid had provoked him enough that Sukuna had, accidentally, mentioned you.

And of course, the brat had run to Gojo Satoru before Sukuna could force him to silence.

And now here they were. Forcing themselves inside your last resting place. It felt so wrong. A feeling Sukuna wasn't used to and hated.

- “My, my! Look at that door!” exclaimed Gojo, a big smile plastered on his face.

- “Senseï, what door?” asked Nobara, pointing at the rock slab against the ground. “That's just a big rock.”

Sukuna felt anger rise inside him. How dare she, a worm, judge it? He could remember you whining about your family's luxurious tomb and how you hated it. You just wanted a humble grave. Nothing fancier than a commoner would get. He didn't understand at first, because you deserved so much more than a hole in the ground.

‘At last, no one shall find and disturb me.’ you had told him.

And it was true until now. Could he really let those rats desecrate your tomb?

- “ Yeah, doesn't look like it. The guy was apparently humble enough to refuse to be buried with the rest of his family.” replied Gojo, cracking his fingers. “I call bullshit. Pretty sure by opening it, we will find one or more of Sukuna's fingers.”

- “Why?” the question came from Megumi who stared at the tomb.

- “Why? But because he was a traitor of course!” exclaimed Gojo, chuckling.

For a second, Sukuna only saw red.

The next, his fist hit Gojo Satoru right on the jaw, sending the sorcerer flying back a couple of yards. By his side, both of Yuji's friends screamed the name of their senseï. And as fast as he got it, Sukuna lost control of his vessel's body.

- “Oh my God, Senseï! I'm so sorry!” Yuji's voice was disgustingly guilty.

Again, Sukuna didn't care. He just couldn't let that piece of shit talk badly about you. Not after everything you did for those fuckers you called friends or family.

Not when he could remember your last conversation together.

Your last request.

His faces rested against your naked chest, ear pressed hard to listen to your heartbeat. He wanted, no, needed to hear it one last time and memorize it. For this was the last time you two would be together. The next time, you would fight until one died.

The silence was heavy, and Sukuna savoured the feeling of your fingers playing with his hair and the heat of your body against his. Then, you had to talk.

- “Sukuna, I want you to kill me.”

- “What?”

- “You heard me right.” you chuckled, pulling his hair playfully. “Only one of us shall stand, the next time we met. And I do not want it to be me. I made my part, now I want to rest. I'm tired of fighting.” You slapped his shoulder before adding; “Imagine how much fear they will all have? They won't call you ‘King’ anymore, but God. Wouldn't you like it? It sounds so nice.”

It did sound nice. But only on paper, because the only thought of your lifeless body laying on the cold ground made him upset. Sukuna couldn't bare the thought.

-” Oi, are you listening to me?”

-”Yes.” he replied, his arms closing tighter around you.

Your hand stopped playing with his hair and came resting against the nape of his neck. He heard you sigh.

-”You do not like my idea, do you?”

-”I would rather have you by my side forever than lose you to the cold embrace of Death.” he said, lips moving against your skin. He felt you slap his shoulder again.

-”If I was a curse, I’ll make those legs my necklace!” you said, kicking his legs.

-”And if you were a curse, I’ll let you!” he chuckled, feeling you laugh.

-”As if!”

-”Oi! Are you calling me a liar?” he asked, falsely offended.

-” Well, I’m not calling you a truth-teller.”

At that, Sukuna smiled.

-”But, I am serious. I wish to die by your hand. Life without you will be boring. You are the only good fighting partner I have.”

-”Let’s make a deal. I’ll accept at one condition; if I’m vanquished first, eat my heart so I can be by your side until your last breath.”

-”And you eat mine if I die first.” you replied and Sukuna could swore he heard your smirk in your voice.

-”You got yourself a deal.”

-”You know... The sound of your legs as a necklace sound pretty tempting.”

-”Shut up!”

And again, you laughed. At the moment, it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Gojo walked back to the group, his blindfold gone and blood dripping from his split lips. Yuki wouldn't shut up and kept saying he was sorry and asking his teacher if he was fine. The cruel and cold smile on the sorcerer's only told Sukuna that Gojo had all anticipated.

- “Ah! Don't worry Yuji. It only proves my point.” The blue eyes stared at the one Sukuna had opened. “So he really was your whore, huh?”

- “He was less a whore than you. Own many prostitutes did you whore yourself to? I'll bet more than you have hair on your head.” Sukuna barked, voice growling. If only he was truly in control!

- “Sorry!” said Yuji, slapping the demonic mouth.

After that, the group returned to the tomb. Again, Sukuna hated it. You just wanted to rest, be left alone. Now, he had to stand there, powerless, and let them do as they pleased.

A part of him also refused to see your remains.

His last memory of you was of your bloody body. Of the plead in your eyes as your lips mouthed ‘please’ and he mouthed back ‘I can’t. He had seen the chock, then the understanding in those beautiful eyes of yours.

Powerless, Sukuna could only watch them take the rock slab away. With one look to the inside, pure joy filled him and Sukuna burst laughing.

-”Senseï, what does it mean? Where’s the body?” asked Yuji as he jumped in the hole, grabbing the only thing the tomb held. “What is that?”

The kid showed the object; one big monstrous heart carved in black stone and fused to it, another heart, but human.

- “Troubles. A lot of it.” said Gojo, grave, his eyes on Sukuna's mouth and eye.

CW: violence and immortal mcd (so not really), child death

Merlin who is able to tell the weather and state of nature and season not because of magic, but because of how he grew up.

The small village was in a rather unfortunate place, at least to most. It was stuck between a forest and meadow with a large river bed that often flooded and took out numerous of their crops. It helped greatly with a permanent water source but every good thing had a fault.

So, Merlin learnt quickly when to tell it was going to rain by the humidity and clouds, so he could better help his neighbours with any preparations. He learnt what soil was best for planting what plants, what of those would be worthy he effort of growing, what could carry bugs and other insects that could house disease or venom. He learnt what habitats snakes and spiders liked, what caves could be good to hide in if the rain came in too quick or bandits came too close to the village.

That was what he learnt most, without ever really wanting to. He learnt when to tell if the air changed with the eagerness of bandits ready for a fight. He learnt how to spot traps after getting caught in two as just a child, the long jagged scar along his leg a permanent reminder of the danger he had to watch for.

Merlin learnt through trail and error, tasting the poisonous berries to know they were as such. He knew how to treat venom bites, to stay still as a rock when a snake caught onto his flesh, what to eat and drink when he had something wrong, how to get out of cruel traps made to rip a man apart by simply not passing out and keeping a clear head.

The knights and Arthur do not know this. They don’t know of his magic, if they did they would assume like the Druid’s did that he simply used that, which he did at times. They just assumed he had a knack for these kinds of things.

Then they go to his home for a rest stop as they target a group of bandits. This is where a elder hears the Knights making fun of Merlin and he marches right up to them and he tells them off in a way that both mortifies and compliments Merlin.

“Listen here, you ignorant fools! This young man had done more for this village than any of you have done for the Kingdom! It’s Merlin who learnt how to make the soil grow our crops properly, he who taught the children what food is okay to scavenge for! It’s this boy who warns us when the floods are most likely and helps us prepare, even though his home is on the other side of the village! Do you know how many times I’ve had to watch this boy nearly die because he took it upon himself to make sure the bandit traps were set off before a child got caught? He once spent two full nights in a cave with a broke leg after my daughter got lost, just to find her and bring her home even though-… even though she’d already passed.”

Merlin goes to his friend and hold so to his hand, trying to comfort him as memories flood his frail mind.

The man finishes his ramble with a pat to Merlin’s cheek, “You do not need strength and armour to be a good man. The selfishness of man has never once touched you, my boy. I will not allow such blasphemy to your name, not by a king or a pauper.”

Merlin only gives a single look at the Knights and shrinks under the pity and shock, deciding instead to take his friend back to his home so they can visit his daughters grave. He had died that first night when he looked for her, his first death and how he discovered his immortality.

He tried not to remember it, the pain and agony of starving and bleeding and a deep burning in his leg that made his body squirm with phantom pain.

The next day the Knights are quiet, Arthur watching him without ever looking away. They only ask him if what was said was true when they set camp up three nights later. So, he lifts up his pant leg to show his mangled flesh and gives them a soft smile that doesn’t reach his eyes,

“Don’t worry, I know how to heal things properly now if it happens to any of you.”

A tear slides down Gwaines face.

for all that i tend to dislike the parallels drawn between hannigram and hoffstrahm, they're not entirely unfounded. and for that, i think, they're all the more interesting to set side by side and pick apart (picture me here, if you will, clad in white and peering at the four of them through a microscope while they just sort of growl at each other like stray cats that have only just met.)

with that out of the way, let's look at those initial parallels everyone and their mother immediately saw—the explicitly expressed and implicitly implied "we're conjoined. i'm curious whether either of us can survive separation." the answer in both cases is a resounding NO, though here the similarities stop. if saw v had been brave enough to give us the ending both we and the characters deserved, they'd both have died in the glass coffin trap, full stop. no ifs or buts or anything else, they ought to have both died then and there (and if you share this opinion, perhaps you might enjoy @tranquilitybasehotelcasino's take this to your grave (i'll take it to mine) or my entre chien et loup.) however, perhaps due to the fact that this is not what we got, the theory is actually affirmed—strahm died, and hoffman went off the rails. it is a popular belief that strahm was hoffman's last remaining tie to some amount of sanity, and that's for a good reason; without strahm, the downward spiral was imminent and unavoidable. this remains unchanged if the roles were reversed; if strahm had been the one to live instead, he would find no peace or comfort in the death of jigsaw. he'd left too much of himself pressed between the pages of numerous case files and reports, the sinewy bits of hoffman still stuck between his teeth. it's all one big what if, but i think it's safe to say you would find him poring over the same files and evidence years later, tapp-like in his obsession of a case solved. (if he let himself live that long.)

similarly, hannigram are doomed to the same two choices; had they not lived through the fall (which had of course been implied that they had by bedelia's unfortunate fate), they must die on the rocks below. for only one to live would be a cruel and unusual punishment, which one might say would befit the likes of them, though in that case one would fail to understand that the other would end it all soon thereafter. if it had been will in that role, he would not hesitate—he had already passed his judgement atop that cliff, and would not have second thoughts about redoing that death sentence. if it had been hannibal, he would not go against will's very judgement; in those moments after dolarhyde, hannibal trusted will—and in this moment, he would continue trusting will.

however, hannigram did live—imo—and now, i invite you to engage your suspension of disbelief, as i'm basing this part off the idea that strahm never did get trash-compactor'ed and instead chose the life of a fugitive alongside hoffman, who also never did get saw-bathroom'ed either. and the similarities between the one pair and the other sort of dissolve here, once they find themselves doomed to a life on the lam. post-canon hannigram are both cannibals, hannibal being a very purposeful one and will being a situational one. if the meat is on the menu, will is eating it. meat is meat is meat is food and why should we waste food? he wouldn't go out of his way to eat people, and he'd never instigate a hunt of his own, but if hannibal needs a hand? if hannibal is cooking? why the hell would he complain. meat is meat is meat is food, and he knew what he got into when he ran away with hannibal. and he didn't "get into it" inasmuch as he leaped for the opportunity. hannibal will allow a dozen dogs in the house and their doggy hair on the couch, and will will allow human meat in his dinner. it is easy, because they're made of the same stuff, and will is for the first time at liberty to revel in this darkness that comprises the building blocks of them both.

meanwhile back at the ranch, strahm could not possibly get with hoffman's serial killing tendencies. he'd never stop being angry, he'd never stop seething. he's only here because the alternative is being alone and hoffmanless, and somehow that is worse than this predicament. and he's furious for that fact too, though most of all, he's furious with himself: for the first time in his life, he has acted completely selfishly. for the first time he has taken exactly what he wanted—and it might be, on the whole, one of the worst things anyone could want. it is hard, because they're made of the same stuff, and there's evidence of this in abundance right before his eyes. his only saving grace would be this anger that he is clinging to, because it's the only proof he has that he's not yet wholly rotten. irredeemable, yes, by the virtue of doing what he's done, but he's not that bad, he's not hoffman. and he doesn't want to be like hoffman. and you might ask, why does he stay, then? if he hates it so viscerally? unfortunately (for strahm), he is not exempt from the human condition, he is not exempt from the raw, unbearable desire to be seen and to be understood and, most of all, to be loved. the majority of behaviors and attitudes he's ever displayed to the world have been universally and unanimously deemed as repulsive and off-putting, the majority of the world saw him as 'that angry guy nobody really likes or talks to.' and then another guy came along who saw all of that—the rather tame stuff (his standoffishness and brusque manner) and the more eyebrow-raising stuff (the tendency to bring a gun into the interrogation room and point it at himself and the suspect and the people on the other side of the one-way mirror)—and instead of repelled, the other guy found himself smitten and in love. well i wouldn't know how to act either to be honest. between staying put and watching my one shot at love hit the road without me, and blindly following my one shot at love no matter what my deeply ingrained moral code told me to do... well. you know. WHO'S TO SAY! anyway.

in conclusion, and in the words of @tranquilitybasehotelcasino:

they love each other so much it's SICK, a bit because and a bit despite. hannigram have brought an open season to the poor mfs of cuba as their love manifests itself outwardly—in the overlapped hands on the handle of a knife twisted into somebody else's gut & the warm meal following thereafter; the people of alaska or maine or whatever quaint little westcoastian town hoffstrahm have relocated to remain suspiciously safe, simply for the fact that their love manifests itself inwardly—in the two pairs of hands wrapped around two throats & the promises of violence lovingly whispered in the dark. you know

It's You And Me (We Wont Be Unhappy)

Joel has never felt worse than in that moment.

Jimmy. Stupid, stupid, Jimmy.

Joel is wide-eyed. Okay, he may be laughing. But he’s upset.

He’s laughing with Grian now. He’s clutching his stomach as it cramps with his laughter.

It doesn’t settle into Joel that Jimmy is dead until the lightning strikes the ground where Jimmy landed- burning away at his hair and clothes just a little as thunder claps along with it.

Grian’s face says it all. Their laughter dies down and Grian stares at Joel. Joel will shortly follow. They both know that.

Joel screams. He yells at the world. At Jimmy. At the fact that he was going to sacrifice himself so Jimmy wouldn’t be the first to die- but Jimmy, being Jimmy, still died anyway.

Joel is manic. He has an hour left, one of his closest friends just died, and he will follow in an hour. Joel doesn't check his clock. An hour? Two hours? It doesn’t matter to him. It never did. He was going to give his time so Jimmy would live. But Jimmy is dead.

He’s manic. His thoughts run faster than he could and he is a fast runner. 

Joel doesn’t know when he started crying, or when those cries turned into sobs he hiccuped out, or when Grian started looking at him like Joel was a shattered vase.

Joel was next.

Joel would die in three hours and 24 minutes. The seconds ticked by so fast he didn't bother counting them.

He stares off the bridge, furiously wiping his tears.

"He did it again, Joel!" Grian pulled him up as arrows shot at the two, "We gotta regroup."

"I was gonna sacrifice myself for him, Grian! I was going to sacrifice myself so he wouldn't be the first off but he's bloody gone and tripped off the stupid bridge!" Joel held onto Grian like his life depended on it.

3 hours, 23 minutes.

The funeral was- a mess. They held a funeral grave and all for Jimmy. Full of jokes and carrots and telling Jimmy how stupid he was. Honestly, it wasn't much of a funeral besides the grave in Jimmy's secret bunker.

A pile of carrots and diamonds laid on the dirt they placed under the giant headstone of different rocks they cobbled together.

