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princess-of-riviaa · 4 years

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Inflicting Misery Chapter 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Pairing: August Walker x Reader

Summary: After the world of the CIA hears of August Walker’s death and betrayal, you track him down to hear the truth for yourself.

Author’s Note: The previous chapters took place before the events in Mission Impossible: Fallout. This chapter picks up after the events of the movie.

Warning(s): Mission Impossible Fallout spoilers, overstimulation, oral (f receiving), fingering, choking

Word Count: 3,716

You double check to make sure your gun is locked as you step inside the safehouse. It’s quiet--eerily so. Your instincts tell you that someone’s here, that you’re not alone, and the silence tells you that the other person is aware of your presence and doing their best to not make a sound. You move through each room slowly, your gun raised and ready to shoot. The kitchen is empty, as well as the living room and dining room.

You make your way upstairs, but as soon as you round the corner of the hallway, a hand comes up behind you to wrap around your mouth. The attacker’s other hand grabs onto your gun and tosses it down the hall before you can fire. From the size of the body behind you, you know it’s a man. And he’s easily twice your size. You elbow him in stomach as hard as you can but his stomach is hard. He’d expected the blow and easily deflected it. His hand is still tight around your mouth, so you bite down on his fingers and his grip loosens enough for you to escape his hold and turn on him. Your fists are raised before you even take a good look at him--and then you freeze.

The attacker is August. Very alive August. Very hurt August.

For a second, you’re relieved. You’ve been recovering from your accident for six weeks now, but you still lose your breath too quickly. You didn’t have the strength to fight someone off much longer. But your relief quickly turns to something worse.

His face is so scarred and burned that you can’t even speak, can’t blink, can’t fucking breathe because the sight of him in so much pain makes you sick to your stomach and angry as hell. Ethan Hunt did this, you know it. Your boss had briefly mentioned Hunt’s name in the debriefing this morning, before announcing that August had fallen off a cliff and failed to survive the fall--the latter clearly being a lie. He just holds your gaze, daring you to look away. There’s anger in his eyes. You’ve known him long enough to know the anger isn’t aimed at you, but at whoever did this to him, at the world for letting this happen, at himself for god knows what.

You feel yourself begin to dissociate, watching your hand reach out to him rather than feeling yourself do it. He flinches back when he realizes you’re trying to touch his face. You freeze. The coldness in his eyes is replaced by a fear you’ve never seen in him before. You give him your most assuring look as you slowly inch your hand towards him again. This time, he doesn’t move. His entire body is tensed like he’s afraid to even breathe. But he lets you touch him. He lets your fingers brush over the marred skin, the layers upon layers of burned flesh. There’s just smooth skin where the curls on the left side of his head used to be. You’ll miss running your fingers through those curls.

But he’s alive. It could have been his entire body that burned. But it was just his face--and not even all of it. He’s alive, and he’s breathing, and he’s safe.

You pull him against you. When your arms wrap around him--squeezing hard enough that if he were any smaller it would hurt--you don’t think you can ever let go of him again. He hesitates. For an everlasting second, he hesitates. His body is tense under your touch and you don’t know if he’s going to push you away or say something to hurt you. His arms hang limp at his sides. But finally, finally, he hugs you back and you bury your face in his chest. Your senses are overwhelmed with August: the mint/pinecone smell of him, strongest when your nose is buried in his chest hair; the feeling of his thick muscles relaxing against your body and his arms encircling you, pulling you tight against him until every part of you is touching some part of him; the sight of that navy shirt that’s three shades deeper than his eyes and the spots where he’d clearly tried to clean blood out but had stained the material just a shade off from the rest of the shirt; the taste of your heart in your mouth, beating so fast with such immense relief that he’s alive and beside you again; and the sound of him whimpering faintly, barely audible to your ears. His chest rises and falls unsteadily and you know he’s crying as he buries his face into the top of your head. You feel the teardrops fall onto your hair and soak them, but you don’t pull away.

You’ve worked with August long enough to have gone on several missions together. Most of them were successful, but a rare few weren’t. And you know that when he has hard days or suffers tough losses--like the one he’s suffering now--the thing he needs the most isn’t someone to talk him through it. He needs someone to be there for him, to hold him and stand beside him until he’s cried all of his tears out. That’s not how you deal with your pain, but if that’s how he deals with his demons then you’ll be right there next to him, fighting those demons alongside him.

So you stand there in his safehouse, buried beneath this man’s huge ass arms, looking like a child compared to him, and you let him cry. You let him scream out all the anger and pain and embarrassment and regret that he’s kept bottled up until just now. You stand there, and you fight his demons alongside him.

He calms down several minutes later. You pull away just enough to look him in the eye.

“Tell me what the hell happened,” you say, and the tone of your voice tells him that there’s no way he’s getting out of explaining what the hell is going on.

So he tells you. He talks for what must be a good hour, explaining everything: Sloane sending him on a mission to work beside Ethan Hunt and ensure he doesn’t do anything destructive; having a falling out with Hunt and his team and them turning his back on him; ending it all on the edge of a cliff as he faced off with Hunt, before Hunt pushed him over the edge.

“That’s a beautiful story,” you tell him bitterly. “Beautifully fictitious. Are you actually lying to me right now? After everything? Look around, August. I’m the only one you have left, the only one who knows you’re still alive. Either you tell me the truth or I walk out that front door and never come back.”

He clenches his jaw. “You’re going to walk out either way. Once you know the truth...”

The look you give him makes him shut up.

“Hunt and his men discovered I’m John Lark,” August admits, watching your face as his words register in your mind.

You’ve heard the name. Everyone in your division is familiar with the terrorist who dreams of annihilating half of the world’s population and starting a new world order. August Walker is John Lark.

You raise an eyebrow. “Is that the big reveal? The big secret you’ve been hiding?”

“You’re not surprised,” he realizes. “You knew?”

“You had me edit that stupid manifesto all those years ago, remember?” you recall. “I’ve known about this whole John Lark deal before anyone else did.”

He frowns. “Why didn’t you go to anyone about it?”

“You swore me to confidentiality,” you remember. “If I check that stupid paper for grammatical errors, you’d track down my abusive father and kill him for me. Which you did. So I couldn’t tell anyone. And I knew the story would come out eventually. No one can hide in the shadows forever, not even you, August.”

“You knew who I was this entire time,” August says, still disbelieving.

“You’re August Walker,” you say, “a dangerous man with as much bloodlust as every other person in the CIA. You’ve got the right idea that the world sucks, just crazy stupid ideas as to how to go about fixing it. You’re the first and only person who saw potential in me when I first started as an agent, and you’re the reason I work under Sloane now. You’re the only friend I’ve had in the last six years. So yeah, I know who you are.”

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Friend? Really?”

You shrug.

“I’m not your friend,” he disagrees.

“Well then what--” you begin, but he shuts you up with a kiss. It surprises you to breathlessness.

His hands are suddenly on your hips, your tiny frame swallowed up by his large hands, and he walks you backwards until your back collides with the wall. The kiss deepens as your bodies press tightly together. August crowds every inch of your body and it’s so overwhelming and hot that you find yourself moaning into his mouth. As your mouth parts, he takes the opportunity to tug on your bottom lip before licking his tongue inside your mouth. You reach out for him. Your hands reach for his hair, but he holds your wrists against the wall over your head, keeping you trapped against him.

“You really like pinning me up to walls,” you let out, trying to make a lighthearted joke, but the breathless way you say it has an effect on him.

His erection presses into your stomach as he moves his mouth to your neck. He nips at your ear just enough to make it hurt before whispering, “I really like hearing you moan my name, baby girl.”

“Fuck,” you sigh. The deep baritone of his voice on top of his filthy admissions sets your body on fire. Your hips grind up against him, needing him to touch you. “August, please.”

“Just like that, baby girl,” he says as he adjusts both your wrists in one hand and uses his free one to wrap around your throat. “Say my name just like that.”

“Please, August,” you beg again, too desperate to put up a fight. “I need you to touch me.”

“Be specific,” he tells you as he licks a stripe up your neck. “Tell me what you want, baby girl.”

You love how dirty he makes you feel, how he talks to you like you’re the sexiest woman alive. It does things to you that you can’t explain. And it gives you the audacity you need to voice your desires. “I want to feel you inside of me.”

He hums into your neck, clearly liking the idea as he spreads your knees apart with his leg and presses into against you core. You cry out and begin to grind against his leg. You’re so wet that your heat spreads to his leg as you continue to drip through your underwear. Fuck, there’s too many layers of clothes between you right now.

“Fuck me, August,” you cry out.

He stills and pulls back from you, looking in your eyes for a sign of hesitancy. “You’re sure?”

You nod hurriedly, past the point of words. Fuck, you need him.

He kisses you roughly enough that you feel it in every part of your body. His hands move from your wrists and neck to grab your ass and lift you from the ground. Your legs instantly wrap around his waist. You never break the kiss as he leads you to his bedroom. Your heart races in your chest in anticipation and nervousness. You want this as much as you’re afraid of it.

August is gentle as he spreads you out on his soft bed. He takes his time to take off your shirt and unbutton your jeans before pulling them down with your underwear. As soon as you’re naked in front of him you close your legs and wrap your arms around your breasts. He growls in disapproval and grabs your wrists, holding them above your head. He nudges your legs apart with his own and takes in the sight of you again.

“You don’t get to hide from me,” he says, and his husky voice on top of the look he’s giving you makes your nipples harden with desire. His eyes flick down to your chest and he lets go of your hands so he can grope at your breasts.

“Oh!” you cry out as he wraps his mouth around your right nipple. He runs his tongue over the bud before clasping his lips around it and sucking--hard. Your mouth falls open with a gasp.

His left hand massages your other nipple while his right hand reaches between your legs and cups your heat. His fingers are instantly coated in your wet arousal. It makes you blush, him knowing just how wet you are, but the way he moans in approval before running his fingers between your folds just makes you more breathless. The stimulation on your breasts and between your legs is more than you can handle. You feel your body tighten as your thoughts become blurred.

“August,” you gasp out, knowing what that feeling signals. “August, I’m gonna... fuck, I’m...” You’re so fucked out that you can’t finish your sentence to warn him properly.

He continues to grope and suck on your nipples as he inserts one long, thick finger inside of you. The feeling is foreign, but it’s so fucking amazing that your walls clench around him immediately. He curls his finger inside of you just once. That’s all it takes for you to come undone underneath him. You cry out his name as you cum and your body shakes and spasms through your high.

He pulls away from you when you can breathe properly again. The smirk he’s giving you makes you blush and you want to smack him for it, for gloating in the effect he has on you. “You’re so fucking sensitive, baby girl. This is gonna be fun.”

Before you can ask what he means by that, he inserts another finger inside of you. The stretch is tight and it hurts for a few seconds. He curls his fingers inside of you and the pain quickly turns to pleasure so great that your eyes squeeze shut and you’re reduced to a moaning mess again. His fingers move fast inside of you. It doesn’t take long before you’re gasping and falling over the edge again. You cry out and clutch onto his forearm as you cum for him again. Your eyes water as your body becomes overstimulated.

August, the fucker, doesn’t even give you time to come down from your high before he moves between your legs and kisses your heat. His lips latch onto your clit. By the time you come back to your senses, your body is already writhing against him again. Your hips buck up to his fingers and mouth as he goes all out on you. His fingers move at an inhuman speed inside of you and you realize that he added a third finger at some point. You’re so wet that your pussy makes a squelching noise every time his fingers move inside of you. The noise is so vulgar that your face burns. Sweat sticks to your neck and back as your fingers clench the sheets beside you.

“Please, August!” you beg. Five minutes ago you’d been begging for him to fuck you; now you’re begging for him to relent.

But your words only spur you on and he swirls his tongue over your clit, his lips still sucking hard on your heat. Your legs clench around him as you cum again. Your body spasms uncontrollably and tears fall down your face. You’ve never felt this much pleasure in your entire life. He swallows up every drop of your arousal.

“You taste like fucking heaven, baby girl,” he groans and the sound of that noise falling from his mouth just does the filthiest things to your mind and you’re desperate for him once again. He kisses each of your thighs. “Relax, baby girl, I’ve got you.” If his words don’t have an affect on you, his mouth returning to your clit certainly does. His fingers move inside of you again and it isn’t long before you’re overwhelmed with pleasure again.

“August, please!” you cry out as tears snake down your cheeks. His fingers are moving so fast inside of you, his tongue circling your clit so intensely, that you’re about to cum again--for the fourth time tonight. And he hasn’t even fucked you yet. Your vision is blurred and your body is on fire and the pleasure is so close to turning to pain.

You need his cock.

You need him inside of you.

You need to feel him fill you up to the brim, feel him warm your insides with his seed.

You need him to claim you.

August pulls his mouth away from you and your body twitches, your nerves too overwhelmed and overstimulated to process any input in a normal manner. You open your eyes just enough to look down at him between your thighs, smirking like the fucking devil. “I’ve already claimed you, little one,” he says, and you swear your entire body burns with a blush as you realize that you just said all those things out loud.

“Please,” you gasp, your breaths coming in quick, short bursts.

