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consumeconstantly · 4 years

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Those Who Are Kind

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Summary: Siblings are the last thing on Marinette’s mind as she begins her frantic search for Tikki. Really, she can’t even consider them siblings, not yet. But they’re along for the ride, whether she wants them to be or not.

Duke doesn’t know what to make of the current situation.

He’s always known that the Waynes are crazy, insane, even, but he loves them all the same, in the begrudging, cautious way he cannot shake. (This approach has served him well over the years, allowing him to avoid multiple schemes that Tim or Jason typically start up to rile up Damian. From there, everything is guaranteed to snowball. The only time things get really bad is when Cass gets involved.) To him, it’s always been a bit uncanny how similar all the brothers looked, despite the fact that none of them shared blood. All of them had the same sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones and defined bodies. Only Tim and Damian differed slightly, with Tim having a dancer’s figure instead of that of a body builder or demolitions expert, and Damian having green eyes instead of blue. It’s also disconcerting that everybody the Waynes are more intimately involved with have some sort of alter ego. He often joked with other members of the Justice League that heroism ran in Bruce’s blood.

With the new addition of Marinette to their family, he has to say that he’s been proven right.

A girl who had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes in any capacity other than the fact that she and Bruce share blood becoming a hero. The leader of a team. Fighting supervillains at the age of thirteen.

He’s very, very glad that he was not adopted by or shared blood with Bruce. He doesn’t think he could have handled being a superhero at age thirteen. He can barely handle being Signal now some days, and he’s an adult. The amount of responsibility on Marinette’s shoulders is difficult to understand. To be the sole wielder of magic that can revert an entire city back to its original state. To bring people back from the dead.

Dick is strangely quiet. A car is driving them from a pit stop near a zeta tube to Marinette’s hospital.

Hands down, Dick is the most sane male of the Wayne family, not including Alfred. But there are times when Duke sees the weight that he carries. All the times that he refuses to talk about the burdens that he bears. Moving forward with a smile when he’s in pain. When he gets in a mood like this, he’s hard to read. But given the circumstances, it’s fairly clear exactly what’s bothering him.

“He’s known about her this entire time,” Dick says, tinted windows allowing Duke a glance at his expression, carefully devoid of any telling emotions. “Nineteen years. He kept her a secret.”

“It’s Bruce.” The man is known for keeping secrets.

“Yeah, but Marinette is family. She should have been, at least. And now…”

Now she’s all alone when she should be surrounded by people that love her, praising her for her victory, for how she shouldered so much responsibility at such a young age. But by bringing her to a hospital in America, she’s been cut off from her team, and any support system she should have had is gone.

“You and her,” Duke says, looking for a way to comfort him. “You’ll get along. You’re similar, after all.” After they brought Gabriel and Lila to the a top security prison and sent Emilie to a hospital that couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, they got two files from Tim. One detailing Ladybug and all of her exploits. The second, detailing Marinette’s life.

Duke has watched the videos. Has watched how Ladybug leads by example, comes up with the plan and begins the execution. How she shoulders more battles than she should.

He’s seen Marinette pull people together with a smile on her face, even while she’s running on empty after a strenuous akuma attack.

Dick and Marinette are alike.

“We’re too much alike,” Dick says. “I suspected for a long time that Bruce had another kid that he wasn’t telling us about, but I thought that if he was keeping her away from us, then maybe she’d have a shot at leading a good life. A normal life. Not the one she got. Sabine’s— Bruce’s biological daughter shouldn’t be somebody like me. She deserves better.”

Duke is acutely aware that Dick’s parents were also murdered, but whatever relation he had with Sabine is something he’s never been willing to talk about. There are pictures in his apartment of a petite Asian woman with a soft smile standing next to him, but whenever asked about her, Dick never gives a straight answer.

“Nobody has the ability to change the past.” Duke claps a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He sags imperceptibly under the weight.

Well— actually, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, given the fact that magic, aliens, and metahumans all coexisted, supplemented by the fact that multiple members of Marinette’s team do have the ability to travel back in time, but that’s another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of information on the Miraculous, and all of their knowledge is coming from Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Zatara, and even the three of them don’t know everything.

“But you have the chance to do good by her. Be a good older brother, like I know you are.”

A thin smile appears on Dick’s face. “She’s going to need more than just one good influence on her life. And Damian is better, but you saw how he looked at her when Bruce brought her through the Zeta tubes. Tim’s not going to react well either, and Jason is a wild card. She’s not going to get the support she needs if she stays with us.”

Duke crosses his arms, knees brushing up against the back of the car seat. “The only person whose actions you’re responsible for are your own. Don’t worry about them. If they don’t like her, they’ll just avoid her.”

That’s certainly not true— all of the members of the Wayne family are notorious for going hard after all of the things they don’t like. But... it’s comforting to hear. Sometimes temporary and known lies are much nicer than harsh realities.

She’s gone.

All of her belongings are missing, the IV needle is hanging from the stand, the window open, and Marinette is missing from her bed.

At least she left a note?

Be back soon — Marinette

“Great,” Duke mutters under his breath. “Another incredibly vague, cryptic Wayne.”

Dick’s face turns to ash. “Her legs. Her head. She can’t go out so soon. Hold on, maybe Barbara can pull up some footage.”

“On the bright side, there’s no blood,” Duke says.

“That’s not a bright side.”

“It is,” Duke argues. “She fell in the worst places possible, right on top of that broken glass casket. If she’s not bleeding that clearly means she didn’t pull her stitches on her mad escape out.”

When Ladybug fell, they’re not exactly sure what happened, because the screen showed Ladybug collapsing almost gracefully. When they arrived on the scene, she flickered between Ladybug and Marinette as her earrings beeped. Her legs were slashed from falling on the glass with a seemingly unnatural force— simply falling would not have garnered cuts that large— and her head was twisted at an odd angle, debris bloodied beneath her.

Somehow, the Miraculous Cure seemed to be working backwards. Not from the epicenter out, but rather from the edge of the damage, in. It worked slowly, every mile taking minutes instead of mere seconds. It hadn’t happened before in any of the battles.

It was useful in apprehending Hawkmoth and Pavona, who were still knocked out. But Marinette, even after the Miraculous Cure washed over her, didn’t get healed. Her injuries didn’t revert. There was still a gash on her stomach from Hawkmoth’s cane, still muscles exposed on the back of her legs and blood on her neck. When she was first brought in, the doctors feared that she may be permanently incapacitated.

Good at keeping to her word at least. She came swinging through the window with worry on her face and grief in her eyes.

“I need to go back to Paris,” she says.

Dick will undoubtedly say no. He’s a very protective person, and Marinette is the center of his current efforts.

But she doesn’t look injured. He eyes her stance. She’s standing with no effort, walks with no limp. No hospital dress, no blood on her neck, no bruises in all of the places he was expecting them to be. Marinette does not look like she just faced a world ending threat less than twenty four hours ago. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s permanently lost the use of her legs. There’s the familiar Wayne Brand Stubbornness in her eyes— no way she’s not Bruce’s kid— that tells him that she’s going to get to Paris one way or another, and that they’re either lucky they were even notified in the first place or that she wants to use a resource that they have that she does not have access to. It’s fairly obvious what that resource is, considering that Paris is nine hours away by any normal plane and it sounds like she wants to get there in minutes, and not hours. Duke also knows that if they don’t take what she’s offering now, she’ll use an alternative method that definitely won’t be as nice or clear cut.

He jumps in before Dick can say anything. “We’ll take you as long as we go with you every step of the way.”

Oh, he’s going to get in so much trouble for doing this. Dick is looking at him with his Disapproving Dad glare, and he can imagine Bruce going into brooding silence when he hears that Duke allowed this to happen.

Marinette’s lips pinch together, but she nods. “Where’s the nearest zeta tube?”

Barbara gets Dick’s text and sighs in frustration.

She’s already got her hands full with watching Tim, who’s spiralling trying to find information about the Miraculous, muttering under his breath in the way he does when he gets a particularly hard case to crack. He’s gone through six cups of coffee in the last hour, and he kicked off his research with a combination of 5 Hour Energy, Monster, three packets of sugar, and 10 caffeine shots. Soon, she’ll have to start limiting his caffeine intake, but right now it’s clear that any attempt to get him to stop his research now will fail spectacularly. At least she’s not in charge of Damian and Jason. Wherever they are, they’re definitely on the move and not happy.

She never thought she'd be able to say she’s happy about being paralyzed from the waist down, but she certainly doesn’t want to be chasing after one of the two hellions. Cass definitely has her hands full and whoever’s watching Jason— wait, is anybody even watching Jason? Typically Roy gets stuck with Jason-sitting duty, but he’s been out for a while.

Barbara groans. Jason is probably on his own, wreaking havoc.

Great.

She’ll deal with that later, even though she has no doubt she’ll regret that decision, but if Marinette is gone from her room, Dick needs the footage, and somebody needs to find where she is. The nurse put in her latest report that her legs were almost healed and that she didn’t show any signs of a concussion, but Marinette was in bad shape when she got admitted to the hospital. Even though Barbara doubts that there was any misdiagnosis, given that Bruce sprung for a VIP room in one of the pricier hospitals, in a world where magic and aliens are present, who knows what’s true or not.

“Tibet!” Tim jumps up from his hunched over position for the first time in hours. “I’m going to Tibet, the closest zeta tubes are three hours by car away, but I can get somebody to loan Wayne Industries a helicopter while I’m over there.”

“Sit down, Tim.” Barbara takes her glasses off and pinches the bridge of her nose. Why can’t Bruce rein in his children? Why is she the one stuck babysitting? “Marinette left her hospital room.”

That certainly gets Tim to put the brakes on his movements towards the zeta tube in the bat cave.

“What?”

“I said, she left her hospital room. Just sit down while I send the information over. It’s not going to do you any good to rush into things anyways.”

A quick review of the surrounding CCTV shows that Marinette didn’t travel far, just around the hospital. She’s looking for something, calling out for it, too. Barbara grabs that file and slows it down so she can read her lips. “Dickie? Do she and Dick know each other already?”

A quick text back to Dick reveals that Marinette has already returned to the room and—

Oh, hell.

“Well,” Barbara pushes her laptop away from her, letting Tim watch the files she’s pulled up. “It looks like we’re taking a family trip to Paris.”

Somehow, Marinette almost manages to lose all four of them within the first four minutes of roaming around Paris.

Luckily, their family has an almost absurd amount of luck between all of them (not all of it good) and the person Barbara was half sure she could only find in prison, beating up Hawkmoth and Pavona, runs into Marinette on the streets and herds her back to them.

“Lose something?” Jason asks, arm slung around Marinette’s shoulder, the smaller, younger girl looking rather upset at having her plans thrown off.

“I told them that they could follow me,” Marinette argues without much real bite. It’s not my fault if they can’t keep up, is the clear meaning of her statement.

Again, Barbara is very impressed that the barely nineteen year old somehow managed to shake off vigilantes with decades of experience with ease. But it is, at least, partially due to her disability. Every time she goes out in her wheelchair, her heart aches a little, especially as the civilians she passes eye her with pity. Barbara doesn’t want pity. Doesn’t need pity. She shouldn’t feel anything when people look at her like she can’t keep up, because she can keep up.

Most of the time, anyways.

It doesn’t matter how she uses her tech skills to modify her wheelchair and deck it out with all the equipment she could ever need, or that she can easily get up to speeds rivalling sports cars for short periods of time before the power runs out. When she’s stuck in her wheelchair, she loses the maneuverability she had when she wasn’t paralyzed.

She couldn’t follow Marinette through the alleyways because she was stuck. Barbara was the one who noticed her escape first. If only she were more capable, she could have—

But it’s okay now. Jason ran into her. Marinette is back with them.

“I need to search for something, and none of you can help.” She’s not intentionally being rude when she says it, and if anything, sounds apologetic. Barbara sees the similarities between Marinette and Bruce. It makes a lot of sense that the two of them are father and daughter, when the two of them are so insistent on keeping major issues to themselves. Marinette twists herself out from underneath Jason’s arm, clutching her purse. Her head doesn’t move, but her eyes are wild.

“We can help,” soothes Duke, ever the voice of reason. “You know who we are.”

“And I’m guessing you’ve all either deduced who I am or have been told my identity,” counters Marinette. “Which means you should know why I can’t have you helping me.”

Barbara and Duke exchange pointed glances.

“That’s not really clear to us, actually,” says Barbara. Marinette isn’t moving, but the way her shoulders tense makes her believe that the younger girl is ready to run at the drop of a hat.

A small group of people from the parade on the streets tumbles into the alleyway they’re resting in. They smell like cheap booze and sweat.

“What are all of you doing in this alley?” one says, after he finished vomiting up his last (very colorful) meal. “You should be out there partying with the rest of us! Celebrating Ladybug and her team.”

“Fuck Hawkmoth and Pavona,” says another solemnly, with neon face paint and pigtails with glitter string intertwined. “Their defeat should be celebrated by even the darkest souls.”

Jason, easily amused by their antics, looks very willing to join them. “Yeah Marinette, we should be celebrating Ladybug not—”

As one, everybody looks at the place where Marinette was, just moments ago. The alley is decidedly empty of a small asian girl with blue eyes and pigtails.

“Fuck,” Jason curses.

“Fuck is right,” Duke agrees, placing a hand over his temple.

Marinette manages to disappear for three hours.

Three full hours.

“She’s good,” Tim says, typing into the holographic computer embedded into his sleeve.

Paris’ CCTVs are painfully easy to hack into, though he suspects that the lack of attention to them may have to do with the fact that everybody in the city is celebrating. Policemen, politicians, artists, students, scientists— people from all walks of life are in the streets today, screaming and shouting and being free for the first time in years.

He spies more than just a few dozen people bawling their eyes out within a few minutes. But that’s not surprising, considering how long Parisians have had to suppress their emotions for.

Dick and Barbara are still in the midst of profiling Marinette, trying to determine the most likely places where she’d stop by, either as Ladybug or herself. All of Ladybug’s usual haunts are decidedly devoid of the young heroine, though Tim does manage to catch a good amount of footage of the other young heroes like Carapace and Rena Rouge, who are most definitely in a relationship based on their makeout session on top of the eiffel tower (one of the first places Tim checked), Viperion, who seems to be the only one from Ladybug’s team to be seeking out the crowd which seems rather atypical considering that the hero never frequented interviews or was spotted on news coverage all that frequently, and Chat Noir and Queen Bee who Jason insisted were in a relationship as well, though the rest of them believed they were only embracing each other out of comfort— Chat Noir looks like he’s been crying for hours, and Queen Bee looks like she’s barely holding it together.

Ryuko has not shown up on camera once today. Neither has Ladybug.

The second place Tim checks is the bakery. She is not there either, though another girl is. It doesn’t seem like the girl has any ill intent, but Duke is more than happy to pull up past files to see if she’s been there before, if she has any reason to be there, and who exactly she is.

Just as Barbara and Dick are debating the chances that Marinette would be at Le Grande Paris, she walks past one of the cameras focused on Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Tim has the system rigged up so that any facial matches for Marinette automatically alerts the room. He hadn’t been able to replicate that with Ladybug’s face for some bizarre reason which is why he, Barbara, Dick, and Jason are manually combing through the areas where Dick and Barbar think she may be (magic is why, but Tim has always believed that technology can be used against and with most forms of magic) so it’s lucky that she enters as Marinette.

“Kagami Tsurugi,” Duke says triumphantly. “She visited often when Tom and Sabine were still alive. Potential candidate to represent France or Japan for Sabre in the next Olympics. Definitely friends with Marinette.”

“Thank God,” sighs Dick. “Now let’s get over there.”

It’s truly, truly unfortunate that they set up shop quite a distance away from the bakery.

They take too long to arrive.

Perhaps it was a mistake, telling Kagami first.

No, not just perhaps. It was a mistake. A bad one.

But Kagami was pushing so hard, and Marinette was so tired and so alone without Tikki at her side, without the knowledge that her parents would be waiting for her. Kagami pushed and pushed and pushed about why the house felt so empty, why there was dust on the floor, why the bakery was closed for so long, and where were Tom and Sabine? Why weren’t they there for the team yesterday, when the battle was won, when they knew how important it was to be there for Adrien who had just lost all three of his parental figures?

The moment the words fall from Marinette's lips, she knows she shouldn’t have revealed it at that moment, because Kagami draws in on herself, lips turning downwards, hands curling into fists.

Kagami has come a long way from the girl she was in lycèe. The thrill of victory is still something she enjoys, but not something she needs to feel secure in her place in the world. She has trouble expressing her emotions, but when it comes down to it, she communicates everything necessary to understand why.

With the news of Tom and Sabine’s death, she withdraws into herself, shifts back into that thirteen year old Marinette first met. Logic and rationale thrown to the wind in favor of cold anger.

It’s no secret that Ryuko, Ladybug, and Viperion are the main strategists of their team. Viperion, out of his duty of using Second Chance and his ability to keep a level head in the face of constant death. Ladybug out of necessity as her position as team leader and the power of Lucky Charm. Theoretically, the two of them should have been enough. But over the years, Kagami became Marinette's favored confidante; though Ladybug trusts all of her team to keep a tight hold on any information she gives them, Kagami is one of the few who is able to pick apart a given situation and transform the monsters they face into manageable pieces.

Today, it is Kagami who has broken to pieces. Very angry, razor sharp shards that seek to hurt.

“You lie to the media, tell them a pretty tale of how they died due to a break in. Why do you avoid pinning their deaths on Lila as you should? To absolve a quality woman from guilt?”

Marinette can’t look Kagami in the eyes.

Her parents deserved a peaceful death. To pass on in old age, hand in hand. Not looking on as a family member died, in fear of what would happen next for their daughter.

“The police know. The judges know,” Marinette protests weakly, but without much eight behind her words.

Kagami just scoffs. “Tom and Sabine were kind people. To not tell the media what truly happened— that’s preventing Lila from getting the full force of what’s coming to her. What happens if she gets out of prison one day? Without any real deaths to her name, she could just flee to another country to escape it all. And when another person loses their life because of her…”

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. If somebody else gets injured in any way, shape or form at the hands of Lila Rossi, it’s Marinette’s fault. Marinette gets what Kagami is trying to say. She thinks the same thing, after all.

“My parents would not want their death publicized in that manner.” It’s the truth, but it’s said so weakly that the words come off as little more than a weak defense, and Kagami takes the words and twists their truth.

“You know little of your parents, considering that you’re their daughter.” Kagami stands stock still, not a single extra muscle moving. “Perhaps if you spent more time with them as Marinette instead of unsuccessfully gallivanting around as Ladybug, you’d have realized that Tom and Sabine admire truth above all else, even if it is painful.”

Kagami does not ask a single question about where Marinette was last night, or how Marinette felt over the loss of her parents or when she saw all those she held dear lying still on the ground after Hawkmoth and Pavona’s final attacks. She just purses her lips and sweeps out the door.

And then she’s gone, and Marinette is alone once more.

The bakery is bone-achingly quiet.

Every step Marinette takes creates such a disturbance in the peace that moving hurts.

But she can’t stay here. She can’t stay here. She does not deserve to stay here. Kagami is right. Marinette was a bad daughter. She could have prevented their death, could have given them justice sooner, could have—

And Marinette can’t breathe. She tries to, she tries so hard to, but she chokes.

She kneels down on the floor— Kagami is right again, the place is dusty, because Marinette couldn’t bring herself to use the living room and kitchen without her parents, could barely bring herself to sleep in her bedroom because she knew that her parents were not sleeping soundly in the bed below hers— and scrabbles at her throat, vision coming in and out.

Her legs burn. She knows that during the final battle, her legs were cut towards the end of it, and they should be healed, she should be okay now, she’s better than this, she’s—

Somebody gathers her in their arms. They smell slightly of Lotus flowers, just like Maman, and cradle her ever so gently.

Marinette’s eyes open— black hair, greyish eyes filled with understanding and love and—

She can breathe again.

She falls asleep.

“Cass?” Dick’s eyes widen at her unexpected appearance at Marinette’s home.

“I thought you were on Damian guard duty,” Barbara says, fixating on the red around Marinette’s eyes and the barely dried tear tracks on her face.

“Where’s that Kagami girl?” Jason scuffs his shoes on the hardware floor, silently marking the footprints on the floor and getting a general idea of what occurred before they were able to get here based on Marinette’s current state and the other girl’s absence. “I want to have some words with her.”

Cass inclines her head sharply, eye sparking with anger. Jason’s fists rise unconsciously— Cass rarely gets angry, and whenever she gets angry at a specific person, that means they’ve done something very, very wrong— ready to hunt down Kagami. Marinette sniffles and shifts in Cass’ one armed embrace, to which Cass places a finger over her lip and shakes her head, a universal sign to be quiet.

Jason scowls but settles down.

They’re quiet as they wait for Marinette to wake.

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip @theunquiet-dead @sleep-deprived-aroace @enternalempires @lilkymilky @woe-is-me0 @officiallydarkgeek @miyla-lokidottir @queencommonsense @demonicbusiness @iamablinkmarvelarmy

@emark7 (i will have the edited version of these on ao3 eventually but i think the link to ch 1 on this one works)

where i ended this doesn’t feel very good but ehhhhhhhhhh my writing process is summary then word vomit that barely correlates which means nothing makes sense unless i edit but looking back at my work makes me cringe so at a crossroads yayyy

also can you guys tell which prompts ive written these for because i’m curious

#bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #bio!dad bruce #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #bruce wayne #duke thomas #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #barbara gordon #tim drake #cassandra cain #batfam

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freetobeafcknriot · 3 years

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apocalypse world midam for the hc ask please? thank u

hello! okay so, i got (unsurprisingly) carried away. i kept it at five but they're a bit long, so i'll put them under the cut. also i wasn't sure whether you wanted the apocalypse world from the show or not; i went with a generic, completely unrelated au, tell me if i got it wrong!

i hope they're not terrible! :')

𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑚 + 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑦𝑝𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑!𝑎𝑢

okay so — they meet by accident. and by accident, i mean that adam was hiking his way up to a meeting point after he got separated from his mom and the group of people he basically grew up with. we’re several generations from now in the future; the world is at its limits, nature has taken its course, and the few humans that still walk the earth are descendants of the ones who survived a big extinction-level event a few decades ago. they live in units, basically, with very little ways to communicate with each other, but they manage somehow. anyway, yeah, it’s not a safe world to live in if you count natural disasters, wild animals, and strange beasts that are kind of like the monsters preternatural tales talk about. what happens is, one day, adam is alone. it’s a miracle that he managed to survive to see another day honestly, it wasn’t a good night for him and being the sane person that he is, he’s freaked out, to say the least. but he manages to stay rational enough to decide that if the others are still alive they’ll make their way up to one of the nearest safe zones. so he gets his bearings and moves. which is easier said than done because what the sea didn’t reach, the forests did. but yeah anyway — one day, he meets michael.

it would be more accurate to say that michael saved his ass, actually. adam’s not a scaredy cat or a damsel in distress by all means, but remember the monsters i mentioned before? yeah, they suck and there is very little chance of survival. so this stranger appears out of the blue and saves adam. it’s unclear if he did it out of the goodness of his heart because later on, when adam tries to take a look at an ugly scratch on his arm, the response isn’t great. he finds out that the strange man’s name is michael and apparently his strength equals his idiosyncrasies. he’s kind of rude, stubborn, haughty, and overall interacting with him is unnerving and weird, and he thinks the exact same thing about adam. they argue more than they talk, but they end up sticking together (out of convenience and need at first, then later on things start to level up).

michael has cryptic mannerisms and apparently, he doesn’t have anyone left. he seems lost, but not in a childish way, there is some sort of sorrow and something old and unique that adam can’t pinpoint and michael won’t reveal. point is, the plan is to go north and hope to reach this camp adam never saw before but has heard of. he knows where it is, but the trail is long and exhausting; there is two of them though, and they sort of compliment each other. once michael begins to patronize adam less and stops giving off the impression he would rather be literally anywhere else, and once adam gets less snarky and impulsive and starts to approach him in a different, more patient way — they get to an agreement and it’s good! because adam has the knowledge of a healer and is actually smart, so he knows when to keep out of the rain from the color of the clouds and which berries and herbs are good to gather. and michael, for his part, knows his way around nature, it’s like his senses are enhanced, and he’s strong beyond belief. heals fast, too. man, the things he can do with a small pebble. . .

they travel and they get close, eventually. especially when they reach their destination and find it in ruins — the damages are pretty recent, and there are bodies here and there, plagued with some sort of disease. it’s a lot, but they have each other. so they decide the best course of action and move on with the intention of finding other humans. some days, the fatigue gets so much they have to stop (it’s mostly adam, and he’s so stubborn michael literally picked him up and went and dropped himself under a tree once, legs on either side of the younger man’s body. adam got him back when he was the one being insufferable, he all but snapped, ‘i love you, but if you don’t rest for a godamn minute and let me see that wound i’m gonna smack you’. wasn’t the best way to say i love you but it worked). other days, they manage to go more than 24 hours without threats (sometimes they run into abandoned places and they’re lucky enough to find supplies. michael managed to put together something resembling a sweet once and it was so worth the sunny smile on adam’s face!). it’s ups and downs, really,

the one thing that never changes is, they always talk. and they always find something good to be seen in one another. they sit on top of some old tree every day before sunset, because it’s safer, and they share what little they have. they stay in each other's space — both as companions seeking for warmth and as lovers. the sky doesn't look right. the color is off and there is always the possibility that one day the sun might just go out; they know, they talked about it. so michael puts his arm around adam's shoulders and adam takes his hand, and they discuss which way they'll go look for other people that surely are out there the following day. that is, until their conversations shift to anecdotes about the long-gone species and plants that adam got to know through his mom and old books, and old tales that go way, way back in time and that michael got so good at telling one could almost think they really happened or that he was there too. they have each other until the very end, and that's... good. you have to find some sort of reason in a world like that, right? well, there it is! at some point, their own ‘sort of reason’ started to be right next to each other.

ref.