"He's a bad boy in the sky now." Grian was the first to rip himself away from the grave.

"I- don't put him in the sky he'll probably fall out of it."

3 hours, 21 minutes

Joel wanted The Family dead. They tried to kill Jimmy. He wanted all three of them gone.

He got separated from his bad boy and crouched quietly on top of the (now very moldy) bread. Tango poked around him below him. He could hear the blaze quietly muttering to himself as he dug up to come face-to-face with Joel.

Tango squeaked and booked it. However, he was stuck on an island in the sky with almost no escape. If he jumped off he'd land in some water Martyn and Scott placed blue glass panes in. The water below was a death trap.

A death trap Joel fell right into. He tripped off the island while trying to attack Tango. His luck was tested as he landed on the glass and died.

2 hours, 14 minutes

Okay, he wanted the family dead, but a Three v. One chase was impossible for him to win. Scar, Cleo, and Scott all chased him across the entire stupid server. He yelled at them. This was totally unprovoked! 

Martyns surprise attack on the Coral Isles was really what did him in, he could've maybe survived a little longer if a fourth person didn't help out.

Scott's sword piercing through his abdomen stung even when he respawned.

1 hour, 30 minutes.

Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 1: THE BEGGINING OF IT ALL

It was quite dark in my room. Unclear of what's happening... Of what's going on... But one thing is clear to me... Someone is calling me from somewhere. Tossing and turning doesn't help the anxiety building up at the pit of my stomach. Come to me I'm scared... Dont be scared. I would never hurt you Who are you? Fall... With me... I don't want to hear you anymore... We'll rule as one.... This is just a dream... Denying won't keep me... This is not real... We are one... I'm hearing things...

Tears pricked my eyes and I shot up trembling. As I thought all of those were just a dream. With what little time have I caught my breath. My alarm stared ringing 6 minutes after I woke up. D/N, my dog, nudged my hand and looked at me with his worried eyes. "I'm good boy... I'll be good. Today's the class trip... I have to be good." I ran down stairs to see my mom cooking breakfast. "Hey there sweetie. You excited for the trip~?" She sang. I reluctantly nodded. "Yeah..." As mom set D/N's bowl she turned to me with a worried look. "You sure? Your enthusiasm sure tells me how excited you are." "Will D/N be coming with me?" On cue my dad already in his suit came down and gave my head a kiss. "Of course sweetie. He's a support animal, they have no choice." He smiled. Taking a pancake from the plate, he didn't bother adding butter nor syrup and bit it like bread. "Anyways, I gotta go. Have fun at your trip. And I'll see you after work." He gave me and my mom a kiss then left. "Start eating. We have to make sure you don't miss your bus." ~ The bus was noisy. Everyone is screaming and laughing loudly. I sat at the very front with Mrs. Rudolph. She's my history teacher and our class adviser. She looks like a grumpy old witch lady who eats children, but her personality is far from that. Which seems to be not enough for my classmates as they're very bratty in her class. D/N was currently laid on Mrs Rudolph's lap as she gently pet him. "Are we close yet Mrs Rudolph?" I asked. She gave me a smile, "yes quite close. In fact, it reminds me to remind you kids something." Picking up D/N from her lap she gently placed him on mine and stood up. "Attention!!" She yelled immediately changing from her soft demeanor. They kids instantly settled down and kept quiet. "Good, now... Is everyone aware of where we'll be going?" "Yes Mrs Rudolph..." We all reply. "And where are we going?" No one answered. I could sense she was about to get mad so I answered on my own. "Metropolitan museum of art..." "Good job Y/N!" She smiled at me and glared at the others. "We'll, I'd like to remind you lot that we won't be touring alone. Another school will be joining us, Yancy Academy! Now I wouldn't be the one supervising the tour, it'll be Yancy Academy's Latin teacher, so we need to show them we are capable and proper. I'm putting Y/N L/N in charge of the group. Listen to what she says and do participate when asked." Whispers started coming once again. I've always been Mrs Rudolph's favorite. It's not like she has a choice, I'm the only proper one among her students after all. "Keep quiet!" In an instant the whispering died. "I will not hear anything from your mouths about Y/N being in charge! She'll have the same power as I! If you have a problem speak louder and say it to me! Understand?!" "Y-Yes Mrs Rudolph..." The bus then stopped moving. "Y/N..." Mrs Rudolph rested an arm on my shoulder. "Lead them." She smiled and went out. I cleared my throat. "E-Everybody file ou-out properly an-and orderly... P-please." Grumbles and mumbles came from them as they did what I said. Once everyone was out I got out. I had D/N in my arms. The first thing I did as I got out was examine everything. From the distance, you could see the students who I assume are from Yancy Academy. A particular group had caught my eyes. A redheaded girl was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in a guy's curly brown hair, his friend was clearly agitated by what's happening and had balled his fist. "Y/N L/N." Mrs Rudolph called snapping me out from the trance. "H-Here!" "Okay so everyone is here. Remember, Y/N L/N is in charge. Now go mix with the Yancy kids." Mrs Rudolph clapped and almost immediately everyone ran towards the group. She walked up to me and pointed at D/N. "Dogs aren't allowed inside sweetie I'm sorry. We tried telling them." A whimper came from my boy as he scoot closer to my chest. "It'll be fine boy. W-would you... Mind?" "Not at all. I was going to offer after all." She smiled and took D/N from me. "Now run along and make friends. He'll be with you by lunch." I turned to see my classmates only to see them instantly making friends with the strangers. I could never do that. Getting closer I searched curly brown haired guy and his friends. A man had called our attention by clearing his throat, not giving me the chance to find curly guy. It was a middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket. "Everybody file." I said which thankfully they followed. "Hello to everyone." He gave us a comforting smile. "I'm Mr. Brunner, Yancy Academy's Latin teacher. I was told Y/N L/N will be in charge of your group?" I stepped up and greeted him. "All right. Well, feel free to mix in with the group. We'll be staying for a while." He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was listening to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, only one kid had been trying to keep them quiet and he keeps getting glares from someone who looks like Mrs Rudolph every time. Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, a snicker came from behind, and a kind of loud reply of, "Will you shut up?" Came. The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story. The guy who had said shut up was the friend of curly. "Mr. Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "did you have a comment?" His face was totally red and he said, "No, sir." Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?" I looked at the carving, and back at the guy who looked relived. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" "Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because ..." "Well... Kronos was the king god, and—" "God?" Mr. Brunner asked. "Oh uh..." He stammered. Obviously his one mistake got rid of all the information he remembered of the image. "Titan," I reminded him a little too loudly. They all had turned on me. "Ms L/N, care to help Mr Jackson?" "I-I, he knows... I don't..." I turned to Mr Jackson who looked at me as if he needed help. When he mouthed please I gulped. "H-He didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them..." As if he had a moment of epiphany, Mr Jackson looked at me and Mr Brunner. "Can you continue on Mr Jackson?" "Okay, Kronos's wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—" "Zeus fed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him puke his other five children, who were immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach." I interrupted... Oh god was that rude? "Eeew!" said one of the girls behind us. "—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," he continued, "and the gods won." "The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld." I continued. Some snickers from the group. Behind us, the red haired girl mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'" "And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?" "Busted," curly guy muttered. "Shut up," Ms Bobofit hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir." "I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "How about you Ms L/N?" I shook my head frantically not sure of what to say. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson, Ms L/n, You both did well. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, Mrs Rudolph, would you lead us back outside?" The class drifted off, the class still mixed with the other. "Want to join us for lunch?" Mr Jackson offered scratching his head. "Uhm..." My face was heating up I never had friends before. I was about to reply when I heard a loud whimper from outside. It was D/N's cry. "I'm sorry." I said and ran towards the sound. They were about to follow when Mr. Brunner called, "Mr. Jackson." Running outside I searched for D/N. "Hey boy, where are you?!" I called. Not long after I found him by the fountain alone. "Oh god, what are you doing here alone? Why were you crying? Weren't you with Mrs Rudolph?" I cradled him in my arms and lied on the grass. Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Red hairedgirl was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Rudolph was with her look alike. "Hey," someone had looked down on me. "Sorry I ran. I heard D/N cry..." "Percy, Percy Jackson." He smiled. "Huh?" "I'm Grover Underwood." Curly beamed. "O-Oh... I'm Y/N L/N, this is D/N." He barked in response to the introduction. "Really?!" Grover looked at D/N in surprise. "Can I borrow him?! Please??" Me and Percy looked at him weirdly but I handed him D/N anyways. Grover sat on the edge of the fountain, and Percy and I close enough but not an earshot away. "Detention?" I asked. "Huh?" "Did you get left behind for detention?" I asked him. "Nah," he said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius. He thinks I know everything about Mythology and stuffs." "I think you are." I smiled at him. "You're pretty smart." "Yeah, well this genius is dyslexic." He smirked. "No way." "Way." "I am too!!" "What?" "Okay we're totally dyslexic twins now." I chuckled. "Totally." Being the awkward kid I am my stomach had to growl. "Want to have my apple?" I felt awkward and took his apple. "Thanks." We watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and had small talks about random stuffs, we ranged our topic from his past schools, to his mom, Nancy Bobofit the mean redhead, and Mrs Dodds his mathematics teacher. Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table. Percy was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap where D/N sat. "Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos D/N tackled her down, not biting her but barking at her not letting her up. And Percy tried to held his laughter in. Nancy screamed at D/N and tried to hit him. When she had successfully hit him she glared at me then the dog. "This stupid dog!" She then kicked him. When his whimper came out. "Hey?! What do you think you're doing!?" I screamed. "You don't know how to control your stupid dog!" "You dumped your lunch on him he had every right to mount you!" Grover had D/N now cradled in his arms. My teeth were gritting at the sight of this redhead. I was about to lift my hand on her. I don't remember what happened clearly, but I was pretty sure the water grabbed her, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!" "No he didn't you liar!!" Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us. Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—" "—the water—" "—like it grabbed her—" I didn't care about the whispers. All I knew was that Percy was in trouble again. As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on Percy. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if he'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—" "He didn't do anything! Why are you punishing him?! Weren't you watching what was happening?!" I glared at her. Staring straight in her eyes. I don't know where I got this confidence and everything but I am starting down the teacher Percy is most scared of and winning. "I'd like to apologize for the bad conduct my student had affected yo---" "Nancy Bobofit is in the wrong not Percy! She. Hurt. My. Dog." I could hear the poison laced in my words. Mrs Rudolph came to me, "sweetie, let's go back in the bus. We have to leave." She took D/N from Grover and dragged me away from the scene. "But----" "Ms. L/N, we'll miss the schedule. Let's go." As if D/N knew he jumped off from Mrs Rudolph's hold and ran. "D/N!!" I didn't bother saying anything to Mrs Rudolph and ran after him. "Y/N!!" She tried calling after. I had lost D/N a few times and I found him. He was barking and growling at something. I went to check and saw Percy swing a sword at a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs... She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me. "Percy?" I called. His sword was gone and there was a ballpoint pen in his hand. His hands were still trembling. "W-Was th-that... D-did..." "Percy," I slowly walked up to him and pulled him to a comforting hug. "Calm down. Breathe. I... Also saw that. You're not imagining things alone." We went back outside. D/N leading us. It had started to rain. Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt." I said, "Who?" "Our teacher. Duh!" We blinked. "We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr." Percy said. He asked Nancy what she was talking about. She just rolled her eyes and turned away. We went over to Grover to ask where Mrs. Dodds was. He said, "Who?" But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at Percy, so we thought he was messing with us. "Not funny, man," he told him. "This is serious." "I am concerned as well..." Grover looked at me in surprise. "A-about what?" "About... Mrs Dodds? Percy and I saw something really disturbing." Thunder boomed overhead. Percy then let go of me and went over to Mr. Brunner who hasn't moved from his spot. I immediately followed after. He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson." Percy handed Mr. Brunner his pen. "Sir," he said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?" He stared at him blankly. "Who?" "The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher." I added. He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, Y/N, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?" "W-What?" "And Y/N, Mrs Rudolph is very worried about you. You just ran away all of a sudden. Your bus is about to leave." I turned to Percy reluctantly. "I'll walk you..." "This... Can't be a real..." I gasp. "Okay if this is real, then we'll never meet again and we were really just imagining things and this is a coincidence." "Agreed..." "Percy, I know what I saw. I know what I remember. We'll meet again, and when we do... I have a feeling it'll be weirder." "I'll look forward to it."

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The Visit

(I found this prompt while cleaning out my inbox and I’m so sorry I missed it the first time, Anon! With more than 150+ messages I am finding all kinds of treasures I missed when they came in!)

Prompt:  "10. True tenderness is silent and can’t be mistaken for anything else" for Chris? <3

CW: Referenced death of whumper, referenced parental death, grief of an abuse survivor/whumpee, religious abuse, frank discussion of death, referenced past child abuse and survivor anger

Essentially a follow-up to this piece after Oliver’s death

Jake borrows Nat’s truck for the trip out to the cemetery, the old stick-shift Ford better able to handle the steep hills outside the city than his own beat-up four door. Chris sits next to him, pale and silent, and it’s a callback to a version of Chris that hasn’t existed in years, not since he was a frightened child.

This is a different kind of silence - heavier, it muffles the music from the radio, makes it seem like static and not songs at all. Jake doesn’t turn it up, or change the channel. He lets the silence draw out.

It’s not the same kind of silence, in the end.

The gates, wrought-iron and looking a mix of delicate and eerily strong, are open for them to drive inside. The rumbling engine of the truck catches the attention of an older woman laying flowers on a gravestone, who looks briefly up at them as they pass, but doesn’t wave.

She only looks.

Chris doesn’t look at her. His hands are folded in his lap, his hair caught low at the nape of his neck, the blue captured by a pale gray clip that holds it back from his face. He asked Jake to get him a suit, for this - he’s never owned one before.

Not since he left the bastard’s house.  

Jake didn’t ask why - he just took Chris shopping, and they bought the suit. It’s black, with thin gray pinstripes that match Chris’s hair clip. His button-up and tie are perfectly done - Chris had done them up himself, the vestiges of training he still remembered. He’s wearing black leather shoes, shined up just for this, and he took out all his earrings, the perfect emptiness of the skin making Jake’s stomach flip at the way Chris has removed nearly all of the ways he made his body his own.

Jake drives around a curve on the little paved road, and finally comes to a stop.

The grave is unmistakable - the dirt is still fresh and soft, and hasn’t fully settled. It’s just... dirt, and behind it a little marker stuck in the ground. A simple name, date of birth, date of death. That’s all. The real stone hasn’t come in yet.

OLIVER WILLIAM BRANCH DOB: 09/09/1966 DOD: 04/02/202X Chris stares at the pile of dirt, and Jake sees his knuckles turn white. He’s not rocking, not tapping, not humming. Just... silent, and still. Like he’s carved from stone.

Statue boy, Chris used to whisper, when he was scared. Be a good boy, statue boys don’t move, stillness is better than what I do, statue boys stay still...

“You-” Jake’s voice cuts into the silence, a knife into skin, and he flinches at the sound of his own voice. He’s just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and suddenly he wonders if Chris wanted him to wear a suit, too, if he’s disappointed Jake didn’t think of it on his own. “You don’t... have to do this, Chris.” His voice drops, stays lower.

Chris doesn’t look at him, only looks at the grave. His beautiful face is pale, and looks young - more like when he first showed up - and the blue hair suddenly looks wrong, like he shouldn’t have it yet. It should still have its coppery new-penny shine. The roots are hinting, just a little, at the color it used to be. “Yes, I, I, I, I do.”