He rises from the bed and you whimper at the loss of contact. You instantly miss the warmth of his body and the stimulation of his mouth and tongue making you completely soaked for him. He undresses himself slowly, taking his time with every button on his shirt. He’s fully aware you’re losing your mind with every passing second. After what feels like an eternity his shirt falls to the floor. Your eyes rake over his body. You’ve seen him shirtless before but it’s never any less impressive. Your eyes jump all over his skin, not knowing where to look first. The sight of his muscles flexing and jumping in his arms as he unbuckles his pants makes you drip even more for him. And those scars, tiny war wounds he’s gotten from what he won’t say, but a reminder that he’s dangerous all the same--god, if the sight of those scars don’t just make the filthiest things run through your mind. Your hands ache to run through that thick, dark chest hair. He steps out of his pants and you’re already so wound up that you moan at the sight of his cock, hard and huge. Your walls clench as you anticipate the sting you’ll feel as he pushes himself inside of you for the first time.

“Fuck me,” you beg when you see the lust in his eyes, making the room burn with an intoxicating, mind-numbing heat.

He’s on top of you a second later, pushing your legs apart and lining up with your entrance. You close your eyes in anticipation when he pushes the tip in and stays there, waiting for you to adjust to his size before pushing further in.

“You’re so fucking tight, I love this pussy,” he growls as he continues to sheath himself inside of you.

You cry out his name in a whimper, though it’s more out of pleasure than pain. God, the things this man is capable of making you feel... it’s terrifying how intoxicating he is.

At long last he bottoms out inside of you. He wraps his hands around your hips, so tiny in his hands, before beginning to move inside of you.

“Gonna fuck you until you cry,” he promises.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. You don’t know what to compare it to. It’s so much better than his fingers. His tongue on you feels almost as good as this, but the feeling of him inside of you eclipses everything else. His grip on your hips is tight as he bucks his hips against you, his balls slapping against your ass. And, fuck it, your body is so wound up and tired and overstimulated that tears already spill down your cheeks, giving August exactly what he wants. He slows his movements inside of you to a gentle pace. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out, your brain and body too tired to function properly. August leans down and licks the tears that fall down your face. The act is so sweet, yet simultaneously so arousing, that you moan and whine.

“I love the little sounds you make for me, baby girl,” he whispers. Seconds later he’s pounding into you again, turning your whines into full out screams.

His thrusts grow sloppier, the pace quickening even more, and you wonder when he’s going to cum. Your body is at the edge too, but you’ve already cum so many times that you don’t know if you can do it again.

One of his hands move to your throat, squeezing tight enough to keep you from breathing, while his other moves down to circle your clit. Within seconds your body is so aroused that every part of you is tingling. Your walls clench around his cock as you cum. He follows seconds later. His seed is warm inside of you and shit, he didn’t wear a condom, but you’re too out of it to care or really process what all of that means.

August pulls out of you and releases his grip on your throat, letting you breathe again. He lies down beside you and pulls you into his arms. You rest your head against his chest and listen to his heart begin to slow. His fingers run through your hair soothingly. That’s the last thing you’re aware of before you fall into a deep, blissful sleep.

...

You don’t know what time it is when you wake. All you’re aware of is how sore your body is--and that August is gone. You get out of bed, wondering if he’s getting something to eat downstairs, when you notice a post-it note on the bedside table. You pick it up and read:

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. Don’t come looking for me this time.

--AW

***

Taglist:

@littlefreya

@agniavateira

@hnryycvll

#august walker #august walker imagine #august walker smut #august walker mission impossible #henry cavill #henry cavill smut

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gryfon-spanish-werewolf · 4 years

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Three Word Prompt

Three word prompt: Gelato-machine, pinecone, airpod

Words gifted by @daughterofhel, story inspired by the wonderful stream @patronustrip hosted yesterday! I’m a woman of my word: when I say I will write fluff by morning I SHALL

Hope you enjoy! [ao3 link]

-----

Anna didn’t really know how Elsa was managing it, but watching her sister scale the pine tree in the backyard really should have been on her bucket list, and Anna was regretting not being able to cross it off officially.

It was a hot summer day and their kitten Olaf had gotten out of the house, following a bird that had flown to the top of the tree. Olaf had spent the next fifteen minutes mewling and meowling at the top of his tiny lungs, stuck and frightened, until Anna had heard him and they’d leapt into action. Anna had volunteered to go get him of course, but Elsa had patted her shoulder, rolled up her sleeves, and set to climbing.

She was about six feet up when Anna recovered the use of her voice to say, “Are you crazy? You’ve never climbed anything in your life!”

“Yes I have,” Elsa tossed over her arm, searching for her next handhold. “I climbed all fifty stories of the North Mountain Hotel for that charity fund.”

“This is not the same thing!”

“I’ll be fine Anna,” Elsa hiked herself up another couple of inches, feathering the ground with dead pine needles. “Besides, who else is going to make the gelato? Me? It always tastes better when you make it.”

So here Anna was, in the kitchen of their shared home, prepping a frozen treat for a wonderful sunny day, watching a blonde head rise up, up, up in a canopy of green and brown. Occasionally there’d be another deluge of needles or the clatter of pinecones bouncing between branches, but shockingly, Elsa was making good progress. Little Olaf had stopped crying and was curled up into a quivering white ball.

“Poor little guy,” Anna said, putting the last of the ingredients into the gelato maker and flicking the switch. “I’ll have to let him have a little spoonful when this is ready.” She knew Elsa would chide her and say Olaf shouldn’t get any because he ran out of the house, but Anna also knew that underneath Elsa’s stern exterior was a massive softie. A softie who would almost certainly sneak Olaf a bite even after a lecture.

A buzz had Anna patting her back pocket for her phone, but she had no new messages. Another buzz came, this time Anna found Elsa’s phone abandoned on the counter. Just an email, but something else did catch Anna’s eye. The phone was playing music.

Curious.

It wasn’t coming out of the speakers, that much was obvious. Maybe it was connected to one of the various bluetooth devices in the house. Elsa liked to listen to music in her office and a few months ago they’d installed speakers in the living room for karaoke nights.

Anna grabbed the phone off the counter, walking out the screen door to ask Elsa about it.

Her question died in her throat.

Elsa had reached Olaf and was in the middle of extending her hand out to him. She was leaning precariously away from the tree, trying to coax him closer, but that’s not what made Anna’s mouth dry out in heart palpitating fear.

Elsa was high, so high that the branches had started to thin out and thin down. The one she’d chosen to plant her feet on was bending way too far, and Anna did not like the sounds it was making.

Anna cupped her hands over her mouth. “Elsa!” No response. “Elsa, move your feet!” Olaf looked down at the sound of her voice, but Anna could read Elsa’s lips as she reached out even further to regain Olaf’s attention.

‘Almost... there.’

Panic rose in Anna’s chest. Why wasn’t Elsa listening to her? She watched Elsa retract her hand just long enough to move a piece of hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. Anna squinted. Then she looked at the phone in her hand, the one still playing music without sound.

“Oh my god,” Anna whispered. “She’s wearing airpods.”

CRACK.

It all happened in a few seconds. The branch snapped, Elsa fell, eyes wide with surprise as the sudden onslaught of gravity made her weightless. Anna’s feet pounded the earth, bringing her to the base of the tree just in time to catch her sister.

But physics is a fickle mistress and both women had plenty of momentum.

Anna’s knees buckled at the sudden weight in her arms and she and Elsa rolled forward, coming to a decisive and loud stop when they crashed against their neighbor’s fence. Anna was upside down, feet above her head, Elsa splayed across her middle, limbs everywhere, both of them breathing heavily and staring up at the sky.

“Wow,” Anna managed after a few minutes. “Those memes are not as funny in real life.” She looked down at Elsa, who was staring at her oddly, but that’s not what made Anna bust out laughing.

Elsa’s hair was a mess. Pine needles stuck out this way and that, knotted in her bangs and making her braid look like a porcupine. Patches of hair were absolutely slathered in sap and dotted with chips of bark. She had scratches everywhere: her face, her arms, her legs, there was hardly a single inch spared.

She was completely undignified and it was sending Anna into mild hysterics.

“Oh my god my ribs,” Anna wheezed, slapping the ground as she howled with laughter.

“Your ribs,” Elsa griped, picking needles out of her hair and flicking them at Anna’s face. “I’m the one who fell out of a tree. My back is going to be so sore tomorrow.”

“Well I practically got my arms ripped off catching you, so I think we’re even,” Anna winced, slowly regaining control of herself. “Jeez you’re heavy, get off me.”

There was a small sound behind Anna’s head that stopped both of them. Anna craned her head back and Elsa propped herself up on an elbow, digging into Anna’s hip.

Olaf mewed again, tottering on baby kitten legs up to Anna’s forehead and giving it a quick tap with his paw. Anna beamed.

“Hey little guy!” She curled a finger under his chin, feeling his little purrs. Then she frowned. “Wait, does that mean he--”

“Climbed down by himself,” Elsa groaned, leaning back and putting all of her weight on Anna again, whose protests were ignored. “I feel so stupid.”

“Stupid for climbing a tree with no experience, or stupid for doing that while wearing airpods?”

Elsa dug the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Anna patted her shoulder. “It was a noble gesture. I’m sure Olaf felt much braver seeing you come to get him.”

As if to confirm her words, Olaf jumped up on Elsa’s chest and buried his head into her shirt. Elsa scratched him behind his ear.

Anna went to do the same but her hand came away sticky from Elsa’s shoulder. “Uh oh, the sap is starting to harden.”

“Well, I think this outfit is ruined anyway,” Elsa sighed. “At least there’s gelato to look forward to.”

“Yeah, that’s great and all,” Anna grunted, “but I’m starting to not be able to feel my legs, so if you could get off so that I could enjoy some of that sweet, delicious, frozen goodness, I would appreciate it.”

---

A detangling of appendages, two generous portions of gelato (and a little for Olaf), and an hour of hair brushing later, Elsa was finally back to normal and Anna was ready for the day to be over. They’d checked all the doors and windows of the house to make sure Olaf couldn’t get out again and had met back in their bedroom. No point in changing into a new pair of clothes if they weren’t going out, Elsa had said, so might as well make it pajamas.

Anna watched Elsa examine her shirt, frown pulling at her brows as her fingers wormed their way through yet another hole.

“I really liked this shirt,” Elsa pouted.

“I can get you another one.” Anna walked forward, putting her hand over Elsa’s to stop her picking.

“But I’ve worn this one to perfect softness.” Anna acquiesced with a shrug of her shoulders and a nod. That was harder to replace, but she was confident they could find another. Right now though she was a little distracted.

“We got this visiting that forest preserve up north, remember?” Elsa stretched the shirt down, extending the printed design. It was a snowflake of sorts, four sharp diamonds arranged around a spiked star center. It had come with a passionate tale from the tour guide about an ancient wrong being righted by an act of good faith, spiced up with tales of spirits and natural disasters. “The forest was so beautiful in the fall, all orange and red. And the air was so crisp and clean, every lungful was refreshing.” Elsa bounced her eyebrows. “It was pretty romantic, don’t you think?”

“Uh huh,” Anna replied unhelpfully. She’d been unable to put her finger on what was different when Elsa had walked into the room, but now that Elsa had mentioned the forest, it clicked.

Anna sniffed appreciatively. “Mmmmm, you smell good.”

Elsa scoffed, pulling her shirt over her head. “I smell like a tree.”

“No,” Anna pressed herself close, burying her face into the side of Elsa’s neck, breathing deep. She walked her fingertips over Elsa’s now bare abdomen. “I mean you smell good.”

“Oh.” Anna smiled against Elsa’s skin -- at how her throat bobbed when she swallowed, at how her sister’s skin flushed red hot.

Elsa coughed to recover. “Maybe I should fall out of trees more often. Or light a candle if this is all it takes.”

“You shouldn’t say that to your rescuer,” Anna admonished, pulling back.

“You’re right,” Elsa huffed, but the way she looked at Anna was gentle. “What would I do without you?”

“You’ll always have me.”

Elsa smiled and pressed her forehead against Anna’s, bringing that smell of pine back, filling Anna’s lungs. Anna's eyes darted down to Elsa’s lips.

“And if you don’t mind,” she said, hooking her fingers through the belt loops in Elsa’s shorts. “I’d like to have you, please.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

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ladywynneoutlander · 4 years

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Hi guys. So I am writing a little story for the holiday season. It is very fluff-tastic, mostly family and love with a minimum of plot. I very much hope someone enjoys it!

Heart’s Abundance

Part 1 - Giving Thanks

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 , Part 6

Bree and I are sitting in the kitchen, enjoying my own special blend of “Liberty Tea,” a mixture of dried strawberry leaves, lemon balm, and chamomile. It is hot, fragrant, and delicious. As we sip, the afternoon sun warms the whole room, giving the feeling of a golden cocoon in the midst of a particularly cold November day. Adso is with us, basking in a windowsill, and we are all practically purring with contentment. Then the sound of dried leaves crackling underfoot reaches our ears. We have visitors. Brianna and I sigh slightly but smile at each other. She opens the door while I take a honey cake from the cupboard.

