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jeongi · 4 years

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cabin fever | jjk (m)

↣ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 | jungkook x reader

�� 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 8k

↣ 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 | fluff. smut. mild angst. exf2l au (?)

↣ 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐱 | explicit language and sexual content. oral sex (f + m receiving), fingering, unprotected floor sex (dongs better be wrapped irl), light dirty talk, very soft, fluffy smut. jungkook is sad, soft babie.

↣ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 | trapped in a cabin with your ex-best friend jungkook, you’re forced to overcome the fallout between you two.

↣ 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | cabin fever

“We're lost!” Seokjin shouts dramatically from behind the wheel. “Hopelessly and forever lost!” The van’s radio crackles and pops as the soft ooze of music sits underneath your friends’ bantering.

“You're such a baby,” says Namjoon as he smacks Seokjin with the map he's holding. “Relax. I know my maps.”

“You've only been here all of one time—” Seokjin spits back, his fingers clenching the wheel harder. You chuckle under your breath at their bickering, your body immediately tensing as you feel Jungkook adjust himself next to you. A part of you wonders if he’s still alive; you have no idea how he’s managed to sleep through the endless bickering- yet, there he sat, still snoring away. If you remembered correctly, Jungkook was almost impossible to wake up.

You ask yourself why you still felt somewhat nervous in Jungkook’s presence, and for the upteenth time, your memory reminds you of that giant nothingness that now separated you two.

Hoseok giggles behind you and your mood dampens further. His excessive, unwarranted giddiness irritates you on any given day, but today it seems extra warranted. How could you not feel irritated when your ex boyfriend is sat behind you, practically playing grab-ass with his new girlfriend?

You ask yourself again why you ever agreed to come on this trip, let alone agree to be stuffed in a van with an ex-boyfriend and an ex-best friend. And once again, you come up empty. You're sure there must be a reason.

“Hey, focus on the road!” Jyo-en shrills from the seat directly behind Namjoon. “Some of us want to arrive alive and unharmed.” Jungkook once again shifts in his seat, his shoulder pressing against your own and his mouth wide open. You can faintly hear the purrs of soft snoring escaping him.

Alas, your motives come to light. Frankly, you knew you were doing this as a favour to Jyo-en more than anything else. Her undying, one-sided pining after Seokjin had her on her knees begging you to go on this trip with her. There wasn't much that could ever reduce Jyo-en to such a state, but her affection for Seokjin's masculine wiles had been too much for her to bear. The fucker was just too damn charming and you couldn’t blame her either. From the broad expanse of his muscular shoulders, to the plump of his pink, full lips, you figure the chaos that naturally comes from his presence is usually heavily subdued by the sheer epitome of beauty that is Kim Seokjin.

Nonetheless, you had agreed to come on this trip, much against your initial refusal.

“Pipe down back there,” Namjoon shoots. “It could be worse.”

“Yeah,” says Hoseok, “Namjoon could be driving.”

Involuntarily, you snort. It isn't so much the humour that prompts such a response, but the bitterness you can't help but feel. However, that response is lost amidst the sea of laughter that now fills the van, save yours, Namjoon’s and a sleeping Jungkook’s.

Namjoon turns in his seat and glares at Hoseok. “Just because I don't have a license doesn't mean I can't drive.”

Seokjin chortles. “You literally almost drove us straight off a cliff the one time I let you drive.”

“You’re being dramatic. It wasn't even that tall a cliff…”

Beside you, Jungkook smacks his lips in his sleep, and sinks his shoulder further into yours. You absentmindedly wonder what he’s dreaming about.

Do you even care? Probably not. But the mental exercise in speculation offers some respite from the storm of emotion slowly and undeniably building within you. You glance back at Hoseok and Nancy, their disgusting buffet of PDA having no regard for anyone but themselves. You know for a fact you and Hoseok would have never done this. Turning away, your eyes once again fall on Jungkook.

You hope it's a dream better than this.

2:04pm [You]: ugh.

2:05pm [Yoongi]: Lol. What’s wrong?

2:07pm [You]: remind me again why i couldn't come tomorrow with you guys?

2:10pm [Yoongi]: Dude we've been over this, you couldn't swap spots with Jimin because he works tonight. It's the entire reason we're leaving tomorrow

2:10pm [Yoongi]: Is it that bad?

2:14pm [You]: between hoseok munching on his new gf and jungkook literally speaking to everyone but me,,, i’d say this is the car ride from hell

2:15pm [Yoongi]: Yikes

2:15pm [Yoongi]: Sounds about right, but I don't know what I can do from here...

2:25pm [You]: it’s whatever, tell jimin and tae i miss them dearly

2:26pm [Yoongi]: I’ll probably forget

2:27pm [You]: you’re the fucking worst.

You sigh heavily and lock your phone, haphazardly flinging it back into your lap. The van door opens with a whoosh and your eyes immediately squint against the intense albedo that now renders you temporarily blind.

“Did you just fucking hiss?” Seokjin asks, no trace of humour in his voice. You shoot him a silencing glare and he plays along to it, his hand shooting up to his chest as he fakes a few stumbles back. The effort to make you smile is that of triumph, the edges of your lips quirking up to a faint smile. Nonplussed, Seokjin continues. “Well, this is it!” He says with far too much enthusiasm for have driven nearly six hours. He reaches down towards the duffle bag by your feet and you swallow the bubble of discomfort that fills you when Nancy squeals behind you.

“This cabin is huge!” Her voice reminds you of Polystyrene rubbing together. It pierces your skull, scorches the skin on the back of your neck and you internally scream. Hoseok chuckles beside her and you can’t help but want to gouge out your eyeballs with a screwdriver.

When Seokjin swings the navy blue bag over his shoulder, his eyes briefly glance towards the still sleeping figure next to you, his face static in the grips of slumber.

“Hey!” Without warning, a red glove speeds past your face and smacks Jungkook in the nose with a surprisingly satisfying thwack. Immediately, Jungkook jolts awake, shooting you an accusing glare so icy, the snow around you may as well be a sunny beach. Before either of you can react, the glove’s partner in crime follows and smacks him in the face again. “Well, good morning, sleepy beauty,” jeers Seokjin. “Now that you're alive, how about you start helping us move our stuff?”

Blinking in the new light before his eyes, Jungkook sighs explosively, half yawn, half exclamation.

“It’s sleeping beauty, you imbecile.” You think you hear him grumble under his breath. A part of you wishes he’d acknowledge you again like old times. Another- and you convince yourself, a greater- part of you simply cannot be bothered to care anymore.

“I think that’s the last of it!” Namjoon yells from the trunk of the van. You hear him close it with a loud thud, one arm holding a cooler, the other locking the trunk. Seokjin stands by the porch of the cabin, nodding approvingly at the progress. He checks his watch.

“I’m hungry,” he says, “Should we go into town?”

You groan in protest. “Dude, we just got here. You want to hop back in a stuffy van and drive, again?”

“Yes,” he answers without a beat.

“Yup!” echoes Namjoon. You have no idea how he heard this.

“Ah, food would be so good,” Jyo-en says as she comes up from behind you, a hand patting her stomach and a frown adorning her face. You can't help but roll your eyes; she’s not hungry at all.

“Food it is,” Seokjin confirms. Despite the peckish feeling that jabbers at your stomach, you're not certain your appetite can handle another car ride with them so soon.

“You guys go ahead without me, I had a big breakfast this morning,” you lie.

“Suit yourself,” he says with a simple shrug of indifference. Turning away to head inside, you hear Seokjin yell for the others. You’re not sure where Hoseok and Nancy scurried off to, though the list of possibilities is disgustingly short. As if on cue, they near stumble out of the room they had chosen for the night, their lips swollen and clothing frayed. You think you’re going to be sick, and a subsequent twist of your innards does everything but confirm the sentiment.

You need to get out of here. You desperately need to get out of here.

As quietly as you can, you pull your boots on and stuff a spare water bottle in your jacket. The door before you opens, and with a breath, you crunch your way into the snow covered trees. You should have worn something warmer, you scold yourself as you cross your arms over your chest and blow out a huff of air.

The air is still- too still, you think. Even the melody of chickadees sound too far away. Your breath comes out in stiff clouds, hanging seconds in the air before fading away. You shove your nose deeper into your scarf as you aimlessly wander, allowing your thoughts to get as lost as you’re about to be.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost be convinced it was four years ago. The way the wind nips your face reminds you of waiting for the train at the worst possible hours of the morning, despite the fact you only had the one class that day.

The rest of the day was for the squad.

This could mean anything from half-attempted study sessions (in reality, a thinly veiled excuse to gossip about your classmates and munch on overpriced cafeteria food) to skipping down to the neighbourhood village just down the street from your university for the far better food that was just as expensive. It could mean sneaking off between classes to a quiet staircase and into Hoesoek’s arms for as many fleeting moments the two of you could steal in a day. It could mean a walk down to the university bar for curly fries and maybe one too many drinks. Sometimes it was the train ride home, hand in hand and falling asleep on each other’s shoulders.

The wind was just as cold as it has always been, but you haven’t been. Somewhere along the line, something had changed. A whole lot of somethings. At some point or another, it all just started to come crashing down until now you stand, here, in a snowy field standing ankle deep in fading memories.

You’d ask yourself how it managed to go to hell so much, so fast. But you don’t feel like opening that vault again— you’ve had it closed for good reason.

The piercing caw of a crow snaps you back to reality. Your eyes open, and the freezing train stations and too-warm classrooms fade away with the snowfall. You feel the first snowflake hit your cheek and when you look up, another hits your nose. Whichever way you go, whether it’s memory lane or the slow, cold walk back to the cabin, it’s going to be a bitch either way. It doesn’t take long for your boots to become soaked, and it takes even shorter for your toes to begin freezing. Your only regret is you find yourself wishing you’d have noticed it earlier; you were too preoccupied with watching the sun’s last stretch across the mountaintops.

Your laugh is what Jungkook remembers the most as you two walked towards the train station on those cold winter mornings. The light fragrance of your perfume that overpowered the icy winds had always made you feel like home to him. And your laugh, the thing he missed the most. When was the last time he’d seen you smile? When was the last time he’d even talked to you? It seems a lifetime ago now.

Jungkook’s fingers hesitantly hold the black pen against his sketchpad as he allows the natural skill of his hand overtake the paper. The desk he’s sat on faces towards the blanket of white snow against a crisp blue sky. He sighs, the view of the mountain sheathed in nothing but white bringing him back to old memories of you.

He can almost taste the pork bulgogi he’d always order at lunch with you. One look is all you had to give in order to silently invite him to eat after class. It was that cocked eyebrow, the slight tilt of the head and he was already transferring money into his bank account. And your scent- soft and subtle against the cold winter air. Even if his lungs were crystalized by the cool winter air, your perfumed scarf still lingered to his nose. You’d always felt somewhat like a distant lover than an old friend. What happened? He happened.

Just as Jungkook blasts his Spotify playlist through his earphones, you walk through the front door. Unbeknownst to you or him, the cause of your melancholy sits on the floor above you in his room. Your hands are freezing, a soft curse escaping your mouth as your teeth clatter and you stomp your way inside. You’re covered head to toe in snow, a sudden icy flurry hitting you on your way back. Perhaps a spontaneous walk down memory lane was one of your dumber ideas but if anything, it was nice to get away from this bullshit for even a little while. And by the looks of it, you’ll be able to escape a little while longer as you stand in the foyer of an empty cabin. You’re alone with your thoughts once again. How did you get here? You ask yourself a million times over.

Shrugging off the weight of your coat, you unravel your scarf and land with a loud sigh against the brown suede couch. It’s a cozy cabin, you’ll have to give Namjoon that much credit but his need to treat everyone as equal despite obvious differences landed you in this more than miserable situation. Your fingers hesitantly uncurl, the heat already uncoiling the ice in your veins. You reach for your phone, the only notification being a “Merry Christmas” email from your dentist. You almost laugh at yourself.

4:04pm [You]: yoongs, entertain me

No reply, instead a big fat, red “not delivered!” pops underneath the message. You frown, annoyed at the world and mostly Jyo-en for dragging you along this getaway from hell. On top of this, the three people you’ve been wanting to see and talk to the most in the world won’t be arriving for another excruciating twenty-four hours. Old Man Winter chuckles to himself as he prolongs your misery.

Jungkook is mindlessly working upstairs, watching the flurry of snow coat the mountains and area around the cabin further. If it weren’t for the gentle ooze of Keshi in his ears, he’d be concerned by the rapid snowfall. His hand works diligently, his sketch near finished as he watches the sun set outside. Somewhere between the last of his shading and perfecting does the lamp in his room suddenly give out.

Silence.

You freeze as the world surrounding you goes absolutely still. The sound of heat coming through the vents stops, the lights flicker off and you’re approaching darkness as the sun settles outside. Fuck, you think to yourself. This could not be happening.

Reaching for your phone, your fingers clamour as you hastily give Namjoon a call.

Straight to voicemail.

You try Seokjin; it doesn’t even ring.

Panic settles over you, your flight or fight kicking in as you think of what to possibly do. You scour the main floor for a landline, anything that could be of use in this situation. Surely there was a maintenance number somewhere? It’s when you’re in the kitchen that you hear the footsteps above you. You freeze again.

Now you’re almost positive it’s an intruder ready to murder you. Like in those horrible, terrible horror movies. Although you’ve played a lot of Outlast, you doubt you could handle whatever the fuck has spawned upstairs. As the footsteps shuffle some more, you grab a knife from the counter and decide if you should wait to be murdered or move towards the sound like every idiot in those movies. But just as you’re deciding, the steps move rapidly down the stairs until you’ve panicked and dropped your knife, shrieking out of pure terror with your eyes shut.

Jungkook stares at you in complete bewilderment.

“_____?” He cocks his head to the side, his eyebrows strewn together in genuine concern. His eyes fall to the knife on the floor, further confusion littering his mind. “Are you okay?”

The voice sounds familiar, too familiar and it pangs you to know exactly who it is.

Your heart plummets to your stomach when you tentatively open one eye and see Jungkook’s big doe eyes staring right back at you.

“Jungkook? What the hell are you doing here?” You put your hand to your chest and sigh a heavy breath of relief. “I fucking...thought…” You look back up at him, the furrow in his eyebrows suddenly flooring you with emotion. You haven’t really looked at him in ages, it feels.

“You didn’t go with the others?” His lips form an innocent pout as he asks. You haven’t realized how much you missed his boyish charm. It’s then that you find yourself observing him head to toe for the first time in a long time. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and (unintentionally, you convince yourself), the plaid red pajama bottoms you got him for Christmas three years ago. Is that how long it’s been since you’ve last spoken? He looks different, more confident, more tone in his body. Although his hair remains the same shade of brunette, it’s slightly longer and rests in natural curls. His jawline is even sharper, you note. From the small mole just under his lip to the faint cleft in his chin, you find yourself completely absorbed in how good looking Jungkook has gotten.

“N-no,” you’re suddenly stuttering as you catch yourself out of flagrant staring. “I thought you did—”

“Nope.” The tension brews around you two, both of you stood across from one another as sudden realization dawns on you.

“The power’s out,” you say and Jungkook nods in agreement. You really didn’t think this day could get any worse yet here you were. “I-I tried calling Namjoon but it wouldn’t go through.” Jungkook taps his pointer finger to his lower lip in consideration.

“Phone lines must be out too,” he said half to himself. “Must be a hell of a blizzard out there.” You shudder involuntarily as you remember the way the wind tore through you on the return journey to the cabin, and with the memory comes the bittersweet nostalgia…

You mentally stomp the memories out. Not the time, not the place. Not anymore.

“Well, I don’t want to starve,” you say as you start to feel your stomach glare at you hungrily. Maybe you should have gone with them after all. An image of Hoseok and Nancy sucking face flashes before you. You shudder again. It might still be hell here, but at least it isn’t a hell so deep as watching them. Besides, this is the most Jungkook has spoken to you in years.

“Fortunately, they left us with the food,” Jungkook says to you. “If memory serves correct there should at least be a box or three of smokies floating around somewhere.” He pulls on a sweater and rubs his hands together in an attempt to warm them up.

“What about the fire?” You ask.

“What about it?”

“Well, I don’t know. Can you start one?” You know for a fact you might be able to, but this isn’t the time for you to test your skills.

“Probably. It isn’t exactly rocket science,” he replies with a smart grin. There’s a small door just under the staircase that Jungkook opens with little to no hesitation. You had always admired how unafraid of the world Jungkook had always been. Perhaps those values washed away when he too walked out of your life.

You snap yourself out of it and roll your eyes. “Jungkook, you’re the least handyman person I know.”

“At least I’m remembered for something,” he replies as he dips below the stairs to search for wood.

You damn near have to stop yourself from smiling.

You’re not certain if it’s just the natural dynamic you shared with him, or if it’s completely circumstantial, but one thing was for certain; like it or not, you found the pair of you swiftly falling back in step with one another in more ways than you’d care to admit… and more ways than you’d care to remember.

It’s almost as if he hadn’t just chosen to vanish from your life for nearly three years. It’s almost as if it were like old times. What had happened to you guys? Why did he stop calling you?

For the umpteenth time, you snap yourself away from this. It’s too late. There’s no use in thinking of the past. You sigh and return to the kitchen, scouring, searching every cabinet and square surface for candles and matches.

A heartbeat or three passes, and a clonking of feet on wood alerts you to Jungkook’s return.

“I've got good news and bad news,” He huffs as he steps back onto the main floor from the cellar.

“Oh, god,” you start. You feel a slight panic coming on again.

“Good news?” He hefts a frayed and worn burlap bag. “I found firewood.”

“And the bad news?” You ask tentatively.

He feigns sadness before he brings out two giant bottles of cabernet sauvignon from behind his back. “There's all this wine, and nobody around to drink it,” he finishes. “Except us, naturally.”

For however brief a moment it was, you knew for certain that the flash in his eyes, the quick smile he now wore, you hadn't seen for years. It seems as though, if only for a split second, the old Jungkook had returned. Somehow sensing your revelation, the moment passes as swiftly as it came, and then a stone faced Jungkook returns.

“I-if you want to, anyway.” The coolness returns without indication, a coolness you are now determined to thaw out.

“I’m insulted you even think you have to ask,” you return playfully. A hint of colour returns to his cheeks, and a fraction of a grin returns. Silently, he sets about starting the fire while you work on opening the wine.

It takes you a second to realize that the wine is in fact corked, and you had not a corkscrew between the two of you. You glance at Jungkook, his back still turned to you, rubbing two sticks together or something. You really don’t know, and he doesn’t share; in fact, he seems quite absorbed in his work.

You glance back at the wine bottle. Taking the lapse in effort, you ask yourself if this was really worth doing- if this was even a good idea.

“Aha!” You hear a whoosh followed by a golden radiance that now permeates the space. “And that,” Jungkook turns towards you, grin wide and proud, “is how you start a fire.”

You’re not only warm, but impressed- leave it to Jungkook to be perfect in literally every department. You suppose he hasn’t lost that talent yet.

Though the feeling of pride quickly fades as you see the can of body spray in one of his hands and a lighter in the other. You raise a questioning eyebrow at him, silently calling him out on his middle school arson methods.

“It was ah, taking too long,” he adds sheepishly, rolling the can of body spray towards the corner and playfully tossing the lighter at you.

“Seokjin is going to kill you.”

“What for? Theft of his lighter, or his outrageous body spray? If anything, I’m doing him a favour…how are you making out with the wine?”

“We… don’t have a corkscrew,” you reply somewhat dejectedly. That half-serious face comes about his visage once more as you see him wracking his brain, trying to solve the problem.

His grin returns. “Don’t worry,” Jungkook says after a minute. “I have an idea.”

“What a waste of a fucking match, oh my God!” You’re sure to sound extra exasperated as you watch Jungkook wrap the loose piece of twine around the neck of wine bottle.

“Do you want to drink or not? Let me work my magic…” Jungkook wears determination on his face, a tongue poking out, eyebrows scrunched together as he ties it once, twice until you’re sure even a wine bottle could choke. You watch as he carefully takes a match and strikes it with the expertise of a pyrotechnic turned for the better. With little hesitation, he lights the twine on fire, a burning noose around the neck of the wine bottle. It doesn’t take ten seconds for the glass to crack open. He’s two for two; at this point, you find yourself enjoying his company more and more.

You’re honestly mesmerized. “How…?” You ask. He lets out a soft chuckle, barely audible.

“It’s magic,” you hear him say as he shrugs. “I don’t have to explain shit.” Another eye roll later, you’re returning to the kitchen and opening the cabinet above the sink in search of wine glasses. To no avail, you find stainless steel coffee mugs instead.