Jake swallows against a lump in his throat, and slowly nods, turning off the engine and sitting back. The radio continues to play, pulling on battery power, while the two of them look at a pile of soil that covers a dead man whose life is still carved into Chris’s mind. “You want me to get out with you?”

There’s a quiet, as Chris thinks.

Then he whispers, “Please,” as his thin fingers find the handle to the door and open it up. His other hand grips onto the bouquet of roses they’d picked up to bring out here, wrapped in crinkly paper and tied with a thin string.

Immediately, birdsong filters in, intrudes on the silence, demands their attention instead.

Jake is out of the truck in a heartbeat and around to meet Chris as he slowly steps down. He looks like a child dressed for a party, even with a suit carefully chosen to fit. Or maybe Jake just struggles to see him as anything else, in moments like this one.

Chris leans towards him and Jake slides an arm around his shoulders.

He doesn’t regret this man’s death, only that it couldn’t have been half so painful as what the bastard deserved - but Jake keeps that to himself, because he can see the tears standing in Chris’s eyes, and that’s not what Chris needs to hear right now.

Instead, he just says, softly, “I’m here.”

Chris nods, bumping into him once, twice, three times - a reassurance, a reminder. Then he starts to walk, clinging to the roses in his hand, and Jake walks beside him, narrowing his own long strides to match, so he won’t pull away, so they’ll move together.

There’s no one else here, in this part of the cemetery. It’s just the two of them, walking towards the grave marker, the laid-in dirt. Somewhere, six feet down, is the man who once made the width and length of Chris’s world so narrow that it was condensed to a single hallway, a basement, to the shape of tears.

Jake stands slightly back when Chris steps forward on his own. He doesn’t offer platitudes - he can’t hope that Branch is in a better place, he’s still got his fingers crossed that hell is real just so people like Oliver Branch can experience it - he can’t say everything happens for a reason and then ask himself what possible reason there could have been for Chris to lose everything and be given his own hell in return.

He can’t say it’ll get better or time heals all wounds or you’ll find a way to forgive him or God has a plan because Jake has lived with those words branded in his soul from a thousand well-meaning relatives and church people and his mother’s so-called fucking friends and none of those words did shit, they never helped, they only made it clear that no one wanted to sit in silence with the weight of what had happened, only talk over it until Jake and his mom pretended the pain wasn’t there anymore.

No one deserves forgiveness - you make the choice to forgive, and it’s got nothing to do with whether or not anyone deserves it, you forgive for yourself - not for them.

Time didn’t heal shit, and he’s never forgiven the man who nearly killed his mother and would have kept hurting him if he never got bigger, stronger, better able to fight back.

He can’t say God has a plan, because if that’s true, then it’s a shitty fucking plan, isn’t it? To steal a child from the love that should have been the foundation of his life and hand him over to wolves to be devoured instead?

He can’t say any of it, because he doesn’t believe it, and all those well-meaning words are just knives that tear you open and then demand you comfort the people who can’t stand the sight of blood.

All he can do is give Chris his silence and his presence while he watches Chris lay a dozen roses on top of freshly turned earth.

Chris speaks, and his voice carries just enough, and Jake’s jaw sets, trembles, sets again as he pretends not to hear. As he tries, and fails, not to listen.

“I tried,” Chris whispers, in his slow-stone voice, the one he was trained to use, that he can still slide into as easily as he might throw on a shirt in the morning. “I tried... to be, be good, Sir. I was... I was good. I loved you, and... I didn’t... leave because I didn’t love you-... I... I didn’t deserve to be hurt, Sir. But...” He trails off, and Jake forces his gaze to wander.

A bright red cardinal stares back at him from a tree branch nearby, flits away, lands on a different gravestone. Jake stares at it, wondering with a strange unsettled curiosity if it’s the same cardinal, if it followed them out here somehow, but of course that’s... not possible.

There are cardinals everywhere. Cemeteries just make everything seem haunted.

The gravestone the cardinal rests on has been here a while - there’s a single spray of flowers laid on one side, and nothing on the other. It’s one of those double-stones for married people, Jake thinks.

Chris is still talking to Oliver, and Jake forces himself with all his strength not to eavesdrop, just to be here, to be the strength Chris needs. So he stares at the cardinal, and the gravestone.

Each side has a little clear plastic heart, and Jake knows what those are - the gravetones where you can put a photo of the person inside, and see them, and he thinks those are creepy as hell, but... but he can see why you’d buy one.

A woman and a man. Jake squints. They have the same date of death, he thinks, and his heart twists. Car accident, maybe? That sucks. Chris said once that he remembered his parents died.

He wonders who misses these two, who left the flowers.

Life is not forever - but love is. Beloved parents of-

Jake feels Chris press up to him, cold nose against his neck, hitching in sobs that are nearly soundless, gasping for air.

“Do you want me to talk to you about this?” Jake asks, gently.

Chris shakes his head, twisting his fingers into Jake’s shirt, rocking now, for the first time since they left. His voice, broken, starts to hum to try to drown out his own tears, and Jake slides both arms around Chris’s shoulders and holds him tightly.

“D-don’t, don’t talk, don’t-... don’t don’t don’t, I just n-need, I need, I-”

Chris tenses and then lets out a wail, echoing off the trees, soaked up in the ground around them, a half-scream of stifled pain he’s carried since he was seventeen years old.

“Hurts, h-hurts, hurts, it hurts-”

“Sssshhh, I know, I know it hurts, Chris, I know.”

“It hurts!”

Across the cemetery, the old woman doesn’t look up from her careful care of the stone she is tending, giving them space, a kind of tenderness all its own in allowing them their privacy.

Jake just holds on tighter, giving Chris an anchor, a steady presence he can scream into until all the sound is out of him, until the scream is gone.

Then, it’s quiet. They stand, for a while, in silence, other than Chris’s slow avalanche slide into outright weeping for the man who did nothing but try to destroy what spark he had left, and Jake doesn’t say a word.

He’ll probably cry when his abuser finally dies, too. Assuming anyone tells him.

When Chris, red-eyed and sniffling, pulls back to get in the truck, Jake lets him go, climbs into the driver’s seat, and brings the old truck rumbling to life.

Chris’s knuckles are still white, but as they drive around the curve again, he starts to rock, back and forth, back and forth.

When Chris starts humming, Jake turns the music up a little to give him something to hum along to, and Chris flashes him a tear-stained, trembling little smile in gratitude.

A dozen roses in brown paper lay on top of the grave of a man who could never deserve the grief that Chris so freely feels for him.

The cardinal watches them go, and then hops down from the top of the gravestone to peck at birdseed scattered on only one side of the double-stone grave of two people who died on the very same day when Chris was fifteen years old.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp​, @finder-of-rings​, @endless-whump​, @whumpfigure​, @slaintetowhump​, @astrobly​, @newandfiguringitout​, @doveotions​, @pretty-face-breaker​, @boxboysandotherwhump​, @oops-its-whump​ @moose-teeth​

Reasons I believe my friend is secretly some kind of deity

1) First time we spoke was a week after the beggining of freshman year she summed up my entire character and most of the events of my life Sherlock style. I asked her how the hell she knew all that. She just shrugged and said she figured out our entire class already.

2) The one time we had religion class instead of ethics she listened to the teacher for a few minutes, laughed and told me:

"Humans have wished to be gods so much they've forgotten they have to ability to create them. Imagination has truly suffered from this 'monotheism' stuff."

I was confused and asked her if she was an atheist. She rolled her eyes and said:

"Oh I believe in god alright. I just don't think the bastard deserves to be worshipped."

3) Out of nowhere she gave me this advice:

"The only truth a liar ever told was that lies weren't going to save you. Don't become the liar who has to pass that wisdom on, because they speak from experience."

4) To this day, she has one of those old-timey phones with buttons she only uses to ocassionally call someone. When I asked her why she never got a smartphone she got pouty:

"I hate social media. On Facebook they talk a lot but never say anything. If I wanted to listen to people moan about their problems and ask for help they don't expect I'd listen to their prayers." (Notice the choice of words)

5) I noticed she was stiff and I offered her a massage since I'm really good at it but when i started kneading her back I swear to this day those were not muscles I felt. I asked her what she did to turn her muscles into rocks covered with a thin layer of skin and she kinda froze then shrugged and said she was just really, really stiff. My hands hurt after ten minutes when I can usually go for an hour. Next time I offered she seemed surprised and laughed. She still has rocks for muscles.

6) We were having a debate over the way neural pathways are formed (I study biology and she forensics) and I jokingly asked if I could have her brain for study when she dies. She laughed.

"Sure, if you find a way to kill me you can have it. I'm actually curious what you're gonna find."

7) One time she was tired and miserable and I tried to comfort her. We both have really dark sense of humor so I told her she could scare the dead out of their graves with that glare. She told me the dead can't come back and I rolled my eyes and said 'obviously' but she continued:

"When you die you descend to the underworld with nothing to lose. To keep you, they give you something to lose. When you want to return, they will demand it back. That's why nobody ever leaves. The only way out is to never enter."

8) One day she just came up to me with a disappointed look on her face. When I asked her what was wrong she was quiet for a few seconds and then just told me:

"Betrayals committed in good intentions are still damning. Just... keep that in mind." Then she left and didn't speak to me for three days. I still don't know what she meant but even three years later I haven't forgotten it.

9) We were casually sitting on a bench when, out of nowhere, she asked me: "Is it just me or have humans gotten dumber? Or have they always been this stupid and I just haven't been paying attention?"

10) She asked me if I ever wondered what it was like to die. I said no but told her I would tell her when I found out. I meant it as a ghost joke but she smiled at me and said:

"Great. I'll wait for you to come back. Maybe you'll even remember me."

In conclusion, she is some kind of low-key god and she lost her faith in humanity even before we lost our faith in her but she's stuck with us because immortality is a bitch.

P.S. I just remembered her name is a variation on 'Eve'. Maybe I should reconsider my atheist status?!

UPDATE (Jan 9, 2019): Since people liked this so much I’m making it a thing. All I have about Eve can be found under #god goes to college

find your way (back to me) - chapter fifteen

Finally, here we are! I’m so sorry that I left y’all on a cliffhanger for such a long time but I needed to be in the proper mood to capture the tone of the last scene in this chapter. All we have left after this is the epilogue!! Hope y’all enjoy!

Malcolm doesn’t remember the last time a gunshot was so loud. It takes away all of the sound in the room like a vacuum had opened up in the center stealing one of his most vital senses. Only his own screaming remained, raw and bloody from the pieces of his heart still left in his chest. He can taste the copper through the cloth where the blood had sprayed his face.

He can’t bring himself to open his eyes. Not when he knows what he will see. His mother will be lying on the cement, too still. All of the color he has in his life fading with her skin tone. Bright and lively eyes will stare blankly up at the sheets of metal, denied the last opportunity to see the sky that she loves so dearly. The one person who refused to leave his side even when he was ungrateful ripped away violently. All she ever wanted was for them to be happy, she pushed herself to make sure they were.

Oh god, how will he tell Ainsley.

His shoulders wrack with sobs and he rocks back and forth trying to gather the little control he has left to open his eyes and face reality. 

Someone grabs him by the shoulders roughly and every ounce of anger explodes out of him. He thrashes around using every part of his body that isn’t tethered to the chair to knock the person off their balance. It works and he hears the person crash but they’re immediately replaced by another.

This one wraps their arms around him, a hand holding the back of his neck with manicured nails digging into his skin. The grip forces his head into a shoulder where his face is buried into a smooth silk blouse. But it’s the smell that makes him stop moving, bourbon and vanilla permeates his senses and dissipates his anger.

He pulls back, eyes wide and searching for answers.

Blue eyes stare back at him, red rimmed but smiling. A relieved laugh escapes her lips while she pulls the fabric from his mouth.

“Mom?” He whispers, his voice breaking.

He takes in the scene fully, Dr. Garcia is still slumped in her chair but she’s stirring clearly still alive but not entirely aware yet. The person he knocked to the ground was Dani, a pocket knife in hand looking a little winded after being headbutted in the stomach. The killer is on the ground, a hole in the middle of his forehead likely dead before he even hit the ground.

He has so many questions. Where did Dani come from? How did she know the perfect time? Did they plan this? Where is everyone else?

Those questions matter so little once his arms and legs are free.

He crashes into his mom, arms wrapping around her stomach so he can bury his face in her hair. Every image that flashed through his mind haunts him as he tightens his grip on her. He almost pulls away when she groans in pain, remembering it had not nearly been long enough into her recovery for him to be holding her so tight.

However, her arms wrap around him too, keeping him just as close to her chest. Her fingers brush through his hair, her voice a comforting whisper in his ear as he breaks down in sobs.

For all he knows she could be a figment of his broken psyche. The last piece of straw that breaks the camel’s back taking what’s left of his sanity with her. He breathes the scent in, his own hands gripping the back of her shirt. If he lets go she will disappear, just another body in a morgue. Just another life taken by a killer.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The scene Gil walks in on is heartbreaking.

His gun was still drawn as he followed the screams. When they stopped he feared the worst. He rounds the corner on the scene that stops him in his tracks.

Malcolm clings to Jessica, both of them standing grasping the other as if they are the last connection to this world. They don’t even notice the new presence in the room. Too busy assuring themselves that they are, in fact, still alive.

It’s Dani who sees him first, checking in on Dr. Garcia who was slowly coming to before coming over to him. Her face gives away everything, her panic that had been building since she got off the phone with him to the relief that she got him in time. She opens her mouth, ready to deliver the report of what happened to him in detail.

He doesn’t let her.

Gil grabs her wrapping Dani in a hug around her shoulders and letting out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding for the entire drive. If it weren’t for her, god he doesn’t even want to begin to think what would have happened to his family. If Jess had died, it would have destroyed them all. Malcolm, already fractured by his father, would be gone. Ainsley just starting to put her life back together again, stuck wandering from room to room searching for someone who isn’t there. He would lose her all over again with no chance of repair this time.

“Thank you.” He whispers to her. “Thank you for saving my family.” She swallows with a short, glassy eyed nod.

Jess must have heard him because he meets her eyes next. The moment is oddly familiar, one where they passed a look over Malcolm who was so much smaller back then. The memory feels so far as he stares at them. He’d wanted to go to them, all that time ago. Wrap the both of them tightly and protect them from every danger. Ainsley had been so small, she hardly knew the weight the two of them carried on their shoulders.

He doesn’t wait for her extended hand this time. Not when he could have lost them both in one fell swoop. He wraps his arms around them both, Malcolm startling for a second at the new presence before he settles again. Only Ainsley is missing from the embrace, no doubt once the scene is secure or once they’re all safely away she will join. 

Jessica’s hand comes to rest on his own over Malcolm’s back and he presses a kiss to her hair. Thankful that the nightmare is finally over.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Standing over a grave has always been a wretched experience for Jessica. When she lost her parents in the wreck shortly after Malcolm was born, after the 23 women were killed, after Eve. Her hatred of death loomed in her very presence.

Still she attended every funeral. She funded every single one without a single moment of hesitation. Tommy Moore and Andrew Rankin’s were on the same day. She nearly wept with relief when she met the little boy named Michael. The parents informed her that Michael had been found playing on the swings by a police officer and picked up by his mother shortly after. Adolpho’s funeral was a private affair. Only his family and her own in attendance but it was nice. It felt fitting for him.

Freddy’s was the worst, she thinks as she stares at his headstone. She had been blocked in on either side by Malcolm and Ainsley, their hands holding tightly onto her own. Dr. Garcia’s eulogy for her son was short. Broken up with sobs and moments to gather herself. She wishes, painfully, about how it should’ve been her but Gil’s hand on her shoulder stops those thoughts.