#midam #adam milligan #michael #apocalypse au #spn #i blame the book series i've been catching up with these days for this post #i hope it satisfies you anon. it's not an au i usually write/think about #but i tried <3

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sa-nddd · 3 years

Text

first mcyt post! this is a dream smp one! let me know what you think :)

Dream SMP headcanons: being the villain >:)

basically, reader is the chew toy of L'manburg. everyone uses her, yet treats her like crap. she's tired of being a toy, and finally unleashes her power.

takes place in the dream smp

warnings: strong language, injury, manipulation, explosives, strong themes

not proofread, it's 5am on a school night and I haven't slept :)

gender identity: cis female, she/her pronouns, no use of name

she was tired.

days, months, years of being pushed over and treated like shit, how didn't they see it coming?

it started in L'manburg's fight for Independence.

She was passionate, wanting to do everything to help her 'friends'.

she gave them shelter, weapons, supplies, and care.

thinking back, all she sees is their faces in red.

fast forward a bit, the war was done!

celebrations nightly, and never was she invited.

she didn't mind, thinking they just were distracted and forgot to send her an invite.

she does live a few miles away, anyways.

then came Schlatt's takeover.

once again, she sent pogtopia crates of her weaponry and materials, only wanting to help.

only to get left by herself, preparing to defeat Schlatt on her own.

when she saw them all walk to the battle field together, she was torn.

Once again, she was left to her own accord, almost getting hit with DREAM'S arrows.

Techno, however, pulled her away.

The only person who showed her an act of kindness.

She fought with a new determination that day.

A few days after that fight, Techno heard a knock from where he was farming potatoes.

Looking up, he saw her standing on the bottom step of pogtopia's stairs, holding an ender chest.

she walked up to him, stopping a safe distance away before placing down her e-chest and opening it.

she pulled out a few things, three stacks of pink fireworks, a few wither skulls, and netherite blocks.

he looked at her in confusion, not understanding why she gave him so many things.

he refused at first, which made her confused.

everyone always took her gifts with open arms, why wasn't he?

when he asked her why she gave him such a expensive gift, she ended up explaining her story, how she was unknowingly being used for her materials.

techno was low-key pissed.

he'd keep her in mind, he promised.

fast forward a bit more, and the two became closer.

since then, techno has taught her everything she needed to know.

how she was manipulated, used, and a victim.

after realizing what techno was telling her was the truth, she decided to stop her generous ways, giving less and less things to her 'friends' and more towards herself and techno.

the two became close, bonding over being used and their power.

the two were a powerful duo, finding strength within eachother.

they were attached at the hip, techno not being this close to anyone other than Phil.

it was surprising, but welcomed.

techno would teach her his ways in fights, and they often collected materials together.

they basically lived together at this point.

he was soft

skipping forward to Manburg's last battle, they agreed on something.

anarchy was the best B)

jk, that they would do everything in their power to destroy every government they could.

As the battle went on, they stood with their backs together, protecting eachother.

as they confronted Schlatt, techno pushed her behind him, not wanting her in reach of the mentally unstable man in front of them.

as they walked to the podium, leaving Schlatt's body behind, the duo stood proudly next to eachother.

the first government they tore apart as partners, it felt great.

they watched, their proud expressions slipping into angry ones as they watched a new government being formed in front of them.

"The fuck?" she whispered out, following techno as he stood up straight, preparing to shout his next words.

she pulled out her ender chest, doing quick work of pulling out her soul and and wither skulls, as well as some xp bottles to heal her and Techno's armour.

as techno started his speech, she handed him the materials, splashing potions in preparation for the blast damage they might take.

then, the ground rumbled beneath them.

They reacted quickly, moving away from the explosives.

Techno pulled out his crossbow and fireworks, firing at any one he saw.

she stood in front of him, her shield up, blocking the debris and blasts from them.

once the explosions passed their area, they got to work spawning in a Wither each.

"You want to be a hero, Tommy? THEN DIE LIKE ONE!"

The withers took off, heads flying everywhere.

As she looked around, she met eyes with a few of her 'friends'.

trey all looked at her with betrayal and anger in their eyes, finally connecting the dots as to why she was being distant.

she just smirked back, causing them surprise.

Techno was done speaking, it was her turn.

"You know, I don't know why I wasted all those years on the wrong side, this is fun."

they looked shocked, not expecting the usually soft girl to be so evil.

"Does the medicine taste good? Cause it didn't for me.

Betrayal is a strange feeling, isn't it?"

"Being used doesn't feel nice. But hey, you live you learn, right?"

She stared them down, eyes glazed over with dark clouds.

"Y'know, I'm a strong believer in Karma.

I'd say Karma comes in different ways for everyone, and we never know what shape or way it'll come to us."

"However, I do know how it will come back to you."

The group let her words sink in, trying to fight off the withers roaming around.

"It's by me!" she chirped.

" and I know exactly how I'm going to do it!" she smiled, pearly whites showing.

"I'm going tear you apart from the inside. just. like. you. did. for. me."

After that, everything was a blur.

she doesn't remember much, only coming back to her senses when Techno pulled her to the lake, pulling out his trident, and passing her her own.

they flew away, going to pack their things and run away.

time skip a few days, her and phil quickly became friends, the same with ghostbur.

Her and Techno are settled down in a cabin far away, having everything then needed.

things were finally good.

She had caring friends, and nice home, and left her old life behind.

it was nice.

time passed, l'manburg with a new plan to take down Technoblade.

would that happen? fuck no LMAOO

TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIESSSS!

anyways

Phil was under house arrest, Techno was taken by the butcher army, and she was pissed.

actually, pissed was an understatement.

she was stood behind Phil's chimney, peaking at the scene in front of her.

she wasn't afraid, she knew techno had a totem on him, as did she. (courtesy of sugar daddy dré)

However, that didn't stop her from jumping down and gripping onto Fundy's hair, pulling it back harshly and pressing her sword into his neck.

She wasn't going to kill him, she has morals, but they didn't know that.

while they were distracted with her, Phil tossed Techno a pickaxe.

He got free, pearling away.

Quackity noticed, running after him while yelling. the rest followed, leaving her unattended with Carl. She took Carl, waving at Phil and Ghostbur before riding back home.

Now, when she went down to the basement and noticed a misplaced block in the floor, she didn't think she'd find a human down there.

Especially Tommy.

Then again, that kid is always ending up in weird situations.

she dragged him upstairs, forcing him to stay put till Techno comes back from trading with the villagers.

while waiting, the two bonded over their experiences with manipulation, Tommy apologizing to her for what he did.

She forgave him, not blaming the young one for following in the adults foot steps. He didn't know better.

Boy, Techno did not expect Tommy and her to be laughing when he stepped in, but alas, it is what it is

Time skip the preparations, the day of the festival has come.

The three were sneaking around in invis pots, going over the plan multiple times.

That was, until she witnessed the Community House, or at least what was left of it.

She fell to her knees, the memories flowing through her mind.

It had been there since the beginning, something she helped to build.

kc when things were simple, no fighting, no war, just friends hanging out.

she remembers the nights where the ogs would stay up building it, sleeping in beds pushed up together.

just her, Dream, George, Sapnap, Callahan, Alyssa, and Sam, having fun, building and joking around.

back before the fight, when Her and Dream yelled at each other over something useless.

before she ran off to L'manburg, who hated her for her relationships with the opposing team, but kept her for her things.

Her invis pot ran out, her body appearing.

Techno panicked, trying to get her to drink another, but she told him it was fine, to trust her.

He hesitated, but turned his attention to Tommy. she snuck off, watching as people slow started swarming around.

tears fell down her cheeks.

she looked around, meeting eyes with Bad.

She ran to his open arms, crying into them.

This was the only place that she had happy memories at, before she met Techno.

The only place that kept her sane.

She let go of bad, turning to Callahan, who gave her a small, sad smile and pulled her into a hug.

She looked to the side after a few seconds, meeting eyes with George, who also hugged her.

she felt someone's arms wrap around her, and she turned around, meeting Sapnap's eyes, and leaning into him.

Finally, she turned to Sam, who was staring at the destruction with tears streaming down his face.

The two of them were the most attached to the community house.

She stumbled into his arms, both of them sniffling into their embrace.

They both kept their arms around each other, turing to the scene in front of them. As Tommy and Tubbo started fighting, she knew that's her sign to go back to Techno. she let go of Sam, meeting eyes with her friends, letting them know she'd be back.

she wiped her face, quickly gearing up before jumping down beside Techno. she joined him in splashing tommy with pots.

then things took a turn. suddenly, Dream has the disks, tommy is on Tubbo's side again, and Techno and her are pearling out of a mob.

She was out of it the whole time, the Community House affecting her alot.

she decided then, it's time to take revenge.

It was the day they were going to destroy L'manburg once and for all.

She was prepared, wither skulls and soul sand filled her pockets, stacks of tnt filling chests in the sky, the black structure towering over l'manburg.

She had a smile on her face, letting out all her stress and anger.

as l'manburg went down, she could feel herself feel more alive, more free.

She stood with Phil and Techno on top of the crater that was once l'manburg, laughing gleefully.

It was over.

The thing that caused he the most pain.

now that Karma has come collect it's dept, she can be herself again.

"C'mon, let's go home."

she smiled at Techno and Phil, wanting nothing more than some tea and sweets.

Her job was done.

for now, at least. >:)

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ali-kitkat · 5 years

Text

Fear Toxin

Marinette knew that Scarecrow’s fear toxin was dangerous. She’d been dating Damian long enough to figure that out herself. She’d been in Gotham half as long to know the rouges weren’t to be trifled with, unfortunately her class hadn’t felt the same way.

The class trip was supposed to be a nice summer break after Papillion’s defeat. Gabriel Agreste and Nathalie Sancoeur had been revealed as terrorists and arrested. Meanwhile Adrien Agreste had revealed himself as Chat Noir as a way to save face, to show that he hadn’t aided and abetted a criminal and that he wasn’t like his father.

He had immediately shot himself in the foot, figuratively speaking. After he revealed himself, he went to Ladybug to profess his love and hadn’t accepted the stern no as an answer. When she confessed that she was in a relationship, he lost all composure of cool and started to rant and rave about how she was his and only his.

There had been a paparazzi nearby and filmed his meltdown, the video had gone viral and ruined his image. He eventually went out of his way to stalk Marinette after forcing Plagg into giving him her secret identity. She had filed a police report and gotten a restraining order against him but that hadn’t stopped him not until she had taken the ring and called the police again. He was in jail for stalking and she still had nightmares about him.

Back to the class antagonizing the villain, they hadn’t seemed to realize that Gotham’s Rouges weren’t anything like akuma victims. When they had realized it had already been too late and Marinette, who was at the front of the class, was gassed with a different strain of the toxin, Essence de Trauma he called it. This strain was enough to recreate your most traumatic memory and Marinette knew she had enough memories of Adrien to last a lifetime.

Marinette was on the phone with Damian discussing the situation before he appeared. She dropped her phone.

“You know you’re always going to be mine.”

She ran, she knows she shouldn’t have but Adrien terrified her regardless whether he was a hallucination or not. She’d sprinted until she hit a dead end before realizing that whenever she paused during her run Adrien was always there. The twists and turns she took did nothing to put distance between them. He was always at her side.

“You know you can’t get away from me milady. I’m always going to be wherever you are.”

She swung at him, hoping that a punch would distract him long enough to get away. Ineffective, he just danced out of reach into her blind spot. Swearing, she turned to see him, but he wasn’t anywhere. Suddenly she felt arms around her waist.

“Aw. Didn’t know you missed me that much bugaboo. You should know better than to attack me like that. It was ineffective before you took the ring. What makes you think it’s going to work this time?”

Flailing around, she ripped herself out of the arms holding onto to her. They were strong and didn’t let go easily. Swinging around to face the person holding onto her, she saw Adrien. Lunging she threw herself at him, they fell to the ground. She landed on something blunt and it knocked the air out of her lungs. Adrien was wheezing as well. Scrambling back onto her feet she took advantage of the fact that he had paused to catch his breath. She brought her foot down on his back, knocking him back onto the ground and the air out of his lungs again. Stretching her leg back, this time trained to kick him in the face. Her attempt failed as he caught her leg still settled on the ground and pulled out from beneath her. She fell and hit the ground, hard. He settled over her, his arms by her sides.

“Now that isn’t very nice princess, I’ll have to teach you some manners.”

She thrashed around, violently trying to escape the arms that had her caged on the ground under him. It was futile she realized. She was tired from running and attacking him wiped her out, as well as being knocked on the ground twice. She felt the sharp pain in her neck before the world went dark.

*~*~*~*

Damian lived with his father long enough to know that Scarecrow was dangerous, and his fear toxin was enough to make even the strongest of his family weak. He didn’t want his angel anywhere near Gotham when Scarecrow was free. Her superhero partner was deranged enough to stalk her while she was a civilian and the emotional scars from that hadn’t healed. Scarecrow’s toxin could do a lot of damage to her barely healed psychosis.

He knew that her class wasn’t exactly the brightest, they typically ran to akuma attacks instead of away, and that Mari tended to follow to keep them out of harm’s way. So, when he heard that Scarecrow broke out, he was on high alert and on the phone with Mari to keep tabs on her. He heard Scarecrow explain which strain of the toxin he was using, and the phone hit the ground before he heard the footfalls heading away from it.

He rushed out of the manor, not bothering to put on the Robin suit, and just grabbing an antidote for the fear toxin. He had found where she was quickly enough, the dead end of an alleyway. She was throwing a punch at thin air and he knew he had to go about the situation with caution.

Grabbing her by the waist he tried to whisper words of reassurance to her, but that failed when she flailed so violently and chaotically that he was practically forced to open his arms to let her go. She swung around and lunged at him, they both landed on the ground out of breath. The process of catching his breath didn’t go well, as Marinette stomped on his back, knocking him back onto the ground and the air out of his lungs, again. He saw her leg stretch to kick him again, though this time in the ribs and he pulled her other leg out from underneath her. She landed on her back on the ground as he boxed her in, not wanting her to run away or attack him again. He administered the antidote after she had tired herself out from the thrashing. He could tell that as soon as the antidote had taken effect that she passed out. He picked her up and carried her back to the manor.

It had been hours since she passed out and she still had yet to wake. She was wrapped up in various blankets asleep in his bed. He wouldn’t leave her, not after the toxin had made her that terrified that she had attacked whatever she had seen. He suspected that she had seen Adrien. Essence de Trauma was a terrible strain of the fear toxin, the tamer version of the trauma toxin. He was grateful that it wasn’t the stronger version, that one left people as husks and even the Scarecrow himself wasn’t fond it.

Not leaving her side meant that Alfred tended his wounds in his bedroom. They weren’t terrible, a little back pain and bruising was all he was experiencing. He loved his girlfriend. The emotional pain of having Marinette look at him like he was her worst nightmare was the most painful thing he experienced overall.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when she started to shift. She bolted upright and started to glance around the room and when her eyes settled on him, she let out a relieved sigh.

“Dames?” She sniffled as she wrapped the blankets tighter around herself. “Can you hold me?”

He climbed on the bed beside her, pulling her into his arms. “I’m here angel.”

She rested her head on his chest listening to his heartbeat, it wasn’t erratic nor was it calm; no, it was a mix somewhere in-between. She tightened her grip on him, not realizing that he winced. She didn’t want to let go lest Adrien show up and torment her once again.

“Angel, I know you’re scared but I’m going to need you to loosen your grip just a little. Your kick to my back left a bit of a bruise.”

“What?” She questioned frantically, pulling away.

He swore under his breath, that wasn’t how he was going to tell her that she attacked him. She was going to be horrified that she injured him. She looked up at him fear and worry in her eyes.

“Love, it wasn’t your fault, you were under the effects of the toxin. You didn’t know- “

“Damian what did I do?” She cut him off, glaring at him. He’d think she was angry from the way she sounded, but the tears building up said otherwise.

“I don’t hold any of it against you love. When you dropped your phone, I tracked you down. I’m guessing the toxin made you see Adrien because you were attacking air before I grabbed you. Thinking back on it I probably shouldn’t have, but I didn’t want you to run off and get hurt.” He spoke softly. “When you wrenched yourself from my arms you tackled me to the ground and got right back up. While I was catching my breath, you brought your foot down on my back. Remember I don’t hold anything against you.”

“How can you not? I thought you were Adrien. I attacked you!”

“While you were experiencing the effects of fear toxin! It certainly doesn’t count. Especially since the strain he dosed you with was made to make you relive your most traumatic moment.” He defended; he wasn’t going to allow her to put herself down. Not after Adrien.

“You are not at fault; I could’ve handled the situation better. I could have gotten father or one of the others to get you the antidote, but I didn’t. You were terrified and lashing out, protecting yourself and you did a damn good job of it too.”

Damian pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to her forehead which resulted in her sinking down into his chest.

“By the way you kick like a mule.” He added, trying to lift the mood. She let a muffled laugh and he smiled down at her. “Are you feeling better?”

“Loads better. Thank you, Dames. The only thing that’s keeping me sane right now is you.” She responded curling further into his side as she started yawning. He pressed another kiss to her forehead and fell asleep holding her as close as possible to him.

It had barely been a half hour that they’d been asleep when Jason busted through the door without knocking. Damian and Mari both bolted upright glaring angrily at him, though Mari’s expression carried a little more fear in it than it usually did. Their expressions softened when they saw how worried he looked.

“Todd is there a reason you’ve busted into my room when you know Marinette here is still riding the effects of the toxin?” Damian started lividly. Jason waved his hands in a calm down manner as if that did anything to tame either one of the young adults on the bed.

“We just received word that Adrien Agreste broke out of jail baby bird. I felt you both needed to hear about it as soon as possible. He’s headed here.” Jason announced.

*~*~*~*

This is just one of those ideas that hit me at three in the morning that I decided to write. I’m leaving it as a oneshot because this is all that I came up with, but if anyone wants to continue it they can.

tagging: @fangs4damemories @shizukiryuu @disorganizedkitten @tv-zombie-blog

#maribat #damian x marinette #marinette x damian #maridami #daminette #oneshot #ficlet #ali-kitkat's writing #my writing

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allthelittlelostgirlsgrowup · 4 years

Text

Love is History

*taps mic* is this thing on? (I stole that from Obama. He was still in office last time I posted my writing).

So fun thing I did - write an angsty sequel to Love is Fiction. If you’ve never read it, it just got over 300 notes this past week. I figured it was time to dust this off from my drafts and complete it.

I hope you like it and my voice sounds similiar to the last election year when I put this out. Honestly I’m so different now and I think this captures the changes I’ve gone through and the way I view relationships now opposed to four years ago.

Love is History

“Art imitates Life right?” Belle closes the folder encasing a rough draft of her first few chapters.

“All good things come to an end.” Emma shrugs as if the concept of him being just a ‘good’ thing ending doesn’t devastate her. He was the best thing.

She thought she’d never write their break up.

“What’s the history?” Belle squints her eyes, nose crinkling as she watches Emma. Belle has been Emma’s ‘Editor’ since college. Now more official. She gets a paycheck, as Emma gets advances from a publishing company that started as a small mom and pop establishment. In the last four years, this little wagon wheel of a company is now a fleet of office buildings all over the US.

“You read book 3: “Wind’s Ally”” Emma leans back in her chair, studying Belle right back. “You know their history.”

Belle keeps her eyes on Emma, relaxing the tension in her face and suppressing a smirk. They’re at a bit of a stalemate here because Emma isn’t sure what more info is needed and Belle isn’t sharing her thoughts at the moment.

“Emma, I knew their history. They finished book 3 in a ‘happily ever after’ kind of way. What underlying issues could have brought them to this point? Why did Alysandra leave?” Emma considers the question. Why did she decide to destroy the happiest relationship she’s ever written? Why would a character who fell madly in love just change their mind? “Maybe, ask yourself why you left.”

-/-

The sun is setting over the Manhattan skyline when she gets back to her apartment. She doesn’t know where she went after the meeting but her mind just got back to the present and she’s pissed.

Emma flings her keys across the kitchen island, kicking her heels off in a huff before stomping over to her bar cart. She pours his favorite whiskey into the anchor-etched old fashion glasses he got her one Christmas.

“History is a stupid word” she grunts to no one but a tilted glass, muffling the sound as the amber liquid meets her lips a second after. She’s taken up talking to herself these last few months. The first four were spent crying and avoiding her reflection. The loneliness finally set in one night and she made herself her own best friend. So she asks her best friend ‘why did you do it?’ as she feels the tension in her shoulder blades ease. Why? Why did Emma Swan leave Killian Jones seven months ago?

“Wouldn’t we all like to know?”

-/-

The nightmares finally stopped and she no longer wakes with a startle when she finds her bed bare of him. Its been 216 days. She’s cried herself to sleep at least 180. She’s been broken before, boys have left in more ways than one, and she has managed to wake up one day finding herself less damaged than all the others. Today might be that day for the Killian Jones saga.

Today is they announced the upcoming film and casting begins in a few weeks. She knows she needs to finish this novel, but she hasn’t finished much. She barely finishes lunch on most days, barely finishes a thought that isn’t dripping in Killian. It’s been seven months and he is everywhere, in everything. She thought progress was a slowly-operated escalator but she was finally on her way.