“Is this even safe to drink out of? I won’t choke on microscopic shards of glass?” You ask Jungkook after your third and fourth glasses. It’s a little too late to be asking such a question but you’re sure at this point, your words are a little slurred and nothing quite makes sense. Inwardly, you realize it’s a moot point anyway, and with that realization comes that for the first time in longer than you can remember, you’re just trying to strike up a conversation with him.

It’s hard not to when Jungkook has planted a pile of pillows and blankets in front of the fire, the pair of you sat and drinking potentially lethal wine. Before you lies half-finished board games you two attempted to play yet failed due to sheer anger at the game itself or each other. You’re sure if you were sober, this would be a lot more difficult.

“Magic, _____.” Jungkook slurs, his cheeks flushed and that half grin he does so well. Despite a certain flutter in your chest, you scoff into your mug of wine, small bubbles splashing back onto your upper lip.

“Magic?” You nearly spit. “This isn’t Harry Potter, Jungkook. How exactly do you personally quantify magic?”

A quiet moment passes as he swirls the final dregs of wine in his cup thoughtfully.

“I’d define it as the things you do to me, actually,” he replies before downing the rest of his cup.

Are you hearing things right? Did that actually come out of his mouth? Is this happening? You glance at your own cup. What the fuck is this wine, anyway? You’re drunk. Both of you are.

Jungkook stands and reaches for the bottle, filling up his cup before topping up your own. You still sit in a stunned silence, observing as he tosses another log into the fire, a shower of sparks floating up the chimney.

“Wh… Where did that come from?” You manage. He waves his hand dismissively, breaking eye contact a moment.

“Next question?” He asks as he sips.

Feeling bolder now, you pursue. He isn’t getting away that easily.

“Okay. I’ll put it another way.” You pause to sip, the confidence now flowing nominally through your system. “What exactly happened to us?” There, you’ve asked it.

A silence now spreads the two of you apart, despite the lack of inherent distance between you two presently. Now it seems to be Jungkook’s turn to be stunned into silence.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing this entire time,” he replies. The stone is slowly creeping up to his face.

“You can do better than that,” you egg him on.

“What, now you believe in me?” He shoots back. The venom in his words would take you off guard if it weren’t for how earnest his was before you. He drinks again, gulping this time. He must be on his sixth glass now. You can see the same sentiment in his eyes that you hold in your heart; a universal now-or-never. This is the chance to lay the cards on the table. You know it’s going to hurt, but you know it’s necessary. He rises slowly to his feet, swaying ever so slightly from the wine.

“How about you tell me what happened to us, _____?” Jungkook almost shouts. “We used to be close. We told each other everything. I used to stay up late just to make sure you got home from class or work, I made sure you ate your meals, that your homework was completed. I cared. We both did. Maybe a bit too much...” With this, he sighs explosively and flops down onto the dusty couch behind you, his chin resting on his hand. “We used to be something. I don't know what, but it was there. And now?” He waves an arm absentmindedly towards the window. “Nothing but cold.” The irony, you think. But it's an irony that's been a long time coming, and a certain sick irony that could only come from him.

But the question sticks with you, more than you'd care to admit. Something had slapped you deep inside, and even still it reverberated within you.

No, you're not going to stand here and take this.

“You tell me what happened, Jungkook.” You uncross your legs and rise to your feet, striding towards him. “You stopped texting, calling. You stopped wanting to hang out, and suddenly there was this wall between us. You never even told me what I did.”

For a moment, he looks hurt, as though a thousand predisposed assumptions has just come hurtling down. He regains his composure, though barely, and through shaken words, he continues.

“No, _____.” His face softens. “It isn't what you did. It isn't anything you did, not really.” He's nervous now; his knee bounces, his jaw clenches. You're fairly certain he's beginning to sweat.

What isn't he telling you?

“Tell me,” you whisper. No venom now, merely curiosity, and perhaps a hint of something more. Your hand finds its way onto his own, and your fingers slowly curl around his palm. Contrary to your assumptions, his hand remains there. Even more surprising, his hand reverses and his fingers interlace with your own. A heartbeat passes, and his eyes meet yours.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, _____. I don’t think either of us did anything wrong. Passing ships in the night? Too little, too late? Just bad timing, is that all? Hell if I know.” He takes a deep swig of the wine. “We vibed. Hard. Everything about us was natural and made sense.” You have to agree with this, even now, not talking after so long- you two felt real, felt right.

“No, Jungkook, that’s bullshit and we both know it!” You insist. “You stopped putting in the effort, you stopped wanting to be in my life, you….” It hurts you, a sinking feeling in your chest as you choke out your words. “You wouldn’t even look in my direction the past however long ago it was that you decided to walk away from my life without a single warning.” Perhaps it’s because you’re drunk that tears spring. It’s a deep-seated memory that you’ve brought back, a confrontation that you had always convinced yourself would never happen. “And I don’t even get an explanation why?” This whole situation had to have happened for a reason, you drunkenly tell yourself. If fate really was real, this moment would be its poster child.

Jungkook is staring at you with a look you can’t quite read. You can’t quite decide if he’s about to cry with you or angrily escape this situation. Instead, he places his cup on the wooden coffee table and stands up. His walk towards you in confident, as if he’s ready to expel whatever it is that riddled him in shades of torture for as long as it did. He takes your hands, a slight shake in the way he grasps them.

“I couldn’t stand seeing you with him,” he blurts.

A moment passes, your eyes unleaving as you try and process the weight of his words in your scrambled, drunken mess of a mind. You with who? Hoseok?

“Him?” You find yourself repeating. “Why would you…”

Jungkook sighs and lets your hands go, his fingers moving up to rake his brunette locks away from his face. He’s definitely sweating, you note.

“Wasn’t it obvious, _____?

“B-but what about after we broke up, you could’ve—”

“Could’ve what?” He laughs humorously. “Could have gone back to the way it was before?” He cranes his neck to the side, the palm of his hand rubbing against the skin. “It doesn’t work like that, _____. I’m selfish for you but not that selfish. Staying away was better anyway... neither of us would get hurt.”

But you were hurt, hurt more than the break up itself because at the end of the day, all you wanted was your best friend and even he had left. “You’re such an idiot.” You can’t help but say. “Stupid, stupid idiot. How could you do that?” You want to punch him, slap him as hard as you can for him to feel any amount of equivalence in physical pain that he gave you in emotional pain. All those nights you had laid wondering what you did wrong had all been for nothing?

Your frown deepens, more questions than ever before emerging. “You liked me?” Had you ever even thought of him as more than a friend? You’re not sure you should even be asking these questions with vigour liquor coursing through your veins yet, you remind yourself that the liquid courage has brought you two here thus far.

Jungkook laughs once more, no strain of humour in the vibrato. “That’s an understatement.” He then mumbles and you’re left racking your brain. For a brief second, it makes perfect sense before you completely lose your train of thought. “Besides,” he continues. “There’s no point in thinking what could have happened, I just—” There’s a pause as his chocolates in his doe eyes search yours for something. “Will you just let me kiss you right now?”

This takes you wholeheartedly off guard, your eyes widen as you speak with hesitance. “Y-you want to kiss me?”

“I’ve always wanted to, _____.” How does this phrase create such a powerful flutter in your chest? You wonder if it’s the alcohol or maybe, just maybe, a deep-rooted longing you;d never known you had in you.

Without answering his question, you kiss him first.

As your fingers reach for his face, Jungkook grapples your waist. You feel tiny in the palm of his hands, he thinks as he feels your lips against his for the first time. Jungkook feels as if he’s dreaming- perhaps the alcohol has something to do with that.

Red wine is what you taste the most, mixed with a subtle sweetness of mint. You drown in him, melt against him as he carefully engulfs you into his arms. The fireplace warming the space around is nothing in comparison to the sudden inferno in your chest. It’s then that you realize, this is what you’ve wanted all along.

Your hand slides down Jungkook’s face to his chest. He feels broad underneath your fingertips, a certain firmness to the touch that you hadn’t expected. He only brings you closer, arms wrapping around your torso as his lips press against you harder. His tongue is soft with your own, a gentle roll with your own as a certain heat builds up in your core.

Suddenly, it’s messier. Jungkook’s tongue swipes your bottom lip before planting a soft bite. It releases a whimper from you, earning a quiet groan from him. You’ve never thought this day would come. Are you dreaming?

When you pull away, Jungkook’s full attention is on you only. He runs a thumb over your wine-stained pout, his eyes large and completely enveloped in the sight of you. “I never thought I would get to kiss these lips.” He says.

You moan and lean in for another.

No matter how much your lips fuse together, how much you press yourself against his stronger hold, you cannot get enough nor do you want this to end. It feels right, comfortable to be in his embrace like this, his mouth against yours and chests connected. It’s not long before you’re both succumbing to the fall on your knees against the self-made bed Jungkook made of old blankets and pillows. It’s cozy, neither of you wasting time to run upstairs to a proper bed. You think this is the most romantic setting you could have ever hoped for.

It’s when you’re suddenly on top of Jungkook that you feel a growth settle underneath your core. You feel the sheer girth of it as your kissing intensifies, two large hands coming to rest upon your thighs as they persuade your hips to skim over it. You gasp at the feeling, sure that you’re already soaked beyond measure. It’s not hard for you to already feel him like this, the thin veil of his pajama bottoms being the only barrier away from you having it in you. The thought arouses you far too much, leading to a harsher grind that has you both moan out. You haven’t been touched in a long while.

Jungkook’s hands travel up your sides until he’s cupped both of your cheeks in each palm. Your lips are guided once again to his own as he places a hard kiss against you. With each fleeting moment, your want for him intensifies. You can’t help but think this was meant to be, that you’ve wanted this somewhere deep within you. Perhaps the old you was looking out for the future you.

It’s with both hesitance and confidence that Jungkook inches your sweater up. His hands feel warm against your bare torso, a shiver running through you when they lazily travels up and down your sides. As you pull away, Jungkook gives you that lopsided grin you hadn’t realized you’ve missed dearly until this moment. It almost feels as if nothing has changed, as if there hadn’t been a giant nothingness between you two for so long.

“You look so beautiful.” Jungkook whispers, his right hand reaching to push a strand of hair away from your face. He helps you guide your shirt off before a thumb strokes your cheek, and then your lips. You softly bite it and receive a contempt groan in response.

“Yours too,” you gently urge as you play with the hem of his white shirt. Jungkook grins and lifts his torso before pulling the fabric over his head. He does not hesitate to kiss you again.

With each kiss, the intensity grows until you’re sure you’ve caused a puddle in your pants as you shamelessly grind your cunt against a very erect bulge in Jungkook’s pants. He feels so firm, more built than you could have ever imagined as he pulls you tighter against him. You’re slowly losing your mind before you decide to take the initiative.

“Jungkook,” you mumble against his mouth.

“Hm?”

“Let me taste you.” Jungkook nearly unravels just from those words alone.

“Yeah?” You nod, a coy smile spreading across your face as surely a heavy blush riddles your cheeks in a crimson red. Jungkook merely chuckles, planting a feverish kiss against your mouth. “You’re so adorable.”

You trail kisses down his torso, the definition of muscles in his abdomen driving you absolutely mad. You’re still unable to fully comprehend what exactly was happening yet you’re equally unable to stop yourself. Jungkook helps you get rid of his pants, your mouth instantly watering when his erection lands against his torso with a soft thwack. It glistens against the golden aura surrounding you. He cocks his head to the side. “Think you can take it?”

If that’s a challenge you hear in his tone, it’s a challenge you’re willing to take. You might even think Jungkook remembers how competitive you are. You move down his body with ease before placing a tentative lick against the head of his cock. Jungkook’s hands immediately surrender to your hair, moving it out of your face until he’s made a makeshift ponytail out of his own hands.

“Fuuuck,” he drags out shakily when you take the whole of his head in your mouth. You suck just under his head, a certain ball of nerves that drives Jungkook absolutely mad. The hold he has on your hair acts as an invisible guide, in motion with his hips lifting does he simultaneously move your head down. “Just like that, baby.” You groan against his cock as you take more of him in your mouth. Jungkook is thick, girthy with a prominent vein that sits right where your tongue can trace it. He’s losing himself further and further into you as you begin a steady motion of sucking. Your hand holds the base of his cock as your mouth works wonders, earning you whimpers and curses from him. “So good, so good.” Jungkook gasps when you pick up the pace. It’s when he feels himself really about to lose control that he pulls you away from his cock, a satisfying pop following the disconnect.

“C’mere,” he murmurs before smashing his lips against yours. Though your lips are coated in saliva, his kisses have become sloppier, rougher as he cradles your torso with one arm before flipping you until you’re underneath him. “These have to go.” He pulls at your pants and you giggle with agreeance.

“That would be ideal.”

Jungkook undoes the buttons before tugging them down your legs. You’ve now got nothing on but your bra, a pale violet with a lacy trim on the top. Did you subconsciously know you were going to get fucked by none other than Jeon Jungkook today?

He pulls your legs apart, a satisfied hum escaping him as your glistening folds welcome him. “Fuck, _____.” He whispers as his thumb skims over your wetness. You suck in a sharp breath, the callous on his thumb sensitive against your cunt. You want him to touch you there.

It’s as if he can read your mind, the thumb now dragging over your clit. The sigh of relief you give only fuels Jungkook’s satisfaction more. He too would like to taste you.

You cry out, hands grappling for his torso as he begins circling the thumb over your sensitive nub. “So wet,” he groans.

“J-just for you.” This makes Jungkook move faster with his thumb. He wants to feel you. Jungkook slowly slides the defts of his index and middle finger into you, your cry filling the space. He takes his time, feeling your walls clench around his digits as his thumb simultaneously circles over your clit. He’s amazed by how each thrust of his fingers causes you to coat them farther in your arousal. And you’re amazed by how soon you’re about to come. It only makes his own erection angrier and your cunt clench tighter.

“You coming, baby?” Never would Jungkook have thought he’d get to call you baby. You nod with vigour, each pump of his finger along with the relentless rub of his fingers causing your legs to shake.

“S-so fucking close...oh my god.” You’re coming, you’re coming, you’re— “Jungkook!”

He dips his head in between your thighs, his mouth instantly suctioned to your clit as his fingers continue their torture. With his tongue replacing his thumb, you come undone almost instantly, the wave of pure white, hot filth overtaking your entire body. You shudder, legs trembling as your fingers thread through the lush of Jungkook’s brown locks. Jungkook continues licking against your clit, flicking and sucking until you can no longer take it.

“F-fuck me, Jungkook- please,” you beg as your cunt craves for more. You want absolutely all of him.

Jungkook’s cock is ready, heavy against his palm as he takes ahold of the base and spreads your legs apart. His mouth is wet with your arousal, his chest littered with beads of sweat. “Your pussy looks so fucking good.” He remarks, letting the pink tip of his dick rub against your wet folds. You both moan at the sensation.

With one more rub of his head, he lines himself against your entrance and slowly pushes his hips forward. You think you could come instantly again. Jungkook’s cock feels amazing, full as your tightness grips with so deliciously, even he has to hold himself back from not undoing quickly.

“Fuck.” You let out as you place a hand on his chest, letting the feel of his cock overtake your entire body. He stops when he’s reached the hilt, careful to rock his hips out before slamming them back into you. You can’t help but cry his name out. “You feel so good.” You’re whimpering, the hand on his chest and moving to the back of his neck as you push his head forward to kiss you. He follows suit, beginning a rhythmic pace of his hips as you lose yourself further and further into him.

Jungkook kisses you feverishly, hot and wet against your mouth as he continues to rick in and out of you. His breaths are laboured, filthy words and curses escaping him as you clench around him with each thrust.

“Yeah, baby?” You’re losing your mind, already close to a second undoing. You know you’re going to come again soon. Jungkook takes your legs and places your ankles on his shoulder, plummeting into you with a force so delicious, you’re about to go delirious. You’re so tight, Jungkook can feel himself edging closer to his own end. “Fuck, turn around for me.” You do as requested, turning to your stomach. Jungkook pulls your ass up towards him and lines himself up once again. Without hesitation this time, he pushes into you, a new type of fullness that overtakes your innards. He feels so fucking good.

It’s a steady rock, your ass hitting against his pelvis as he continues a continuous motion with his hips. He’s relentless in his movements, the new position allowing him to reach deeper, feeling you clench tighter.

“Holy fuck,” Jungkook is moaning out. He grabs a handful of your ass, using it as support while he rams into you with no plans of slowing down. The room is filled with the sound of your skin slapping and your deep breath and moans. Jungkook knows he’s so close.

He reaches forward, first and second digit immediately gravitating towards your clit. As he rubs, the familiar rubber band stretches in the pit of your guts. You’re going to come again, you feel it.

It’s when Jungkook whispers into your ear how much he wants to come inside you, that you give out. It washes over you, makes you tighten your grip on the blanket underneath you as you clench so hard around Jungkook that he too comes with you. You feel the spurts of him fill you to the brim until you’re nothing but a puddle underneath him. You lay still, letting his fluid mixed with yours dribble out of you as Jungkook pulls out. It burns to have him away from you. You want him to hold you all night.

“Was that okay?” Jungkook asks, leaning forward to kiss your shoulder. You nod in reassurance, twisting your head around so he can kiss your lips.

It’s then that your phone blares, taking you both by surprise. You rush to your feet, arms reaching for your phone when you see Namjoon’s name flash across your screen.

“Hello?” You answer with no thought.

“_____! Oh my god! Are you okay? There was a huge storm, we’re trapped in town until Monday- did I ask if you were okay? I think Yoongi—” The line fizzles out.

There’s a pause as you look at a curious Jungkook.

“It looks like we’ll be here a while.”

a/n: hey babies! so sorry for the long wait for this one! i really hope you liked it! it’s been in the works for a little while haha. this is my first fic back in a WHILE! and more to come soon! let me know what you think as per usual. i love you so much!!!!!!! and happy holidays to you, your friends and families ✨💞

#bts smut #jungkook smut #jungkook #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook #jungkook x you #bts x reader #bts #bangtan smut #oneshot #fic #kpop

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firstumcschenectady · 3 years

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"God, Stress, and Abundant Lives” based on 1 Kings 19:4-8

I'm mad. Mad that we – the big collective we �� might have beaten this virus if we trusted our experts and prioritized collective well-being. Mad that we “can't have nice things” still, EVEN THOUGH science provided amazing vaccines in an unbelievably short time. Mad that I have to make decisions no one– including me – likes because the first rule of John Wesley is “first do no harm” and I really believe we have to do that.

But, a friend sent an article this week that pointed out that I'm not mad. I just think I'm mad. Or, more so, that anger is a secondary emotion that works well to mask primary emotions. The article said the emotion that I'm actually feeling is fear. (Note: do not try this at home. Do not tell someone what they're “really feeling” when they tell you what they ARE feeling. Really, truly. DO NOT DO THIS. The article got away with it by taking about generic people and I personalized.) The article speaks about people choosing not to be vaccinated and vaccinated people's anger responses:

Though this new flavor of outrage might look and sound like righteous indignation, mental health professionals say that what’s behind it is fear.

“It’s scary to admit that somebody else has power over you and you’re at their mercy and you’re afraid of them, but showing that is not a very American ideal,” said David Rosmarin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at McLean Hospital. “Instead of expressing that fear, it’s a lot more comfortable to blame somebody else.”

Anger is what people in his profession refer to as a “secondary emotion.” It’s a feeling that arises in response to a more primal emotion, like fear and anxiety over having some aspect of your life threatened. “The reality is that there are millions of people who are miseducated about something, they’re making a big mistake that will have massive consequences that might affect you and your family and that makes you scared,” Rosmarin said. “But nobody is saying that.”1

That article also says that part of what people are struggling with is that this was always going to be a “long war” but we didn't get that message from the outset. That fits for me too, I deal better when I have my expectations set correctly.

Two years ago I preached on this passage from 1 Kings 19, and afterwards several of you mentioned that you could hear in it my yearning for a break. (It was fairly soon before my renewal leave.) I hadn't meant to be that transparent then, and it makes me want to be a little bit cautious now, but....the story hasn't changed.

This remains a story of Elijah, prophet of God who has worked diligently for what he believed God wanted him to do. The response to his faithfulness has been a threat of murder that came directly from the palace.

Elijah is too tired to fight anymore. He fled for his life, but in the midst of the flight he lost even the will to live.

He prays, asking God to let him die, which would at least be less violent than the death otherwise planned for him. He'd walked into the desert for a day, and when he prayed he sat under a single broom tree, the only bit of respite he could find. The Bible seems to suggest this is a particularly sad story, it is the same one told of Hagar, having walked into the desert, exhausted her provisions, sat under a broom, and prepared to die. Just like with Hagar though, God meets Elijah there.