It is Young Ian and Rachel. I smile warmly at them. Ian is dressed in particular native splendor today, owing to a visit from a group of prominent Mohawks passing through. His head is freshly plucked and spiked, with metal ornaments and turkey feathers hanging from the back. Over his pink calico shirt is a vest decorated with astonishing beadwork, and his buckskin trousers are fringed. Next to him Rachel’s Quaker attire is a contrast. She is in a gray wool dress with plain white cap and kerchief. As she enters the sunny room, she unwraps her shawl to reveal the newest Murray, snuggled in a sling against his mother.

Brianna closes the door behind them, then her face lights with a smile, “Why, you look like a Thanksgiving pageant!”

The couple look at each other in incomprehension. “A what, cuz?” Ian inquires.

“You know! When the Pilgrims and Indians ate together. At Plymouth? It was a long time ago…” Her voice becomes more hesitant as the faces of our guests remain blank.

I understand the difficulty. Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated now, even though the famous harvest meal happened more than one hundred years before. I’m struggling to salvage this time-travel faux pas when Jamie steps through the door leading to the front of the house. He bends to kiss my cheek then crosses to wiggle a finger at the newly freed baby. “And what’s that then?” he says, turning to Brianna. “Is thanksgiving not something you do, no a meal?”

“Well…” she hesitates, then boldly rushes on. “Where I grew up, in Boston, some people take a day near the end of November to give thanks for their blessings. They celebrate with a feast and invite close friends and family.”

“It sounds lovely,” Rachel says kindly, “though oughtn’t we to give thanks every day?”

“Of course,” Brianna agrees, ‘it’s just nice to take a special moment for it now and then.” She looks wistfully at me. “Right Mama?”

Suddenly I recall craft-paper feathers, Macy’s parade on the television, and the taste of a cranberry jello salad in perfect vividness. I move to stand by Brianna and take her arm, smiling softly in understanding. “Yes, darling. It is.”

Jamie looks at us and his own face grows tender. Rachel still looks confused, but Ian, who has been watching carefully exclaims, “Sounds like a fine idea! We should have our own thanks meal, aye?”

I look at Ian gratefully, thankful indeed for his enthusiastic spirit. I also see Jamie’s face. It is creasing slowly into a smile. “Aye. We should.”

Brianna’s hand tightens on my arm in excitement. “Great! We’ll have Thanksgiving on the Ridge!”

-o0OOO0o-

A few days later I pull Brianna’s turkey out of the oven and baste it well with drippings, butter, and thyme before pushing it back inside for another half hour. It is nearly time to eat and the bounty of the Ridge is spread throughout the kitchen. It will be a delicious meal (if I do say so myself). The smell is heaven, and by the discreet peeking and increasingly frequent visits of men and small children, they think so too.

Jamie and Brianna brought down this large tom the day before. Even with ten people there would be plenty to go around. I had also dug the last of the fresh vegetables and emptied the pantry. Fanny had spent the entire prior afternoon baking. It would be a feast indeed.

The table is set and festooned with colorful dried leaves and pinecones. Roger even wove a clever cornucopia from twigs and filled it with gourds. Perfect. The turkey has a chestnut mushroom stuffing. There are also yams and brussels sprouts and onion gravy, and (elegance indeed!) yeast dinner rolls rather than corn bread. Crocks of butter and honey and jam round out the meal. My mouth waters just setting it all out.

Soon everyone gathers and we ceremoniously present the pièce de résistance on a platter. Looking from face to face around our large farm table I see Fanny’s eyes widen and smile happily to myself. We are all here, Brianna, Roger, Jem, and Mandy. Germain and Fanny. Jenny and Ian and Rachel with the baby sleeping peacefully in a basket. Jamie takes my hand and gives it a squeeze, then leans over and whispers, “I often think your time strange, Sassenach, but this is fine, aye?” He kisses my lips softly.

The others, used to us, are chattering away. Jamie straightens, clears his throat and waits for quiet, then looks to the end of the table, saying formally, “Ieremiah, an toireadh tu taing?“

Jem, sensitive to the honor thus bestowed, sits up straight as an arrow, “Aye, sir.” He folds his hands before him and I am suddenly reminded of my first dinner at Leoch, when young Hamish said grace. Jem has the same red hair. I add Hamish to my prayers as we all bow our heads together.

“Dear Holy Father. Thank ye for the food before us. Thank ye for our family and friends. Bless us, O Lord, and help us to do good always. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

“Amen,” the table echoes.

Jemmy peaks at his father, and at Roger’s nod of approval relaxes happily in his chair. Jamie carves and wafts of fragrant steam are released. The table makes noises of appreciation all around. We fill our plates and enjoy the meal.

“You know,” Roger says, buttering a roll. Since we are giving thanks today, maybe we should each say something we’re thankful for. I believe that’s something they do in Boston, aye Brianna?” He smiles at his wife and she nods.

“Oh yes, it’s a tradition.” When no one volunteers she goes on, and looking directly at Jamie and I, “I’m thankful to be home.” Brianna then turns to Mandy on her right. “And what about you sweetheart? What are you thankful for?”

Mandy turns up a honey-smeared face and smiles. “I thankful for Esmeralda!”

Everyone chuckles and Roger goes next. “I’m thankful for family, for my wife and bairns.”

Jem says, “I’m thankful for Grandda. And Grandma,” he adds hastily.

Germain is next. “I’m thankful for my friends.” He smiles at Fanny and Jem.

Fanny answers in a small voice, “I’m thankful to Mr. and Mrs. Fraser for keeping me.”

“Oh Fanny,” I say gently, “We want to.” She blinks quickly and gives a small smile and we continue.

Jenny, Ian, and Rachel take their turns.

“I’m thankful for our new wee bairn.”

“I’m thankful to have my mam here, and my wife.”

“I’m thankful for the peace we enjoy here.”

Jamie says simply, “I’m thankful for ye, Sassenach.”

I look around the table slowly and finally turn my face up to Jamie, the man who is my heart, “I’m thankful for each of us. For love and family. For every moment.”

“Amen,” he says, and kisses me.

-o0OOO0o-

Soon afterward the table is cleared, and dessert brought out. We have apple tansey, clootie dumpling, and for Brianna, pumpkin pie. There is also custard and sweet cream. I am just setting coffee to boil when a solid thump sounds on the front door. Everyone freezes in surprise for a heartbeat. Visitors are nearly unheard-of this time of year. Then, just as chaos breaks out, Jamie rises. He walks to the front of the house, myself close behind. He seems unhurried and calm, but I notice he carries the carving knife in his left hand.

Jamie opens the door, letting in a blast of frigid November air. What greets us looks like nothing so much as a bear covered in deer hide. Albeit a bear with merry blue eyes glinting above his beard.

“Myers!” Jamie greets the mountain man warmly, discreetly passing the knife to me. I stash it in my deep pocket. “Welcome! What brings ye here so late in the year?”

The bristles part with Myers’ grin. “Well, I’ll tell ‘ee sir. I’ve come wi’ company. Found ‘im near frozen on his way up from Cross Creek.” He steps aside to reveal a second figure in the dooryard, just as tall, but more solidly built.

Peering around Jamie’s shoulder my mouth falls open in shock. The last person I ever expected to see on the Ridge is the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere.

For once I recover more quickly than Jamie, and step around my husband. “William!” I say in sincere pleasure.

The young man looks up a bit uncertainly, then seeing my happiness recovers himself. “Mother Claire.” He might have said more but is prevented by a blur of yellow homespun that comes hurtling through the door and crashes into his middle. William teeters precariously at the impact before coming solidly back to his feet, Frances Pocock clinging to him in perfect imitation of a baby opossum on its mother’s back.

“William! Oh William! I thought I might never th-, see you again!”

William gingerly pats the capped head. “It’s good to see you again too, Fanny.” He smiles gently down, a slight shadow passing briefly in the depths of his slanted eyes. He gently disentangled Fanny and turns to Jamie. “I hope our arrival isn’t a cause of inconvenience to you sir. I…”

Seeing him hesitate I break in as politely as I can. “Of course not! You are both most welcome! Come in and warm up. We are just about to have dessert.”

I usher the newcomers and the gaping crowd back into the kitchen. In a few moments of flurried activity William and John Quincey are greeted by all and settled at the table, the children relocated to stools.

“We had a fine harvest this year so we’re having a wee meal to celebrate and give thanks for it,” Jamie explains, smiling.

“Judging from this bounty, indeed you have!” Myers exclaims as he unabashedly fills his plate with apple tansey, sweet cream, and one of the remaining rolls covered in honey and jam. Jem and Germain looking on in fascination.

I pour him coffee, hiding a smile. “We’re pleased to share it with you.”

William eats more sedately, but with evident pleasure. Watching him, Fanny on one side and Brianna on the other, I wonder suddenly why he has come. Then I look at Jamie. He is watching the boy as well, and though his face is expressionless, to me his eyes reveal the joy he takes in the sight. No. The reason doesn’t matter. I slide my arm around Jamie’s and lean against him, expressing without words my own joy in his happiness.

#outlander #heart's abundance #Thanksgiving

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izanyas · 5 years

Text

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow (23)

Rating: M Words: 18,600 Warnings: general ATC themes, gore, murder.

[Read from prologue]

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow Chapter 23

Autumn in Lanling City fell as golden and cool as the halls of the Tower. The last flowers of the clement seasons blossomed in the gardens, less fragrant for the lack of heat but no less beautiful. Hearths were lit in the chambers of the Jin clan and its guests, tended to hourly by servants.

Or perhaps not so, and Jiang Yanli was an exception.

It amused and worried her that they should feel the need to watch her so closely, she mused, looking at the back of the woman who had come to rekindle the fire. Jiang Cheng's words had halted as the door to her rooms opened; he was watching the woman too, although his face bore a frown of distaste she had never quite seen on him since the war.

The woman seemed scared of him as well. She avoided his gaze, bowing only in Yanli's direction and scurrying away wordlessly once her task was done. Jiang Yanli needed not ask what it was that made her so frightened. She had heard the whispers and the tale; she knew what they said of her brother.

She was honest enough to know, as well, that the shivers on her skin each time she remembered the sight of him covered in blood were due to shock as much as worry.

He had been so shaken. Pale and speechless, and Sandu in his hand still red and dripping.

"Come sit down," she called him anyway. "A-Cheng. Please."

Jiang Cheng did so reluctantly. He had been in such a mood since he arrived; somber and hesitant, and with guilt in his eyes no matter where he looked. He sat by Jiang Yanli's side with quite the room between them.

He grabbed the tea before him without bringing it to his lips, though they looked dry. Jiang Yanli frowned and shifted on her knees till she was by his side, till she could reach his face with her hand and stroke his cheek and forehead.

"Are you coming down with a cold?" she asked gently.

For a second, he looked as though he would push her away. His shoulders had become so wide in the past few years, and they tensed and shuddered in anticipation for movement.

But Jiang Cheng had never rejected her. Even when he took her hand in his to bring it down, his hold was gentle.

His thumb stroked the lighter patch of skin at her index—where Zidian had been until she was forced to give it away.

"You shouldn't have asked me to come here," was all he said. "People will talk."

"I don't care about gossip," she replied. "What will they say anyway? That I miss my brother, and want to see him?"

"You know they call me—"

Omega murderer. That was what they called him.

When Luo Qingyang had come to Yunmeng weeks ago, bearing a message from Jin Zixuan informing them that his father meant to march upon the Burial Mounds of Yiling and take back everything that Wei Wuxian stole, Jiang Cheng had been panicked. He had struck the dinner table they were all sat around so harshly that Wen Linfeng had jumped in her seat with fright. He had left without a word, taking only a travel cloak and his sword, and leaving Jiang Yanli to deal with the three children around her who had gone pale and still.

She had not known what to do at the time. Like A-Cheng, she knew what the message did not say; that Jin Guangshan had obtained so much power in the wake of the Sunshot Campaign that all would turn a blind eye to his actions now. Who could say, after all, what truly happened in the midst of battle? Who could predict every lost arrow, every blade held forward?

Who could say that Jin Guangshan meant to kill Wei Wuxian rather than capture him, if Wei Wuxian simply found himself at the wrong end of a sword in the confusion of the fight?

But it was not Jin Guangshan whose sword Wei Wuxian was pierced by in view of hundreds of eyes. And therefore it was not him who walked the halls of Lanlingjin's stronghold with whispers in his trail.

"A-Xian is alive," Jiang Yanli said.

Jiang Cheng's hand shook around hers, trying to pull away, but she took hold of it before it could. She brought it to rest in her own lap and stroked it soothingly.

"You've had news from maiden Wen, you know he survived. You know he'll be fine."

"I know," Jiang Cheng replied, almost spitting the words out. "He's always fine in the end, isn't he? Not for lack of trying to die like a fool."

Jiang Yanli smiled, though her heart tightened painfully.

He had not told her what it was he had seen before or during the siege. Not even after she herself arrived in Lanling to speak to Jin Zixuan, and Jiang Cheng had come back from Yiling and spoken long and hard with the Jin sect heir.