And then the congratulation calls come through. Text after text, email, voicemail and she’s sure in a week or two, she’ll get a card from Mary Margaret. She sorts through them looking for something she’ll never find and she has to rewind.

She left him. It wasn’t mutual and it wasn’t obvious. He had no clue. All the calls and texts he was going to send her were sent months ago when he was breaking down in voicemails and begging her to just tell him she was okay.

Congratulations, Emma, you saved him...from ever having to care about you again.

-/-

She doesn’t leave the apartment again until the 245th day. It is easy to stay inside with the modern advances in technology. People will bring literally anything to your front door. Except, maybe inspiration. That she has to go out and find.

She finds herself in Harlem. The Harlem Public Library. She has to get back to her roots. Sure, this isn’t Storybrooke, and no, she’ll probably never meet a pair of eyes as blue coconut as...but her work needs her to find a way to write.

She thinks of his face.

Three hours pass and all she has in a google doc is ‘why?’

-/-

Despite the first failure to launch, she finds she quite likes that library. She’s giving herself a pep talk this time, before she finds herself staring at a blank screen wondering why again.

“I left because I had to.” She looks at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. That’s the only statement she’s made to anyone, herself included. When her friends, her agent, her editor, and her heart ask, she tells them she had to.

She makes her way through her apartment, recounting the moments, hours, days leading up to it. There are very few things her mind makes enough sense to share. Everything else is so convoluted, so tangled up in self-loathing and years of agonizing loneliness, the average person wouldn’t get it. Some days, as she’s matured and healed, she finds even she has trouble understanding it.

There’s not a day that goes by she doesn’t spend half of it feeling nothing but regret. That’s the healthy part of her, the well-adjusted adult who grew from the little lost girl. She’s sane enough to know she threw away the best relationship she’s ever had. She’s sane enough to know she saved him from future hardships with her.

The sound of the empire striking back stirs her from her thoughts. Regina gets the Darth Vader theme as a ringtone so Emma never forgets who really owns her career.

“Hey,” Emma answers as she reaches her apartment door.

“Nice of you to finally answer your phone.” She can hear the glare in Regina’s voice. “You know you pay me to do this right? Not the other way around. Get your money’s worth, why don’t you.” Emma rolls her eyes as she packs her laptop in her messenger bag.

Regina Mills is a fierce woman, as charming as she is aggressive. She can pretty much get anyone to do anything she wants. Emma doesn’t practice in the ways of the force, but she’s certain Regina knows a Jedi mind trick or two, and as her agent, that comes in handy.

What doesn’t come in handy is her tie to Killian. Regina’s husband Robin happens to be Killian’s cousin. Emma avoided Regina’s calls for months after the break-up, afraid she’ll have to answer the same question she’s been asking herself all afternoon. Once she finally started accepting calls again, it seemed Regina had moved on to bigger and better things: A movie deal.

“Right” she sighs. “What’s my money bringing me today?”

“This isn’t money related, so much as a word of warning.” Regina’s tone doesn’t seem as sass-filled as before, so it’s clear she’s not the one wielding the threat. She actually sounds a bit sympathetic. “Belle and I pulled straws to see who got to break this to you, and I, unfortunately, pulled short this time around.”

“There’s a point here.” Emma urges, feeling ill-fated all of a sudden.

“Killian just moved to NYC.” Like ripping off a band-aid. Emma braces herself for pain, but is met with an absence of feeling altogether. Her knees buckle and she finds purchase against her kitchen island. “Emma?”

“When?” She whispers.

“Just a couple of weeks. He took a job with the NYC public libraries, he’s actually doing really well and has just approached Belle with an idea to get the youth excited about writing. There’s a chance you’ll run into him at the office, so I just...we both thought a heads up was necessary.”

“Which library?” because Fate is a nosy bitch and has no business showing up and guiding her to the man she ran from.

“Emma?”

“Which library”

“I think...if I recall correctly, his home base is in Harlem.”

“I’ll call you back.”

-/-

She thought about leaving the country. At the very least, the state. She is overwhelmed, without a question just so damn overwhelmed. She has gotten so used to tears these days, she’s a little shocked she didn’t cry the minute she heard his name.

Her body had other ideas, because although she definitely meant to get on a train going the opposite direction, she found herself in Harlem 25 minutes later.

She sits in the middle of the library at an open table, clickity clacking as loudly as she can. Part of her really believes that maybe if she saw him, she’d remember why she left.

Another part is certain that masochism is her new favorite hobby.

He never appears.

-/- “Hey” Emma answers her phone going off for the eighth time today.

“Emma?” Belle sounds more relieved than usual. “Where have you been, I’ve been calling non-stop since 3.” Emma rolls her neck to view the time on the DVR.

7:45 pm

“Sorry, I’ve been reading all day.” she hasn’t talked to anyone for another two weeks. She does this far too often to still have a support system. Emma’s not sure she’d pour the same amount of effort into anyone who went radio silent every other week.

“We had a meeting at 2:30.”

“Sorry.” She shrugs, because honestly, nothing even matters.

“I’m coming over,” Belle says decidedly.

“No, Belle, you don’t have to do that.” Emma regrets answering on the eighth attempt. “Let’s reschedule.”

“We just did, I’ll see you in thirty minutes. Open the door.” Sure, she’s a small, sweet, meek-looking woman, but what most people don’t know about Belle is she could slay dragons with pure determination alone. In a battle of wills, she's even got Regina beat.

Emma peels herself off the sofa for the first time since noon, snuggie falling to the floor as she heads for the shower. If Bella can make the journey to her apartment, Emma can at least shower. Sure enough, 30 minutes later she’s greeting Belle at the door, a pizza in hand.

“Are you okay?” She sets the pizza on the kitchen island and wraps Emma in a hug. Emma tries to pull her head far enough to keep her hair from wetting Belle.

“Yeah, just...the creative process. Ya know.” Emma trails off as the hug ends. Of course, she’s not okay. ‘Okay’ people don’t stop answering their phones for weeks, they don’t stare at blank pages until their vision blurs. They don’t behave this way. This was her first shower in days.

“He was in the office yesterday,” Belle says after a long silence, just a full 3 minutes of her studying Emma from head to toe. Do her eyes just scream ‘Killian’ every time someone looks at her. “He said he called to congratulate you on the screenplay adaptation.”

“No, he didn’t.” She’s quick to dismiss. She scoured her missed calls for days looking for his name, he never called.

“How would you know, you never answer your phone, Emma.” She sits on a counter stool, tugging Emma to join her. “He’s going to be in every day next week, and I think…”

“No.” Emma cuts her off.

“Let me finish.” Belle opens the pizza box, sliding it toward Emma. “I think you should take a vacation. Get out of the city for a while, maybe visit Storybrooke, since you know he’s not there to run into.” Emma grabs a slice of pizza, not sure when she last ate but too preoccupied with the idea of leaving the city for a while. She ran to NYC. Now she’s running back to Storybrooke. Is he just going to chase her back and forth?

“Did he say anything else about me?” she hates the desperation gnawing at her.

“He asked me why…” Belle sighs “I told him we’ll all find out in book four.”

-/-

God only knows what compelled her to do the exact opposite of what Belle suggested and show up at the publisher’s office. Probably the same thing that led her to the Harlem library a few weeks ago. She bought a new outfit. She realizes she’s barely even worn jeans over the last eight months, and now she’s in a dress and heels like she has an interview to work here. She’s wearing makeup and perfume. She’s trying her best to cover up and signs of the wreck she’s been for months.

The office seems busier than it has ever been, many new, young faces bustling about. She keeps her features calm as she scans every inch of every room she enters for him.

“Emma?” Belle is hurried as she crosses the main floor to meet her. “What are you doing here?”

“I know.” Emma returns the hushed tone Belle is using. “I reworked some chapters, delayed the breakup, and gave more of Aly’s history.” and Belle nods, but is evidently not listening.

“He’s here.” Belle looks almost frightened. “So if you want to reconsider, I would do it now. Otherwise…”

“Swan?” no one calls her Swan. She’s paralyzed. What did she think was going to happen? How did she think she was going to react? When she paced around her apartment for three hours this morning, did she think she was going to just be okay? He would be here, he would see her and suddenly everything would be okay? “Emma…” He tries softer, less shocked, more timid.

This is the moment. In every love story, angst finds its way in, rips the reader’s heart out and although they’ve been bleeding for chapters now, they can feel nothing at this moment. Time is still, the lights are dim, and all we see is Emma and him.

He looks like himself, just more professional. He’s in well-fitted gray slacks, a navy dress shirt, his hair is longer though. He’s got more scruff on his neck than normal. His eyes are too blue, truly, for anyone to notice another inch of him. They stare at her, the same shade that’s been haunting her dreams, and she still struggles to define it. Everything. They’ve always been everything, no matter if it’s more cotton candy than blue coconut.

“Killian.” She swallows. Her throat makes this awkward gurgling sound and she wants to melt into the floor. Why is she here?

It’s suddenly so quiet but so loud. She can hear her heart hammering in her eardrums. No one says anything for a long stretch of time, maybe 2 seconds, maybe 3 hours, she can’t be sure. She just knows there is so much said in the silence.

“How are you?” She asks without thought. The look on his face is devastating.

“Sorry?” He mocks a laugh. “How am I?”

She’s not completely delusional. This is a thing humans say to one another, no? Why does it feel so foreign all at once, like she’s attempting English for the first time with a local?

“Killian” she sighs, releasing the most dizzying breath.

“I’m good” he grits, suddenly covered in constrained anger. “And you?”

And now they are strangers, all dressed up and nothing to talk about.

“Me?” Her tongue drags along her lower lip to buy time. “Good.” She nods.

“I’m just pleased everyone is good.” Belle smiles sweetly. “Now, Killian and I have a brief meeting, and afterward, if you’re still available, we can go over your rewrite.”

An exit strategy. This is quite possibly the only thing she could have hoped for.

“Swan was a bright young writer once” Killian grins, wickedly. “Why don’t you attend the meeting. We’re talking about a youth writing program.” He’s obviously bating her. How dare she show up on a day he’s here and act like she didn’t destroy him…

“Sure” she agrees. Partly because she’s too stubborn to back down from a challenge, and mainly because she did destroy him and there’s that whole thing about masochism she recently discovered about herself.

Belle looks beside herself. Her eyes narrow and she puffs her chest for a moment before leading them to a meeting space. Two more individuals join them, laptops ready to jot down notes and ideas. Her meetings are only ever with Belle so, for Emma, this seems like red carpet treatment.

He has amazing ideas. He loves the idea of bringing an artistic outlet to the children of Harlem. He was always so much more than a shelfer. He was always a dreamer, with these brilliant, compassionate ideas for helping everyone feel less alone, more encouraged.

She was always a fence, holding him back from the best parts of himself.

-/-

When the meeting concludes, Belle graciously thanks Killian for coming, makes promises of action, and attempts to say goodbye.

Killian, as good-natured and kind as he can be, has always had a persistently obnoxious side. He invites himself to the next meeting.

“This is only fair, Swan.” he smiles, though his eyes are full of darkness.

They regroup in Belle’s office after a bathroom break.

As much as Emma is dying on the inside, Belle looks absolutely disturbed by this. She can’t imagine the discomfort in being the third wheel of a breakup reunion.

“So...when we uh, when we left off, you were telling me why they broke up.” Belle sighs, knowing how awful this is. Emma smiles, hoping it lets her off the hook a little. After all, Belle told her to leave town. Emma decided to torture herself.

“Right.” Emma takes a large breath in, holding it while she pulls out her folder. Only releasing once its in Belle’s hands. Killian is studying her like he has a Chemistry final to take tomorrow and she’s the only hope. “Alysandra left Atlas for his…” She’s said it to herself. She’s made hints to others, but Killian has never had a clue. “For his own good. She’s derailed him from his journey. She’s made him less of a pirate, more of a…”

“More of a what?” Killian’s breath is sharp as it floods in through his nose and out through his mouth. “What did she do to him?”

“She reduced him to a caregiver,” Belle answers from what’s written in the text. “Alysandra took over the journey of discovery. She was suddenly the main character.” Belle looks up at Emma with a look she’d only be able to classify as “delayed understanding.”

“In a story about Atlas, Aly becomes the focus. Everything he does, he does for her.” Emma can feel herself losing composure, eyes stinging with tears, throat drier than a desert. Somehow, someway, she finds her way to Killian’s eyes. “He wasn’t living for himself anymore. He had no purpose but to love her. And it was destroying everything.”

She’s not sure if it’s understanding she expects, or maybe gratitude, for saving him from the needy monster that she is. She knows neither is what she received.

“Did you ask Atlas, perhaps… perhaps that’s what made him happiest?” Killian’s eyes are drilling into her like nails, pinning her against a wall.

She is less.

Speechless, motionless, hopeless…

Less sure she did the right thing. Less firm on her decision. Just so much less than she was the day before.

There’s movement after a long pause, not by her, but Belle, gently setting the files down and moving to leave them alone.

“Aly is an orphan” Emma explains and she can see his head start to shake, but she has to be firm. “Listen. She is not the strong-willed, rebel without a cause she pretends to be. Some days the sadness from being alone for so long stunts her. She spends hours upon hours laying awake wishing she could sleep forever. She can be a wreck, a mess, an impossible woman to love.”

Does it make it easier to talk about herself as if she’s someone else? She’s been doing it for so long, all the catharsis from writing herself into stories, just to unpack the things that plague her? Maybe she can have sympathy for anyone but her, maybe its the only way she can recognize how her behavior impacts others. Maybe the book is why she left in the first place.

“You make it impossible to love you, Emma.” She’s never seen his jaw trembling like this before. “And against all odds, through resilience and patience, I’ve found a way to do the bloody impossible. You can cover it up in characters you’ve based off of us, but this isn’t fiction. I was real. What we had...what we had was real. It wasn’t easy, but when you finally let me in, it was simple. We were happy.”

“You were happy?” She brushes tears from her cheeks as she shakes her head in disagreement. “Was it simple? To come home and find I hadn’t moved from my spot on the couch? Was that the ideal relationship you dreamt of, to see all of your energy, love, and time wasted on someone who couldn’t get themselves off the couch?”

“So you got yourself off the couch now.” Killian stands, eyes frantically scanning Emma from head to toe. “Well done, it only took the motivation of ending a relationship to do it.”

“I did it for you.” and she believes that, with everything in her, she left for his own good.

“Did you now?” He seems so out of breath for standing still. “Or could you have possibly woken up one day and realized the weight of a relationship was what was pinning you to the couch. Was it that Atlas cared for Aly too much, or was it the expectation that Aly would have cared for him in return? Was breaking my heart easier than just trusting me with yours?”

And all at once in the middle of the ocean, she can see Aly waking up all alone in the captain’s quarters, searching the whole damn ship for a man who did what the men she loves always do.

“Maybe there were days you thought I was miserable” he kneels before her as the ocean finds its way to this office. His eyes are ocean blue, always changing hues depending on if the sun is shining, or a storm is brewing or they’re in the deep. “But you weren’t afraid I’d die that way, always miserable, no...some part of you thought I’d leave before I let that happen. That’s the orphan I loved. You were never a mess. You were a survivalist.”

So maybe that’s their story. Aly watched Atlas change his life for her, and realized he’s going to live to regret it. Did the last seven months hurt less because it was her choice? If he would have pulled the trigger, would the bullet do that much more damage?

“I would have died miserable.”

-/-

The history she’s writing is hers and hers alone. When she was younger, when her heart was stolen and broken, when she always ended up alone. She was writing an escape plan.

This was the first time she was the one who left, and to quell the guilt of being her own worst nightmare, she forced herself to believe she was doing it for him. How many people have left her for her own good? How many times did she think that they were doing her a favor?

She’s been sitting motionless for who knows how long when Belle comes back. Killian is long gone but his words linger like those dizzy stars after a concussion. Her head is throbbing trying to make sense of it. This wasn’t just seven months spent believing the lie. Now she’s searching for the truth.

She gets anxious in monotony, like a stench in stagnant water, she is repulsed by the concept. She’s never wanted to do the same thing every day. She doesn’t want a picket fence, she wants…She does like a cute cottagey feel with a nice picket fence, she could…she could deal with a picket fence.

She definitely does not want a husband though, or to be barefoot and pregnant, or…

There were times, she’d look at him fresh out of the shower, or in his sleep and he’d look so much younger, she’d wonder what their kids would look like. There have been times she’s searched her fingers as they moved across her keyboard and realized her ring finger would look nice with a natural stone set in some brass band. It was never anything he did that scared her. It was that she thought about more. The concept of more scared her, and the fact that she was greedy and foolish enough to want it.

Four years is a long time to not talk about marriage, but after they moved past her initial anxiety attacks over having a boyfriend, he never really pushed for much again. Moving in together was her idea. He kept enough stuff at her place and with Elsa moving abroad, it made sense to do it. That’s as far as she was going to take it. Another few years piled up and she was busy writing and he was busy being supportive of that, she recognized she was his sun. When he made sure she ate during the weeks she barely left the house, when he kept her house plants alive, when he did her laundry, reminded her to shower, and told her he’s proud of her too often to quantify, she knew she was his ship. An inanimate object, something someone can love so much and not receive the love back in return, and sure, he’s as silly as a pirate to believe a ship that holds itself together while he’s sailing on her loves him, and that’s just her role.

Hold yourself together Emma, that’s always been your role.

She started to get bitter and insecure. What is she contributing to this relationship? How is she making him any better? Has he even written many songs since they moved in together, has she gone to see him perform, has he performed? Some days she was so enthralled in her writing, she didn’t realize he wasn’t home all day. It was his day off and he was gone for longer than a workday. He could have been having an affair for all she knew. For all he did, he deserved to be having an affair, falling in love with someone who would be there for him, encouraging his dreams, and dedicating herself to him.

After that day, she started her drafts. Killian, you’re so much more than I deserved…Or Killian, your life paused the day you met me. And finally, after months, she left him with I need this to be over.

She’s a writer, a published author, an English major and an avid reader yet, through years and years of literature and just terrible romcoms, she never learned how to break up with someone. She never knew the words to say to him, so she said nothing. He called for three-five days, she’s not sure as she was in a sobbing-induced coma. He sent texts, he sent freaking carrier pigeons, and she locked herself in a hotel room with her laptop and her broken heart. Finally, an email came in.

Emma, I’ve moved out. Everything I’ve left is yours…among the worn t-shirts you liked to sleep in and the novels we’ve collected over the years is my heart. Goodbye Love.

“Emma,” Belle brings her back to the present after a very long, painful trip into her past. “Are you okay?”

Why is that word even used to describe how ‘good’ something or someone is?

“No.” She glances over at Belle, she thinks to ask if she talked to him in the hall after he left, if he said anything, if he seemed ‘Okay’ himself but she settles back to a business mindset. Work is the only constant. “Aly left because she didn’t want to get left again.”

“And that’s how it ends?” Belle hands her the folder back. “You can do better.”

-/-

“The concept of fiction isn’t a lack of reality, it just hasn’t happened exactly that way yet.”

She hears his voice cascading down the ramp she’s sitting at the bottom of. It's been a week since Belle’s meeting and she made her way back to the library. Back to their roots. There’s so much history in this building, but the history she’s looking for lives within her. There’s a group of teenagers huddled together like they’re on a tour. Her fingers shake as she looks back down at her laptop.

“Don’t be afraid to use your own daily vernacular. It’s just as likely as any well-researched, powered by thesaurus dialogue, but it will come to you much more easily. That’s your voice.”

His voice sounds increasingly close. She wants to look but if they lock eyes now, while he’s busy, she’s back to being the center of attention. Why did she come here? Does she want to get back to being the center of his attention?

“Swan?” her stomach flips violently. She really didn’t think this through. Her neck trembles as she cranes to look up at him. “Hi.” He clears his throat, the group of teenagers studying them closely from behind him.

“Hi” she breathes. “Uhm…”

“Do you want to meet my junior author group?” He cuts in quickly.

“Hi.” She repeats, only this time her eyes travel across the young faces. “I’m Emma.”

“Emma Swan?” A young girl in the back pipes up. “You write Cap Zeph.” ‘Cap Zeph’ is a very popular Tumblr tag, Emma’s been told. She is now a mild-day D list celebrity with the news of the screenplay adaptation. She never published under her real name until this one, Killian’s idea.

“That I do.” Emma feigns a smile.

“Emma Swan” Killian begins, chest swelling “came up with the idea in a small town library.”

“Really?” another girl with wavy blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders asks.

“Yes, and Killian Jones worked there. He’s…evidently the inspiration. Hair as dark as night, eyes as blue as the sea he sails upon.” Every girl and one boy in the group glance at Killian, amorously. Still handsome as ever. He looks down, scratching behind his ear and chuckling dryly. She wonders if his throat burns the same way her eyes do or if this feels so natural he’s happy to fall back into it.

“Why don’t you all find some books to research personal voice from in the YA section, hmm?” He dismisses the group quickly. They share assuming glances and move to leave in pairs, surely gossiping on the way.

Being alone again is terrifying. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. Why does she always go looking for him? What does she want? How can they come out of this okay? What is okay?

“What brings you?” Killian starts. He isn’t looking anywhere but her and the look in his eyes leaves frost on her flesh. His expression is so blank. She has no idea if he even wants her here after their last conversation.

“I was just looking for inspiration.” He nods.

“There are study rooms.” He adds, motioning in the direction she may find them. “My office is actually at a different location, or I’d…suggest…”

“Do you hate me?” it comes out without warning.

“No.” He winces. She’s not sure if it’s because he’s lying or because he wishes he were lying.

“Why not?” She asks. He flinches.

“Christ, Swan. Stop it.” He grabs a seat across from her at the small bistro-style table she’s been working on. She closes her laptop to remove barriers between them. “I hated myself for a while. I thought maybe I should have never lost sight of who you were. You’ve always been guarded. I thought I had broken down some of your walls. I should have never assumed I tore them all down.”

This voice within her tells her that it's no man’s job to do the work for her. Her walls are her own to remove.

“What about your walls?” Emma counters. She didn’t come for an argument, but Killian had trauma, he was damaged in theory, but always presented himself as such a well-adjusted, forgiving, kind, loving man. “Maybe you had to go brick by brick, but you knew they were there. I just watched you for years never act like anything troubled you.”

He laughs, loudly.

She’s startled more that she laughs in return than questions it.

“Emma, my love...of course I was troubled. I still am. I drink far too much and try to solve all of my problems myself without anyone’s help.” He’s still smiling as he confesses.”Hell, I didn’t tell anyone we broke up for months and it wasn’t because I thought you were coming back. I just knew I wasn’t going to let anyone worry about me.”

“You’re not troubled” she shakes her head but thinks back to every time he came home frustrated and sealed himself up before she could get a good glimpse of it. “Are you?”

“I spent an entire day at the marina grieving my dead brother, over a decade after losing him. Every time I went to leave and come home to you, I’d get upset again. I used to stay away until I could pull myself together.” His smile slips into something dark and Emma realizes all the ways they failed at communicating. “I loved you just enough to only show you my best parts. I never trusted our love enough to show you everything. And it’s not because you were sad every now and then.”

And she sees the orphan in him the moment she realizes being left behind were his worst fears, too.

“You thought I’d leave…”

“I think the term is ‘best-laid plans.’” His smile is back “Convince an author to fall in love with you, live forever. Only, with my luck, I get to read my heart get broken in the exact same way whenever I’d like. I was looking forward to your book, knowing I’d get to see us in love again.” She considers the part about him looking forward to her book.