You may already know how much I love this story. He falls asleep, and wakes up when provisions have arrived. He eats, he drinks, he falls back asleep. When he awakes, provisions have arrived. He eats, he drinks, AND THEN he was able to go on.

I really love that he needs to sleep, eat, drink, sleep, eat, and drink before he can rouse himself. He has gone far beyond the “have a cup of coffee and keep going” point. He is exhausted. He is out of will power. He is out of a will to LIVE. If I were writing this story though, I'd add in some breathing. “He took intentional deep breathes until he was able to slow his body enough to sleep...” and then the rest of the story. It would make it just a smidge better.

Probably because of the book I just read, I'm noticing that the story as written (and more so as adapted), Elijah is given the chance to “complete the stress cycle” in this story. The book is “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” written by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. In their opening chapter, they distinguish between stressors and stress. They point out that we need to complete the stress cycle, no matter what is happening with the stressors. And they name, concretely, how to do that. The first and best option is to “do literally anything to move your body enough to get you breathing deeply” for 20-60 minutes a day.2 Elijah walking into the desert for an entire day seems to qualify.

The Nagoski sisters offer 6 other ways to complete the cycle though: 1. “deep, slow breaths down regulate the stress response”3, 2. positive social encounters (even causal ones), 3. laughter – but the real deep belly laughter kind, 4. physical affection from someone you trust (they suggest a 6 second kiss between partners or a 20 second hug with someone you like, snuggling a pet), 5. crying, and 6. creative expression. In other chapters they also talk about meditation and spiritual connection, so I'm going to add a #7 – whatever prayer practices work for you. They're suggesting that we do at least one of these, and better many of these, every day. Because the stressors keep coming at us. And their book was written in 2019, so it is WAY MORE TRUE today.

So Elijah. He took a long walk (check), I'm all for pretending he took some slow breaths, he maybe had a positive encounter with the angel? (does that count??), and I'm quite sure he cried a lot, the Bible just forgot to mention it. He also took care of his bodily needs for rest, nourishment, and hydration. (Chapter 7 of their book is all about rest.) He also named his despair to God, and naming emotions has a lot of power too.

This little story has a lot of good responses to despair and burnout. Which is good, because many of us are in despair and/or burnout in at least some aspects of our lives.

The pandemic has challenged all of us. The challenges have differed, because we're different, but we've all been challenged. Having another wave is definitely not helping anybody. We're mad, whether or not that's a primary emotion, sad, fearful, and maybe even detached. We're exhausted.

And most of us are comfort seeking. We want things to be easier. We NEED things to be easier. We're looking for things that sooth, ease, comfort, and console. Often, we're looking for things to be “back to normal,” familiar, and make sense like we're used to. We're human. That's how we work.

Another facet of how we work is that when we're in high stress, we revert to earlier and lower levels of emotional functioning. We blame. We over react. We fight. We flee. We gossip. We triangulate. We take all our anxiety and we try to get rid of it by sharing it with others or throwing it at them. This too is human. It is how we work.

No one I know is operating at their best right now. We can't.

What we can do is seek to complete the stress cycles – we can't change most of the stressors, but we can give ourselves the best possible chance to change the stress. Our bodies, minds, and spirits are all connected, they're all “us.” When we care for each of them, we give all of them a chance to do better.

I believe that God calls us all to life abundant. To full, meaningful, connected lives. To spiritual depth and work that matters and relationships that give life. Elijah went from that broom tree to the Mount of Horeb where he deepened his relationship with God, and then on to meet his protege Elisha and started to pass on his labor to the next generation. It wasn't God's intention that Elijah struggle alone, or burn himself out. It isn't God's will that we struggle alone nor burn ourselves out either. God wishes for full, abundant lives for us all. That's part of why we take care of each other, and share love in the world. So, dear ones, I encourage you to complete your stress cycles, name your emotions, connect with your dear ones, engage in prayer, and live life as abundantly as you can. God wants it for us, we want it for each other, and the world needs us as healthy as we can be! May God help us. Amen

1 https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/02/belated-realization-that-covid-will-be-a-long-war-sparks-anger-denial/

2 Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski Burnout: The Secret to Unlokcing the Stress Cycle (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019) p. 14.

3 Nagoski, 15.

#FUMC Schenectady #Schenectady #UMC #Sorry about the UMC #progressive christianity #Thinking Church #Elijah and the Broom Tree #Rest Food Hydration #Complete the Stress Cycle #DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME #Nagoski Sisters #fatigue #burnout #Delta Variant #Despair #Abundant Life

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masterofmagnetism · 3 years

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they put me in the ground (but i’m back from the dead)

They took my life but it isn't the end They put me in the ground but I'm back from the dead

Oh, I'm the World Ender baby and I'm coming for you

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers @firstxman, Jean Grey-Summers @jeaniegreysummers, Bruce Banner @hulkout. Mention of @mistressxfmagnetism WHERE: Stark Tower’s CRADLE lab. WHEN: February 21, 2021 WHAT: Jean and Scott get Bruce’s help resurrecting Erik. Erik comes back and is Not Happy. WARNINGS: Reference to past major character death, abuse, murder, assorted mental health issues, grief, ptsd. WORDS: 11k

JEAN: Erik crossed a line. No matter how she cried over his body, no matter how empty she felt when he was lowered into that grave (and she felt it, the shift in the earth, felt the ripple of emotion that came from the funeral even as she curled up in the rain under a tree in the park, even as she flicked through annotated poetry anthologies, a German dictionary propped open beside her), she knew they’d made the right decision. The only decision. Because Genosha was meant to be a place of safety, of respite, somewhere to escape from centuries of persecution and war. They’d already declared their strength with the siege. Anything after that was nothing more than malicious.

More than malicious. Genocidal.

Jean tried to tell herself it was the Phoenix. She told herself that if she could wake up in the morning with moon dust on her knees and blood under her nails and not remember any of it, that maybe the same thing was happening to Erik. Maybe he was overcome like she was on that lawn. But Erik didn’t ask for help. Erik didn’t hesitate, didn’t have a moment of outward remorse, didn’t let her into his head to see if there was an instance of it even internally.

Didn’t trust her, at the end of the day, despite his promises, despite his love. Despite everything they’d been to each other for all these years, Jean still wasn’t enough to break through. Her other father made that same mistake, out on that beach all those years ago. He made the same mistake every time he sent children to fight an old friend he wasn’t entirely sure would pull his punches

But that still didn’t give her the right to kill him.

After all, it was Jean who put the Phoenix into him. It was Jean who split the Raft, Jean who helped orchestrate the siege, Jean who encouraged the alliance between Erik and Scott. It was Jean who was fundamental in the unlocking of Lorna’s memories, Jean who indirectly led to the assault on Julio Richter.

Jean at the epicentre, as always, for once a driving force in her own narrative and hating every goddamn minute.

She killed Erik Lehnsherr, and it was the right thing to do, but him staying dead was a decision she couldn’t swallow. Asking the Phoenix for help was impossible. There were forces at play there she could never understand. Science was the only way forward, and there was something there when they exhumed the grave (Lorna would kill her, if this didn’t work. Jean would let her). Erik didn’t feel dead. He didn’t feel gone. He felt like he was … frozen. Waiting.

Stasis. A pause, rather than a full stop.

Jean chewed at the inside of her cheek, arms folded against the white of her lab coat. “We’ve run the preliminary tests more times than I can count,” she said. Scott would recommend, no doubt, that she slept before they tried this -- but she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. She couldn’t, until this was resolved. “We don’t know what frame of mind he might be in when he comes out, so we need to be prepared for anything.” Including killing him again, if necessary. This time, it would be her dealing the final blow. Marriage was all about equality.

SCOTT: When Scott was a child, his father was a retreating back. He always seemed to walk out of the door more often than he walked in it, always seemed happier leaving than staying. Scott remembered carrying a child’s anger in tiny fists, remembered a heart pounding against a ribcage in a way he wasn’t yet familiar with, remembered asking his mother on the days when she felt well enough to leave her bedroom why his father never seemed to want to stay. ’This is supposed to be his home,’ he’d said, ’and people are supposed to want to be home.’ And his mother went quiet, looked down at her hands, tried to think of something to say, some way to explain away anger too big to fit inside a body so small. ’People do things sometimes,’ she told him, ’Not because they want to. Because they have to. Because some things need doing. Your father does important work, Scotty. He does what he has to do.’

He learned to hate that phrase over the years. He does what he has to do. Even after his father died doing what he had to do, even after he took Scott’s mother with him, the phrase lingered. It was one Sinister used in that basement lab, one he hummed as he poked needles into veins and pulled memories from an already fractured mind. It was one Winters sneered when he kicked Scott in the ribs so hard he heard something crack. It was one Erik clung to with missiles pointed at a city full of people Scott loved.

And it was one Scott used when he took off his glasses and painted the whole world red.

Erik wasn’t very different from the rest of the fathers who’d let him down over the years. Scott knew that now. He wasn’t entirely separate from Christopher Summers, from Nathaniel Essex, from Jack Winters. They all clung to the same excuse, all hurt people and offered themselves an easy out in the process. Erik wasn’t very different from them at all. But neither was Scott.

If he voiced the concern to her, Jean would reassure him. Scott was sure of as much. She’d tell him that he’d saved lives doing what he did, remind him that Erik hadn’t offered much of a choice. She’d tell him everything he needed to hear, and she’d make him feel better in the process. That was exactly why Scott hadn’t told her his thoughts aloud. Jean would comfort him, and Scott wasn’t sure he deserved comfort. He wasn’t sure he deserved forgiveness. And redemption, he knew, wasn’t an option at all. You couldn’t be redeemed from a thing like this. Once that blood was on your hands, it stayed there. You could never get it out from beneath your nails.

But… Jean was offering him a chance to come as close to fixing things as was possible. Bringing Erik back sans Phoenix wouldn’t undo the damage that had been done. Scott knew from experience that raising the dead didn’t heal the wounds they’d left behind, but it was something. And god, he couldn’t keep doing nothing. Anything was better than that.

So he was here. In a lab he felt fundamentally uncomfortable in, with a man he hardly knew, planning on doing the impossible for someone he’d killed himself. His palms itched and his chest ached and his eyes were heavy with all the sleep he’d missed since Erik’s death, but he was here. And he hoped that could count for something.

“Can you restrain him, if necessary?” He looked to Jean, nervous energy flittering in his chest. “He may need time to… calm down.” There was every chance he’d be angry, when he came back. Scott certainly had been, and there was a letter in the Bugle to prove it. And Erik…

Erik had always done anger better than anyone.

BRUCE: Assumptions disappointed and killed more people than anything else in the world. When Bruce was young, he thought it was because disappointed weighed you down like boulders tied to your ankles in quicksand, but as the scientist had aged, he found that it wasn’t because the feeling was so heavy - it was because assumptions were akin to hope. Hope spread like a disease: clogged your arteries, confused the mind, and chased happiness down like catfish in a barrel.

Hope, on its own, could save lives. Could bring a dead man back to life under the skilled hands of a mutant and a man who belonged nowhere - could salvage what little tenderness resided in a heart made of stone. And in the very next second, it could slit the wrists of the person wielding it. It starts as a small trickle of blood that eventually bleeds you dry without you knowing, Bruce thought, large hands pulling open a gaudy blue menu, full of numbers and operations that, with hope, man could understand.

Bruce didn’t know the X-Men very well. Knew Logan from the few times they were forced to cross paths in laboratories just like this one, but not much else. Knew what he’d read in the papers and knew how Erik Lehnsherr should probably stay dead.

In his apparent all-mighty knowing (that he’d likely adapted from Tony), he also knew what assumptions did to good people who were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

While he hadn’t seen Scott and Jean very often, Bruce couldn’t imagine they looked this exhausted all of the time. While hero-ing and saving and destroying often took a toll on your mental and physical health, the look that they carried said ‘I’m pleading for hope, and this is the last place I have left to look.’ Bruce thought, for just a moment as he booted up the core CRADLE systems, that he’d probably worn that look too many times in his life too. Half-naked in the streets of Harlem, showing up in the rain on Tony Stark’s doorstep, visiting his mother’s grave with a clenched fist and flowers she would never get to see, or on the faces of the other monks at the Phuktal monastery in Zanskar when they finally learned of his story, who Bruce Banner really was.

Yet, he continued to hope that somehow things would change. That someone would bandage his wrists and tell him he could stop bleeding for the sins of others - do the right things because they felt right, sleep at night because it was OK if he stopped to rest, eat because it was alright to have something in his stomach other than regret.

People always assumed Bruce Banner was always battling for control, hoped that he wouldn’t let go of himself. Bruce always wondered if tomorrow would finally be the day he wouldn’t wake up again.

Staring down at Erik’s lifeless, bio-illuminated face inside of the CRADLE vault, Bruce wanted Erik to wake up. Whether it was for the right reasons or not, he wanted Erik to wake up. Licking his lips, Bruce gave Scott a somewhat sad smile, brows furrowed, “I think if things get out of control, I’ve got it covered.” We have it covered, his ridiculously sardonic brain reminded him unhelpfully. Even his mind and body were not his own - out of his control.

The stillness within the lab seemed almost clinical, if it weren’t for the fact that they were about to scientifically reconstitute living cells in an organically preserved carcass of someone they all considered a friend. “To be fair to Erik, I’d probably be pretty -“ Happy, “- mad if someone I trusted off’d me too.” The joke fell flat between them, and the chemical hiss of the CRADLE as it began to pre-register every input that he had settled into the machine filled in the silence for him. “I would say ‘ready when you are’ but I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready, so. It’s more ‘ready when you go because I have to be ready,’ haha.”

JEAN: Everything about this was a bad idea. Jean had fought between her head and her heart for as long as she could remember, and right now her stomach was squirming and her mind was screaming at her to stop, to leave well enough alone, to leave because Banner was a master scientist, but he needed their energy levels to make this work. She wrung her hands together as she looked down at the CRADLE and thought about that night, the couple of minutes that changed their lives completely. Erik stood there, argued with them that genocide could be an option. He turned into the very monster he’d been fighting since he was a child, and he saw nothing wrong with it.

Some people may say that was just Magneto. Jean knew better -- she had to know better. If she loved that man as much as she had, if she trusted him, then that meant there was something good in him, something worth protecting. That meant it was the Phoenix that caused him to stand there, thumb hovering over the metaphorical trigger. It was the Phoenix that almost had him killing her friends, her former students, even mutants who still resided on the other side of the bay.

He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking like himself. And when he came back, just as when she came back from Zatanna taking her out on the lawn of her childhood home, he would understand that. He would thank them, for doing what was necessary -- because he was the one who taught her how to do that.

Sentimentality had no place in war, Jean knew that, but she did what she did for him. She wouldn’t have his legacy tarnished by one final decision made in the heat of a cosmic flame.

“I can hold him,” she said. She was confident in that much. There was a reason why she wasn’t taking the risk of using the Phoenix, even if it was a tried and true method. She would stop it from fracturing into him again -- or anyone again -- if she could help it at all. “No,” Jean countered, turning around to Bruce. Softening her voice, she repeated, “No. You’re here as a scientist -- to help. If he’s going to lash out at anyone, it’ll be us.” Me, she thought to herself. If anyone touched a hair on Scott’s head, she’d never forgive herself … and chances were it would go a lot more south than she intended when she was trying to repair bridges.

She touched against the top of the CRADLE, ran her eyes quickly over the calculations flying across the screen. “There’s a reason I asked you, you know,” she said to Bruce. “Because I knew you’d understand it was more than just offing someone who was inconvenient. It was…” Mercy? The word itself seemed like an insult. “I thought of all people,” she continued, “you’d understand why we needed a Plan B.”

It wasn’t a personal secret. It had been broadcast over the TV, radio, newspapers. The self loathing that followed after Banner and the Hulk was comparable to that of Scott and Jean themselves. They’d never had pride in what they were unless they were trained to -- conditioned to. And from what Jean read in Stark’s mind, she knew Banner had contingency plans. The Hulkbuster armor, a series of arrows, certain poisons that would at least slow him down if not kill him if push came to shove.

“Erik didn’t know what she was doing,” Jean said, and her voice was far firmer on account of looking at Scott when she said it than she thought herself capable. “He doesn’t deserve to die for someone else’s mistakes.” A beat passed, a breath taken, and Jean nodded. “Start the process.”

SCOTT: Even without the Phoenix, paranoia ate at Scott’s gut like a disease. He’d never been a trusting man, not after a childhood wracked by grief and betrayal, and after everything that had happened since… Without a little doubt clinging to his fractured mind, he wouldn’t have made it as long as he had. He wouldn’t be alive now if not for his healthy dose of uncertainty.

(But was he alive at all? Did this count as living? He was clay and bone, an inanimate thing Jean had breathed life into, a body the Phoenix had claimed. Was living the proper word for what he was doing, or was it one assigned to him because no one knew any better term? How many times could a dead thing die? Maybe they were about to find out.)

This paranoia made him tense at Banner’s presence, made him uncertain and uneasy, made him shift and tighten at the reminder that the room was not occupied by his family alone. It was Scott, it was Jean, it was the empty shell of the man they had loved and killed, and it was Banner. It was them, and it was an Avenger. And they needed him, Scott knew. They needed him to ensure that this wasn’t a repeat of Jean standing over Scott’s grave on Valentine’s Day, needed an outside influence to ensure they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes and call it a solution, but Scott was uneasy all the same. .

Banner swore he could handle it if Erik got out of control… but Scott looked to Jean anyways, didn’t relax until she confirmed that she would be able to hold him if she had to. The ease of tension didn’t last long before Banner spoke again and Scott tightened all over, wound tighter than a spring ready to take off. “If you’d rather have let him kill eight million people…” His voice was tight and sharp and unnecessary. It had been a joke, Scott knew, a poorly timed one, perhaps a tasteless one, but still a joke. But Scott Summers wasn’t known for his sense of humor.

(Scott Summers wasn’t known for anything decent at all. He hadn’t been for a long time now, and he was aware that it was a perception that predated the Phoenix’s reign of his body. He’d never been a good person. The things the Phoenix talked him in to doing only cemented a fact everyone else had always already known.)

Glancing to Jean, Scott let his lungs deflate, let the breath that was caught there escape in a quiet sigh. Erik didn’t know what he was doing. She sounded so sure of it, so positive, but… Scott had known what he was doing, with the bird ravaging his mind. He had known every step he took, been aware of every word he said. And maybe he wouldn’t have said them without the firebird insisting they needed to be said, but he would have thought them all the same. Maybe he wouldn’t have written a letter to the Bugle or killed police officers who stood in his way or participated in an insurrection against the government of a country he’d only ever wanted to belong to, but he wasn’t sure he would have thought those things were wrong, either.

It wasn’t entirely fair to say that Erik hadn’t been himself, but Scott wouldn’t argue it, either. He wouldn’t tell Jean that he wasn’t sure the bird absolved Erik of his sins, wouldn’t admit that he didn’t believe it absolved him of his, because doing so would mean saying that Jean wasn’t free of hers, either. And Scott loved her far too much to breathe that sentence to life, even if it might have been true.

“He deserves a second chance,” he said, because he believed that, if nothing else. Erik deserved a second chance because everyone did, because Scott had gotten more than his fair share and this was what he’d done with them, because Erik had suffered so much and worked so hard and he’d deserved a better end than the one Scott gave him. “So let’s give him one.”

BRUCE: It took a lot, for someone like Bruce to keep their comments to themselves. Even with the thought of his father barreling him down with a glass whiskey bottle, Bruce still piped up when it was not his place. He’d watched plenty of curses take the lives of people who didn’t necessarily deserve it - but Bruce knew from personal experience, just like the other people in that room, that Erik knew what he was doing. Likely deserved to pay some sort of penance for his actions. But Bruce also thought, calibrating the machine, that maybe knowing what kind of monster lurked beneath the skin was enough of a punishment in itself.

“I won’t say I understand,” The scientist started, initiating launch sequence, a loud hiss coming from the chamber beside them, hearing an echo of Tony’s voice in his head. Yeah, buddy. I’ll strike you down in cold blood if need be. Tony waving him off a moment later to talk about some sport neither of them gave a damn about. How hard had it been for Jean and Scott to make the decision to put Erik down? “But I get it. How much you want it, I mean.” How much you want the monster to be imaginary, he thought.

