#In reality those are all the Ghosts looking to see if the Rumors of Fighting Humans in the Zone are true | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nolongerdaily-pussinboots · 9 months

Text

One last thing!!! i had a dp x pib crossover idea (honestly, it's less a crossover and more a pib au that borrows lore from dp fanon lol) it turned into this whole fic accidentally so ill put it under read more

Basically, long ago there was a small child who was saved by a cat, this child later becomes one of the Ruler of Ghosts. their gratitude to the cat was monumental, and their power even more so. Therefore, they made all cats liminal (half-dead half-living), claiming them early while extending their time in the living world. This power held strong even after the child Faded.

This led to some famous rumors. Cats staring into the shadows (looking at ghosts), cats always lands on their feet (their liminality allows them to float for half a second if they panic), cats only care about themselves (due to their liminality, cats get a minor ghostly Obsession. It doesnt effect their personality, it simply makes them more passionate about certain things) and lastly, cats have nine lives.

This last one is technically NOT true, it's not that they die then get revived. In reality, they just inch closer and closer to death. Their fur inverts in colors where their death mark was, with each 'death' they grow closer and closer to becoming full ghosts. They can see more ghosts, obsessions become more distracting, and their power grows. Until finally, when they lose their last 'life', they become a ghost for good.

While cats who still own all nine of their lives aren't as liminal as cats who own only one, they are still liminal enough to have ghostly powers. Only it takes A LOT of concentration for them to appear. And even if they do, it's weaker than a more liminal cat's.

During his childhood, Puss in Boots was the only cat in the orphanage. He never knew his parents nor his name, and he never met any other cat. So, he never got a proper explanation for his weirder abilities. To the other kids, the small cat always gave off a creepy vibe that (whether they knew it or not) set off their 'fight or flight' instincs. This led them to either avoid him or to bully him.

The only two people who shook off those feelings where his Mama and his brother Humpty. They were the only people the small cat trusted to talk about his weird feelings. And Humpty, excited after reading books about fantastical lands and magical creatures, was the one who urged the cat to try and explore it more (to take vengence against the bullies. The small cat wasn't the only kid who got bullied in the orphanage. Their Mama tries her best, but she is only one person)

It was when he saw someone in danger that he finally managed to use his powers for the first time. And when his Mama gave him his boots (inspired by his favorite book, of a brave young cat in sturdy boots who goes against the odds to protect the people he cares about) that he finally finds his spark, his Obsession.

Become Puss in Boots, be as brave as him, as noble, kind, and heroic as him. And thus, the legend was born.

With each death, his passion towards his act becomes more. He defies greater odds, he gains stronger enemies, and he grows stronger with each death. It isn't until he crosses the one rule all ghosts and liminals follow that he finally meets his match.

Puss in boots may be a noble and kind cat, but he is also an arrogant (and dumb) one. By the time he meets another cat, he assumes that he already has all the knowledge he needs. It isn't until he and Kitty are together that he learns more, and what he learns... scares him. This fear, coupled with his already existing fear of betrayel (his brother's actions have effected him greatly. He misses and forgives him, but the scars his two betrayels left run too deep) causes him to run.

Puss in Boots is never afraid! Puss in Boots cannot be afraid! Ghosts, the afterlife, Death cannot scare him. And so he shouts where ever he goes. Puss in Boots challenges death! And so, a line is crossed, and a cat pays the price.

The Ancient master of Death has many names. The living have multiple stories of him, and their feelings only extend hos strength.

Death is not cruel. He understands the fear of the unknown and the desperation for the living. But despite his patience, an Ancient can be challenged so many times before he finally takes matters into his own hand. And for the challenger to be a cat, one of the only to continuasly evade him- well, he is a ghost, and ghosts crave to be feared.

This then leads to the events of the wishing star.

Jack horner's obsession with magic means that he is aware of ghosts. One of his artifacts has the power to mind-control them, and that's what he uses to go after the two liminal cats and their little dog.

Perrito is not a cat, nor is he dead. But he did go through a near-death expirence. So while he can't see ghosts the same way kitty and puss can or even touch them, he can sorta feel their presence. It's that and dumb luck is what saved him from the constant ghosts trying to attack them.

#i had like a basic idea and it suddenly turned into a fic whoops #not sure what to do with goldie #but i thought this would be kinda cool #anyways if u read this ty!!#moon speaks

5 notes · View notes

heliads · 3 years

Text

Over the Edge

Based on this request: “One shot of reader getting shot and hides from everybody including Wanda. She ignores it and continues to fight sword agents. At the end reader faint due to the injuries she has and Wanda take him and goes to the cabin where she cries.”

masterlist

You feel as if you’re standing on a precipice. One push, one shove, and you’ll be falling down, beyond the reach of anyone save a dark-winged angel.

You’ve always known that there will come a moment in time when your life will end. An injury, a sickness. A battle, maybe. You could sense that something would stop you from living life until the last- old age may be a guarantee to some, but to you, it was a privilege that you would never attain. No, you would die a moment too soon, a time before all others.

You had a certain affinity for seeing into the future. Your gift was frustratingly vague, always coming when you least wanted or expected it and never showing the final result. Your death was one of the first things you had ever seen. It was fitting, in a way: your birth of power was used to show how you would die. You would be alone, maybe. Whatever it was, it would be before you got the chance to grow old.

Ever since you’d gotten that first vision, witnessed the horrible sensation of something utterly wrong happening to snuff out your last breath, it was as if you’d been haunted by the promise of what would happen. You always checked behind you for someone watching your back, for an attacker or accident that could fulfill your vision. For a while, you were safe in the knowledge that your death wouldn’t be coming for a while as you had visions involving a future you, but you have no idea when those would run out, spelling the end for you.

The Avengers had come for you after the rumors spread. They always seemed to show up for cases like yours, cropping up like flies before the bodies can rot on a battlefield. This time, you’d predicted something too well: an attack on S.H.I.E.L.D. in the form of a HYDRA mole. You had seen the entire organization crumble as friend turned on friend, and no one had believed you.

Your family and friends had laughed. HYDRA? Shield? Girl, you’re stuck in fairy tales and ghost stories. Then it happened, the Triskelion falling flame to fiery explosions. Suddenly, your freak hallucinations weren’t quite so funny after all.

Representatives of the Avengers had shown up after that. No one knows about S.H.I.E.L.D. until after they come, that’s the way it always is. Yet you had known, and you would have to explain it all. You were sure that they would kill you for knowing, and that’s how your abrupt death would begin. However, you weren’t to be granted that reprieve of life just yet- when they offered a gun, it wasn’t a barrel pointed at you but a handle offered to you. A job, not a death sentence.

You took it. Of course you did. There is no way to politely turn down an organization with that much power, with that many members willing and able to dole out death like a greeting card. You had agreed, taking the job, and flowing along with the tide wherever it took you. No matter where you went, though, no matter how many prophecies you made, you always kept returning to the precipice. Somewhere, somehow, you would die. Did anything before that really matter?

The knowledge haunts you. It is hard to avoid. You might have saved yourself from certain death by taking up the Avengers’ offer, but by starting down that line of work, you might have damned yourself even more. Death threats and violent confrontations were a cup of coffee in the mornings with the Avengers, and by involving yourself with them, you increased the amount of times you could die. Sometimes, you wished you had never spoken those words allowed, never made the prophecy so they wouldn’t have found you.

Then you met Wanda Maximoff, and that was when you realized it might have all been worthwhile after all. She was like you- fleeing death, doing her best to do it on her own times. She practically sang with the tune of the dying, of her city and parents and brother. People tended to avoid you, afraid that you would see their end and they’d have to live with it just like you. Wanda, on the other hand, was not afraid. She’d seen enough death to know that you were no harbinger, just a Cassandra born to speak aloud. Why fear the speaker if you’ve seen enough of the stories?

The two of you stayed together. She woke up screaming on nights when the air was cold and the sights reminded her of all the damage she’d lived through. You didn’t want to speak for days at a time, when you’d had another vision and were horrified by what would come to be. No matter what happened to either of you, you’d always be by each other’s side.

It was good for a time. Maybe too good. Maybe you should have known then, that nothing in this world ever stays good for too long. You’d seen enough stories fracture to never place any trust in hope. Yet when you had that vision, seen the Infinity Stones brought together under Thanos’ watch, it had still torn you utterly apart.

You had told the Avengers, been the first call to muster the forces and prepare for war. It didn’t do much in the end. They still fought, bled, and died. Thanos snapped his fingers, and you were one of the first ones to go. Wanda had reached out to you just before you went. She was just a hair too far away. Her outstretched hand was too slow to reach you before you turned to ash and dust. In your last moments, you weren’t afraid at all. You had known it all along, hadn’t you? One last step off the precipice. You had seen it coming for years.

You had expected that to be it, that Thanos’ snap and your resulting death fulfilled your very first prophecy. However, your eyes still opened on the battlefield. From what they told you, it had been five years. You had spent a very long time in the dark, forced to behold hundreds and thousands of prophecies. Your mind felt like it could scream and tear itself apart from all that you had witnessed, yet you kept fighting as they asked. A wind up soldier, dealing out destruction wherever they pointed your weapons.

You knew that the fight wouldn’t end, even after Tony Stark sacrificed his life to save you all. The precipice would still loom. You had found Wanda in the fight, and she had finally wrapped her arms around you and pulled you close. Later, she would tell you that not being able to reach you in time had been one of her greatest regrets. It was one of the first times you had truly been separated in many years. She had never felt more alone as she died, even though it would bring you closer to the same home in the dark.

You had found her after the battle, after the funeral. You had told her in a trembling voice of all that you had seen, the countless prophecies and visions you had witnessed. If the Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about them, they would send you down to record everything until your mind ran dark with blood and you went mad. Some of the visions weren’t yours to tell, you knew that, but spies have rarely cared for the price of secrets. By now they would already know that you had seen too much, and already be on the move. You had seen people following you for the past couple of days. It had already begun.

You didn’t know what you thought Wanda would say. You weren’t the mind reader, and you had only seen bare glimpses of what she would do in the future: a rushing wall of red, loud sobs, a house in the mountains. Twin boys. You had no idea what any of it would mean, just that she would continue to live. That alone was enough for you.

Wanda had stayed silent for a minute. You were used to her silence, welcomed it as much as a hearty conversation. At last, she rose, taking your hand to guide you back to the road. We will have a home, she had said, and they shall not hurt us here. When you arrived at Westview, New Jersey, you at last understood. You had seen this very sign when you were dead, and you had seen the scarlet barrier before even as Wanda casts it now. The very scope of her powers is astonishing, but everything was proceeding as it had been foretold. There is nothing you can do to stop the tide of time from flowing, nothing to stop the precipice from drawing ever closer.

When you look around you again, you’re still in Westview. Technically, your feet haven’t moved an inch. But the town itself is different- walls are brighter, people are happier. If you look closely, you can tell that something is wrong. This isn’t the way people are supposed to move, like they’re being jerked around on strings. This isn’t the way time progresses, or the way everyone seems to look at you like they’re screaming for help. This is wrong, horribly so, but it’s so tempting to be safe for once that you can glance away and pretend not to see.

It’s just so good here. So nice. Wanda smiles at you, and you smile back. They cannot hurt you here, cannot reach you. There are no labs or interrogations or people begging for details on your visions. For once, you’re not living in the future, but the present. You haven’t made a prophecy since you came, and your head is blessedly yours. Wanda understands what it is like to be a prisoner of your own powers, and she’s given you a chance to live.

You can tell which people are being manipulated by Wanda’s magic, which people are given scripts and lines to rehearse. You are not among their numbers; Wanda wants you to be you, and that means that you two can have your perfect future. It’s not a prison, it’s a refuge, and that means that you won’t need protection from her.

For the first time, you have the chance to grow old. You have always loved Wanda, and it is so easy here. There are no wars, no guards, no soldiers. You pick wildflowers in the park and present them to her with a flourish, she makes the entire town look like your favorite sitcom so you can practically be living in your favorite reality. You are both fighters who have bled for too long, but for once, you are whole. It’s an opportunity you wouldn’t give up for the world.

When the sky begins to fall, you pretend you don’t see it. You’re silently begging with the future, pleading it not to come. It has never listened to you before, but you can’t help but hope it will stay its hand this once. You see Agnes become Agatha, see the twisting wires of purple magic infiltrate the red. You see S.W.O.R.D. arriving outside the town, and you turn away. Please, you ask, just this once. Let me live this once.

Your pleas are ignored. They send people through the barrier, then armored trucks and weapons. Suddenly, your picture perfect home is shot through with rot, your happy future crumbling away to ash. You try to find Wanda, but she is gone, locked away with Agatha. Everything comes true. The cycle will always turn. You cannot find your love, and you cannot live as you hope.

When it breaks down fully, you know what must happen. So does Wanda. She finds you before she takes down the barrier, holding you in her arms. You can feel her on your hands, breath hot against your cheek. You’ll never stop being on the run from the precipice, from the watchers who want your visions. At least you had this with her. It was worth it, all of it.

The fight begins as they always do. Guns rattle, people cry out in terror. You have seen this scene before in countless different ways and places. However, you’ve taken part in enough battles to know how to continue. Knock out a soldier, take his gun. Keep fighting. Wanda is by your side, lovers staying together once more.

You hear the gunshot from across the town square. Distantly, a voice in the back of your head cries out in relief. This is it, what you’ve seen all along. The bullet hits you a moment later, a piercing pain that seems to shake your very bones. Your hand presses to your stomach, and when you pull it back only a second afterwards, scarlet is already starting to dye your shirt red. You look up, searching for Wanda. She doesn’t know yet. No one does.

Clarity is falling upon you. This is it, at last. The precipice. You stand up, forcing yourself to keep moving. You have always been born to die. At least let your last moments be worth something. S.W.O.R.D. agents fall, but it’s not enough. Will it ever be enough? You don’t have a choice. Wanda is turning to you now, eyes widening as she at last sees the red smear on your side.

When your head hits the pavement, you realize that it’s finally over. The gun falls from your head, clatters to the pavement. Wanda lunges for you, but she arrives too late again. Why is it that she is always one step too far? You don’t have any more visions of yourself, just of her. You’ve always been looking at her. When you die, you have a smile on your face.

Death is not peaceful. It never is for you. Your eyes are forced open by invisible hands, and you watch once more as the future is laid bare for you. I’m dead, you want to shout, stop making me see any more. But the prophecies keep coming. You are the one who sees them, and so you must see the world through. That is how it works.

Wanda, however, is not willing to give you up so easily. You’re not sure what price she paid to put breath back into your lungs and keep your heart beating, but when you wake, you’re in a cabin in the woods. You’ve seen it before, you realize, when you died the first time. This means you’re still alive, and you’ve eluded the precipice once more.

Wanda is leaning over you, relief written in every line of her face. When she sees you look at her again, she starts to sob in earnest. “Don’t ever do that to me again. I can’t take your death.” It is a shame, then, when you know how it ends. For now, though, you manage to crack a smile. “I don’t much enjoy it either.”

Death still weighs upon you, heavy as an anvil. There will come a day when even Wanda’s magic won’t be enough to save you, when love falls through the gaps and you will finally be laid to rest. The precipice still looms, as it always will. But for now, you sit up and take Wanda’s hand. At least when you face that fight, you will have your lover by your side. You can look far enough into the future for that. For now, you can keep on fighting, even when the precipice seems inevitable. You’ve accepted your death, but you would live for her.

marvel tag list: @mycosmicparadise

wanda maximoff tag list: @mionemymind, @xxxtwilightaxelxxx

#wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff imagines #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff oneshot #scarlet witch #scarlet witch imagines #scarlet witch x reader #scarlet witch oneshot #marvel #marvel imagines #marvel oneshot #mcu #mcu imagines #mcu oneshot #wandavision #avengers #avengers imagines #avengers oneshot

135 notes · View notes

lightsovermonaco · 3 years

Text

His Good Sweater: Chapter 5

Masterlist

Shoutout to @acollectionofficsandshit for being my sounding board and beta reader! She's the absolute best a girl could ask for, thanks my love!

Word Count: 3.0k

Recommended song: "The Heart is a Muscle" by Gang of Youths

You woke before the sun, Pierre's bare chest pressed to your back and an arm slung over your middle. You wiggle in his grasp, trying to be sneaky as you turn to face him but ultimately waking him. You run a finger over his lips as they curve upwards before biting lightly. You draw back and he laughs quietly.

"Morning," You whisper, head throbbing slightly. "I feel like I got hit by a train."

"Knocking back four or five shots in a few hours will do that to you." Pierre stretches, arching his back and exposing his neck. The slight mark you left the night before had darkened into a true, unmissable bruise. The reminder of it sent a thrill down your spine, and you couldn't resist ghosting your lips over the hurt.

He sighs, cupping your chin and bringing your mouth up to his. The kiss is lazy, both of you still too ensnared by sleep to put any heat into it.

You stayed tangled in him until Yuki called to remind Pierre they had to be at the airport by eight. You helped him pack as slowly as you could manage, a stone settling in your gut. When the time came, Pierre hadn’t wanted to leave, only relenting when Yuki called again to say the jet was waiting on him.

The longing wasn't something that normally hit you this hard when Pierre left. It was new, the edges raw and unhealed when you poked at it. Everything on campus Tuesday reminded you of him, from the sunlight hitting the lab table to the rare cloudless blue of the London sky.

Just when you’d gotten over the sting of his absence, the news broke. Charles sent you the link to the article, simply captioned, 'You will want to read this.'

Gasly snogs mystery girl in London bar, the headline read. And fuck, that was a grainy picture of you standing between his legs, fingers tangled in his hair. You scroll through the article, heart in your throat, praying you weren’t called out by name.

By some small miracle, whoever had taken the photos hadn’t gotten one of your face. Against your better judgement, you checked the comments.

That was where your name came up. Fans had connected the dots. Your hair had been up that night, but it was the exact same shade as the picture. Your instagram had been filled with photosets of London for months, and Pierre had flown out early before Silverstone. Clearly he had been meeting someone. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that you were the one in the photos, even if the article didn't mention you directly.

The first DM didn’t come for a few hours. It was nasty, the user hurling cruel words at you that struck your chest like tiny knives. Plenty more followed, threats and names alike.

Gold digger.

Does she really think she deserves him?

He could do so much better.

You couldn’t bear attending classes. You sent Pierre the link to the damning article and stayed in your apartment and sobbed. The fans- if they could even be called such a thing- pulled no punches. Every DM and comment struck home, until you eventually had to turn your phone off and curl up in bed, defeated.

People are cruel, you thought, wiping the tears that streak down your cheeks.

You kept your phone off for a few hours before you gathered the courage to check it again. You immediately uninstall any and all social media, unwilling to let it affect you further than it already had. But messages pour in, most from Pierre and a few from your brother.

Hell yeah! Was all your brother sent, along with a screenshot of the article. Your mouth twists, the memory of the comments washing over you again.

Pierre’s messages were the ones that broke you. There were close to a dozen of them, accompanied by missed calls and panicked voicemails.

“Are you okay? Please pick up the phone, my love, I need to hear that you’re okay. I love you. Please call me back.”

The last message, time stamped from a half hour earlier, simply said, “I’m getting on a plane.”

A fresh sob wracks your body. You press a hand to your mouth, trying to silence it. God, he was so pure hearted. You knew the comments would hurt him just as much as they hurt you, if not more. He would blame himself, when in reality, it had been a mutual mistake. Either one of you should have recognized the risks of your actions. But you couldn't let him risk his career for it. You could make it through… somehow.

I’m okay, you type, hating that you had to lie. You don’t need to come to London.

I’m already in the air, He informs you, and you curse softly. He would have hell to pay upon returning to Austria, even if he had somehow convinced Tost to let him leave at the last minute.

I'll be there soon

The flight from Vienna to Heathrow was about two and a half hours, which meant you had that long to pull yourself together. You didn’t want Pierre to see you broken. You shower and change into slightly less ragged sweatpants and an oversized shirt. You grab your laptop, quickly emailing your professors to apologize for missing lecture unannounced and informing them you wouldn’t be there the rest of the week either. You'd need time to sort out your head before facing your peers.

Pierre’s knock came far too quickly. You’d barely assembled your face into a mask of resolve before the door opened. Whatever semblance of control you'd managed to construct came crashing down at the sight of him. He looks just as distraught as you, eyes red and cheeks flushed.