She could guess, however, that it had not been easy for him to see; that Wei Wuxian probably looked no better now than he had when she had last seen him in Phoenix Mountain.

A-Xian, she thought, not for the first time. What happened to you?

She should have asked him again, even if he did not wish to answer. She should have asked again and again until he had no choice but to give her the truth; until this thick shell of indifference he had grown during the war finally shattered and let her understand what had driven him so far from her.

"He hasn't been seen in weeks," A-Cheng said. "Some of the Wen sect remnants sometimes come and go from the hills to the village, that damned Ghost General always with them, but never Wei Wuxian."

"He must be recovering," Jiang Yanli replied, placating.

"I just don't understand. He knows you're here, he knows you're in danger—why won't he just give up that one omega? Why does he have to be so stubborn?"

"Did you see her?"

Jiang Cheng's face grew pained.

"A-Cheng," Jiang Yanli called again patiently. "Did you see consort Jin when you were there?"

"I did," he admitted at last.

"And how did she look? Did she seem like she wanted to come back here?"

She read the answer off of him without him having to give it to her.

Jiang Yanli smiled. She squeezed his hand in hers, feeling the warmth and pulse of it, comforting herself with it. "A-Xian has never been able to let go of someone in need of his help," she said. "Not when they were right in front of him."

Jiang Cheng took his hand back and replied, "Yet he could let go of you."

He looked ashamed for his words almost immediately, but he did not take them back. Jiang Yanli knew that her own face showed nothing either. No matter how much the truth ached in her.

"You don't need to worry about me," she told him. The tea they were served earlier had grown tepid; she took her cup in hand anyway, and stroked with a finger the thin engraving of a bird laid into the side of it. It held within its beak the very fine painting of a peony flower. "Madam Jin has been very good to me. She will not allow her husband to see me, and she never lets me dine alone."

"Sister—"

"Tell me about the children," she interrupted. "They must feel lonely."

A-Cheng's fingernails dug into the skin of his palms as he struggled not to question her for lies. But Jiang Yanli had told him nothing but the truth—Jin Guangshan had not seen her since the day he had come back from the siege, followed by Jiang Cheng and immediately hounded by him and Jin Zixuan both into allowing Wei Wuxian to live. Jiang Yanli only had to give up so little to make sure he agreed.

Zidian, her last memento of her mother. Her sword which Yu Ziyuan had forged for and before her when she was just a child. The promise that she would never try to flee the grounds of Golden Carp Tower, for her doing so would ensure that Jin Guangshan marched once again upon the Yiling Patriarch's stronghold.

Her freedom.

How odd, that only now that she was rid of it, she found herself thinking of the black-wooded house at the edges of the Lotus Pier, and of the days neither she nor anyone else spoke of when Wei Wuxian had to be locked in it.

Jiang Cheng told her tales of the three Wen omega living in the Pier until evening came, cold and somber. She knew by the way he hesitated that he struggled to spend time with them at all; he had never liked to be close to them even when Wei Wuxian had been there with them all to curb Wen Yueying's bright personality and keep Wen Yiqian occupied. It must be difficult for him, to know that after Wei Wuxian and his sister had gone, the responsibility to care for their happiness fell to him.

She knew that Wen Linfeng must miss her terribly. The girl was so young still, immature and gentle, and she had grown used to meeting Jiang Yanli at night and speaking with her in soft voices. She was always so shy around Jiang Cheng, too. She must hide whenever he was around and not let him enquire after her well-being.

Servants avoided them as Jiang Yanli walked her brother back to the top of the white-and-gold stairs. She saw that he was looking at the wide hall there, as he did every time; that he must be remembering the day Wei Wuxian had made so many enemies and torn away from him for good.

The sound of footsteps reached them slowly as they looked over the height of the mountains around. Jiang Cheng turned his head aside immediately, but Jiang Yanli smelled the scent of pinecone and knew that she was safe.

"Jin Zixuan," Jiang Cheng greeted hesitantly.

Jin Zixuan nodded to him with both hands before him. "Sect leader Jiang," he replied. "My apologies for not greeting you sooner, I was busy elsewhere."

His father must have once more summoned him for a lecture.

Yanli bowed to him as well, smiling faintly at the nod he gave her. Jin Zixuan had been nothing but polite to her since his father had so rudely ordered for her to remain in the Tower, unarmed and unaccompanied. His behavior was much the same as it had been when she had run to him after the Lotus Pier fell; he greeted and spoke to her at least once a day, sometimes shared a meal with her and his mother, and otherwise made her life here as comfortable as was in his power.

The space at his hip where Suihua always rested was conspicuously empty. Jiang Yanli wondered, sometimes, if the place it was taken after being confiscated was the same as her own sword and Zidian. If the three weapons rested next to one another.

"Are you about to leave, then, sect leader?" asked Jin Zixuan.

"Yes," Jiang Cheng replied.

He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment longer. His brow furrowed and twisted before he could bring himself to speak again.

"I must… thank you, again, for your help." The words looked to be tearing themselves from him with pain. "If not for you," he added, "Wei Wuxian may be dead today. I'll make sure he knows this, one way or the other, and present you with his own apology one day."

If Jiang Yanli were more self-preserving, she would have kept looking downward as she was taught to in the presence of her betters; but this particular ache had never fully dimmed in her, and so she looked at Jin Zixuan's face.

She saw just how he stilled. She saw the way his throat shivered, the guilt washing briefly over his handsome face.

"There's no need for this," Jin Zixuan muttered, looking away. "I bid you goodbye, then."

Jiang Cheng, of course, had no idea. He turned to Jiang Yanli with a dark expression, one which Yanli doubted would dissipate even after she held him in her arms tightly. He gave her back her embrace tenfold. Her shoulders ached slightly where his upper arms pressed inward.

"Be careful," he murmured for her ears only.

He sounded so much like a little boy.

"Of course," she replied, stroking the hair over his nape. He pulled away from her, looking at her as always with emotion he had no words to express. She smiled at him. "Take care of yourself, A-Cheng," she said. "Tell the children I've gotten their letters and will be replying soon."

She and Jin Zixuan watched him fly over the mountains until he was but a speck of black in the distance; a grain of dust against the purpling sky.

It was no surprise to her when the Jin sect heir followed in her steps unasked, standing a little way behind her as she took the direction of the gardens. He had taken to walking with her like this when his mother could not, to make sure she wasn't lonely. Jiang Yanli felt no small measure of pleasure at this, and no small measure of guilt either.

"They will be withering soon," Jin Zixuan said softly.

She was standing before a massive bush of chrysanthemums. At his words, she stroked a yellow flower between index and thumb. "It's a shame," she replied. "I only saw the end of summer."

"They will flower again next year."

He must realize the implication of his own words—that she would still be trapped here a year ahead—for when she looked at him, he seemed guilty again.

He tried to smile at her. "I was lucky to first visit the Lotus Pier when the flowers were in bloom," he said. "I will never forget how beautiful the docks were that day."

Jiang Yanli's mouth lifted at the corners. Her eyes stung.

"Was it the docks that caught your eye then, young master Jin," she asked shakily; "or was it Wei Wuxian?"

Jin Zixuan tensed like a bowstring pulled by heavenly fingers. If she were still young, still the well-mannered child that her mother so coveted and her father liked to look away from, she would have taken her words back right then. She would have never uttered them in the first place.

But she was so tired. She was so lonely, so scared, so betrayed in her ugliest of hearts that for weeks now, A-Xian had not given sign of concession in spite of the threat on her life.

She had so longed to one day see Jin Zixuan look at her as he looked at Wei Wuxian.

"Maiden Jiang," Jin Zixuan stuttered.

But the words had left him. She could see it on his face.

Still, she smiled. Still she remained straight-backed and kind. "You don't have to lie to me," she said. "I've known for quite some time now."

His voice came roughly. "How? Were you the one who overheard…"

He stopped himself. Although he had known they were alone in the garden, he looked around them both. Jiang Yanli knew not what she was supposed to have overheard, but the worry on his face made her decide to end his plight.

"I knew on the day you came with me to stop your cousin from buying his hand," she told him. "Even though he was so awkward in those clothes, you looked at him in such a way…"

Jin Zixuan's face grew red and miserable, halting her before she could finish.

"I do not believe he ever noticed, if that is your worry," she added softly. "A-Xian is… he was never very good at recognizing those things."

Wei Wuxian had never been able to see that he was worthy of such feelings. Even before the war, even before the fevers which had so shaken him. As a child, he only spoke of love to her in the farthest of hypotheticals. Jiang Yanli could hardly imagine that he was any better at it now, with how different he had looked the last time they had met.

Jin Zixuan could not meet her eyes anymore. "I know this," he said.

The words, said in such a defeated tone, dried at her throat. "Have you spoken to him about it?" she asked. She tried so hard to keep her voice even, yet it broke at the end and made her taste bitterness.

She saw the answer in the way he moved; in the hand in flexed and then opened at the empty space by his hip, and the shaking of his throat over a painful swallow.

She breathed out a short, silent laugh. She turned her back to him so that he would not see how her eyes shone. "Well," she forced out. "I can't imagine that he took it very well."

His silence said it all.

Such bitter, bitter jealousy, so much bitterer now than it had been on the day she had come to Lanling begging for help. Even then the sight of Jin Zixuan's concern for Wei Wuxian had hurt her deeply, for she knew that Wei Wuxian had asked for none of it, that his status was more of a burden to him than anything else. And now in the aftermath of near-war, after her own brother had had to stab Wei Wuxian, she still found it in herself to grieve.

She was such a silly girl. A silly girl in her mother's armory, watching her show the precious collection of blades and bows she had amassed over the years; a silly girl in front of her father, who looked at the honey-scented child before him as if he were his own.

She breathed in deeply to quiet the pressure in her chest. Air itself came to her shakily, almost hesitantly. She said, "You don't have to tell me anything. Though, for your sake, I wish that things were different."

"I swore that I would speak of it to no one."

It almost made her smile. Of course Wei Wuxian would think this a terrible secret to hide.

Little by little, her heartbeats eased. Her fingers relaxed over the edge of the flowerbeds before her. The peonies and plum flowers there had turned darker with the coming of night, their petals closing together. She picked the largest she found between two fingers and cut its stem with a nail. It was still wet from the morning's rain.

"Maiden Jiang," Jin Zixuan said. She heard him approach her, saw him take place by her side, his back as straight as a ruler. "I must apologize for how I treated you when we were younger. I was only a child frustrated by my circumstances, but I should have known better. You did not choose to be betrothed to me either."

"I never minded," Jiang Yanli replied.

She felt more than saw his surprise as his arm jumped nearby hers.

"A-Xian and yourself have more in common than he thinks," she said. "The both of you are proud and rather difficult to approach. You are both better cultivators than most… and neither of you is very aware of others' feelings toward you."

"Maiden Jiang, I—"

"Do you still love him?"

She looked at him. She braced herself atop the bannister, readying herself for meeting his eyes and trying to decipher a lie in them.

But Jin Zixuan did not give her one. "Yes," he said roughly. "However, I…"

He interrupted himself without her input this time. She once more saw his neck tremble as he worked through his own misery.

"I know that those feelings will lead nowhere at all," he declared at last. "And I do not intend to pursue them any further."

He looked so sincere. He looked a moment away from putting a hand over his heart solemnly.

"Good, then," Jiang Yanli smiled.

In his surprise, Jin Zixuan did not pull back from the hand she had wrapped around his wrist. Yanli herself hardly felt the fear that such boldness should have brought in her; she was always such a shy girl, always so quick to fall silent and let confrontation slide over her unseen, yet now she took his hand. Now she held a thumb against the veins in his wrist where his own heart beat slow and strong.

With the other, she put the peony in it. She closed his fingers around it until the petals bent, until she was certain that he would not let it fall. She took her shaking hands back.

"Maybe one day you'll look around you," she told him, "and notice that you, too, are loved."

On the first day of spring, on the third year since Wei Wuxian had started living at the Burial Mounds, Wen Qing came to get him inside the bloodpool cave.

She pushed aside the drapes keeping the cool wind out. She sneezed as she often did when the moonless flowers were in full bloom and nearly ready to be picked and dried, having no love for the bitter smell or taste of them. She found him sat against a wall at the far end, nearby the red pool whose light never really dimmed—and even now traversed his closed eyelids and painted his darkness crimson.

She called his name: "Wei Ying."

Wei Wuxian blinked slowly, carefully; like one blinked after the deepest of sleeps, one moment gone and the next here. The bodiliness of breathing reached him. The weight of arms and legs hung upon him once more. His neck bent under his own head before he found the strength to lift it.

Wen Qing stood silently as she waited for him to emerge. Dressed in the cloak she wore only for travelling to the village, her boots muddy and her hair swept by the wind. Only when the breath left his lips audibly did she speak up again.

"For your information," she said, "you've been in here for three days."

This would be the reason why he felt so heavy, then.

Wei Wuxian said nothing, knowing that his throat was dry and his voice weak. He pressed a hand to Chenqing at his hip thoughtlessly; then he pushed against the stone ground to kneel and stand.