The hissing grew louder, echoing off of the metal room within the lab, numbers flying across Bruce’s panel and a loading bar appearing for the sequence duration. The ominous glowing green had Bruce shutting his eyes tightly for a moment, remembering the day the bomb went off. The gamma seeping into every fibre of his being - the excruciating pain he felt the first time Hulk entered his mind. Bruce wondered if maybe a piece of Erik would be missing too, when it was all over. If the Phoenix would gauge a hole in him that nothing could ever fill again.

“Go, Jean.”

ERIK: He’d been fifteen when Shaw had conducted the experiment that changed his life. Strapped to a table in the middle of the man’s lab in Auschwitz, leather strap between his teeth, Erik had been terrified by the manic look in the doctor’s eyes as he readied a syringe. The other doctor had been there, too, the one everyone in the camp knew only as Nosferatu, the one who never had his subjects come back to their bunks. Erik was scared of Shaw, but that one had his adrenaline pounding extra hard, noxious fear making his mind spin as he struggled to watch the two men out of the corner of his eyes.

He hadn’t realized he’d been shaking the metal table beneath him until Shaw turned to him and clicked his tongue, and Erik made a concerted effort to rein his powers back in—from the table, from the needle, from everything, because the last time he’d lost control, Shaw had pinned him down and broken his arm in two places.

Shaw finished his prep work and rolled over to the side of the table, the other man at his shoulder, watching with a detached gaze that made Erik feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. Shaw had brushed his hand through Erik’s hair as if he were trying to calm a spooked horse, shushing him as he readied the needle.

“This is my gift to you, Max,” he’d smiled. ”So you can be like me. Like us.” And then he’d slid the needle into his arm and pressed the plunger, and everything felt like it was on fire. He’d discovered later what the man meant, what ‘gift’ he’d bestowed on him in those labs.

Life. Too much of it. He’d been 93 years old, facing off against his children in the silo, and he’d scarcely looked into his forties. His cells aged slowly the way Shaw’s had, and he’d hated it, hated that the man couldn’t simply be relegated to memory.

When Scott had flipped the visor, Erik had died. But his cells hadn’t quite done the same—had sat in stasis through his burial, through his exhumation, through his settling into the Cradle and the tests that led up to the flood of energy that finally sparked his neurons back to life.

His heart beat once. Twice. His chest heaved as he dragged air into his lungs for the first time since the silo.

They tell you that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. They don’t tell you that it does the same thing when you come back.

Over the years, Erik had carefully constructed mental walls to keep unwanted memories at bay. Charles had once remarked that his mind was one of the most organized he’d ever been in, neatly linear and uncluttered by anything except The Goal and The Plan.

You wouldn’t know it, now.

The first thing he was aware of was that his mind felt empty, somehow, like he was missing a limb. He’d had a cosmic force that devoured worlds tucked in alongside his own consciousness for so long that its absence was jarring. Almost as jarring as the realization that all those walls were so much rubble.

Erik opened his eyes, saw a lab, and those memories of Shaw that should’ve been locked away assaulted him all at once. Terror, not helped by the realization that he was contained.

Get out get out get out get out.

The top of the Cradle slammed open, and Erik sat up, powers already stretching around the room, wrapping around whatever metal was in reach. Natural, unbidden, just reaching, leaving pens and tools hovering in the air above where they’d been resting. Defensive instincts long-honed seizing on anything that could be a weapon before he could even identify the threat.

And then he saw them.

“I love you, but I can’t love this.” Jean’s face, stone cold.

“You’ll be grateful I stopped you, later.” Scott’s fingers, perfectly steady on his glasses.

Betrayal from two of the people he loved and trusted most. ( But he should have expected that, shouldn’t he? Shaw’s voice, warning him that “sentiment will be the death of you if you let it, my boy.” Magda running away, Charles turning on him, sending an army of children after him—He should have known, always, and yet. )

Fury reared its head, as it always did, and Erik felt the beginning brushes of Jean’s mind against his and realized that those walls were gone, too, and no. No, no, no, no no.

<<Get OUT.>>

The sentiment was punctuated by the hovering metal around the room all flying toward the couple at once as Erik hauled himself out of the Cradle.

Jean didn’t even need to interfere, because the second his feet his the floor, a wall of exhaustion slammed into him. The Phoenix had been able to keep him going through almost no sleep for months, but without its energy in his mind, all that time putting off his body’s needs crashed into him at once.

His legs gave out from under him, and the airborne metal hit the floor at the same time he did.

Someone else was at his side, moving to help, and Erik snarled before he even realized who it was. “Don’t touch me.” Banner—it was Banner, and he was safe-ish, wasn’t he? Erik didn’t know if anyone was, couldn’t relax—stopped, hand halfway to his shoulder, and Erik curled his fists and shook his head as he tried to get the flood of memories clamoring for attention to settle.

“Make them leave. Get them out.” He was in no condition to be dealing with them—mind too loud, powers too weak. Maybe once, that wouldn’t have been a problem.

But he didn’t trust either of them. Not. One. Bit.

JEAN: Bruce wasn’t going to forgive them. He could say he understood a part of it, while distancing himself from the darkest aspects of what they had done -- the darkest aspects of the forces they were playing with now. The Phoenix remained silent in the back of her mind, though it was never true silence. That would imply some degree of calm, and Jean hadn’t known what that felt like since … God, since she was ten years old, maybe before. The Phoenix’s absence from this occasion said all it needed to about her stance. She thought Jean should’ve asked her. She thought they could’ve worked together, that Jean would turn to her and beg, that she’d regret what she’d done.

Regret that Erik was dead, perhaps. Regret over the actions she had taken to prevent something worse … not exactly. Charles drummed into her since she was fourteen years old that to be truly useful in this world, you needed to protect the downtrodden. To be truly good, you had to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves, defend those who would never forgive you for making yourself bleed on their behalf. The city of New York had done nothing for Jean Grey but rip her apart and refuse to put her back together again. The people hated her, splashed her husband’s face in graffiti, treated her father like a lunatic in the press.

But that didn’t mean she’d let them die. It was the same principle she extended here, standing over the CRADLE, watching the mechanisms begin to shift. (Did Stark know they were here, she wondered? He trusted Banner, she’d picked up on that much -- but from what she understood of Iron Man, he was a pragmatist. A logistician, at his core. He would say this was a terrible idea. Jean understood where that impression could come from.)

Everyone deserved forgiveness. The Phoenix had hurt, had ripped them apart, made them commit so many atrocities -- but this was the first step in giving a second chance, in piecing together the things Jean had broken.

But, again, that didn’t mean Jean was blindly trusting. Her intelligence wasn’t the first thing people thought of, when they thought of her (and she knew, of course, courtesy of hearing every goddamn ‘compliment’ that went through every person’s head), but it was something that only grew with experience. The CRADLE burst open, and Jean already had protective shields formed around Scott, around Bruce, and a split second later, around herself.

The metal dropped, though. The invisible shields remained in place, even if she knew Erik would assume their presence. The CRADLE hissed, smoke still rising from the chamber. The lights flickered, the walls shook, electricity in the air made her hair go static—

And Erik was standing in front of her. Erik was standing in front of her, eyebrows furrowed, jaw clenched, hands curled into fists by his side. Chest moving, breaths heaving. He was angry, always angry, angrier than she’d ever seen him -- but he was alive.

(Was that all that mattered? Rictor said, once, she over-simplified it. Breathing alone wasn’t enough to keep a person alive, but it was the first step. It was the foundations. Jean always had faith that could lead to something else.)

There was a beat of relief, a wash that went through her chest and relieved the tension that had curled into it (she could tell Lorna she brought her dad back), and then a moment where she realised it wasn’t dad she thought when she looked at this man. It was something else, something foreign, like looking at a stranger.

She’d mourned him, Jean reminded herself. She’d sat, curled in his seat, looking around at the books in his office. She’d taken a blanket from his home during the funeral, tried to find his smell under whiskey and cigar smoke. She’d mourned him, she’d loved him, and the first words that left his mouth…

Well, she had expected it. She had expected it, but there was a part of Jean that hoped, against all odds, just as there had always been.

“Last time we left,” she replied, coolly, keeping her hands stiff by her sides and her feet firmly on the ground, “you almost caused the Third World War. I’d like to make sure that’s not going to happen again.” If that meant Bruce and Scott remained wrapped in a telekinetic shield, if it meant she took the brunt of the flames, so be it.

Jean was used to the fire.

SCOTT: The process, once it happened, wasn’t a slow one. It was strange, watching it play out. Scott had never been present for this part before. He’d watched people he loved die so many times that the images were etched on the back of his eyelids, playing out like a movie projected on a sheet. He could rewind, pause, fast forward, take it from the top. Those moments were a part of him. And he’d had people come back to him, too, of course. Jean walking up to the Institute doors with her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white, like a prayer and an answer all at once. Illyana showing up again years after she’d died, breathing and wild-eyed. He watched people die and saw them lowered into their graves, watched them walk back through the door after the dirt had settled, but this? The only resurrection Scott had ever been present for was his own, and there had been nothing miraculous about that. Nothing good, nothing incredible.

This was different. This wasn’t the Phoenix, wasn’t a cosmic force that described a curse as a blessing. This was some hodgepodge mix of science and telepathy that Scott doubted he’d ever entirely understand. Part of him hadn’t expected it to work at all, had thought the most they’d do was desecrate the corpse of a man who’d more than earned his right to rest, but he’d gone along anyway because Jean had asked him to and Scott had been bad at saying no to her since she took his hand on that park bench decades ago and asked him to stay. The Phoenix was like playing with fire, but this? This was more akin to trying to shape water into something tangible. Scott’s expectations hadn’t been high.

But they should have been. He should have understood that Jean Grey (Jean Summers) never failed at something she’d put her mind and heart into, should have remembered that she was the same girl who’d convinced a sullen, quiet boy that he was a thing worth loving, should have understood that she would move heaven and earth for the people she loved and that Erik, for all his faults, was one of them.

The Cradle slammed open. The metal in the room began to hum, hovering free of gravity. A familiar shield engulfed him, invisible and protective. And Erik Lehnsherr was revived the same way he had died --- suddenly, violently, and with a love so great that there was room for little else besides it.

There was a moment where the world stood still. Everything hung motionless. Scott held his breath, swore that his heart stopped beating for an instant, swore that the blood stopped pumping through his veins as the world waited to right itself again. And then it did, and everything came crashing back down in an instant. The anger slammed into the room like a train obliterating everything left on the tracks, like a car crash of rage and betrayal and grief and defeat. Erik was alive, and he was angry. Scott couldn’t blame him for that, couldn’t fault it. If not for Jean, he would have accepted whatever punishment felt necessary, would have let himself be skewered for his sins.

(“You don’t have to be a martyr,” Warren told him once. ”You don’t have to shoulder every mistake. You’re allowed to forgive yourself, Scott. You’re allowed to move on.” And he might have tried that if anyone had ever told him how. He might have done it if it hadn’t seemed so impossible, so unreal. How could you get out from under something that stretched the length of the whole sky above you? How could you get away from something that was a part of you? It only sounded easy if you’d never felt it before.)

But Jean was there, was shielding him, was protecting him no matter how little he deserved it. The metal dropped to the ground, and the shields stayed up. The anger remained. And with it, the guilt. The grief. The betrayal.

Scott stayed quiet, eyes darting away from Erik and back to Jean. She was hurt. He could feel it through the bond, see it in her posture. She wasn’t surprised, but she was hurt, and he ached with her. He’d wanted a happier resolution to this, a better end, but it had been a fool’s dream. Jean forgave Zatanna when she took the Phoenix down, just as Scott forgave Logan when he ended his suffering on that grassy knoll in Central Park. There were people, he knew that were easy to forgive. There were people good enough, decent enough, that forgiving them came as simply as breathing, as blinking, as turning your head. There were people who were easy to forgive because they were easy to love, because you wanted them in your life no matter the cost.

Scott had never been one of them.

BRUCE: Bruce wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. If there was one well-known thing about Erik Lehnsherr, at least to the public, it was that he was very focused. For good, for bad, he had the insight of an owl and the determination of a bull. Apparently, even in death, in exhaustion, he was equally so. He wondered if he would ever get to feel death. If it would always elude him like many other things in life; happiness, a home, a family, somewhere he felt safe.

He thought, for a moment, maybe he had been a little jealous of Erik. That Jean didn’t have the right to take that away from him, no matter how much he would be missed.

Jean’s protective barrier didn’t seem to move him. Emotionally of course, because her raw power was enough to match Erik’s, and he could take the static in the air like the Kansas plains right before a tornado came through. How many people would he stand beside who were more convicted than him? What kind of hurts did they hold, and why did they hurt enough to bring Erik back? ( Why did he bring Erik back? )

“Hey, buddy - it’s — hey. Let’s not do anything drastic,” Like accidentally murder someone else, haha — “I know you’re angry. Totally get it,” Bruce slowly approached with scuffed dress shoes, each click of their rubber soles sounding like a gunshot in the suddenly too-quiet room. He couldn’t imagine having that kind of power - to make everyone notice when he was there and also when he wasn’t. “But you’re going to be really dehydrated in a hot minute if you don’t let me help you up, okay?”

Bruce spared a look for his two companions, and maybe Jean was right. Maybe he was someone who could understand what they’d been through. That if someone had to save Bruce from himself, he would at least want it to be someone he cared about. Clint, Tony, Steve. He would never ask Nat to do it - she’d been made enough times to be a stone-hearted killer, Bruce wouldn’t add to that.

Although he didn’t really know either of them well enough, he could tell when somebody cared enough to still be there after you’d disappointed them. Jean thought Erik would be disappointed, stayed anyway. Would anyone care enough to stick around for him too?

Gently, as if approaching a spooked animal, Bruce placed calloused fingers on an expensive funeral suit, surprised when he electricity in the room didn’t shock him on contact. The ever-present scientist in him placed that interesting tidbit of knowledge in a file for future examination. Maybe because Hulk’s skin was like reinforced rubber? Was he a grounding material? Could that be something helpful in the future, like making schools safer during storms, or for severe weather shelters for the homeless—

“If you want them to leave, they’ll leave,” Bruce promised, not looking back at the couple again. He supposed the situation really wasn’t about them.

ERIK: Everything was too much. His mind felt like it had been ransacked, left in tatters as his previous cohabitant had rifled through memories and motivations alike to trim down only to what was useful. Tweaking perceptions, ramping up the paranoia.

Not paranoid enough, some part of him noted wryly.

Bruce's fingers wrapped gently around his shoulder, tone and stance reminiscent of the way they used to handle shell-shocked soldiers. He stiffened under the touch, knuckles going white against the floor, but he didn't shake him off. Reached up and dragged himself to his feet again, even if he swayed, even if the room spun a bit around him and wavered black at the edges. He needed food, he needed water, he needed sleep.

More importantly, he needed to get out of the presence of the two people who had murdered him before he lost control entirely. Scott was standing there in silence, expression torn between surprise and guilt, and there was none of Erik that had the capacity to feel anything but disgust for the man right now. It didn't take a genius to put together who had led the charge in the silo, who'd been calling the shots. Scott was a good little soldier. A good little husband. "Bird got your tongue?" Scott didn't have the Phoenix anymore, that much was clear--guilt wouldn't be anywhere in his face if it was. But the point stood regardless, and Erik didn't care that Jean always got tetchy when he so much as breathed a negative word in Scott's direction.

(Somewhat hysterically, he wondered if he'd make her mad enough to kill him again. Maybe he should--the time between his death and now was rapidly flitting away from his mind, but he remembered warmth, remembered family, and part of him wanted to claw it back.)

Jean's words had him choking on a laugh, and Erik nearly snarled at her across the Cradle, fingers pressing dents into the metal. "If that's what you're worried about, why am I back?" he hissed. And oh, there were other questions that came crashing on him, then.

"FRIDAY," he said, because he wasn't sure he could trust anyone in this room except the machine he could feel thrumming in the walls around them. "What's today's date?"

"February 21, 2021, Mr. Lehnsherr."

February. Two months. Two months.

Scott Summers had been resurrected a week to the day from his death. Jean had been so grief-stricken, so heartbroken, that she had moved heaven and earth and death itself to bring him back after just a week without him.

Two months. He hated that there was a part of him that was wounded by that fact almost more than the murder itself. There had always been two reasons that he was kept around, two reasons that people kept him close: love or use. She hadn't brought him back because she missed him or because Lorna did, which meant she must need him to do something—

Lorna.

The world constricted once again, because Lorna wasn't here. Her father was being resurrected, and she wasn't here. Erik knew his powers could scarcely reach across the room let alone the bay, but g-d if he didn't try anyway, breath caught in his throat. He felt the room tip at the exertion before he stopped, kept upright only by the tight grip on the Cradle and Bruce's hand at his back.

"Where is Lorna? Where is my daughter?!"

If she was dead, and they'd brought him back to a world without her, he would drag them all back to the grave with him.

JEAN: She’d never been the kind of woman who lived on an island. Her mind was tattered, splintered into pieces that could cut intruders like knives, ever since the Phoenix rushed into her body so many years ago and refused to leave. Jean never made sense, she knew, to the people around her. She burned too bright or not at all. She went hot or far too cold. She was capable of almost pathological compartmentalisation, or she saw everything at once so the picture was too damn big for anyone else to understand. She loved and loathed in equal measure, and she was, above all else, not the kind of woman who was easy to digest. Easy to adore, perhaps, but so many people desired to get close to the fire before they truly knew what it meant to be burned. There were so few who saw the worst of her and stayed.

Scott was one of them. If anyone touched a hair on his head -- even someone she considered family, someone who was more blood than anyone else on the planet -- she would rip them into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the wind without hesitation, without guilt, without grief. But there was another person who looked at her in all her chaos, in her fear, in her self hatred and mania, and who said, this girl is worth trusting. There was another person who approached her in the wreckage of other people’s lives and said it wasn’t her fault, that she held a great gift inside of her, and the only way to control it was to refuse to control it, to embrace it instead.

Erik had been that person. Erik knelt down in front of a child and he reached to her even when the rest of the world was pulling back. He gave her a safe place to rest, gave her logic, pragmatism, gave her a path that she followed long after he was gone. And then he was on the other side of a battlefield, throwing buses at her friends and threatening everything the X-Men were fighting for, and she was told to defeat him at any cost.

Perhaps this was inevitable. Perhaps there could only ever be Jean alive or Erik. Maybe having them both here at once, occupying the same space, defied some kind of cosic deity -- defied the Phoenix. Because as Jean looked at Erik, her chest tightening and her throat burning, the Phoenix was conspicuously silent. Conspicuously void of opinion, for one of the first times in living history.

Then Bruce opened his mouth, and the bird came back to life. We could kill him next, she offered.

“We’re not killing anyone.” It took a breath, just a second, for Jean to realise she said those words out loud, that she’d turned her head to the side as if a friend was standing right there -- as if Maddie was beside her (why was she thinking of Maddie, now, as if she was a shadow? As if she was someone lingering, constantly, even when she wasn’t here physically? Was it because they’d done it together, the three of them, and so it made sense to picture her now?) Jean collected herself, levelled a look at Erik as her eyes burned, too.

She wouldn’t cry. She refused to. But God, it would be so easy to let those tears spill, to fall to her knees, to run towards him like she was an eleven year old girl who’d lost everything that mattered to her in the world and he had all the answers.

But he was insulting her husband. He’d threatened the safety, the peace, of their entire people. He messed with Kara’s head, threatened Rictor, almost started another World War. She couldn’t forget that.

“I didn’t want you dead, Erik,” she said, as simply as she could. There were a hundred other things she could say. She could tell him how she knew the Phoenix felt in him, how it twisted everything, how it made things so simple and so complicated all at the same time. She could vindicate him, could say this wasn’t his fault -- but the way he was looking at her now…

(Maybe there was always meant to be one, in the end.)

She knew where his mind went, when he asked for the date. “I didn’t want to use her,” she said, because he deserved something of an explanation. “I couldn’t.”

You could have. Haven’t I helped you before? Haven’t I made things so beautiful—

“We needed you back,” Jean said, “not someone else. I found another way. It took some time, but …” It worked, clearly. It worked so far as there was breath in his lungs now and color in his cheeks. If that was the definition of life, they’d succeeded -- but Jean knew it was far more complicated than that. “Lorna’s alive,” she continued. “She’s safe, and she knows we’re here. I wanted to make sure we were … that she stayed that way.”

The Erik she knew would’ve wanted her paranoid, if it came to Lorna. He would’ve wanted her to take every precaution when dealing with something as unpredictable as life and death. Yet, as she stood there looking at someone who felt as much like a stranger as he had on that very first day they faced off in the middle of New York City, she wasn’t entirely sure he would see it like that now.