Before he says a word, he gathers you in his arms, tucking your head to his chest. Your lip wobbles, and when he whispers “I’m so sorry,” the tears fall in earnest. For less than a week, you’d been on top of the world with Pierre by your side. You’d gotten to enjoy the idea of being his girlfriend for six days before reality stepped in and ruined it.

You clutch at his shirt, fighting hard to piece yourself back together. Now that he was there, the dam had burst and no amount of willpower could keep the sobs back.

Pierre sweeps you up, one arm under your knees and the other keeping you tight to him as he carries you to your bedroom. He climbs into bed, shoes and all, and keeps you in his lap as he strokes your hair. He sniffles, softly enough that you know he's trying to be strong for you. The realization that he's crying too just makes it hurt that much more.

"I'm sorry," He whispers again and again, as if the two syllables were the only ones he remembered. You can't find your voice to tell him you don't blame him or how much his presence means.

Instead, you press your face into the soft cotton of his sweater. He doesn't move except to stroke a calloused hand over your hair. You let his presence wash over you until your breathing turns more even and your fingers stop trembling.

"H-how were you able to leave Austria?" Your voice shakes, but you tilt your head up to face him. He quickly wipes away the wetness on his cheeks with a sleeve.

"I just left. The only one I told was Yuki. He said he'd cover for me. I saw the comments and I couldn't think straight. I didn't want you to believe them." The look he turns on you is an apology. "When I called and it didn't even ring, I had to get to you."

"I don't think you'll be welcomed back with open arms," You point out, and he presses a tender kiss to your brow.

"They can be pissed at me all they want. I don't care. I needed to be here." You wouldn't admit it, but he was right. The fact that he'd risked everything to comfort you helped you ignore what those users had said. Nothing could ever erase the words, but Pierre’s presence dulled their impact.

“I already petitioned for the article to be removed,” Pierre says softly. “Don’t know if it’ll amount to anything, but it’s worth a shot.”

You nod and wipe your nose on your sleeve. “It’s so much worse than I imagined.” Pierre’s cheek comes to a rest atop your head, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on your arm. “I get that I’m not the only one that loves you. But it’s like they don’t remember that I’m human.”

“People are bold when they're speaking to a screen instead of another person.”

"It was so much easier before anyone knew," You say, words dipped in longing. Rumors had never swirled when you had kept your distance, you'd made sure of it. But now that the secret was out… Would your life be spent dodging threats and dealing with negativity?

He pauses, thumb stilling. “Do you… Do you want it to go back to the way things were before? When we were... friends?"

Your head whips around. “What?”

“It isn’t fair that you have to go through this because of me,” He explains. “I hate the fact that I’m the one causing you pain. The way you’re being treated is only because I live in the spotlight.”

“It’s not your fault,” You assert, placing a hand on his stubbled cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

“Maybe it would be easier if we-”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” You say sternly. You force him to look at you, his eyes storming like the sea. “We’ll figure it out. Our emotions got the best of us last week. We just have to be more careful, keep this behind closed doors. We don’t need to flaunt it, right? Just tell the press that you want to keep your private life private, and I’ll take a break from social media. We can figure it out.”

Pierre nodded in agreement. His voice is scratchy, like he had swallowed gravel. “Alright.”

“It’s us against the world,” You tell him, “And I couldn’t ask for a better teammate.” Your lips ghost against his in an attempt to reassure him. He returns the kiss, firmer and more confident. Your hand slips to the nape of his neck, drawing him in as your tongue glides against his lower lip.

Last week, you’d fucked. But tonight, the sex was something else entirely. It was soft sighs and languid kisses, whispered words of adoration and promises of endless love. Above all, it was an affirmation. Pierre loved you; heart, mind, and soul. In every sense of the word. He would let nothing come between you and himself. Not his career, jealous fans, or the thousands of miles that may sometimes separate you.

Pierre offered you his heart, and you accepted it without question.

**********

The few precious hours Pierre managed to give you were enough to keep you afloat the rest of the week. The break from seemingly endless lectures helped to reset your mind and give you time to focus on yourself.

Pierre called as often as he could, and texted when he couldn’t. You filled him in on the little things you did to keep busy, like how you spent all of Sunday rearranging your tiny apartment so that your bed was as close to his in Austria as you could get it. Monday night, you fell asleep on Facetime with him as you tried and failed to write a term paper for your architectural history class.

Pierre’s visit and subsequent calls had made you feel invincible. But the moment you walk into the lecture hall on Tuesday, everyone’s eyes are on you: the first test of your newly minted confidence. Chin held high, you meet a few of their stares and take your usual seat at the front. The moment you start to question yourself, if you're ready to face the scrutiny, your phone buzzes with a text from Pierre.

Ignore them. Remember that I love you. I’ll call you tonight.

Once again, he somehow knew exactly what you needed to hear. It amazed you that a handful of carefully selected words could grant you so much strength. But it was proof that Pierre recognized and accepted your fears and was willing to help you work through them.

You take a breath, letting the whispers of your classmates fade until they were nothing more than a faint hum. You turn your focus on the professor as she enters, falling into your usual cadence. Easy. You could ignore the gossip until they got tired of it and left you alone. Their fascination couldn’t last more than a few days.

You made it through the rest of your classes and walked home without incident. No one ran up to you and demanded you explain your relationship with Pierre. Your worst fears had been abated. The stress of it rolls off your shoulders when you make it to your apartment. It was already 7 o’clock, but Pierre hadn’t called yet. Seeing as Austria was an hour ahead, you weren’t sure he would hold to his earlier promise.

Your stomach growls, and you leave your bag next to your bed before heading to the kitchen. Dinner was a box of macaroni and cheese, simple but delicious. You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing at your phone every few minutes, hoping to see Pierre’s name on the screen.

Coming to terms with the fact that you probably wouldn't be getting a call, you settle into your favorite chair and crack open your laptop. Term papers didn't write themselves, and you still had a few thousand words to write. You lost yourself in theories and articles for a few hours before your phone breaks your concentration.

You awake?

A smile splits your face. Yeah. Working on this never ending term paper.

I'll leave you to it. Love you, sleep tight.

You laugh quietly. You agree with his 'school first' mentality most of the time, but there were exceptions to every rule. You call him, heart stuttering when he answers.

"You're supposed to be writing."

"Well, nice to hear your voice too," You say playfully. "It was boring me anyway. Who wants to read twenty pages comparing Roman and Greek columns anyway?"

"I'm pretty sure your professor does," He says with a laugh that warms your bones. If only he were standing in front of you so you could feel his chest rumble beneath your fingertips. Wanting to see his face, you switch to a video call.

"I was wondering how long that would take," He teases, smile wide and welcoming.

"I miss you," You say softly, padding to your bed. You'd accomplished enough that you could push off writing more until tomorrow. "I wish I could come to Japan this weekend."

"Me too, my love," He responds, voice tinged with longing. "It's one of the more challenging circuits on the calendar. And you've always wanted to visit Tokyo."

You weren't surprised that he remembered that silly dream of yours. "Send me something that reminds me of you." You flick off the lights before climbing under the covers, pulling them up to your chin. "Something cute and sweet."

"I fly out tomorrow night to meet Charles. I should have some extra time to do some window shopping."

"You and Charles going on a date?" You tease, propping your head on a hand. Now that you were cozy, it was hard to keep your eyes open.

He shakes his head. "He's been… helping me with the press. Tackling it all."

"Oh." The mood sours. You decide not to dwell on it, turning to humor instead. "Give him a kiss for me as a thank you."

"He would love that," Pierre laughs. Comfortable silence blankets you, broken only by Pierre humming softly. It was a song you recognize as one of his favorites; it must have been stuck in his head.

"What time do I have to wake up on Sunday?" You mumble, struggling to stay awake while he was unknowingly serenading you.

"Do you want to watch the prerace stuff?" Papers shuffle softly on the other end as he figures it out for you. "If you do, probably like 3:30. If not, the race would be at five your time, so maybe 4:30."

"That's early. You're lucky I love you enough to sacrifice my beauty sleep."

He didn't hesitate before responding. "Luckily you don't need sleep to be beautiful."

Your mouth curls in a sleepy smile. "When you say things like that, I hate the distance between us even more."

Pierre scrubs a hand over his face. "I don't have a break for another month or so."

"I know."

Silence falls again, both of you lost in your own heads.

"You should sleep," He says finally, and you nod. Your first class was only 6 hours from now. "I'll sing to you if you promise to close your eyes and try to sleep."

Despite your best efforts, you yawn. You often called him for a song when you couldn't sleep and the time difference permitted it. Just hearing his voice was soothing enough, but a song? It was heaven. "Shouldn't be hard to do." Sleep came within minutes, Pierre's soft song your lullaby.

Tagging: @flashcal @sunshinesewis

122 notes · View notes

podcastbigbang · 3 years

Text

'21 Projects Masterpost

dust and ashes | Unseen

Steven Winstead and Robin Fend make a deal to help each other to get out of Blackstar custody; Steven tries to figure out how to live with himself.

ao3 link art link

Another Lazy Day In Pepper Heights | Dreamboy

Dane and Luke have a lazy day together, in which they attempt to talk about feelings, they dye Dane's hair, and watch some movies.

ao3 link art link

A Heart for a Heart | Limetown

A "what might have happened" Fic for season 2 of Limetown. Follows Daniel Rassmueller and his journey from saving Emile Haddock to falling for him, and the tragedy of the Bridge.

ao3 link art link

Growing Up | Desperado

Now Samar is on her own for the first time in her life, with only the stubborn Belkacem twins for support, as she struggles to find herself s an individual and prove to her ancestors that she's worthy of their return.

ao3 link art link

Embers Still Burn | Critical Role

Caleb Widogast has been out of the AM and working to get himself free of their shadow for years now. What will he do when people close to him start to come under their influence?

ao3 link art link

Chancellors and Changes of Heart | Stellar Firma

David gets to keep their place. Trexel learns to be a sink chancellor, what it's like to be actually vulnerable, and how to be a slightly better person.

ao3 link art link

spite, caffeine, and homosexuality | Kaleidotrope

Coffee, study dates, identity shenanigans, and more. The question amidst this chaos is if Harrison and Drew will ever realize they love each other.

ao3 link art link

A Tune Without Words | Kaleidotrope

Prince Harrison never thought he would get a happily ever after. That is until he meets a swan in the forest. A Swan Lake AU

ao3 link art link

A Strange New Reality | Kane and Feels

Lucifer Kane spent a long time figuring out who and what he is, and there was a time where he had to figure out who he was. This tells of that time, and other moments of his youth.

ao3 link art link

Library Pseudoscience | Kane and Feels, The Magnus Archives

Detectives Kane and Feels investigate the Magnus Institute. Can they face the horrors within, or will the terminally paranoid head archivist convince them to leave before they get the chance?

ao3 link art link

i've lost and found you in seafoam and shorebreak | The Adventure Zone

Davenport is a traumatized man after having his autonomy and entire identity stripped away for years. He copes by sailing the old-fashioned way, and letting natural forces, rather than human decision and magical intervention, have control of his destiny.

ao3 link art link

say what we wanna do, make it all come true | Strange Case of Starship Iris

Sana, Arkady, Brian and Krejjh are an up-and-coming indie band called Rumor. When they save would-be whistleblower Violet Liu from the clutches of her employers at a gig, they gain a band member - but also make an enemy of a ruthless corporation.

ao3 link art link

a rumor of a fight | Strange Case of Starship Iris

a road trip complete with late night, inexplicably space themed diners, hotels with suspiciously few twin beds, and a few gentle interventions.

ao3 link art link

You Know Me Well | Welcome to Nightvale

The year is 1811. Carlos is a prolific writer of gothic novels featuring everything from ghosts and spectres to vampires and beyont.

ao3 link art link

A Thousand Hours (To Rearrange The Stars) | Welcome to Nightvale

An introspective look into the life and trauma of the beloved radio host of Night Vale, Cecil Gershwin Palmer.

ao3 link art link

broken bottle mosaic | Welcome to Nightvale

A fairly introspective little piece about Carlos’ scars, both physical and not, and an exploration about how everyone has flaws or damage from the past, and how those things are not detriments to our whole self but instead a critical part of it.

ao3 link art link

take me to the pilot | Wolf 359

What's left of the Hephaestus crew go on a road trip. What could go wrong?

ao3 link art link

Funzo 2: It's Back and It's Personal | Wolf 359

Post-finale, the Hephaestus gang gets stuck in Cutter’s old office on the Sol. Things go from bad to weird when they find a certain “Craziest Board Game of 1973” in one of Cutter’s desk drawers.

ao3 link art link

a weed usurps a spaceship | Wolf 359

There's an awful lot you see from within the vents. Space Mutant Plant Monster, on her crew, itself, and humanity.

ao3 link art link

You Say I Killed You (Haunt Me Then) | Wolf 359

A mostly canon-compliant exploration of the SI-5’s past, and the difference between masks and monsters.

ao3 link art link

Misroch Grabbing Chairs | Brimstone Valley Mall

In which Misroch grabs chairs, Trainees are acquired, and Belzagor knows all.

ao3 link art link

Throw My Dead Body in the Dumpster Behind Weiner World When I Die | Brimstone Valley Mall

What if Brimstone Valley Mall was the other way around. Wouldn't that be fucked up or what?

ao3 link art link

Handle With Care / Not Alone Anymore | Brimstone Valley Mall

Hornblas is gone. Belzagor is only just now registering this.

ao3 link art link

falling doesn't feel so bad when i know you've fallen this way too | Brimstone Valley Mall

In which Belzagor and Xaphan are ordained by the heavens to clean up the satanic messes they’ve created in South Central Pennsylvania, and between furby reconnaissance and Chole's day jobs, end up hurtling through some identity crises together in true useless lesbian fashion.

ao3 link art link

TBS Projects Masterpost | TMA Projects Masterpost | TPP Projects Masterpost

#podcast big bang 2021 #unseen #brimstone valley mall #welcome to night vale #the adventure zone #critical role #wolf 359 #strange case of starship iris #kane and feels #stellar firma #desperado #limetown #dreamboy #taz #wtnv #bvm

52 notes · View notes

ktheist · 3 years

Text

the prince.

knj / myg / jhs / ksj / pjm / kth / jjk

the first time jung hoseok met the commander’s daughter is on the training ground.

at the age of 9, she’s swinging the wooden sword like she’s meant to dance on the battlefield.

she welcomes him with a different kind of enthusiasm than those noble kids do when the palace arranged for them to meet at tea time.

she grins as she charges at him and she laughs when he trips on air as he’s about to strike her.

“you’re pretty good for a beginner.” she says and he pouts.

“i can’t even hold a sword properly.”

she stands in front of him with her tiny, calloused hands on her hips as if she’s about to fight him, “you’re willing to learn and that’s more than i can say for the other spoilt brats. especially the princes.”

little does she know, he’s one of his father’s princes.

he meets her again and again and again. so much so, he’s memorized her little tricks of looking at the opposite direction she’ll struck him, of her attentive eyes on his facial expressions and of her grin widening as she delivers her finishing blow.

even if he saw it coming, he could never block it.

he ends up sitting on the dirt ground, looking up at her magnificent beauty as the sun casts a halo over her body.

“you improved,” she says and she always says this after the final spar of the day, hand outstretched to help him up.

with his heart thumping inside his chest, he takes her hand knowing that he’ll attribute to the rosy flush on his face to the intense training session they just had.

and he thought he’d go on attending the training and blushing like a complete idiot like this for a long time.

“i’m joining the war,” she announces a bit too casually, “i won’t be as good as my dad but even the higher ups can’t ignore my skills.”

hoseok like to think of himself as a mild tempered person. doesn’t dream too high and always wishes for the best of those around him.

but when he heard that his -

his -

fuck.

he doesn’t even know what they are.

but when he heard that she’s joining the war, he ended saying something he shouldn’t have.

it starts with a “don’t go”.

to which she responds with a ruffle of his hair, “don’t worry, i’ll come back with the enemy’s head for the emperor and you’ll be able to say you’re friends with the war hero. isn’t that something to boast about?”

“how sure are you that you’ll come back?” it’s the first time he’s ever looked straight in her eye when they’re not swinging wooden swords at each other.

she’s an expert who well and able to hold a real sword. the only reason they spar with a wooden one is because of hoseok.

he knows he’s still lacking.

he knows he won’t make the cut even if he tried enlisting.

“...doubt my skills, are you?” she’s saying something but he’s barely listening.

“the war...it isn’t a playground. you could get killed!” he explodes like a ticking time bomb.

the next time he sees her is at the farewell parade, the sun rays trapped in the glint of her silver armor.

all he recalls is her grin down turning and her eyes widening as she locks gaze with him.

her, as a loyal subject and him, as the prince whose country she’s going to war for.

it’s the first time he’s seen tears in her eyes.

hoseok goes on weeks without the news of war but when a messenger arrives, it’s never a news to celebrate about.

“what news of the battlefront?” he struts right into the chancellor’s office like he owns the place.

“your highness, you can’t keep asking me classified information just to make sure your sweetheart is still alive and well.” namjoon sighs.

when doesn’t even deny the reason he’s flushed pink at the word and continue to wait until namjoon relays what he came here for, the latter looks down grimly.

“one of the two youngest lieutenants was reported to suffer a serious blow in the abdomen.”

hoseok thinks his heart drops, words of the letter he received from her last month detailing her excitement for being appointed the youngest lieutenant along with a comrade, burning at the back of his head.

it’s around three weeks ago that he stopped receiving those crumpled up pieces of papers and child’s scribbles.

he goes on like a ghost, drifting through the palace. the wooden sword hangs on the wall of his room. he hasn’t been training for a long time. not since he heard the news of her possible death.

he confines himself to the library where he buries himself in bled scriptures and a world far away from the reality he’s forced to face.

that is, until he receives her first letter in a long while.

she’d been promoted to commander where she was able to fight alongside her father.

‘i didn’t think having a to fight with my father on the battlefield would be this hard. i’m always worrying about him. i think i know now why you were so against me joining the war.’

as she’s doing her best in the war, hoseok, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, finds himself joining hands with the chancellor, advising the emperor of the internal affairs and filtering out the corrupted nobles.

he wants you to come back to an empire you can say you’re proud of fighting for.

the war lasts for five years.

the next time he sees you is when you march in with your commanding army, the head of the enemy’s general presented to the emperor.

“what is your wish? i shall grant you one for ending the war.” seokjin’s delighted voice booms across the throne room.

she doesn’t look up, doesn’t even look at hoseok who’s eyes are pricking with tears as grounds himself.

he can’t be running over and hugging you like he’s seeing a ghost.

“sire, i may appear insolent for asking this.” her voice’s changed.

it lacks the sun that shines brightly overhead.

“ask away!”

“i wish nothing more than to stay by his highness, prince hoseok’s side.”

“hmm. hoseok? not my youngest brother, taehyung, the crown prince?” seokjin rubs at his nonexistent beard.

she denies any other relation with the princes besides hoseok.

the news of the commander and prince hoseok being childhood friends turned the palace upside down. rumors of hoseok aiming for the crown starts to spread with the war hero swearing her loyalty to the third prince.

but the emperor knows of his heart.

and it beats only for her.

for his commander.

“when i said i wanted to stay by your side, i didn’t mean this.” she comments, throwing herself on the silken bed, the pristine white dress taking up all the space.

“i can have the maids prepare another room for me.” hoseok stands a few feet away from the bed as he tries to make small talk with the love of his life whom he’s never talked to for five years besides through letters.

“my prince, i didn’t say i dislike the arrangement,” she grins, beckoning him over.

and he walked straight into her trap.

she pulls him down as she shoots up and traps him underneath her. the white dress wrapped around her body makes her look like a war angel sent to pass judgment onto him.

as she lowers her face to his, he feels his heart thump in his chest.

hoseok thinks he wouldn’t mind being trapped in her prison of embrace for the rest of his life.

(”you’ve gone rusty, husband,” she asserts just as his wooden sword hits the ground.

“y-you see, i’ve been busy attending to other matters,” for the first time, hoseok sees his life flash before his eyes as he tries to appease the flames in his wife’s eyes.

“then, we have a lot of catching up to do.” she grins a grin that has his heart thumping in a different way.

“i don’t suppose you mean to do that over tea, do you?” he dares to ask.

suffice to say, he goes to the palace for work barely able to move his legs properly the next day.

“wives, am i right?” namjoon laughs.)