“It’s not your fault.” She startles at the voice she hadn’t heard approaching. The woman who had been plaguing her thoughts is standing on her right. The doctor’s eyes are red rimmed, tears have been shed by nearly everyone in attendance that day but especially them. “Your son told me what you did trying to save Freddy.”

“Malcolm tends to exaggerate to protect others.” She laments.

“I don’t think so.” The entire time her eyes remain ahead, never looking at Jessica. “I read about you, you know. After the surgeon got arrested. How many of those families did you take care of?” She doesn’t know how to answer that question. “And your daughter told me that you already plan on setting up a school fund for the grandson of the second victim.” Jessica shakes her head, of course her children did that. They’re both such meddlers. “You didn’t do this to him.”

“I left him behind.”

“You went to get help.” Dr. Garcia argues and Jessica’s jaw snaps shut. “Any longer in there and your infection would have spread. You can’t argue with that, I was your doctor.” She sighs in defeat at that claim. “You tried to save my son. You’re a hero.”

“Your son was the hero. He cut up his shirt to tend to my injuries. He would’ve been a great doctor. You should be proud.”

The woman’s eyes get glassy at that. Her gaze casts over to another figure staring at them. “That’s his girlfriend. I’m sorry if she says anything angry to you. Freddy was all she had.”

“That’s not true.” Jessica swallows, grabbing the other woman’s hand. “She has you.”

“I don’t know if she’ll let me take her in.”

“Give her time.” Jessica looks to her own children talking with Gil. “They come around.” Dr. Garcia smiles, a sad one that is too reminiscent of a goodbye. Her heart aches for the woman that had to outlive her child. She would do anything to make sure that Malcolm and Ainsley would live long and happy lives.

“His father will take care of him. At least until I can see them again.” Jessica’s eyes fall on the grave beside Freddy’s. Her throat closes again with the familiar panic. “Please, don’t let this man tear you apart more than he already has. That monster can’t hurt them now. He can’t hurt you now.”

Tears slide unwillingly down her cheeks as she nods.

Jessica hopes she’s right.

Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 5 Part 9

Hello all, I am back with another exciting segment of Midnight Striga!! Admittedly, this one is slower than the prior chapter, but I still hope you all enjoy it.

Lilith strode forth, Eda hot on her heels. They circled through the Covention, spotting the representatives from the Major Nine assisting. The Construction Coven workers were rapidly working on structural damage dealt to key pillars and walls, members of the invading force held tightly by hastily assembled cells and chains, the Construction Head, and Lilith was genuinely puzzled as to where he had come from, looming over the invaders, personally guarding them. The Oracle, Healing, and Illusion Covens were working in concert, with the Oracles tracking down trapped or injured citizens while Illusionists either guided them to safety, or rescue workers to their locations, and the Healers had set up a clinic to attend to the injured.

The Plant and Abomination Covens worked to root out and capture the remaining attackers, many of whom were thrown into those same cells she had passed alongside the Construction Coven. The Beast Keeping Coven members used their abilities to track down and locate those stuck in areas inaccessible to the abilities of Oracles, allowing rescue workers to bring them to safety, the Bards using their magic to manipulate the pieces that the Construction members couldn’t move safely. The sight of the Covens working together, in harmony, brought a melancholy smile to Lilith’s face. Her mood plummeted further, however, when she saw the bodies.

Piles of corpses, so many they couldn’t lay them out properly and were overlapping in awkward lumps, were arranged before the Healers’ Clinic, families weeping over their loved ones, the ones who had been present with them at least. The rest would need to be informed. And not to mention the numerous corpses of Guards, some having died cleanly… others not so much. Titan, she really was a failure, wasn’t she? Shaking herself from her self-loathing, she turned to her sister. “Edalyn, I must ask, but do you have any idea what has occurred?”

“Well, from the looks of it, a huge fight.” Eda said, faux-humorously. Before Lilith could snap at her, she continued. “But seriously, while you were stuck in la-la land, that guy, Rudolph he called himself, said he and his group were part of the ‘Black Dog Squadron’ whatever that means, and that they were here to kill everyone for someone or something called Oroboros. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.” She recalled, face grave.

Lilith bit back a curse. Taking a deep, calming breath, she attempted to draw more information out of her sister; out of all the adults on the Isles, Eda’s knowledge of humans was estimated to be some of the best, by virtue of her regularly full stores of ‘treasures’ to sell. “Edalyn, I am begging you, if you have any knowledge of how this…” She gestured, to the corpses, to the crying parents and children, the ruined stands and damaged walls, ”all happened, I need you to tell me!” She pleaded.

Eda leveled an even stare on her sister, before slowly replying. “Lily, I had no idea how this happened, or what went into it occurring. As much as I hate Bonehead, if I had ANY idea that something like this was going on, I would’ve either let you know, or tried to stop it beforehand myself, maybe both.” Lilith searched her eyes, an almost desperate light burning within her, before sighing, accepting Eda’s words.

“As much as it pains me to say this, I will likely need your help for the moment.” Lilith said as evenly as she could, the bitter sting of acknowledging just how much her sister still outclassed her rearing its ugly head. “If any of these scavengers are still lurking about that are on the level of that maniac Rudolph, I will likely need your skill to defeat them before they can wreak further havoc.”

“Heh, glad to see you finally admitting my skills,” Eda preened, oblivious to Lilith's mood plummeting at her statement, before growing serious. “And yeah, of course. We may have had our differences, but I’m not gonna cut and run when kids are in the crossfire.”

Lilith nodded, relieved. She hated that she felt relieved; it was just another admittance of how Eda was better than her. Still, Lilith took in the sight of the dead guards, the mutilated children, and felt her resolve harden. It didn’t matter if Eda was better than her right now; justice was what was needed, and she would bring about that justice. She felt her eyes mist. It was the least she could do, as penance for failing them.

Throwing up her arms in confusion, Lilith exclaimed. “What I truly wish to know is how did Humans gain the ability to wield magic!? It should be impossible!! They lack a bile sack, so how did that-that maniac cast those spells!” She whirled on her sister. “Please tell me you didn’t know about this?”

Eda shrugged, feeling guiltily amused at Lilith’s flustered panic. “Eh, only for a few weeks or so. And let me tell you, it sure caught me by surprise!” She laughed. Eda paused, a thought occurring to her, but it was one she was hesitant to share. Biting her lip, she carefully broached the topic. “You know, I think I might know someone who could shed a little light on this whole mess.” She said cautiously.

Lilith zipped into Eda’s personal space, tightly gripping the front of her dress. “Truly!?” She asked, pleading honestly. “Where are they? Who are they!?”

“Well first off, personal space sis,” Eda bluntly stated, lightly pushing Lilith out of her comfort zone. Taking a breath, she added, “As to where they are, they honestly should be right here in the Covention.”

Lilith’s face fell, already fearing the worst. “But, if they were here, then wouldn’t they have had to face…” she gestured to one of the attackers being led to the cells, cackling insanely, “ Them?”

“Pffft! If goons like that were a serious problem, I’d be a little worried, but she’s crafty enough to stay alive, heck, she probably beat a few of them!” Eda cackled, before adding, with a hint of nervousness, “And, well, I hate that I got to ask this, Lily, but please keep an open mind when you meet her? Please?”

Lilith gave her sister a flat stare. “Edalyn, I have just had a rather large portion of my worldview regarding humans and the power and stability of the Isles torn out from under me, as have a large group of others. When word starts spreading, I have no doubt that more than a few people will either go into denial or mass hysteria.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Very little could properly phase me at the moment. So yes, Edalyn, I will keep an open mind.” She said the last part so dry and sarcastically that, if this weren’t serious, Eda would’ve been so proud to call them sisters. Eda nodded grudgingly, accepting her promise. With that, the two headed out. Eda really hoped the kid was okay.

Luz gasped and sputtered, nearly choking on her tears. Willow slowly rubbed circles on her back, calming some of her heaving and screams. Gus and Amity stood on the side, both feeling lost and awkward; neither was as close to Luz as Willow, but neither wanted to see the girl in such despair either. All three just wanted to know what was going on.

“Sshh… sshh… it’s gonna be okay.” Willow whispered, unbothered by the tears staining her dress; it had already been ruined from the blood and grime of the battlefield the Covention had turned into, but even if it was fresh and clean, Willow would gladly soil it for a friend to cry on. “You can talk to us, okay? And if you don’t want to, we’ll be here anyway.”

“She-She can’t be alive!!” Luz spluttered, tears clogging her throat. “She can’t be!! I can’t have abandoned her!” She wailed. It had to be a lie, it had to be!! Because, if it wasn’t… Luz would never be able to stop until she saved her, no matter what she’d have to do in order to do it.

“Who?” Amity hesitantly asked.

“My hostage.” Luz said glumly, her tears drying up for the moment. She reached into her jacket, pulling out a photo tucked inside, showing it to them, a watery smile forming on her face. “My sister.”

“Sister?” The group echoed, leaning forward. Staring back at them was a picture of Luz and, well, Luz! Or rather, they saw Luz standing by what they presumed was her identical twin. The two were still very much distinguishable from one another. The one on the left was clearly the Luz they knew, having a similar style, a wild and reckless grin stretched across her face. The one on the right, however, was shyly glancing away, a nervous smile on her face, hair tied back neatly with a pair of clips.

“Yeah, Vee.” Luz said, a melancholy look of remembrance on her face. “She was always my leash, even before I got drafted into Oroboros. Whenever I had some crazy idea, she’d talk me through it before I did something stupid.”

Willow and Gus sat down beside her, leaning close, Amity standing a respectful distance behind them, clearly listening. Luz continued. “One time, I got this idea to make home-made Lacrimas by shoving a bunch of magic into one spot, and Vee reminded me that neither of us knew how Lacrimas formed, and just stuffing magic into things blew them up.” She snickered, a tear tracing down her cheek. “And this one time, I was gonna try and tame a Wyvern, I actually went out and did it even! But then, Vee reminded me we had nowhere to keep it, and no way to feed it, so I found it a nice hunting ground, and convinced it to defend a nearby town.” She laughed out loud, a heavy, full-belly laugh that sent her sprawling, tears leaking.

She paused, tears in her eyes. “She was my best friend, the person who made every day away from home something bearable. She was my anchor, my rock, and Oroboros used her against me.” Her fingers dug into her hand, a pained look crossing her features. “If she’s actually been alive this whole time…” Her tears were cut off when Willow and Gus hugged her, both having tears of their own.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll get through this.” Willow stated, pulling away and looking Luz straight in the eye. “Oroboros is going to keep coming after the Isles, so you’ll probably get an answer one way or another. And either way, I’ll be right by your side.”

“And the same goes for me!” Gus chimed in. “Plus, my dad’s a reporter, so I can help find out new info for you to go off of!”

“And if I am available, I would not be averse to using my magic to fight against those who’ve threatened the Isles. Rescuing an innocent will be a nice bonus, I’d say.” Amity primly stated, sporting a confident look.

Luz gave the three an almost awestruck look. “You guys.”

“GET AWAY FROM THEM!!” A voice screamed, drawing their attention. Luz’s eyes widened as Lilith Clawthorne, Eda’s apparent sister, rocketed towards her, staff glowing with magic, her eyes burning with rage. Before she could smash Luz’s face in, however, Eda jumped in, tackling her sister to the ground.

“Sheesh, Lily! Chill out!” Eda cried, desperately wrestling her sister to the ground. “I told you to keep an open mind, remember?”

“What does that have to do with-” Lilith ranted, only to pause, eyes widening in realization. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She groaned, hanging her head as Eda sheepishly chuckled.

“U-um… Eda, what’s happening?” Luz tentatively asked.

Eda really wanted to ask Luz why she’d been crying, but decided to put it off, focusing on the current issue. “Well,” She drawled, “My prissy sis here wanted info on everything that happened. And after thinking it over, I thought you’d be the best person to give it to her.” Eda stated, pointing at Luz decisively. As unbalanced as Luz’s emotions were at the moment, she could see the logic in that.

“Seriously!?” Gus cried, incredulous. “After what she just learned!?”

Eda blinked. “What? What’d she learn?” She asked, figuring that whatever it was was the reason behind Luz’s tears.

“Something we can talk about later. In. Private.” Luz stated, her face screaming ‘let it go for now!’ Eda grudgingly agreed.

“Ugh, can we please move back on to the topic of information?” Lilith growled, pulling herself up. She loomed over Luz, a suspicious glare emblazoned across her features. “I have a great many questions for you, human.”

“And I’m perfectly willing to answer them, Miss Clawthorne.” Luz replied, unblinking. She glanced around, taking note of the damage around them. “But maybe it’d be better if we went somewhere more private for this?”

Lilith nodded, seeing the logic in that. “Indeed, better we not be interrupted.” She turned to her sister. “If that is acceptable for you, Edalyn?” She asked, getting a shrug and a nod in return, the Witchlings following Eda’s lead. Lilith clapped her hands. “Well then, we’d better be going back to the main center, as I recall seeing the Covens building something of a camp there to deal with the aftermath of this mess. The Healer’s Clinic should have a room we can use.” And with that the group set off, a tension running through them after their collective ordeal.

Emira paced, frantically glancing about the interior of the Healer’s Station, Edric gloomily slumped next to her. Her eyes scanned the nearby groups, hoping to spot something, anything, that could give her some hint as to where her sister was. She and Edric knew she was here, but where had she disappeared to after being displayed up there with Lilith was the real question.

“Could you please stop pacing, sis?” Edric groaned, clutching his head. “It’s not going to just make her appear if you keep doing it.”

Emira whirled on her brother, fire in her eyes. “Well what do you expect me to do!? Maniacs barged into the Covention, massacred who knows how many people, and OUR SISTER IS MISSING!!! I don’t have a lot of options right now, now do I?” She brutally snapped, briefly yelling in the middle of it, before fading into a broken tiredness. All those people, those kids, all gone. If her sister was gone like that, and her only memories were of her and Edric pranking her… She looked into Edric’s eyes, and saw the same fear, the hopeless, helpless realization that Amity may be gone, and her only memories of them would be of all the times they gave her trouble.

Edric sighed, tiredly rubbing his eyes. “Believe me sis, I get it, but all we can do is wait, and hope she’s okay.” He patted the spot next to him, a clear invitation to sit. Emira gave one last furtive look around, and glumly complied. The two briefly wondered just how their parents would take all of this.

Bria bit her lip, glancing over at Gavin and Angmar. She didn’t consider them friends, not really. Maybe she’d change that? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about much right now. She… had been made helpless. Magic like nothing she’d ever seen had been on display, and a LOT of people were dead. She, Gavin, and Angmar WOULD be dead. If it hadn’t been for Matty. Matty; goofy, clumsy, always taking the fall, boasting about his skills Matty, had saved their lives. Tears pricked her eyes, as she remembered how close she’d come to death, the sheer heartlessness on display. Was that what she was like? Some kind of monster? ...Was that what everyone was like at Glandus, behind all the excuses about being powerful?

“Hey, I got your drink!” Matty cheerfully replied, holding a glass out to her.

Bria shot him a half-hearted smile. “Thanks Matty.”

“Eh, it’s no problem.” He said, waving it off. “After all, we’re friends, right?”

“Yeah, friends.” Bria muttered, sipping her drink. Maybe… they really were friends. She’d have to talk to Angmar and Gavin about this. Maybe Hexside was still taking transfers.