SCOTT: Banner’s voice was like radio static, something there-and-not-there in a way Scott had grown accustomed to as a teenager when the world became like a television with no static and he began to understand why his mother locked herself in her room for days at a time, why she spent so many afternoons in bed. It shut out the world sometimes, made him his thoughts and nothing else. Banner was there. Erik was there. Jean was there. And Scott wasn’t. Scott was in a silo, in a hospital waiting room, in a grave. Banner was promising he’d leave as if he knew how, Jean was throwing a shield around him as if there was something left to protect, Erik was---

---Erik was speaking to him. The realization dawned slowly, like a wave lapping your feet on a beach, covering them with sand slowly and quickly all at once in a way you didn’t realize until the pressure was there cementing you to the ground. It took Scott’s mind a moment to catch up with his ears, a moment for the words to register. It always did, when he got like this. When the world was radio static and his mind hopped from one place to the next like Kurt’s teleportation, like a superpower that took him to every place he’d never wanted to be.

Bird got your tongue? The words came to him, slow and deliberate, and for a moment he felt like he was twelve years old, like he was standing in Essex’s lab with his arms stiff at his side and his eyes locked to his feet, like fingers would come in at any moment to grip his chin and force it upwards, force eye contact. (Essex was the last person he’d looked in the eyes before the world went red and a pair of lenses separated him from everything he saw. He thought of that sometimes, what it meant. What it said.) For a moment, there was an echo of another man’s voice, decades ago but just as cold, just as disgusted. Come on, Scott. You’re so much prettier when you smile.

He flinched. He didn’t mean to, but he did. And it wasn’t fair, he knew. Scott was not a victim here. (And maybe he hadn’t been a victim back then, either. Maybe Essex had never done anything he didn’t have coming. Maybe if he were better, smarter, easier to love, things could have been different. Maybe - ) Scott had killed Erik, had opened his eyes and turned the whole world red, and maybe Erik was angry now but he had a right to be. Scott Summers was not Zatanna Zatara. He was not Logan. He was not a person who had done a favor for a friend, not someone who was only doing what his would-be victim asked him to do. What he did was his choice, his decision. No one forced him. No one made him. And maybe he’d only damned himself to save Erik from the same fate, but that didn’t make him any less damned. Did it?

Scott stayed silent, and the world kept moving around him. Time went slower, he’d found, without the Phoenix coloring it. The loss of immortality made every moment a mountain, every second a marathon. He watched realization dawn in Erik’s eyes in slow motion, watched anger turn to grief turn to fear. And Jean spoke, but it wasn’t---

It wasn’t to Erik. It wasn’t to Banner, it wasn’t to Scott. It was to someone else. Scott could almost feel her in the room, like a phantom limb. The Phoenix. Had Jean ever spoken to her aloud before? (He had, towards the end. He remembered it. Pacing in his room, muttering to himself. It was one of the things that made him realize the line had been crossed, one of the things that made him realize he was going, going, gone. His heart dropped into his stomach and his chest felt tight. Jean had a handle on this. She had to. She had to.)

He tuned back in to the conversation, listened as Jean insisted that they’d done what they’d done to ensure they resurrected Erik and not something else. A strangled sound escaped from the back of Scott’s throat at that, and he cursed himself for drawing the attention back to him. Given the opportunity, Scott had always preferred to exist in the peripheral. To be seen and not heard, the way he’d been taught by his father, Essex, Winters. “If we’d taken shortcuts,” he said, because the attention was on him and if he didn’t make it seem like he had something to say then it might stay that way, “we wouldn’t have solved any problems. Take it from me, that isn’t… It’s not how you want to come back.” An apologetic glance to Jean, the echo of a statement he didn’t dare repeat. Maybe we were better off dead. “Lorna’s safe. You’re safe. Genosha, New York… It’s all safe. We just wanted to keep it that way. That’s all.”

BRUCE: Every word Scott breathed made Bruce’s chest feel tighter and tighter. Safe, like Erik wasn’t capable of controlling himself. Safe, as if something really got out of control, they couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle him.

If Erik had needed to be put down because he was a danger to society and he hadn’t even hurt anyone yet, then what did that make Bruce?

Unbeknownst to him, lost in his thoughts, Bruce’s skin under his lab-coat began to turn an eerie shade of green, spiderwebbing out from under his sleeve and onto the fist that gripped Erik’s suit, holding the man up like he was Bruce’s lifeline. “Don’t talk to him like that.” The words sounded echo-y and far-away, like someone had smashed pots and pans together beside his ears and just let them ring. His throat felt full, like he’d been drooling for days and had forgotten to swallow. If they loved him so much, then they wouldn’t have killed him when it became inconvenient.

Would they have?

Hulk roared in the pit of his stomach, startling him into a barely noticeable jump. Gripping Erik tighter, green creeping into the corners of his vision, Bruce managed a not-so-controlled, “I’ve got it from here. You guys’ve done enough, right?” He hated, how much like his father he sounded when his ridiculous Dayton-Ohio-accent came out with his words.

Hated feeling like a monster, in front of judgmental eyes. Bruce may not have known Jean or Scott very well, but he couldn’t trust them any farther than he could throw them. As Banner, anyway. “I’ll make sure he ‘stays out of trouble.’” The words dripped with poorly hidden malice, maybe some misguided hurt, and he couldn’t hold eye contact with either of them anymore. Instead, he focused on Erik. Fed off of his exhaustion and hoped that maybe they could trade places. That maybe the next person that came knocking could put him down instead.

“FRIDAY? Can you make sure my floor is set to 75 degrees? He’s probably going to be a little cold, as tired as he is.” Licking his lips, Bruce cocked an eyebrow, still staring at the ground as if to say ‘Anything else?’

ERIK: Lorna's alive. It was buried in their responses, between excuses and explanations and lies he didn't care to hear, but it was there, nonetheless. Lorna was alive, and some of the panic that had filled his lungs like cement dissipated. Lorna was alive.

With that assurance, it was easier to focus on the rest of what they said. Safe, safe, safe, safe, safe....

(Alles ist gut, alles ist gut--)

And that was funny, wasn't it--absolutely hysterical, and the laughter bubbled up out of his chest before he realized it was coming.

We needed you back. Not someone else. (And it was needed, wasn't it, not wanted--)

It's not how you want to come back. The metal groaned under his fingers, lights flickering for as his voice rose. "What made you think that I wanted to come back?" he snapped, voice cracking for a moment. Just a moment.

Get it together. He cleared his throat, shook off the edges of black tinting his vision, marshalled his focus into staying on his feet. Don't show weakness. (Too late, too late, too late--)

"It doesn't really matter, does it? Because you needed me. And here. I. Am. My life was a problem. My death was a problem. How long do I get the floor this time, Jean?"

He stared across the Cradle at Scott, expression stuck in a strange space between anger and pity. "It was all for keeping everyone safe, hm? Is that what she told you to help you sleep at night, Scott? That you were making the world safe? No, no, no. You stopped me to keep everyone safe--fair enough. Can't begrudge you that. But that's not why you killed me. You killed me because you were angry. Because your chest was burning over Ric, over Kara, over Lorna, over all the failures of your fathers, and because you could take something in recompense. And because she told you to. Good soldier, good husband."

And then, for a moment, some of that anger edged back, some more of the pity filtering in, because Erik knew what it was like to love someone enough to do anything. "Did you realize you said almost the same thing she did, just now, hm? Did she notice?" A brief glance at Jean, before he looked back at Scott. They'd been sharing minds for years. Might be doing so now, even, and that had been the reason he'd never quite let Charles do the same--the fear of not knowing where your thoughts ended and theirs began.

"You and I both held the Phoenix, Scott. You know what it does, what it's like. How long has she been talking to it out loud? Do you feel safe, right now?" His head was starting to swim, the room growing more distant through the tunnel that was starting to settle in front of his vision, and Erik reflected absently that perhaps it wasn't the wisest of choices to be using so much oxygen on talking when his legs were barely keeping under him.

(You don't know when to quit-- oh, he owed Ric so much...)

He felt Banner's shift starting behind him, felt the radiation in the room spike, even through the dim grip he had on his powers at the moment. The man's voice, when it came, was strained, his grip tightening at Erik's back, and he would be lying if he didn't say it wasn't more than a little vindicating to hear the disdain with which the Avenger spoke to Jean and Scott.

He didn't quite get to express that, before the black won out.

JEAN: Jean had been angry her entire life. She’d been angry at what she wasn’t allowed to do, what she was, how she could go against the natural order of things and nothing ever seemed to come of it -- not until later, at least -- not until the sum of all her mistakes came crashing down in one fell swoop and she was left drowning at the deep end. But there was always someone who dove in, whether it was a backyard pool or the ocean during a raging storm, and that was Scott. Scott, who changed the world for her. Scott, who she changed the world for. Scott who killed a man when Jean asked him to, who would live and die for her, who promised to spend his life by her side regardless of whether she was beside him at the breakfast table or six foot under in a cemetery.

“Don’t speak to my husband like that,” Jean said, taking a step in front of Scott when Bruce shot him a glare. She didn’t come to the other scientist to be judged. She didn’t come here to be treated as the villain when she knew, deeply and instinctively, what the Phoenix was capable of -- how it changed people, twisted them up inside, changed them. She came here for one reason and one reason only, and he was standing in front of her now.

He was standing in front of her angry, but Jean knew him far too well to expect anything else, even if there was still a sickening disappointment swirling in her gut. “Because I always did,” she said, her voice quiet. Because she always would want to come back, regardless of what horrors were awaiting her the second air filled her lungs once more. Life would forever, constantly, be preferable to the lingering emptiness on the other side. “Because I thought--”

You didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t sure if he would hear it, if she was broadcasting it, if the feelings were leaking out of her like water from a cracked dam. “Because I’ve always needed you.”

Because it was her fault. The Phoenix wouldn’t be a part of their lives if it wasn’t for her decision on the shuttle at eighteen years old, a stupid child playing at being a god, a woman so desperate for approval from anywhere that she’d take sycophancy whispering in her head and preach it like gospel. “It wasn’t you, Erik. It wasn’t you any more than it was me on that lawn.”

He didn’t see that now. Maybe he never would. But Jean knew there was no other option, no other choice. Erik would admit himself there was nothing that could stop him from accomplishing his mission unless it was death. He was a man forged by soldiers’ cruelty, but he shared their pragmatism, their single-minded focus.

And then he kept talking, and the Phoenix roared to life in her mind -- almost laughing. Yes, it was laughing. It was bitter and cruel, but it was laughter, genuine amusement.

Oh look, she whispered, you brought him back insane.

“We were angry,” Jean said. “Of course we were angry. You violated the very principles we founded Genosha on when you threatened one of our own in a public place, for all to see. We were meant to be peaceful, a sanctuary. We were meant to be safety, and you turned it into your own personal battleground where you were judge, jury and executioner. You ripped apart the sanctity of a woman’s mind who is good and kind and honest in more ways than we could ever be, and you pointed a gun at the head of every citizen in New York and tried to justify it in a way that didn’t make you sound like Shaw.”

Because yes, that was in the notes she’d collected. Yes, that was in the memories he’d shared with her. Yes, she knew all about it -- and she knew that, if it came down to it, Erik would never become the monster that had ripped him apart and put him back together different than was ever intended. He wouldn’t wanted her to stop him. Her father would’ve wanted that.

Maybe this man wasn’t her father.

Bruce spoke again, and this time Jean let out a bitter huff of almost laughter. “Right,” she said, “because the Avengers are such a safe place for mutants, always have been. Remind me of all you did for our kind while you were parading the streets after your great victories and we were still hiding in backalleys, getting murdered for how we were born.”

(Jean never had a personal problem with the Avengers. She never understood why Scott burned with resentment towards what they represented, even if the people themselves weren’t to blame. She did now. Bruce stood there, on a pedestal despite his mistakes, looking down on them as if they were to pity. Like they were the monsters.)

“Erik, you belong at home. You belong in the place you helped to build. You belong in your own paradise. Come home, and we can be there or we can leave, but don’t--”

Don’t push us away. Not just Scott and Jean, which was inevitable, but the entirety of mutantkind that resided in the streets he’d pieced together. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d sacrificed, and the Phoenix had torn it apart.

And then Erik hit the ground, and Jean was beside him in an instant, fingers going to the pulse on his neck as her other hand squeezed his arm.

Breathing? the Phoenix enquired. Jean nodded. How unfortunate. I thought we’d get to work together, again.

Jean looked back up at Bruce, at Scott, and slowly rose to her feet. Reluctant to leave him when the experiment was so new, so uncertain, and reluctant to leave him because everything within her screamed that was her family hurting, on the floor, aching.

“Take care of him,” Jean said to Bruce, reaching for Scott’s hand to intertwine their fingers together. Flames flickered, orange and purple at the tips, and formed a circle -- a circle she could see through, right back to their sofa and fireplace back in Genosha, right back to home where Rachel would no doubt be making cocoa in the kitchen. She’d never done that before.

Cosmic travel? Of course we have. You just forget. The human mind can only bend so far.

Jean squeezed Scott’s hand once more, knuckles white, and past the burning in her chest and throat she took a step into the portal, unsure whether she’d just healed a wound or created a new one.

#( adding a little bit of spicy doom tones at the beginning for *drama* )#f: discord #d: back from the dead #c: scott summers #c: jean grey #c: bruce banner #tw: murder mention #tw: abuse mention #tw: grief #tw: ptsd #tw: mental health issues

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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years

Text

Negative Space || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Following Lydia’s death, Morgan and Deirdre search for ways to pick up the pieces.

CONTAINS: discussions of death, dying, and grief. brief mentions of Lydia’s human captives.

“The clinic was a mistake.” Deirdre grumbled as she drove, hissing her complaints as she pulled the Subaru to a stop, massaging her temples in a desperate attempt to summon back her vision and the senses it offered. Her mind had been imprinted with the beeping and whirring of the clinic’s machines, the very same that had kept her sustained, and lent her the energy now to be driving at all; the doctor’s droll voice, asking her to stay another night, because she needed it; and the whispering of other fae, annoyed that a non-fae was in their presence, in their space, and her own voice, shushing them. She slept well, with Morgan in her arms and medicine in her body, but time had a horrible way of eating at memory, and a worse way of moving things around. Lydia’s body might not be in the alley she was murdered in anymore; if someone went to such lengths to kill her, they’d be disposing of her too. The two of them weren’t just too late, it was like they were operating on a whole other timeline. Deirdre hated it. She hadn’t touched the rest of her vision of Lydia’s death; the faces, the voices, the sounds and scents, those she wanted to save for when her mind needed them. Right now her mind needed a location...and a drink. Deirdre groaned and threw her head back. “If she was trying to leave town, then she should be here. But I’m not feeling anything.” She eyed her doctor-recommended crutches and then the sidewalk. “Maybe we should go by foot.”

“The clinic made you better,” Morgan mumbled. She didn’t especially enjoy being looked at like she was a dog wetting the living room, or being whispered about in Gaelic like she hadn’t made time to learn the words for ‘human’ and ‘filth’ online. But Deirdre had held her all night and she’d been able to follow the monitors tracking her recovery and listen to her heartbeat and believe, to an extent, that they would be okay. “I can pop out the wheelchair they gave us, if you want to take a swing around the next block or two,” she suggested. “I can take over driving, if it’ll help you concentrate. I won’t go so fast, or slow or…” Or whatever she’d done that had contributed to missing Lydia and her body. She knew by the light of day that there wasn’t much to be done about having a mental breakdown under the double trouble trauma, but having some responsibility meant she wasn’t completely helpless.

“Not the wheelchair,” Deirdre grimaced, turning the car off. “Anything but the wheelchair.” She didn’t have the energy to be wheeling herself around, and there was something deeply embarrassing about having Morgan push her. By comparison, the crutches were slightly less embarrassing, though still enough for her to forgo them as she stumbled out of the car. “Let me use you to lean on?” She called out, hobbling towards the passenger side to meet Morgan outside. “It’s better than anything else.” She smiled bright, and though she’d spent most of the car ride tensely silent or cursing at the air, even in her state, it wasn’t hard to see Morgan wasn’t doing well. Lydia’s death was a rumbling echo, but time had moulded her sadness into anger—her depression to urgency; guilt to stubbornness. She hadn’t asked what plagued Morgan, she’d almost forgotten to. Maybe she didn’t conduct the same alchemy of emotions that Deirdre did. “Do you want to take another break, my love?” She asked, for all her desperation to find Lydia, she was continually astonished and horrified at the ease in which she could offer pause and rest to Morgan. Caring for her girlfriend was not a task that she deliberated on, or regretted, she only hoped that Lydia beyond the grave didn’t hate her too much for wanting to care for the woman she loved. Even if respite was the last thing she wanted. The clinic had been agreeable only because pain and medication captured her brain, if they stopped now, she would start thinking. In that moment, Deirdre could think of no greater torture—except, of course, everything Lydia endured. But that was just it; that was the thinking. “We can think of this as a nice stroll if you’d like. Like we’ve always taken.”

“Sorry. I just thought…” The wheelchair would be faster, smoother, easier on Deirdre’s hands and the rest of her body. Morgan could wheel them around in a few minutes. Even sidewalks without accessible ramps wouldn’t be a problem with her zombie strength. She was three days without a meal now and could bust through or lift most things she put her mind to. “Anyway, you should at least bring your cane. I’ve already ordered a nicer one, but it’s not going to come in for a couple of days.” She stumbled over her words to appease Deirdre’s hardened grief so much she almost missed her love’s gentle offer. “Of course you can lean on me, if that’s what you want,” she said. Her eyes nearly watered at Deirdre’s smile. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours out from when she had stopped breathing in her arms, since she had run and disappeared and fallen apart in bloody pieces and stopped speaking to her altogether unless it was to give instructions. As Morgan got out of the car to meet her girlfriend and pull her into her arms (gently, so as not to upset her healing sores), she couldn’t help but feel like some part of her was still cowering in the driveway, stuck to the ground with all that blood. “We don’t need to stop,” she said into Deirdre’s shoulder, carefully giving her a squeeze. “I know we need to do this. I know why we’re here. Just tell me what you want me to do. I’ll--” She shivered. “I’ll do it. I’m doing a lot better today, and I can carry you if you get tired, and I um…” She couldn’t think of anything else to specifically offer. She looked up into Deirdre’s eyes, promising her anything with desperate intensity. I’ll be good. I’ll find a way to make this better.

Deirdre glanced over at the shoddy stick, more tree branch than cane. The fae enjoyed their ties to nature, Deirdre would sooner use the crutches—which were grey and dull but notably not dirt-stained. “I...think I’d rather just lean on you.” Even in sickness, there were standards to be upheld. And while Deirdre found a measure of humour in it, she looked to her girlfriend to see that she didn’t. “We have time,” she smiled softly. They really didn’t, her stomach churned and her mind battled with her to assert a timeframe. They didn’t have time, except that Deirdre smiled as though they did, and spoke slow, measured, as though there was no rush. She pressed her body beside Morgan’s, just the way the two of them knew how to walk tangled in each other, with added weight against the zombie’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she gestured for them to walk forward with a careful pace, seemingly unbothered. She felt fractured; there was the part of her that cared so deeply for Morgan that even against her own desperation, she could summon whatever kindness Morgan needed. And the part that burned for Lydia; the slow growing storm that just wanted to find her. In these moments, it was easy for her to remember that Morgan was suffering too. When left to herself, everything else seemed to slip her mind. Storms were often consuming, but she had practice taming them. “We can talk about it, if you want; whatever’s bothering you. Besides the obvious, I guess.” She laughed weakly, staring up at the sky. Something about the early morning air was always acrid, it stung her eyes, but it was of great importance to her that they left the clinic as soon as she woke up. She’d forgotten to ask what Morgan thought. “I’m sorry I haven’t been exactly…” she looked to Morgan with her own desperation. “...like I should be. I just want to find Lydia, I just want to get to her.” Deirdre shook her head, sighing. “You’ve been very good to me, despite everything. And I haven’t even thanked you for it. I’m sorry, my love. Will you let me ask after you now?”

“O-obvious?” Morgan wasn’t sure what counted as obvious and what didn’t. She averted her eyes and started to hobble with Deirdre the way she wanted to go. “No, we can just…” Morgan swallowed thickly, trying to summon up some wall to put between herself and the fear and guilt she didn’t know how to relocate. But she was always herself around Deirdre. She didn’t know how to pretend around her, even if it was what would help the most. “You don’t have to be anything more than how you are. We can go find her, we don’t have to stop for anything, I’m sorry if I’m...I’m not trying to hold everything up, I don’t mean to be so…” Her eyes were burning again and she tried to focus on walking with Deirdre. She never would’ve thought walking up and down their house wrapped up in each other would come in handy before. But here they were, stepping in the way they knew so well, enough that Morgan could remember how they usually were. Not the happiness, but the ease, the intimacy of their openness.