#bts scenarios #bts fics #bts fanfics #hoseok scenarios #hoseok fics #hoseok fanfics #hoseok fanfiction #bts fanfiction #hoseok x reader #bts x reader #hoseok smut #bts smut #sonder

68 notes · View notes

angelicamerlinbarnes · 3 years

Text

TUA DISNEY AUs: Big Hero 6 (Pt. XVIII)

(please understand that by AU, I mean they share an incredibly small amount of things in common with the original source material which I barely remember BUT the “story” takes place in the setting of the film) (not to be misleading or anything :p)

(BEWARE: abuse, murder, corruption, mental health issues, unhealthy coping mechanisms, suicidal ideation, death, grief, violence, basically i took the sad montage after Tadashi dies and just kept going with that except without the whole "getting better" thing, sorry, my bad, enjoy anyway i guess i don't know, bye, etc.)

(If you can handle watching Umbrella Academy, this will be fine for you.)

(Hiro) Vanya hasn’t much of a head for science - not since a gas explosion in her childhood apartment killed her parents and exposed her to radiation, leaving her brittle-boned and sickly. She spends most of her days holed up in her room, reading and writing about every little thing she sees and hears and feels. There’s this cat in the alleyway she feeds sometimes, and her friend Ben who comes by to see how she is every few days. The only time she goes out is for school, or bot fights down in the bad neighborhoods. At those she gets to see Ben, and his partner Klaus and his friend Diego. Oh, and Sissy - the beautiful, shy punk girl who spins the records in the corner store. Vanya lives what she considers a pretty average life - until Ben dies, she screams, and all the windows around her shatter from nothing.

(Tadashi) Ben has been a science nerd for years, spending hours in the libraries and labs researching every little thing that catches his fancy. His partner, Klaus, has no such interest, having more of a head for poetry, but Ben loves him more than life itself - especially since Klaus was the only person who stuck with him when one of his experiments went wrong a few years ago, resulting in tentacles that are prone to ripping out of his chest when he’s angry. And since he loves Klaus so much, he spares not a second thought to running back into a burning building to get him back, even when it means certain death. And Ben knows you can’t bring back the dead - he tried when Klaus’ beloved boyfriend Dave died in a gunfight a few years back. Once you’re gone, you’re gone - or so he thinks until he wakes up and Klaus starts crying and muttering, You’re here, you’re here, you’re here, I did it, I did it, I did it - and Ben reaches out and thinks, Oh, no, sweetheart. You didn’t.

(Honey Lemon) Allison was engaged to Ray before he disappeared, but even after that failed experiment lost her the love of her life, she continued to work for the forward movement of science and kept her vow of love to Ray. Using her research, she managed to create a pill that allowed her to bend reality, hoping to bring back Ray. Though she couldn’t raise the dead - no amount of I heard a rumor Ray was alive again worked - she won herself other advantages with her newfound powers, including sponsors, knowledge, opportunities, and protection. Klaus, Diego, Five, and Ben are her only true friends in this world - and she nearly loses all of them when Ben dies, drowning in their grief. When Luther, one of Five and Ben’s passion projects starts hanging around to monitor their mental health, Allison finds a new kind of love - deep, ever-lasting friendship that she’ll never give up. Even when they have to leave him behind on the moon after they save Ray, she doesn’t let him go - she finally knows how to speak up for what she wants, and speak up she does: I heard a rumor that Luther came back to me.

(Fred (actually a mash-up of Honey Lemon and Hiro though to be honest)) Klaus is a starving artist and poet, and he's covered in tattoos of his own words and drawings. Diego is too, because Diego loves him, and Klaus wants to love him back and probably does already, if he’s really honest with himself, but he’s not ready yet. Dave happened too soon ago. And then there was a fire, and Klaus was running around outside, looking for Ben, looking for the platonic love and light of his life, and he saw him run inside screaming Klaus’ name and never come back out. And he lives with that guilt every day, smoking and drinking all the bad shit again in an effort to just forget, forget, anything goddamn anything to forget, and he goes crazy. People forget, because he’s not a student at their nerd school and because he acts like a dumbass, that Klaus is actually just as much a genius as the rest of them, and whatever he wants, he can get without much trouble. So what if he can’t bring back the dead? He won’t live without Ben, he won’t, and he won’t leave Diego - which leaves only one option, really: find a way to make himself see ghosts.

(Wasabi) Diego lives a charmed life. Truly. He’s almost been assassinated fifteen fucking billion times, his two best friends are robots, and he’s in love with a person too sad to love him back. See, Diego’s skills brought him to the military’s special attention - he found a way to make weaponry that doesn’t obey the laws of physics. He keeps it as secret as he can, and will sell it to nobody, but millions of people are still after it. It’s not until one of the assassins almost nails Klaus with a bullet and Diego kills her with a store-bought kitchen knife without moving that he realizes the weaponry he created isn’t special, but Diego is. From then on it’s nothing but trouble - because Klaus likes to dumb himself down, but he can’t fool Diego, and so when he starts screaming at empty air and calling it Ben, Diego isn’t surprised in the least, though maybe he should be. Instead he just sighs, opens his arms, and lets a sobbing Klaus fall into him, loving him more than he did yesterday and less than he will tomorrow. Diego has his home, and he has his people, and he has his powers - and he will defend them to the fucking death.

(Gogo) Five is bitter and grumpy, living off coffee and perpetually crazy. He’s brilliant enough to have done surgery on himself, implanting an AI pacemaker in his heart named Dolores from an accident that nearly stripped him of everything, his life included. He was born with special powers, both of which fuelled his fascination with science, but he keeps that secret close to his chest - he’s seen what people do to Diego and Allison, and he has no interest in that. He’s close with the others, somewhat, though his impassable genius makes it difficult for people to understand him - Diego gives him piggy back rides and he often falls asleep curled into Klaus’ side, and Allison gives him rides home and Ben builds robots with him. But as hard as he finds it to connect with them, it’s even harder to lose them - so when he realizes he can use his time travel powers to save Ben, he doesn’t hesitate. And then he’s dying in Klaus’ arms, and he’s watching as his favorite person in the world chooses to lose the love of his life all over again to save Five, and something deep inside him changes.

(Baymax) Luther is a medical robot, built by Five and Ben in their spare time. There are some videos in him, mostly of Ben talking to Klaus because Luther was meant to be a gift for Klaus to help him with his depression, anxiety, PTSD, anorexia, and addiction, etc.. Five adds grief counseling to his programming and gives him to Klaus on his first birthday after Ben’s death, making Klaus dissolve into tears. While Luther clashes with Diego, who hates him for surviving where Lila didn’t, they get along well enough to appease Klaus, because Luther knows Klaus loves Diego and Diego knows Luther helps Klaus. When they travel to the moon to get Ray, Luther winds up stuck there, unable to get the others home if he doesn’t stay behind. Klaus and Allison both have trouble letting him go, but Klaus forces Allison to come home with him, crying as he leaves Ben for the third and final time. When Allison brings Luther back, his videos still intact, Klaus touches Ben’s face on his chest and cries, cries, cries.

Lila is a malfunctioning masterpiece, and Diego’s best friend. He made her as a help robot, but she’s a prototype, and was rejected for her proneness to violent outbursts and catatonic episodes. She’s easy to manipulate, as Diego never bothered to fix her security protocols, but it’s not like there’s anyone else who talks to her - except Five, and he’d never touch her programming without Diego’s explicit permission. She sleeps at Diego’s house, in her charging station next to Eudora’s. Lila knows robots can’t feel love, so that isn’t what she’s feeling - but her wires are tied to Eudora’s in some way, she just knows it. They’re two halves of the same code. But she never gets to explore that link - she burns away to nothing in the fire that destroys the Handler’s minions, using the last of her strength to save Five from the flames. She hopes, when Diego finds his baby brother curled in her charred corpse, that he’ll bury her in the rain, and keep on living without her well enough.

Eudora is a suicide-prevention robot. Seriously. That’s all she’s here for. Ben and Diego built her together for Klaus specifically, programming her with some of his favorite jokes and references so she’d have an easier time talking him down from the edge when one of them can’t be there. She’s programmed to instantly call Ben, Diego, Five, or Allison immediately if she finds him doing dangerous things, like playing with Diego’s knives naked. (It happened one time. Seriously. True story.) She’s calm and gentle, unruffled and kind, and Diego often spends hours talking to her, because she may be programmed for Klaus but she can still help anyone who needs it. He nearly looses her to Cha-Cha, but Klaus saves her just in time, beating Cha-Cha to a steaming hunk of scrap metal with a baseball bat for trying to hurt his best (robot) friend. She’s not saddened by Lila’s death, per say, she can’t be… but when she’s downloading databases on panic and anxiety attacks for Diego and Klaus, she makes sure to save some on insomnia for herself, too.

Sissy is a botfighter, one who dresses in a black and magenta punk aesthetic to fend off strangers, too shy for the world. She messes around with Vanya, the two of them often dancing in the rain and finding joy in the small moments, but happily ever after was never in the cards for them. Sissy lives with her abusive boyfriend Carl and has their son to take care of, an accident from too many beers - when Carl murders her in a drunken rage, it’s less of a surprise and more of a solemn inevitably. Her son, Harlan, is placed in Vanya’s care, and Vanya travels the world with him, telling him everything about his mother she knows. It’s a bittersweet ending, but a hopeful one too.

Ray was a student at the nerd school before he became a therapist, using his incredible mind-healing technology to help people all over the world. Allison fell in love with him quickly, easily, and the two were engaged before the year was up, planning for a spring wedding in which Klaus would, obviously, be the flower girl. But when he was offered the chance to go to space as a therapist for the other nine people on the mission, he jumped at the chance, bidding Allison goodbye and heading to the moon. But something went wrong and he was lost to the world, along with the other nine astronauts, all of whom died when the ship crash-landed. Ray has been in a coma for years there, having been knocked out in the explosion, and remains that way until Luther brings him home, Allison having come for him at last. (When he’s well enough to, he takes care of Five, Klaus, and Diego, whose mental states have been steadily declining for years. Their robots are brilliant, of course, but there are some things you just need a human for.)

Reginald is the dean of the nerd school and also an asshole. He has a habit of killing students when they get in his way, or to steal their inventions as his own - and he gets away with it too, because he’s at the forefront of memory technology and quite literally erases these people from existence so nobody comes asking questions. Plus he’s got connections in the government that destory any records he needs destroyed. He had a couple of kids he wanted to get rid of the night of the showcase, and started the fire to make it seem like an accident - well, Ben actually was an accident, he wasn’t on Reginald’s hitlist, not yet, but whatever. It is what it is. What Reginald doesn’t anticipate is Klaus - because nobody ever anticipates Klaus - and so he thinks nothing of it when he confesses to Ben’s murder in his monologue in front of all his former students. He can just erase their memories later. Or so he thinks, until Klaus lets out a savage war cry and lunges forward to strangle him, killing him in cold blood without a second thought, and so is the end of Reginald Hargreeves. (Five takes the fall for his murder - not that it matters. Diego and Klaus break him out and the three of them disappear, never to be seen again - at least, not until Allison’s done manipulating every single person in the world into forgetting it ever happened on live TV.)

The Handler is Reginald’s finest invention: a flawless AI in a perfect human body. Problem is, she became bored of being his servant years ago and took over his life, blackmailing him into doing whatever she wants. Most of the killings are still his idea, and Ben certainly wasn’t her fault, but it’s the Handler who wants Five dead, and it’s the Handler who sends her reject minions after him. She wants Eudora dead and she wants Klaus deader, but she gets neither - Five finds her and hacks her into little tiny pieces, putting all of them in a fire and then shoving those ashes into an Iron Maiden, dropping the Handler to an inescapable grave. Fuck her “life”.

Hazel is a teddy bear with a security camera in his stomach. He sits on Agnes’ counter in her donut shop, just watching the goings-on even though nobody ever steals anything there. Mostly he’s held in the lap of Five, who comes into Agnes’ whenever he doesn’t want his friends to see him cry - over a failed invention, Klaus’ most recent suicide attempt, Lila’s death - whatever, you name it. Agnes takes care of him, making him milkshakes when he asks for coffee, and eventually sends Hazel home with him, asking him to take care of Five for her. He doesn’t know it’ll be the last time he ever sees her - two weeks later Agnes is killed by Reginald and her donut shop is ransacked by looters. Her memory lives on in Hazel and Five, who rebuilds and reopens the shop with Klaus and Diego and Allison after a couple years, renaming it for Ben and living on despite his grief, and Hazel sits on the counter again, watching the sunset through the glowing windows.

Cha-Cha was supposed to be one of those “oh-hey-we’re-not-racist-anymore-we-make-black-dolls-too-see?” Barbies. She ended up with a rather experimental kid who enjoyed robotics and horror films, resulting in Cha-Cha: an AI in a Barbie with chainsaw arms. She kidnaps Klaus under the Handler’s orders, as he’s a connection to Five (who the Handler wants to kill) and Ben (who’s the only connection to Reginald and the Handler’s murders). This backfires spectacularly, of course, when Eudora and Diego come for him: Cha-Cha goes for Eudora’s throat and Klaus breaks himself free of his binds and beats her to smithereens with a baseball bat.

Leonard used to hang around Vanya, just generally assaulting her and being a creep, until suddenly he disappeared one rainy Monday never to be seen again. His body was found rotting in a lake a couple years later. It was revealed later on that he had decided to and succeeded in making real-life replicas of the Five Nights at Freddie’s characters, and they hadn’t been too fond of him trying to boss them around. The Handler recruited the replicas later on for her own schemes, and they followed Reginald rather well, their appetite for people satisfied well enough. But Leonard remains the school legend, and a striking reminder to be careful what monsters you let live.

Grace is the queen of the Land of the Remembered, and you may be wondering what she’s doing in this story. Well, to put it simply - Reginald’s little games have been messing with her shit. There are perfectly kind and memorable people who have come down to her only to be erased in the Land of the Living within the week, leaving her no choice but to take them in as refugees, working out a deal with the Land of the Forgotten since they weren’t given a fair shot at their deserved afterlife. She takes care of Ben when he dies for the second and final time, appearing to assure Klaus he’ll be alright when he crosses over. This is when Diego finally learns the truth about his mom, who has always been home in time to make dinner and never missed a single milestone, and who is apparently also an all-powerful goddess. She gives him a hug and tells him his boyfriend is cute (He’s not my boyfriend.) (You’re holding hands, darling. You may be an oblivious idiot, but I’m not.) and then she heads off, though she’s always back with Ben for the holidays. (Not Lila, unfortunately. She has no jurisdiction over robots.)

And Hiro is ace-aro and he and Miguel are QPPs, and Honey Lemon and Wasabi are QPPs, and Fred and Wasabi are dating, and Gogo is an bisexual aro queen with a girl she likes to kiss in the back alleyways, and Hiro has two sisters named Violet and Boo and Tip is his ace-aro lab partner. You’re welcome.

#tua #the umbrella academy #big hero 6 #disney #the hargreeves & friends #kliego #ralluther #eudorla #vanya x sissy #five &x dolores #klaus &x ben #hazel x agnes #hazel & cha cha #i don't know this is really sad and really dark #whatever #my bad #have a nice day y'all #bye

8 notes · View notes

prose-for-hire · 4 years

Text

Damsel in distress

Pairing: Buffy Summers x fem!reader

Request: hey, if you haven't already gotten too many requests for Halloween could you write Buffy x (preferably female) reader with the prompt “I dare you to go in there. Alone.” my idea is that some students from their school/college are kinda bullying the reader into going into some building rumored to be haunted and Buffy stands up to them but the reader goes in anyway to prove shes not scared and then the place turns out to actually be haunted and Buffy needs to save her.

Requested by: Anon

Warning: A very mild hint of homophobia.

You didn’t know why you hung around with them. They were never nice to you. But at least it was better than being alone. The only saving grace, was that she was there. Buffy, her name was. You loved the way her name sounded on your tongue. Calling her over or just saying it. She introduced herself to you one night when she was hanging out with you and your group.

She had moved from LA a few years back and you had seen her around school, but you had never had a class together. Which was a shame - you would have loved to have a class with her. A reason to talk with her more. However, you would have probably not been able to get much work done. You would have just been dreamily looking her way.

You hung around with a few people you knew, usually just around the streets on the nights the Bronze was closed. Trying to find some fun in the wasteland of a town. You didn’t particularly like the group of people you hung out with, now mainly coming for a chance to speak to Buffy.

Buffy had started joining you a few months ago, you weren’t sure who she knew but she usually spoke to a few people briefly before coming back over to speak to you for the rest of the night. In reality, she had started to grow attached to you. And you spent a lot of time out after dark. She wanted to make sure you were okay.

You got on really well and she was incredibly sweet. And funny. Oh, and did I mention completely gorgeous? She would usually twist strands of her hair with her finger as she spoke to you, laughing and looking down at the ground before daring to look back at your face.

Tonight was Halloween night, so nothing was going on. Sunnydale wasn’t big on the 31st, they did appear to observe Halloween the rest of the year though in the form of vampires and demons running riot. You knew who Buffy was, she had revealed it to you one evening. She didn’t warn you much about staying out after dark – she wanted the excuse to meet with you.

You hadn’t been getting on with the rest of the group, they had noticed you and Buffy had been getting on so well. They were probably jealous or didn’t like to see you both happy. So they had started to single you both out. This evening had been no different.

She had slid her hand into yours and squeezed. You had told her a secret, confided in her. It had been one you had never told anyone before. Only her. The gesture was comforting but you couldn’t help wishing it meant more. You both looked down at your hands, they fit together so perfectly. As if they were made for each other. But neither of you had said anything about it.

“Look at them!” You jumped, moving your eyes away and they jeered at your visible shock at them shouting. They started to crowd around you, noticing the way you had been holding Buffy’s hand.

“Ew, what is she your girlfriend?” one teased and you looked at the ground. You hadn’t expressed your attraction of women yet, but you weren’t necessarily ashamed.

“So what if she was?” You muttered, your eyes not lifting from the ground now as Buffy had a glint in her eye at the suggestion. They continued to tease you, until you eventually got up and started walking down the lane away from them. Buffy quickly got up to follow you, telling the rest to leave you both alone.

But they wouldn’t leave. Buffy swung around as the group approached you, her knuckles curling into a fist. You put a hand on her shoulder, that they all jeered at, to tell her not to.

“Aw, God, y/n! You’re such a coward!”

“I’m not - you’re just not worth a fight!” You exclaimed as Buffy nodded her head, moving her arms to cross them over her chest. You didn’t realise what house you were stood outside of until they mentioned it.

“Okay, then if you’re not a coward - I dare you to go in there. Alone!” the ringleader of the group said, pointing towards the abandoned house that had been abandoned since you had lived in the town. That place even gave Buffy the creeps and she was a slayer. They all gasped and made creepy noises in anticipation. Everyone knew about the house and countless rumours had been associated with the large house over the years. You looked up at the house and although you had nothing to prove, decided you would do it. Anything to get away for them for at least ten minutes.

“Fine” You shrug, not usually one to backdown so easily. But Buffy was concerned.

“You don’t have to, they’re just bored. And cruel. And… remind me again why we bother to hang with them?” She asked, dropping her voice.

“Well I wouldn’t have come back if it wasn’t for you” You whispered softly. Your words echoing her own thoughts, “I’m going in” You then shrugged, despite Buffy’s best efforts to put you off. She had heard things from demon snitches and she hadn’t got around to looking into it yet.

Before she could say anything else, you had made it to the front door with everyone watching with their mouths open. Nobody went near that house anymore. But you had flung the front gate open and stalked up to the door in the blink of an eye. No hesitation.

You turned the handle and it let you straight in. Weird, you would think they’d lock an abandoned building in the middle of town. The door slowly opened and you stepped inside. Alerting anything residing in the house of your presence as your footsteps echoed loud through the house.

When you were over the threshold, something happened. Something you, really, should have expected. The door slammed shut behind you. You jumped, gasping and turning to confirm that you were now shut in. You tried the handle and it had locked fast.

Unknown to you, Buffy had run straight after you, realising the door was now locked and she tried to find an alternative way in. While this was happening, the rest of the group got scared. They turned to leave and ran off to their respective houses. Leaving you and Buffy to deal with the house alone.

You intake another deep breath of the musty air, steeling yourself. Telling yourself you would be okay. You decide to explore a few rooms and then head out, maybe the door would have unlocked itself by then.

So that’s what you did. You tentatively stepped through the hall, the wallpaper yellow and peeling as nobody had lived in there for years. There was some graffiti started on the walls and it gave you a strange feeling when you noted that none of it appeared to be completed.

The only furnishing in the corridor an abandoned coat stand, evidently not precious enough for the previous residents to take with them. You reach out to touch it, wondering what the varnished wood may feel like.