His eyesight ran dark and painful as soon as he was upright, but he did not sway.

"I won't bother asking if you've eaten," Wen Qing said. "All the food A-Ning left you is still here."

"Wen Ning came?" Wei Wuxian couldn't help but ask.

As expected, his words were nothing more than whispers.

Wen Qing's lips thinned. "Of course he did," she replied. "He worries for you."

"I'm fine."

"Keep your lies for the others, Wei Ying, not me."

He had not even the energy to argue with her.

Still, he followed her outside, barely blinking when sunlight shone into his eyes. Everywhere he looked for the past few months had taken on a dark tinge, as though a see-through veil rested over his eyes. Even now, in the middle of day, the village around him looked to be shrouded by dusk.

He realized too late that Wen Qing was calling his name again. "What is it?" he asked tiredly.

Her mouth closed. He thought faintly that he should feel something less distant at the sight of her worry, or at the sound of anger on her voice when she replied, "Luo Fanghua said she wanted you to deliver the new batch of clothes to the village."

"Luo Fanghua?"

"Yes," Wen Qing snapped. "Do you still remember her, or has your mind rotted away in that cave of yours?"

A moment passed. Wind shivered through the newborn foliage of trees.

Wei Wuxian exhaled. "Of course I remember her," he said. He pressed a hand over his eyes, rubbing at them futilely. It did not rid him of the darkness, but it made him feel a little more present. "I just wonder why. Usually she's fine asking Uncle Four or someone else to do it."

"Well, she thinks you might need the fresh air. We all do."

Would that he could argue her words, but already eyes were turned to them. Already he could see some people near the closest houses knock on doors a little way farther and pointing in his direction.

They wore smiles when they looked at him. They looked relieved at his presence.

Wei Wuxian turned his back to the village. "Just get your uncles to do it as usual," he told Wen Qing. "I've got better things to do."

He tried to walk past her, but she blocked his way.

"No you don't," she said. Wei Wuxian stared fixedly at the arm she had lifted before him; a second later it lowered, and Wen Qing's hand grabbed his wrist instead. "You haven't gone outside in months," she added. "I think you've had quite enough time to wallow in your misery. Get yourself cleaned up and go deliver those clothes."

"Have you forgotten there are about twenty cultivators between here and the valley ready to pounce on me?" he asked between his teeth.

He tried to shake her hand off of him. She squeezed even tighter in answer, looking a second away from yelling at him, but then the sound of high-pitched laughter reached them. She let go reflexively, her worry taking over her frustration in a second.

But not even that laughter could still him now. Wei Wuxian took his hand back and looked briefly at the running silhouette of Wen Yuan in the distance.

Wen Qing sighed. "Going to the village is not breaking any of the rules Jin Guangshan set," she said. "Go take a walk. I need to harvest the flowers anyway, we'll soon run out of the tea."

"You know I like to do that," he replied.

"Then be back before I'm done," she retorted. "And take A-Ning with you."

There was no arguing with her even if he had the will to.

The masons of the Wen sect had built a bath house over the river a year and a half ago. Half of it served to dye and wash the fabrics that Luo Fanghua and her assistants worked with daily; the other was a series of narrow tubs, separated by wooden walls, heated with stones left overfire. Wei Wuxian disliked going there during the day, when he ran the risk of meeting someone else, but today his feet took him to the entrance by themselves.

He washed himself quickly, scrubbing succinctly at his skin, looking nowhere but straight ahead the whole time. Even with the steam around him, the heavy smell of dyes permeated the air. He changed into cleaner clothes than the one he had taken off and walked again outside before he was completely dry.

Luo Fanghua awaited him by the end of the hillpath, a pile of folded clothing twice as big as she was set atop the cart that they all used for such travels. Her face was closed-off as always, although her eyes belied no anger toward him. Wei Wuxian felt himself nod to her in greeting, and then to Wen Ning standing by her.

"I'm sorry for my sister, young master Wei," Wen Ning said as they began to descend down the sloping tracks. "She should not have bothered you with this."

He was pulling the cart with his bare hands. Wei Wuxian could remember a time when he insisted that horses do the job instead, feeling faintly ill at the sight of Wen Ning doing such work, before he understood that Wen Ning enjoyed it.

Considering the other kind of work Wei Wuxian once had him do, it was all-too-easy to see why.

"No need for apologies," Wei Wuxian replied.

He fit his back more comfortably against the clothes. Shadows emerged in his eyesight every time he blinked, sweeping between tombstones and dead trees like ghosts.

"I've had nothing to do for months but wallow in my failure."

"No one thinks you failed," Wen Ning said softly.

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes. He tasted bitterness as he thought of his shijie; as he thought, also, of the now-heavily pregnant omega living in the same house as Wen Qing and Grandmother.

"At least our little friends should get something to report out of this," he replied at last. He blinked. Laughed dryly. "The Yiling Patriarch, deliverer of homemade goods," he added. "I hope Jin Guangshan gets a laugh out of it."

He had no need for good eyesight to feel the presence of cultivators near and far.

Wei Wuxian tried to lie down over the cart. He tried to watch the blue sky over them, rendered purple by the diminishing of his eyes through the past months, and to make sense of the shape of clouds as he did as a child. This memory seemed so far from himself now that it may as well belong to another life entirely—a little Wei Ying on the docks of Yunmeng, laid over old wood with his naked feet in the river. Arguing with his shijie and shidi over one thing or the next. Heedless of the years that were to come to him.

He could almost see his own face in that half-somnolence; and Wei Wuxian thought for a moment that he did, before he realized that such a face was above his; that grey eyes peered down at him from above the edge of one of the wide clay pots the cart always carried.

He was wide awake, now. The breath caught painfully in his lungs, his fingers near-spasming with fright. Above him, Wen Yuan rubbed his nose with one small hand, looking down on him in curiosity.

He called, "Uncle."

Wei Wuxian grabbed the edge of the cart with one shaking hand, feeling splinters lodge themselves in his skin with the strength of his hold, and hoisted himself off of it entirely.

It had rained the day before, and the soil was muddy. His boots slipped over it before he caught himself on the bark of a dead tree. He vaguely saw the cart halt after he had hopped off of it—vaguely heard Wen Ning call his name in worry, vaguely saw the child climb out of the pot he had been in all along—

"A-Yuan," Wen Ning said in surprise, "what are you doing here?"

"You didn't find me," said the child.

His words were so much clearer now than that time in the bloodpool cave. Almost eloquent.

Wei Wuxian turned his back to them. He leaned against the tree, closing his eyes, breathing forcefully out of his mouth. Cold tendrils of energy roamed over his skin, ever-responsive to his moods, but he chased them away. It would not do to cause Wen Ning to lose his control now.

When at last he felt that he would not be sick, he pushed himself upright once more.

Wen Ning and the child were speaking to each other slowly. They turned to face him almost as one, and Wei Wuxian once more had to hold his breath or risk faltering where he stood.

"I'm sorry, young master," Wen Ning said softly. "A-Yuan and I were playing hide and seek before we left… I didn't know he was hidden in the cart."

"You didn't find me," Wen Yuan repeated proudly.

As he said it, his hands grabbed the long ends of Wen Ning's hair and pulled. Wen Ning seemed to suffer the treatment habitually, and wasted no time before pulling the child's fingers out of his hair, a vaguely scolding expression on his face.

Wen Yuan laughed.

Wei Wuxian wanted to vanish on the spot.

"Should I take him back, master?" Wen Ning asked.

One did not need to be as apt as Wei Wuxian was at reading him to know that he was concerned. Wei Wuxian had no idea if Wen Qing had told him anything of Wen Yuan's origins, had no idea even if Wen Ning suspected anything was wrong between himself and Wen Yuan…

But they were close to the village already. Going back now would mean a delay of another few hours. And if Wen Ning ran back with the child by himself, Wei Wuxian did not know that the owner of the eyes he had felt on them all along would not try to attack him.

He could not afford to slip up and hurt one of them.

"No," he said roughly. "I'll just—"

I'll just walk ahead, he meant to say; but his eyes met Wen Yuan's again inescapably, and the words died on his tongue.

"Uncle," the child said again.

"Don't call me that," Wei Wuxian snapped.

Wen Yuan's face fell. His fingers loosened within the strands of Wen Ning's hair he was still grabbing tightly. "Then what do I call you?" he asked.

It felt like a nightmare. All of it. Wei Wuxian realized slowly, thickly, that he had never before thought of Wen Yuan as more than a shadow in the corner of his eyes; that the child had never been more to him than the threat of cries or laughter, the sound of a voice and the shape of a small body.

Not words, not conversation. Not the bright gleam of intelligence in grey and lively eyes.

"You don't call me," he choked, and he had no idea if the child heard at all.

"Come here, A-Yuan," said Wen Ning, offering his back to the child rather than let him to his own devices over the cart.

Wei Wuxian walked past them and led them the rest of the way toward the village, trying the whole time to hear nothing but the slow beat of his own blood.

They found the town bustling with activity as always. It had grown these past few years, and the merchant that Wei Wuxian sold Luo Fanghua's work to had rebuilt his shop right at the center of it, twice as big as before. It was there that he headed after Wen Ning put a wide hat over his head to hide the pallor of his skin. A strip of cloth was wound around his neck in spite of the warm day, in order to disguise the black veins running there.

Wei Wuxian left Wen Ning and the child outside as he greeted the man. He watched him unfold and examine the clothes and gauge the price he would pay for them unseeingly.

"Been a while since we saw you here."

The man's words came thinly to Wei Wuxian's ears. In the lapse of time it took him to react to them, the man had re-folded the silken robes he was holding and put down the glass he used to magnify his sight.

"I've got some more fabrics for that little seamstress of yours to look at, if she wants," the man went on, now that Wei Wuxian was looking at him. "They're just waiting in the back of the shop. It's been months now since I got them."

"You could have given them to one of the others," Wei Wuxian said slowly.

The man gave a laugh that sounded like a cough, raucous and disagreeable. "I don't trust that lot half as much as I trust you," he replied. "Just wait here a moment, little master. I'll be back with the samples."

He rose from the chair heavily, awkwardly. The rainy beta-scent of him lingered for a moment before vanishing, as did his thickset body vanish behind the drape keeping the backroom from view.

Wei Wuxian was seated in an alcove near the rear of the shop itself. From here he was mostly unseen, but he could see well, and he saw that a few people were roaming the rows of fabrics and clothes, speaking with ease to the owner's husband who was helping them make their choice. He realized that they wore travel cloaks and boots, and that the horses tied to the front of the shop must belong to them.

"Noticing now, are you?"

Wei Wuxian looked aside; the man had come back with strips of fabric in hand, tied together with string, and a bag full of noisy coins. He placed both before Wei Wuxian on the table.

"Where did they come from?" Wei Wuxian asked, lifting a hand to take them.

"Far and wide. This shop has gained quite the reputation since you started coming here." The man sat with a loud grunt. He continued, "Such fine sewing in such a place… well, they do say the touch of an omega is the most delicate of all."

Wei Wuxian stilled with his hand over the money pouch. He looked at the man in silence, feeling the air freeze over him, feeling the hole within his chest glow with power.

The man did not look afraid. "Your eyes are red now, little master," he said evenly. "I would calm down if I were you. There's been news that an immortal cultivator came last night to chase away some spirits."

After another moment of stillness, Wei Wuxian dragged the fabrics and money to him. He opened the pouch to count the coins, never fully looking away from the one before him. Once he was done, he hid it in his sleeve near one half of the Stygian Tiger Seal. Then he asked darkly, "How many know?"

"Hard to say. We're not the brightest bunch, are we?" The man laughed his raucous laugh again, drawing toward him the fond eyes of his husband, which rested over Wei Wuxian quickly before looking away. "But I would wager most of the shops you've done business with for food or clothing have a hunch. They don't care, either."

"I rather doubt that," Wei Wuxian said.

The man shrugged. He leaned back onto his bench until his wide back touched the wall. "As long as money is good, we don't much care where it comes from," he replied. "And I suppose there's some pride in doing business with the Yiling Patriarch, what with all the folks who come here looking for you, spreading all those tales."

Wei Wuxian should deny this, should pretend to be nothing more than a merchant. He should leave the shop now, take Wen Ning and Wen Yuan and hurry back up the hills until he was safely behind his barriers again.

Instead he said, "Perhaps there's some truth to the tales."

"What does it matter to me anyway if there is," the man retorted. "Me and my husband, we're not like those cultivation sects. We couldn't afford an omega even if we wanted one, and none's been born here in decades. As far as I'm concerned, you can rob them all you want."

"I'll take my leave now."

The man showed no anger or disappointment. He watched Wei Wuxian rise from his seat in silence, his broad face as somber as always in spite of his smiles, his beta-scent clinging to him faintly, as it did all people who shared his status.

Sunlight did not blind Wei Wuxian under the veil of his own impoverished sight. He walked past the horses tied to the front of the shop, looking slowly around for a trace of Wen Ning and the child.

The cart was where he had left it, but Wen Ning was nowhere in sight.