Morgan met Deirdre’s eyes for a flash of a moment, hoping that she could be good and find whatever strength she needed, however unfamiliar, to pull herself up and help Deirdre find what she needed to. But as Morgan held her gaze, the tears came free and her insides crumbled. “You don’t need to thank me, or be sorry. Honestly, I don’t really feel like I--” she hesitated. “I know I...I tried, I did, but I screwed it up...” she clenched her jaw and tried to keep her composure as much as possible and brought them slowly to a stop near a sidewalk bench. “I know I can’t do anything to fix what happened, but if I could just do something to make any of this better or easier for you…” She clenched her jaw and breathed again. “I know you’re angry. And I know I’m at least partially responsible for us being in this situation. But…I’m sorry. I feel like I’m making everything worse right now. I should be comforting you. You shouldn’t have to worry about me after losing your best friend, your family, but...you were gone. I got off the floor and you were gone and then you were bleeding and you wouldn’t tell me anything and you wouldn’t stay or take me with you and...I should’ve just gotten the car, fucking stars above, I should’ve just gotten in the car and picked you up and maybe then we… but I just thought ‘she couldn’t have gone far, we’ll figure it out.’ I didn’t understand what was happening, and...you were dying! You went from running away to looking me in the eye and saying you weren’t going to live and then you couldn’t walk or use your hands and there was so much blood everywhere and I was scared! Out-of-my-mind scared! I would do everything different now, I would, but...I didn’t know anything except that the world was ending. You were dying and it was the end of everything and I was scared and it broke me. I didn’t even realize you’d gotten up after the call, you were just gone, and nothing felt real anymore and I couldn’t...be what you needed. I tried, but I couldn’t. And I’m still--between failing you and almost losing you on the fucking driveway with no warning, I’m just not back together yet...” her voice petered out. Morgan could only just push through her shame to look at Deirdre again, searching for someplace safe in her gaze to hole up in.

“Lydia, I mean….” Deirdre breathed with trepidation; confessing the truth so bluntly was not something she had grown accustomed to in the time between her scream and now. She would have preferred, in fact, to never speak of it. But such wasn’t fair--Lydia deserved to be spoken of, remembered, loved. Even if it would just be her who held the leanan-sidhe in her heart. She frowned and anchored herself to Morgan’s side, pressed as tightly as she could manage. With great imagination, she could pretend this was one of their strolls around White Crest, at some point they’d turn a corner and make their way into a cemetery. But the gravestones in her head all read Lydia’s name. “You didn’t screw anything up…” She fell on to the bench, gesturing for Morgan to sit beside her, nearly pulling her down too. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything, my love. I wouldn’t have gotten myself anywhere on foot, you know that, and it is true that my body needed rest. You can imagine the state I would be in now if you hadn’t chased after me.” Deirdre tried to laugh, the gentle, light way she did when she wanted to lift Morgan’s spirits, but the sound came out as a cough. And then another. And then a tug, taut and strange in her chest. She grimaced, leaning forward to clutch the rough fabric of the clinic-lent sweatshirt she was wearing---equally as gaudy as the cane and wheelchair. Morgan’s voice throbbed in her ears, she made out a few sentences and a handful of words. Distantly, she knew Morgan was talking about her near-death, and the trauma that followed it, but her head pulsed; vision spotty. “You don’t need to...do anything...different…” She spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s okay. Don’t be sorry. I don’t need you to be anything but how you are. It’s oka---” The cemetery with the Lydia gravestones screamed at her, ringing loud and demanding. Deirdre stumbled off the bench. She stared down the road, watching it narrow. The pull she had been searching for was clear, and it was persistent. It tethered her, strung her limbs up and pulled her like a doll.

If she was thinking, she’d realize it was in poor taste to be running off again. But she wasn’t thinking, she was sprinting down a foregin street. Pain forgotten, she burst forth with temporary speed and composure. “Morgan!” She called her girlfriend’s name just once before she turned the corner. The cemetery. The Lydia gravestones. They lived in a nameless alley; not that alley’s often had names, but she’d make sure people knew this one--the place where good died. Deirdre stumbled into it, filled with perverse relief to find Lydia. To find Lydia. To find--Where was Lydia? Deirdre threw herself to the ground, equal parts frantic and too weak to hold herself up. Where was Lydia? She committed herself to vision, to everything her death-cursed body could drum up.

Morgan thought the clinic and the waking up and the sitting tensely in the car was a trick and this really was a magic nightmare drummed up to torment her. Deirdre coughed, ragged and painfully unlike herself. Morgan scrambled for the water bottle in her bag and handed it off to Deirdre. “Drink slowly, babe,” she whispered. “Slow, okay?” She felt brave enough, forgiven enough, to stroke Deirdre’s cheek the way she liked to when it was her turn to comfort her. But Deirdre shuddered and sank against her body. “I’ve got you. What is it? Hey—” And then Deirdre was up, running away from her again, knocking her way through the street, drunk with pain. “Deirdre! Deirdre, please!” Morgan didn’t care about the pedestrians turning their heads to look at the crazy woman shoving past them. She was just seeing their street and the trail of blood and Deirdre’s dead, icy look. Morgan couldn’t do this again. She didn’t have it in her.

Morgan turned the corner and caught Deirdre’s hand as she called her name. “I’m here. Tell me what’s happening, just fucking tell me, I don’t even care what it is!” She pleaded, falling to her knees with Deirdre, holding her up in her arms. “Are you in more pain? Do I need to drive you back to the clinic? What do you—did you find something?” She brushed back her love’s hair, searching her face for some tell about what new twist of the cosmic knife was working through them this time. She held onto Deirdre, too tight for her to break away from easily. “Please. I can take it. Just talk to me…”

Where was Lydia? Deirdre burned, clawing at her skin with bandaged fingers. She felt cut upon cut across her chest, the weight of wounded wings she didn’t own, spear through her shoulder. She felt Lydia’s pain, splashed up against the walls and spilled across the floor, but she didn’t know where she was. Her body took flash fever, starting at her knees against the ground. Where was Lydia? She heard voices, saw figures in the dark of her vision–one, two, three...just how many people had watched Lydia die? How many of them caused it? At the center, a blonde girl flared to mind, but Deirdre already knew about her; had already committed herself silently to dealing with it. She began to paw at the ground. Perhaps Lydia had been buried below, somehow, but she searched and searched and found nothing. Her body burned.

Deirdre blinked, turning slowly to her girlfriend. The apology for her actions that wanted to sit on her tongue had been swallowed down. She took dirt and ash into her hands, letting them stain once pristine bandaging before peeling Morgan off of her. The process was slow, she was in no rush now. She had found Lydia, after all. Once unfurled, she opened Morgan’s palm and dusted ash against her skin. “That’s Lydia,” she said, “we found her.” Deirdre turned back to the ground, the ash was nearly indiscernible from the rough cement, but she leaned down and scooped it all up into a pile—every grain of dirt along with it. In time, by hand, she would pick everything that wasn’t Lydia out. For now, she just wanted it all. She thought she could mold her back, like clay. She tried it; holes for the eyes first. But the nose wouldn’t stick. “How is she going to wear something nice, for the funeral?” She asked, “what if she wanted to be buried? Didn’t they ask her? Didn’t they think about her family? This is all they get to see of her now. Who would want that? Who would want ashes?” In her scraping the ground, the charred remains of Lydia’s phone mixed with the pile. Deirdre plucked it out. There was Lydia, pile on the floor, and this was the place she died. This was the place she saved Deirdre’s life. And they gave her ashes. “Didn’t they know…” she sobbed, unaware she had begun tainting the ash with her tears (she would apologize for this later, seek repentance in the familiar places she knew). “....didn’t they know? Didn’t they know that I loved her. Why would they—what did they think I would do with a body? Couldn’t they have just left her in a river or—“ Deirdre curled up on the ground, pulling Lydia to her chest. There wasn’t much left of her now, even with the ash; a byproduct of the time she wasted (she would apologize for this too). “She couldn’t stand looking at a dead body, not the beautiful decayed kind. But I think she—I think she wanted a coffin. Didn’t they ask her? Why didn’t they ask her?” Deirdre sobbed, a horrible and pathetic whimpering sound, but she knew the answer.

Morgan tried to fasten Deirdre’s hands together in her grasp to no avail. “No! If you can leave me behind like I don’t matter you can use your fucking words and tell me what’s happening!” She shook her, aching and desperate, but Deirdre was somewhere else, and nothing Morgan said meant a damn thing, if they’d even registered as words at all. And then she spoke and all of Morgan’s fear and grief punctured, crawling miserably into some dark corner inside herself to hide. There wasn’t time for this. If Deirdre was right (and when it came to death, Deirdre was always right), then Morgan didn’t get to matter right now. She quieted and let Deirdre have her way, carefully folding away her hurt in box after box to fester out of sight.

Morgan had never looked at flesh ash before. Somehow she thought it would look different, more distinct and impressive. But aside from being a little paler, there wasn’t anything to differentiate it from the dregs of a regular bonfire. Morgan closed her hand around the grainy nothing Deirdre had put in her hands. Lydia. If she hadn’t been an alchemist in another life, she wouldn't know the connection between these little particles and the woman they had both known. But Morgan did, just as she knew that whatever kind of soul fae had, Lydia’s was off becoming part of something else. Strangely enough, Morgan couldn’t find it in her to hope for peace for Lydia so much as a second chance, an opportunity to be kind, to understand that the world wasn’t stratified the way she’d been raised to believe, to feel connected to the affection that had vanished from her life over its final weeks. That’s what Morgan wanted.

But death didn’t care for wanting. Deirdre had explained that to her plenty of times. And as Morgan held her girlfriend, rubbing her back and stroking her hair as she sobbed, she reminded herself that she was part death too. She could hold and speak and not want anything. She could, if she remembered the pit inside her and let it take her a little. After watching her tiny world implode on a loop so many times in less than a day, it was almost easy. “I don’t know, my love. I’m afraid I don’t know.” she said faintly. “But I do know that her soul and her energy have already passed on and transformed. Maybe she’s in the winter flowers, or the wind, or some happy, gentle creature that was just born. But we can put what’s left of her in a nice urn, maybe something from her house. I don’t think she’d mind her house pieces being with someone who can appreciate them. Or we could get an alchemist to turn her into something you can keep with you always. She would like her body turning into something beautiful, I think. When you’re ready, you’re going to finish the water bottle, and I’ll clean it out and we’ll put her in there for the time being. And we’ll go home, and you’ll decide what you think is best for her remains when you’re ready for that too.”

“There’s no winter flowers in an alley!” Deirdre bellowed, rumbling the world around them. Her tears felt like fire against her cheeks now, and she pushed herself off the ground. “This stupid man-made shit. She doesn’t get to go anywhere! Not back to the earth that bore her, not the forests of her ancestral home. This human garbage is what she gets. You can’t grow a tree in cement! They killed her here! And they didn’t even leave a body.” Deirdre slammed her fist to the ground, shattering bone on impact and undoing her body’s attempts at healing her torn nails; she reacted to neither, an instrument of pain and anger. “You don’t know what they did to her,” she spoke to Morgan now, trembling in the force of her words. “We didn’t even get to hear all of it. But I saw, I heard, I know. They took Lydia from this world, she begged and they ignored her and now she’s ash. She didn’t want to die this way. And I promised her, I promised her—“ ‘A good death’ shouldn’t have been something impossible to give. It was her job, her livelihood; everything she was born for. “She was my sister and they took her.” Deirdre huffed, calming herself just enough to remember who she was speaking to, and what had been said. “Not unless you can dry it all out,” she gestured at the water bottle, gently taking it with her good hand. If drinking water would please Morgan, she would do it, but the point of the gesture was lost on her now. “Water will ruin the ashes. Or taint them. Nothing touches Lydia anymore, nothing that will hurt her. No water.” She took a sip, hissing as it went down. Drinking water felt like a waste of time, so much so that she stopped at just the first sip. “And no home. We go to Lydia’s.” Deirdre pulled off her sweatshirt, pushing the ashes onto the fabric. She considered that the water bottle just might have been better, but she wanted everything and she wanted it pure. “No one will be turning her into anything, not unless I know I can still feel her like that, and, anyway, not a human. I’m not letting another human touch her. Her family will decide what’s best. I’ll leave that to them.” A work of art might’ve sounded good to Deirdre, if her mind could bear to stir itself from thoughts of rage. “Are you good to drive?” She asked Morgan, speaking mostly to the ash though. “We can take a break, if you don’t want to. But we’re not going home. I don’t want to go home now. We need to go to Lydia’s, as soon as we can. Time—“ she snarled, “—clearly has done terrible things to my sister.”

Morgan took back the water bottle as soon as Deirdre made her disgust for the idea apparent. She had dumped out the rest and begun cleaning it with her sleeve when Deirdre dismissed the idea. Morgan stopped, screwed on the lid, and put the empty bottle away. Nothing to do about it now. Taking off the sweatshirt from the clinic was a stupid mistake. The ash would get caught in the fibers and almost impossible to fully separate. Some of Lydia’s remains would end up in the wash, or some cotton blend would end up in her urn, or whatever happened in the end. And Deirdre shouldn’t have promised a good death, not when she knew from Morgan’s death that sometimes there wasn’t time enough to fix anything. But nothing in Morgan’s head mattered, and nothing broke the surface of her blank face except a ‘fine,’ and later, when the silence had been long enough to make Morgan sure that Deirdre was finished, she said flatly, “You just re-broke your hand, of course I’m driving. We’ll go to Lydia’s and then swing by the clinic again.” Deirdre didn’t have enough clarity of mind to set her own bones, and she probably couldn’t, with her fingers in their state. She scooped Deirdre up in her arms and walked them back to the car. She buckled both of them in, started the car, and took them away.

Time washed away funny when you were in the pit. It was both a long time and a short time back into town and up to Harris Island. The light had changed, bright and desaturated. Morgan pulled up the drive and turned off the car and came wordlessly around to wait for Deirdre to let herself out whichever ways she was going to insist on next. Deirdre had been right about time, the air crackled with the sound of tarp bubbling in the wind. New windows still had the stickers on them, ready for the final approval that would never come. At least the security team was absent, now lacking someone to follow and crime scene tape had been strung around the perimeter. Morgan only needed to twist the handle hard enough to break it free and let them in.

Deirdre hated being carried, despite its convenience. It made her feel like a child, and of all the things to be, a child was the worst. But she did not argue this time, she had her eyes glued to Lydia, and they remained there. In the car, which she hadn’t noticed they’d gotten into, she tried whispering her friend’s name, as if coaxing her out of her ashen hiding place. Then she spoke to her softly in Gaelic, mostly nonsense, but partly apologies she could not find the words for in English. Every so often, she subjected herself to the vision again, this time she took account of every detail. She had been cataloguing sounds by pitch by the time they came to Lydia’s. “We’ll be back,” she told the ashes, which was a silly thing to do, but Deirdre’s mind had gone to a strange place. A different place. She made sure Lydia was comfortable before she left, wrapped safe in the cheap sweatshirt. Inside, there would be nice vases for Lydia to go in until she found a more permanent home. It would be better than her shirt, at least. Deirdre looked at the ashes. “Do you want to come?” She asked them. They did not respond, but she turned back and picked them up carefully, unable to part with Lydia anyway. Lydia’s house was not even in an acceptable state; too messy, too taped up and put together all wrong. Lydia wouldn’t want that. “I should clean up,” she announced to no one in particular. “But first a good home for the ash—for the ash—for the—for Lydia.” But everything was toppled over, not where it should be. Her mind was still reeling from visions, she didn’t have the capacity to log every change here. Her eyes raked over the sheer number of them, and she felt sick. “This isn’t good.” She said, sitting on Lydia’s couch. The same place she would sit, feet tucked under her, as her and Lydia chatted over wine. Deirdre’s gaze settled on Lydia’s empty spot beside her. “This isn’t right.” She looked to the ashes again, bundled with more care than she had ever held anything. “What do you think?”

“You’re not gonna clean anything. It’s a crime scene,” was all Morgan said. She walked through the first floor of the house, or as far as she could manage while keeping Deirdre in her sight. There had been a struggle, and there had been an investigation underway. Spots were marked up with numbered tags as evidence. If they only knew the worst of it, they wouldn’t have bothered, Morgan thought. She went systematically through each room, stopping in the kitchen to work on the cabinets. It was fitting and cruel and pitiful, to put Lydia in something meant for food, but there weren’t going to be many options on this floor. She took out a sculpted rice serving pot and a ceramic sugar tin, both more form than function. She washed and dried them carefully by hand. There was a lot wrong with this place, a prickling awfulness that wanted to pull Morgan out of her numbness and shoo her out the door. But Morgan didn’t matter right now, and neither did Lydia’s crimes. Maybe another day, but not right now. Morgan brought the two vessels out to the living room where Deirdre still sat. “You don’t care what I think,” she muttered, setting them down in front of her. She’d found fault with everything Morgan had put forward so far, and this was probably going to be more of the same, so Morgan stepped away in an effort to get ahead of the next blast. “I’m going upstairs. Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”

“What crime happened here?” Deirdre turned to the ashes, whom she thought might laugh and tell her something silly. But with things numbered up, the humans hadn’t infested Lydia’s home to try and look for her; they didn’t care she was ashes. But what crime happened here? Lydia had never done anything wrong, as far as Deirdre could think—which wasn’t very far, now. “The vases and art are missing.” She assumed because Regan had done her number against them, but it was wrong to see Lydia’s house so barren. She would’ve hated this. Likewise, she would’ve hated the options Morgan presented. Deirdre eyed them, and a moment too late, spoke softly. “I always care what you think, Morgan.” But Morgan had gone already and left Deirdre in the place that was wrong and empty. She pulled the serving bowl close, and carefully poured Lydia inside. “I’m sorry,” she told the ashes, and though she was vigilant not to spill anything, she couldn’t help but think she was losing some of Lydia in the transfer. She slipped the sweatshirt back on, bundling the ash-stained front in her hands, tugging them close to her chest. Deirdre turned her attention back to the house, she thought about mixing the numbers around, rubbing dirt over the places they thought were evidence. She didn’t know what crime they assumed was committed here, but they were wrong, and Deirdre needed to protect Lydia’s legacy. But instead she hobbled to her feet, and stumbled her way up the stairs. Falling down and over, revisiting old scrapes against her legs, wasn’t so terrible now that she had no space in her mind to think of it. “Morgan?” She crawled to the bedroom, “what are you looking at?”

Morgan had only been upstairs to visit Remmy before, and so wandered the rooms on rooms on rooms without purpose. She found Remmy’s first: empty. Morgan frowned to think that she and Lydia felt the same way about them and their absence. But there it was, a hollow shell where a life used to be. If Morgan didn’t know any better, she would have taken it for some overly personal art installation. It could be called something like, ‘regret’ or ‘disavowed’ or ‘why the heck did you stick around for so long if you were going to make me feel bad for what I need and fuck off’? That last one was more about her than Lydia, she liked to think, but she shut Remmy’s old door and moved on all the same.

There were more spare rooms and suites, some that looked lived in recently enough to make Morgan’s stomach clench. Clothes folded with neurotic care. Pencils and paper on a desk. Shoes tucked under a bed like they were hiding. It had to be Chloe. Other, too, from the looks of things. Where had Lydia found the time to take more people? How long after leaving Chloe or Sammy dying had this happened? Morgan lingered for several moments. She was one of the few people who could begin to understand the crimes that had happened here, she owed Chloe that much. How many times had she been tormented here? How many times that this felt like some sick safety compared to the torture basement? How much harder was it to bear this alone? Morgan didn’t have the stomach to bear it at all, not with the memory of Chloe’s cries in her ears. She stumbled backed away from the hallway and turned down a different one. The house seemed to change, performance and display falling away to simpler aesthetics, cozier furniture. Morgan entered the room at the end of the hall and found herself in Lydia’s bedroom.

It was the kind of room someone’s mother would have liked: soft textured fabrics fresh out of a bedding catalogue, warm light coming through the curtains, fat photo albums and well-loved poetry books stacked on the nightstand, and on a vanity shelf, miraculously intact, were arrays of trinkets and knick knacks. Morgan went up to look at each one, noticing the particularities, the mish mash of styles. This wasn’t curated the way the sculptures and paintings downstairs were. If there was any logic here, it was known only to Lydia, mysterious and personal. There were runes and gaelic dialects that must have been fae and off in a corner was a collection of bones, including a bell jar terrarium arranged around a racoon skull.