A strange feeling, goose bumps begin to form slowly up your arm. You can physically feel them starting from your wrist up to your shoulder. It makes you rethink this. Moving your hand away from the stand and moving on. Quickly.

You walked into what you guessed had been the living room. The room was damp and dull. You suspected it had been dull before the house had been abandoned. Whoever had decorated liked beige. You were staring at the patches on the walls, where paintings or photographs had been fixed there. The wall was a lighter shade from where it hadn’t been exposed for so long to the elements.

It was a cemetery for the life that had once been inside the house. A family home. Full of hopes and struggles and laughter. But now it only held-

Suddenly, a crack rang out through the empty house. The floorboard was splintering under you and finally gave way. There was nothing you could do, except fall through the floor and down into the basement. The one room you had never intended in going into.

Buffy had managed to sneak in through a window and had been trying desperately to find you before anything bad happened. She had heard your grand entrance into the basement but couldn’t find you. She kept getting lost. The house was big, almost like a maze and she was desperately trying to follow the sound of your voice.

“Is this the part where I play the damsel in distress?” you sigh, asking an unknown entity that the slayer couldn’t see. You were trying not to show your fear in any way. You spoke loudly and clearly, the wavering in your voice hidden to anyone except her. Her heart ached, she just wanted to get to you. Stand by your side in the face of this threat.

Buffy heard your voice but the vibrations were bouncing through all of the empty rooms. The echoing making it even harder to locate you. Buffy was worried for you. Almost losing her cool as she bit herself back from shouting and ruining any element of surprise she could take.

What Buffy couldn’t see was that as soon as you entered, the basement had started to grow incredibly cold. Freezing. You hugged yourself, trying to preserve the warmth as cold air started to whip around you as if you were stood in the eye of a mini tornado.

A voice sounded. A low, incomprehensible murmur to begin. But it slowly grew louder. And it sounded angry.

You do not belong here! You do not belong here! You do not belong here!

Then you saw it. The translucent figure with the most striking yellow eyes. There was no soul behind those eyes. It was a man. His skin was cracked and his hair was swept back. His outfit told you he had only been a ghost for a decade, the way he was dressed still somewhat familiar although nobody would be seen dead in it anymore. Well, maybe they would.

You started to panic, he was pointing now. Eyes dead-locked on you. No matter where you shifted slightly, his eyes followed. You kept talking, non-stop at first. Scoffing and acting uncaring. Trying to distract the ghost as you slowly backed out. You were looking for an exit in the periphery of you vision, but the room appeared to be sealed.

You managed to pull your eyes away, feeling along the wall and checking for some kind of door. This was a mistake. As you had looked away, the demon became corporeal and was stalking towards you. It didn’t appear to want to give you a hug either. When you had turned back from your fruitless effort of finding a way out, it slapped you across your face. As if to shut you up from your nervous rambling. You had angered it, clearly.

YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE! YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE! YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE!

The shouted got louder. Piercing your skull so acutely it felt almost as if you were being lobotomised. You tried to speak over the shouting, but it progressively got worse. In the blink of an eye, you found yourself curling into yourself on the dusty floor of the basement. Not of your own will. The figure looming over you, menace in those eyes. Unable to hear yourself think, let alone talk.

You scrunched your eyes up tight, some unknown force keeping you on the floor. You never saw it when she jumped through the hole that you made in the floorboards above. Landing on her feet easily and tapping the demon-ghost on its shoulder. It was somehow corporeal, so she managed to land some blows leaving it staggering backwards.

The demon, for someone only part-time corporeal, was a surprisingly good fighter. This meant Buffy had been looking around for some kind of weapon. You missed it when she found an ornate hunting knife in the corner of the basement, that happened to be its one weakness. She stabbed the figure straight through the heart. You even missed her brilliantly executed pun, the wind had still been rushing in your ears.

You had been expecting pain. Horror. Some seriously disgusting demon goo (you had seen Ghostbusters). But instead you felt a soft hand on your shoulder. Her hand. She had come straight to kneel by your side, helping you up. You both stood and the tornado-like wind finally subsided. Leaving a quiet you didn’t know you had been waiting for wash over you. It made you feel calmer.

You gazed into her eyes, smiling softly, the relief painted on your face as you mouthed thank you. She nodded, her hand was still lingering on your shoulder. You enjoyed the sensation, hoping she wouldn’t move away any time soon. The close proximity was enough for you to wanted stay in a haunted basement just to get to stay by her side.

“Is this the part where I kiss the damsel in distress?” She teased, but the sentiment was there. Her eyes wild from the slaying, the adrenaline still pumping around her body as she smiled so sweetly. You couldn’t have guessed that she had just beat that ghost back into the hell-dimension it came from.

Her hand slid to rest on the side of your face, the warmth of the gesture making your close your eyes. A slow blink before returning to her eyes, the sparkle still there. You sighed into her touch, moving into her hand further. You had never felt so good. Never felt so safe.

You nodded softly, willing this to happen. Willing her to feel the way you felt for her. You had been craving this. Dreaming about it. Her touch. It was everything you had hoped it would be. And more.

Before you knew it, she had leaned in and your lips had met hers. Your eyes fluttered closed once more as your hands slid around her waist, one hand resting on the small of her back. She pulled you in closer, both hands now sliding along the side of your face. Her lips were so soft you found yourself instantly addicted. She sighed into your kiss, this had been something she wanted since the first time she met you. You never wanted this moment to end. You were both vibrating with happiness as you moved back slightly, contacting the wall behind you.

The basement was still creepy and there were thick cobwebs along the wall, tangling in your hair - but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. It was her. All you wanted was her.

All you cared about is her lips against yours.

#A very Buffy Halloween #Buffy Summers #Buffy #Buffy Summers x reader #Buffy summers imagine #Buffy Summers x you #Buffy x reader #btvs #btvs x reader #btvs x you #btvs imagine #female reader #buffy x female reader #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagines #Halloween #halloween fic #halloween request

93 notes · View notes

areiton · 3 years

Text

something to hold onto - stony

Read on AO3

~*~

It goes like this:

You put the Valkyrie in the water. And then you swim.

You don't die.

You get picked up in Greenland and Howard Stark is already on his way, a search and rescue only be believes will succeed.

It goes like this:

You tell Peggy you’re going back.

You ask her to wait.

You take the Howlies and you look, do what you didn't have time for then, because you should have died and Bucky should have died and if you didn't--

You go searching for Bucky, following trails and rumors and a missing body until you find a broken shell of a man and rumors of a snake that should be dead.

It goes like this:

You don't die but a bomb is dropped and then another and maybe part of you does die.

You don't die but Bucky is broken, and you don't know how to put the pieces together.

You don't die, but Peggy looks at you with regret and sadness and you think--maybe you should have.

It goes like this:

You don't die.

~*~

You go back to war. It’s familiar, what you know even if it isn’t what you want. It’s familiar and you’re good at it and Bucky falls into place at your side, familiar and comforting and as unchanging as you are.

He’s haunted now, and you hate the ghosts in his eyes and his dark days, when he’s all silence and brooding, the long months he vanishes and comes back restless and violent.

He’s never talked about the years he was with the Russians, or the way you found him, and you’ve never pressed. Some days, you think you should.

You fight with Howard. About his fucking bomb and his company, about the presidents and Bucky. About his child bride wife and his drinking and Peggy.

You're there when the boy is born, but Howard is drunk and you only stay long enough to brush a kiss on Maria's forehead and touch the tiny hand of his newborn son. Small fingers wrap around yours and you smile. “Hello, Anthony.”

~*~

Your relationship, shaky at best, shatters when you find out about Zola. “He tortured Bucky!” you shout in his face, and Howard waves it off.

“You need to learn to adjust,” Howard snarls.

“And you need some fucking principals,” you snap back, furious.

You slam out of the mansion, and you see Tony peeking at you from behind Jarvis, wide eyes and pale face, and you feel a pang of regret, that you’re losing this--Maria and Jarvis and Tony, sweet and young and already brilliant.

But Howard is there with his secrets and his agenda and the way his gaze tracks over you, hungry and calculating.

“You and Howard want different things, darling,” Peggy tells you. You’re friends now, able to look at her and see the woman you respect and admire, and not just the might have beens. “You’ll never like him, because you don’t respect him. And he’ll never forgive you for that.”

“So what do I do with that?”

She shrugs, and smiles, enigmatic. “You do what you can.”

~*~

What you can is this: you move to DC, to her newly founded SHIELD, and you work. You aren’t an army, like Phillips wanted, but you are here and the people you loved are growing older but you--you don’t. You work.

~*~

Bucky returns from six months of silence, and there’s blood under his nails and fury in his eyes, and a little girl, red haired and beautiful and unnerving, at his side.

“She’s mine,” he says, and it’s not true and it is, and it doesn’t matter, because there’s a look in his eyes, feral and familiar, and you don’t think anyone would survive crossing him on this, maybe not even you.

“Ok, Buck,” you say, mildly, and that’s how you become an Uncle.

~*~

Some years are easy, and you train the SHIELD agents that get younger every year.

Some years are hard, endless the way that you have begun to feel.

Some years are quick and brutal, marked by blood and shield in your hand and the battles that never end.

But some years--some years are Natasha’s smiles, shyly emerging, and ballet practice and bake sales, and weekends cleaning your weapons because Nat likes it with her cartoons.

~*~

When they promote you to Commander, you see Howard. It’s the first time in--decades. You’re startled, to realize he’s gotten old.

“That’s what people do, darling,” Peggy says, a little bit dry and you laugh and when your old friend comes up to you, shakes your hand and stares at you with that old familiar hunger, you don’t hate him for it--you feel only the slightest stirrings of pity.

You think of the years that are passing, think of Natasha, your niece who smiles now, and Peggy’s children, her niece Sharon, and think, with a pang, of Tony.

You haven’t seen him in ten years, since you stormed out of the mansion all those years ago.

You shake Howard’s hand and you think maybe it’s time, to go back and mend those fences, because maybe you are slowly aging--but he is not and you don’t want the chance to pass, to fix things.

~*~

Bucky laughs at you, when you tell him, but he never much liked Howard, and you can’t blame him too much for that, considering Howard never had any use or time for Bucky.

You mean to call, but a mission comes up with SHIELD and you end up in Iowa, chasing a boy with a bow of all fucking things and you forget, for a time, that you mean to fix what’s broken.

~*~

He dies.

Howard dies, and you don’t really believe it, but there’s Peggy, sobbing on the phone, and the reality of the truth--Howard Stark is dead.

You sit across from her, this girl you thought you’d love and marry and have a life with, this woman who has become a fulcrum in your life, the turning point that you built everything that came after upon, as much as Bucky is, as much as Natasha is.

There’s more white in her hair than black now, red lips wrinkled and thin, laugh lines near her lips.

Your hair is going grey and your body aches sometimes, but there’s this--you can still fight, can still lead the young recruits in training and combat, still slip into undercover missions that Bucky has always been better at.

You are as old as Peggy and Howard, and you feel it some days--but days like this, you mostly feel lonely.

~*~

You have Bucky, steady and haunted and mirroring your own age. You have Natasha, beautiful and defiant and vibrantly alive. You have Peggy and her children who you watched grow up, watched fall in love and marry.

But you feel, so often, utterly alone.

~*~

“Steve, darling,” Peggy says, and you turn, watch her come towards you with a young man, pale skin, a wicked smile, and familiar eyes. “You remember Tony, don’t you?”

~*~

“Dad used to talk about you,” Tony says, when Peggy has wandered away and it’s only you and this beautiful creature--this son of your dead friend.

“Did he?” you say, dumbly, and his eyes are bright and laughing, laughing at you.

You don’t think you mind, not if it means he’s laughing.

“Always wanted to fix things with you, Cap.”

“Commander,” you correct, instinctive. You haven’t been a captain in almost five years and you remember it, abruptly, wanting to fix things. You never did.

Tony’s eyes have widened, just a touch and his voice is different, a little bit raspy, when he repeats, “Commander.”

~*~

You jerk off, that night, to the thoughts of a wicked smile and big brown eyes.

~*~

He is a child--he is twenty--and your friend’s son.

He isn’t for you, a bright shining beacon in a world you have long since decided has gone dark.

He is brilliant and beautiful and for the first time in so long you have forgotten what it feels like, you want.

~*~

You take missions that take you out of the country, come home for a few days and Bucky looks at you, eyes sharp and knowing and you don’t meet his gaze, avoid Peggy when you are forced back to the states.

“You miss Nat’s show, she’ll gut you,” Bucky tells you, when you’re in Belarus, and not even sure why--the Cold War has been a series of confusing standoffs. “Come home, Stevie.”

“Buck--”

“You can’t run forever,” he says, and he sounds exhausted, the way you’ve felt for years, and you think maybe it’s because he ran first. “Come home.”

~*~

You go to Nat’s recital, and sit between Tony and Bucky in a dark row, and the warm slight weight of him is distracting, even as she is beautifully captivating on the stage.

You don’t ask why he’s there, not when Bucky stares at you, that thousand yard stare that promises violence, not when Nat hugs him, giddy and unreserved, not when Peggy lets herself lean against him, frail and thin and still fierce.

He fits here, in your family, the people you love, and you love it, far more than you should.

~*~

“We should get coffee,” he says and you smile and shake your head.

~*~

“Come over for dinner,” he says and you give your regrets and stay home.

~*~

“I got tickets to the Dodgers,” he says and you laugh and take a mission to Atlantic City.

~*~

“Why do you hate me?” he asks, and you stare at him, big eyes and wet mouth and messy hair you want to sink your fingers into.

“I don’t hate you,” you say. “That’s the problem.”

Understanding fills his eyes and Tony smiles.

~*~

You want him.

You’ve wanted him since the moment Peggy led him, young and beautiful and smiling, up to you.

Now--seeing him with your niece, the way he’s sweet and careful with her, the way he brings weapons and dancing shoes to her and let’s her paint his nails and listens intently when Nat bitches about school--it makes you weak.

The way he is with Peggy, gentle and teasing, flashes of the boy he had been in the way he reverts to a teasing mischievous child with his godmother.

The way he treats Bucky, like a peer, talking too rapid and fast about tech, about SI and SHIELD and Nat--

You want him. You want the complex man who talks about his assistant like she’s his favorite thing on earth, who laughs with your niece and watches you like you’re a puzzle he can’t wait to solve.

You want him and sometimes, when he’s standing too close, lips stained with wine and laughing, you forget he’s twenty three and not for you.

~*~

The first time Tony kisses you is on your birthday. He throws a party for you at his beach house, and kisses you in the dark kitchen, under a spray of fireworks while his godmother and your family laugh and shout outside.

He tastes like cheap beer and strawberries, like sunshine and freedom and everything you can’t have.

~*~

You leave the next day, take a training assignment with Barton in the wilds of Canada and bitch the whole fucking time, because who decided that Clint fucking Barton should train baby SHIELD agents.

You spend six months in the wild, come home with a thick beard and too long grey hair and an ache to see your bed.

You sleep for three days solid and Bucky drags you and Barton both to a family dinner at Peggy’s son’s house.

Tony is there, and he looks--different. Stretched and tired, shadows in his gaze. You listen as the family teases him, as Nat sniffs over his latest girlfriend, and Tony avoids your gaze and skirts the conversation with a deft skill that’s infuriating and fascinating.

“He’s been spiralling,” Bucky says, later, when you’re sitting in the dark living room with him, “Whatever happened, before you left, he didn’t take you running real well.”

He sighs, and rubs a hand through his hair, hooks it--it’s long now, when did he grow out his hair?--behind his ear and says, “You gotta quit this shit, Steve.”

“I can’t stay here, with him.”

“You could. He wants you to.”

“Buck,” you say, reproachful and he shrugs.

“You ever think you aren’t meant to be alone?” he thinks. “You fight these wars and you go on these missions and you’ve got nothing to keep you going, nothing to come home to.”

“I have you, Nat. Pegs.”

Bucky smiles at him and it’s sad, resigned. “I love you, brother. But you need a reason to live, because folks like us--watching our friends die? It’s gonna be too easy to give up.”

~*~

You think about it a lot, Bucky’s words. He found his reason to live, even after the years of rage and grief, found it in a pretty little girl with haunted eyes and red hair, and he never looked back or away.

You think of the decades of fighting, with the Howlies and for Peggy, with Nick Fury and Coulsen and Barton, and wonder if it wasn’t always you, reaching for something you can’t find.

Tony smiles at you, over coffee at Peggy’s, and you don’t want to run, don’t want to fight.

You want, for the first time, to rest.

~*~

You kiss him for the first time in the spring, while Natasha is sleeping in the sun outside the house where you and Bucky raised her and Barton can’t quite stop watching her, and Tony is sun-gold and laughing, with his tired eyes and sad smiles.

“Don’t,” he whispers, almost begging, “If you’re going to leave again, don’t do this.”

You almost, almost step away, and his lips tremble under yours, eyes bright and scared and hopeful.

He’s too young and your friend’s child and not for you.

But he makes you feel alive, too, clings to you like you might vanish, watches you like you matter.

You drag him close, lick the whimper from his mouth and hold on tight.

#arei writes #arei writes fic #steve rogers #silver fox steve #tony stark #stony #stony fic #commander rogers

28 notes · View notes

nanaminsonyfans · 4 years

Text

Between Worlds; Chapter Four

Previous, Next, Masterlist

A/N: This chapter is gonna be split into maybe three parts. Don’t worry, this is just for Y/N’s character development then we get some Zuko ;) Please enjoy!

!!TW!!Swearing

Over the past few days, you were healing from your injuries caused by Zuko. Your chin had a slight scar, but you had a second-degree burn on your right hip. Katara made sure that you always had a wet cloth over the burn to soothe the pain, it worked. Sometimes. Going to the City of Omashu really strained your body. Although you connected with a good friend, Bumi, the challenges he gave you were far from easy with your injury. On the bright side, you saved a village from the Fire Nation’s oppression. That made you feel nice, like you were now actually worthy of the label Avatar.

You were brought back to reality and away from your thoughts by the smell of something charred and burnt. It smelled like charcoal. You leaned over Appa’s saddle to look down. “What is that?” You ask, pointing down to the ground below you. Sokka, who was steering Appa since your injury, looked over too. “It looks like a scar…” He said now guiding Appa to the ground where the scent came from.

Once the three of you reached the ground, you jumped off, using your staff as a walking stick. “The Fire Nation.” Katara whispered walking around. Your heart hurt to see such destruction, this forest was somethings home. Birds, deer, bears, even insects. Sokka glared as he looked around at the burned wood and grass. “Those monsters.” He grumbled kicking a rock. You sat down on the burned and blacked ground. You let out a deep sigh and hunched your head forward. “This is horrible.” You whisper, silently cursing at yourself for letting this happen. You started to fidget with the staff, running your fingers along the grain of the wood.

You were snapped out of your trance when something hit your head. You turned around seeing Katara with a handful of acorns. “Katara- What the hell?” You glared at the other girl, “These are acorns, Y/N. That means the forest will grow back with time.” She smiled. Then you remembered, this was the Winter Solstice episode. Your mind was still so foggy about your life before this. You just knew you had to help with whatever disaster was coming. “I guess you’re right.” You mumbled and stood up, using the staff to stabilize yourself. You heard shuffling footsteps from behind you, you turned around taking a defensive stance.

You relaxed, seeing as the source of the sound was an old man. “Those….markings! Those are the markings of an Airbender! You are the Avatar!” The old man said in shock. “I saw the flying bison and thought I was going insane, but now I see that I am not! Come with me, my village desperately needs your help!” You raised an eyebrow and looked back at Katara and Sokka. They looked just as confused as you. “Yes. I will gladly help you and your village.” You say sweetly, now following the man to his village.

A few buildings in the village were smashed and in ruins. The old man lead you to a building in the center of the village. “This young woman is the Avatar!” He said proudly, gesturing to you as you entered the building. “The rumors are true…” A middle-aged man said, causing murmurs among the people. Inside of the building, it seemed to house all the villagers, there weren’t that many, about 20 or 30 people. You suddenly got flustered by all the attention, light blush dusting your cheeks. Finally, you got enough courage to silence the murmurs.