“It’s as much my book as yours.” She means that. When she first wrote the Cap Zeph short stories, she had no plan of publishing. Killian pushed for her to immortalize this, to believe in herself and sell it. When the first went well, he convinced her to meet with Regina. “I mean, you are the entire series, after all.” He shakes his head and sighs.

She doesn’t have a response and the seconds tick by. It only takes a few before they reach an awkward silence where one person makes an excuse to leave. And then when do they see each other again?

“I should get back to my writers.” He moves to stand and she wants to jump up, but she doesn’t know what words follow that. She writes fiction. It's why this book has been so damn difficult. Writing their personalities into a fantasy of pirates and fairies, that's one thing. Writing history is another. She can build on what has already happened. This in-the-moment dichotomy, will they? Won’t they? Can they make it work? It’s disturbing.

He’s the quick thinker. Always a come-back, a pun, a literary quote…

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you…” She opens her laptop nonchalantly, as if it won’t wound her for him to leave. “...a boy who loves you.”

Among the many novels they shared, “The Book Thief” was one of Killian’s most treasured.

He stares at her with wonder glazing his face. “If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.”

Maybe she’d burn every book in this library, for a chance to experience falling in love with Killian all over again, as if it weren’t a moment in history.

The screenplay would read ‘They share a look of longing’ and she’s not sure that’s how she’d describe it. ‘Longing’ seems more cliche and not nearly as descriptive as her quickening pulse would use.

This feels like a pivotal moment where she realizes that they don’t necessarily have to not be in love anymore. They could take a slow pace, like windchimes waiting for a breeze to bring them together. That’s all a Zephyr is.

“My number hasn’t changed.”

-/-

His number has. She gets a text around 1am. Are you up? It's odd, because Killian isn’t a booty-call kind of guy, but who knows what a breakup can do to a man.

I rarely sleep before 2. Her phone rings moments later.

“Hello?” her tone sounds like a question, but she knows it’s him.

“Swan, it’s Killian.”

“Yes, Grandpa, I’m aware.” She can’t help but chuckle. Almost too elated that he’s on the other end. She can hear him laugh on the other end.

“Do you remember the first time we started speaking on the phone? You wouldn’t give me your number until maybe the 18th date.” She didn’t trust herself then. They took things so slowly.

“You know I like a clean getaway.” Is it too soon to joke about always having one foot out the door?

“What's the escape plan this time?”

“Probably the West Coast since you chased me here”

“I did not!” His laugh is vibrating against her ribs, setting the tempo for her heart.

Could it be easy all over again? One quote and he’s calling her? One call and they go see a movie? One date and…

And thinking about the end is how she got there, isn’t it?

“Did you plan on seeing me again? Knowing you were moving here?”

“Of course. I planned on seeing you no matter where I lived...I prepared for you to come into focus and the rest of my world to blur.” He sighs and she can hear his mattress settle as he moves. “I didn’t plan on seeing you in my library again.”

“Where else would I get inspiration. You’re my muse.”

They talk til 4am. She’s rethought every word she’s said these last seven months. She rarely moves without tension tugging at the back of her neck. Her thoughts are never clear and simple, not since she left. And here, in the darkness of her bedroom, with nothing but a familiar voice on the other end, she hasn’t second-guessed a word.

-/- She’s not sure if she should call it a date. He invites her to a scholarship meeting and sure, they’re dressed up, but because it's a business meeting. He talks to the team, Belle is in attendance, and she barely says a word.

But he asks her out for drinks afterward and suddenly she’s all he’s focused on, laughing about old times, discussing the interesting twist in literature they’ve both read recently. She asks him if he’s written any songs and he beams brightly when he tells her ‘only recently, Love.’

Sometimes love is familiar, like a book you’ve read a dozen times. There’s comfort in knowing everything and loving it anyway.

-/-

“Are you dating him?” Belle watches her from the doorway as Killian moves down the hall to his meeting. They came to the office together this time, maybe a peck on the cheek occurred before his departure, and maybe Belle witnessed it.

“I don’t know.” Emma tries not to think logistically about what’s going on. It’s been 4 weeks, she’s written 8 chapters and Aly is about to find Atlas again. “For the first time since I started, I know how book 4 will end.”

They go over the recent chapters and Belle seems subtly impressed but she’s holding back. Emma knows it's Killian-related. She just knows she can’t pry without being pried open in return.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it's beautiful. From tragedy to triumph is the Captain Zephyr way.” Belle hands the work back to Emma with a sad smile. “What makes it different this time? True love always finds its way back to one another, but how do we know they won’t split up again?” Emma knows this isn’t about the novel. They haven’t yet gotten back together to split up.

Does she know they’ll never separate again? Of course not. Killian is dedicated, devoted like a priest to the cloth. She is very aware that his heart is not yet healed, but eager to love her all over again. A few dates and late-night phone calls don’t make forever a promise anyone could keep.

“We don’t.”

-/- He’s walking her home after another fun night at a bar near her apartment. They’ve been casually seeing each other but nothing more than a kiss on the cheek or a hug goodnight has occurred. They get to her building in record time, too preoccupied by the conversation on who in Hollywood would make a handsome Captain Zeph. “Johnny Depp doesn’t have blue eyes.” Emma laughs. “You can’t just pick the most popular actors, and he’s already a pirate in another franchise.” They’re at the doors of her building and his eyes are boring into her. “Do you want to come up?”

And maybe it's because they haven’t had a real kiss in what’s very close to being a year now, but he seems almost nervous.

“I’m afraid I miss you too much.” he scratches behind his ear and looks down the road. When he looks back at her he seems shy.

“Chris Wood,” she comments. She liked him on Supergirl. “Come upstairs.”

It's the look on his face when he studies her apartment that makes her remember they broke up. As if she had forgotten months of trying to hold herself together, he reminds her that she broke him when his face floods with that loneliness.

“Killian...”

“This is a very nice place you have.” his eyes are darting from one corner to the next, lingering on the most significant differences. “So ‘New York’ it's almost as if you’ve never lived anywhere else.”

“Your apartment isn’t ‘New York?’” it's so weird that they’ve never seen each other's place when they’ve seen each other's souls.

“It’s just a place to lay my head.” He glances back at her with something almost accusatory when he says “You’ve gone ahead and made yourself a home.” And it has never felt like that, not once, when she was hiding away, when she would run home to it.

This place, this city has always been a foster home she feels like she’ll get kicked out of if she gets too comfortable. It wasn’t like their home together. Their home felt like roots. Here she feels like an implant that won’t take to the soil.

“The designer furnishings don’t mean shit to me.” Emma moves to the bookshelf, all new and shiny but it's just a box to keep what matters most. “Only what I’ve come here with is all I care to take. She pulls out a few books, “Wuthering Heights,” “The Book Thief,” and “Emma.” She hands them to him knowing they were always his.

“I wanted you to keep them.” He starts to give them back when she waves her hand.

“What do you need to not resent this place? To know I have everything you left tucked away in all these new places?” she motions for him to follow her to the bedroom and he slowly drifts behind, setting the novels on the coffee table. Her bed is covered in pillows dressed in his t-shirts instead of pillowcases. She keeps his cologne on the bedside table as if it were some expensive aromatherapy pillow spray. The blanket Granny from the local diner in Storybrooke made them lay at the foot of the bed, an anchor crocheted into the loops.

“I only drink whiskey you like. I only sleep in your t-shirts.” she sits on her bed, reaching for his hand to pull him down with her. “I don’t know what we are, and I can’t promise you I’m not a tragedy waiting to happen. I just know that I haven’t been able to erase an inch of you.”

He kisses her then. It's not on her terms, and he has only ever waited for everything to be on her terms. So when he pulls her in, hand cupping the back of her head, mouth open and adventurous, she gasps.

His other arm wraps around her waist, pulling her closer to him, her hands pressed flat against his chest as his tongue enters her mouth with desperation. She fists his shirt in her hands, pressing even closer to him as her tongue reacts in kind. It has been the longest year without him and he’s kissing her like they’re running out of time.

All at once they’re falling as he lays her down on her back, continuing to claim her mouth as his property. Her hands start moving, tugging and fumbling with buttons and zippers and just much too much fabric for her liking. When she moves for his briefs he tugs back from her lips.

“Is this what you want?” Her response is to slip her dress over her head. Any questions to follow are puffed out in a husky tone against her ear.

Sometimes love is erotica, so she catalogs every second of it because nothing has ever happened quite like this before.

-/-

They spend the next few months together and she bangs out the rest of the book in record time. Regina and Belle throw her a submission party. She dodges questions about their future and tries to focus on the book.

“So Aly and Atlas together again,” Robin questions her as Killian returns with a drink for the both of them. She knows he’s not talking about the story. Killian has been very careful to not assume much about their status. Both of them have just stuck to ‘seeing where it goes.’

But it's not like they just met six months ago. They have history, they have four years of standing together at parties and being a couple. Do they have the luxury of casually dating? If all happiness is fleeting, do they dive face-first in it or wade in the shallow end.

“I love Killian.” She says firmly. It’s never not been true from the moment she realized it, in a foreign library miles and miles away from home. He is not easily erased, and it has become glaringly obvious it will only destroy her to try. “I always have and I always will.” Killian’s eyes have never been so doe-like. She’s never been so bold.

“I…” Robin’s face flushes, certainly not expecting her to speak so proudly.

“And I love Emma, if it isn’t ardently clear. She’s everything to me and I’m happy just to exist in her life.” He raises his whiskey to her and she follows suit like a gentlemen’s agreement has just been formed: To love one another without concern of what it means. As she takes a sip she realizes what everything means. He hasn’t pushed aside his dreams in the slightest this go around. He’s been focused and driven, ambitious and busy. Somehow, he’s still considering her ‘everything.’ Maybe what she thought was sacrifice all that time ago was really just love.

So they stay in love.

-/-

Another year goes by and the first film is set to release. Although Emma and Killian still pay rent at their separate apartments, they spend every night together. Sometimes it's downtown in Killian’s studio, and other nights it's in the heart of the city at Emma’s. Commitment isn’t measured by who gave what up. It has shifted to who stays. They both do, and every day they make the decision to stay, when it's 5 months since Killian has slept alone or 10 months since Emma had dinner without him. They stay together with one promise in mind. They love each other. And for as long as Love is Present, they will choose each other.

Love is History

“Art imitates Life right?” Belle closes the folder encasing a rough draft of her first few chapters.

“All good things come to an end.” Emma shrugs as if the concept of him being just a ‘good’ thing ending doesn’t devastate her. He was the best thing.

She thought she’d never write their break up.

“You read book 3: “Wind’s Ally”” Emma leans back in her chair, studying Belle right back. “You know their history.”

-/-

The sun is setting over the Manhattan skyline when she gets back to her apartment. She doesn’t know where she went after the meeting but her mind just got back to the present and she’s pissed.

“Wouldn’t we all like to know?”

-/-

Congratulations, Emma, you saved him...from ever having to care about you again.

-/-

She thinks of his face.

Three hours pass and all she has in a google doc is ‘why?’

-/-

Despite the first failure to launch, she finds she quite likes that library. She’s giving herself a pep talk this time, before she finds herself staring at a blank screen wondering why again.

The sound of the empire striking back stirs her from her thoughts. Regina gets the Darth Vader theme as a ringtone so Emma never forgets who really owns her career.

“Hey,” Emma answers as she reaches her apartment door.

“Right” she sighs. “What’s my money bringing me today?”

“There’s a point here.” Emma urges, feeling ill-fated all of a sudden.

“When?” She whispers.

“Which library?” because Fate is a nosy bitch and has no business showing up and guiding her to the man she ran from.

“Emma?”

“Which library”

“I think...if I recall correctly, his home base is in Harlem.”

“I’ll call you back.”

-/-

Her body had other ideas, because although she definitely meant to get on a train going the opposite direction, she found herself in Harlem 25 minutes later.

She sits in the middle of the library at an open table, clickity clacking as loudly as she can. Part of her really believes that maybe if she saw him, she’d remember why she left.

Another part is certain that masochism is her new favorite hobby.

He never appears.

-/-

“Hey” Emma answers her phone going off for the eighth time today.

“Emma?” Belle sounds more relieved than usual. “Where have you been, I’ve been calling non-stop since 3.” Emma rolls her neck to view the time on the DVR.

7:45 pm

“We had a meeting at 2:30.”

“Sorry.” She shrugs, because honestly, nothing even matters.

“I’m coming over,” Belle says decidedly.

“No, Belle, you don’t have to do that.” Emma regrets answering on the eighth attempt. “Let’s reschedule.”

“Are you okay?” She sets the pizza on the kitchen island and wraps Emma in a hug. Emma tries to pull her head far enough to keep her hair from wetting Belle.

“No, he didn’t.” She’s quick to dismiss. She scoured her missed calls for days looking for his name, he never called.

“How would you know, you never answer your phone, Emma.” She sits on a counter stool, tugging Emma to join her. “He’s going to be in every day next week, and I think…”

“No.” Emma cuts her off.

“Did he say anything else about me?” she hates the desperation gnawing at her.

“He asked me why…” Belle sighs “I told him we’ll all find out in book four.”

-/-

The office seems busier than it has ever been, many new, young faces bustling about. She keeps her features calm as she scans every inch of every room she enters for him.

“Emma?” Belle is hurried as she crosses the main floor to meet her. “What are you doing here?”

“I know.” Emma returns the hushed tone Belle is using. “I reworked some chapters, delayed the breakup, and gave more of Aly’s history.” and Belle nods, but is evidently not listening.

“He’s here.” Belle looks almost frightened. “So if you want to reconsider, I would do it now. Otherwise…”

“Killian.” She swallows. Her throat makes this awkward gurgling sound and she wants to melt into the floor. Why is she here?

“How are you?” She asks without thought. The look on his face is devastating.

“Sorry?” He mocks a laugh. “How am I?”

She’s not completely delusional. This is a thing humans say to one another, no? Why does it feel so foreign all at once, like she’s attempting English for the first time with a local?

“Killian” she sighs, releasing the most dizzying breath.

“I’m good” he grits, suddenly covered in constrained anger. “And you?”

And now they are strangers, all dressed up and nothing to talk about.

“Me?” Her tongue drags along her lower lip to buy time. “Good.” She nods.

“I’m just pleased everyone is good.” Belle smiles sweetly. “Now, Killian and I have a brief meeting, and afterward, if you’re still available, we can go over your rewrite.”

An exit strategy. This is quite possibly the only thing she could have hoped for.

She was always a fence, holding him back from the best parts of himself.

-/-

When the meeting concludes, Belle graciously thanks Killian for coming, makes promises of action, and attempts to say goodbye.

Killian, as good-natured and kind as he can be, has always had a persistently obnoxious side. He invites himself to the next meeting.

“This is only fair, Swan.” he smiles, though his eyes are full of darkness.

They regroup in Belle’s office after a bathroom break.

As much as Emma is dying on the inside, Belle looks absolutely disturbed by this. She can’t imagine the discomfort in being the third wheel of a breakup reunion.

“More of a what?” Killian’s breath is sharp as it floods in through his nose and out through his mouth. “What did she do to him?”

She’s not sure if it’s understanding she expects, or maybe gratitude, for saving him from the needy monster that she is. She knows neither is what she received.

“Did you ask Atlas, perhaps… perhaps that’s what made him happiest?” Killian’s eyes are drilling into her like nails, pinning her against a wall.

She is less.

Speechless, motionless, hopeless…

Less sure she did the right thing. Less firm on her decision. Just so much less than she was the day before.

There’s movement after a long pause, not by her, but Belle, gently setting the files down and moving to leave them alone.

“So you got yourself off the couch now.” Killian stands, eyes frantically scanning Emma from head to toe. “Well done, it only took the motivation of ending a relationship to do it.”

“I did it for you.” and she believes that, with everything in her, she left for his own good.

And all at once in the middle of the ocean, she can see Aly waking up all alone in the captain’s quarters, searching the whole damn ship for a man who did what the men she loves always do.

“I would have died miserable.”

-/-

The history she’s writing is hers and hers alone. When she was younger, when her heart was stolen and broken, when she always ended up alone. She was writing an escape plan.

She definitely does not want a husband though, or to be barefoot and pregnant, or…

Hold yourself together Emma, that’s always been your role.

Finally, an email came in.

Emma,

I’ve moved out. Everything I’ve left is yours…among the worn t-shirts you liked to sleep in and the novels we’ve collected over the years is my heart.

Goodbye Love.

“Emma,” Belle brings her back to the present after a very long, painful trip into her past. “Are you okay?”

Why is that word even used to describe how ‘good’ something or someone is?

“And that’s how it ends?” Belle hands her the folder back. “You can do better.”

-/-

“The concept of fiction isn’t a lack of reality, it just hasn’t happened exactly that way yet.”

“Don’t be afraid to use your own daily vernacular. It’s just as likely as any well-researched, powered by thesaurus dialogue, but it will come to you much more easily. That’s your voice.”

“Hi” she breathes. “Uhm…”

“Do you want to meet my junior author group?” He cuts in quickly.

“Hi.” She repeats, only this time her eyes travel across the young faces. “I’m Emma.”

“That I do.” Emma feigns a smile.

“Emma Swan” Killian begins, chest swelling “came up with the idea in a small town library.”

“Really?” another girl with wavy blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders asks.

Being alone again is terrifying. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. Why does she always go looking for him? What does she want? How can they come out of this okay? What is okay?

“I was just looking for inspiration.” He nods.

“There are study rooms.” He adds, motioning in the direction she may find them. “My office is actually at a different location, or I’d…suggest…”

“Do you hate me?” it comes out without warning.

“No.” He winces. She’s not sure if it’s because he’s lying or because he wishes he were lying.

“Why not?” She asks. He flinches.

This voice within her tells her that it's no man’s job to do the work for her. Her walls are her own to remove.

He laughs, loudly.

She’s startled more that she laughs in return than questions it.

“You’re not troubled” she shakes her head but thinks back to every time he came home frustrated and sealed himself up before she could get a good glimpse of it. “Are you?”

And she sees the orphan in him the moment she realizes being left behind were his worst fears, too.

“You thought I’d leave…”

She considers the part about him looking forward to her book.

She doesn’t have a response and the seconds tick by. It only takes a few before they reach an awkward silence where one person makes an excuse to leave. And then when do they see each other again?

He’s the quick thinker. Always a come-back, a pun, a literary quote…

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you…” She opens her laptop nonchalantly, as if it won’t wound her for him to leave. “...a boy who loves you.”

Among the many novels they shared, “The Book Thief” was one of Killian’s most treasured.

He stares at her with wonder glazing his face. “If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.”

Maybe she’d burn every book in this library, for a chance to experience falling in love with Killian all over again, as if it weren’t a moment in history.

“My number hasn’t changed.”

-/-

His number has. She gets a text around 1am.

Are you up?

It's odd, because Killian isn’t a booty-call kind of guy, but who knows what a breakup can do to a man.

I rarely sleep before 2. Her phone rings moments later.

“Hello?” her tone sounds like a question, but she knows it’s him.

“Swan, it’s Killian.”

“Yes, Grandpa, I’m aware.” She can’t help but chuckle. Almost too elated that he’s on the other end. She can hear him laugh on the other end.

“Do you remember the first time we started speaking on the phone? You wouldn’t give me your number until maybe the 18th date.” She didn’t trust herself then. They took things so slowly.

“You know I like a clean getaway.” Is it too soon to joke about always having one foot out the door?

“What's the escape plan this time?”

“Probably the West Coast since you chased me here”

“I did not!” His laugh is vibrating against her ribs, setting the tempo for her heart.

Could it be easy all over again? One quote and he’s calling her? One call and they go see a movie? One date and…

And thinking about the end is how she got there, isn’t it?

“Did you plan on seeing me again? Knowing you were moving here?”

“Where else would I get inspiration. You’re my muse.”

-/-

She’s not sure if she should call it a date. He invites her to a scholarship meeting and sure, they’re dressed up, but because it's a business meeting. He talks to the team, Belle is in attendance, and she barely says a word.

Sometimes love is familiar, like a book you’ve read a dozen times. There’s comfort in knowing everything and loving it anyway.

-/-

They go over the recent chapters and Belle seems subtly impressed but she’s holding back. Emma knows it's Killian-related. She just knows she can’t pry without being pried open in return.

“You don’t like it?”

“We don’t.”

-/-

He’s walking her home after another fun night at a bar near her apartment. They’ve been casually seeing each other but nothing more than a kiss on the cheek or a hug goodnight has occurred. They get to her building in record time, too preoccupied by the conversation on who in Hollywood would make a handsome Captain Zeph.

“Johnny Depp doesn’t have blue eyes.” Emma laughs. “You can’t just pick the most popular actors, and he’s already a pirate in another franchise.” They’re at the doors of her building and his eyes are boring into her. “Do you want to come up?”

And maybe it's because they haven’t had a real kiss in what’s very close to being a year now, but he seems almost nervous.

“I’m afraid I miss you too much.” he scratches behind his ear and looks down the road. When he looks back at her he seems shy.

“Chris Wood,” she comments. She liked him on Supergirl. “Come upstairs.”

“Killian...”

“Your apartment isn’t ‘New York?’” it's so weird that they’ve never seen each other's place when they’ve seen each other's souls.

“I wanted you to keep them.” He starts to give them back when she waves her hand.

Her bed is covered in pillows dressed in his t-shirts instead of pillowcases. She keeps his cologne on the bedside table as if it were some expensive aromatherapy pillow spray. The blanket Granny from the local diner in Storybrooke made them lay at the foot of the bed, an anchor crocheted into the loops.

“Is this what you want?” Her response is to slip her dress over her head. Any questions to follow are puffed out in a husky tone against her ear.

Sometimes love is erotica, so she catalogs every second of it because nothing has ever happened quite like this before.

-/-

“I…” Robin’s face flushes, certainly not expecting her to speak so proudly.

So they stay in love.

-/-

#kenya writes #cs ff #captain swan fanfic #captain swan fanfiction #one shot #love is fiction #love is history #honestly #i forgot how to tag #I forgot everything #but I really plan on writing again #and I need to put myself out there #300 notes is a lot #oh this is definitely not beta'd #I own like ALL the mistakes and you know what #this might be one big mistake

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marshmallow-phd · 4 years

Text

Secret in His Eyes

Spinoff of Sins of the Father

Genre: Mafia Au

Pairing: Luhan x Reader

Summary: A vacation exploring China’s famous city was supposed to be relaxing. When you witness a horrifying murder, you instead find yourself in police custody, unable to run. Trying to stay alive, you meet Luhan, and you believe you can trust him. You never imagined that he might be the one you should be running from.

Part: Prologue I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I Final

Your breath caught in your throat.

Run away. That’s what every fiber in your being was screaming at you. But it wasn’t out of fear. No, it was because you knew if you gave in, running away would no longer be the ultimate goal. You knew the strength of your own resolve and it wasn’t much.

At your silence, Luhan let out a sigh and stepped back. “I understand. But I’ll keep my promise to you. I’ll find out who’s behind all of this and I’ll keep you safe.”

Some part of your brain panicked, snapping out your hand and grabbing his wrist to make him stay. Why couldn’t you just walk away? You wouldn’t walk out of the mansion – it still too dangerous for that – but you still had the physical ability to walk out of this room. Yet, here you were, clinging to him.

“I want to hate you so much,” you growled through your teeth. Before he could respond, you pulled him to you, careful not to hurt him further. It didn’t start out as the most romantic kiss, with lips crashing together in a way that sent a minor shockwave through your jaw.