“My bones,” Morgan whispered. She had given Lydia the gift on their last planned meeting. She always came with a gift for Lydia, but this one had been her most involved; crafted by hand instead of purchased. “I thought you hated this,” she said. “I thought you hated all my presents, but I worked on this for days, hoping you’d be impressed. I wanted to remember what it was like creating something, and I thought you of all people would understand. But you never really said you liked it, so I figured you put it in some reject closet...” But it was here, carefully tended to along with Lydia’s other treasures, the moss even looked like it had been nurtured recently. Morgan surveyed the collection again, the strange hodge lodge of it, and the care they were curated with. These were gifts. These were people she wanted to keep close to her heart, and for some reason she had chosen to remember Morgan along with them, even after everything. And looking at this, how could Morgan not think of Lydia over at the house, sipping wine with Deirdre, or next to Morgan in the car, begging silently to be accepted? And then all the times they fought online and Lydia’s patience when Morgan said something stupid and offensive to her fae ears and that time they sat in the warmth of a fae funeral pyre, pressed together with Deirdre in the middle? That was real. As real as Chloe’s cries in the basement and everything else that had happened here. This stupid terrium that only mattered because Morgan had made it--this was Lydia too.

Morgan lifted the bell jar terrarium and held it to her chest, bundling her arms tight until the glass broke. Morgan whimpered. No, she didn’t matter. None of this mattered. Not the glass pressing into her skin, not her hurt, her betrayal, her grief. And yet. “What was wrong with you?” She asked Lydia. “Why couldn’t you have been this kind to—what was wrong with you?” She sank to the floor, staring into the broken offering like it might hold any answers. She reached deep inside herself for that calm, dead balance again, but it was no good. It wasn’t a place Morgan had ever known how to keep herself in. As she curled her body over the mess, sobbing into hand, it seemed that it, too, had abandoned her completely.

Morgan sensed Deirdre only faintly. She gasped for control, scrambling for something inside her heart to protect herself with. She wiped her eyes furiously and curled her body away, crunching the glass further. It came apart on her shirt, but Morgan didn’t care. She wasn’t ready to get off the floor and face whatever Deirdre would do to her next. “...Stop.” She said, her tear-choked voice just above a whisper.

“Morgan?” Deirdre called out again, crawling across the floor. If she had sense, she would have hated the child-like quality of it. If she was thinking, she would have apologized for it. “Are you oka—“ Stop. Deirdre flinched, Morgan would not catch the flicker of pain across her features, though her whimper was audible. “But—“ her argument caught in her throat. Somewhere beyond her, there were the words of care and love: you’re not okay, I won’t stop. But there, right then, all she had was quiet. Tell me what’s wrong, turned into the slow reaching for Morgan, grimacing at her flinching of the touch. Whimpering as it happened again when she wrapped her arms around her love. The Lydia spilled across her shirt spread on to Morgan, but Deirdre’s mind was a simple beast now; it did not possess the intelligence to consider intricacies. “Let me see your hands,” she asked softly, then set about picking the glass out of her. That, like all of the Lydia that had been defiled around her, was also wrong. She was learning that she didn’t like seeing the people she loved in ways they didn’t belong; Lydia to ash, Morgan to pincushion. “You were right about the water bottle,” she said, “but I do like wearing Lydia. It feels like she’s hugging me again….almost. I miss that. I held her while she cried, in that bed right there, and at the time I didn’t think to cherish the feeling. I thought I’d always have it.” She paused, trying to pull Morgan close to her, like always was—like she also imagined she would always be able to. But she had lost Morgan once, a few times before if loss by her own doing could be counted, and she knew to always hold her as if committing the feeling to memory. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan continued to cry, shrinking and cowering from Deirdre’s touches as she searched for the cold, effortless grasp of death, and a voice that at least resembled her own. She tried pulling her hands away (the cuts didn’t matter) and she tried dissolving out of Deirdre’s arms and slithering back to the car alone. But Deirdre had her, and she was trapped, and maybe it would have been the only trap she wanted to fall into if it wasn’t all a meaningless lie. “I said stop…” she croaked. “Stop lying, stop touching me like you…” Her voice snagged and whined in her throat. “Like you suddenly care. Just stop, please…” The back and forth felt more cruel than the rejection; at least when Deirdre had abandoned her before, Morgan never had to question their reunions. She could count on at least a week, often more. Deirdre’s strong, slender arms had pushed her away so rarely before today, Morgan had thought they were the key to knowing she was safe. But that had been before the nightmare day, before she’d stopped being able to do anything right or important in Deirdre’s eyes.

“I can’t do this again,” she begged in a whisper. “Don’t act like you want to stay anymore. I believed you—I believed you last time and—” And Deirdre couldn’t have been bothered to do things differently even once. For all Morgan knew, she hadn’t been listening all. “I can’t anymore. Please just stop and tell me what you’re angry about next. Were the dishes I picked out too ugly? Do you hate the windows being messed up? Do you hate me for wanting to go back to the clinic? Or do you—stars, I don’t even fucking know anymore because you’re never going to tell me what’s really wrong or listen to when I try to explain, you’re just going to leave!” And in that case, why was Morgan saying so much now? Catching the irony, Morgan slumped in on herself, trembling as she searched in vain for the dead, nothing parts of her for comfort. “Please, don’t lie anymore. I don’t understand what I ever did but doesn’t matter, so just do it...” Just go. Leave me behind.

Deirdre pulled her hands back, tucked carefully in her lap, as she listened to the strange words tumbling out of the strange Morgan. She thought it was a dream, for a moment, until a dull pain throbbed across her hand, and she noticed for the first time how swollen and misshapen it was. She couldn’t remember when or why, but she noticed it. And she looked at Morgan, and she noticed more—the betrayal claimed in her features, the torment in her voice. “What did I do?” She asked quietly, she tried to search her mind for the answer but could not remember anything outside of entering the peculiar dimension that housed this wrong imitation of Lydia’s home. “I do care about you. I always care. I don’t understand…” she blinked, found herself crying, and blinked some more. She wanted to touch Morgan, but Morgan had told her to stop, and in her obedience, she did not dare. She thought the good Deirdre, the one that could have kept her promise to Lydia, would have known how to fix this. She wouldn’t have brought Morgan to this point to begin with. But as she was now, she couldn’t logic out what was wrong, what she needed to apologize for, and what she could do to make it better. Her mind was jumbled with thoughts of Lydia, memories intertwined with regrets. She could feel the leanan-sidhe on her chest, holding her steady. “The dishes were ugly.” But that was only because any dish would be ugly to hold Lydia, it wasn’t Morgan’s fault. And she didn’t like the windows being all broken either, but Morgan had nothing to do with that. “I don’t understand,” she said again, usually Morgan was good at explaining for her. And so she waited. And waited. And blinked, and cried, and waited. “I love you. I promise I love you. I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you, I promise I do. More than my life, if I could do that. It would be such a great honour. It is the only thing I want, everyday.” Deirdre cocked her head to the side, as if the new angle might provide answers. “Do you….want me to leave?”

There were limits to how much a zombie could shrink her body, as it turned out. Morgan’s bones bent as she tried to shield herself from Deirdre’s next absence and the hateful, drowning feelings that would take her after. There were limits to her nerves too. How did Deirdre not understand? What part of anything she’d said had been unclear, now or anytime before. She lifted her head, bewildered and horrified. Was this some sick joke? Was she toying with her now? (She wouldn’t. Even like this, she wouldn’t, right?) “All I have ever begged you to do since yesterday was stay with me!” Morgan tried to scream, as if climbing near banshee decibels would make Deirdre finally hear her, but her voice came out ragged and choked with the hurt she was too frightened to let go of. “How can you…” And Deirdre cried and promised and Morgan couldn’t bear it. The two pieces didn’t match up and she couldn’t keep guessing wrong forever. “Do you not even hear me right now? Did I die again with you in our driveway? Because I have told you and begged you! All I did today was try to please you, to make anything up to you from before, and you told me it was okay! You told me you were here, you asked me what was wrong like you wanted to know and it mattered and I believed you! And then you left me! You can’t say these things and make me feel--” Safe. So safe that she never had to hide, that even when it made no logical sense, she mattered in a way that was only possible with love. “You can’t do things like that and then leave me behind like I’m not even there!” Morgan’s voice broke with an ugly sob, forceful enough to make her sit up on her knees. “If I didn’t do anything wrong, why are you punishing me like I did? Why...why are you acting like everything I say is awful if you’re not mad at me? Why can’t you stay with me when I need you if you don’t hate me for letting her die? Why can’t you tell me anything if you love me? My whole stupid little life is built on you, and you were gone. You were dead! And then you couldn’t get away from me fast enough or bear to talk to me and I know I was too busy being broken over your bleeding fucked up body to get to her in time, but you keep acting like you forgive me and then taking it away!” In a way that struck Morgan as cruel now, she still felt too safe around Deirdre. She could hear the pitiful, child-like anguish under her cries. There was no dignity, no mask of anger or cold, deathlike apathy. She was just hurt and afraid, and though she hated herself for the pathetic quality of it, in a way she was still begging, too.

Deirdre sat very still and listened. She repeated Morgan in her head to make sure she was understanding the words, she asked herself their meanings and parsed them from English to Irish to English again until she was sure she understood. “I would’ve died for Lydia,” she said softly, picking at the ashy remains of Lydia on her shirt, rolling them against her palm. She wanted to weave Lydia into her skin, she wondered if it was possible. “I would die for Lydia. Still. My only regret with that promise was that she had to take it back. I would’ve died on our driveway for her. I would’ve died and thought nothing of it. I think of dying for her now. I think it’d be nice. I understand why my family spoke of our lives having no value, why we take no ties. We are fae, we carry their deaths, we avenge them; no matter the cost. I would die for Lydia.” Dread dug its cold fingers into her stomach, churning and pulling. “I’m so sorry. I would’ve died and left you, and I wouldn’t have regretted it. I would still do that now, and I can’t---I can’t shake it from my head. I want peace for her so badly I would wrench it from myself. But that’s not fair to you. I’m so sorry, my love.” The things she had to do, and the new life she carved with Morgan, never had learned how to fit nicely together. But her love for Morgan was not a whim to be cast aside, and not a treasure she would so easily give up. It was that same perseverance that marked her love for Lydia, too. “It’s not your fault Lydia died. It’s not your fault she’s ash. I don’t blame you, I’m not angry at you. I’m trying to stay with you. I’m trying because I want to. But it’s hard because---” Deirdre lifted her bandaged hands, one bent wrong and one normal, and tried to demonstrate a split road. “But I’m sorry.” She dropped her hands, lacking the energy to keep them up. Deirdre, unlike Morgan, had no torrent of emotion inside of her. There was anger and pain, neither she showed now, and then deep, unshakable, sadness. Something like self-loathing, but more desperate around the eyes. “I’m sorry.” Was all she could think to say; was all she knew how to say now. “I’m sorry.” And she sat very still and straight as she offered it, just the way she’d been taught. She could be a stitching of instincts and half-feelings, a mannequin of memory. But she could not be Deirdre anymore.

Morgan shook her head. In her awful, bleating explanations, she’d closed some of the distance between them on instinct. She was close enough to touch Deirdre now, and her arms twitched, aching for her, but she held back, still tense with fear, like an animal that had been hit too many times. Morgan scoffed at the idea that Deirdre was trying, that forgetting her not five minutes after insisting she bare herself counted as trying. “I knew,” she croaked. “You would never choose me over a fae. I knew that when we started. I just thought… you would care enough by now to try to take me with you. Or to tell me that’s what you were doing. I would’ve driven you anywhere if you’d just said she was in trouble. You think I don’t still love her? That I don’t hate what they did to her? I would go with you anywhere if it would just occur to you to ask me, especially for her. I’d pack you a bag if you swore to me you could only do it by yourself. I don’t need you to look at it like it’s one or the other. I needed you to choose me too.” She looked up at her, eyes searching her strange, faraway face. “How do I know you aren’t going to drop me in five more minutes if I believe you right now? How do I know anything will be different? That this isn’t going to be like every other sad choice I trusted in before you? How can you tell me that you can choose me too?”

“I did choose you.” Deirdre blinked. “Always. I did when I said I loved you the first time, I did when we drove to the clinic instead. I am choosing you. Do you know it’s sacrilege to let a non-fae hold a dead fae’s body? But I gave you that ash.” She didn’t exactly get it, but she understood enough to try and wrap herself around Morgan again. “But this isn’t about choosing, I don’t think…or maybe...maybe it is. I don’t know. Is it? Is it?” She buried her head into the crook of Morgan’s neck, taking her in by way of her senses. With her nose pressed up against her like this, she could smell the decay--Morgan was due a meal soon, she realized, then tried to think back to the last time she ate. “I’m sorry.” How had she let them go so far without noticing? Why didn’t she stop to ask if Morgan wanted something to eat? “I could give you a promise,” she said, wincing as she realized her offer was in poor taste. “I don’t want to leave you, Morgan. I just don’t know what to do. I didn’t think Lydia could die, and I didn’t think there was time to say anything about it. I don’t---I don’t know what to do. I said it’d be okay when we found her, but it’s not. She’s ash, Morgan. Ash!” Deirdre trembled, clinging tighter to her love. “Y-you don’t know, I suppose. Can you trust me? Can you trust that I love you more than that?”

Morgan sank into Deirdre and let her hold her. “I didn’t ask for her ash, I know she’s yours. I just want us to have gone together,” she whimpered. “I just want you to take me with you next time so we can go together. Or talk to me. I can be strong with you. Don’t you believe in me enough for that?” She latched on tighter as she felt Deirdre shudder and cry. She could’ve sworn they’d each been so strong before, that they could each stand on their own two feet without being afraid. Maybe, when the worst of this was over, they could be again. Morgan flinched and clutched Deirdre tighter at the mention of a promise, but in this moment, it still looked to her like salvation. She was so tired of holding herself in, she ached with hunger and grief, and even as her heart expanded to accommodate more anguish, there didn’t feel like enough room to mourn Lydia as just herself. (She didn’t want to, she didn’t have the same blinders that Deirdre did. She knew too much, enough to think that she and Deirdre might be the only ones crying over the good in Lydia that was lost. Grief was a cruel feeling, but grieving alone was punishing.) One death she was old hat at managing. Two, this close to her heart, and she didn’t know which end was up, even if Deirdre had come back in the end.“But I trusted you before--” she said pitifully. “You can’t do this to me again, Deirdre. And don’t tell me you’re ready for something you’re not. I would’ve waited for you to ask me later, I would’ve tried…” She might not have succeeded, but she wouldn’t have given up everything to Deirdre’s deaf ears if she’d known better. “I was right there with you on the bench, you didn’t even take my hand. I would’ve gone with you…” She shuddered, crying into Deirdre’s shoulder, trembling with tension her body was desperate to release. None of this was fair, or right, she didn’t even want to be crying over Deirdre when there was someone else who was never coming back. Not by zombies or necromancy or anything else. Her fingers dug in, heedless of any limits or habits she’d learned. Her body wanted to fasten itself to safety and hear the heartbeat that she had come to think of as safety. Somewhere, in that desperate, pitiful place, Morgan realized they already had a promise thread between them she could pull on. “Can I ask for you…?” She said in a shaky voice. “I feel like I lost you too and I need you. I want you. Can I ask you to come to me? Stay close for just… you haven’t even let me have you back for a day, can I at least ask for until morning? Can you love me enough to give me that?”

“No, you have to hold her,” Deirdre explained quietly, “you know who she was, so you have to hold her. No one else knows and loves like you do.” But her words fell away in a matching whimper, her body slumped against Morgan and the rest she just gave up on. All the fire and brimstone raged quiet and frail. She was tired now, as she had been for so long. But that was only this Deirdre; the woman who loved Morgan. She was not whole; she was part anger, part sadness, part ash. As the parts could not exist together, not any more, she hand-picked the one that needed to perform. “I’m sorry,” she said again, “I love you.” The only things that remained feeling right inside of her; apology for her inadequacies and love that would forever hold for Morgan. “Of course you can,” Deirdre pulled back and smiled, running her broken hand against Morgan’s cheek, as if nothing was wrong with it or her; a facsimile of the affection she knew to offer. “Of course.” She couldn’t tell the promise apart from her own desire to be by Morgan’s side, and she didn’t exactly know where she had been lost, but she nodded and urged for Morgan to take it. “Ask for me,” she smiled again, a small thing though her face pulled in memory of a larger one. The corner of her lip twitched. “I love you. Ask for me.” She pitched her voice up, the way she remembered warmth and affection sounding. She was trying, but she wasn’t sure if it looked more like lying. She wanted to be good, that was it. She summoned the woman who loved Morgan and told her to sit still and smile, even if emotion was a strange taste on her tongue now. She wanted to be good.

“Okay, I’ll hold her. We won’t tell anyone, but I will,” Morgan whispered, her voice smoothing out as her body eased to the tune of Deirdre’s assurances. The tune was familiar, even if it was off-key. Deirdre was hurt. Deirdre was lost, in a way. Latched onto her the way she was now, with permission granted and settling over her like a shock blanket, she could sense that as easily as the tremor in her love’s voice and the quiet outside. The rest of Morgan’s heart unlocked and she sagged,nodding and nuzzing into Deirdre’s hand as she stroked her cheek. “I need you. Will you please come to me, Deirdre? Just until morning?” She said softly. And in the saying, she knew that it was a question and no question at all. Not just because of the magic threads Deirdre had given her outside Al’s that sad night, but because that was how Deirdre loved her, as a matter of course. Morgan took Deirdre’s broken hand gently in her own and kissed her wrist, pressing in as hard as she could. “I’m sorry I need you,” she murmured. “I love you too.” She took several deep breaths. “Thank you for trying for me right now. I just need a minute…” She breathed deep again. “We shouldn’t stay here much longer, in case the police come back, and you can’t set your bones with your hand like this, we really do need to go back to the clinic. But we can take a minute…” She breathed again. Deirdre was here. Deirdre had promised. Deirdre loved her. They were both just lost and spun in different directions, groping clumsily for some kind of stability. They’d never both needed each other so badly at the same time before and they stumbled through the crisis like idiots. Morgan looked down at the terrarium pieces on the floor. Would you be angry with me, for using our promise? She silently asked Lydia. Would you be proud that losing you didn’t break us? Morgan breathed again. “We can take that jewelry box on the vanity for her ashes, if you think that would be better than what I brought you downstairs. I think everything up here is a gift.” Morgan gestured to the array of knick knacks above her. “It could be like being held by a friend…” Morgan stroked Deirdre’s cheek and searched her eyes, wondering if there was enough of Deirdre leftover to latch onto her as dearly as Morgan latched onto Deirdre’s efforts at gentleness.

Deirdre sighed in relief, falling against Morgan like the steadiness of a bed. She could rest there, she thought, and maybe when she woke there would be more of her to work with. “Of course,” she mumbled, and couldn’t tell if the promise blossomed warmth in her chest or if her love for Morgan did. She always felt tethered to her with something far stronger than a promise. “Don’t be sorry about that,” she breathed, “I need you too.” And though the fact made her feel horribly selfish to admit, it was a truth she could unearth from herself despite her state. “We can stay here for a minute.” It sounded nice, or it sounded like it should be nice, Deirdre wasn’t sure. She only had one hand to cling desperately to Morgan with, and she gripped the fabric of Morgan’s clothing tight between her fingers. She didn’t want to lose her, that was another truth easy to unearth. “And the clinc’ll be okay. I’ll be okay to go there.” Her gaze followed along to the jewelry box. “I’m worried…that if I move her again, there’ll be less of her. I know that box is better looking, I know she’d like it more, but whenever her family comes, they might want to move her into something else. And I was thinking---she gave me that vase, the one I have the magnolias in. Maybe she’d like it there. Just for now.” She closed her eyes, and shooed away the sight of Lydia’s empty bedroom for her memories of the one she occupied. Deirdre had always been so pleased to watch Lydia go about her day, as if she might learn from her how to be just like that. This house would never know her again, and she’d fit so well here. She’d been Lydia for so long, Deirdre thought it suited her. Maybe she liked it too. Maybe she found a place to stay. Maybe this was home. She wouldn’t know now, no one would. “Lydia cared about her friends,” Deirdre opened her eyes, “people didn’t care enough about her, as it seems. But she was good. She loved, just like everyone else. And she did care. She did. I know it seems weird to you, because of how she could treat--” Deirdre swallowed thickly, leaving those words about Lydia in a different place and time. “---When I first came over, I gave her this deer skull. I thought she hated it. It wasn’t pretty like a work of art to her, and I knew she didn’t like death much. But she kept it, and she liked it. And she cared. About me, about the people she loved. They’re not going to see that, are they? They’re going to find the basement and--” She swallowed again. Deirdre didn’t know how many people knew how Lydia liked to feed, but she had a feeling that the number of them that knew and were okay with it was something she could count on one not-broken hand. Except for the fae, she reasoned, they’d get it. “I want to take some things she liked; dresses, art...I don’t know what’s going to become of this house and its belongings. But I want some things to be hers, for as long as I can keep them.”