He frowned. "Wen Ning?" he called through the bond tying them together.

He felt an echo of acknowledgement to the right, where the broadest street of the village extended toward an inn and tavern and a quick-running river. He stepped in that direction without feeling any of the people who walked past him, carrying donkeys and horses or pushing forth carts full of straw and other goods.

He found Wen Ning in the narrow space between two houses, standing awkwardly in the shade, looking at him with guilt.

He was alone.

"Young master Wei," Wen Ning whimpered. "I'm sorry, I—I lost sight of A-Yuan. I looked away for a moment, and then…"

Wei Wuxian remained still and wordless for a moment longer. There was a pulse to his chest, he felt, though it seemed that all it did carry was emptiness. Shadows swarmed the edges of his sight.

"Let's just," he tried to say. His mouth was dry. "Let's look for him," he managed. "Then get away from this place."

"Yes," Wen Ning murmured.

They separated to cover more of the village more quickly, and all the time Wei Wuxian walked his chest constricted and beat voidly, vanishing sound and sight alike as his boots crushed dirt and grass under their soles. He felt that he was walking on air rather than ground, that perhaps the valley should wash from beneath him as if he flew over it on a sword.

How far could such a young child have wandered on his own? He was so short still. He had hidden his whole body in the pot over the cart, and it must have been a rather easy fit, considering the time he allowed to let go before making his presence known. How old was…

How old was Wen Yuan?

Wei Wuxian stopped in the middle of the street, causing those next and behind him to voice their annoyance. He heard none of their words, so taken was he by the fact that he could no longer count the number of seasons. The aches of labor had never fully left him, the feel of blood and fluid over his legs never entirely washed away. He could still hear Wen Qing's voice, her dreadful calm as she told him what to do even as he forgot to breathe, as she had to slap his face to make him tense and push; as his whole body finally detached from him and felt no more familiar than a lump of formless clay.

He could not remember how long ago he had woken in that inn and wanted so dearly to have died.

The air he breathed now felt like ice. The light around him dimmed in the way of winter twilight, quick and all-encompassing, as if any second now the moon should rise and bring about snowfall. Wei Wuxian marched on through the wide street, searching for the alpha-scent of petrichor as much as he dreaded it, seeing nothing around him but blackness.

Yet petrichor was not the first familiar scent he found; instead his nose filled with the first warm breath of sandalwood, and when his blind eyes rose to see before himself, an expanse of white shone in the midst of so many shadows.

As he blinked, as the light came back to him in increments, Wei Wuxian recalled the shop owner's words: "An immortal cultivator came last night to chase away some spirits."

Lan Wangji certainly looked the part of an immortal, even as confused as he was in the middle of a staring crowd—even with a child hugging his leg and beginning to cry loudly.

Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian thought.

Wen Ning's awareness came to him within a minute. He spent it looking from a distance as murmurs shivered over the crowd. Wen Yuan cried over Lan Wangji's leg; Lan Wangji looked at a loss for what to do; a woman near them said, "Be kinder to your son, master."

Wei Wuxian rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to let sickness rush up his throat.

The awkward Wen Ning was here soon enough. He came to Wei Wuxian's side in confusion, before taking in the spectacle in the middle of street. Then he called, "A-Yuan," gently, and went to retrieve the child from Lan Wangji's side.

Lan Wangji saw him, and he was not as easily fooled as the villagers by a wide hat and a scarf. He must have noticed the color of Wen Ning's skin and the ever-cold aura around him. One of his pale hand grabbed Bichen's pommel, and the other took hold of Wen Yuan's collar, ready to pull him out of harm's way.

Wei Wuxian forced out, "Lan Zhan."

Lan Wangji's head immediately turned in his direction.

Perhaps it would have been unneeded, as Wen Yuan himself cried even louder at the sight of Wen Ning and finally released Lan Wangji's robes to throw himself into the corpse's arms. Either way the child was retrieved, and Lan Wangji now looked at Wei Wuxian with wide eyes.

Wei Wuxian approached carefully. "Don't you have better things to do?" he asked the small crowd around the street, who looked at him in rancor and went reluctantly back to their tasks.

Soon enough they stood alone, and Lan Wangji spoke at last: "Wei Ying."

It was Wen Ning who replied to him rather than Wei Wuxian, whose tongue seemed to be caught within his dry, dry mouth. "Thank you for finding him, young master Lan," he said softly. "We've been looking for him."

He rocked the child once in his arms, and Wen Yuan added a small, "Sorry."

Lan Wangji seemed not to mind at all that part of his ever-clean uniform now bore little handprints in dirt. "He found me," was all he said, looking not at Wen Ning but at the child he held; and then staring at Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian could not meet his eyes.

"Wen Ning, you go back to the cart now," he said hoarsely. "You take—"

But the name could not leave his lips, and anyway Wen Ning obeyed as he always did. Perhaps such an order had carried over the bond they had, impossible for him not to comply with, through the strength of Wei Wuxian's discomfort.

He walked away, Wen Yuan still held against his front carefully.

Wei Wuxian exhaled only after they were gone from his sight. "What are you doing here, Lan Zhan?" he asked.

Lan Wangji's hand slid down from Bichen's pommel at last. "A hunt," he replied. "And I… I brought more music."

It was a long second before Wei Wuxian's confusion made way for understanding; before he remembered the woods atop Phoenix Mountain, and the songs Lan Wangji had played for him there.

Indeed Lan Wangji's guqin was strapped to his back in soft grey cloth, the very same that seemed to carry more items at his waist.

"You look surprised," said Lan Wangji.

"Shouldn't I be?" Wei Wuxian replied after a brief silence. "We are far from Gusu. You came here without warning, in spite of…"

In spite of the the warning hanging heavily over Wei Wuxian's head in the shape of Jin Guangshan's army.

But instead of saying anything about this, Lan Wangji told him, "I met maiden Wen this morning. She said she would tell you."

Anger thrummed through Wei Wuxian for a bare second, vulnerable and betrayed; but he knew like Wen Qing must that had she told him the truth of why she wanted him in the village, he would never have come.

He sighed. His chest felt pained and slow. He gave a look to the man beside him, whose eyes had not drifted from Wei Wuxian's face since he had heard his call earlier. His presence alone seemed to chase away the shadows clinging to Wei Wuxian's sight. As if light poured out of his skin rather than the sky above.

"You shouldn't be here," he told him. "There are too many eyes on me now."

Even now he felt them, roaming over his limbs like the footprints of insects.

"People will accuse you of treason. Don't you care what your brother or uncle will say?"

"No," Lan Wangji replied.

No more, no less. As stubborn now as he was on the day they met, and he attacked Wei Wuxian over the outer wall of the Cloud Recesses for bringing in liquor.

Some echo of a smile lifted Wei Wuxian's lips. "Let the Yiling Patriarch treat you to a meal, then," he said. "Or whatever excuse for a meal is served here."

He took a few steps toward the entrance of the inn close by, but Lan Wangji remained where he stood.

His head was turned to the long street beside him that Wen Ning had traversed as he left.

"This child," he said; and Wei Wuxian's empty veins iced and stilled.

The lump of clay of his body weighed so much in that instant that he felt he ought to gather upon the ground like thick mud, to lose shape and will and then solidify as he was. If a cultivator had come right then to take his head, he would not have had the strength to lift an arm and take Chenqing in hand.

The silence that followed was the longest of Wei Wuxian's life. He spent it feeling like the knoll of a freshly-dug grave.

Lan Wangji said no more. He walked to Wei Wuxian's level and then past him, into the inn's doorframe; and Wei Wuxian thought for a terrible moment that he would not look back. That the picture of his back disappearing into shadow would be the last he saw of him.

But Lan Wangji held the door open for him. He looked him in the eye in silence, his outstretched arm the same as the one Wei Wuxian had offered him years ago.

The inn was quiet and deserted in the hours of mid-afternoon. All who would come here to drink would do so later at night, and what few were seated were travelers, weary and gaunt, wrapped in long cloaks stained with dust.

"You don't drink, do you," Wei Wuxian said after they were served. The liquor sold here was strong, yellow in color, as bitter as it was sweet. He downed a cup of it before he was able to speak, and another after his question.

"Alcohol is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses," Lan Wangji replied calmly.

Wei Wuxian mourned that he could no longer recall what a young Lan Wangji had looked like, saying those words to him for the first time.

"It's just as well. The one I brew in the Burial Mounds tastes much better."

Lan Wangji's brow broke out of its smooth exterior and into a single crease. "Alcohol is a good way to keep warm," he said slowly. "In winter."

"You don't have to be polite with me," Wei Wuxian replied, smiling faintly. "I've been aware of your disapproval for many years."

The frown on Lan Wangji's forehead only worsened, though his gaze was kind.

Wei Wuxian drank more of the bitter liquor, wiping the spill of it at the corner of his mouth with a sleeve. It had been a while since he got to indulge, as the alcohol in the bloodpool cave could only be made in small quantities and had to be shared in-between all of them. If Lan Wangji intended to remain desperately sober, then he would drink his fill.

To his surprise, Lan Wangji did not berate him for it. In fact he pushed the jar set by his side of the table toward Wei Wuxian without a word. It threatened to topple after knocking into a hole of the wood, and Wei Wuxian caught it by the neck, his fingers brushing Lan Wangji's in the movement. The man drew his away slowly.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian said when it became evident that Lan Wangji was set on remaining silent. "Show me the music you brought."

It was a second before Lan Wangji moved to open the cloth tied at his waist. He handed him a stack of paper, each sheet covered in minutious writing.

Wei Wuxian spent a while shuffling through the different songs, humming some of them to make them easier to remember later, trying not to show just how grateful he was. Wen Qing had played the ones he had badly taught her many times, and each had given his heart less peace over the years. Perhaps these would bring him some more of the quiet he had found when Lan Wangji played them.

"I won't be able to remember all of these," he said mournfully. "But thank you. I think the simplest ones will stick."

"You can keep them."

Wei Wuxian looked up from the papers in his lap.

Lan Wangji had his head turned to the table between them, one hand delicately wrapped around the tea he had yet to bring to his lips. The tips of his ears had gone red in the stuffy air of the inn.

"They are copies," he said. "You can keep them."

"Copies?"

Lan Wangji nodded. His fingers twitched around the porcelain before his grip loosened.

Wei Wuxian stared once more at the sheets he was holding, noticing now that every stroke of ink on paper was even no matter which he read; that the same hand must have drawn all of them.

"Did you copy all of these yourself?" he asked.

Lan Wangji nodded wordlessly.

Wei Wuxian's fingers ran over the smooth, expensive paper, the very same that he had scribbled on a lifetime ago in punishment. The same he had drawn Lan Wangji's portrait on, lost in contemplation for the boy before him who withstood silence and immobility so easily.

It had been so long since Wei Wuxian drew anything that wasn't a spell array, since he picked up a brush for something other than formulæ or the occasional note about his aimless life. He had not even done this much since Jin Guangshan had laid siege on him. Each day he spent in the bloodpool cave became two or three before he had the time to breathe; and he could not recall what he did during them, in-between the moments of clarity that shook his head and lungs.

He felt the sudden need to push paper to wood, to rub ink to inkstone, to feel the smooth length of a brush in-between his fingers. He felt that he could paint Lan Wangji like this; that he could once more attempt to catch the light emanating out of him and try and translate it the only way he knew.

The only way he used to know.

But his fingers were awkward now, bent into the shape of flute-playing and not painting, out of practice and out of time. Already the light outside had dimmed, and his own sight with it. Lan Wangji before him was but a spot of white among shadows.

"I can't accept this," Wei Wuxian said. He blinked, hoping to see better, unsurprised when the shadows remained.

He tried to push the sheets toward Lan Wangji, but the man shook his head. "Keep them," he replied.

"Lan Zhan, those are songs from your sect. Even I can recognize how old some of them are."

"Keep them," Lan Wangji repeated, as unmoving as marble. "Learn them. If they are of no use to you, then I will take them back."

"Why?" Wei Wuxian asked. "Why would you do such a thing?"

But Lan Wangji did not answer this time any more than he did the last time Wei Wuxian had asked him. He lowered the head again, almost in a nod, the tea he held lifting at last to hover before his white-clad chest.

Wei Wuxian's hand rose over the table; before it could do anything, be it grab at the sheets or at Lan Wangji himself, he felt one of his barriers fail.

His breath caught in the second it took for one of the talismans on him to burn and scorch his skin—and then he was standing, knocking into the table outright in his need to run.

"Wei Ying?" Lan Wangji called.

But Wei Wuxian did not reply. He rejoined the outside of the inn, watching Wen Ning run to his side in the distance, a frightened Wen Yuan clinging to his back and shoulders.

"Master!" Wen Ning said when he reached him in inhuman speed. "Master, I felt—"

"I know," Wei Wuxian cut in. "I shouldn't have come here, I should've known they would try something while I was gone—"

"Wei Ying."

Lan Wangji had come out of the inn as well, the sheets of music once more rolled into grey cloth. He took another step toward Wei Wuxian.

"What is it?" he asked plainly.

"Someone is trying to break into the Burial Mounds," Wei Wuxian replied. "I have to return now."