Skara listlessly handed supplies to Bo, who was frantically patching up as many injuries as she could. Skara just felt so tired, so hollow. So many people had died. She’d seen little kids ripped apart, their parents crying over their bodies. She’d seen the opposite too, parents being cried over by their kids and family members.

Skara only had eyes for one thing, though. Boscha. Boscha was propped up on a bunk, at least two rows away, but still in Skara’s line of sight. She’d been brought in by a little demon, screaming and demanding that someone help her. Skara felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought that it wasn’t her demanding that someone heal her friend. Oh, wait, they weren’t friends anymore. It still hurt to think about, even though talking with Amity helped. The demon was hovering around Boscha, ranting and ordering around anyone and everyone who got close. In the back of her mind, Skara was honestly impressed at how unrelenting and exacting he was with his demands, even if no one was following them.

Then, Skara caught sight of another body brought in, another corpse. It was Batthew, a nice guy who had flirted with her a few times before. He was sweet, in his own way, and was really fond of going over the top. His throat had been slashed open. Skara didn’t fight the tears as they came.

Lilith pulled up a seat, eyes glaring daggers at the human seated before her. One way or another, she was going to get the answers she needed. She briefly spared a glance at Perry Porter, a known and well-viewed reporter upon the Isles, and one known for being unabashedly honest and direct in his reporting, something that earned him several points with the populous, as they knew they could trust his information. The boy, Augustus, had called him in after they’d gotten to the emergency clinic the Healers had established, citing a need for the people to understand what had happened. Thinking of her own impending reveal to the public, Lilith had agreed. If all turned out well, both could be accomplished together.

Lilith leaned forward. “Now then, human, it’s time for you to answer my questions. The People of the Isles are dying to hear what you have to say.” She said, eyes half-lidded.

Luz placed her hands on her chin, a brave smile on her face. “Ask away. I’m all ears.”

Rock Bottom

It had been a few hours since Iris had left the estate. There was a huge gap in her night she couldn’t remember anything of, so she suspected she had passed out. After she had awakened she had headed into The Forgotten Knight, bought a new bottle and staggered on the silent streets while sipping. Iris could no longer remember why, but she had got into a fight with some people. She had been overpowered and someone had had the nerve to steal her bottle. Iris wasn’t been sure had she just spent all of her gil or had she also been robbed during the conflict. Either way, she had no place to go or enough gil to leave Ishgard. Then a sudden realization had struck her: she actually did have a place to go. The one final place. After a long while that had felt like an eternity Iris found her way to Silke’s doorstep. She lived in a block of flats with four floors. Silke’s apartment was located on the third floor, in the second one of the three outdoor stairways. The place was cheap and Iris had often noticed it - among other things - from thin wooden walls and random noise coming sometimes from upstairs, sometimes from downstairs or the apartments next door. If there was one person in the whole world who understood her, it would definitely be Silke. She was Iris’ lighthouse in this cursed sea of pitch black shite. Iris leaned on the doorpost for a moment, trying to pull herself together. Finally she knocked the door. “Si… Silke!” she yelled. “Open the door, it’s mi!”

It took a while for Silke to get to the door. She cracked it a bit, looking tired. Iris saw a very unfashionable combination of a poison green morning gown and pink moogle slippers from the narrow gap. Silke hadn’t even tried to tame her long, black hair, which was hanging loose, partly in front of her face and all around her shoulders. The tiny shiba inu earring she had bought from a fair earlier this year was dangling in her left ear. Iris hadn’t seen her ever taking it off. “Lareine?” Silke asked in a sleepy voice. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Then she noticed the blood and the smell and seemed to wake up. “Oh dear gods, what the heck? Come in”, she urged and opened the door. Iris stepped in, struggling her way towards the sofa and fell onto it. She was probably quite a sight: covered in blood and puke and the corner of her left eye was purplish blue and swollen. Though she was too tired to care about what she smelled or looked like. “The focker threw mi out… Like I was a damn dish rag he had just used… to wipe his failures off the floor…”, she explained vaguely. It wasn’t necessary to say anything about herself actually wanting to leave the estate. Silke didn’t need to know. The only important part of the story was how she had been thrown out. Silke closed the door and followed Iris to the living room. For a moment she was unable to do anything but stare. “What happened?” she uttered finally. “Have you fought with someone? How much have you drunk?” She was eyeing at her all over. “Oi… do you need a bathroom? How about some tea? Or can you keep it in?” Silke was fussing about like she had never seen anyone in such a state before. Iris leaned on the sofa. She could’ve just listened and looked at Silke forever. She always looked so nice, fancily dressed or not. She also smelled nice. Mostly her scent was ink and old parchment, at times some mild, floral perfume, and sometimes something that resembled awfully lots of gunpowder. “N-no… I kinda… used a bathroom already… Kinda… Might have been yer neighbor’s bush…” Iris wasn’t completely sure. The memories were hazy. “Ya… happen to have anythin’? Some fockin’ ugly pig stole… my bottle.” Silke’s eyes widened the more the farther Iris got in her story. She opened and closed her mouth for a couple of times, trying to come up with something to say.

“Uh, you should know I’m so impulsive I can’t keep any booze in my apartment. Just so that I wouldn’t depend on it on bad days”, she explained while giving an awkward laugh. “And even if I did have something, I definitely wouldn’t give it to you. You’re in need of the damn tea… and maybe at least a bit of food?” Iris could almost feel something snapping inside her head. She turned around to see better Silke standing behind her. “Oh fock yer damn tea… Ya really think some leftover leaves floating in hot water will help mi in ani way?” In some twisted way Silke’s baffled expression made Iris feel good. Silke used such a huge chunk of her time in either school, library or her apartment, that it had probably been ages since someone had roiled her boring and dull life a bit. “Ya know.. Maybe ya should keep somethin’ here”, Iris continued. Now that she had started, she could as well mention about some other things as well that had been more or less bothering her. “Maybe if… Maybe if ya did take a shot or two on a bad day, ya wouldn’t… be so fockin’ boring! Why not take those dirty old books of yer and stuck them up to yer ass?” Okay, maybe that had been a bit too much. What she had said was true, Iris thought, but people were so damn sensitive nowadays and got mad if someone spoke aloud some uncomfortable truths about them. Perhaps she could still save the situation somehow. “Could ya… go to yer sissy’s place and… get some more booze for mi?” Iris asked in as soft voice as she possibly could. Silke had apparently forgotten herself to stare at Iris for a moment again. Her jaw was hanging wide open. Then she finally blinked like she would’ve snapped out of some kind of trance. She inhaled deeply and started to gabble: “Well excuse me, princess! Water would actually help you, since obviously you’ve gotten yourself a big fat alcohol poisoning. It ain’t some rocket science, so even a bunny-eared potato like you should understand such a concept…” She tossed her bangs and some longer locks away from her face, but the bunch of hair only fell immediately back to where it had been. “And I’m sure you know where The Second Circle is located. If you want your damn drinks so badly you can scurry there by your own little feets. Do I look like some damn maid to you? Geez…” Iris couldn’t do anything but to blink as well. For a moment she wasn’t sure what to say. She had hardly ever seen her friend like this. She got up and started to walk towards her, supporting herself by leaning into the couch. Suddenly she noticed a book laying on it, and for a reason yet unknown, decided to pick it up. The cover said something about aether currents, but Iris didn’t care enough to focus more on the thing. She turned back to Silke, waving the book in her hand. “Dat whut I am to ya, sweetheart? A potato?” she asked. “Well, dis explains quite a lot of things! Ya never even see mi! Ya fockin’ ignore mi! Ya have any idea how much I want ya!? And yer just playin’ with mi! And now I know why! Dis damn piece of crap matters to you more than I ever do!” She gave one final look at the book before flipping it into the fireplace behind her back. “But ye know whut? Yer wrong! Ya should be BLISSFUL for someone actually showing interest in ya! No wonder they peck ya at dat school of yer.” Silke just stared in horror as the book flew into the fire. Apparently it took a moment for her brain to process of what was happening. She leapt over the sofa, crouched next to the fireplace and tried to save the tome, but it was too far on the other side of the flames and she quickly yanked her hand away with a sharp “Shiteberries!” Iris followed her struggle, smirking slyly. “…Point proven…” Silke watched the book burning for a while, her back turned to Iris. “Do you have any idea how much those things cost?” she asked quietly after a while. “As a student my income is quite crappy…” She slowly stood up and turned to look at Iris, who could see a hint of red on her pale cheeks. “What the fock is the matter with ya, Lareine?!” Silke started to scream. “I don’t give a damn what you’ve drunk or taken or what kind of stupid drama you have with others but for gods’ sake don’t take it out on me! Oh, and mebbe if YOU drank a bit less and wouldn’t be such a rectum people wouldn’t be throwing you out of places! And you know, I’m rather just by myself and keep sticking my tomes up to my asshole than hang out with a nut job POTATO like you.” Her right hand seemed to be very tensed up and her fingers were frozen into a position like the hand would’ve been cramping. Iris noticed a small flicker of fire in her palm before she squeezed her hand shut, extinguishing the fledgling fireball. “I think you should go”, Silke said numbly. At first Iris was about to turn and leave. Then she changed her mind. She wouldn’t let anyone who had reviled her this gravely go so easily. She walked up to Silke, raising her chin with her finger. Iris was more than aware of her breath smelling like last night, and maybe even the night before. “Dat’s what ya want? Mi to leave?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “And… here I thought you of all people would understand. But it seems I was wrong. Yer no better than the rest of dem… No one in dis fockin’ world gets mi… But how could they? We could have been somethin’ beautiful… If ya did not focking fall asleep on mi!” Iris leaned forward, slipping her hand below Silke’s hair to hold her head in place and kissed her violently on the lips. Silke shivered in disgust, pushed Iris away from her and took a long leap backwards. Suddenly a small, turquoise creature appeared next to her from thin air. Iris didn’t know much about magic, but she had seen them around. It was an emerald carbuncle, the first creature beginner summoners learned to call forth from the other side of the rift. Except that this one was half smaller than they usually were. The tiny thing was barely bigger than Silke’s moogle slippers. Silke glanced at it confused, like summoning it wouldn’t even have been a conscious thing to do. Then she turned back to Iris, her gaze full of disbelief and disgust. Laurence had also appeared from somewhere and flashed his teeth and growled at Iris from behind the couch so that only his head was showing. He had tucked his ears back so tightly into his neck hair they had disappeared from sight, which made him look like an orange, bloodthirsty seal. “You’ll either walk away from here by yourself or you’ll be taken out on a stretcher carried by medics, princess~!” Silke proclaimed. She was smiling like a lunatic, eyes full of tears. Iris glared at the shiba inu staring back at her with a demonic grimace and an ugly, low growl. Even the damn dog who usually lay on her lap on his back, all paws pointing in different directions while she was petting his tummy, had turned against her. Iris turned back to Silke, full of rage just waiting to be released, but once she noticed tears in Silke’s eyes, all of her anger just dispersed. This woman never cried. Never. Or did she? “S… Silke?” Iris whispered, taking just one step closer, rising her hand towards Silke. “Don’t touch me”, Silke said, her voice forced calm. “Do not ever touch me again. Get the fock out and don’t show your face around here anymore!” She strode next to her big bookshelf, started to pull tomes out of the tight rows and throwing them at Iris. “You wanna burn my stuff? Here, take it! And this one? And mebbe this one too?” She giggled mindlessly. Iris gasped as the first book flew through the air. She ducked under it, dodging it barely, only to see more to come. The second and third barely missed her, but the fourth, a large brown one with leather covers hit her on shoulder. She lost her already questionable balance and fell onto the floor. She couldn’t recall the last occasion recently she would’ve been so terrified. “Silke… Silke!” Iris tried to call her. “Sweetie…! Silke, stop it!” Silke kept throwing more tomes at her but she quickly became exhausted. That didn’t stop her, though. “Out! OUT!” she yelled and pointed towards Iris. The tiny carbuncle twirled like trying to perform some sort of attack, but it only managed to create a light breeze that didn’t do basically anything. Silke let out a frustrated sound and started marching towards Iris. She grabbed a broomstick laying on the floor and started blindly whacking Iris with it. “OUT, OUT, OUT!” she screamed. “I’m not your focking sweetie!” Iris crawled backwards on the floor while being pummeled. She tried her best to cover her head, but a couple of swings found their mark. “P-please, Silke!” tears started running freely down Iris’ cheeks, as she curled up under the swings, too exhausted to move any longer. “S… Silke, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” Iris held her head, crying inconsolably, like all the grief gathered during her drunken night would’ve been breaking out at once, her tears washing away her anger. But where Iris had just reached the end of her fury, Silke’s had just ignited. She let out a scornful laugh. “That shite has gotten old already, honey, there’s no point to try it out on me anymore”, she hissed. When Iris stopped moving, Silke threw the broom away and marched to the door. She swung it wide open, returned to Iris and started to drag her along the floor and over the doorstep, grunting and groaning on the way. When Iris was completely on the other side of the door, Silke stepped gracefully over her. “There’s a drunk tank close by, only two blocks straight ahead when you step out of the main door”, she stated coolly. Iris forced herself to look up and was able see the last glimpse of Silke’s teary eyes, before the door was slammed shut in front of her and locked. Million things raced through her mind at the same time. Her head had started to clear up. She saw little Tora, weeping in front of her, covered in her own blood, her beautiful yukata ripped to pieces. She saw Mori, sitting in a corner, cradling what was left of her beloved music stand. And lastly, she saw Silke’s face when she had backed out from her kiss. Tears on her beloved friend’s face. All of her friends. What was she even thinking? Iris looked down at her hands, still covered in blood and who knows what. She got up, and with her legs feeling heavy and her mind even heavier, she started to slouch away from Silke’s door. Not towards the bar, nor the drunk tank. But towards the small cafe in the Jeweled Crozier. She would get a cup of tea, clear her head, and then… She did not know. She would try to fix things. Or at least some of it.

But was it all beyond saving? --- With @iris-ymir​ :3

Could you write a sad Maeve / Luis one-shot where they break up and Drivers License is from Maeve’s POV?? We can just pretend that she didn’t have her license in the books haha

yesss i freaking love this song so much thanks for the ask! This takes place when Maeve’s a senior in high school and Luis is a sophomore in college. 

I got my driver's license last week Just like we always talked about

“What’s the first thing you want to do now you can drive wherever you want to?” Bronwyn asked Maeve as she jumped on her bed. 

“Drive into hell and stay there.”

Bronwyn sighed and closed her eyes. Maeve had been pushing past her sister’s patience threshold for the last week.

“I’m being serious Maeve.”

“As am I.”

“Maeve.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But I can’t stand thinking about my dumb license. We used to talk about me getting it for so long.”

“Maeve Luis is not the end of your world.”

“Then why does it feel like he is?”

'Cause you were so excited for me To finally drive up to your house

Maeve felt her heart break as she drove past his familiar house, the one with the flowers crammed into window boxes. She wanted to pull into the driveway, ring the doorbell that always stuck and make small talk with his mom before falling into him like she always did. 

But today I drove through the suburbs Crying 'cause you weren't around

But she couldn’t. She felt the tears pool in her eyes as she kept driving farther and farther away from her town and everything she had always known.

And you're probably with that blonde girl Who always made me doubt

Maeve didn’t like to think about who Luis was with. If she had to guess, it was Monica from his culinary class, with her bright blue eyes and blonde highlights.

She's so much older than me She's everything I'm insecure about

What was there to not like about Monica? She had beautiful long hair unlike Maeve’s cropped bob, and she had the kind of curves a person with cancer for ten years could only dream about. Maeve used to feel like a child whenever she stood next to Monica.