Morgan stroked Deirdre’s hair and wove careful kisses around her temples as she spoke. There was relief in knowing that she wouldn’t have to fight her on going to the clinic, or on staying huddled together on the floor. Deirdre had promised, and so there was no need to hold onto her fear and no need to cling, except to give comfort to one another. “Then we’ll keep her where she is until we can put her in the vase. Nothing else will be lost, not anymore.” She listened to Deirdre’s story, more attentively than she had the others, and made a note to ask her for more, as many as she would give, over the next several days, which were doomed to be awful. “I know she did. I don’t know if you could hear, but her last words were to you. She loved you more than anyone else here. And I have to believe that love goes somewhere too. No energy is completely destroyed. Her love still exists, and it’s yours. And--” Morgan swallowed thickly. She had just regained her composure, but with her fear for Deirdre abated, Lydia rushed in to fill those empty spaces. “I know she loved us. I don’t know why she loved me too, we argued so much, and I think I got on her nerves--” Morgan sniffled, gasping out a sad laugh. “But I know she did. She wouldn’t have kept this stupid terrarium if she didn’t.” Morgan looked down at the mess she made of her own present. There was no more chance of repairing it now, just as there was no turning Lydia’s ashes into the woman they knew again. “And I...I don’t understand how what she did was good, but I would’ve given anything for her to be here to explain and argue with me about it.” She shook her head. “No. No, they aren’t going to understand. But we know she wasn’t just anything. Stars, she was so many things. And we’ll remember the truth, okay?” Her heart sank at Deirdre’s simple, heartbreaking request. She pulled away enough to look at her girlfriend so she would know how disappointed she was to not be able to grant her this to the extent she wanted. “We can’t, my love. Not as much as I know you want to. This is a crime scene, and people took pictures and inventory of the things that happened here. It’s risky enough taking one of her dishes to put her in. Whatever you take, it has to be small. Something easily missed. She wouldn’t want you to get involved in this mess. She spent her last time protecting you, and I want to do that too.” Morgan stroked her love’s cheek. “One or two small things. Nothing more. Do you want me to help you up?”

“I wish I could feel it, the energy that’s left. The only thing I get is her death.” Deirdre slumped further against Morgan, as if she might mold their bodies into one. Shell of herself, she would’ve died to be filled with something else, someone else. If only she could let Morgan carry her all the way, out the otherside of time where everything was okay. “But it’s better than nothing. It’s always better than nothing.” She had heard enough prattle about grief and bereavement, some she had offered and some offered by her family. But in actuality, loss was something she had experienced very little of--a child by banshee standards, emotionally unattached by every other. She didn’t know what to do about it. But Morgan did, Morgan understood it very well. “When you lost your father…” she started quietly, “...how long was it until you started to feel whole? Did you ever?” She couldn’t live like this, she was admitting in her own way. With all the pain she held for Lydia. She felt each cut, every stab, the desperation in her cracked voice--she knew her death, and she knew the ways to cleanse herself of it. The peace she could bring was not one she wanted to commit, for the quiet of the moment, sheltered in Morgan’s arms, she felt safe enough for one last truth: she didn’t want to hurt anyone, not really. She had grown tired of it, and she knew better now. Quickly, the thought would be swallowed by ones of anger and revenge, but she offered it to Morgan, asking her to keep it. One day she would need to remind her that she didn’t want this, and she feared that day would come very soon. Lydia’s peace would be a hurricane. “We’ll remember the truth,” she repeated, “Lydia as she was.” With weak strength, she tried to nudge Morgan up; silent answer to her question. Her own legs couldn’t hold her, and she needed Morgan in more ways than she knew how to admit. “Then I’ll leave it. I can come back...later, maybe, when it’s not a crime scene anymore. I-If it’s---If they found the---this stuff might not be Lydia’s anymore. I don’t know what they do about kidna---kid--” Deirdre swallowed. “A-are you good to leave now? I think I want to---I think I--I just---I don’t want to think about huma--people--people...t-touching her things. I don’t--” Her words trickled off into whimpers and sobs.

Morgan cradled Deirdre as close as she could. Without her fear clouding her mind, she had enough wherewithal to take care with how she used her hands, her grip firm but not painful, her soothing strokes gentle but not too soft. “Oh, my love…” she sighed, pressing a long kiss to her head. “It felt like so long. It felt like...there was this heavy spiked weight inside me, and I couldn’t move without getting hurt or crushed by it. For the first week, it felt like that pain was all there was of me.” Another kiss. “But in time, the weight gets smaller. The cuts it sliced into you scar over. And eventually it’s so small and light, rattling around your chest, you don’t really feel it cut you at all, except on a bad day. You’re whole already, my love. There’s just something else for you to carry now. And you can. It’ll be a little while, but you’ll be able to as it gets lighter. And I’ll help however I can.” She looked into Deirdre’s face and smiled as tenderly as she could, trying to offer her the best hope instead of the recollections of her worst nights. I came out okay, right? I was happy again, and sometime so will you. I’m here, and I carry this, and I love you.

Deirdre’s face seemed to be reaching out with a message of it’s own, some strange thought, embarrassed, even ashamed. It seemed to be asking Morgant to help her, to get her out of whatever sunken place she was in. If it were as easy as getting to her feet and lifting Deirdre up, she would have done it in a moment. “I’ve got you,” she whispered in her ear. “We’re together, and I’ve got you, okay?” She half carried, half dragged them to the nightstand where the picked up the first book she could reach before scooping up Deirdre’s legs and walking out with her, bridal carry, and coming down the stairs. “I’m going to bend without putting you down, and you’ll get the dish you put her in, and then we’ll go, okay? We’ll go by the house first and put her in your safe and get you a change of clothes, and we’ll go back to the clinic, and if you want, I’ll read to you from her book, and we’ll be together. Is that okay?”

“But I have so much to carry…” Deirdre half-whined, half-sighed. She nodded along to Morgan’s words and willed them to help her, somehow. She latched on to Morgan’s expression of love and devotion, and willed that to stick with her too. She found they fluttered down, like someone trying to press paper to a wall, but she picked it up and tried again. And again. “Thank you, Morgan.” She said, slumping as the last of her energy drizzled down. The last words she managed to get out were a grumble, petulant in a way that felt familiar even to her now, “I hate being carried.” But she smiled softly, in a flicker, and didn’t protest. She nodded along to Morgan’s plan, though she would have agreed to just anything then, and let herself be carried away. She picked up the dish, just as Morgan said it would happen, and cradled it against her. Then she was in the car, as planned, and fatigue set into her. Her spiked weight was foregin, and heavy, and she could only just imagine how much worse it would be alone. Whenever she would wake next, memory jumbled, she would thank Morgan. She might just have died on their driveway, but the only reason she was breathing around the spikes was her love. When she woke, she would thank her. When she woke, she would...

#negative space #wr deirdre #wr chatzy #wr deirdre chatzy #domestic abuse tw #wickedswriting

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spiltscribbles · 4 years

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omg hi i don't know if i was able to send my request to you cos my wifi sucks but could you write "things you said while I cried in your arms" and/or "things you said when you thought I was asleep" for alex and henry? :) loved your last one so much!!

~Notes: I’m so sorry I never posted this here my love🥺 But I hope you enjoy this!!! A REBLOG IS WORTH A thouSANd STARS!

Things You Said | Prompts Closed

When Henry was being brought up— back before his father’s abrupt death and before he understood the sadness in his mother’s eyes and before the very act of attending family dinners had begun to feel like crossing into enemy territory— the Fox Mountchristen Windsors would spend their summers in the family estate, Mertylewood, in northern Hampshire. Back then Henry had thunk the manner there was a Neverland of sorts, otherworldly and magical and totally untouched by the underhanded dealings and suffocating sophistication required by the life of a royal.

Mertylewood was wide and sweeping, with boundless rooms with air that always smelt like a cocktail of hickory and bonfires and the gossamer his mother had always favored. It was surrounded by green pastures and flower meadows for miles, divorced completely from any of the uneasiness back home, and Henry had always relished in the anonymity of it all. A respite from a life composed of expectations, doused in the ever appraising public eye, and strung together by the looming threat of the responsibility to the family name. It was the closest thing to home he’s ever known.

Mertylewood was the place where his mother taught him how to knit, their hands folded into one another’s and her long arms encircling his narrow frame. It was where Phillip stopped being such a god forsaken wanker all the god damn time and taught him how to aim while shooting with his bow and arrows. It’s where Beatrice looked lightest, most carefree, where she forgot about the judgmental glances by the gaggle of tube sock wearing, nasally sounding girls she claims are her friends. It was where she and Henry would stay up all night long listening to her favorite records, and painting their nails ridiculous colors and laughing for absolutely no reason at all. But most importantly, Mertylewood was the one place where none of the cameras or tabloids or reporters got even a slice of their family, including Henry’s father, his hero. His father who always told Henry that while Arthur might’ve been in the movie business, Henry was the brightest star of them all. His father who loved them all so thoroughly that Henry could never forget it, even when the shine to his smile or precise shade of blue to his eyes began to fade. His father who spent the afternoons in Mertylewood with Henry riding their horses and chasing the sunlight. Afternoons where Henry felt like time would never end.

Their favorite spot to stop and rest was a tiny alcove on the cusp of the property, right where the trees met the mouth of the river, and where the sunlight refracted against the tree tops and sod to make them look like they were ablaze. Henry had thought that it was something magical, something that could never be replicated. He knows now, a decade and a half removed, that he was wrong. He sees the same blaze in Alex Claremont Diaz’s chestnut eyes whenever he’s determined, excited for a challenge even if it’s something as stupid as a staring contest that he refuses for Henry to win. He thinks Alex is the personification of that wonderment Henry had once felt as a naive boy, and is blown away by him all over again.

“Oy! I saw that!” Alex suddenly crows, leaping up from his seat on their sofa in the Brownstone Henry had bought to start their lives together, topping it off with some ridiculous dance from some ridiculous app that in all seriousness Alex shouldn’t even have considering that it was created by a hostile government literally spying on it’s users. “You blinked Henryson! I win!”

“I did not do anything of the sort!” Henry reproves with no real heat, too busy trying not to gaze longingly at Alex’s swinging hips in those sweatpants.

God it’s so fucking unfair that his boyfriend is so hot, and even more unfair that Henry is so God damn weak for him.

“Ah c’mon sour patch,” Alex pretends to croon, beginning to pepper sloppy kisses down the column of Henry’s neck, unwittingly making it so Henry arches up towards him. “I know it’s not really part of you royals’ MO, but a deal is a deal.”

“Says the first son of a nation which rebelled over some taxes,” Henry scoffs, can’t help the snicker that bubbles out or the dazed way he feels over the gleam in Alex’s eyes.

“Spare me babe, you love it when I’m a rebel,” Alex goads, far too cheeky and far too endearing all at once. He’s a living contradiction that Henry would spend an eon trying to figure out, but for now, Henry momentarily loses all thought when Alex, the sneak, slips a sly hand into his shirt, and swipes his fingers against bare skin— a whisper, a promise for something more.

Henry has fallen for a bastard, God save the queen.

“I promise I’ll make it worth your trouble,” Alex pretends to croon, presses an open mouth kiss to Henry’s own. In turn, henry only responds by swinging his head back and willing himself not to get all heated like he were some fucking schoolboy with his first crush over being a fully fledged adult lounging around in his home with his fucking fiance of all people. His annoying ass, smug as all get out fiance, but his fiancé all the same.

“I took’r out to shit last time!” Henry grouses, greedily pulls Alex back closer when he starts to detach himself.

“I seem to remember that you offered last time,” Alex says with a pointed hiking to his dark brow, dips down to trade another snog like he couldn’t help it, as if he felt a fraction for what Henry felt for him. “And then you lost this time around, so.”

“I’m not use to all this manual labor while i’m in America,” Henry tries for broke, immediately regrets the quip when he sees the way it makes Alex’s entire countenance go smug and his button nose turn up in such a shrewd fashion that it inspires a whole slew of maddening emotions to chorus within him, ninety percent of which being that he’d really like to get Alex naked. Nine percent wanting to kiss him so hard that it falls off, and the remaining one percent being a mental note to text June about some face masks for him to get rid of the blackheads speckled around there.

“Shut it Alexander,” Henry opts to say, faux aggrieved as he slips out of his embrace and picks up Eleanor’s leash. “I’ll take her out if you just promise not to speak out loud any of the various innuendos you’ve surely devised in that cryptic place you call a brain.”

“Rude.” Alex sniffs.

“I reckon that’s a deal?” Henry presses.

“You run a hard bargain,” Alex nods, unflinching and far too serious. Truly, Henry must be completely off his rocker considering that he’s not only helplessly in love with this boy, but he’s been lost on him since before he could remember. Sometimes his chest feels like it’s going to burst with the love he feels for him, knows that he can be shit at showing it, quieter than Alex’s grand gestures and loud proclamations, but Alex knows. Alex knows how the love Henry holds for him runs deeper than all the oceans, and more expansive than this galaxy. He knows that Henry considers him his person, that what he feels for Alex is unparalleled by any other, insurmountable in its daunting expanse but what keepsHenry grounded nonetheless. And that’s the most important part out of all of this.

“I’ll make you some tea for when you guys get back,” Alex offers, grin a supernova that Henry had once been terrified to burn against.

“If I end up dead in a gutter and the local news reports that I was a decent man, you promise to get me one of the nicer candles for my wake, won’t you? The one’s with a wooden wick?” Henry asks, only partly kidding.

“Don’t be silly babe,” Alex laughs, mock magnanimous. “With those cheekbones? You’d never end up on local news, primetime would be fools not to plaster that pretty face all over!”

Henry frowns before pecking a kiss to the corner of his lips.

“I’m so glad I’ve got such a strong support system at home Alexander.”

“You know it baby.”

When Henry had been six and Beatrice a fresh ten year’s old their parents had taken them to see a peculiar show on Westend which featured odd musical numbers, a Mary Poppins like nanny, and a set of twins whom were able to read one another’s minds. Henry was so very confused by the whole ordeal, but Beatrice was downright ebullient over it. She had spent that entire spring trying to train them to learn how to do the very same. Predictably, it was a spring full of scraped knees and random bruises and a twisted ankle. But sometimes, once in a blue moon, their connection is so clairvoyant that Henry privately thinks that somehow Beatrice’s persistence had somehow forged the bond out of sheer force of will.

Exhibit A, while Henry walks down the brisk streets of the city— or well, less walking and more being dragged by the ninety pound Labrador he and Alex had adopted nearly a year ago now— he feels his phone buzz, and when he opens it he finds a message from Beatrice. Just a short phrase coupled with a photograph that punches the air right out of him.

B: Sometimes I miss it

The attachment is a picture of the five of them, Henry and Beatrice with Phillip and their parents, on Mertylewood’s veranda. The photograph was taken on a day where the light shimmered, making it so Henry and their mother’s golden hair shone right through. Henry and his siblings were in matching trousers and tops, while his parents were caught mid laugh. It looked like what you’d see plastered all over the trashy magazine covers that were obsessed with their family to a morbid degree.

Henry remembers the precise moment the photograph was taken. Remembers how his father spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out the camera settings so that it would take an automatic shot. Remembers Phillip and Beatrice bickering about a butterfly she had caught and he had let go free. Henry remembers his mother carding a ginger hand through his tousled hair, the both of them always having been more reserved than the others and sharing the trait like a lifeline in the chaos of it all. Henry remembers how after they had finally gotten a good collection for their grandmother to sift through in the midst of deciding which would make it on that year’s Christmas collage for the paper, Arthur had tossed Henry on his shoulder, and slung an arm around Catherine’s hip and beckoned the two oldest along for them to go out for sundaes and eat them by the peer.

It’s one of the last truly happy memories Henry has before his father’s diagnosis, a snapshot of resplendence that would never last.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been staring down at his phone, doesn’t notice that time had passed until he finally feels the salty droplets cascading down and splashing against the screen. And shit, it’s been over an hour since he’s left. It was only meant to be a walk around the block for Eleanor to stretch out her legs before bed. Damn it, Alex is probably worried sick.

With a shuttering breath, Henry slowly shuts off his phone, looks up to find that he recognizes the apartment complex they’ve stumbled in front of, miraculously only five minutes away from his and Alex’s place.

“Thank Jesus,” Henry mutters before softly tugging Eleanor away from a hydrant and making the trek back home, stomach twisted up in knots over how Alex must feel.

His suspicions are confirmed when the pair of them make it back home and are greeted by the sight of a peeved off looking Alex, only clad in his pajama bottoms and a frown.

“You could’ve called,” he says, bends down to ruffle a hand into an excited Eleanor’s fur.

“I know.” Henry says, utterly apologetic.

“Dude I thought you really were gonna end up needing that fucking candle,” Alex tells him.

“I— I’m sorry.”

Henry’s not sure if it was the stutter he let out just then, or if he finally had gotten close enough for Alex to spot the wetness tracing down his cheeks, but almost immediately Alex’s expression goes stunned, then confused, followed by angry until it lands on something painfully contrite.

“Baby,” he says in a hush, and the open way that word comes out of him— pleading and hurt and wanting all at once— is enough for a new round of tears to flood Henry’s eyes and for his body to begin trembling while his heart lodges up into his rapidly shutting throat.

Henry thanks his every star that he’s got Alex. That he has someone he can trust so implicitly, so thoroughly that he isn’t afraid when his brain shuts off and he just falls into his fiancé’s embrace, plunging his face into the juncture of Alex’s head and shoulder and just sobs, let’s the sadness just swallow him whole and lets himself remember his father and remember his family and remember when everything had been so effortless.

Somehow, seamlessly, Alex carts him and their pup indoors, helps Henry shed himself of his jacket and shoes before pressing him down onto their bed, and wraps him up into his favorite blanket. Henry absently knows that when Alex leaves him to his solitude it’s because he has to make sure Eleanor is taken care of and has to shut down everything around the house, but that doesn’t stop Henry’s yearning for him, nor does it stop him for feeling so painstakingly alone.

When Alex comes back it’s with a glass of water, and a bowl of fruit, and a cup of hot coco because he knows that’s what Beatrice makes him whenever Henry is feeling especially sad. Henry wonders if Alex knows it’s an old tradition started by their father whenever their mother had gotten the same way. He’d like to tell him, but feels so very tired that he can’t fathom moving his lips to form around the words, resolves to explain it another day.

“You’re back,” Henry says, hates how desperate he sounds, wishes he weren’t so very inept.

“I love you,” Alex answers, his smile still so fucking bright and his hands so soft as he climbs into bed with him, props Henry’s head on his chest and kisses the line where his hair begins.

Henry starts to cry all over again, and Alex only repeats the affirmation, moves to telling him funny stories of when he and June were younger when that doesn’t work, and then starts to rant about his hellish constitutional law professor because he knows that Henry wants nothing more than a distraction.

Tomorrow Henry will show him the photograph, and Alex will understand because he knows Mertylewood, hell he’s spent a handful of weeks over there. Then Henry will tell him more stories in exchange for the ones Alex had given him tonight. Then Henry will explain the hot chocolate thing and Alex will listen and laugh and nod and kiss Henry in all the right parts. And Henry will just fall in love with him all over again. Tomorrow Alex will ask if they could have their wedding in Mertylewood because he wants Henry to be reminded of that happiness always, and also because he thinks it’ll act as some sort of tribute to Arthur. Henry won’t say yes right away but he’ll think it, and it will be better, because Alex always makes it better. But for now it doesn’t have to be better, and Henry is so thankful he understands that.

“I really love you Henry, you know that?” Alex asks hours later when the tears have dried away and they’re doing nothing but mapping out the patches of skin on one another’s bodies— reverent and unhurried and just because they need to be touching one another.

Henry wants to make a joke, thinks that on any other night he’d retort with a playful barb without a second thought, but he can’t make himself do so tonight, it all feels too raw, too real, too fragile.

“I love you Alexander,” he says instead, cuddles closer to him. “For forever and a day.”

“Forever and a day.” Alex confirms and they fall asleep like that, tangled in forever and one another and all their tomorrows.

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#Henry Fox Mountchristen Windsor #Alex Claremont Diaz #firstprince #rwrb #red white and royal blue #rip me #SPILT INK

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