Luhan immediately wrapped his arms around you. You could practically feel his heartbeat against your chest, pounding at the same high speed as yours. As the kiss deepened, you lost control of your own actions and push Luhan back until he collided with the dresser. The momentum of the hit caused the picture frame sitting on top to fall the ground. It landed on the corner, shattering the protective glass.

With a gasp, you pulled away. “Oh, crap! Luhan, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t be,” he said with a slight chuckle. Using the inside of his foot, he kicked the frame under the bed, leaving behind a few specs of glass in its wake. “I should have gotten rid of it a long time ago.” A smile spread across his face as he looked at you.

You sighed. “This doesn’t mean I can stay.”

The grin lost a bit of its shine as he took in your words. “I know,” he said sadly. “But can I be with you as long as you’re here?”

“I think I can do that,” you nodded.

“Now, that the lovey-dovey scene is over, can we get back to what’s really important here?”

You let out a squeak at Tao’s sudden intrusion, making Luhan “oof” when you jumped in closer to him. You threw a mumbled “sorry,” his way and he patted your shoulder in response, letting you know you hadn’t hurt him too much. You were going to have to be more careful around him for the time being. The last thing you needed was to have a clumsy moment and rip his wound back open.

Taking your hand in his, he started leading you towards the door.

“Does the mouse have to come?” Tao sneered.

“She’s involved in this just as much as you and me,” Luhan said. “So, the answer is yes.”

Clearly not happy with that finite statement, Tao rolled his eyes and pushed off the door frame he was leaning on. His stomps down the hallway could be felt a few feet behind, vibrating the walls and floors with each step. Luhan squeezed your hand reassuringly – or, at least, he was trying to be reassuring. If Tao was being hostile towards you like this, you hated what awaited for you from the other one.

Since Luhan’s office was now in shambles, the meeting was to take place in the dining room. Kris was already there, his long frame sitting back on the table, hands shoved into the pockets of his navy slacks. Yixing was seated on the opposite side. His elbows were resting on the table while his folded hands covered his mouth. The tension between his eyebrows and far off look in his eyes told you that he was in deep thought. What about, you weren’t sure, but for him to be frowning so furiously… it had you worried.

“Sorry, we’re late,” Tao said as he sat down in the chair next to Yixing. “The lovebirds got a little distracted.”

Immediately at that comment, you snatched your hand away from Luhan’s and crossed your arms over your chest so he couldn’t take it back. A somewhat hurt look was sent your way before his face hardened on the younger member.

“Watch it, Tao. I’m not in the mood for your stupid attempts at jokes.”

“I don’t care as long as you stay focused during this,” Kris commented. He straightened up, moving out of the way so Luhan could take his seat at the head of the table.

You, on the other hand, stayed back.

“Sit down, (y/n).” Luhan motioned to one of the many empty chairs for you to choose from, but you shook your head.

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

He simply nodded, obviously disappointed that you were pulling away again. You couldn’t help it. Space was the only thing keeping you sane at the moment.

“So, what have you found?” Luhan asked as he turned to Tao.

Tao leaned back in his chair, leaving one hand on the table to rap his knuckles against. “Chan was able to find a majority of the pieces to the bomb. It was small, meant to damage, but not kill. For the most part, anyway. The design is very unique. He traced it back to a man known only as Mr. Eight.”

“Mr. Eight?” Kris snorted. “So terrifying.”

“He’s called that because once his bombs are detonated, you only have eight seconds before you see the last flash of your life,” Yixing explained. “He was most known for working closely with Liang Zheng. Until he died.” His telling gaze flickered over to Luhan.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Yixing was implying: that Luhan was responsible for that man’s death. Just when you were beginning to let yourself forget what exactly his world contained, you were rudely awakened from that dream to realize you were still stuck in the nightmare.

Part of you wanted Lin back, even though you never really had him. With Lin, it was easier to pretend. Easier to imagine him leaving this life behind. Luhan was a constant reminder of what could possibly happen to you if you stayed too long.

Luhan kept his own eyes down on the dark wood table. There was almost a red hue to the stain, making you want to keep away from it even more. “What were the last known whereabouts of Mr. Eight?”

“His last siting was in Qingdao,” Tao answered. “That was about five years ago. No one has seen or heard from him since. Until now.”

“If it really is him who sent the bomb and not someone who might have trained under him,” Kris pointed out.

Luhan shook his head. “No, I think it’s really him. If it was someone who trained under him, they’d have their own signature mixed in there. These kinds of guys can’t stand not getting the credit.”

Straightening up, Yixing moved his hands so they were now laying in his lap. “So, what do you propose we do?”

“We’ll send a few men down to Qingdao to see if they can find some trace of him,” Luhan concluded.

“I’ll go with them,” Tao volunteered. “I know the area well.”

“Going to go see her while you’re at it,” Kris teased with a smirk.

Tao rolled his eyes in annoyance, but the smile on his face was telling a different story.

Your mind recalled the time that Luhan had said you would be surprised about what a romantic Kris could be. Did all of these guys have some sort of romance in their lives? It was hard to picture, apart from Yixing, at least. You could see him as the hero of a love story. But the others? Not so much. The Godfather wasn’t exactly something you’d find in the romance drama section.

“Just do it and try to stay on task.” Luhan groaned. His hand went to his side, cradling the wound that was still trying to heal. You took an involuntary step towards in, but stopped when you saw Yixing already by his side. This man was bringing out your instinct to comfort and take care. Just another reason that he was dangerous for you.

“You should get back to bed,” Yixing told him as he checked his pulse from his wrist. He counted off the seconds with his watch, the crease between his eyebrows deepening as time went on. “This is putting too much stress on you and your body won’t heal if you keep it up.”

When you had expected was another witty one-liner from Luhan, instead he simply smiled, patting his friend on the shoulder. “Okay. I could use some more rest any way.” Then he turned to look at you. “(y/n), will you help me back to my room?”

All eyes turned to you. Well, now you really couldn’t say no, could you?

With a silent nod, you slowly walked over and helped Luhan up to his feet. For a second, he staggered, but you had a sneaking suspicion that it was all for show given that his arm somehow landed around the small of your back. Not exactly the best place for support. Tao must have agreed because he rolled his eyes for the millionth time since you’d met him and stalked out of the room.

“Do you have him, (y/n)?” Yixing asked.

You looked up at Luhan with a slightly annoyed expression. “Yeah, I’ve got him.” To Luhan, you said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

It was a slow journey back to his room – which was surprising since he wasn’t exactly the biggest guy in this mansion - but eventually you were able to get him back, helping him up onto the bed that was sitting way too high off the ground.

“You should think about investing in a lower frame,” you mumbled.

“But I like it. It’s comfortable.” For added emphasis, he patted the space beside him.

A motion which you promptly ignored. You were already starting to regret your earlier kiss, especially now with the new information that another man was dead because of him. The only thing that kept you going was the fact that you didn’t have all the details surrounding his death, so you could imagine Luhan being as disconnected from it as possible. But that didn’t make the regret of the kiss go away. Because it kept you here, despite the boundaries you’d created for yourself. It was a line that you had drawn not too long ago and yet you already crossed it. And the thing is, no matter how thin or poorly drawn that line was, it was nearly impossible to step back over.

“Get some rest,” you told him.

“I’ll sleep better knowing that you’re here,” he threw back at you.

That was nothing more than a line, you were sure of it. But, against your better judgement, you shut the door to his room. You made sure that the most annoyed glare was on your face as crawled up on the bed next to him. He wasted no time pulling you in close so your head was resting on his chest.

“You promised to stay.”

“No, I said I would be with you as long as I was here,” you reminded him. “We both know I can’t stay. If an out comes along, I’ll probably take it.”

Luhan let out a long, burdened sigh as he rubbed your arm up and down with his palm. “I can protect you.”

You sat up and stared down at him in disbelief. “It’s not just about being scared, Luhan. This is your world. Not mine. I’m not built for it.”

He bobbed his head in understanding before reaching out and caressing your cheek with his thumb. “I guess that’s the ultimate sacrifice for getting where I am today. I can’t be happy with you and keep my life here. It’s not fair.”

“We all make choices,” you said. You brought up your hand to cover his and leaned into his touch. “But think of it this way. If you’d gone down another path, then you never would have met me.”

“An alternative I’m sure you’re wishing had been.”

You shook your head. “No. I honestly can’t say that I am.”

It was true. Yes, you wished you didn’t have the trauma that came along with everything. Or the horrible memories of blood and bullets. But the man lying in front of you… you couldn’t regret him. You couldn’t bring yourself to wish him out of your life.

What was wrong with you?

Deciding that that was a question you would never be able to answer, you lean forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Get some sleep,” you urged as you lowered his hand to rest on his stomach.

He let the smallest of smiles pull on his lips. “Okay.”

Soon enough, his eyelids closed. You watched a little while longer as his breathing deepened and the softest snore vibrated in his throat. You laughed to yourself quietly before slipping off the bed and leaving the room.

You weren’t sure where you were going, only that you were needing room to breathe, room to think. You couldn’t stay. You had to keep your stand on that. You couldn’t waver after saying so many times that you needed to leave. If only he didn’t make it so hard.

Over and over, you told yourself that it was because he was hurt. If you saw his real self, the notorious leader that was known to strike fear in lower level criminals now that you were privy to the truth, you would probably feel different.

Looking up, you realized you’d somehow came to the back door that Luhan had brought you through a few weeks ago. You glanced around to see if anyone was around. Sure, there were cameras everywhere, but you weren’t running away. Outside just meant fresh air, open space, and relaxation. It was too tempting to resist.

No alarm went off when you opened the door. No one tackled you or ran after you, yelling for you to stop or they’d shoot. So you kept going. The plan was to walk around, let your thoughts collect themselves, and then you’d be right back. You had nowhere else to go right now, so what would be the point in running? You didn’t have a safer option for the moment. You told Luhan that you would stay, until you had a chance to leave. That was your only promise.

“(y/n)!”

You groaned. Barely amongst the trees and you were already caught.

Turning around, your eyes grew wide, nearly falling out of your head at the person running towards you.

Detective Zhuang was dodging branches and leaves as she came to a stop in front of you, huffing to catch her breath.

You gaped at her appearance. “What are you doing here?”

Still hunched over and breathing heavily, she waved away your question. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get to you since I found out you were here. I can’t believe my luck.” She stood up and held her hand out for you. “Come with me. Now.”

You took a step back, eyes flickering back at the mansion behind you. Yes, you’d just been wondering about when you’d be able to leave, but her offer felt like trading one cage for another. And you’d already seen how unsafe you were in the hands of the police. “I can’t. I can’t leave.”

Detective Zhuang scoffed. “Why not? This is the perfect time to escape.” Studying your face, she narrowed her eyes at you. “Please, tell me you haven’t grown to sympathize with them. Those are bad men, (y/n). If you haven’t been hurt yet, you will be. Besides, I can get you out of the country.”

Your head snapped up. That changed everything. “What? You can? How?”

A wicked smile grew on her face. “The man who you witness murder that mafia member? He’s dead. We found his body on the banks of the river. The gun used was found on his person. Case closed. The judge said you could go home. You can go home and leave all of this behind.”

It felt too good to be true. Part of you wanted to question it, but if you denied yourself this one chance to go home, you might never get another one. Taking one last glance behind you, you gave a silent farewell to Luhan. You weren’t breaking any promises, only fulfilling it.

I’m sorry, Luhan. Goodbye.

Looking back to Detective Zhuang, you nodded and took her hand, letting her lead you through the trees and finally to freedom.

#exo #exo mafia au #exo mafia!au #luhan x reader #luhan #lu han #exo gang au #exo gang!au #kris wu #wu yifan #huang zitao #z.tao #tao #zhang yixing #lay #exo series #Secret in His Eyes

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pennylanefics · 4 years

Text

Till We Meet Again - Tom Blake

a/n: this is not sad, don’t worry! it’s sweet :) i just couldn’t find a better gif to use lol

warnings: mentions of wounds, blood, stitches. i tried to be discrete as possible with descriptions of it!

•••

The war had been going on for three years now, and your time as a nurse has been the same. When talks of the war began to brew, you were recruited, along with a bunch of other women, to train more deeply in the medical field. You already knew some things, but they taught you the specifics, like how to treat a gunshot wound, a stab wound, pretty much everything.

So when you were stationed in France in 1914, you were ready for anything that was thrown at you. And you sure did see a lot; too much for anyone to see on a regular basis. But you grew used to it, the blood on your hands and clothing felt like they were permanently stained.

Every night, you wished that this useless war would end, no good would ever come out of something so violent and harsh. These men, these young men, were dying every single day, and if they weren’t dead, they were either severely crippled or traumatized forever.

The years go by fast, thankfully they give breaks to nurses every now and then, to spend time away from the battlefield and all. Now, the war was three years in, and you didn’t feel like it would be coming to an end soon.

Every day, you had more and more soldiers coming to your aid post, with wounds bleeding out or head injuries from debris or whatever it was. You were growing tired of treating the same injuries all the time, but you had no choice.

On one particularly dreary April day, it was quite slow. You had heard from a fellow nurse that the Germans had advanced back, abandoning their front line and leaving territory open, meaning that no one was fighting there at the moment.

So, you took the time to relax, knowing that if anything were to happen, it would be at night. Kicking your feet up on another chair, you begin reading a book you had stored away in your things from home; it was the one thing that kept you sane during these times.

But, your relaxation was interrupted when loud, desperate yells sounded from right outside the post.

“Help me! Please help me!” The voice shouted. Looking around, you find a young soldier, a lance corporal, carrying a fellow soldier, who looked to be bleeding out on his side. You and Jessie, the other nurse, quickly run over to them, helping him carry the other lance corporal over to a bed.

“What happened?” Jessie asks. She attempts to calm him down as you begin tearing at the clothing of his friend, or fellow soldier.

“We-we, I-”

“Okay, why don’t you take a seat over here and let her do what she needs to,” she says, walking him over to the other side of the canopy. You work quickly, preparing to stitch his wound up after cleaning it and assessing the damage. You decided that he was going to survive, if you could stitch him up quickly.

You were quiet while you worked, though you could feel Jessie’s and the blonde soldier’s eyes on you as you did. The brunette soldier had passed out at this point, the pain being much for him. But you made sure to check his pulse and see if he was still alive every now and then.

After twenty minutes or so, you finished, wiping your hands on your apron.

“Is he gonna be alright?” The blonde wonders.

“Yes, he should be. It may be awhile before he wakes up, but I successfully stopped the bleeding and sewed him up.”

“I wish I could stay, but I have to deliver a message to the Second Devons, that’s where we were headed when this happened. I have to leave now.”

“Wait! What message?” Jessie wonders. “What happened to him?”

“I have orders to stop tomorrow’s attack. They are walking into a trap that the Germans have been planning for months. If not, we could lose sixteen hundred men.” Your jaw drops at the number mentioned, knowing that the aid posts at that front line were going to be overwhelmed.

“I will be back tomorrow or the next day, if I’m still alive. If he happens to wake up, tell him I am on my way to Ecoust. Goodbye.” With that, he turns and leaves, running in the direction of which he came from.

“That was odd,” you whisper. “I wonder if he’ll make it.”

“Ecoust isn’t that far, but no one has any idea what he’s walking into because that place is crawling with Germans.”

“We never got their names either.” You walk over to the soldier and check his ID bracelet.

“Lance Corporal Thomas Blake,” you murmur, going back to your seat.

“We’ll see what happens.”

As the day goes on, you continue treating the couple of soldiers that were still slowly recovering, and checking to make sure Tom was still alive, as well as treating the few more soldiers that showed up.

Night time came and Tom had yet to wake up. Every other soldier that was in the tent had been moved to recovery a few yards away. So it was just you, Jessie, and Tom.

“I wonder if that lance corporal made it to the Second Devons or not,” Jessie says.

“I hope so. He looked very determined and it seemed very urgent.” In the middle of your conversation, a groan sounded through the silent air, and you are quick to your feet, running over to the soldier.

“Wh-what happened?” Tom groans, eyes lidded with exhaustion and sleep.

“You were stabbed, it seems. Your friend couldn’t say much when you arrived, but from my experience, it’s a stab wound.” He huffs and tries to sit up, but you stop him immediately.

“You need to rest. You’re still very weak. We’ll transport you to recovery in the morning.” Tom nods and lays back down, staring up at you.

“Were you the one who saved me?” He asks, his voice gravelly and rough.

“Yes. I was the one who stitched you up. Your friend is the one who brought you here.” He suddenly becomes more alert, worrying you.

“Will...did, did he leave for the Second Devons?” He wonders, urgency filled in his voice.

“As far as I know, he left right after I was done stitching you up. He knew the way and he seemed determined to make it.” Tom relaxes at the news, reaching for your hand, which you let him do so. Usually, when the soldiers got handsy, you slapped them away. But Tom seemed different.

From the short time that he had been awake, you could tell there was a sense of innocence to him, that he was terrified of the war and all he wanted to do was go home. So, you allowed him, just this once.

“Please stay with me,” he whispers, a desperate tone in his voice. “Please, I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to keep you here overnight and move you to recovery early in the morning.”

“No, I can’t. I want to stay with you.” A small smile appears on your lips, the thought of Tom wanting to be by your side warming your heart.

“I wish that was possible, Tom, but we have to keep these beds open for incoming wounded. If you start healing, we need to send you to recovery.” Tears begin to fall from his eyes, shining in the gas light lanterns that were hung around the tent.

“How about this, I’ll visit you towards the end of the day, but I have to be back by sunset,” you bargain. Tom smiles and nods, wincing as he finally feels the pain in his side.

“Get some more rest, okay? We’ll be here all night in case anything happens.” He nods and closes his eyes as you go back over to Jessie.

“Are you really going to go to recovery to comfort him?” Jessie asks in a hushed tone. You give her a side stare for a moment before looking down at your hands.

“He seems young, terrified.”

“Every soldier that comes here is most likely young and terrified. What’s different with him?” You pause for a moment, wondering what you feel differently about.

“I don’t know…” you taper off, not having a true answer for her.

—

Sure enough, when the sun broke the hillside, you and Jessie transported Tom over to recovery. You talked to him the entire time, carrying the side where his head was. He seemed a bit happier, telling you all about his friend Will, the other soldier who was with him.

When you dropped him off, he gave you one last goodbye wave.

“I’ll see you tonight Nurse…”

“(Y/N). Just (Y/N).” He smiles as you walk off with Jessie back to your station.

“Why didn’t you just ask Eden to switch posts with you for the night?” Jessie asks.

“Because I’ve been in recovery before. Every man there thinks he’s entitled to touch and harass me as a reward for surviving. It happens at night, especially.”

“Shit. Some of these men are just awful.”

“But not Tom,” you grin, thinking about his bright blue eyes that captivated you.

“You fancy him, don’t you?”

“I think he’s very cute.”

“How old is he in the first place?”

“Only a year younger than me, nineteen.”

“You two are smitten, I can tell.”

“We’ll see.”

Later that day, when the sun is finally beginning to set, you make your way over to the recovery tent where Tom is at. Thankfully, most of the soldiers that were there today have now moved, and there were only a couple left, including Tom.

“Hey,” you greet, setting your chair right next to Tom’s bed. A huge smile appears on his lips as he sits up a little, still sore from the injury.

“Hi! I missed you all day.”

“Because it was such a long time.” He chuckles and sticks his hand out for you again. You gladly take it and thread your fingers through his. Glancing down at them, he squeezes your hand and places his other on top of yours.

Tom is quick to jump into a conversation about his family back home, how his dog is having puppies and everything about his brother. Before you know it, the sun has set and the air has grown cold.

“Well, I need to get back to my post,” you mumble quietly. Tom nods and keeps ahold of your hand as you stand up, grabbing onto your chair.

“Will you come visit me tomorrow night again?” He asks.

“I will try to, Tom. See you later.” As you walk away, you finally drop his hand and he watches as you trudge back up the slight hill to your post.

*a week later*

You were tending to a wounded soldier that had been brought to your post when a figure stepped up to the tent, standing there.

“I’ll be right with you, sir,” you say, focusing on your work. When you finished, you rinsed your hands in the bowl next to the bed, wiping them on your apron after. Finally, you turn to the soldier, ready to dress his wound, when you find Tom standing there, a new uniform covering his body.

“Tom, what is it?” He smiles and steps closer to you.

“They’re sending me home. I can’t bend over anymore, even though it’s still not fully healed, it’s still tender. I can’t hunch over while walking through trenches anymore, so they’ve released me.”

“That’s great to hear, Tom. I’m happy that you finally get to see Myrtle’s puppies and your mum’s orchard.”

“Yeah, I am happy. But I am going to miss you,” he mumbles, eyes casting to the ground in a shy manner. You reach up and tuck your finger under his chin, to make him look back up at you.

“Don’t be sad. Be happy that you’re alive, and I know you’ll always remember me for saving your life,” you chuckle. Tom laughs as well, his blue eyes boring into yours.

“I promise to find you once the war is over,” he says. You are shocked by his words. With no idea of when the war was going to end, he wanted to be with you? He barely knew you, only in the short week that he’s been in your care and recovery.

“How?” Tom hands you a letter, his scribbly handwriting on the front, reading “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THE WAR IS OVER”. You chuckle and smile at the phrase, not knowing when the war would even end.

“Who knows when this war will end? You will find someone else, someone perfect for you, Tom,” you say, handing the letter back to him.

“No,” he stops you. “Keep it. Please. I would really like to reconnect after.”

“Alright.” Tom smiles and leans forward to press a kiss to your cheek.

“Till we meet again, (Y/N).”

“See you later, Tom.” With that, he walks off, facing you as he does before eventually turning away. You watch as he trudged alongside his friend, Will, who returned after having stopped the Second Devons, which Tom was extremely happy to hear about, and that his brother was still alive.

You had only hoped the fighting would end soon so you could see Tom.

—

A year and a half goes by, and the war has finally ended. You and Jessie were sent home within days of the news, after tending to the last few soldiers that were at your post. The train ride home was the worst, all you could think about was opening the letter from Tom.

Finally, you step foot into your home, your mother, sister, and brother running to hug you instantly.

“We are so glad you’re back home and safe,” your mother sobs, running her fingers through your hair.

“I am too, mum. It’s so nice to be home and not worry about what I am going to come in contact with the next day.”

“No more talk of that, it’s all over. I’m having a bunch of people over to celebrate, so I’m going to run out for food. I’ll be back later!”

After catching up with your siblings for a little, you tell them to go out back and play while you settle back in. Once in your room, the first thing you unpack is Tom’s letter. Taking a seat on your bed, you rip it open, your heart racing at what could possibly be written inside.

Dear (Y/N),

I am guessing that the war has now ended since you are reading this. If not, fold it back up and wait! Anyways, if it has ended, please write me a letter, letting me know that you have read this. I will be waiting to hear from you!

Love, Tom.

A huge smile took over your features as you read his handwriting. As soon as you finish reading, you jump up and skip over to your desk, taking a piece of paper and grabbing your ink pen. You quickly write to Tom, stating that you are back home and that you have read his letter.

You address it with the information Tom gave you, and run it out to the post box right down the road from your house. Now, all you had to do was wait.

A few days go by and you had yet to receive anything else from Tom, but thankfully, that changed when you picked up the mail from the post office. You scan through the mass amount of letters from relatives, congratulating you on returning home, when a familiar handwriting catches your eye: a letter from Tom.