“It’s nice to meet you all. So…how may I help you guys?” You smiled at them, but it soon fell because of the depressing atmosphere. “I’m not sure there is much you can do.” The middle-aged man spoke up. “Nonsense! She’s our only hope!” The elder jumped in. “For the last few days at sunset, a monster comes to our village and attacks us. He is the Hei Bai, the black and white spirit.” He explained with a worried look. Sokka raised an eyebrow at them suspiciously. “Why is it attacking you?” “We don’t know. But for the past three nights, it has taken one of our own. We are especially fearful because the Winter Solstice draws near.” The elder continued. “What happens then?” Katara questioned. “The spirit world and our world get a stronger bond. We fear it will become more powerful and kill us all.”

You were the bridge between those two worlds, so you had to do this. You didn’t really didn’t have a choice. You walked down the village, using the staff as a walking stick since you had a limp. Thanks to Zuko. Sokka was getting antsy, he wanted to get out there and help, you were injured and at to fight a spirit monster?! It was insane to him. “We can’t just cower in here while Y/N facing a fucking spirit monster thing!” He whispered shouted to Katara, who elbowed his side at such language. “If anyone can save us, it is her.” The old man spoke. Sokka crossed his arms glaring out the window.

You planted your staff down into the soft Earth. You really didn’t know how to do this. “Umm…The sun has set. Where are you, Hei Bai? Spirit?” You called and looked around. “Well, I hereby ask you to leave this village alone!” You yelled in a commanding tone. You were answered by a breeze of wind going through your face. “Okay then. I guess that’s that.” You smiled triumphantly and began to walk back to the building in the center of down.

A black monster came to view with a white underbelly, unknown to you though. The beast followed behind you as you walked back, until it let out an exhale, making your hair flow forward. You yelped in surprise before turning around and facing the creature. You smiled sweetly and looked up at it’s…eyes? You looked at where his eyes would be. “You must be Hei Bai! I’m the Avatar. I’m the bridge between the spirit and human world.” You said, but it just ignored you and turned to the right to smash a building. You flinched at hearing and seeing a small home being smashed. That was someone’s childhood home. You narrowed your eyes at the beast. “Hey! Listen to me! I’m trying to help you as the spirit bridge!” You barked, the beast turned around now, hitting you across to another house.

There was a crash when your body his the roof of the building. “That’s it. She needs help.” Sokka grumbled walking out. “Sokka no! Get back here!” Katara yelled worriedly, it wasn’t any use though. She started to follow but was held back by the middle-aged man, “It’s not safe.” He said softly, Katara reluctantly stayed put.

“Hey! Hei Bai! Over here!” Sokka yelled throwing his boomerang at the monster. It hit its head, which caused it to turn towards Sokka. You finally got up after groaning and looked at Sokka in shock. “Sokka go back!” “No Y/N! We can fight him together!” “I don’t want to fight him-” You started but was immediately interrupted by Hei Bai grabbing Sokka. He yelled in shock but the monster started to run away into the forest.

You got onto your gilder trying to follow him and the spirit. “Sokka?!” You called for him worriedly. “Y/N! Over here!” Sokka called back. You followed his voice until it disappeared. You landed back in the scar of the Earth. You gripped the glider until your knuckles turned white. You fall to your knees while tears started to roll down your cheeks.

“I failed.”

Taglist;

@imagine-yourself-happy @toobsessedsstuff @bluecrystals01 @cheyenne-dunn-universe @foolishgang @alrightberries @givemetundies @anxietyriddledcollegekid @gra-hamcrackers @marionette-ghoulette @miracle-rat @bangtanboyswriting123 @wattpadwaterandfire @hopelessly-hopeful-hope @alexander-the-great32105 @mavix @mcartist @furblrwurblr @celamoon @ghost-of-the-oldwest @whatanicepanohthatsjustme @itscomplicateddw @panini-the-bird-killer @yoongnysus @willa-the-bean @so-fuckin-tiredd @utterlyconfused-tm @ctrl-alt-jeon

Some accounts wouldn’t let me tag them so im very sorry! Turning on the post notifications that will help maybe? I dunno. Stay safe and I hope this brought smiles to your faces! <3

#zuko x reader #avatar zuko #atla zuko #atla #sokka #atla sokka #katara #atla katara #avatar x reader #between worlds #avatar reader #x reader #reader instert #avatar the legend of aang #avatar the last airbender

201 notes · View notes

words-for-holland · 4 years

Text

Happier (3) | T.H.

Summary: Harrison is looking for answers. More unknown text messages and blackmail. A phone conversation takes place. Wait...who’s the new guy?

A/N: Don’t be shy let me know all your theories! Again, thank you for the support on Happier! The story continues!

Puzzle

This whole thing was just a giant puzzle that needed to be solved, but the closer one got to solving it, another complication comes around. The story wasn’t clear for anyone, but for Harrison it was a mess. He had so many questions that needed to be answered, so many clues he wish could have been solved at the snap of a finger.

Tom was too lost in himself to even comprehend the puzzling reality, Y/N while also lost in heartbreak had been awefully quiet since she left London, Kate was lying to Harrison, and Natalie had been too friendly with Tom.

Harrison replayed the conversation with Kate over and over again in his mind, trying to remember every little thing she said that night. He knew Kate was aware of something. Her tone said it all.

“Listen I dont know who you are, but if its the same person that sent my best friend a threatening message that she’s better off breaking up with her boyfriend”

“She received a few messages...from Tom.”

“Oh my god.” Harrison said to himself in realization. How could he have been so dim to not recognize what Kate had said in the first place? He paced around as he continued to think it through. But a threat message? Who would send a threat to Y/N? And what did they threaten her with? Tom and Y/N’s relationship has been secretly hidden from the public for as long as they’d been together. No one knew she even existed...right?

For a moment, Harrison stopped in his tracks, thinking of Natalie. Though he quickly shook the idea off. Natalie may have wanted Tom, but she wouldnt go as far as threatening Y/N. He had been friends with her since they went to primary school, and knew she wouldn’t go that far. “Maybe a stalker fan?” He questioned himself. Though he also quickly ruled it out, but something about it just didnt feel right.

In the kitchen, Harrison took out his laptop and started googling Y/N’s name. If her name didn’t show on the News or one of those Tom Holland fan accounts, it would at least answer one theory. As he scrolled through pages and pages, nothing showed up until...he found on account. He logged into the site and browsed the history, realizing it was all about Y/N and Toms life. Not as a couple but seperately. It all seemed too strange. Only very few accounts followed it and yet no other accounts in the world had mentioned Y/N. Harrison quickly shut his laptop when he saw Natalie enter the room.

“Oh don’t mind me just...grabbing a water.” She giggled, making her way to the fridge.

“Hey mate...uh..I guess everyone got hungry at the same time?” Harry asked, a bit surprised to see Harrison and Natalie in the kitchen.

“Yeah. I guess.” Harrison muttered.

“Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine. If i didn’t know I’d say you were the one more affected by the break up then Tom and Y/N themselves.” Natalie commented.

“No. It’s just that I dont think Y/N broke up with Tom just because of some rumors about you and him.” He explained rubbing his face from exhaustion. Natalie’s smile dropped, when she heard Harrison mention his potential theory.

“Well...did you talk to Y/N about it?” Harry asked him, also intrigued by the theory. “Now that I think about it she —“

“Oh come on. Just leave the poor girl alone. Im sure she knew what was best for the both of them. You’ll only make it worse.” Natalie interrupted, taking a sip from her water. “Well since you boys are all talk, Im gonna go find something more worth my while.”

Out of sight and out of mind, Natalie made a quick call about what she heard. “Harrison’s getting suspicious, and so is Harry.”

“Time to clean up then.” The unknown number spoke out before hanging up on Natalie completely.

Meanwhile, Kate had managed to get Y/N out of the apartment and walk the streets of the city. Her heart and spirits were still low, but she appreciated the efforts. Kate and Y/N went around stuffing their faces with crepes and ice cream. It was the cure to any bad days, but it wouldnt have been a Kate and Y/N date if they didn’t hang around the New York Aquarium. It was also the perfect time to crack out what Y/N really knew about the unknown text message, and who was harrassing the both of them. “Look, I know I promised you a stress free outing, but I saw a text from your phone the night you came back home.” Kate confessed.

Y/N’s face became pale almost as if she’d seen a ghost. She knew, and now there was no point in going back. “So you know then.” She says quietly looking at the fishes.

“I only know they threatened you.” Kate states, leaving out that she, herself, was also threatened. Y/N had enough on her plate to worry about, and it wouldn’t be the best time to being up how her message also threatened their friendship. “How long?” She continues.

“Weeks maybe. They started around the time I was fighting with Tom.” Y/N vents, she takes a deep breath before she continues. “Each message was worse than the last. They threatened that if I didnt leave, Tom would lose career, and I...I couldnt do that to him.” Tears were falling slowly, but Y/N was quick to pick them.

“Why didnt you tell him?”

“Yeah, Kate let me just tell him the truth of why I left him because the messages weren’t offensive nor threatening enough. And let’s just assume that the person texting wouldn’t blackmail either of us if they knew I said something. Anyways, maybe it was for the best...I could never fit in his world and those past few months just proved that.” Y/N’s words continue to spill out every fear and thought she had bottled up within her. It felt good..for a moment, but nothing can really erase a heartbreak of losing the one you loved.

As the pair walked through the shark tunnel, Y/N bumped into a tall figure. “Oh my god, Im so sorry...Matt?” she asked in confusion. The moment Y/N looked up into those familiar brown eyes hidden behind the thin glasses, she knew. How could she forget?

“Y/N? Wow, it’s been so long how are you?” Matt greeted as he wrapped her into a hug. “Kate, it’s good to see you again too.”

“Yeah, we’re great, just you know...navigating life.” Kate responded to him. “We haven’t seen you since what? High school?”

Matt smiled and nodded at Kate’s response, his focus remaining on Y/N. He didn’t remember much with Kate back in high school, but Y/N was a different story. They were good friends at the time, always competing in classes, but as junior year rolled by things got awkward. Y/N was falling for Matt while he didn’t return the favor at the time. Though he’d be lying if he didn’t say he may have felt the same at one point, but just never committed. Now all grown up, he didn’t realize how pretty she turned out, but her personality wasn't there. He must have figured something was wrong. After all, a girl with that kind of spunk back in the day, didn't seem like the one to lose hers so easily. “Yeah, look. I know it’s kind of a spur in the moment, but maybe we can all hang out sometime? I’d love to catch up.”

Kate was all for it, but Y/N felt a tension she wasn’t sure if she wanted to act upon. After all, breaking up with your boyfriend after 2 weeks, because of threatening messages and still loving him deeply, it wasn’t an easy thing to move on from. Then again it’s not like Matt was asking for a date, it was just to catch up after not seeing each other for 6 years. “Uh, maybe. I have to check my schedule, and see when Im free, but I can let you know” Y/N answers him.

“Great, well..here’s my number, and hopefully I hear from you guys. I gotta get back to my brother, so hope to see you around.” he quickly says as he walks away.

“Wow. Matt Brynne, who would have guessed?” Kate says, breaking the silence.

“I know...Funny I used to be so head over heels with him at the time, and now I barely feel a thing.”

“Well yeah, cause you still love...you-know-who.” she teases, though it probably wasn't the best time to be making that type of joke with everything going on.

“And I don't think I’ll ever stop.” Y/N mutters to herself. As Y/N and Kate make their way forward, Kate’s phone began to vibrate.

Unknown

Set up a date and take a picture of Y/N and that boy you posted on your insta story. Or Y/N finds out the truth about what you did. XOXO

Kate looked up as she cursed herself, realizing she forgot to keep her story private. It was supposed to be a harmless post of old friends reuniting and now the unknown number has used it as blackmail. It would have been easy to find the culprit, but her view count was up in the thousands with unfamiliar faces. It’s what she gets after gaining a decent following on TikTok. Kate couldn’t let Y/N know what she did, and she’d make sure she would hide that truth from her for as long as she can. “Hey, Y/N...I think we should hit up Matt.” she says, running after her best friend.

At the same time, another texted popped from Y/N’s phone. She picked up thinking it might have been a group chat with her close friends, but it was from the only person who could make her heart flutter and break simultaneously.

Tom

I can’t stop thinking about you. About us. I still love you.

Y/N almost called him..almost, but she knew better. She couldn’t...not unless she wanted to continue to hurt each other.

Meanwhile, back in London, Harrison was ready to come clean to Tom about what he’d found out. He watched as Tom finished typing on his phone, and throwing it on the side of the bed, rubbing his face. This was the new normal. Tom being alone in the dark, reflecting on his sadness and exhaustion. Only stepping out when needed and keeping up smiles for appearances.

It was then Harrison was ready to knock on the door, when his phone received a notification.

Unknown

Don’t even think about it. Or I’ll make sure you and your lads careers are over for good.

Harrison sighed deeply, as he put his phone down, and walked away. Until he came to a most probable conclusion. “Natalie.” he says anger. “I should have fucking known.” At this point he no longer cared, about who she was before and how they were friends. The timing of it all seemed too perfect. Her arrival, the eavesdropping, the flirting. It had to be her but with what proof other than unknown numbers and good timing? Another part of him feared...what if it wasn't her?

Meanwhile, Tom was still unaware of what was really happening behind his door, but he did know, he had to take a chance now and try to contact her instead of sending these useless messages. In the moment, he showed no signs of regret, only praying Y/N would pick up so he could hear her voice.

“Tom?” Y/N answers hesitantly.

Tom closes his eyes, as he takes in her soft and gently voice. “Y/N.” he speaks softly into the phone.

Taglist:

@hollanddolanfangirl @ifilosemyselfagain @hevjadams @averyfosterthoughts @fangirl-with-a-mission @drishtisikarwar @eridanuswave @ifntelyinspirit @trumpettay @astridcommings

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine

143 notes · View notes

lady-divine-writes · 3 years

Text

Klaine Advent Drabble Challenge 2020 - “Meeting in the Middle” (Rated PG13)

Summary: A petty argument between Kurt and Blaine leads to a heavy confession. (2133 words)

Notes: Written for the @klaineadvent Drabble Challenge 2020 prompt 'meet'. Warning for mention of Blaine’s infidelity and a mention of sexual harassment.

Read on AO3.

“It’s a reindeer.”

“It is not a reindeer.”

“That is absolutely a reindeer.”

Blaine huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and turning away from his husband, leaving enough leeway so that he can still give him a serious case of side-eye. “It can’t be a reindeer!”

“Why not?” Kurt snaps. “Because you say so?”

“Look at those stumpy antlers. Reindeer have huge antlers!”

“How do you know? Huh? Do you suddenly work for Wild America? Did you get an internship you’re not telling me about? Did you take a Learning Annex course?”

“No ...” Blaine gears up for an argument, a bullet-pointed list prepared for his defense perched on the tip of his tongue, waiting to launch. But at the last minute, he shifts in his seat and backs down. “I just … I just … know. All right?”

“Right. Because you know everything.”

“I never said that.”

“You implied it! You’re apparently some unsung expert in the field of zoology! Meanwhile, it seems that the longer we stay married, the less you know me!”

"That's finally something we can agree about!"

"Oh! So you admit you don't know me?"

"No! You don't know me!"

“Maybe I don't know you! But you should know by now that I can’t tank a relationship with a high-profile client every time your ego gets a little bruised!”

"What? Do you honestly think ...?" Blaine stares at his husband - hurt and heartbreak filling his eyes when Kurt doesn't back down, not even an inch. "I'm right," he says sadly, inching away even further. "You don't know me."

“Oh my God!” Santana groans from the back seat. “Can you both put a pause on acting like drama llamas for five seconds!? We are going to die out here! If I don't get to see my wife and daughter again because of you two Necco wafers, I am going to find you guys in the afterlife and ruin every sexual experience you attempt to have!"

"Don't talk to me about being a drama llama," Kurt grumbles. "He's the one who started it."

"Fine," Blaine says, defeated. "I started it. Does that make you feel better? Does that make everything okay again? Because doing this after every Vogue function is getting exhausting."

"It's not every Vogue function," Kurt concedes. "Just the ones Trevor Atley attends. You know, my new client who's about to elevate my status as a fashion editor? The one you seem to think is always flirting with me?"

"Maybe you should just start leaving me at home."

"Maybe I should!"

"Quit it!" Santana scolds. "Both of you! You're not in high school anymore."

"Thank God," both men mutter in unison.

"Everyone knows the two of you love each other more than your Gucci luggage, so why don't we set the angst aside and focus on the issue at hand. How are we getting out of this mess?"

Neither Kurt nor Blaine answer, staring out their respective windows, doing their best to ignore the problem.

And each other.

Santana sighs in frustration. "Do you two need the number of a good couples' counselor?" she offers. "Because I have one I can give you if it will bring you guys back to reality!”

Kurt and Blaine perk up, turning their attention back to the conversation.

“You and Brittany went to counseling?” Blaine asks.

“Well ... yeah," Santana replies self-consciously. "There’s no shame in that."

"Why?" Kurt asks. "If you don't mind me asking?"

Santana shrugs. She may have minded any other time, but she'll come clean, seeing as this is an emergency.

"There was a time when Brittany thought the ghost of Lord Tubbington was trying to split us up."

"O-oh," Blaine says. "That's ... interesting."

"I personally thought, you know, it might not be that. That it might be something deeper. So we went to a professional and talked things out.”

“Wow," Kurt says. "That’s very mature of you guys.”

“Yeah, well, we have our moments. I wish it was contagious!"

Kurt and Blaine roll their eyes and retreat to the safety of their corners.

"Look," Santana tries, desperate for a resolution, "I think you guys might be suffering from a good, old-fashioned failure to communicate.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because most couples do. You spend so much time with one another, you get to a point where you assume you can read each other’s minds. Then you get offended when that’s not the case.”

“So what are we supposed to do about that now? How’s that going to get us out of the hole that we’re in?”

“Why don’t you start one truth at a time? Meet in the middle. Kurt, you reveal something to Blaine, and for every one thing you tell him, he has to tell you one thing back.”

Blaine wraps his arms defiantly over his chest, looking more like a pouting middle schooler than a grown man. “I will if he will."

"Will you?" Kurt bites. "Because you seem to think there are things I can’t handle before you even tell me what they are!"

"Because you usually go off the deep end no matter what I say! Especially if you think I'm keeping a secret!"

"Well, excuse me, but the last time you kept secrets from me, you’d slept with someone else!"

The car becomes tight with quiet until Blaine sighs. "Fair enough."

"Sometimes I get the feeling that you're waiting for me to do the same," Kurt continues. "That no matter how much I tell you I love you, that I forgive you, you're waiting for me to find an opportunity to hurt you.”

"Ooo. Kurt starts out strong," Santana says, taking it upon herself to moderate. "Blaine? Your turn."

Blaine shoots Santana an unamused look. “I used to feel that way. I'll admit it. Because I thought I would definitely deserve it if you did cheat on me. But that's not the case here. Not with Trevor. The truth is …" Blaine curls against the window a bit, curls in on himself a bit "... I don’t like him. At all. It’s not even a personality thing. He makes me uncomfortable. Like ... Terry Crews … Brendan Fraser … uncomfortable.”

The air around them is tense. It's cold. So cold that Kurt's hands hurt. But he feels none of it.

He feels nothing.

He's gone numb.

Blaine's confession is nowhere in the vicinity of what Kurt expected to hear. He thought for sure that this entire issue surrounded Blaine's jealousy. His insecurity. Kurt's suspicions had been corroborated by reliable sources.

Namely Isabelle.

The Vogue gossip mill didn't work in his favor this time.

But he shouldn't need it. How did he not catch on to this?

“Do you mean to tell me …” Kurt swallows hard, already planning the outfit he’s going to wear when he rips that asshole Trevor a new one “… he touched you?”

“N-not yet.”

“Not yet! What do you mean not yet!?”

“I’ve heard rumors. And he … he looks at me. Makes comments. I know if it came down to it, I could handle myself with him … physically. But there’s so much more to consider."

"Consider? What else is there to consider? What are you weighing against the possibility of sexual assault?" Kurt screeches when he should remain calm, but he can't help himself. He didn't have a clue about this! But he's not just pissed at Trevor.

He's livid at himself.

"I was afraid it would put your job at stake. And my reputation. If I call him out on rumors and I’m wrong, it could tank both of our careers. Neither of us would ever work again. But I don’t want to wait until he does something. I don’t ... I don't want to be touched. Not by him.”

“Oh, honey. Of course not." Kurt puts a hand on Blaine's shoulder and waits, sees if he wants to be comforted. A single touch is all it takes for Blaine to roll towards his husband and melt in his arms. "I'm nice to him because of that stupid contract, but I can't stand him, to be honest. The whole night, I was hoping you would come over, hang all over me, stake your claim like a Neanderthal. It didn't dawn on me that there might be some other reason you were keeping your distance."