Yeah, today I drove through the suburbs 'Cause how could I ever love someone else?

“They’ll be other boys,” Maeve’s mother had assured her when she had burst through the front door sobbing like there was no tomorrow.

“No there wont,” Maeve had wailed into her pillow.

“There will be sweetie, trust me.”

Maeve didn’t answer, but as her mother stroked her hair, she couldn’t help but feel her mother was wrong. Who else in the world was like Luis Santos?

And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one

Maeve could remember the way they slammed doors and yelled at each other when their tempers got the best of them. Addy reminded her of those days when Maeve started to feel sad, but Maeve didn’t listen. Because no matter how much they argued and yelled and screamed, they always made it up to each other by the end of the day. 

And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone

“I wonder if his girlfriend remembered that he’s allergic to shrimp.”

“I’m sure she did honey, now please eat your dinner.”

“I will Dad, but what if he eats shrimp and dies?”

“Doubtful Mija.”

“But it could happen.”

“Maeve eat your food or I’ll stab you with a fork.”

“Don’t be violent Bronwyn. But your sister is right honey, eat your food.”

“What if he gets stabbed by a fork?”

“Maeve stop talking.”

Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me

Maeve still had the song he wrote on the back of a napkin at Glenn’s diner. She could remember that day like it was yesterday. She had been gushing over how cute a new song was, and he had flashed her his easy smile.

“So what? It’s easy to write about people you love. I could do it in five minutes.”

“Oh yeah?” Maeve was laughing at his serious expression.

“Yeah.” Luis grinned at her. “Hand me that napkin.”

“Yes, sir.”

He held the pen over the paper. “Time me. In five minutes I will have written a masterpiece about the masterpiece in front of me.”

'Cause you said forever now I drive alone past your street

Maeve hummed the tune to the forgotten song as she drove past his house.

And all my friends are tired Of hearing how much I miss you but I kinda feel sorry for them

“Maeve I don’t care that Luis had a baseball card collection,” Phoebe whined. 

“And if I have to hear about the time he hit a homerun and won the game one more time I’m going to throw you out of my car,” Knox agreed.

“He wasn’t even that great. He was kind of stuck up.”

'Cause they'll never know you the way that I do

Maeve just pursed her lips and looked out the window. She didn’t bother to tell them about how he coached the little-league baseball team every week, or about how he volunteered at the animal shelter every Saturday and taught Sunday school the next day. Just because he didn’t tell everyone didn’t mean he wasn’t a great person. 

Yeah, today I drove through the suburbs And pictured I was driving home to you

As they drove past Luis’s house, Maeve closed her eyes and imagined herself leaning forward, tapping Knox on the shoulder, and asking him to “please drop me off here I need to tell my boyfriend something.” The fact that Maeve couldn’t do that make her want to curl in to a ball and cry. 

And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one

“Luis who are you staring at?”

“No one babe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. The only person I could stare at is you.”

It was now that Maeve realized that he was watching Monica. It broke her heart to think about, but she could also feel the way she warmed up from inside out when when he turned those chocolatey brown eyes on her. 

Oh, and I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone

“Do you think she’s making sure he takes a break from cooking?”

“Maeve, frankly, I don’t care and neither should you.”

“But Nate-”

“But nothing Maeve.”

I guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me

Maeve could still think of those song lyrics, the only ones that were coherent in a jumble of words:

I love my Maeve

She’s so fine

With her eyes that shine

'Cause you said forever now I drive alone past your street

As Maeve drove past his house to get to the mall, she saw Monica’s car in his driveway. Did he think her eyes shone too?

Red lights Stop signs

Maeve stared ahead at the red light as she remembered the first time Luis drove in the car with her when she only had a learner’s permit and he took it upon himself to teach her:

“God Maevey, make sure you don’t stop a foot into the crosswalk” he had said.

“Sorry.”  

“Don’t be.”

I still see your face In the white cars

He leaned towards her and kissed her long and hard as the guy in the white car behind them honked his horn incessantly. 

Front yards Can't drive past the places We used to Go to

Maeve drove past a front yard and remembered the time she nearly drove straight into her mother’s hydrangea bush. “Try not to decapitate the flowers,” Luis had said gravely.

“I’ll try,” Maeve had laughed as she put the car in the reverse.

Maeve could still feel the giddiness the felt that day when they drove past the flower shop and Luis suggested they should get more hydrangeas just in case she decided to go on another killing spree. 

Now, as Maeve passed the store, she felt as if someone had ripped a hole in her chest. 

'Cause I still fucking love you, babe

“I love you Luis,” she whispered to the empty shop as she drove past. 

Sidewalks We crossed

Maeve could feel the weight of his hand in hers as she crossed the street to the mall. She missed how comfortable he made her feel.

I still hear your voice In the traffic

As the cars drove past, he could hear him saying to her “these cars had better be careful once you get your license Maevey. We should get you some sirens so when you start driving people will know to get out of your way, just in case.” 

We're laughing Over all the noise

Maeve smiled to herself a little as she remembered how Luis had to wrap an arm around her middle to keep her up as she laughed at his admittedly not-that-funny joke. There was something about being with Luis that made everything ten times better. Even his god-awful jokes.

God, I'm so blue

Maeve sighed a deep sigh as she thought about how much she missed. 

Know we're through But I still fucking love you, babe

Maeve would give anything to be laughing with him. Her mother had once told her that love was fickle, and that you could be in love with one person one day and another person the next. Maybe that rule applied to Luis, but it didn’t to Maeve. She still missed him so much it hurt. 

I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one

Maeve could still remember the day he had locked her out in the rain. They had argued about something petty and she stood on the steps trying to figure out how to get home when the door opened and Luis stood with so much remorse on his face it hilled her. 

“I’m so sorry Maevey, I was an ass.”

Maeve hugged him hard and he rocked her back and forth, apologizing over and over again. 

And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone

Maeve wondered briefly if Monica was willing to go to cookware stores with him for hours upon hours as she walked past his favorite store as she left the mall. She hoped so. Luis deserved to be happy. 

Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me

Maeve passed an ad for a song-writing class as she passed a street sign pole. The words to the song he wrote came flying back to her:

I love my Maeve

She’s so fine

With eyes that shine

'Cause you said forever now I drive alone past your street

Maeve turned those lyrics over and over in her mind as she drove through his neighborhood.

Yeah, you said forever now I drive alone past your street

“Love you Luis,” she mumbled as she passed his house.

God for such a happy couple I write so many sad one shots about them :( (I have fun though keep requesting stuff). Enjoy!!!

Never Fear (The Winchesters Are Here)

Six Feet Under

You woke up to a deep ache in your shoulders. It was sore all the way down your back. Probably bruised to hell.

You grunted, and your breath fanned back onto your face. You attempted to move, despite your smarting back, and your hands brushed against loose dirt and flaky wood. You tried to adjust your eyes, but there was nothing to see. Just… black. Wherever you were, it was a narrow space. A dirty narrow space.

Was it time to mention you were also slightly claustrophobic?

You were sweating. The air was stuffy. But there was something cold right next to you. Something cold and yielding. You reached for it, blindly patting with your hand flat out, until your fingers curled around something with contour.

You mapped out the dimensions of the object before recoiling in horror. That was no object—that… that was a body. 

Which, with your odds, meant you were in a coffin. An oddly large, though still cramped, coffin. Underground. With no way out but through the suffocating dirt.

Freaking ghouls.

Your first instinct was to scream. To pound up against the wood and holler until your throat was raw. It wasn’t that you wouldn’t, either; it was that you couldn’t. 

You couldn’t breathe.

There was something in your chest right now. There had to be. A void where your lungs had been, like a vacuum that swallowed up all the usable air. Your heart was in your throat.

Were you running out of oxygen? Was it already too late? Your shallow breaths were burning a hole in your chest. You couldn’t breathe.

You reached over to the corpse, this time with urgency. Cold but still flaccid. The body had been fresh for about an hour, then. Rigor mortis hadn’t even begun.

Does it matter? a part of your mind reasoned. It sounded a little like Dean. There’s a cold, dead body next to you, you’re on your last round of air, and you still can’t stop being a nerd?

"It matters," you muttered to yourself. "Matters ‘cause that means I’ve been stuck down here for about an hour. Takes about five hours total to run short on oxygen. Means at the very least, I’m not dying… yet."

As hard as a transition was going to be, you needed to breathe deep and slow. But there was still a tightness in your chest.

Relax your shoulders, you could almost hear Sam chiding.

"A little… difficult to do… suffocating in a pine box," you said, but you relaxed them anyway. You then took in your first, full breath since you woke up. That was progress.

You couldn’t count on the Winchesters finding you in time, or at all. You were going to have to take matters into your own hands and try to climb out of the grave. Dean had done it before, so you could too.

Dean’s also, like, 200 pounds of muscle, Sam cautioned.

If you were going to climb out of your grave, you needed a mask to protect your face from the dirt. Which meant you were going to need to work your shirt off of your head. You brushed your hand over your stomach. Well, you must have put up a fight. Your shirt was shredded, so… that was a no go.

The dead guy had a shirt, Dean said.

Fantastic.

You looked over to your left, to the corpse you couldn’t see. You reached over, awkwardly pulling the shirt up. Its cool skin grazed yours as you worked the fabric over its head. 

The neck didn't jerk about; it was rigid, but the arms weren't. Rigor mortis was kicking into gear. Which meant you had been down here for roughly two hours. Working as a hunter, you needed to have some level of knowledge on the dead.

Such a nerd, you could see Dean rolling his eyes.

You tied the bottom of the shirt which took a little while with your arms pinned down and the pitch darkness to guide you. Finally, though, you made a tight knot.

You pulled the shirt over your head like a bag and sat there for a moment. You wished the Winchesters could talk you through this.

That's when you broke at the pine box. The dirt was cold, dry, and thankfully loose. It fell in clumps around your shoulders, and you shoved it down at your feet.

Climbing your way past the dirt was no joke. It was grimy and freaking difficult. It was like those foam pits that gymnasts use that are nearly impossible to work your way out of, except in complete darkness with limited space. In other words, a freaking nightmare.

But you kept working. Kept pushing up while pushing the dirt down. Six feet, Sam reminded you. Just six feet. Once you’re standing, just work upward. Should be about as tall as I am, yeah?

You made a risky move upward, throwing your hand up as far as it could go, and touched air. A light breeze fell over your skin.

To say it was encouragement was an exaggeration. You worked twice as hard, shoving your way to the top. When your hand felt hard dirt, you crunched your abs and pulled until your chest hit the surface. You frantically dug your legs out before collapsing on the ground.

You went into a fit of hysterical laughter, a result of your adrenaline high and the last throes of your panic.You threw the filthy t-shirt off of your head, inhaling the air that you had once taken for granted.

In your brief delirium, you recalled Dean Winchester retelling his old raising-from-perdition story. He had hardly mentioned climbing out of his grave, as if it hadn't been important. His focus had mainly been on the mystery of the angels and how they turned out to be douches. He had made this part sound like a. Slice. Of. Pie.

And, well, you got a freaking reality check today. Because it was an entire body workout, and it was exactly as terrifying as it sounded—no, worse. Waking up in pitch darkness, in a small space, with a corpse, six feet under the ground? Hell naw. You were lucky you'd had enough trauma to know how to push back your panic. Because two years ago, you probably would have rotted down there, helpless.

It left you to wonder, though. Why the ghouls left you alive, and not the dead guy. All the other grave desecrations had been long dead—but you were the first to live.

First, you were going to have to get back to the motel. You already knew the boys were gonna freak.

///

When you opened up the hotel door, the Winchesters sprang out of their chairs, barking your name in surprise. "You're—you're…" Sam stammered as he took in your state. You couldn't blame him; the grave had covered you in dirt from neck to toe.

"Alive. I know," you said. "I'm also really dirty. You mind if I use your guys' shower?"

Sam blinked. "No, not at all, but uh, seriously—what happened?"

You let out a halfhearted, breathy laugh. "Nothing I couldn't handle." You tried to shrug past Dean, but he caught your arm.

"You were gone for three hours," he said.

"Look, we're just worried about you. Could you humor us?" Sam added. His eyes were pleading and damn hard to say no to.

You scowled. "You two gotta tell me what happened on your end first. Deal?"

"Deal," Dean said. "You know most of it. Several grave desecrations of old gravestones, but fresh bodies where bones should be. People in town go missing a few days before that. We split: you went to check on the newest body, while we checked the cemetery. We ganked the ghoul, figured you were coming back from the morgue, but you never showed. After about three hours of looking, we came back here to see if you had maybe come back at all. Actually, we were just about to leave again." Dean clapped his hands. "Did you ever find anything at the morgue?"

"Yeah, the guy had died from…" …asphyxiation. You trailed off. "Oh crap…"

"What? What is it?"

"Asphyxiation. The guy… he, uh, he had died from asphyxiation. Originally, I mean. The ghoul had been burying his food to eat later. Like… like a squirrel. Must have taken the guy out to snack on, but he was already dead." It was all coming together. "The ghoul was either stupid or confident because he got sloppy. Probably because he was too hungry to care. That's why… why I… why I..." Damn it, you let that slip. You peered around them, looking for escape. "Guys, hey, can I just shower? I really just wanna—"

This time, Sam caught your arm. He was gentle, but he had a firm grip. "That's why you what?"

You clammed up, peeling your eyes away from them. "Why I… uh…" you couldn't think of an excuse, and the silence was becoming too long to make a convincing one on the spot. You should have walked into this room with a workable lie in mind, but all you had wanted was to shower, scrub all the dirt off your skin, and to lather soap where you had touched that god-awful corpse. You just wanted to be clean and to sleep.

And you seriously were trying to tell them things. Lying sucked, but this? You weren’t sure if you could tell them this and come out of it in one piece.

Sam softly said your name again, trying to bring your eyes back to his. It was too easy. He knew your tells. Your eyes always gave you away if you lied.

We're never going to let this die, your inner Dean voice sang. And you internally swatted it away. 

I know, you thought sourly. Behind your eyes, a pressure built. Just let me go so I can cry alone. I can't cry in front of you. I can't. "He—it… might have…  buried me alive." It took everything you had in you for your voice to stay steady.

Both of them rocked back a little. Dean looked a little dazed, and Sam looked pale. Sam tilted his head, "Excuse me, buried—?"

"It explains the dirt," Dean sighed. "No offense, sweetheart, but you smell like a toilet."

Oh, shove it, Winchester.

"Yeah, I know. That's why I just want to shower—"

"Hold on," Sam said. He had his hands combing his hair. "Hold on, hold on, just— am I the only one bothered by this?! She— you could have died!"

"But I didn't," "But she didn't," you and Dean said in unison. He winked at you and you rolled your eyes back.

"Sam. I have been through a lot. You know it, I know it. I'm not that girl from two years ago. You said it yourself once before: I'm a Winchester now. And I'm not a Winchester without a few near death experiences."

Sam scowled. "You two are so frustrating. Fine, go. Go take your shower. This conversation isn't over, though."

Thank God. You could handle this later. The conversation alone had keyed you up. You were burning with tension, anxiety, and trauma. You waved a hand at him. "Fine. But can we do it in the morning? I am so frickin' exhausted." It wasn't a lie; you had bruises lining your entire back, and your face muscles hurt from all the fake expressions you were sending Sam.

They can't know that I'm weak. How hard could it be, anyway?

Dean did it once, like a freaking champ. Why couldn't you just suck it up and be a big girl?

He looked on at you with that sad, thoughtful look of his. Complete with the infamous Winchester puppy eyes. "Yeah, sure."