Lan Wangji looked at him in stillness for a second.

Then he unsheathed his sword, letting it hover low above ground, and extended a hand forward.

"Master, you'll be faster on sword," Wen Ning said, his voice coming from far away. "I can run with A-Yuan, we can leave the cart for now…"

No, Wei Wuxian thought, trying to turn away; but his eyes met Lan Wangji's above the arm he had not moved between the both of them.

The road back over the cart, even with Wen Ning running as fast as he could, would take over an hour. A second barrier fell as Wei Wuxian stood still and breathless, singeing the skin of his arm under the narrow sleeve he wore.

"You get there as fast as you can, Wen Ning," he said, never looking away from the man before him.

"Yes, master."

The air that Wen Ning's departure moved erased everything, even Wen Yuan's surprised cry.

Wei Wuxian felt that he had to push forth impensable weight in order to grasp Lan Wangji's arm, to be assisted up Bichen's wide, hovering blade. And then again he almost dropped off of it when he felt Lan Wangji at his back, when the man's chest knocked into his shoulder, and he said—"Wait."

His fingers were so cold. As though they had just plunged into wet earth to try and pull the weight of him away.

Wei Wuxian stepped back till his heel hit the raised edge of the sword's pommel, leaving the space before him empty for Lan Wangji to occupy instead.

Lan Wangji asked no questions. He stepped onto the sword again, waited until Wei Wuxian's hold on his arms felt secure enough, and followed the path Wen Ning had taken out of the village.

Wei Wuxian could not have told when the last time he flew on a sword was—save for the practice sword he had forced into obedience as he rejoined the Lotus Pier in fear, he could not recall when last Suibian had lifted him in the way Bichen lifted Lan Wangji. The familiarity of the flight, however faint it was, ended there; this was more akin to being carried on a wild horse, no matter how smooth the path was that Bichen carved into the evening air. He had no control over it except for the direction he gave to the man who wielded it, and no core within his chest either to feel the echo of spiritual energy being released around him.

They flew beyond Wen Ning quickly. They went above the tortuous path through the hills, above the macaber air surrounding the village, above even the few and far-between silhouettes of cultivators on swords watching over the road. Within minutes they arrived to the edge of the barriers, and Wei Wuxian did not have to tell Lan Wangji to slow this time. He felt the cold slither of resentfulness on his own.

Lan Wangji lowered them to the ground carefully, too slowly for Wei Wuxian's taste, who wanted nothing more than to stop holding onto him and put distance between the both of them. It was sandalwood he smelled rather than death and decay as he dismounted the blade, and sandalwood seemed to cover even the burn of the third talisman vanishing on his skin.

He followed the there-and-gone light of the barriers in a run. He took in hand the two halves of the Stygian Tiger Seal, ready to bring them together at whatever sight awaited him beyond the scorched trees.

What he found under the arch of wood which he had used as a boundary so long ago was not an army, however, but one man. Lashing talisman after talisman against the solid air before him, fracturing the barriers like glass, all the raised corpses around him unwilling to lay a finger on him.

Wei Wuxian's eyesight grew white, grew red; he stepped over the dry ground and yelled, "What are you doing!?"

The last talisman burned after digging again into the breakline that its predecessors had caused, and Jiang Cheng turned toward him, Sandu drawn in one hand, the other holding more yellow paper.

"Wei Wuxian," he said; but whatever he meant to say vanished as he took in the man who stood behind Wei Wuxian.

The talismans he held fell to the ground uselessly. He walked toward them, Sandu brandished to Wei Wuxian's left, asking: "What is he doing here?"

There was so much ire over his face. Such disbelief and betrayal as he stared at Lan Wangji, whose own sword had not gone back into its scabbard. Bichen glowed over dry earth and dead branches with white and holy light.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji said quietly.

But far from keeping at bay the cold now spread through Wei Wuxian's middle, or washing off the taste of grass from his lips, his words only made them sharper; and Jiang Cheng before them both grew pale and furious, and spoke before either of them could.

"Is this how you spend your time while my sister rots in Lanling, then," he growled. "Is this how you repay the sacrifice she made for you, you—"

"Jiang Cheng—"

"Wei Ying," Jiang Cheng called back in unending sarcasm. Each of his words burrowed under Wei Wuxian's skin like a stab wound. "You've always thought me so gullible, so stupid, with your great acts of self-sacrifice! 'Yunmeng's hero', was it?"

"Calm down," Wei Wuxian said between his teeth, trying to see through the shadows of night encroaching upon them.

But Jiang Cheng did not obey. "Was that not what you called me? Was that not the promise you made me!?" he roared. "How many promises of yours will go to waste, Wei Wuxian, before you've had enough of playing people for fools? Or is your loyalty only for Lan Wangji?"

"Jiang Wanyin," came Lan Wangji's cold voice through the ringing in Wei Wuxian's ears, "mind your manners. You do not know what you speak of."

"Don't I?" Jiang Cheng spat. "Has Wei Wuxian not always been yours, alpha!?"

It was as though his voice traversed through the ages, as though Wei Wuxian still lay upon the grass in the mountains behind Yunmeng, Jiang Cheng's hands strangling him: Who's to say he's not carrying a little Lan?

The crack of steps upon dead wood reached them, and Wen Ning appeared where they could all see him, holding a drowsy Wen Yuan in his arms.

Bile burned up Wei Wuxian's throat, more potent than liquor, as if all of his insides wanted to retch themselves out of him at once.

By some miracle, he contained it. He managed to swallow and speak, horse and painful, as Jiang Cheng panted in anger. "Wen Ning," he said. Saliva flooded his mouth bitterly. "Go up to the others. They must be in a panic."

"Master," Wen Ning protested.

But Wei Wuxian did not acknowledge him. After a brief moment, Wen Ning ran through the barriers and vanished from all their sights.

Wei Wuxian walked forward. Sandu veered to him instead of Lan Wangji, and he saw a shadow of doubt over Jiang Cheng's face, a trembling in the hand that held it before it stabilized. He did not stop walking until its pointed edge rested above the place it had stabbed months ago.

"Have you calmed down now?" he asked quietly.

"You don't have a right to speak to me," Jiang Cheng seethed.

Sandu pressed the slightest bit forward, a single point of pressure between Wei Wuxian's ribs, but it broke neither cloth nor skin. It wavered in Jiang Cheng's hold.

"Either kill me or sheathe your sword, Jiang Cheng," Wei Wuxian said. "But don't leave the job half-finished again."

He saw the breath that Jiang Cheng took shake through his throat and chest and make his face redden; and the look that his former shidi directed to him then was not one he knew how to handle anymore.

Please fix this, Jiang Cheng's eyes said. Please just fix everything.

But Wei Wuxian had not the knowledge or power to, and Sandu fell from his chest to stroke the ground instead. Both of Jiang Cheng's arms became lax by his sides.

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes. He breathed almost forcefully, enough to feel his own body again despite the otherness clinging to him. "Lan Zhan, thank you for today," he said without daring to look back. "I'm afraid I must ask you to leave."

"No," Lan Wangji said.

Jiang Cheng moved again at last. "Just leave," he snapped at the man behind Wei Wuxian. "I'm not going to attack him."

The status they shared must carry more weight to Lan Wangji than anything Wei Wuxian could say, for only then did he abide. There came the sound of cloth unwinding, of something dropping to the dead forest floor; and then white light shone again between Wei Wuxian's feet and Jiang Cheng, and wind rang between branches as the man took flight.

When Wei Wuxian looked over his own shoulder, he saw only the music sheets that Lan Wangji had brought him, laid upon the ground.

"What was he doing with you?" Jiang Cheng asked then in a much more moderate voice then before.

"Nothing," Wei Wuxian replied. "We met by chance. He was with me when I felt the wards fall, he just offered to carry me back."

"He wouldn't have needed to if you carried your own sword."

Wei Wuxian ignored the jab. He turned to the half-broken barriers before them. He took the Stygian Tiger Seal in hand and brought the two halves together, mindless of the fatigue that threatened to drag him to his knees. He layered more of his wards again, more fragile than they had been before for lack of nurturing.

"Did you have to destroy months of work in a tantrum?" he couldn't help but ask, his voice breezy with effort.

"How else was I supposed to make sure you'd come out?" Jiang Cheng retorted. "You haven't been seen in months."

"You must have terrified them all. Wen Qing will have my head for this."

Wei Wuxian stared at him just in time to see the guilt over his face, the discomfort giving him that ugly blush again. Jiang Cheng turned his back to him and sheathed his sword at last.

His own heart still smarted from the words spoken earlier, but Wei Wuxian thought it best to put them behind him and never think of them again.

If he thought about them—if he tried to imagine the face Lan Wangji must have made, being accused of such things with him—

"Why did you come here?" he asked, having to swallow again for the nausea crawling up his torso and neck.

Jiang Cheng faced him again after one bracing second. His eyes dragged from Wei Wuxian's face to his belly, and his hand over Sandu's scabbard tensed and whitened. "How is your wound?" he said for all answer.

"Fine. It takes more than a sword to kill me."

"Don't say such things," Jiang Cheng snapped at him.

Wei Wuxian smiled at him ghostly, though he had wished so desperately at the time that Sandu did kill him. "Just tell me why you're here, Jiang Cheng," he said. "I can't imagine you just wanted the pleasure of my company."

"I came to tell you that Sister is getting married."

Wei Wuxian's mouth opened and closed silently.

Jiang Cheng frowned at him. "I thought you might like to know," he added spitefully. "Even if you won't give that omega back to free her."

Even the guilt of having made this decision could not pierce through Wei Wuxian's surprise now. Silence stretched between for a long time before he managed to ask: "To whom?"

"Jin Zixuan."

The feeling of a hand on his face, of words spoken close to his lips as he stood cornered by his own fright and the wide trunk of a tree. The too-easy grip of Suihua in his hand as he put the blade to its master's neck and watched him beg him to flee, his face lit from behind by a fire, four terrified omega hiding in the entrails of a mountain cave.

"Is this another plot of Jin Guangshan's?" The words had to tear out of him by force and sickness alike. Wei Wuxian looked at Jiang Cheng's shuttered face, asking, "Does he intend to trap her like this too? Is Jin Zixuan trying to—"

"No," Jiang Cheng replied with no hesitation. Frustration once more tensed at his neck and brow. "You have no idea the amount of begging Jin Zixuan did for you," he spat, and Wei Wuxian near-flinched back, though he knew. He had known all along. "He wouldn't harm her. His proposal was sincere."

Wei Wuxian swallowed. His throat ached and burned unpleasantly. "And shijie is," he tried; he stopped, having to breathe again. "She is happy," he said. "With him."

"She is. You know she has always loved him."

I've loved you since we were children.

He had never known a secret so heavy, he thought; and never a guilt quite so crushing.

"She wanted me to tell you," Jiang Cheng said, unsheathing Sandu again. The sword's dark glow washed over the grounds around them as he mounted it, as he looked at Wei Wuxian in anger and longing. "She misses you."

"I miss her too," Wei Wuxian replied softly, though he had no right to.

Neither of them moved for a moment longer. Wei Wuxian read on Jiang Cheng's face the same regret he held so deep beneath his skin, the same ache for better and freer days, no matter that this freedom had always been a lie. The same absence of warmth at his side, when too often their arms had knocked without daring to embrace.

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth, looking grieved and lonely, and Wei Wuxian wondered if he would say the words he could feel trying to escape his own lips.

But he did not. And as Sandu vanished over the gnarly branches of dead trees, carrying out of sight the person he missed the most bitterly, he found himself more alone than he had ever been.

The next-to-last time Wei Wuxian saw Jiang Yanli was seven days after Jin Ling's birth; five days before he lay bleeding in the empty Burial Mounds, in the arms of the only alpha he had ever trusted.

He saw her then happy as she had never been in his presence, the fatigue marring her face unable to stop it from glowing, more beautiful and kind than any who stood by her. She was sitting in the wide bed of the bedroom she shared with her husband, clothed in gold and white. If any of the pain of labor followed her still, she showed no sign of it; her politeness as she greeted the ones who came to visit her and presented the newborn to them was without fail, and she looked for all intents and purposes as any new parent should.

Happy. Fulfilled. Loved and loving endlessly.

There were half a dozen people within the room when Wei Wuxian arrived with Jiang Cheng by his side. All of them looked at him in hatred before leaving it, hurried, some even holding their sleeves to their faces as if afraid of catching the scent of him.

"Why did they invite him?" he could hear them whisper before they could walk far enough; "Why call the Yiling Patriarch here today?"

"Sister," Jiang Cheng called, unhindered by the murmurs, his voice swelled with emotion.

"Come here, A-Cheng," Jiang Yanli replied with such a bright smile that it shone even in the ever-darkness. "Come meet your nephew."

Jiang Cheng did so in slow steps. He sat by her side on the bed, he looked at the child held in her gold-clad arms. He smiled as he touched its hand; his eyes shone when Jiang Yanli turned the head and pressed a kiss to his temple, saying, "Thank you for bringing him."