"I should have told you.”

Kurt squeezes Blaine tight. “Yes, you should have told me!"

“I’m sorry, Kurt. I just got … overwhelmed. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I didn’t want you to do anything that would jeopardize this contract, but …”

“Blaine! You’re my husband! No contract in the world means more to me than you!”

“I ... didn’t know what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do," Kurt says, his voice shaking with rage. "In the morning, we’re going to call Isabelle, and contact the legal team at Vogue for a consult. Then we’ll hit this asshole with a two-fisted punch. I’ll have my team do an expose, try to find anyone who might be willing to blow the whistle on this guy. But we’ll also run a series of PSAs on sexual harassment, and how it can affect anyone. You’ll be in one of them! That way, even if we never say this guy’s name out loud, he’ll know we have his number. If he doesn’t start backing down after that, then I’ll invite him to an intimate lunch at my office, talk things out one-on-one.”

“Make that two-on-two,” Santana pipes up from the backseat. “It’s more fun when we threaten assholes together, remember?” She offers Kurt her fist to bump, and, caught up in the moment, he does.

Blaine straightens up, finds a tissue to blot his eyes. “You guys don’t have to do all that.”

“Yes, we do!" Kurt says, concerned that his husband would consider backing down from this fight, especially seeing that Kurt was in a similar boat when the two of them first met. At the time, it was Blaine coming to the rescue, back when the only thing at stake was a mark on his so-called permanent record. Now they're older, and the stakes are higher, which is why Kurt has to do everything he can to return the favor. "I’m not standing for this, Blaine! Not in a million years!”

Blaine smiles at his passionate husband, looking more relaxed than he has over the past three weeks of functions and parties. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

Blaine leans forward and gives his husband a kiss - a small kiss at first, but it goes on longer ... and longer, Santana grimacing as she sinks into her seat, praying the leather will swallow her whole and shoot her out the exhaust pipe to freedom. But then the car rocks back and forth, and oh!

How quickly they forget.

Kurt and Blaine get so wrapped up in one another, in love and relief, they don't seem to notice when the car shakes again, more violently.

But Santana, in the middle of sending a text to her wife, pops up.

“Great!" Santana cheers in an anxious voice. "We have a plan to deal with that asshole, and love is the law of the land again! Fantastic! Now - how are we going to handle Rudolph the Red-nosed Roid machine?” She gestures out the window to their original problem, the one they forgot about in the heat of the moment - a giant buck standing in front of Blaine's BMW, head lowered, ramming into the bumper as if attempting to flip them over.

He may have stubby antlers, but he sure knows how to use them.

“We should call 9-1-1," Kurt says.

“I’m calling Triple A," Blaine says.

“What is Triple A going to do?” Kurt snaps.

“I don’t know. But they might be a bit better prepared than 9-1-1.”

“How in the world do you figure that?”

“Because Triple A’s sole purpose is helping motorists out of a jam. They might have deer deterrent or a special horn or something.”

“What!?”

“It makes sense, Kurt!”

“No it doesn’t!”

"And what are the police going to do?"

"Hello? Police have guns!"

“Before the two of you get started again, this is what we’re going to do." Santana points to Blaine. "You call Triple A." She points to Kurt. "You call 9-1-1. Meanwhile, I’m going to save the day.”

“Who are you calling?” Kurt asks.

“Domino's Pizza.”

“And why is that considered saving the day?"

“I'll bet you $50 delivery will not only get here faster, they’ll be packing mace. Plus, they'll bring food. Listening to the two of you bitch really drains the life out of a person.”

#klaine advent 2020 #klaine advent: meet #klaine fanfiction #klaine fic #klaine

30 notes · View notes

serpentinerose · 4 years

Text

I’ve now published 300k words in the 2Ha Ao3 tag! Thanks to my friend on twt for this prompt to push me over the 300k threshold.

Prompt: Mo Ran and Xue Meng bonding in the 5 years Chu Wanning was in seclusion.

No spoilers beyond the current tl. Rated G. You can check out the rest of my fics on Ao3 @ serpentinerose.

Xue Meng thought he could spend the rest of his life without ever hearing the name “Butterfly Town” ever again.

It was almost funny, Mo Ran would say, that this insignificant town a mere half day away from the foot of Sisheng Peak would ever become something of significance to them. A town known for nothing but the captivating fragrance that snaked between the broken slats on windows forever shuttered, for the reddish earth that never produced anything of substance, soaked through with far too much blood for a town of that size. A town of ghosts and promises buried in coffins that shook under the weight of their own grief. Xue Meng would have never stepped foot there a second time, were it not for the fact that Butterfly Town refused to lift its shadowy wings from the course of his life.

Mo Ran would have said all that, Xue Meng thought, but not Mo-zongshi.

Not this tall, broad man in white who stood before him today.

They scrubbed the blood out from under their fingernails, washed the gore from their swords in the stream, and stared into water so deep that neither of them could see what had sunken into that great river. Butterfly Town laid quiet behind them; the disciples of Sisheng Peak had busied themselves with the task of carrying away the wounded and burying the dead. The mangled pieces of demon flesh littering the expanse of the earth behind them were quickly spirited away, sent into flames so high that those red tongues dared to reach toward the sky with its own stripes of red, dispersed among the clouds.

Xue Meng’s fire core had made quick work of that mess. The resultant acrid smoke irritated his nose; he sniffed, stomach clenching at the nauseating smell of roasted meat, sweet and succulent and altogether wrong.

“Hungry already?” His cousin’s voice held little trace of its former ever-present mocking tone, but there was a little humor in it all the same. Mo Ran’s white robes were splattered around the hem with various shades of brown, and Xue Meng wrinkled his nose, wiping away the mess that the yao corpses had made on the shining metal of his armor.

“Your defense needs work.”

“Your attack needs more work,” Mo Ran shot back, but there was no heat in it. “Anyway, what does it matter? You were supposed to be guarding my back.”

“I was guarding your back,” Xue Meng argued. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t manage to keep in formation. Did anyone ask you to jump ahead? Did you want to show off to the pretty ghost lady?”

Mo Ran barked out a laugh. “I’m surprised you could tell it was a ghost lady at all.”

“It wore a bracelet.” Xue Meng scrubbed his hands together under the water. Red swirls spread on the surface; the dying sun, too, cast its own redness over the glittering water, swallowing away the evidence of their work. “Anyway, it’s too late to head back to Sisheng Peak tonight. We’ll make camp here. The inn seems to be in good shape. They might still have some food and wine to offer us.”

“So you are hungry,” Mo Ran pointed out. “Fine, Young Master. Let’s go get something in that stomach of yours.”

The inn was spared, but barely just. The entire second floor was uninhabitable, but the eatery still held its scattering of mismatched, coarsely carved tables and chairs. It would have to be rebuilt, Xue Meng thought. But not by them.

They had already done enough for this town.

Whatever had remained of the food supply had disappeared far too quickly into their cavernous stomachs. Some of the other disciples had decided to wash off the filth of the day more fully in that dark river, and some had even found the ingenuity to catch a great bounty of silvery fish along the way. It turned out that three arrows and a cloak strung together with spiritual energy were quite enough to form a kind of net. The smell of roasted fish finally cleared that stench of yao corpses from the air. They had eaten quietly, and then, one by one, the disciples trickled out to the tents they had put up along the main street of town, now cleared of all debris.

Butterfly Town had never looked cleaner, Xue Meng thought.

It was just him and Mo Ran left in the inn. The innkeeper had generously offered them a bundle of blanket and a corner of the main eatery hall. Under normal circumstances, Xue Meng would have turned up his nose at the meager accommodation, but not tonight.

After all, Xue Meng doubted if they would get any rest at all this night.

Their dusty table was littered with the clumsy wooden pieces of what would somehow become a Holy Night Guardian. Xue Meng never had any affinity with the process of creation; the constant rumor mills of Sisheng Peak, powered by both its disciples and Elders alike, liked to insist that upon Xue Meng’s first meeting with his shizun at the age of five, he had destroyed an entire room’s worth of inventions with only a file in his hands.

Chu Wanning had looked inordinately pleased, as much as that was possible for his shizun. Or so Xue Meng was told.

Mo Ran’s skills also lay elsewhere, but there was no other choice. Their shizun still remained in seclusion at the Red Lotus Pavilion, shuttered behind barriers too advanced for either of them to broach, and the contingent of Sisheng Peak disciples who had survived this last battle had never trained under the Yuheng Elder.

It was up to them now. Carrying on their shizun’s legacy until he returned.

Sometimes, Xue Meng wondered whether Mo Ran’s shoulders broadened under that strain merely by adaptation.

They worked in silence; the candlelight flickered between them, casting large shadows that loomed over them, although the shadows seemed more contemplative and watchful rather than ominous even as this broken down inn bowed under the storm swirling overhead. The water dripped at regular intervals from the misshapen slats, scorched in some places and warped in others, and Xue Meng cast a clumsy barrier over their table. Mo Ran’s eyes flickered strangely as that shining blue sphere descended around them.

“What?” Xue Meng demanded.

A ghostly smile curved playfully at Mo Ran’s lips. “Shizun would have scolded you for this barrier.”

“You think you can do better?”

“Yeah, probably,” Mo Ran snorted. “But I’m not going to show off. This is passable enough, I guess, if you were a novice under Elder Xuanji.”

Xue Meng threw a wooden stick at Mo Ran’s head, who ducked it all too nimbly. The relief that flooded him at that moment was unreasonable. Xue Meng kicked himself, but his mouth quirked upward all the same. “Oh, fuck off.”

Mo Ran laughed once, and the shadows seemed to have shifted. The candlelight grew just a touch brighter. Xue Meng fixed his eyes on the notches he had made on that stick of wood; Longcheng was a proud, fearsome sword, more suited to the destruction on the battlefield than the delicate work of carving eyes and a nose into this wooden frame. It was a little ridiculous, Xue Meng thought, that wood could walk and move and protect. A mere instrument in their hands, imbued with their spiritual power, compelled to perform duties it had never asked for, and yet could never refuse.

He wondered if wood could feel. If wood understood what pain was when it was struck. The steel of sword and the steel of lightning. If, when the wood splintered under forces greater than it could withstand, it would also feel the cut deep within whatever sliver of soul had managed to form within its rings.

All wood had once been trees. Living things.

But that was impossible, Xue Meng scolded himself. Strange musings brought on by this strange town.

After all, wood was just wood.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Mo Ran said. Xue Meng swallowed the lump in his throat that had formed without his knowing. The distance between them, a mere table apart, had seemed as insurmountable as that between Sisheng Peak and wherever it was that Mo Ran found fit to stay for longer than a fortnight or two.

The twisted pieces of wood, discarded from the remnants of their failed Holy Night Guardian, lay on the table between them, next to a jar of wine that the innkeeper managed to scrounge up from the kitchen. They eventually did succeed in making a passable rendition of their shizun’s invention, and that wooden puppet had started its first patrol of the outer perimeter of the village.

It had a crooked little face with a crooked little nose, with arms slightly uneven and a body halfway between ugly and pathetic. Mo Ran had shrugged helplessly when Xue Meng pointed at the way the little wooden puppet stood tilted to the side. Nonetheless, it worked.

It walked.

It would fight, given time and opportunity.

“Oh.”

“There’s much to do in the world still.” It was as if Mo Ran wanted to argue the point for himself. He twisted the empty porcelain cup in his fingers, stroking at the hairline fracture that had formed on the surface of that fine bone after too many years of use, no matter how careful the washing had been.

It was simply the way of the world, Xue Meng knew. And in this lower cultivation world, the reality of their lives was filled with far more decay and broken things than what lay just beyond the border into the upper cultivation realm.

“Where are you going?” Xue Meng only said. The wine had not yet gone to his head, although he knew it would, eventually. “Where haven’t you gone yet?’

“Jianghu is vast,” Mo Ran replied smilingly. Xue Meng truly looked at his cousin this time; Mo Ran had changed in recent years, not the least in the expanding span of his shoulders or the widening of his back. Or the ridiculous lengthening of his legs. It wasn’t the simple outfits of white that marked Mo-zongshi out in a crowd, and neither was it that gentle smile that Xue Meng never remembered from his rash cousin’s younger years.

Whatever it was that had changed, Xue Meng could not put it into words. But he could feel it in the way Mo Ran looked at him, the drag of time that had etched itself in that faraway gaze, as if Mo Ran had lived at least two lifetimes and carried the weight of them on those shoulders.

“Shizun would return soon,” Xue Meng noted, taking a sip of his wine. By etiquette, he should have turned away, hid his face behind his sleeve, but there had never been any ceremony between the two of them.

Their backs pressed against one another, dampened with blood and sweats. Their faces splattered with the gore of their targets’ guts, the stench of fresh blood clinging onto their skin for days, for weeks.

If shizun could have seen them then...

Mo Ran’s dark gaze shuttered, and for a quick moment, Xue Meng could swear that those eyes flashed a deep purple color. His cousin’s lips pressed into a thin line so uncharacteristic on that face; and yet, so many things that Xue Meng had never associated with his cousin had begun to be inextricable from that figure.

Mo-zongshi, Xue Meng had heard. Sometimes, when he looked at his cousin’s figure from far away, those white robes picking up the slight breeze of late summer, Xue Meng could almost swear that it was their shizun’s image on that dusty road.

It was only the smile on Mo-zongshi’s face that had distinguished them.

Mo Ran was not smiling now. “I’ll come back before he awakens.”

“How can you know for sure?” Xue Meng demanded. “Have you been counting the days?”

With a jolt, Xue Meng realized that he had not. Four years ago, Xue Meng would have sworn up and down that his life would halt until shizun returned to them.

Each day that passed without his shizun’s commanding presence would have been too unbearable.

And yet, he bore them all. Days turned into weeks turned into months, and soon enough, four years had already passed. Life seemed to move on even when he least wanted it to, and Xue Meng thought he could reach out for the stream of time, wade his fingers through the soft water, and come up with the grains of sand that he had been searching for, undisturbed beneath that torrent. It was only time itself that had revealed to him exactly how foolish he was being.

The sand stayed. The water didn’t, and Xue Meng was carried along with the current.

Mo Ran said nothing, but there was a strange, enigmatic smile on his face. “I’ll be back in time, don’t you worry. You think I’ll let you take all the credit with shizun without me there?”

Xue Meng punched his cousin’s shoulder, thankful that they had taken their armor off for the night. Clad only in their inner sleeping robes, Xue Meng could almost believe they were back in that inn of long ago, refreshed from the hotspring, with shizun just a step behind them as they bickered their way back to their upstairs rooms.

It had been a long time since that inn.

“You know there’s a place for you at Sisheng Peak,” Xue Meng found himself saying without knowing why. The lump in his throat had grown in size; he downed the rest of the wine and filled their cups to the brim again. This time, his words came out slurred. “It’s still your home.”

Mo Ran’s face stiffened, and there was a shadow in that gaze that seemed to hint at things only spoken aloud between the last breath of the night and the first blush of dawn, shrouded in the mist that seemed to descend upon the earth for that particular instant before the sunlight cleared it all away. Xue Meng would have asked his stupid cousin what it was he still thought could be hidden between them, but Mo Ran already shook his head and smiled. “I know. It is my home. It’s simply not time yet.”

“You’re just hiding,” Xue Meng accused. He wanted to say more. Horrifyingly, there was a tight pressure building up just behind his nose, spilling forth as warm wetness that slid down his face and stained the cracks between the dirty wooden table. “You…”

He wanted to say more, but the words would not come out between the sobs that shook his entire body.

Shizun was already gone, Xue Meng wanted to say. And you would rob me of yet another.

How selfish of you.

How very like you.

Even the words spoken in anger, at their very worst, when the vitriol was too much to bear, still bore some remnant of truth.

Slowly, cautiously, Mo Ran reached out a hand for his shoulder. “There, there.”

“S-stupid Mo Weiyu,” Xue Meng managed, swallowing air between the syllables. “You are so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Mo Ran sighed, shifting closer. The hand on his shoulder seemed to emanate warmth far beyond that of an ordinary person; through that thin layer of fabric, Xue Meng felt a rush of something almost like spiritual energy from his cousin’s fingers, knowing that it was all too absurd to feel such a sensation when no such transfer took place. Mo Ran seemed to have that effect on people, much to Xue Meng’s chagrin. “I’m stupid. Xue Meng, come here.”

“No,” Xue Meng hiccupped, hugging the wine gourd to his chest.

“I’m coming over then,” Mo Ran warned. “Don’t hit me.”

“I’m not.” A pause. A sob. “Not promising anything.”

Mo Ran’s shoulder was solid, broader than his own. Xue Meng buried his face into it, letting his tears stain the white of Mo Ran’s robes. His cousin sighed, patted his back awkwardly, and must have looked upward at the ceiling. The slight jostle to his frame suggested as such. “I know you miss him.”

“Who doesn’t miss him?” Xue Meng snarled, but the heat was gone. The words were curtained in tears, shrouded in grief, and every syllable struggled against the jerks of his throat. “You stupid dog.”

“You haven’t called me that in a long time,” Mo Ran commented.

“I haven’t seen you in a l-long time,” Xue Meng stubbornly replied. Mo Ran fingers pried away the wine cup from his hand, set it down on the table, and resumed that stuttered task of patting his back. “Stop touching me.”

“Are you going to stop crying?”

“I’m not crying.”

Mo Ran pushed him away. “You’re not a child anymore, Mengmeng. Don’t lie like that anymore.”

Xue Meng’s lips trembled; he willed them to stop, but his body had never liked to listen to his mind too much. “I…”

“It’s okay,” Mo Ran said. His eyes stretched into long, thin lines, softened by an emotion that Xue Meng could not identify. The corners of Mo Ran’s mouth turned upward even as his brows were weighed down by something heavier than grief. “I miss him too.”

It was the first time he had ever heard his cousin admit that.

Throughout all this time. Throughout all the times they had fallen asleep curled up in a dirty tent in a battlefield, washing up in whatever water they could find, scrubbing the blood from underneath their nails, Xue Meng had never once heard Mo Ran mentioned shizun.

Until now.

“Ge,” Xue Meng tried. “When will he be back?”

“Three hundred and ninety one days,” Mo Ran murmured.

That choking sound came from him. Xue Meng realized belatedly that it had started out as mocking laughter, turned too quickly into something unnameable. It was something he had realized for a long time, Xue Meng thought, the way words sometimes would not suffice, and yet there was nothing to do but cling clumsily to whatever sentiment could be expressed through that inadequacy.

I miss him, Xue Meng wanted to say. You miss him, too.

The words had been spoken, and yet, they might as well have been weightless for how little they truly meant. Platitude. Useless sentiment that talked of everything and conveyed nothing.

Sometimes, the words that mattered the most were the ones least expected.

Three hundred and ninety one days.

“Ge.”

“Go to sleep, Xue Meng,” Mo Ran said. “We still have to teach the village how to use the Holy Night Guardian tomorrow.”

“It’s cold,” Xue Meng whined, and his cousin sighed. The warmth left; Xue Meng shivered relentlessly in his thin robes, and then, from behind, a warm cover had replaced the warmth of Mo Ran’s hand.

His cousin had taken the pile of blanket on the floor and wrapped it around him. “Don’t be a brat. You’ve withstood worse.”

But I don’t want to, Xue Meng thought helplessly, peering up under lashes ladened with tears.

Mo Ran regarded him for a moment, sighed, and ruffled his hair. “Go to sleep.”

“Don’t go,” Xue Meng found himself asking. “Ge. Don’t leave.”

A deep sigh. The candlelight was close to extinguished; the wax pooled on that wooden table, the wick almost completely submerged in the melted wax. The shadows on the wall seemed lighter; when there was no light in the world, the shadows, too, melted away.

“I’ll be back,” Mo Ran said, and Xue Meng’s eyes slipped shut.

Mo Ran would be back. Xue Meng knew this to be true. And yet, time ticked away without regard for man’s wishes, and the sand of today will simply remain under that current until one day, a pair of eyes will open in that Red Lotus Pavilion, and this time, the stream would push along whatever rested on that riverbed, sand and silt and stones smoothed by the ever flowing current.

Three hundred and ninety one days.

Xue Meng had been waiting for a long time already.