You couldn’t even wait to open it, so you ripped the envelope and unfolded the paper. Your eyes scanned over the words, a grin appearing on your face in the process. He asked you to come to his house to spend time with one another, and the day that he wanted to meet was today.

You run home as fast as you possibly can, jogging straight up to your room once you bolt through the door. Your mother called for you, wondering what all the noise was for.

Quickly changing into something more presentable and nice, you make your way back downstairs, the letter still in your hands.

“(Y/N), what on earth are you running around for?” Your mother scolds you.

“Sorry. I’m off to meet a friend I met while in France. He was one of the wounded that I helped.” A sly grin took over your mother’s features as she stopped washing the dishes for a moment.

“Possible romance?” She wonders. You roll your eyes at her words, though deep inside of you, you hoped that was the outcome of this.

“Oh shut it. I’m just meeting him to chat.”

“Sure, you say that now, but soon enough, you’ll be so infatuated with one another.”

“Okay, mum. I have to go, don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Stay out as late as you want, darling!” Chuckling, you walk out the front door and hop into the family car, taking one last look at the address to try and figure out where it was. Realizing it was just a town over, you start the car up and head over to his place.

The ride there was agonizing. You were so anxious and excited to see Tom that you hadn’t even noticed that you had arrived. Taking a deep breath, you step out of the car and go to walk up to the small farmhouse, but a figure sitting on the steps catches your eye.

“Well hello,” Tom greets you as you walk up to him, meeting you halfway.

“Hi,” you shyly respond. Tom sticks his arms out for you and within a second, you fall into them, a huge smile on your face and laughter falling from your lips. Tom spins you around the open yard, holding tightly onto your waist.

After a couple more minutes of hugging, Tom lets go of you, but grabs onto your hands immediately.

“You’re all I’ve thought about since I left,” he admits, staring deeply into your eyes.

“Really? A year and a half, and you found no one else?” Tom hums in response, shaking his head at your question.

“Only you. You saved my life and comforted me when no one else would. I knew if I had asked those nurses in recovery, they wouldn’t have done anything.”

“Yeah, the main problem is that soldiers in recovery are usually touchy and rude, thinking that because they survived something, that they’re injured or crippled, they deserve you, to touch and harass.” Tom’s eyes widen at your words, thoughts and images running through his mind.

“I would know, I worked a recovery post for a short time till I got sent over to the last aid post.”

“That’s awful, love. Why did you put up with it in the first place?” You shrugged, knowing there was nothing that could be done.

“I had to. C’est la vie.” Tom chuckles and steps a bit closer to you.

“Why did you continue to see me in recovery every day? Why not just stay at your post and get on with your day?” Your hand reaches up to cup his cheek, the innocence still hiding in his eyes.

“You were different. Sure, you weren’t the youngest soldier I dealt with, but I could tell you were terrified. You had this innocence and purity in your eyes, and I can still see it. War was not something you should have seen or been put through, and I guess I wanted to make you feel better with some comfort that I figured you needed.”

“Thank you so much,” he whispers. “For everything.”

“You know, I thought about you every day, too. I stared at the letter, wanting to so badly open it and read it already; I had no idea when I would even be able to, if I were to. When Jessie and I finally heard the news, all I could think about was you and that damn letter.” Both of you laugh for a moment before the air settles between you, silence taking over.

“Can I kiss you?” He asks in a hushed voice. Nodding a little, he leans in and places his lips on yours, gently at first, but once you reciprocate, it’s much more passionate. The kiss continues for a few seconds, both of you enjoying the taste of one another.

Finally, you pull away to catch your breath, and Tom rests his forehead on yours, his hands slowly encircling your waist.

“Will you be mine? I don’t want to be with anyone else. I want to be with the woman who saved my life?” He wonders, blue eyes shining with hope.

“Of course I will, Tom.”

•••

taglist: @gecrgemackays @anneinneverneverland @1920s-obsessed

#tom blake #thomas blake #dean charles chapman #tom blake imagines #tom blake x reader #1917 #imagines #fanfiction #fanfic

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mexicancat-girl · 4 years

Text

Still Waters Run Deep

A birthday fic for @chadsuke / @ftcoye !

The last time I've written serious Naruto fanfiction was 2015, so I blame them for this.

I wanted to write something as a thank-you for them being one of the best writers for the Naruto fandom. Their fics always bring me joy. Their characterizations are amazing. Their wlw fics are galaxy brain.

AO3 Link (here)

...

Mei Terumi could feel a headache coming on.

It was not over the current war effort, thankfully. Mostly because said war effort had managed to defeat their opponents, ie: a snake-possessed necromancer, a thought-to-be-dead megalomaniac, an impossibly hard-to-kill plant man, a self-made Jinchuriki, and a literal rabbit Goddess.

Truth be told, anyone should be having a headache from such an insane repertoire of God-like beings managing to cripple five nations worth of forces. Or, well, any sane person—and Mei likes to think herself as rightfully sane, thank you very much.

She is, after all, the person who stopped a tyrannical Kage from furthering destroying her home nation from the inside out. And, you know, committing even more genocide. So, there was that.

Thankfully, she is the current Mizukage. The Fourth Shinobi World War is done and over with. They have won. They are alive.

But Mei hasn’t survived this long without being able to see the big picture or think a few steps ahead. She wouldn’t have been able to dismantle Yagura’s forces and managed to beat him down and kill him, otherwise.

Every nation has suffered great losses from this war. They’d nearly been fighting an unwinnable battle ten times over. All the current survivors were no doubt suffering from massive psychological if not physical damage, having had to watch their comrades fall before them in variously gruesome ways.

That’s without accounting for the people who watched as their dead comrades and family were raised from the dead to fight against them. Then with them. Then having their bodies crumble as the jutsu keeping them going burned out, the stolen minutes with loved ones lost making things either healing or unbearable, depending on the person.

Quite frankly, it was an exhausting debacle for all involved, in ways that most of them had not—could not—have accounted for. They were all pushed to their limits physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And while the threats were finally vanquished, it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot.

Because after this, they must bury the dead. Heal their wounded.

Then after that, they have to figure out where the hell to go from here. How to just…move on.

Sure, the shinobi nations all teamed up together against this major threat. But what comes after…?

How will they deal with war criminals like Orochimaru of the Sannin? Like Kabuto Yakushi? Like Sasuke Uchiha?

How will they go about making a peace treaty? Will there be a peace treaty? They’ve come together to fight in this war, yes, but that was out of necessity. So that the entire world did not fall into chaos. This rare show of unity can hardly erase decades of bloodshed and ill will and complicated history between the Elemental Nations.

It’s all a rather nerves-inducing line of questioning that, sadly, they must consider. Especially those in positions of power and authority. Since Mei is Mizukage, she’ll no doubt have to weather all of that.

For any and all possible talks of peace, the Kage will be involved, of course, because that’s a no-brainer. But who else will be pulled into the discussions? The war tacticians? The Nations’ daimyo? The very teenagers that felled a God and saved them all? Probably. Most likely.

Mei Terumi can barely stand talking to Water Country’s daimyo on a good day. Add in the daimyo of the other Nations—all ridiculously spoiled, ludicrously rich, greedy old men—will eat away at her will to live. No doubt they’ll bicker over who will cover the costs of reparations, and about how much aid should be granted to their shinobi villages, and blah blah blah.

Kill her now…

Mei likes to think that she is perfectly reasonable. That she can keep a level head, and bullshit with the best of them. That she is strong enough to get her point across without being callously cruel—and that just because she has compassion, it shouldn’t be considered a weakness.

Her nation has lived under tyranny and pain and tumultuously bloody waters for far too long. She does not want to rule with an iron fist, but still wants to be strong and cutthroat enough to protect her people and keep others in check. She’s sure she can lead her village—her country, her home—to a better tomorrow.

She’s sure that not everyone else thinks that. Many people see what they like to see, and they see a beautiful woman who acts coquettishly and dresses up. They see a woman who happens to have two powerful kekkei genkai. She must have gotten lucky, right? She must have seduced and swayed enough men to her side to do her bidding, for her to be Mizukage. She must have gotten in a good shot with her two bloodlines, to take out the previous Mizukage.

Mei is a perfectly reasonable person, and she is competent, and she is strong, and she happens to be quite a good leader thank you very much.

She’s also fairly certain that no matter how hard she tries, she will not be held in the same regard simply because she is a woman in a world of men.

Case in point: even if the daimyo don’t get involved with the peace treaties, there’s the other Kage to worry about. Mei would like to think that she’s got the patience to deal with them and the coy poker-face to back it up, but they’re all rather…hm. Eclectic is the most diplomatic word she can think of.

Onoki is an old coot who wouldn’t know innovation and progressiveness if it bit him on his fat red nose. Ā is, quite frankly, a bullheaded asshole who has negative tact and is constantly grandstanding to compensate for his probably small dick. Two patronizing, utterly misogynistic bastards that would rather butt heads and yell for an entire meeting than take any form of suggestions because they had sticks shoved that far up their own asses.

They were downright incorrigible.

There was also the third male of the group to worry about, though admittedly in a completely different sense.

Gaara speaks carefully and is perfectly polite, very willing to listen to others on top of that. He’s proven himself to be a good leader and oddly fantastic motivational speaker—kid could probably move an entire mountain range if he asked the ground nicely enough— strong in his own right. But there’s still the fact that he’s just a teenager.

He’s only been Kazekage for about, what, two years? Sure, that’s longer than Mei’s been Mizukage by double, but she’s been spearheading the Kiri Rebellion for a solid number of years before-hand. She’s led squadrons and held the lives of hundreds in her hands while Gaara was still stuck in school or private lessons. Suna scrambled in the time it took to train up a replacement after their Kage was assassinated by Orochimaru, lucky enough to find someone as strong as Gaara to take the mantel. But that doesn’t hide the fact that he’s the most inexperienced of them, made a Kage all at sixteen, barely seventeen now.

Despite everything he’s done to prove himself in the war—and having proven himself at least a good five times over, at that— Gaara’s age will always be an obstacle he has to overcome. Onoki and Ā certainly didn’t consider him a threat to their grandstanding and bullshit for just that reason, using seniority as to why they considered their own peon brains to be greater than Gaara’s.

Gaara is someone who’s willing to listen to reason, but Mei cannot count on him to be her main support. To act as a tiebreaker, possibly. But Onoki and Ā look down on him nearly the same amount as they look down on Mei herself. The fact that he is young puts him on the same level of Mei being a woman, in their misogynistic views.

The only person she can count on to have any Gods-forsaken sense is Tsunade Senju, and for good reason.

Tsunade is older than all of them but Onoki, and she certainly has the strength and experience to back herself up. She hasn’t been a Kage for as long as Onoki and Ā, but her strength is literally legendary and she’s well-travelled and intelligent, which is more than either man can claim. She’s one of the Sanin, and she revolutionized Medic Ninjutsu across the entirety of the Elemental Nations, for Gods’ sakes.

If not for Tsunade being temporarily incapacitated during her tenure, she’d have a spotless record.

As it is, she cuts through bullshit like a sharpened kunai through butter. Nothing cows her. No men will get her to back down, and certainly not men she could crush with her bare hands.

Tsunade is so competent and amazing, Mei’s possibly even a little in love. But that’s natural, isn’t it? It’s Tsunade Senju, after all. Mei’s sure everyone is a little starstruck when in the presence of such a force of nature.

In fact, Mei quickly finds that the first post-war meeting with Tsunade is probably the smoothest and most productive meeting between the Kage yet, no doubt since the founding of the Hidden Villages themselves!

And it’s all because Tsunade Senju takes no prisoners. When she sets out to do something, she gets it done.

Onoki and Ā are quick to start bickering about reparation costs and whining about treaties like the utterly braindead, paranoid bastards they are.

But, oh no. That doesn’t long very long with Tsunade around.

The blonde woman slams her palm on her desk with careful restraint, as the wood doesn’t shatter on impact. She leans over it, stares straight into Onoki and Ā’s eyes with an intensity that would make lesser men shit their pants.

And then, speaking in a tone that brooked no argument, “My grandfather, Hashirama Senju, God of Shinobi, could tame the Tailed Beasts. He first created the Ninja Villages for peace. He was literally re-animated to fight by our side, in the flesh. Alongside my student, one of the teenagers that helped kill a God because the world couldn’t shut the fuck up for two seconds and stop fighting. We. Are. Going. To. Have. Peace.”

Both men closed their mouths, in-synch, with audible clicks of their teeth.

For once, they are silent, and it’s utterly delightful.

“As someone who stopped a bloody civil war and the massacre of bloodlines, in order to bring peace to their own Village, I concur,” Mei agrees calmly, flashing a sweet smile with a hint more teeth than polite. Normally, she would have more constraint, but she is so damn giddy, she can’t help herself but jumping at the weakness like a shark smelling blood.

(She may be kinder than the past Mizukage by leagues, but she is still the leader of the Bloody Mist. She’ll find a way to reform her Village so it’s no longer known as the Bloody Mist, but they are still the most ruthless of the Ninja Villages by far.

That is to say: when Mei sees an obvious weak point, a chance to sink her teeth it, well. She’ll take it. She’s not all looks, after all. She’s as ruthless as the rest of them.)

Onoki and Ā narrow their eyes at Mei, their lips thinned as they frown disapprovingly and grumpily at her—no doubt for her daring to speak.

But before they can protest, Gaara comes in clutch, as the tiebreaker that Mei had been hoping for.

Hands clasped in front of himself and looking much older than his seventeen years, the Kazekage nods solemnly. “I agree.”

One meeting.

One meeting is all it takes to make the peace talks officially under way, and Mei cannot be more relieved.

She might just have to send Tsunade a complimentary fruit basket or something, as a thank-you. The Sanin has managed to nearly singlehandedly dismantle the bullshit of grandstanding and dick-measuring that the meetings would have devolved into, if not for her directness.

Besides, it was impossible for Onoki and Ā to ever compare, anyways.

After all, Tsunade very obviously had the biggest dick out of them all, just by proxy of how she conducted herself alone.

It’s also helpful to have someone that the saviors of the world so clearly respect and look up to. Sakura Haruno was literally Tsunade’s student. Naruto Uzumaki calls her ‘granny’. Sasuke Uchiha is wary around her and stands as far as possible from the woman that he can— without both appearing rude and leaving the side of his friends.

So yes, it was an absolute blessing to have Tsunade as the Hokage, if only because it made everything so much easier for Mei to handle as the Mizukage in political meetings.

Women have to stick together, after all, in a world of men.

But hopefully, they’ll help usher in a future where women are given the opportunities to be able to be equals with men. Being female Kage certainly helps start that.

The future is looking bright to Mei already.

...

#gift fic #mei terumi #tsunade senju #Sabaku No Gaara #onoki (naruto)#A (naruto)#naruto shippuden #post canon #naruto fic #chadsuke #ftcoye #implied femslash #wlw #femslash #sorry for the lateness of this #but im posting this and crashing #mexicat writes #me being dumb

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dokuhebi · 4 years

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Teppet / cont. @traitorousscales

“I would be lying if I said I remembered much of what I did,” they say, although snippets of their wrathful tantrum was certainly fading in and out of view. Taunting them with half formed visions of just how unsteady they had been, and just how volatile the throes of fever and delirium had made them. They could be a temperamental patient when of sane mind, it is a certainty that when they were out of it, they were a menace to contend with. Volatile, unpredictable, quick and battle born, they could only be grateful it had been a superior species in the immediate area, “although I do distinctly recall giving you a hard time.” And a good few bites to inflict nasty and inconveniently venom fueled punctures. Needless to say they were a handful, triggering bouts of defensive aggression like a flip switch. Because what was a better defense than offense at times? They certainly see clumsy remnants of their spat in the abode, more likely from their scampering about blindly in the dark seeking a hiding spot, or a better vantage point to next land an attack. To their great luxury, the chimera they had aimed their anger and fear toward was safe company. He had not retaliated, that much they can remember. For had he done so, there would be very little of this room left standing. It was hard enough to calm them down when restraining them with gentle coaxing and reassuring company, had there been hostility offered in return, had any attempt been made to dominate their erratic form and force them to yield, they would have merely used the bare scraps of what chakra they had left to burn down whatever stood in their path, buildings and people a combined obstacle in their tunnel vision of escape. Still, they are not entirely sure what he means by that last comment, what precisely will be so horrific about his next meal? Has he worked up a gory appetite? What compensation did he have to make for them during the messy night that transpired? It is after he speaks, and the water is handed to them, that the clear scent of smoke resonates from his muzzle, and their golden eyes reflect a brief amount of questioning, “why do you smell like a chimney, dear?” Not the most grateful words from someone who just requested silence on their own antics. But they can not help the blatant curiosity, and they have never been the most tactful at social situations. They allow him to help them with the water, if only because they are still shaking off the last of their bodies trembling recovery. No longer are they plagued by fever, nor are they injured and in any pain. Merely minor discomfort from tender muscles, organs and bones that protest at the training attempts made, and the slight shake or tremor of a body coming back to its senses. It should be worse, and that gives evidence to the fact that Teppet must have done some nurturing during those blacked out hours. They had been given water, had been kept warm. Above all else, they had been watched over, allowing for them to truly sleep and regenerate from the damage. Rather than aimlessly stumbling about until early morning when their body gave in from strain. The sensation of awakening from the blunder this time is far more forgiving than past moments. They would commonly awaken choking down their own blood, still violently shaken by cold, with a throat that felt akin to razor blades and a body that felt less uncomfortable and more painful. His efforts had spared them more than he likely knew, the simplest act of keeping them restful allowing the worst of recovery to be done well in the blanket of sleep.

They had returned to their human visage by now, losing that rather lethal naga like body by the time slumber possessed them. Far more polite in figure once more, less imposing, less geared for battle - or so misleading outside appearances would suggest. After taking a sip from the water, and handing the glass back to him to ensure it was not going to fall and slip from their currently untrustworthy grasp, they take a moment to scan his form for any injuries. They recall biting in to his scaled flesh many times, as they recall crushing him in vice like coils. Yet they can not see an ounce of damage upon him. Testament to his skills in healing they imagine, rather than any show of them holding back. Because they know for a fact they had done no such thing. They get to their feet, in order to test how far along their body had managed to reverse the strain they had caused when unleashing a power that by all accounts should have killed them for their recklessness. Nothing of this world ever proved devastating enough to bring such a fate to the viper however. They find support on him, almost losing balance but taking full advantage of his sturdier body beside their own. A slender hand catching on his shoulder then sinking lower down to obtain a better grip. It is when they finally let go to stand on their own, a little shakily, that their hand brushes over the part of his limb that they had sunk twin fangs in to. They remember a drastic amount of venom being delivered, it gives them pause, as they intentionally run their fingers over the missing marks. A drop of their venom could easily kill a hundred shinobi, mere contact on the skin seared and destroyed tissue like acid. “My venom does not work on you,” they say, curious observation, not bothered that one of their most relied upon weapons is evidently ineffective on this being, for as of right now, he has become a rather trusted companion in this realm, “I would be curious if your venom is any use on me. I would quite like to test it.”

#毒蛇 IMMORTAL; the curse is broken (post war)#traitorousscales #the other post is one big glitch for me thanks to tumblr :')#so I had to move it over and just link the original #/long post

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musicreviewbfox · 4 years

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Chromatica

The Album Chromatica is Lady Gaga’s newest album. It’s a new album not only in the sense that it marks her return to being an Enigma to the general public again. But this album also uncovers how the artist behind Lady Gaga has been feeling and hopes to reach out to people. She hopes to reach out to her fans. The album its self is almost a love letter to not only Stefani the woman behind the mask of Lady Gaga. But Chromatica is an album to let others join in on her own self-love affair. Chromatica has three string arrangments that are key to dividing up the album from Resentment and depression to Entrapment and PTSD and lastly ends in a blanket of upbeat pop rhythms where Stefani assures herself that she is making an everlasting impression on not only her fans but the music industry itself.

I didn't ask for a free ride

I only asked you to show me a real good time

I never asked for the rainfall

At least I showed up, you showed me nothing at all

The beginning lyrics of Rain on Me by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande form a beautiful entry to the depressive side of Chromatica after Lady Gaga drops us into Chromatica with Alice and ensuring that Chromatica runs on everlasting Stupid Love. Rain on Me is different from its predecessor in which Stefani admits that the love-filled joy trip she had has finally come to halt and she is left yet again broken-hearted. She dissects the struggle she now faces being alone and admitted by herself in interviews “A fountain of misery for tears to pour out of”(Spotify). This everlasting presence continues with the lyrics.

It's coming down on me

Water like misery

It's coming down on me

I'm ready, rain on me

We are reminded that this is the mesmeric miserable state that Gaga and Ariana are in with the lyrics but the beat in the background of Rain on me is a heavy bass and beat to carry the singers on and be able to channel that miserable energy into fighting dance styles as displayed in the music video that they both appear in. Gaga leading the front of the pink tribe and Ariana with the purple tribe. Both singers are seen in Mad Max outfits which is the setting of Chromatica. A dystopian world where all ideas are challenged and the only way to survive is to dance away the pain or love you feel. Which carries us to Ariana’s lyrics

Living in a world where no one's innocent

Oh, but at least we try

Gotta live my truth, not keep it bottled in

So I don't lose my mind

Baby, yeah

I can feel it on my skin

It's coming down on me

Teardrops on my face

Water like misery

Let it wash away my sins

It's coming down on me

Let it wash away

Ariana comes in with massive vocals and is able to quickly catch up to Lady Gaga in terms of performance. In an hour-long interview with Zane Lowe this was one of the hardest parts of the song for both Ariana and Gaga. Ariana reportedly felt overwhelmed and felt like she couldn’t keep with Gaga until Lady Gaga pulled her out of the booth, determined Gaga said “you are gonna sing as you’ve never done before, while I dance in the corner”. That’s exactly what happened and Ariana outdid herself with many fans and critics saying that the high notes Ariana not only hit while in the studio were astounding but the high notes she hit on the VMA’s matched up to why the duo worked so well together on this record. This now brings us to some closing lyrics

I'd rather be dry, but at least I'm alive

Rain on me, rain, rain

I'd rather be dry, but at least I'm alive

Rain on me, rain, rain

Rain on me

I hear the thunder coming down, won't you rain on me?

Rain on me

I hear the thunder coming down, won't you rain on me?

Rain on me

The final lyrics of Rain On Me show how Ariana and Gaga are prepared for any more trials to come in the future. The duo is prepared for whatever comes their way and are ready for the misery that the tears of regret and broken love may give them. Love being a recurring theme is Chromatica so far in the first section means that it won’t be overplayed and overdone as you the reader will see which is really one of my only criticisms of this album.

The next song that we’ll cover on the Chromatica album is Replay. The song Replay has a lot to do with much of Lady Gaga’s PTSD and Trauma responses to the violent attacks she suffered at 17 and 19. The middle of Lady Gaga’s album is much more of her pained past and how she chooses to come through the other end is with music. Lady Gaga heals as reported is through music. Lady Gaga reported in a Spotify/genius interview. “I refused to not allow this song to be on the album. Sure, I’m the “boss. But really chromatica cannot exist without an abstract explanation of what it’s like to be triggered if you have PTSD.”. So with the explanation of the reason why the track exists at all, it’s now to dive into the lyrics of Replay.

Am I still alive?

Where am I, I cry

Who was it that pulled the trigger, was it you or I?