You were happy to get out of the conversation—and this hunt—relatively unscathed. Hopefully, you would never have to go through that crap ever again, or you really didn't think you'd be able to keep yourself together like you just had.

When you shut the bathroom door behind you, you let the silent tears run down your face. You bit your hand, heaving, wishing you had the freedom to scream. But you couldn't, so you didn't. All you did was turn on the shower right as you let out a quiet sob into a towel to muffle it out. 

Why did your life suck so bad?

///

#supernatural #supernatural series #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural gif#SPN#spn gifs#spnfandom#fanfiction#fanfic#Supernatural fanfic#dean winchester#dean#dean fanfiction#sam fanfiction#Sam Winchester#sam#reader#reader insert#x reader#dean x reader#sam x reader#sam x you#sam x y/n#sam x platonic reader#dean x platonic reader#fanfics#fanfictions#spn fanfics#spn fanfictions

I really like Tequila from Lee's world. What would that weird Tom/Ginny combination be like if Lee had never returned to the HP universe? Would they become more like October Tom? Or something else entirely? How would Tequila handle the mad creature their main soul has become?

Oh man, you give Tequila far more credit than I do.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to Tequila below as “he”, mostly because it’s really Wizard Trotsky at the wheel in “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds”. He just happens to rock Ginny Weasley’s adolescent body.

Tequila’s a hot mess, a dumpster fire, and it doesn’t matter if he’s pining after Tom Riddle’s childhood friend Ellie Potter, if Tom is stuck in a diary only to be released to confront Ellie/Harry Potter, or if he’s stuck in a diary and released only to find out Ellie Potter isn’t even there. Tequila will always be a mess.

Let’s say Lee never showed back up. Tequila’s life would be one of hilarity and woe.

Wizard Trotsky likely would have continued masquerading as Ginny, i.e. being Tequila, out of a sheer lack of ability to answer the question “what the hell do I do now?” That’s why he stuck around as Ginny in the first place. 

So Tequila goes to Hogwarts, milks “I’m an invalid, woe is me, I can’t go to class cough cough I am traumatized by snakes on planes” excuse for as long as he can get away with it (which is forever) and ends up with decent marks (having gone through Hogwarts twice now) but not nearly as good as he once had or, say, Hermione has because he’s gotten profoundly lazy. Sadly, this still puts him ahead of 50% of Hogwarts’ population.

Similarly, Tequila’s effort at impersonating Ginny Weasley is half-assed at best. However, because Ginny went through an incredibly traumatic experience, no one gives him shit for it or wonders “Hey, is this really Ginny?” Due to this, Tequila’s soul is dying inside even more than usual. He doesn’t even have to try around these assholes. He could walk up to the wall, spray paint “I am Voldemort, bitch!” and they’d probably just try to console him.

Lee showing back up out of the ether is the most exciting that has ever happened to Tequila possibly ever. It’d be better if Lee wanted to do epic ninja battle, so Tequila could prove how cool and not useless he is and defeat his prophesied enemy, but even Lee just being in the castle, insulting everybody, and lighting all of Hagrid’s pets on fire is amazing.

But anyways, Lee never shows up.

Tequila gets a pretty good idea of who the original Death Eaters were thanks to gossip but there’s not much he can do about it as all the Death Eaters (aside from the ones in prison) have disavowed Voldemort out of self preservation. His showing up as an adolescent schoolgirl just doesn’t have the same effect  and it’d be a little hard to prove who he is given that he doesn’t even really know these people.

Not to mention that Voldemort was this distant thing in the future for him and he has no idea how to actually go about doing any of that. The actual Voldemort has many years experience on him in recruiting, guerilla warfare, logistics, etc. 

Tom Riddle was in dueling club one time, it was great, he learned things.

So Tequila likely wiffle waffles a lot, telling himself, “One day, I’m going to run out on all these assholes, return as Voldemort, and then Granger will cry” only to sigh and realize it’s far more realistic to start from fresh. Besides, why just try to redo what his other half did, he wants to be his own person (a better more competent version! He won’t get blown up by any toddlers!) and that means finding his own cause. And if he can make Dumbledore’s Order his Order, then great.

Not to mention there’s the disturbing possibility that Voldemort’s not quite dead. Now, Tequila can give this credence as being the horcrux, he knows that Voldemort’s not really dead. He’s amazed Voldemort managed to blow himself up with a baby, amazed, embarrassed, and offended, but Tequila isn’t willing to completely throw out the idea that Voldemort’s this evil wraith who occasionally possesses muggle studies professors. Not exactly on Tom Riddle’s bucket list, but clearly, the original screwed up everything and doesn’t even deserve Tequila’s respect.

(Tequila went through a brief, extremely brief, period of wondering if he should seek out the main soul and help him return it to power. Being the horcrux, technically, he should probably serve the original soul.

Then he remembered that asshole had one job, only one job, and he ruined it. Tequila was shoved into a diary for nothing and look what happened. Now there’s a national Harry Potter Day. Clearly, the wrong half of Tom Riddle was put out of commission and if you want it done right you’ve got to do it yourself.)

So, in 1994 without Lee’s involvement, Voldemort returns from the grave. Because I’m realistic, Neville probably dies. Sorry, Neville, you lived a good if short life and I’m sure you gave it the college try. Dumbledore falls into despair and “THE WORLD IS DOOMED!” mode now that all his even remotely prophesied children are MIA and immediately gets the Order of the Phoenix together.

Ginny, being thirteen at the time, isn’t allowed because that would be ridiculous. Despite it being ridiculous to include thirteen year olds, Tequila is pissed that he’ll have to wait another god knows how many years before Molly lets him do what he wants.

Offscreen Dumbledore probably goes through varying levels of extremely horrifying solutions to the Tom Riddle problem.

First, he probably goes horcrux hunting. Unfortunately for Dumbledore, in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” and “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds” there are only two horcruxes and only one was intentional. Tom had originally planned to make seven but the hangover from the first one was so mind breakingly awful he went “New plan, I will make one horcrux, and then I will think of something else”. He never really got around to thinking of anything else.

Dumbledore, however, doesn’t know this. So he dutifully collects memories, banks on Tom’s ridiculously romantic nature, and starts going to places of importance. Not to reveal too much, but Tom actually laid several traps around for those poking their nose around looking for his horcrux. Dumbledore steps into several of these with not so good results.

Given that one of the horcruxes is Ginny and the other is still stuck in Konoha without any access to magic, Dumbledore is 0 for 2.

More, given that only Neville Longbottom was prophesied to have the ability to defeat the dark lord either Dumbledore has to somehow resurrect Neville or else get himself a new Neville. Because I love terrible, but funny, things let’s say he does both and we get a round of Pet Semetary (sometimes, dead is better, Albus) and pulling in Harry Potters/Neville Longbottoms from other dimensions (but miraculously not Eru Lee somehow, which is great for her because she’s busy having a terrible time in the third shinobi war). 

Back to Lee for a bit and why Dumbledore’s first solution isn’t just to desperately try and find her.

First, she is completely off the map and has been for years. She isn’t even registering as “dead” or “in mortal peril” she’s just gone. Somehow finding her and hoping, miraculously, for her blowing up Voldemort a second time just isn’t on the table.

Second, Lee’s involvement in the prophecy is... a bit wonky. This has been noted a bit in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” but the prophecy in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” and “Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds” actually explicitly does not refer to her in that it specifies a male child born at the end of July. This is because the universe is falling apart and we’re all doomed, doomed, doomed, but that’s a different story. Point being, especially in this Lee-less version, Albus has no idea what’s up with Lee but he’s putting his money on Neville. Poor, dead, Neville.

Tequila meanwhile gets to read news of how everything’s going to hell in the dumbest way he can imagine. Voldemort clearly came back wrong and missing a lot of brain cells, even with a body he keeps not taking over the ministry even though they’re practically begging him to do it, and everything he does is not only a) very embarrassing but b) it prevents Tequila from rising into power and becoming amazing.

Clearly, he must be stopped, there can only be one Lord of the Rings.

Well, destroying him completely means destroying Tequila first, and we can’t have that. So Tequila comes up with the only reasonable solution: they have to seal Voldemort’s evil spirit away in some magical artifact.

Tequila drops out of Hogwarts, goes adventuring for a few years, finds some exorcism sword or something and learns how to use it. Comes back and anticlimactically defeats Voldemort while everyone else was busy panicking and Hogwarts was being invaded or some nonsense.

Nobody, not even Tequila, knows how to handle Voldemort’s sudden and very anticlimactic defeat.

Then Tequila recovers and shouts “Weasley is our king!”

Tequila, probably eighteen around this point, is voted the youngest Minister of Magic ever. With Dumbledore dead, Tequila strongarms his way into taking over the Order of the Phoenix, and everything’s coming up Tom Riddle. 

Only then Tom Riddle has that terrible sense of deja vu as the, “What now?” question hovers in his brain. Once again, he has absolutely no answer. Tom is the dog who has caught the car.

Congratulations, Tom.

TL;DR: Without Lee, Tequila would probably end up dealing with the original Voldemort himself/herself. He’s still a mess, he’s learned nothing, and at the end just finds out that actually, he didn’t want to be in power, being in power is stupid.

All he figures out is that he has no idea what he wants.

On the plus side, at least Dumbledore’s dead.

Inktober 2020 #24 - Dig

This comes from the latest incarnation of the very first novel I ever wrote.

When I was 10 I was blown away by a book called “The Girl Who Owned A City”, about a girl my age trying to survive after a plague killed all the adults. This predated the TV/comic series “Jeremiah” by a good bit. The book had a lot of weird shit in it that I now know is libertarian/objectivist bullshit, but at the time I was amazed by it. So, of course, I wrote my own version of the concept, “Below”, which was terrible because I was in 7th grade and in those days, without the Internet, we all sucked when we were young. Then when I was 13, I wanted to enter a contest for teen novel writers, and my mom “helped” me by completely rewriting Below into a totally different, equally terrible work that was terrible in a very different way.

Sometime in my 20′s, I started a rewrite, more or less using the plot skeleton of the original but completely rewriting from the ground up, but I only got, like, two chapters into it. In 2017, I picked up the rewrite again, and would probably have gotten farther with it if not for the 2018 cancer diagnosis. One of the things I did was to add an explicitly autistic character as a counterpart to the main character, who, being that she was originally based on me, is an undiagnosed autistic girl who more or less successfully fakes being NT most of the time. Andy Thorn is a boy, does not successfully fake being NT pretty much ever, and was diagnosed as autistic at some point in his life. He’s also anosmic because my older son is and I wanted to explore how not being able to smell might affect a kid in a world without adults, after a plague.

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The house was like most of the other houses Andy had visited. One window was smashed, but the front and back doors were still locked, and aside from the broken window, there was no evidence anyone had gone inside. “Stay, boys,” Andy told his dogs. They’d led him here, and he didn’t question their noses, but it was good to get independent corroboration.

He used the stepladder he’d been carrying around in the cart attached to his bicycle to climb up to the broken window. Carefully he reached inside, unlatched the lock on the window, and screwed two clamps to the lower rail of the window sash. With the clamps attached, he was easily able to open the window enough to slide inside without hurting himself on broken glass. The front door was deadbolted, but the deadbolt could be opened with the twist of a knob – it didn’t require a key. Andy opened the door and let his dogs in, and then pulled in his cart.

Clifford and Updog immediately began sniffing around, exploring the house. “Clifford. Find the dead thing. Find dead, Clifford.” Tail wagging, Clifford went in search of dead people. “Updog. Heel.” Updog took the appropriate position. “Good boy. Let’s go.” He followed Clifford, and Updog followed him.

They were in the master bedroom, of course. Two of them this time, two men. Their rotting bodies lay next to each other, as if they had huddled together before the end had come.

Andy was here to make a bargain with them. He didn’t need to talk out loud, because they were dead and couldn’t hear him, and because he knew they wanted what he had to offer. Or would have wanted it, if he had been able to make the deal when they were alive on behalf of when they were dead. The dead wanted to be buried. They didn’t want to rot in the pajamas and nightgowns or sometimes naked in the bedsheets that he found them, bringing maggots and disease to the homes they had loved when they were alive. They wanted to go down in the ground and have a stone to mark where they’d been laid to rest. And they would pay him in the bounties of their home, canned goods and medicines and other things Andy could make use of and that they couldn’t anymore.

Stealing was wrong. Andy didn’t like the looters any more than he liked the gangs. The looters stole from people who weren’t alive any more – generally speaking people who had died in a hospital, far away, because they stayed away from the houses that smelled like death – and the gangs stole from the looters. Stealing was wrong, even if you were doing it to survive, because it was wrong. Wrong things didn’t stop being wrong just because you felt like you had to do them. Andy had found another alternative. He performed a service for the dead, and the dead repaid him.

He found bedsheets in the linen closet. Wearing his gloves, which he never forgot because he hated touching anything because everything had germs on it, Andy wrapped the first body in a bedsheet, and then the second one. They didn’t fall apart too much. The skeletons were strong. Some of the meat had rotted enough to fall away from the bone, but it was stuck in the pajamas so it didn’t fall away from the body, and then it was all wrapped up in the bedsheet. Another bedsheet, he carried out to his cart and lined it, and then pulled the cart to the bedroom.

It was hard for a 10 year old boy to move the dead body of an adult man. It involved a lot of pushing and pulling, and eventually, the body fell off the bed onto the cart. Two dead bodies would be too much to carry, so Andy moved the first one first, going back to the front door. “Don’t worry,” he told the dead man. “Your friend comes next. You won’t be alone.”

Outside, he dug in the dirt. Clifford and Updog helped. They liked to dig. For sanitary reasons a grave should be six feet deep, but Andy wasn’t even six feet tall, and there was no way he could dig that much. He dug down about a foot and a half, wide enough for two bodies to lie next to each other, long enough that they could lay mostly straight without having to curl up a lot. It took hours. Not as long as it had taken the first time he did this, when it was his mom and his dad that he was burying; he was stronger now, even if his hands were sore and calloused from all the digging, but it was still hard and it still took half the day.

When he was done digging, he tumbled the body off his cart and into the shallow grave, and then went back for the second body. That one was dumped into the grave too, lying half on top of the first body. Then Andy started putting the dirt that he’d taken out back on them, forming a mound.

He ate two meals there at the house, while he was digging. The cheese that had gone bad in the fridge was covered with mold, but the mold didn’t go all the way into the hard cheese, so he was able to get it all off with a cheese planer. The bread in the pantry was moldy too, but there was an ancient hard baguette that was too crunchy and tough to have grown any mold. Water still ran from the taps, though the hot water was all gone by now. Hard baguette plus water made softer, more edible baguette, and cheese where he’d cut all the mold off tasted weird but satisfied his hunger.  For his second meal he ate cold vegetable soup with milk made from powder, and had a dessert of a can of cherry pie filling.

There wasn’t any dog food in the pantry. They hadn’t had a dog. Most houses Andy visited didn’t have a dog, and the one he did find, the dog had eaten most of the old man’s body, making it very hard to collect all the pieces of the guy to bury them. He’d released the dog; as much as he liked dogs, it was a small yappy dog who barked at him and his dogs a lot and also growled at his dogs, so letting it free to join a wild pack was probably better than making Clifford and Updog jealous or stressed out. Andy did find canned Vienna sausages and canned tuna fish. He liked to eat those things himself, but Clifford and Updog needed meat in their diet; Andy could survive without it as long as he ate things like powdered milk and peanut butter, things with the protein he couldn’t get from most vegetables. So he fed the canned meat to his dogs. It wasn’t very much; they’d need another meal when they all got home.