#2ha #2hanet #2ha fanfic #xue meng #mo ran #my stuff

30 notes · View notes

prurientpuddlejumper · 4 years

Text

A Deep and Rapid River, Ch. 9

<- Chapter 8 | Chapter 10 ->

@sexy-opium-ravioli asked me to write a comfort Frankenstein fic so instead I did this [stares at the camera]

cw: suicidal ideation

Heavy raindrops pound on the wood-shingle roof, each impact combining into a chorus that roars in your ears in the pitch-black darkness. It’s like you’re being swallowed by a great beast. The entire building creaks, straining against the wind, making your heart race with the fear that it might all come crashing down on top of you as you lay clutching the covers in bed.

A deafening crack and blinding surge of light is followed shortly by a second, earthier crack and a dull thud on grass. Lightning hit one of the trees in the pasture.

In the middle of this raging tempest through which no living being could survive, there comes a scratch at your shutter. The curtains flutter as wind suddenly swirls inside, and the roar of rain grows louder. Something is coming into your bedroom.

Another flash of lightning reveals the silhouette of a massive figure, drenched and dripping, standing in front of the window. The blast of thunder that shortly follows makes the enormous figure jump, and rush, trembling like a kitten, to your bedside.

You take his deformed and scarred hand in yours, and squeeze it.

“I do not like thunder,” his grave voice whispers through gasping, timid breaths. Your beautiful, sweet creature. You never want anything to hurt him. An aching sadness washes over you anew, quivering your lower lip.

He notices you are shaking, frantic, frazzled, and puffy-eyed. He doesn’t look much better.

“When you did not come, I feared for you.” He licks his lips nervously. “I ascertained that you were within the house, but were under guard, and I could not reach you. Please tell me you are unharmed—if anything has happened to you, I shall not forgive my cowardice.”

Without warning, a sob chokes you, and hot tears roll down your face. The monster, filling up half your small cottage bedroom, doffs his wet cloak and pulls your crying form against his warm, broad chest like an extension of the furniture and holds you, rubbing your back and cooing soft words of comfort. You hide your face against him, trying to disappear as muffled sobs wrack your shoulders.

“What is wrong?” he asks with a voice so fragile from your silence that the answer might break him.

“Just let me hold you for awhile. Please.”

You feel him shudder against you, and surround you in his warm arms like a cocoon. It’s a long time before you can collect yourself enough to tell him what happened.

*****

“Like hell we are!” you snapped impulsively as soon as Ferdinand announced your “engagement.” Your fists clenched into tight balls of righteous fury. He was delusional. You were leaving.

Then your father stared at you—that dark, severe stare that threatened violence if you did not behave. “Mind your tongue, child!” he snapped, and your tongue stopped moving, and all of the smart words that had been on the tip of it just disappeared. It was so strange. You had been frightened to run, terrified, but you were ready. Just like that, all the oxygen seemed to drain from the room as Ferdinand, your father, and your mother surrounded you, reminding you of your place in the world and how helpless you were in it.

Your fiery ember dropped into a bucket of water.

You sat in the living room, trapped like a rabbit in a snare, crawling inside your own skin as reality washed over you. They laid out the situation. There were rumors around town—serious ones—that you’ve been consorting with the devil. Half the village thought you were a witch. It wouldn’t be long before something terrible came of it, but Ferdinand had graciously offered to make you his wife, and in doing so, put the rumors to bed. So you would marry him. He was well-liked among the superstitious factions, and could get them to leave you alone if he made you an honest woman. (You growled at the implications of that particular phrase.)

Ferdinand sneered with self-satisfaction, his voice dripping with honey as he said how much he worried for you.

They were pressing you into the marriage and would hear no arguments, no back-talk. They suspected you might run, and wouldn’t let you out of their sight—your mother, your father, and Ferdinand.

You were prey. There was nothing you could do to fight.

The sky grew ever darker and more ominous with each passing minute you spent ensnared, until you knew you had missed the rendezvous time. Your heart twisted—if your daemon were wise, he had left already without you. Thinking of the alternative—that he had stayed, and would be discovered—your chest twisted even tighter. Marrying Ferdinand was a get-out-of-jail-free card for you, but the creature’s life was in irrevocable mortal jeopardy.

“You can’t force me to marry him!” you whimpered to your mother, praying for a sympathetic ear when you were left alone with her for a moment. She was horrible, but she was a woman. She must understand, at least a little, what they were doing to you.

She patted you softly on the shoulder, but her eyes stayed hard. “Your grandmother remembered when they burned a witch right in the center of town. Believe me, this gossip is not something to take lightly. Making you a proper wife is the only way to make people see that you are a normal girl. If you do not, then you shall no longer be our daughter, and we cannot protect you from whatever shall happen next.”

You tried to speak, but your tongue was dry. You kept trying to swallow the dryness away, but it stuck in your throat. You wanted to rage, to scream against them, to be on fire, but your blood had all turned to ice.

This was happening, and there was nothing you could do but accept it.

*****

The creature strokes your cheek gently, his sympathetic and sorrowful yellow eyes glistening in the erratic flashes of light from the storm. “I am sorry I could not protect you. I am here now; let us depart under the cloak of night.”

Your head shakes in tense arcs before you decide to make them, your throat closing up. “You don’t understand—I can’t.”

The dark shadow shaped like his body becomes a tense, rigid statue. “What do you mean?” he says, cautiously.

“I can’t!” you repeat, as if he’s the one not making sense and your feelings should need no explanation, but you explain anyway, the words gushing out like a flooded river. “Maybe I wanted to, I thought I could, but it isn’t realistic. Look at the storm outside! I can’t run away in the middle of this—it frightens even you, doesn’t it? You couldn’t protect me should a thunderbolt strike me on the head! What will we do during weather such as this without any shelter? With my family monitoring me like a prisoner, I could not even finish packing—I haven’t the food and water to survive a week away from home! Where could we go, anyway? You cannot guarantee Victor Frankenstein will take us in! He may just as likely kill us! They think me a witch here, where everyone has known me since I was a baby. I will be a witch in the next town. We will be pariahs wherever we go.”

You wished he would yell, that he would argue, or be consumed in a fit of emotion—that would be better somehow—instead, he listens to your fearful list of excuses silently, with no reaction but his shoulders slowly falling and a soft, pained growl deep in his throat.

“D-don’t you see?” you explain frantically as if he had been arguing back. “We don’t need to run. They never spoke of you as more than rumor—those hunters, and Bess, they must not have been believed as any more than superstition. Every town has its ghost stories. There is no bloodthirsty mob, so long as I marry him. We can stay here and keep you hidden. We’ll be safe.”

“Safe?” he growls, but only softly and without malice. He can no longer bear to listen quietly. “You wish to marry him?” You hoped he would be angry, but his voice is a wavering medley of betrayal and confusion, and the pang it leaves in your heart is almost too much to bear.

“Of course not, but I have no choice.”

“Yes, you do. Run away with me tonight.” An angry bolt of lightning splintered another tree out in the pasture, making you both jump, and providing the counterpoint to his argument for you. “Tell me you want to marry him,” he reaches out with a large hand that could cover your entire head, and delicately strokes your cheek. His eyes glisten with longing. “Tell me you want this and I will go. I shall live the rest of my life a miserable wretch, but I shall bear it, knowing you are happy.”

“Y-you once told me you wouldn’t care if I was with other men, so long as I came back to you. Maybe we could…”

That finally gets a rise out of him. “We could what?” he snaps, cutting you off. “You desire to marry another, and keep me hidden away in a barn—a filthy secret for you to visit at your leisure—to make love to when you are not sharing a bed with your husband? Is that… what you want?” The energy and indignation he had begun with fades away to a lame sort of helplessness by the end.

You know how pathetic you sound. How weak. It was the last thing you expected of yourself, too. You had always walked to your own beat, never fit in, and never cared what anyone thought of you—at least not enough to change for their benefit. You always dreamed of running away one day.

But you hadn’t.

No matter how much you had dreamed it—and even one exhilarating day had packed a bag and chased an eight-foot monster into the forest, convinced that you might run away with him—you never actually did. So many years waiting in misery, and all of that time you could have run.

But you wouldn’t. The moment the fantasy began to crystallize into reality, you froze with terror. You never would.

You only wish you had realized this before hurting him. Your precious daemon stares back at you expectantly, fiercely blinking his watery yellow eyes to fight off tears he won’t let fall in front of you. He’s waiting for you to assure him that this is a mistake—that he’s more to you than a sexual pet—and your heart twists with shame.

“Here is bad, but here is safe. It’s that kind of bad that’s all I’ve ever known. That sharp, snow-covered peak you can see from the barn has stood there, unchanging since I was born. It was there watching over our valley before my parents were born. The alpine winds have shaped it for thousands of years, since before the great pyramids of Egypt. Maybe I am like that mountain. Maybe I can never change, no matter how much I want to.”

It’s not the answer he hoped for. His jaw clenches. He had come here thinking you were running away together at last, and finally, finally, the weight of what is happening sinks in. You watch as the hope goes out of his eyes. Lightning flashes behind him, a little more distantly now. His throat bobs as he swallows.

“Please don’t look away,” you sob, begging. Something inside you is breaking with him.

Footsteps creak on the stairs and the faint orange glow of a candle filters under the door. “Are you talking to someone in there?” demands your mother’s shrill voice just as the door to your bedroom swings open. Your mother gasps in horror.

“You’ve left the window open, you fool child!” She clucks disapprovingly and rushes to shut it, closing the drenched curtains over it once it is latched tight. The shadow of the creature is gone. “What were you thinking? Of running away?” she snaps.

Yes, you want to scream. You hate her. Pinpricks of tears sting your eyes, and you wish you had disappeared into the night, too, for a vengeful bolt of lightning to release you from your misery.

Then she does something that surprises you. She sighs, and sits at the edge of your bed, her weight making a sinkhole on the straw-filled mattress. “My baby girl, you’re crying. They say it isn’t right for a bride to cry on her wedding night, but we know better.” She smiles sadly and wipes a tear from your cheek. “I wanted to run away, too,” she says quietly. Her gaze drifts over the window thoughtfully, like she was imagining a different life. In the flickering candlelight, you wonder if she could almost see it, that other life. You wonder what it was. “But if I had, where would you be?!” Her voice is back to an accusing, judgment-laden shrill. “I’ve tried so hard with you, to get you to grow up. You finally came to your senses—you’re not a child anymore, you can’t just do whatever you want. Life isn't a fairy tale. Life isn’t about being happy… it’s about doing what you have to do. Don’t disappoint me.”

When she leaves and returns downstairs, you give a cursory but hopeful search under the bed and in the corners and shadows for the creature, but he is gone. You had seen him disappear into the loft at the slightest sound of footsteps dozens of times, and you know he had fled out the window and is miles away by now. You wonder if he had returned to the barn, but you know in your heart that he’s gone. It’s already too late. You saw the way he had looked at you before your mother interrupted. Betrayed. Wounded. Finished.

He must hate you.

You throw open the shutters again and look out on the dark, windswept landscape. Heavy, cold rain pummels your face, soaking your night dress instantly and making your squint and shiver against it. There is no sign of him, though above the howling of the wind, you imagine that you hear him howling, desperate and anguished. You could jump from here, you think. You could lash together your bed sheets and climb down undetected, and—

A bolt of lightning strikes a tree in front of the house and it explodes to splinters as a cataclysm of thunder bursts open your ears. The blinding-white flash fills your room and your senses, sets all your hairs standing on end, and for several moments after you can’t see or hear a thing. Am I alive? you wonder first. Is he scared? you worry a second later. When your eyes finally adjust to the dark again, you can see the smoldering embers of the destroyed trunk, its crown lying in pieces on the ground. One branch had scarcely missed the roof, and had you jumped from your window a moment before, you certainly would have been hit.

If only you had been, a part of you screams against your skull. It’s the only way out, now. Jump from the window! it insisted, its voice weaving harsh fingers of smoke through your mind. Run, slipping in the wet grass with your ankle broken into the night and find him, or be eaten by a bear. Let a branch fall and crush your pathetic body. Let the lightning take you to Hell.

You close the shutter, and latch it.

Shaking, you return to your bed and lay on top of the covers. The depression in the mattress from your mother is still flattening out. Wet spots on the blanket are the only memento of the creature’s visit. You remember what it felt like to be held, warm and safe in his arms just moments ago, and try to tuck the memory away somewhere it will never be lost. Somewhere you can look back at it in the years to come. You’ll never feel that way again.

It would be a mistake to run.

You're making the right choice.

You don’t want to die. Surviving means doing what you have to do.

You're making the right choice.

You repeat it to yourself over and over, shivering alone on top of your bed until the black sky turns to grey, and the birds start to sing a summer chorus—first one melodic song, then a jarring metallic buzz, a repetitive whistle, and more and more add their voices until it swells into a cacophony in the purple dawn. The storm must have passed some time in the night without your noticing. It doesn’t matter. You made your choice and broke your own wings.

You made the right choice.

#frankenstein #Frankenstein's Monster #monster x reader #the creature x reader #monster x human #my writing #lo siento por esto XD #I hope I don't make you wait another 4 months for an update >_>

74 notes · View notes

dragonrajafanfiction · 3 years

Text

Yamata-No-Orochi (Part 2) Princess Tutu

Princess Tutu is a must watch if you haven’t seen it. It’s a bit after the MCs time though so she wouldn’t have been able to see it.

The throbbing bass from the speakers sync with the flashing lights of the dance club at Takamagahara. The crowd is thriving today. You can see glimpses of the masses of people in the pulsing of light. They appear like brief colorful snapshots on the floor below your center platform table.

The Romanceable MC contest continued despite the tragic death of Chance. The official narrative was that Chance died bravely defending you from street hooligans, which is horribly ironic, because that was something that you specifically told him not to do. Now Club Takamagahara was holding another Princess Night with the theme of Knights in Shining Armor. Men walked around like living walls of muscle wearing silver helmets, silver studded leather straps and bronze colored leather subligacula.

It was the exact opposite of what Chance’s life was. He was no knight. He would have been the first to admit that. He was on the underbelly of the world as a gang member, the lowest of his kind as an unstable hybrid and even then he lowered himself further, running sex dungeons for money to maintain the balance between his humanity and his raging dragonblood. And he still smiled and he still dreamed of a Hokkaido winter wedding.

Your chest constricts involuntarily.

“Are you going to be alright? You don’t have to be here.” A voice murmurs in your ear. Diamond is the only contender next to you. As a cowboy style performer, he has no need to dress up like a knight. Cowboys, like handsome knights, are just another font of masculine charm and marital fidelity. They work hard out on the lonely trails, wrangling sheep and cattle but they are true and come home to you, their sweet prairie wife. As sheriffs, they run out the outlaws in the town. “

You look up at him, his eyes are a welcome distraction. “You don’t have to be here either.”

He huffs. “Well, you can’t hurt too bad, if you come up with a sweet comeback like that.”

“Why are you here? Armani and Calypso have backed out.” Rumor had gone around that Chance's killing was related to an out of control fan who had fallen in love with you and had used his yakuza ties to put out a hit job and kidnap you. The other suitors didn’t mind losing a little dignity if it meant living another day.

“I used to work at Bliss Hall, also known as the Paradisio. I knew shady stuff went down. And when the gang war came there, I looked down the barrel of five guns while they interrogated me and patted me down. They determined I wasn't involved and let me go. So… if I was going to die of gang violence I probably would have already.”

“So why are you here?” You reach for the glass of champagne in front of you. Even though you were underage, you were already accustomed to the taste of drink and the smell of tobacco. Your high level of dragonblood didn’t let you get drunk easily as the men found out on your first day as the Main Character on this show. Chu Zihang checked the records on that night, and you had drunk two full bottles of vodka before you even felt the slightest bit tipsy.

He reached for his own glass. “I'm still a competitor. And I'm curious how Chance won three star-hearts in a single night. Is giving up your life the way to your heart? It’s a high price to pay and a lonely existence for you.”

Your mind flashes back to Renata and Chance. “I can see why you're second in the ranking. You dress much flashier than Kazama. But you’re no less of a sharpshooter.”

He presses his hand to his chest and bows.

“I don't need riches or beauty. So if you offer me those things, I'm not attracted. When I first came to Japan, I didn't care about anything. I felt my life was over. I was just trying to wait until the end and I wanted my life to end. But every time I reached for the end, there was a man who kept telling me no. I should not try to end my life and, even if it looked like my life was over, I shouldn't just take that conclusion at face value. His final lesson was I shouldn't just accept the inevitable death of others. It took a few times to accept those three lessons, but it was what I needed.”

“What happened to that guy? He sounds like a real keeper.”

You huff. “He was very happily engaged when we met.”

Chances eyebrows lifted. “I bet.”

“But I never forgot what he taught me. Chance helped me to speak those words from my own heart and my own experience. It's one thing to learn a lesson. When you teach that lesson to others, then you know it's part of your life. To see him listen to me and put what I learned into action because he loved me? How could my heart not overflow? Chance didn’t just accept his fate. He didn't just give up his life for me. He fought for us to be together. He… he wanted to live. I needed that in a person.” You run your hands over the empty glass in your hands imagining his smooth childlike face, so peaceful in the rain. “How many people are there out there who can look fate in the eye and say… ‘How about no?’”

Diamond reaches over with a champagne bottle and refills. “Oh You need someone who can rewrite the script! Like in Princess Tutu.”

You blink. “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘Princess Tutu’?”

“Oh come on, don't tell me you've never heard of Princess Tutu. It's just the best anime ever!”

You’re speechless. It was like this suave handsome Ikemen had suddenly turned into Lu Mingfei. “No, please fill me in.”

“Okay, hear me out. Once there was a writer named Drosselmeyer, who had the power to make his stories come to life. He especially loved to write stories with tragic endings! But he died before he could finish his final tale, called The Prince and the Raven, leaving the two title characters locked in an eternal battle.”

“After many years, the Raven managed to break free into the real world, and the Prince pursued him. To seal away the Raven's evil, the Prince shattered his own heart with his sword, causing him to lose all his memories and emotions. Without his emotions, he is reborn as Mytho.”

“Drosselmeyer, now a ghost, decides the story must have an ending. He finds it in the form of a little duck, who has fallen in love with Mytho. He gives her a magic pendant that can transform her, first into an ordinary human girl, then into the graceful ballerina Princess Tutu, another character in the story. As Tutu, it's Duck's job to find all the scattered shards of Mytho's heart and return them to him.”

“What's more, Duck learns that part of Princess Tutu's story is that she can never confess her love to Mytho, or else she'll turn into a speck of light and vanish. However, it becomes clear that Mytho wants his heart restored, so despite interference, she persists. She finds a friend in Fakir, a man who is the son of Drosselmeyer who also has the ability to bring his stories to life.”

“After most of Mytho's heart is returned to him, the seal trapping the Raven begins to break. Finally able to feel love again, Mytho realizes he loves Rue, another character – not Duck. Duck also discovers her pendant is the final shard, meaning she must give up her life as a human to return it. She eventually finds the courage to do so, and becomes a humble duck again.”

“Mytho and the Raven battle once more. When the fight turns bleak, Mytho considers shattering his heart to seal the monster away again. Duck begins dancing to show him he must not give up. As she does, this guy named Fakir writes a story about how she never stops, no matter how many times the Raven's minions attack her. They make that story a reality! This gives Mytho hope, which gives Mytho the strength he needs to rescue Rue and defeat the Raven. Mytho asks Rue to be his princess and they return to his kingdom inside the story. Duck and Fakir continue their relationship, even though she's stuck in her duck form. With nothing left to do, Drosselmeyer departs in search of another story.”

“The point is, you're Duck and you need someone like Fakir who can defeat Drosselmeyer by rewriting the script!”

When thinking about a ghost behind the scenes writing a script, it was clear who the Drosselmeyer in your life was. Z had rescued you and taught you to fight so your life could continue even though you didn’t really understand why. You were just like a duck receiving the pendant. But Z also had plans for you. He'd also forbidden you from confessing her love to Ruri Kazama before you even had feelings for him, only for you to meet him and suddenly he’s a potential contender for your heart with a clear connection with your past?

Z had a script. And falling in love with Ruri Kazama didn't fit. Why was your love interest so important? Who are you supposed to fall in love with? Caesar asked that in a roundabout way. Why did the person you fell in love with matter to him, if he wasn't your boyfriend?

Chance said that Izanami loved Izanagi on a whim, as a hobby, while she used him to help her live forever. She loved him and turned him into a monster. She needed him, and consumed him.

Z appeared and kissed you after you entered the MC contest. “I want to get to you before those idiots.” He’d said.

He entered the competition only after you nearly gave a star heart to Ruri Kazama. “I know how the story ends.” He’d said.