I'm completely numb

Why you acting dumb

I won't blame myself 'cause we both know you were the one

In the beginning Lady Gaga questions if she is still alive much like how she reports in her song 911 at the beginning of the second act of Chromatica is if she is still sane and can’t escape the voices in her head during a manic episode. She again feels trapped but an outer source forcing her to relive a traumatic experience that she feels undeserving of. The questions of why does my existence amount to this, why was I the chosen out of so many people, why can’t I escape this anguish and misery. Gaga takes all of these questions and puts them as a side focus to have the answer put in front of people. Lady Gaga believes she isn’t a savior but rather looking to take the pain she’s delt and expresses it through music cause in the same interview Gaga says “ And the very thing that plagued my mind for years, trauma, is precisely the thing that now powers my lifeforce to be braver. I.e. this voice I hear- continue to make music although your brain feels it’s breaking sometimes.”. This brings us to the next set of lyrics

Every single day, yeah I dig a grave

Then I sit inside it, wondering if I'll behave

It's a game I play, and I hate to say

You're the worst thing and the best thing that's happened to me

What Lady Gaga is trying to submit here is with her vocals radiating up and down a registry key is that she is condemning herself for feeling the pain and relieving the trauma she is experience. She continues to feel this pain and she questions is it her or the monsters that have been created in her head that force her to feel this way. She questions if she even cares about the damage being done to her mentally and physically and if she is paying the price for a much higher power for being the way she is.

Psychologically, it's something that I can't explain

Scratch my nails into the dirt to pull me out of pain

Does it matter, does it matter? Damage is done

Does it matter, does it matter? You had the gun

You had the gun

In the last lyrics of Replay, we the audience get a full picture described to us of how Lady Gaga is fighting the monsters in her mind and how she is trying to break free from a fire zone. A red zone in which every step causes pain and misery but Lady Gaga fights this torture by dancing and singing against it. She uses her music to help balance herself once and remind herself that she is ready to keep going and fight these monsters every time they replay.

I need you to listen to me, please believe me

I'm completely lonely, please don't judge me

In the sing 1000 Doves we get a different side of Lady Gaga, the side she’s sheltered and kept away from the world, aside she is ready to nourish and feed love again. That side of Gaga is Stefani. Lady Gaga put an alter ego in the spotlight and hid away Stefani the person and mind behind Gaga away from the world. She kept Stefani away and in this song she tells Lady Gaga she finally gets to meet the person who had the hard path and tough road to ride to fame and fortune. Stefani the woman who stuck around whenever everyone left her. Stefani endured many hard times and never got to fully understand and put into motion how her Trauma and battles against those that deposed her especially at her time in NYU Tisch. The next set of lyrics describe the passion and love that Stefani has for Lady Gaga.

When your tears are falling, I'll catch them as they fall

I need you to listen to me, please don't leave me

I'm not perfect yet but I'll keep trying

When your tears are falling, I'll catch them as they fall

In these sets of lyrics, Stefani is the singer and at the reigns. You can tell that this is Stefani coming through because she is saying she is always ready to catch Gaga’s tears as she falls apart no matter where and or why. Stefani has healed and is always ready for the net challenge. She was born ready for fame because of the humiliation she faced growing up. Misunderstood and abused was Stefani and so she took all the pain and formed an alter ego to protect from the world which is Lady Gaga. which is complex because the song seems like a love ballad to another person she vows to protect but in reality, it is a love letter to Lady Gaga from Stefani and how she is ready to combine to the two and have them heal one another.

I've been hurting, stuck inside a cage

So hot my heart's been in a rage

If you love me, then just set me free

And if you don't, then baby leave

Set me free

In these final lyrics, we get a showcase of what it was like for Stefani to finally meet the creation she helped launch into stardom. A woman she doesn’t know almost because of how long it been since shes played a role in Gaga’s life. Not since the Artpop have the two been in hand deep of creating music as Stefani has had the reigns in the last couple of years with Cheek to Cheek, Joanne, and A Star is Born. But Stefani knows the woman who brought the stardom and first captured the world’s attention which is Lady Gaga. So at the end of this song, the two recollect and remember how hard it was for Lady Gaga and Stefani to receive the credit that they’ve held onto for over a decade now.

A thousand do-o-o-o-o-o-ves

Oh-oh

Flying, flying, flying like a thousand doves

A thousand do-o-o-o-o-o-ves

Flying, flying, flying like a thousand doves

Flying, flying, flying

With these lyrics I abid you a good morning, afternoon, or night on our journey of Chromatica. Overall the main takeaways of Chromatica as an album are that Lady Gaga wrote this album as a self-love note much like in the ways of Ariana Grande did with sweetener, Kesha did with Rainbow, and what many artists do with self-titled albums or more depending on how long they’ve been in the music industry. But the core points to take away from Chromatica is that hardships are expected and what you can expect for Stefani or even Lady gaga to do with those hardships is to write music and dance the pain away. Either is be a traumatizing experience in Replay, a broken heart in Rain on Me, or even a question of self-worth in 1000 Doves. Gaga will and forever make music for those who feel like an underdog and had many crazy experiences.

Links:

https://genius.com/Lady-gaga-1000-doves-lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZXBF9t32zA

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lady-gaga-chromatica-making-of-bloodpop-axwell-1007139/

https://genius.com/Lady-gaga-and-ariana-grande-rain-on-me-lyrics

https://genius.com/Lady-gaga-replay-lyrics

youtube

#Chromatica #Lady Gaga #gaga #PTSD #Romance #album #stefani #ariana grande

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callsignbaphomet · 5 years

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Quick Tips for New Players pt. 2

You can roll through roars. Each monster type has different timing and will require a bit of practice to get it right but once you do it'll make fights a cakewalk.

To be fair you actually CAN roll through some lesser attacks but it takes practice to get the frames right. No, this isn't like Dark Souls where rolling through everything makes you invulnerable. Take some time to see which attacks you can safely roll through.

Every monster attack is heavily telegraphed and if you pay attention you can completely avoid all their attacks. For example right before Rathian does her air flip to hit you with her tail she will crouch lower, her roar will be a guttural growl and then she'll jump.

Every monster except for Bazelguese and Deviljho (correct if wrong) sticks to a certain path and area. As you get familiarized with the game you'll learn where they hang out and which camps to spawn in.

Gunlance users and HBG users. For the love of all that is sane please be considerate of your partners! When a Gunlance user uses Wyvern's Fire or an HBG user fires cluster bombs it sends your partner's flying. Not only will it prevent someone from attacking a monster and doing more damage to it it will also stagger a player and will prevent them from evading an attack and that could cause them to cart. The fault is all yours. So be mindful of cluster bombs and Wyvern's Fire. Don't be that person that spams that shit without regard.

Flashpods are only effective three times during the fight on tempered monsters. It's best to save them for when the monster is limping away to its nest where things can get super risky and hectic. Looking at you, Kushala.

Make use of the training room. It's fantastic! Spend some time labbing a weapon and get a feel for it. Also any items you use there will not be consumed so go ahead and test out a build and use some demon juice or powder or what have you to see how much damage you're doing.

Every weapon is capable of inflicting status effects (poison, paralysis, sleep, blast) it's just that some have an easier time doing it and with more consistency. For ranged weapons the best option is the Light Bowgun. For bladed weapons it's the Dual Blades. But even the painfully slow Great Sword can inflict ailments.

Speaking of ailments. Every time you poison, sleep, paralyze or add blast to a monster its resistances to that ailment go up. It doesn't mean you won't be able to do it again, it just means each time it gets a status effect it'll take more hits than the last time to get the effect. There are ways to make it easier like charms or decorations or you can eat for Felyne Specialist at the canteen.

Speaking of the canteen, if you scroll all the way to page 4 you'll have 6 slots to make your own menu. This allows you to save menus that have Food Skills you wanna make use of during a quest. Oh and FYI the "daily" skills ain't daily. They change every time you spawn back into Astera. I have no idea why they chose daily.

You can cancel any healing or buffing in case you need to get the fuck outta dodge or avoid an attack. Just roll. If you do it early enough the item won't be consumed.

When you heal using a potion or mega potion your character wipes their mouth. You can cancel that animation by rolling as soon as your health bar has recovered. Ain't much but it sure as shit could save your ass.

Lance users please stop "running over" your partners when y'all are attacking a monster. See #5 for reasons why you should cut that shit out. Now!

Low Rank and early High Rank players should definitely take advantage of festivals. Not only because of the events but because during festivals, up in the Gathering Hub, the canteen will have a special platter which is guaranteed to give you more health and stamina. You can only get it up at the Gathering Hub.

Do not throw away, sell or trade decorations when you start out in High Rank. Every decoration is useful and you never know how you'll change your playstyle in the future. Some of these are extremely hard to come by so keep them. Once you've established yourself a little better and are holding about 500 Palico Rally decos then you can trade them.

Hold off on trading Gleaming Stones at the smelder. I highly suggest you augment your armor first. I know it's tempting but these are a bit of a pain to come across and you REALLY will need augmented armors for end game and especially for when Iceborne drops.

Augmentation is unlocked the very second you get you hands on a Hero Streamstone or a Sullied Streamstone. Just do some tempered investigations, either threat level 2 or 3. Chances of getting one or the other are strictly RNG based. There is no way to know if you'll get it. Just keep at it and eventually one will drop.

The Siege of Kulve Taroth is super fun and can be done as soon as you're done with the main storyline. Not only do you get some really neat weapons but you can also make KT's Alpha, Beta and Gamma armors (I suggest the Beta and Gamma). Once you crafted the armor you want I suggest selling all of her materials for Zenny (the game's currency). You always end up with a bunch of materials and they sell for high easily netting you over a million. Just don't sell her gems.

With the exception of KT you should never sell any monster materials especially hard to come by pieces like tails and gems and plates. You never know which weapon or charm or armor piece you may need in the future.

If you wanna join a quest I highly advice you avoid any that have been ongoing for more than 8 minutes. Once the quest hits 10 minutes and you join you won't get any rewards. Unless you don't care for getting rewards, in that case join whenever the heck you want.

Deviation is the recoil or kick from each trigger pull. Recoil allows you to move as you shoot. All rapid fire ammo (the ammo with a white arrow pointing up) benefits from this. 3 Recoil Suppressor mods are mandatory for rapid fire ammo. You only really wanna do this for LBG. No matter how high the Deviation is it's super quick to adjust to and frankly after a few quests you won't even notice it. The wording in this game can be frustratingly confusing.

Insect Glaive users should also upgrade their kinsects along with the Glaive. Make sure you pair up the right kinsect with the right Glaive for maximum efficiency. Imma save you a lot of time and headaches. Grancathar III, Whispervesp III, and Pseudocath III are the best ones. All the others really suck. The kinsect from the Final Fantasy questline is absolute shit until you upgrade it.

If you're looking to hunt a specific monster with other players just hit Join a Quest, Respond to SOS and scroll down to Target and choose the monster you need. Some are easier to get than others but keep trying.

If you're going to join Low Rank quests don't be that asshole that never actually helps and just wants to show off. Actually help the host. Debuffing yourself is stupid as fuck.

It may feel a little intimidating at first but the hud has all the information you need. Pay close attention to it especially during a quest.

When you hover over a quest all the information about it is laid out right in front of you. It will tell you the time limit, reward, small monsters in the area, will say if it's a slaying, hunting or capturing quest so be sure to read everything carefully so you're prepared.

As you hunt monsters your Hunter's Notes get updated. Check back every once in a while to see what new info it has to offer.

Yeah, the game autosaves frequently but it's never a bad thing to manually save. I've had the game freeze and crash on me while I tried to join a game.

I highly suggest you get very well acquainted with the dive dodge. It will save your life! Remember, it can be done while running AWAY from a monster but it has to be within reach.

Some attacks will knock you down and if you don't press any buttons you'll just lay there for a few seconds. This can be super useful to avoid a fast follow up attack as NOTHING will touch you while you lay there. As you get familiar with the monsters and their attacks you'll learn when to get up and run and when to just lay there for a few seconds longer so that the attack completely whiffs.

HBG users, yeah you can put shield mods. In fact, it's kind of a really good idea to do so because putting away that weapon is painfully slow. However, you only really need just 1. Literally 1 is enough.

There can only be three monsters per map. Every time one leaves the area it's replaced by another. Do keep an eye on this HR as the missing monster can be replaced by Deviljho or Bazelguese.

Adamant Pills cure Guard Down.

Demon Powder, Might Seed, Adamant Seed and Hardshell Powder last for 3 minutes. Adamant Pill and Might Pill last for 20 seconds. Armorskin, Mega Armorskin, Mega Demondrug and Demondrug last until quest completed or you faint. Dash Juice lasts for 4 minutes. Also Might and Adamant Seeds, Adamant and Might Pills cancel each other out so you can only consume one or the other, can't eat both a seed and a pill.

Your buffs and debuffs show up next to your name on the screen. You can tell when a buff is about to go out when it starts rapidly blinking. Same for the powered up Kinsects. When they're about to go out they'll blink rapidly.

When you mount a monster quickly avert your eyes to the top right corner of the screen the game itself will tell you when to brace, attack or move. Don't look at anything else! Eventually you'll learn when to do what but it's just safer to watch the commands.

Your character doesn't level up in the traditional sense, your gear does. A level 29 could have far better gear and builds than a level 49. Don't let the Hunter Rank fool you.

Kelbi horns are fantastic items to have. Find a Kelbi with big horns and smack it in the face with a blunt attack, for example the shield of the Sword and Shield, to make the horns fall off.

Wanna talk to one person in particular in the session. Press options, triangle, hover over their name, click on chat, open the chat option and type.

Listen, no Elder Dragon in MHW (pre Iceborne) is weak to the dragon element. None. Taking a weapon with dragon element into an ED fight is just going to prolong the fight. You can get the Elder Seal effect by the dragon pods that they drop themselves. If you have the space for it the Elderseal decoration can up the effect of these pods. Dragon element weapons against Elder Dragons = horrible idea.

#Monster Hunter World #MHW #Monster Hunter #monhun

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foxymuses · 4 years

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an incomplete list of headcanons for sirius black:

there was a period of about 6-8 months between running away/being disowned and receiving his uncle’s inheritance when sirius had absolutely nothing to his name but the misc junk he’d shoved in a bag when he left the house to go to james. the potters, ignoring sirius’ claims they didn’t have to, bought him a moderate amount of items including but not limited to clothes, school materials, and various items for the room he’d already claimed at their house. when his inheritance kicked in, he tried to pay them back. they refused.

sirius was always more afraid of his father than his mother (which is the opposite of regulus). the reason is that his mother was more concerned with appearances outside the family, but was content to simply act as if sirius didn’t exist when they were at home, which was fine for both of them (and on some occasions, the worst that would happen is she’d scream and yell and be generally unpleasant, and true she’d be the one to force a hair cut or destroy his ‘revolting’ muggle/gryffindor items). however his father was the disciplinarian. his father rarely raised his voice, but was the first to raise a hand or wand to correct behaviors or punish misbehaviors, and though sirius would stand up for himself and was not scared into silence, there were many instances where he would show up to the potters in the middle of the night, or return from mandatory holidays during the school year, with signs of magically induced injury.

following that, sirius is always the first to jump to the defense of others, completely disregarding his own safety or the danger of the situation, and has been known to laugh in the face of those that think they can fight him, and generally doesn’t react to anyone who rises to attack him either verbally or physically, but whenever his father even shifted slightly, sirius would tense and brace, and there were several instances in public where a disagreement would start and though often the marauder’s were nearby and out of ear shot, they’d know things were going poorly because sirius, who never ever shows fear to anyone, would flinch

it’s clear from prisoner of azkaban that sirius could have escaped at any point. all he did was become padfoot and get past the dementors who weren’t looking for or caring about animals (literally his words). there is no true reason he had to wait twelve years except for dramatic story telling. that being said, the shock of the situation prevented any of this from logically settling in his mind for the first few weeks, and then after that, the dementors and their constant soulsucking presence did make it easier for sirius to blame himself for james and lily dying. he convinced them to make their secret keeper peter instead of him, he didn’t try hard enough to keep them safe, he should’ve actually killed peter, fuck what’s happening to harry, where is he, does anyone care about him, is he being taken care of, what’s remus doing, does remus think sirius did it, does remus hate him, is remus okay, it’s another full moon please let remus be okay, fuck if he gets out he’s going to strangle peter --- on and on, and it definitely gave him a huge amount of guilt on his shoulders, and regret, and despair, and while i personally don’t think it would have taken him 12 years to finally fucking decide to leave, it definitely did take several, especially since telling time within the walls of azkaban is near impossible

ON THAT NOTE, HOWEVER, it is this very guilt and anger that allowed him to muster the determination to finally fucking escape. even amidst all this guilt and fear and sorrow, sirius was strong enough to stay sane under the influence of the dementors and his own perceived failure, that he consciously made the decision to trick his way out. it was this very fury he felt towards peter and the injustice that he suffered because of his coward of a supposed best friend that fueled sirius’ ability to withstand the trails of being a prisoner at the worst wizarding prison. once his guilt subsisded enough for pure unadulterated hate to seep in, it was just a matter of deciding the best time to stage an escape

I REPEAT, I DO NOT BELIEVE IT TOOK HIM 12 YEARS at most, i would figure, personally, it happened in four or five. which, while following my canon divergent main verse, would still allow time for sirius to clear his name and fight for custody of harry, which he does successfully, by my canon, when harry is about seven. SO EVEN IF sirius isn’t instantly cleared as my main verse would like, he still winds up a single dad.

he has horrible nightmares after azkaban, regardless of when he gets out or how long he was there or whether he ends up raising harry. i personally would have it so that he and remus end up living together, both because sirius has his inheritance to support them, and because they’re the last two marauders and trusting others is hard for sirius to come by after everything, so living with remus is Safe and Easy, and he does everything he fucking can to make up for all the full moons he missed, but regardless of how Hard he tries to get back to some semblance of a normal life, he has severe ptsd from prison and he doesn’t sleep well and he doesn’t eat much and he drinks more (in verses where he doesn’t have custody) and he smokes a shit ton more and he spends more time as padfoot than he does as a human because being a dog is just so much simpler and he has fewer worries, and remus is fucking worried as shit about him because sirius was always the strongest of the four of them (fight me on this i dare you) and to see the confident, arrogant, and generally easy-going carefree rebel that was sirius black in school turned into a jumpy, irritable, shattered shell of himself is hard and sirius never truly recovers from that damage, he just gets better at hiding it, and he does a hell of a lot better at healing when he does have custody of harry because harry gives him purpose in a way that remus can’t.

when sirius inevitably comes across peter again, he does try to kill him. whether he genuinely fails or subconsciously stops himself because peter, as much as sirius resents and hates and would love to grind him into little rat pieces, was a friend and was someone sirius trusted and cherished and would have protected with his life, and no matter how much he very much wants to kill the bastard, he can’t

shifting gears a bit, but sirius had never and still doesn’t really see himself ever getting married. he never even wanted kids until harry came around, and even then, the only kid he’ll ever have is in my canon divergency where he raises harry himself. in that verse he is more open to a co-parenting relationship (re: when he’s with @gavrele‘s gabe, or if he were to be with remus or another marauder’s era character who survived either by au or in canon), which can be considered romantic or merely a mutual desire to raise this orphaned child, but in that instance, he still probably wouldn’t want marriage, because it makes him seriously uncomfortable just thinking about it, and at the very most he would just agree to mutually wear signifying rings but not actually make it official, so that way if at any point he does feel weird about it he won’t feel bad about taking the ring off for a few days until the feeling passes

he learns of regulus’ dying while he’s in azkaban and listen canon sirius was very ‘meh’ about the whole deal, which really pisses me off, so my sirius was very torn. and it doesn’t help that most people just write reggie off as disappearing, they don’t know the story, they just assume he died in the war or voldemort disposed of him or something, doesn’t matter, he learns that regulus is gone, and his father is gone, and his mother ends up dying shortly before he gets out, and sirius is alone really and truly, and when he returns home for the first time in years, he manages to convince kreacher to explain the situation because even if he doesn’t particularly like kreacher, they both loved regulus, and sirius crafts a makeshift grave for his brother which he visits reguluarly, and though he doesn’t usually say much except “hey reg”, the first time he broke down sobbing because he tried so hard to get regulus to see the right side of the war, but he didn’t try hard enough, and he should’ve worked harder to keep reg safe, what an awful brother he was, he only ever thought of himself, if he just took regulus with him when he ran away maybe they could’ve avoided this, fuck he’s sorry he fucked up, he’s so proud that regulus stood up to voldemort in the end, he doesn’t care if it was for selfishness or fear or whatever, he’s so proud, he wishes regulus would know how proud he is

he actively keeps harry as safe as possible, doesn’t let half the shit that happens happen to him, fully supports and listens to him whenever the kid says ‘something is going on”, talks with him through it, tells him all the stories of james and lily that he can, never treats harry as less than his own blooded son because to him harry is his son, but he also never tries to replace james with himself, and harry knows how much sirius loved james and lily and how sirius only wants harry to be safe and happy, and merlin did he cry the first time harry called him dad and told him that he knows sirius isn’t his real dad but its okay to have more than one dad, he still loves james too he just loves sirius as much, and when he saw sirius almost crying, he asked if that was okay, and sirius could not express how absolutely perfect that was and later when talking to remus, remus had to hold a conflicted sirius for at least half an hour because he adored the idea but god he misses james so much, he wishes this wasnt the situation but it is and fuck it hurts (remus is uncle, by the way)

he literally stands between snape and harry, and dumbledore and harry, and does not let lucius anywhere near harry (and only allows cissa after a tentative no-children meeting, where they agree to not be enemies but rather awkward cousins like they are, and sometimes even let draco and harry play together) and harry is raised knowing about the prophecy, and since he’s raised in the wizarding world he’s not a commodity, by the time he starts hogwarts, everyone has kind of gotten over the hype so he can be mostly normal, and yeah strange things keep happening but the second harry tells sirius (because harry is raised in an open and loving environment where talking about things is encouraged), sirius does shit about it, and yeah voldemort wasn’t vanquished, he is still waiting, and sirius can’t be everywhere, but when harry says voldemort is back, sirius fucking rallies and essentially one-man-armies the ministry into fucking doing something about it because he lived through that hell in his last few years of hogwarts, he lost friends to it, he is not going to watch it happen again and nothing is going to hurt harry period

naturally, this means he doesn’t die in the department of mysteries because when the dreams start happening, harry talks about them with him, and they work it out together.

sirius doesn’t get a job because he doesn’t need one, and all of harry’s inheritance from james is purely harry’s, sirius doesn’t touch an ounce of it, and in fact regularly adds to it of his own inheritance, but sirius is seen roaming random places offering assistance, usually in regards to muggle nonsense (think hands on mechanics stuff) because he’s good at it and he doesn’t know what to do with his time, but he never lets them pay

he helps fund the weasley’s prank store. ron is a little odd, and hermione is sometimes annoying, and boy does he have a soft spot for neville because sirius knows about his parents, and you can bet that rather than lifting the map from filch, sirius straight up gave it to fred and george, and remus later confiscated it from his now-permanent DADA position (or whatever position remus wants, tbh) and sirius got an earful before telling remus he knew the other would give it back to them, which he did

i could continue but i should probably start another post to do so SO THERE YOU ARE

#you didn't ask for it #but here is a list of everything i thought about sirius in my short 15 minute bus ride this morning #;;siriuscanon #THIS GOT WAY FUCKING LONGER THAN I MEANT IT TO #AND ALSO FOCUSES A LOT ON MY DIVERGENT SETTING #but idfc i have sirius muse up the wazoo and i need to share it #long post #man i dont usually tag that but fuck this is. this is a lot

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melodiouswhite · 5 years

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rewritten - Ch. 32

32. Sympathy and tenderness

(A/N: Excessive mention of rape. Sorry.)