It was close to evening as he finished shoveling dirt onto the mound. He heard a whistle, and turned. Three boys were standing outside the fence. He was face-blind, so he couldn’t tell from looking at them if he knew them from anywhere. One was a littler kid, maybe seven or eight, but the other two were around his age, 10 or 11 or so. One of the kids his age was white; the other two boys looked like they were from India or Pakistan or something. All three of the boys were wearing hoodies that had some kind of green blob painted on them, that looked as if maybe it was trying to be the same shape each time but whoever had had the can of spray paint wasn’t a good enough artist to be consistent. “Shit, dude,” the white boy said. “Did you just dig a grave for some deads?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

“This your house then? I thought this was the house where the gay guys lived.”

“Is that why they died together?” Andy said.

“Didn’t you know them?” the older brown-skinned boy said. When he talked, Andy recognized him. It was Nish Varma, who’d been in most of his classes with him. “How did you not know they were gay?”

“I didn’t know them,” Andy said. “I looked through all the envelopes in the house to find their names and I wrote them on this rock.” He showed the boys the rock he had written the men’s names on, in crayon because Sharpie markers didn’t stick to rocks as well as crayon did. Andy kept crayons in his pocket for that reason.

“What were you burying them for then?”

“That’s what I do,” Andy said. “I bury the dead. Stealing is wrong so when I need food, I go to houses that have dead people in them, and I bury them.  That’s a service, so I take the food they left as a repayment. That’s better than stealing. There’s nothing wrong with bargaining for what you need and working hard to provide a service and getting paid for it.”

The little boy said, “How can you stand how bad it stinks? We don’t go to houses with dead people! There’s flies everywhere and it smells awful!”

“I can’t smell anything,” Andy said.

The white boy said, “Seriously? You can’t smell that? What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me is called anosmia,” Andy said. “It means I have no sense of smell. It’s like being blind or deaf except for smell.”  He gestured at his dogs. “My dogs here find the dead people houses for me. Dogs don’t mind dead people smells.  So I bury the dead bodies. You’re supposed to make graves six feet deep but that takes grownup men a long time to do and ladders so they can get out, so I don’t dig as deep.”  Andy had suspected that the main reason the houses he visited were usually untouched and unlooted – at most, a broken window or a jimmied door, but no food taken – was that people with a sense of smell couldn’t stand it, and as long as there were still houses where the owners had died in the hospital and so there were no dead bodies on the premises, other kids weren’t desperate enough to go to the houses of the dead.  He knew dead people supposedly smelled bad; he just had no idea what a bad smell was actually like, since he couldn’t smell anything.  But this was the first time he’d had it confirmed.

The white boy whistled again. “But still! You can lift dead grownups and you can dig a hole that big? You must be ripped, man.” He leaned on the fence. “Look, me and my dudes here aren’t here to get on your stake and take the food here. I can see you’ve got big dogs, and you look pretty tough.”

That surprised Andy. Most people didn’t think he looked tough. He used to get bullied a lot. “Maybe I got pretty tough from a lot of digging,” he agreed. Or maybe they were fake complimenting him in a sarcastic way and it was really bullying. Andy could never tell if that was what kids were trying to do until they started laughing. But he preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt and take their word for it until they proved otherwise.

“I’ll just bet,” the white boy said. “That’s why we’re here to recruit you. The Green Bears could use a strong dude like you.”

“You wouldn’t have to dig any more graves,” Nish said. “When you’re a Bear, you get fed.  We’ve got access to gas-powered ranges that are still on, so we get cooked food.”

“We had spaghetti yesterday,” the little boy said. “With sauce!”

“Yeah, and me and my brother are vegetarian but the kids who aren’t vegetarian got meat sauce.”

“And you can live in your own house, since the Civic Center got too full for any more guys,” the white boy said. “The Bears are fucking huge, man.”

Andy winced. “That’s a curse word. You shouldn’t say that word.”

“Oh, like my mommy and daddy are around to wash my fucking mouth out with fucking soap? Fucking shit damn on a bastard son of a bitch. Who’s gonna fucking stop me?”

“No one,” Andy said, “but wrong things don’t stop being wrong just because no one can stop you doing them.”

“Fucking hell, dudes, we got ourselves a real Boy Scout here,” the white boy said, and Nish and his brother and the white boy all laughed.

“No,” Andy said. “I was never in the Boy Scouts.” The other boys laughed harder. Andy scowled. He knew they were laughing at what he said, and he was pretty sure it was probably in a nasty, making-fun-of-him way, but as usual he had no idea why they thought what he’d said was funny.

“Andy’s special,” Nish said, leaning on the fence. “If he doesn’t wanna swear I’m cool with that.” Nish hadn’t been one of the kids who’d bullied him in class. He had never talked to him or tried to be friends with him either, but at least he hadn’t bullied Andy. “How about it, Andy? Come join us!”

“No, thank you,” Andy said politely.

The white boy scowled. “Dude. You have no idea what you’re passing up.”

“That’s okay,” Andy said. “I don’t believe in stealing. Gangs go around stealing things from other kids, so I don’t want to join one.  And I don’t believe in hurting anyone unless they hurt me first.”

“Bullshit,” Nish said. “In third grade you hit the teacher with a chair.”

Andy winced. He had done it because she took his book away while he was reading about dogs, even though he was already done with his assignment, because it was math class and he wasn’t supposed to be reading in math class. It had been totally unfair and triggered a complete emotional meltdown. He’d been suspended for three days and had had numerous Talks with his parents during that time. “I have a bad temper,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I think what I did was right.”

“I think you’d better reconsider,” the white boy said. “Carrie doesn’t like it when we report to her that some guy didn’t want to join the Bears. She’s psycho, man.”

“Who is Carrie?”

“Carrie Mulhaney. She’s Rich’s younger sister and second in command. When guys say they won’t join the Bears, she burns their houses down.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Andy said.

“I’m not fucking with you, man. I’m serious. She will burn your fucking house down.”

“With what?” Andy said. “Gasoline? Wood that’s on fire? Alcohol?”

“Are you serious?” the boy said. “With whatever! What does it matter?”

“My dogs are trained to smell dangerous things for me,” Andy said. “Fire is a smell they’re trained on. Gasoline is a smell they’re trained on. Natural gas is a smell they’re trained on. I don’t know of anything that can be used to burn down a house that isn’t a smell they’re trained on.” He smiled, with all his teeth, because a couple of kids in his class said that when he smiled with all of his teeth he looked like a psycho and he should stop doing that, except that right now, these boys were threatening him so looking like a psycho so they would leave him alone was a good thing. “I have guns upstairs in my house. If my dogs alert me that someone is bringing a dangerous smell to my house, I’ll take my dad’s rifle and I’ll shoot whoever is on my property. And dogs can smell a dangerous thing from a long way away. I could tell you all about how good dogs are at smelling, if you want.” Most kids never wanted to hear him talk about dogs. Occasionally adults would listen to him, but there were no adults anymore.

“Don’t let him get started,” Nish said. “If he starts talking about dogs he never shuts up.”

“Your funeral, man,” the white boy said. “If you’re saying no, you’re saying no, but I betcha Carrie isn’t worried about your guns.”

“That’s good,” Andy said. “If she’s not worried about them, then she won’t take precautions and it’ll be easy to shoot her if she comes into my yard.”

“Whatever,” the white boy said. “Come on, dudes, let’s go. We don’t need this loser anyway.”

“Weirdo,” the little boy said. “Creepy weirdo. We don’t even want him in the Bears.”

They left. Andy brought his dogs back into the house, sat down on the dead men’s plush, soft sofa, and called his dogs up on to the sofa with them. Then he hugged them while he cried. Emotional confrontations upset him, a lot. He’d gotten better at controlling his temper since third grade, and he could hide the fact that he wanted to cry until he was alone or with a safe grownup, but he couldn’t keep himself from crying indefinitely. Updog lay his head and paws down on Andy’s lap, which was heavy but comforting anyway, and Clifford snuggled close so Andy could hug him and cry against his fur.

After he was done crying, it was time to take his payment and go home. His dogs needed food, and he had candy bars at his house that he was saving for stressful times like this. He loaded his cart with the powdered milk and all the cans he could fit, as well as a bunch of fitness food replacements like energy bars and protein powder. Maybe tomorrow he’d come back for the rest of the cans; he didn’t know how fast dead smell cleared out of a house, though, so it was possible that other kids would hit the place before he had a chance to.

It was dark, and Andy had a hard time finding his way in the dark, but he trusted his dogs to know the way. “Home, Clifford. Home, Updog,” he said, and they trotted in front of him, pulling just hard enough on their leashes to lead him forward.  Really, he was only holding their leashes to make them feel secure, because they were trained with leashes; he knew they would walk with him if he let go of the leashes, and it was hard to pull his heavy cart with one hand and hold onto two big dogs’ leashes with the other, but he did it anyway because his dogs expected it and he know how upset he got when things happened that he didn’t expect, so he imagined his dogs felt the same way.

CRAWFEATHER! : MLP Fan Fiction

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CRAWFEATHER!

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

1382 words

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 10/16/19

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Cory grinned meanly as he bounced the heavy bag from hoof to hoof while he offered, “Yah, I got the money that I owes you, Canter.  It's right here.  Not gonna pay you, though.  Not yet.  I means, it is Nightmare Night.  I will give you the money first thing in the morning.  Just spend the night in the old Crawfeather place.  Should be a piece of cake, after all, you don't believe in ghosts, so you says.”

“You are on, Cory.  But make it 300, if you make me stay in there for the night!”

“You got it, Canter, if you stay the night, I'll make it 300 when you come out at dawn.”

Now he was creeping down one of the empty hallways of the long abandoned mansion of Crawfeather.  The darkness relieved only by the single candle held in Canter's magic.  Old furniture mostly covered by aged dust covers dotted the passage.  He shivered, and it was not from the cold.  He was wishing that he had not taken the dare to spend this Nightmare Night in the reputedly haunted Crawfeather mansion.  Still, 300 golden bits was 300 golden bits.

Canter remembered all too vividly the ghastly past of this place.  The land that the mansion was built on was originally owned by the Bordens, back in the very earliest days of Ponyville, before there was any sort of formal town.

After the Apple Clan had demonstrated the value of the land in the area for farming by creating one of the most productive apple orchards in Equestria, the land rush was on!  The Bordens had claimed a big area and invested all that they had into clearing the land.  It proved to be too stony for any sort of farm.  It wasn't just loose surface stone either.  Rough upthrust sedimentary rock made up most of it. Clyde's attempts to sell it to newcomers became a local joke.

Clyde Borden put the land up in a card game and lost it to Jason Crawfeather.  For weeks afterwards, Clyde crowed about how bad Jason was taken in by winning that worthless land.  Jason and his family quietly ignored him and set industriously to work.  It was not too long before the Crawfeather Quarry was supplying the good building stone for foundations and nicely split slates for stout, weatherproof roofs that the rapidly growing community of Ponyville needed.

The fortune earned by the Crawfeathers and the resentment of the Bordens stoked the flames of the feud that followed.  The orgy of murder was started by Poxy, one of Clyde's grown colts.  

Swinging an ax, he charged into the Crawfeathers and some guests, who were dining on their plaza!  By the time that it was over, Chance Crawfeather was carried up to his room, his life blood soaking the sheets and bolster of his bed as he died.

Sweetbriar Crawfeather, Jason's wife was laid out in the great room.  One of the guests was a doctor who managed to stanch her wounds and saved her life.  She would carry those scars to her grave.

Poxy was caught before he could escape.  Three strong unicorns from the quarry held him down while Jason brained him with his own ax.

Pretending serious remorse for the actions of her brother, Lisset Borden came to serve the remaining Crawfeathers as a maid.  She soon learned that all three of them, Jason, Sweetbriar, and their remaining filly, Sunblossom had a fondness for tomato soup.  She served the unsuspecting family a tasty soup of tomatoes, basil, and a strong portion of poison hemlock.

Sunblossom collapsed at the table.  In spite of the pangs from her own stomach, Sweetbriar assisted Sunblossom up to her room.  In her attempt to appear innocent, Lisset helped her too.

Jason, in spite of the agony in his own innards, called for help from the house staff.  It took them only moments to find the bottle that had contained the deadly concoction.  They captured Lisset as she was coming down the stairs.  Lisset was made to drink the soup that remained.  She was dead before the ghastly wails of Sweetbriar announced the passing of Sunblossom.

Both Jason and Sweetbriar were ill for weeks before they recovered from the effects of the hemlock.  In one regard Sweetbriar never recovered.  Seeing both of her foals murdered by ax and poison drove her into madness.

She was known to haunt the rooms where they died and sought them about the mansion and their play yard.  She even went down into the quarry seeking her “lost” foals.  Most watched her with pity.

Searching the play yard again, as the year was passing into autumn, Sweetbriar stumbled on something concealed from her sight by her madness.  The headstones of her missing foals, Chance and Sunblossom could no longer be denied.  She avidly read what was on each stone.  Instead of wailing her loss, her heart became harder than the stones of the Crawfeather Quarry.

On a late autumn night with no moon to betray her, Sweetbriar sneaked down into the developing town of Ponyville.  Unseen by any, she poured lamp oil over the front porch and back stoop of the Borden house and set it ablaze.  Cunningly, she did not stay to see how her plot played out but repaired back to Crawfeather, avoiding the many foals out in fanciful costumes.

Entering the house, she beheld the horrid sight of Clyde Borden hacking at the dead body of her beloved Jason with a double bit ax!  She seized the weapon from his grasp as he pulled back for another stroke!  With the power of her rage and madness, she took Clyde's head from his body in a single stroke!

She dropped the ax, which stuck upright in the floor boards.  In her struggles to drag the corpse of the assassin off of her husband's body, her feet slipped in the spilled gore and she lost her footing! She fell on the ax and the razor sharp blade cut her throat!

The house staff and their foals returned from their Nightmare Night, which had been made more exciting by the deadly house fire that had destroyed the Borden house and, apparently all the remaining Bordens!

The town's newly appointed constables had far more to deal with than the usual Nightmare Night pranks.  At least the feud would go no further. Neither Borden nor Crawfeather remained alive to carry it on.

Canter's reverie was broken by the creaking of hinges.  His ears straining to hear more failed to spot any further sound.  This was not the first such sound that he'd heard, either.  He had traced the first ones to open windows upstairs and drafts making old doors swing.

There was a creaking floorboard behind him!  Whirling about in startlement he saw . . . Cory!

“Just checking up on you, Canter.  Realized that you are missing out on Nightmare Night partying.  Brought you a little to make up for it. Here.  Got you something to drink in the bottle and a bunch of candies.”

“Nice of you, Cory.”

As Canter took the bag, the knife that Cory was hiding behind it plunged up, through the bottom of his jaw and into his brain through the weak area of skull on the underside!

Canter collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.

Cory's gloat of, “Looks like that money stays mine!  You ain't going to see the dawn . . .” was interrupted!

Screaming foals in Nightmare Night costumes ran from the old parlor and out into the night!  The last one bucked the doors shut!  The locking click of the latch was like a trump of doom!  Cory was panting frantically and pounding on the door when the old handle turned.  The opened door showed a brace of constables waiting to take him to jail.

Canter looked about, sort of puzzled.  Everything was sort of gray, in spite of which, he could see clearly.  There was a pony before him, also gone gray, and a good thing. He had several huge wounds.  At least he was not bleeding from them.  Canter could see furniture through him.

He invited, “Canter, right?  I am Jason.  Why don't you come with me and meet the rest of the family?”

~THE END~

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