Pursuing Ruri Kazama or anyone else would defeat his script! Whatever script Z wrote required that you love no one but him.

Your hands tighten on the wine glass and Diamond massages your back. It's not that you had no feelings for Z at all, but Z was acting like Izanami, hiding his true intentions while making overtures of affection. There's only one way to be sure you weren't going to end up a duck or a monster at the end. Force a confession out of Z!

You look up at Diamond. “Thank you.” Your eyes are sparking with something like anger. You felt fierce and wild inside realizing that you’d been led along by this stranger, assuming that ‘keeping you alive’ was good enough of a good ending to your story. But Izanagi was ‘kept’ alive… as a sacrifice to the White King. Until you understood Z’s intention, there was no telling where he was leading you.

You stand up and lightly tap your glass. The host of the Takamagahara lowered the music and all faces turned to your center platform. “I would like to thank you for coming out tonight. I’ll let you get back to your dancing in a moment, but first I would like to award 3 star hearts to Diamond, for opening my eyes to the truth tonight.”

You spoke looking down on your audience like royalty. Standing in your sparkling silver cheongsam, you looked like royalty. Diamond’s eyes opened wide and he hastily swallowed his Champagne before he could choke on it. He had been kicking himself for speaking so foolishly to this woman. She’d fallen into a deep silence and he figured he’d just killed all his chances of a win. But she liked it!

“And I would like to announce the winner of the MC Romance contest. He knows who he is. He has a deep connection to my past, and I would like to explore that connection further. If you’re listening.”

You raise your eyes to the cameras that broadcast your face to hundreds of screens around Takamagahara. Spectators pushed each other to get a good view and the loud hall descended into a deep silence.

You didn’t remember the tune, but you would always remember the words and you speak them, closing your eyes and placing your hands on your heart. “All happiness may be a fleeting blossom in the shadow of the moon, but I am in that shadow waiting for you in a field of those flowers. Won’t you join me? Together we will dance in the depths of Yomi!”

The hairs rise on the necks of every patron of the Takamagahara. Eyebrows knitted in confusion, hushed puzzled whispers were uttered involuntarily. Your words sounded nothing like a love confession, more like a forbidden incantation written in secret by a practitioner of black magic!

The flashing lights suddenly go dark, every large display screen clicks off in a successive wave. You turn around in horror as those screens replace your face with the words “GAME OVER” in bright burning red text!

The words were on every screen in the room. Your eyes scan the room and immediately spot Caesar moving towards you on the left. You quickly descend from the platform and hurry to him. He covers you, sweeping over you with one arm. “Get downstairs. Now!”

His eyes meet with someone else's, likely Chu Zihang’s. “Don’t take the elevators, he can probably control those. We’ll take the stairwell.” He said.

You enter the beige corridor of the stairwell. It’s also pitch black. Not even the emergency lights are on. The basement is only one flight down and you can see to the bottom. A lone shadowy figure staring up at you with furious red gold eyes. You leap back and try to pull Caesar out, back to the crowd. “No! Caesar! Run!”

Caesar’s eyes blaze gold and he levels the Desert Eagles in the direction where you’re fearfully looking, but then he lowers them. He didn't hear anything, or see anything.

“Don’t! Don’t hurt him!” You beg.

“Z’s here?”

You gasp. “Yes. He’s mad.”

“Then we can talk?”

Your eyes swivel to and fro from Caesar’s eyes to Z’s eyes which apparently only you can see. Caesar still held his Desert Eagles but there was no fear there. “Yes.”

“Alright… Z. You’re running Takamagahara. The MC love contest was your idea right? What are your plans for MC?” Caesar asks. “I get the feeling you don’t have her best interests at heart.”

Z chuckles from the bottom of the well. “This conversation will have to wait. I’m a bit busy with another client.”

You’re shaking so much you hold on to Caesar’s arm to just keep yourself upright. “He’s gone.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’s busy with another client.”

The door opens, scaring you both. Chu blinks at both of you in the dark stairwell but then he looks at Caesar and holds his questions. “We’ve got a problem. The Uesugi girl and Lu Mingfei have run into trouble. The whole area around the Robuchon restaurant is blocked off and it’s complete chaos. We’ve got to find Lu Mingfei and make sure he’s alright.”

Caesar gathers his arm around you and together you leave the stairwell. “MC, come with us. I don't want you and that Uesugi girl to meet, but until I figure out what Z is… I don’t think you should be alone.”

#Dragon Raja

5 notes · View notes

out-of-this-dimension · 4 years

Text

Spooky SF Headcanons

Happy Spoopy Day~ Hope everyone is well. I thought I could celebrate on here with some spooky headcanons!

Venom

Venom is considered to be a haunted, cursed place. There are remnants of several civilizations scattered across the planet, the most prominent being the ancient Cornerus and the far more recent failed Cornerian Settlement Project.

Not much is known about the Cornerus or what happened to them but their ruins still haunt Venom’s eerie landscape. There are rumors of ghosts that dwell within, wailing in a state of perpetual limbo with eyes that can invoke madness. Usually these ghosts do not stray far from the old Cornerus cities but occasionally there have been sightings in the jungles. Most sightings are usually laughed off fearfully-- people don’t want to admit there might be a nugget of truth to any of these rumors but the amount of people who have seen something paranormal in the wilds is incredibly high.

The Cornerian Settlement Project happened quite some time before the Lylat Wars, before even the time of James McCloud, Peppy Hare, and General Pepper. The project was a colonization effort to start a third planetary hub that would function as a center of trade with planets further from Corneria, such as Sauria and Cerinia. Back then, Venom had a different name, tentatively called “Eden”, though that name was quickly nixed after the Settlement Project. Although some experts had already scoped Venom out and had reported high levels of toxins in the air, most of those reports were dismissed by settlers. The sight that followed the settlers arriving was allegedly one so traumatic that the survivors immediately ran back onto the ships in horror. As soon as the first group arrived, over half their number dropped dead on boarding ramp, their lungs clotted with airborne poisons. The survivors wished to leave but eventually did decide to settle the proposed colony area on Venom. However, within two years, the colony was abandoned, even after measures were taken to try to purify the air. It is said that not only did the air make it hard to populate the land but there was an unnatural force that pushed the Cornerians out-- a force no one could see but could feel. A force that would dismantle bits of their infrastructure and haunt their government officials at night. After the Project failed, the planet’s name was switched to Venom and it was used as a place for exile.

Of course, Venom has seen plenty of civilizations who survived the toxic atmosphere -- namely reptilians who have long made their home amid the jungles. Though reptiles are not entirely uncommon in the Lylat System, the varieties seen on Venom were viewed with apprehension, no doubt stemming from the fact that the planet itself seemed cursed, so everything that lived there also carried that same stigma. From these early discoveries of Venomian reptiles came legends of alien-like beasts that would thrive in the dark jungles, abducting Lylatians and feasting upon their flesh.

Fichina

Not many people would consider Fichina to be a terrifying planet-- after all, it’s home to sights such as the aurora borealis. However its harsh climate has led to some terrifying discoveries over the years.

Fichina’s north and south pole clock the coldest temperatures in all of Lylat, however that has not stopped people from trying to live there, even those without any expertise in living in such harsh conditions. Climate control centers dot the planet’s surface, trying to stabilize some of the weather in an attempt to play God. However, there have been several cases of these climate control centers failing, resulting in lives being lost as entire cities are covered in blizzards. Alternatively, heating systems connected to the climate control center have been known to occasionally fail, resulting in the worst case scenario imaginable-- entire cities frozen, its denizens inside, lifeless.

Yet despite the freezing temperatures, arctic animals often make their home on Fichina. When Corneria arrived at first to establish peaceful negotiations with the Fichinans, they spread across the planet’s surface, even venturing out to reclusive villages up north. One military officer reported back to Corneria with a chilling report that they had found several villages that had been infected by a sickness of some sort, turning most of their citizens (arctic wolves) into mindless creatures running berserk. The Cornerians destroyed the village and all who were within to keep the sickness from spreading, later attributing it to something found in a local set of mines. This report was eventually leaked to the public and twisted by media. Over time, these barbaric, berserker wolves became something of a cryptic legend and there are claims some of them even still exist to this day.

Aquas

Though a planet that looks like a gleaming sapphire in the midst of space, Aquas is a planet drowning in a bloody history and filled with dark secrets.

It is believed that the monstrosity Bacoon destroyed the north and south poles of Aquas, flooding the continents with water. This is a tale that has been believed by Cornerians for some time... but no one has really discovered how this was possible. There has been some research done into this legend to ascertain the truth but no one knows for certain how the giant clam was able to do this. There have been, however, strange shrines spotted on the ocean floor. Shrines that bear an uncanny resemblance to shrines found on Venom and Sauria. Did Bacoon... have help? And if it did, what happened to that help?

After the defeat of Bacoon, Corneria opted to help the planet recover from all of the pollution Andross had dumped into its waters. When they did, they also decided to explore the planet, scoping it out as a possible location for a colony. The planet was perfectly fine, they believed, just covered in water-- nothing that they could not possibly work around. However, as they searched the planet, they chose to dive into its depths. Not only were they met with abyssal, dark waters but their scanners indicated an assortment of gargantuan things that lurked far, far below the water’s surface-- things that perhaps had not even seen the light in hundreds of years. Although the colony project was given the greenlight, there were many scientists unsure if it should have been approved of at all. Many beg the question if Bacoon was ever really alone down there.

Exploration into Aquas’s ruins have uncovered what may have been religious worship of Bacoon. Worship that eventually was abandoned, resulting in the beast growing enraged. Some of these depictions of worship include bloody sacrifices to the clam.

Eladard

Eladard’s surface is a nightmarish tangle of factories and cities, the planet’s environment completely disregarded. Eladard has become something of a junk planet, filled with graveyard-like dump sites.

Eladard’s capital city saw its fair share of strife after the planet was abandoned by wealthy Cornerians looking to profit off the planet. The worst of its strife stemmed from its self-proclaimed mayor, who ruled the city with an iron fist and his own personal army of mobsters. After he was dethroned and killed by mercenaries, his manor’s grounds were investigated. Countless bodies were found on the site, some even taxidermied and kept in a trophy room. The entire manor was burned to the ground and his body was allegedly burned with it. The grounds now stand empty, just outside of town, charred. Some folks have since tried to revitalize the area... but for some strange reason, nothing ever seems to grow there. Not even grass.

Eladard’s clusters of factories have seen their fair share of work accidents. From these accidents, occasionally there have been deaths. And from these deaths have occasionally been ghost sightings-- usually late at night, from the graveyard shift. Sometimes when the workers are packing up, they will swear they see their late coworkers, occasionally looking as though they are clocking in. Other times, they can be seen across Eladard’s nightmarish landscapes, wandering about the factories aimlessly, as if they are unable to rest.

Space

Space... the final frontier some say. But despite being beautiful, it is a silent, haunting place.

Tales of the unknown are common among pilots, particularly space-faring ones. But one of the most haunting sights is near Sector Omega, where one of the final fights happened in the Lylat Wars. It is said that there is a spaceship graveyard still out there, debris floating in limbo for all eternity. It consists of both Cornerian and Venomian ships, abandoned by their respective sides and left to drift forever.

Every so often within the asteroid belt of Meteo, pilots have reported a strange portal. Of course not many dare approach it out of fear... but a few brave souls have, plunging into the unknown fearlessly. They disappear within and usually are found days later, sometimes on the other side of the Lylat System, babbling about strange lights and even stranger noises. Each of them has described a world where reality is distorted and the laws of physics don’t seem to make sense. All of their descriptions are similar with a few tweaks here and there-- moons with sneering faces, comets made of rainbows, strange random objects floating about, and strange, terrifying creatures lurking within. Each and every account ends with the pilot being led to safety by something they can only describe as “the Whale”. It should be noted that all of the pilots have experienced some sort of psychosis from prolonged exposure to this strange dimension and have all been needed to be hospitalized. Cornerian officials from the CDF have looked into the matter but the findings have not been made public.

#star fox #starfox #venom #long post #headcanons #star fox headcanons #starfox headcanons #fichina #aquas #bacoon #eladard #spooky headcanons #out of this dimension #meteo #ok some of these are heavily based off of canon but like eh i put a small bit of my own spin on it

27 notes · View notes

tanoraqui · 4 years

Text

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] Epilogue

[now all on AO3!]

The real tragedy is that, while Nie Huaisang got to attend Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s wedding, and of course it was lovely and everything it could have been, he had to miss the subsequent banquet, which was the event of the century. A week later he’s already heard a song about it; two weeks and he’s heard four, and more rumors than usually circulate in a year, and even they mostly pale to the reality as reported from the horse’s mouth

“ - I was just going to run around dodging until some ghosts got through, but then Lan Zhan leapt to my defense, catching Sandu with Bichen!” Wei Wuxian grinned at Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang with equal glee, though his smile for the former was much softer. “Jiang Cheng struck back, of course, and they were off - two of the greatest cultivators of our generation, leaping from table to table right there in Glamour Hall, fighting blade to blade - and whip to guqin!”

He gestured dramatically, recreating the moment and nearly smacking Lan Wangji, seated beside him, in the face. Lan Wangji simply ducked, expressionless except maybe for the faintest crinkle of his eyes. Nie Huaisang sipped his wine and watched in delight

they’d come under cover of darkness, sneaking up old side-stairs they’d all used during the Sunshot Campaign. Perhaps excessive, but a little caution never hurt anyone

drinking together in Nie Huaisang’s bedroom when everyone was supposed to be asleep felt ridiculously nostalgic, though

“But Jiang Cheng - don’t tell him I said this - is just the tiniest bit much less impressive than Lan Zhan, so I had to leap in in turn - Lan Zhan didn’t realize we were just play-acting, nobody had thought to bring him in on it, he just defended me because it was the honorable thing to do.”

The stars in his eyes put the clear night sky to shame.

“I will not allow harm to come to Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said calmly

holy shit. Holy shit. How had Nie Huaisang missed this one, when he prided himself on keeping up with all the juiciest gossip about his friends.

He refilled Wei Wuxian’s cup. “And that’s when you started the food fight? I heard there was a food fight.”

“Yes!” Wei Wuxian clapped. “I couldn’t exactly use my sword - I’d already boasted that I didn’t need it! But Lan Zhan was going to kick my shidi’s ass, and I had to step in - so I tipped a bowl of soup right in his face!” He ran a hand down Lan Wangji’s chest and frowned dramatically. “It ruined all his beautiful robes - I’m so sorry, Lan Zhan.”

“Mn. It was no trouble.”

Now that Nie Huaisang was looking for it, he recognized the slight stiffening of a man absolutely desperate to grab that hand and pull its bearer into his lap and then some. Holy fucking shit.

Wei Wuxian cackled. “It wasn’t! You just kept fighting with Jiang Cheng - so I kept throwing food! At both of you, because sometimes Jiang Cheng kept trying to hit me, too - until not just ghosts arrived but some corpses, too, coming up from the dungeons.” That broken-glass edge to his smile again. “It seems Jin Guangshan had been quite a bad boy, or at least one of his guest disciples had - a man named Xue Yang got called out, I heard? But he disappeared?” He turned to Lan Wangji. “We heard people talking on the road.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji confirmed

“I heard the same,” Nie Huaisang said. “Creepy weirdo. Jin Guangshan is saying the corpses were yours, of course, but it’s a little hard since Zewu-jun found all those notes on demonic cultivation in Xue Yang’s room - and some of them with Jin Guangyao’s handwriting on them.”

“We heard about that - kind of,” said Wei Wuxian. “Is he really in the dungeon himself now?”

“Yes.” Nie Huaisang smiled, and topped off his own glass. “Between that and having reason to believe he’d just given all the Wen prisoners to Nie Sect on a whim, Jin Guangshan is quite displeased with Lianfang-zun.”

he felt a little bad for Lan Xichen, but the man would get over it. He still had one respectable, far superior sworn brother

Wei Wuxian raised his glass in toast and Nie Huaisang met it gladly, and leaned forward again. “So what happened next?”

“Oh, you know.” Wei Wuxian leaned back and waved one hand. “Lots of shouting. The peacock got shijie out of there, so I guess maybe he’s okay for her. A lot more fighting - Jiang Cheng kept doing a really good impression of trying to kill me, Lan Zhan kept stopping him, and I kept stopping Lan Zhan from hitting Jiang Cheng too hard. Jiang Cheng shouted again about how I’d better destroy the Tiger Seal or leave YunmengJiang forever, just like we’d planned, so I threw half of it in the air and broke it with Suibian - and good thing I wasn’t holding it, because even just half of it exploded so hard it blew up half of Glamour Hall! I was nearly knocked out - Lan Zhan had to carry me out on Bichen!”

he spoke airily, except for the last part which he spoke with hearts in his eyes, but there was a weight like a brick to it. Nie Huaisang wondered how much of the supposedly pre-planned drama had come down to split-second decisions about what mattered most

though it was also hilarious to think that anyone believed it wasn’t choreographed, on the part of Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng at least. For one thing, Qinghe had strength; Lanling, appearance and secrets; and the spirit of Yunmeng, true to its motto, was sheer bloody-minded perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, preferably with as much drama as possible. If Sandu Sengshou and the Yiling Patriarch truly fought to the death, even Huangang-jun wouldn’t be able to stop it, and a mere wedding banquet couldn’t contain the battle - it would be on the edge of a cliff before the entire cultivation world, possibly with the earth on fire around them

it was even more hilarious to think that even if emotions ran that furiously high, either of them would do a single thing to ruin their beloved sister’s wedding day, without her explicit permission and encouragement

“I can’t believe you destroyed a major sect hall without me” Nie Huaisang shook his head mournfully. “Remember when we set off firecrackers in the Cloud Recesses?”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said firmly, while Wei Wuxian burst into laughter.

“Ah, Huaisang-gongzi,” he said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “I promise I’ll invite you next time.”

"You’d better!” Nie Huaisang cried. “I mean, you still have half the Tiger Seal to destroy...”

Wei Wuxian shot him a wink that said, that’s true, and you’re my friend, but I’m not biting that hook you’re using to fish for information. Nie Huaisang shrugged, can you blame me? and lifted the wine jug again

“More? You know, you’re welcome to stay more than one night. This is so fun, just catching up - and I know A-Yuan will be delighted to see you again!”

“He really is a cute kid, isn’t he?” Wei Wuxian smiled wistfully, then shook his head. “But no - maybe we’ll say hi to Wen Qing and Wen Ning, but we’ve given Jin Guangshan about four different things to worry about, when he used to have just one or two, but it’s still probably better not to consolidate them.”

Nie Huaisang had to nod to the wisdom of that. (It was a pity the whole tower hadn’t come down on the man’s head, really.) He savored the last few sips of his own glass. “So you’ll be gone in the morning - do you know where?”

“I’ve heard that there’s a shidi of my mother’s starting to make a name for himself as a rogue cultivator - another disciple of Baoshan Sanren. I thought I might find him and, you know, say hello at least.”

His smile was touched with mournful longing, but his eyes held the particular glint that said someone was about to be befriended, or possibly adopted into YunmengJiang on authority of the Head Disciple, whether they liked it or not. It was a very Wei Wuxian expression, and Nie Huaisang didn’t think he’d seen it since they were all young and stupid at the Cloud Recesses

“I am going with him,” stated Lan Wangji, Victim Example #1 of that expression

“Aw, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian, for lack of a better word, snuggled up against him, before turning back to Nie Huaisang and saying with exaggerated disappointment. “He’s finally accepted that I’m not going to go back to Gusu to be cleansed within an inch of my life, so he’s following me around and keeping me out of trouble day by day instead. So righteous! So boring!”

good god, did he not know...?

Nie Huaisang met Lan Wangji’s eyes and found there a well a patience deeper than the sea, and affection just a great Well, he had to toast to that

He raised his last mouthful of wine, to clink against Wei Wuxian’s glass and the cup of tea Lan Wangji had been politely nursing. “Well, good luck to both of you!”

That’s all, folks! Thanks for reading!

#mdzs #the untamed #my fic #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #lan wangji #i think this au may have come to like...16k or so total #that was. unintentional.#i mean this last bit is really just an entire scene that i happened to format with bullet points as i wrote out all the dialogue and stuff #...his bodes ill for the efficiency of my fierce corpse jiang yanli canon rewrite #anyway i'll probably put some minimal polish on all this and slap it into ao3 bc by god i wrote like 16K #IN LIKE 8 DAYS NO LESS #LOOK UPON ME YE MIGHTY AND encourage me to go get some sleep

114 notes · View notes