Hyde had no bloody clue, how he'd managed to drag himself all the way home, being in the agony he was. But somehow he had.

When he finally entered Jekyll's house, he slammed the back door shut after himself and fell to his knees from exhaustion and pain.

“Jekyll?”, he called out hoarsely, “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you”, his creator’s voice answered.

His reflection in the mirror morphed into that of Jekyll, who stepped out of the mirror with a sombre expression.

Hyde smiled bitterly. “What's with that face, Doctor? You look as if you actually feel bad for me!”

“I do, Hyde”, the older whispered gently, “Believe it or not, I feel almost as horrible about it as you do.”

The brunette laughed: “It's kind of funny. I'm depraved to the core, but I've never felt so impure and defiled in my entire life.”

“Me neither”, Jekyll agreed sadly, “After all, we're in the same boat. I … I came out as a shadow, when I sensed that you weren't feeling well. I saw everything … oh, Edward, it was so awful!”

Hyde looked at him in surprise. “Why the hell are you crying?!”

“No, the real question is, why are you not?”

The smaller man ground his teeth. “Crying is for the weak.”

The blond shook his head. “Hyde, it's not like you to pretend. You don't have to be strong. Not now, not here, not in front of me. It's okay to hurt. It's okay to cry.”

Hyde tried not to, he really did.

But it was impossible.

He was hurting in every way, humiliated, angry, upset and just wanted it to stop.

He began to sob.

Jekyll took him in his arms and they both wept.

It was late afternoon, when their crying subsided and Hyde sat on the floor alone, desperate for shelter and comfort.

By this time Jekyll was no longer corporeal. He had kept that form up as long as he could, but it had taken too much energy and he'd been forced to return into Hyde's head.

“He-Henry”, he croaked, “E-everything hurts … what do I do?”

“You need medical attention”, Jekyll answered tiredly, “I can't help you. So you have only one option.”

Hyde's eyes widened in horror. “Are you serious?!”

“Yes.”

“But … Lanyon … he will …”

“He won't judge. Not you. It wasn't your fault.”

Jekyll sounded so confident, that he gave in.

Lanyon had just seen off the last patient, when his butler informed him, that a visitor was waiting in the parlour.

The hoary doctor frowned. “A visitor without notice?”

“The young man probably has a good reason for that”, the butler replied, “He looks absolutely awful.”

That got his attention. He went to the parlour hoping, that it wasn't who he feared it was.

Alas, he was disappointed, when he came in and found Edward Hyde waiting.

He wanted to make a snarky remark, but then he saw the brunette's state:

Hyde was even more pallid than usual, his eyes more sunken in, the rims around them darker, as if he hadn't slept in days. There was a nasty bruise on his forehead (probably at least a day old and provisionally nursed). His eyes were red and puffy, he must have been crying. He was supporting himself on his walking cane, but had visible trouble to keep himself upright.

He looked up, saw him and rasped: “I need medical attention.”

It sounded pathetic. Broken.

And Lanyon hated it.

If Hyde was suffering, Jekyll had to be as well.

But he didn't show what he was thinking.

“Very well”, he said calmly, “But perhaps you should sit down-”

“I can't”, Hyde interrupted him quietly. “I can't. It hurts way too much to sit.”

A sense of foreboding crept into the doctor's heart.

“… That answers the question of where the problem is, I suppose. Can you lay on your stomach?”, he asked, pointing to the cot in the corner. The younger one nodded.

“You're obviously tired”, Lanyon continued, “Perhaps you want to rest first. And you look dehydrated. Do you want some tea?”

The brunette smiled gratefully and nodded.

Lanyon helped him over, covered him with a blanket and went to give the orders and fetch his medical equipment. But first, he placed a bucket next to Hyde's head – he did look quite sick.

When he came back, the poor boy was hurling. Within a second, he was by his side with a pot of water and gently rubbing his back.

“Oh dear”, he mumbled, “Mr. Hyde, what's the matter? What happened to you?”

Hyde laughed hoarsely: “I can't answer that question without making it sound like a horror tale.”

Alright, now the sense of foreboding was festering.

Oh my god, please don't let it be what I think it is, please, please, please, he prayed desperately.

He handed the younger man the pot of water. “Some water, for your throat”, he told him and added uncomfortably, “Perhaps we should wait until your stomach has settled down-”

“No”, Hyde choked, “I want to get it over with as soon as possible.”

Lanyon sighed sadly. “As you wish. But you'll have to strip of your inexpressibles, I'm afraid.”

The brunette nodded hesitantly. Lanyon helped him to stand up and offered to help, but Hyde refused vehemently.

The white-haired doctor looked away out of decency and tried not to show his pity, as the other obviously struggled to do as asked of him.

Finally Hyde spoke up: “I'm ready. But Dr. Lanyon, before we get to it: I must ask, that you will remain professional and do your work and nothing more.”

Lanyon turned back to him and nodded solemnly. “Of course, Mr. Hyde. Now, lie back down and spread your legs, please*. I know it's a compromising position, but-”

“I know, I know!”, the brunette snapped. “Just get it over with!”

He spread his legs like a female patient. The young man was shaking like a leaf and his eyes were wide with fear. As if he was trying his best to have faith in the other, but was too frightened and upset to do so.

He only allows me to look at it, because Jekyll trusts me, Lanyon realised.

The doctor began to examine the other's lower body, but his mismatched eyes widened in horror, when he saw the injuries that caused the brunette so much pain.

“Oh my God …”, he breathed. “Jesus Christ!”

“Jesus Christ doesn't care”, Hyde commented coldly.

Lanyon ignored the blaspheme remark.

He had to focus on swallowing his rage.

Hyde wasn't Jekyll, but he was a part of him. Hurting him meant hurting Jekyll too.

And that made the hoary man's blood boil.

Someone had dared to lay hand on his best friend! Had touched and defiled him in the worst possible way! He would fucking kill him! He would find the bastard, who had done this and do the most gruesome things to him that he could think of!

Hyde's voice tore him back to the moment. “You're not going to make me explain what happened, are you?”

It was an anxious question, a plea.

Lanyon shook his head. “You don't need to, Mr. Hyde. It's obvious.”

He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

“You don't happen to know the guy who did this, do you?”

The patient shook his head. “No. The one I suspect is a complete stranger. I don't know who it was.”

“Dammit”, Lanyon grumbled. “Because I really want to kill him. Shove the barrel of my gun up his arse and pull the trigger.”

“I'd love to see that”, Hyde chuckled weakly, “And hear his screams of agony, as he dies a slow and painful death.”

Lanyon nodded grimly and took another deep breath.

“I'm going to tend to your injuries now”, he told the smaller man. “Sadly I've run out of chloroform, so this will hurt a lot.”

The other nodded. “I know. You'll have to fix me to the cot. I don't think I'll be able to hold still the entire time.”

Lanyon heeded the advice and then went to work.

The procedure was painful for both of them.

For Hyde obviously, for Lanyon, because he couldn't bear to see the other in so much pain.

Not only because this was Jekyll suffering (well, specifically his darker half, but it counted!), but also because Edward Hyde was young, slender and very small. The culprit probably had thought that the brunette was an underage Mary Ann**, which made this whole thing even sicker.

Finally the doctor was finished with his work, leaving the patient drained, but relieved. Lanyon untied him and handed him his pants.

“I'm afraid, this is all I can do”, Lanyon told him apologetically, “Also, you shouldn't eat any solid food for the next days. This needs to heal.”

“Great”, Hyde grumbled, “More soup.”

The older man continued: “Good news is, once the wounds have healed sufficiently, you will be fine. No permanent physical damage.”

“Lucky me”, the younger deadpanned.

“I know it's no comfort.”

“It's not.”

Lanyon hated how helpless he was in this situation.

He had been able to patch up the physical injuries, but never would he be able to mend the wounds left on Jekyll's and Hyde's soul. Even if the wounds healed, the scars would never fade.

Knowing that was unbearable.

“Don't make that face, Doctor”, Hyde said, “You've done all you could. And that was more than enough. I will be fine.”

“Will you?”, queried Lanyon. “Mr. Hyde, stop pretending that you're not hurting on the inside – the other inside”, he added poignantly, when the brunette lifted an eyebrow.

“You're forgetting, that I have known you – that is, Jekyll – for forty years. Your act doesn't fool me.”

He opened his arms. “Need a hug?”

Hyde bit his lip. His acid green eyes lost a bit of their brightness and specks of brown appeared. Jekyll was breaking through his defences, Lanyon realised.

Then the younger nodded silently.

Hyde didn't know how long they had been sitting in this weird position, but eventually he calmed down. Somehow he was able to think clearly now and his emotions were becoming less overwhelming.

For someone who was so easy to unnerve, Lanyon sure had a stabilising aura of reliability to himself.

But then again, this is why Jekyll clung to him for fifteen years, isn't it? Why he loved and needed him so much? Because he made him feel sane?

“Thank you, Lanyon”, he whispered finally.

The hoary doctor smiled. “You're welcome.”

“What time is it?”, he inquired.

Lanyon checked his watch. “It's half past nine.”

Huh. Was it really that late?

The older man handed him his walking cane. “Honestly, I think my work is done so far. Right now, you don't need me any longer.”

Hyde blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Lanyon looked at him seriously. “I gave you medical attention, but you also need someone to help you get the justice you deserve. Mr. Hyde, what you need now is a lawyer.”

Oh.

Right.

A lawyer.

“Shall I call you a cab to Utterson's place?”

Hyde shook his head.

The other frowned. “It's pouring outside and you're still in pain. You shouldn't-”

“I know”, the brunette muttered, “But I walked all the way here from Jekyll's home. I'll manage.”

Lanyon shook his head and gave up. “Well, suit yourself. You two are goddamn stubborn, trying to dissuade you would be pointless.”

“Exactly”, Hyde agreed. “I'll be on my way, then. Thank you for the medical attention. Oh, and Dr. Lanyon?”

“Hm?”

Hyde regarded him with genuine gratitude and said: “You're a good fellow and a wonderful friend. Jekyll is lucky to have you.”

At first, Lanyon looked shocked. Then he smiled lopsidedly.

“You are lucky to have me.”

He laughed throatily. “Yes, I guess I am.”

Then he left.

Utterson was stacking away the last of his paper work, when he heard a knock from the door.

Looking through the spy hole, he couldn't see anything, so he opened the door to check.

To his surprise, it was none other than Edward Hyde standing in front of him. He was completely drenched, shaking like a leaf and supporting himself on his walking stick.

“H-hey”, the wet man stammered.

“Edward! My god, you're soaked! What were you doing outside in this weather?! Get out of these wet clothes, I'll find you a towel and something dry.”

The lawyer pushed him into the living room, near the fireplace and brought him some tea.

When he came back with a nightgown, morning coat and three towels in his arms, Hyde had peeled out of most of his clothes and was hiding behind the armchair like a frightened animal.

This was so very wrong … he felt his heart twist painfully.

But Utterson saved the questions for later and helped the young man dry up and put on the dry clothes. The poor man was still shivering, so he shooed him into his own bed.

“Good grief, out there in this weather at this hour! What happened? You're a mess!”

“Yes”, Hyde replied softly and lay down carefully. “A mess …”

His lip was quivering.

His voice was hoarse and shaking.

His eyes were slightly damp.

He was on the verge of tears, Utterson realised and his heart twisted even further.

“Wait a bit”, he told the brunette gently, “I'll get you some more tea-”

“No!”, the smaller cried suddenly, startling him. “Don't … don't go … I … I …”

The lawyer sat at the edge of the bed. “I'm not going anywhere. But Edward, please tell me what happened.”

“Don't worry”, Hyde muttered, “That's what I came for.”

Then he slowly sat back up. “Oh! I can sit again!”, he remarked, “I must thank Lanyon tomorrow, he did a good job.”

Utterson began to fret. Couldn't the other just tell him already what the matter was?!

But then Hyde began to do exactly that: “It won't be pretty, Gabriel, so brace yourself.

It was last Friday night, I was at the pub to get up the knocker – you know, the usual. Something was different this time, though. But this time there was this stranger, who asked to sit with me. That in itself was weird – no one ever wants to sit with me – so I got suspicious, but I didn't say anything about it. Then my first shot came and I must have been distracted for a moment, I don't remember. Anyway, I was already dizzy after half a glass, so it must have been spiked. So I didn't drink the rest, paid for it and left. But it was pretty difficult to get forward in the darkness and the rain – I don't even know, if I was walking into the right direction. At some point I had to lean against a wall, I think. Then, suddenly I heard a voice behind me and someone threw me against the wall several times. Of course that and the drug made me pass out.

The next thing I remember is waking up today morning, in the flat of one of the girls I frequent. My entire body was hurting like hell, especially my arse and back. She told me what had happened, but it wouldn't have been hard to guess anyway.

Jekyll said that he saw what happened, because he was out in his shadow form. He tried to keep the memories from me, but he isn't as good at it as I am. They came to me on the way here. Fun times. Seeing pictures in my head, of how that bastard defiled my entire body. Then he left me to die, unconscious and covered in blood and filth.”

He hugged himself and looked away, while the lawyer stared at him in horror and disbelief.

When it all sank in, Utterson felt his heart shatter into a million pieces.

“You don't believe me, do you?”, Hyde asked in a hushed, broken voice. “Or if you do … you're disgusted with us, aren't you? With me and Jekyll? Because we allowed someone to do this to-?”

“Shhhh”, the lawyer whispered. “Edward … please look at me.”

When the young man turned his head to look at him, his eyes were brimming with tears.

“Of course I believe you. Why would I not? And I'm not disgusted – not with you two anyway. Just the piece of filth, who did this to you.”

The thought was sickening.

Someone touching Hyde – and therefore Jekyll – like that.

And why the hell was Hyde chuckling?!

“I deserved it. It's not like I was any better. And at least something good came out of it”, he remarked.

The older man frowned. “What good could possibly come out of such a thing?!”

“It taught me to respect women and that a no is a no. Don't give me that look, Mr. Utterson”, he added coolly, when the lawyer frowned. “Did you really believe that I was respectful or even kind to the whores I screwed? Or that I cared, whether they wanted to serve me or not?”

The black-haired man sighed: “No. I'm just disappointed, that Henry Jekyll is a rapist.”

Hyde lifted an eyebrow. “You're surprisingly calm about it. We expected you to freak out.”

“There is nothing I can do about it now. Anything else I should know?”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, neither of us ever touched anyone younger than eighteen. That's the minimum age for Jekyll. My partners must be older than twenty.”

Utterson tilted his head. “To be honest, that does make me feel better. But back to the matter at hand; the culprit. Did you know him, or if not, do you remember what he looked like?”

“I didn't know him, but I do remember his appearance. A bit taller and bulkier than you. Two, three inches, maybe. Broad shoulders, wild red hair and freckles. Irish accent, a very deep voice-”

Suddenly Hyde broke off. His green eyes widened, as if in revelation.

“Edward?”, the lawyer asked carefully.

“That man”, the younger whispered. “It was the same as the one who shot me!”

His face twisted with anger and he jumped up.

“It was him! I knew he was familiar! How did I not recognise him?! That bastard! I should have killed him right on the-!”

Utterson pressed his hands onto the other's shoulders and pushed him back into a sitting position.

“Edward, I know that you're angry, but you need to calm down. Don't play into his hands by becoming his murderer. He will face justice, I give you my word. But you have to keep it together.”

“Keep it together!”, Hyde gasped out angrily, “I let him fucking drug and violate me and now I'm-”

“You didn't let him do anything”, Utterson grimly cut him off. “This wasn't your fault, Edward. It was his fault for being such a perverse individual. I bet he thought you were an underage rent boy or a Mary Ann. You do look a bit like it at first glance.”

“Gee, thanks a lot!”, the younger retorted sarcastically. “That totally wouldn't hurt my pride, if I had any to begin with!”

The lawyer cringed. “Forgive me. I didn't mean to add insult to injury.”

He stood up. “Lie back down, alright? I will get you more tea and something to eat.”

Hyde smiled lopsidedly. “Well, I haven't eaten in two days, so that would be appreciated.”

Utterson couldn't help but smile. “I'll see what I have. Oh, and one more question!”

“Hm?”

“The woman, who saved you. Did you repay her somehow?”

The brunette nodded. “Yes, actually. With 200 £ and a promise to never hurt her again. After all, she did save my life and patched me up as best as she could.”

Utterson nodded in approval.

Two hundred Pounds were a lot of money, but considering what had happened, Jekyll would surely forgive his other half.

He went down to the kitchen, cut a few pomegranates (Lady Summers had given him some from her own greenhouse) and went back up.

Hyde's mood brightened immediately, when he saw the bowl full of pomegranate seeds. His face looked adorable like that, but this was not a good time to think further on it.

“I'm afraid that's all I have right now, since it's Sunday night. Personally, I'm not a fan of them”, Utterson said and gave him the bowl. “But I thought just in case you come here, I might as well get something you like. My favourite food always cheers me u– aaand you inhaled them”, he ended lamely, when the brunette devoured the seeds within less than ten seconds.

“What? I told you I was hungry”, Hyde stated.

Well, at least he didn't get anything onto my nightgown, the lawyer thought drily and handed him a handkerchief.

“Obviously. How are you feeling now?”

Hyde's face fell again and he shook his head.

“It's ironic, really. I feel so tainted and worthless”, he croaked. “I, Edward Hyde, who is but the embodiment of everything that taints Henry Jekyll. I'm not even a real-”

Utterson shook his head and put his hands on the other's shoulders again.

“Hush”, he whispered. “Don't speak that way. None of this is true. Being Jekyll's darker half doesn't make you tainted. Neither does what that scum did to you. Was this the first time you were penetrated like that?”

The brunette lowered his head and nodded.

“Edward. It doesn't count.”

Hyde's head whipped back up, disbelief edged into his face. “What's that supposed to mean?!”

The black-haired man gently kneaded his shoulders and explained: “Your virginity is something you have to give willingly. Something taken without consent and by hurting someone is worth nothing. Your body may be wounded and bruised, but it won't become impure or dirty, because of something that wasn't your fault or even your choice. You haven't chosen to give yourself, Edward, and that's why what he did to you doesn't count. The only things that can tarnish you, are the choices you make and the things you do.”

Throughout his talk, the boy's eyes had filled with tears and now they were running down his face like torrents.

“That's … the biggest balderdash I ever heard! It makes … no sense whatsoever!”, he choked. “Goddammit, Gabriel! Quit making me so bloody sentimental all the time!”

“Sorry”, Utterson apologised, “I'll try. No guarantees, though.”

“I hate being like this!”, Hyde sobbed, “I hate being so fucking pathetic!”

“Edward …”

“I want to forget it! I want to forget, that this ever happened! I want to stop feeling these things and go back to being the unfeeling, cold-hearted creature that I was!”

“Edward …”

The brunette dug his fingernails so deeply into his arms that blood started to seep through the sleeves of the nightgown.

“I want it to stop!”, he cried in anguish. “I want it to stop, damn it! Make it stop! Help me forget it all! Make me forget who I am and not think about anything but that I'm here with you! You're so good at that, Gabriel. Calm my nerves and my mind! Make me feel like I'm more than just the personified sins and vices of someone else! Make me feel like I'm human!”

“Edward!”

The black-haired man pried the other's hands away from his arms, embraced him and let him cry into his chest. The smaller man clung to him like a lifeline, while Utterson stroked his back and his long, dark brown hair with the other.

“Edward. Look at me”, he pleaded.

Oh so hesitantly, the younger looked into his eyes. The older took a napkin out of his waistcoat and wiped the blood off Hyde's arms.

“You're not pathetic. You're hurt, angry and upset and there is nothing pathetic about that. I've told you many times before and I will tell you again. You're far more than just the personified darker half of Henry's soul. You're human. You're a man. Always were and always will be. You're not the lesser being you think you are.”

Hyde's acid green eyes were full of doubt.

“Prove it!”, he rasped, “Prove to me that I'm a person and not the monster everyone things I am!”

The lawyer acted out of instinct.

Hyde blinked in confusion, as the taller man cupped his face and bent down slightly.

“Gabriel …?”

He didn't get to finish the question.

Utterson had no idea, what prompted him to lay his lips upon Hyde's.

Or why he had thought that he could just give the other a gentle peck on the lips.

Because that had been his intention: a harmless, quick and chaste peck.

Stupid him.

As if Hyde ever wouldn't be Hyde enough to crave more than just that fleeting touch.

Next thing he knew was that the young man was kissing him back with passion and entangling his spidery fingers in his greying hair.

Utterson felt his face flush. He felt his heart beat higher and a strange fuzziness in his stomach.

Yet at the same time, he felt a sting in his heart.

What am I doing? My first kiss was supposed to be with Henry, yet here I am …

The thought was quickly banished, however. Hyde gently pushed him down onto the bed and crawled on top of him, not breaking the kiss for a split of a second.

Never would the black-haired man have imagined, that this would feel so … right. That he would ever willingly make out with Edward Hyde and like it.

But Hyde was so skilled and good at it, and his lips tasted like the pomegranate seeds he had eaten earlier.

It was wonderful. Addictive. It took his breath away.

It made him feel … desire. He had never felt desire before. It was so unfamiliar, yet it felt so good.

He moaned softly and clasped the other's thin waist.

But after a while, the need for air became too great and they parted, both wheezing for breath.

“Whoa …”, Utterson gasped. “Edward …”

With hooded eyes, he gazed at the smaller man, who was currently panting on top of him.

His eyes were glowing with emotion and a rosy blush had painted his pale cheeks.

In that moment, he looked stunningly beautiful.

“That was … unexpected”, he remarked breathlessly.

Then he giggled: “That really was your first kiss.”

It wasn't a question.

Utterson blushed harder and asked sheepishly: “Was it that obvious?”

Hyde nodded. “Quite so. Your lips quivered. And you were so awkward, clumsy and timid, there is no way you could've had any experience.”

The black-haired man was peeved by the smug grin on the brunette's face. But any snappy retort he could have made died in his throat, when he saw the softness in those green eyes.

“No one has ever given me their first kiss before”, Hyde confessed. Then, more seriously: “You saved your first kiss for Jekyll, didn't you? Why did you kiss me instead?”

That was a good question.

Why had he kissed him?

Because he had felt like he had to do it? Because the younger had needed it? Because he had wanted to? Because he'd had something to prove?

None of those … but he had no idea what the truth was.

“I … I do not know”, he finally admitted.

“Do you regret it?”

Utterson considered.

Eventually he smiled and said: “No. I don't regret kissing you.”

Hyde relaxed and smiled back.

And then, suddenly – a lion yawn.

Seemed like exhaustion was finally catching up to a certain someone.

The lawyer chuckled and pulled the covers over them.

“Sleep, Edward. I'll stay with you.”

Hyde snuggled into him and fell asleep soon after.

Utterson wrapped his arms around him and closed his eyes.

Never mind, that he was still fully dressed.

---

* I don’t know how anal injuries were treated back then (if at all), so I improvised.

** Mary Ann - Victorian slang for an effeminate man, sometimes (but not necessarily) a male prostitute.

In summer 1885 (before my story begins), the age of consent was raised from 13 to 16 years old (by the same Act that criminalised homosexuality).

My Hyde looks younger than 16 years old at first glance (being so small and slight), so a stranger would mistake him for a 12/13-year-old, just by looking at his face.

#The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #Dr. Jekyll #henry jekyll #Mr. Hyde #edward hyde #Mr Utterson #Gabriel John Utterson #utterson #uttersonxhyde #hyde needs a hug #give him a hug

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