Wei Wuxian avoided her eyes when they rested on him. He met Jin Zixuan's instead across the room, and the rigidity that struck him was not any better.

The Jin sect heir was standing by his wife's other side, his face red and lax with joy. He too wore the colors of his sect, his golden robes thicker and more beautiful, the peony embroidered to his chest more detailed than Wei Wuxian could remember. He had on him the air of someone who could not believe what they were seeing; he saw Wei Wuxian, and nodded to him in greeting; and he looked again at Jiang Yanli and the child she had birthed him, and wonder illuminated him anew.

"A-Xian."

When he could not avoid it anymore—when all details of the room and its occupants had burned themselves to his mind for the ages to come—Wei Wuxian turned to face his shijie.

He did not know what he expected to see on her face. Disappointment perhaps, or betrayal of the worst kind. Some happiness for the sight of him, wasted by the worry she had always exuded in his presence since her parents had died. But Jiang Yanli smiled at him kindly. She placed her child into the crook of her right arm and extended the left to him, inviting him forward.

Wei Wuxian could do nothing but join her. Jiang Cheng left him his spot upon the bed, and he took it so slowly and carefully, the mattress hardly dipped under his weight. His arm almost touched hers when she shifted to face him.

"Shijie," he said.

"A-Xian…" He did not move to avoid the hand she lifted to his face, the brief caress she gave to his temple and cheek. He felt her palm frame him as she took in the sight of him; as she noticed the differences between how he looked now and how he had looked the last time they had met.

He could not have told if there were any. He had not looked at himself, not in a mirror or in water's reflection, in too long to remember.

All he knew were the worry Wen Qing showed day after day for his lack of eating or sleeping, and the same look in his shijie's eyes as she chose not to say a word of it for once.

"Did you meet any trouble on your trip?" she asked gently. Her hand dropped once more to the burden she carried, stroking over the golden cloth keeping it warm and covered.

"No," he found the strength to reply. "Jiang Cheng complained the whole way, however."

"Because we could have flown instead of riding," replied Jiang Cheng's voice angrily behind him. "If someone hadn't forgotten his sword again."

Jiang Yanli smiled at her brother. "A-Cheng, will you please fetch young master Meng for me?" she asked. "More people came than I thought there would be. I need to discuss the seating arrangements for the feast with him."

Jiang Cheng scoffed, bothered and frustrated, but he had never had the will to refuse her even when she did not look so very tired. Wei Wuxian heard his footsteps echo upon the walls of the room as he left. He looked at the bedspread he was sat on rather than his shijie's face or anything she held.

When he was gone, Wei Wuxian asked: "Is Jin Guangshan lying on his deathbed? I'm not certain myself how I managed to walk up the stairs without being attacked."

A moment of silence followed; then Jin Zixuan coughed from his side of the room, replying, "No," in a strangled voice.

"Sect leader Jin agreed to your presence here," Jiang Yanli said, relieving her husband. "Though not immediately."

Wei Wuxian said nothing. The only reason he could think of for Jin Guangshan approving of his presence, outside of an ambush, was to show off the hostage he had kept for over a year to his face.

There was another child in the Burial Mounds, now; another crying babe with the last name of the Jin clan in the arms of another mother, who was not so finely draped as the one Jiang Yanli held in her arms.

He looked at it before he could help it. It was only a glance, barely longer than a blink of the eyes, and still the image of the wrinkled, sleeping creature burned into his eyes and made him want to throw up.

He made as if to rise, but Jiang Yanli's hand was on him again, pushing his shoulder down. He met her eyes with his heart beating at his throat.

"A-Xian," she said, "we'd like you to choose his courtesy name."

He stilled. He looked at her in incomprehension. Her face showed nothing but kindness, however, and Jin Zixuan's behind her belied no other thought either.

Finally, he let out, "What?"

"We've discussed it for a long time," Jiang Yanli explained, rocking her arms and smiling down at her son. "Ling'er is beta. It does not matter to sect leader Jin who chooses his courtesy name, only those of A-Xuan's alpha heirs."

She looked up to Wei Wuxian again. "I think it should be you," she said. "It couldn't be anyone but you."

It could be Jiang Cheng, or Madam Jin, or even a member of the Yu sect far away in Meishan. It made no sense at all that the choice should fall to Wei Wuxian, who had betrayed and abandoned her, who stood in disgrace to all who roamed the halls of Golden Carp Tower.

He was the one who had stolen her first love from her, even if she was married to him now. He had driven Jin Zixuan into holding his hand in those woods and declaring his love.

"The next generation of Jin clan rulers will be named 'Ru'," said Jin Zixuan, but Wei Wuxian could not look at him now.

He had never named a child, not even the one—not even Wen Yuan. He knew not if Wen Yuan had a courtesy name chosen for him either, and he did not wish to know. When Jiang Fengmian had asked him to name his sword, the sword which now lay abandoned at the deepest of the bloodpool cave, Wei Wuxian had not known what to answer him either.

The only named possession of his was Chenqing. And Chenqing did not sound so beautiful to him, either the name or the music it produced, since Lan Wangji had played it and quieted him with it.

His mouth dried. His jaw loosened. "Rulan," he said.

There came a moment of silence before Jin Zixuan asked, "Like the Lan clan?"

Wei Wuxian felt the hair rise at his own nape. "You don't have to keep it—"

"No," Jiang Yanli interrupted.

Her hand on Wei Wuxian's arm pressed over cloth and skin warmly.

"No, I think Jin Rulan is perfect."

A breath he had not known he was holding loosened itself out of his lungs. Jiang Yanli's hand left him and came back to her child. She stroked his sleeping face, her lips stretched into the same loving smile she had worn since he had entered the room—as if she did not know any other way to be, as if happiness had settled so deeply within her that her mouth could not lose the shape of it.

Then she asked the sleeping child, "Would you like your sect-uncle to hold you, Ling'er?" and Wei Wuxian could not have moved even to flee her.

No, he thought, but she was already tugging his arm toward the bundle of golden cloth; Don't make me, he wanted to beg, but already the light weight of the newborn was placed at his elbow, and Jiang Yanli closed his hold on it and laughed. The air she breathed felt like ice over every inch of his skin.

Jin Ling did not cry, did not squirm, as Wei Wuxian recalled the bloodied body of Wen Yuan did in Wen Qing's hands after hours of pain. Still the unsettled riverscent of him dried his throat and his lungs, and the mere sight of him again, the feel of him over his hands, made his stomach twist and ache. Bile rose up his neck and bathed his tongue.

He wanted to throw Jin Ling away. He realized this in horror and in fear. The impulse was at his fingers, at his neck, in the muscles of his back already tensing and shifting. He wanted to throw him away, to make sure he could never touch him, never look or speak to him as Wen Yuan had that day.

Instead he gave him back to Jiang Yanli almost forcefully, shaking from shoulders to fingertips, doing his best not to show it. He heard her call his name through the blood rushing past his ears, but he did not heed it. This time there was no hand to hold him back as he rose, and he almost swayed on his feet, so dark had the world around him become.

"I'll let you rest, shijie," he heard himself say to her. "You have many more visitors to entertain."

"A-Xian—"

Wei Wuxian walked out of the wide and sunlit room, allowing his feet to guide him rather relying on his eyes. He heard murmurs and footsteps after him as he crossed the threshold; he smelled the same bitter pines that had once driven him to threats, and he was not surprised as he stopped in the middle of an unseen hallway to turn around and find Jin Zixuan following him.

"What do you want?" he snapped at him.

It was all he could do not to rest his weight on his hand against the wall. His legs had gone shaky and weak, unable to support his own weight. His heart still beat wildly far up in his own chest, and the darkness had only lifted enough for him to see Jin Zixuan who stood right before him.

Jin Zixuan went still at his question. It was a tense moment before he replied, "You do not look well," in as quiet a voice as Wei Wuxian had ever heard from him.

"I'm a madman, as you well know," Wei Wuxian said. "Go back to your wife before someone sees us."

Jin Zixuan looked torn. His head turned to the direction of the room Jiang Yanli was in, and the harshness of his features seemed to loosen, his brow easing and his mouth curved; then he met Wei Wuxian's eyes again and tensed anew, nodding his head, one hand rising to cover his own chest.

Wei Wuxian grabbed it at the cloth-covered wrist before it could.

Jin Zixuan inhaled in a deep and short burst, the sound of it ringing through Wei Wuxian's own lungs in echo. He did not move to tear his hand from Wei Wuxian or advance upon him again. He simply stared at him with wide-open eyes.

"Do you love her?" Wei Wuxian asked him.

Himself felt breathless and sick, the weight of the child still hanging over his arms and making them shake. The very act of touching Jin Zixuan threatened to send him over the edge and have him retch where he stood, but he held strong.

He looked at the man's face. He tried to search for deceit in his eyes, in the pulse of the wrist he held so tightly, but he could not find it, just as he had not found any whilst Jin Zixuan looked at his son or at Jiang Yanli herself earlier.

"Yes," Jin Zixuan said, and the truth of it seemed written over him.

Wei Wuxian released his hold on him. Jin Zixuan's hand lowered and did not lift again.

"You take care of her," he told the Jin heir tiredly.

All the strength seemed to have gone from him.

"You better make her happy, Jin Zixuan."

"I will," said Jin Zixuan softly. "I could not forgive myself if I did not."

Wei Wuxian supposed that such a promise would have to do. He stepped away from the man slowly, making sure that he would not be followed again, and Jin Zixuan seemed to accept it. He turned his back to Wei Wuxian and took the direction of the room they had both left.

Wei Wuxian paid no mind to the whispers that followed him as he rejoined the wider areas of Golden Carp Tower. He had known they would be there since Jiang Cheng had come again to the Burial Mounds days ago, alight with excitement, telling him of his nephew's birth; and promptly asked him to come to the boy's seventh day celebration, arguing that none would dare to contest his presence or harm him while he was there.

The whispers had started when they reached Lanling City. They had not ceased as the both of them ascended the long stairs around the mountain. Now they clung to Wei Wuxian's skin like sweat, and the eyes that avoided him were not any better than the ones that followed him.

He found the entrance of a garden behind the widest hall atop the stairs, a place lush with flowers and trees, smelling heavily of sweetness. It was empty but for the birds who came to peck at the seeded soil.

He retched there away from all eyes. He held his aching stomach with one hand, near-whimpering at the pain he felt digging a hole through it. When he wiped his mouth with a shaking hand—when he finally could breathe without wanting to hurl—it came away stained with blood.

Wei Wuxian looked at it confusedly. He ran his tongue over his teeth, over the inside of his mouth entirely, looking for the sting of a cut. He found none.

"A bit weak-willed, aren't you?"

Wei Wuxian wiped the blood off on the black cloth of his robes. He rubbed over his mouth once more to be certain that none showed there. "I wasn't the one crying," he retorted.

Jiang Cheng was sneering at him when he turned to face him, but it was not the sneer of disgust and hatred he had shown in front of Lan Wangji. It looked more like the playful kind he sported as a child whenever Wei Wuxian did something especially embarrassing.

"Sister told me you ran away when she tried to make you hold Jin Ling," he said, mocking. "I'm sure most of the fools here would have a field day with this. The Yiling Patriarch, defeated by a baby."

Wei Wuxian felt too exhausted for Jiang Cheng's words to make more than faint queasiness rise in him. "I'm not staying," he muttered instead of trying to argue. "I've seen enough."

Jiang Cheng frowned at him. "The celebrations will last days," he said.

"And it'll take me days to go back home. I can't be away for so long."

"Home," Jiang Cheng repeated through his teeth. "Is that what you call that place?"

But Wei Wuxian had not the will for another fight with Jiang Cheng, not with his stomach still aching so brightly. The phantom weight of the child still rested upon him hauntingly. "Yes," he said.

He put the little box containing his gift to the newborn Jin Ling in Jiang Cheng's hands and walked away.

No more people stopped him except for Meng Yao, who was walking near the entrance in direction of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan's room. "Leaving so soon, young master Wei?" he asked with a deep nod of his head.

He had a guqin strapped to his back, like Lan Wangji the last time Wei Wuxian had seen him. Wei Wuxian realized distantly that the celebratory the music he had heard upon his arrival must have been played by him.

Meng Yao, as always, seemed not to find offense in his lack of answer, though Wei Wuxian stared at him silently for a moment. He simply made way when Wei Wuxian walked again, and the feeling of his eyes over Wei Wuxian's nape vanished soon enough.

He saw no one but civilians as he descended the stairs. Those people carried heavy loads on their backs, sometimes two at a time, going up to the great halls above to deliver their gifts. Cultivators had no such need for an effort. They flew over their heads on swordback, showing not a sign of being willing to lend the earth-bound hand.

Merchants had once again occupied the last of the stone steps for a way before the city proper, loudly proclaiming for him to approach and browse the things they sold. But Wei Wuxian had no need for anything, and no desire to linger as he had on the day of the discussion conference. He went to the stables where he had left his horses and took the both of them back.

The farther he rode out of the city after that, the easier he breathed.

Wen Ning had accompanied him and Jiang Cheng on foot on the way. He rejoined him outside the city gates and took the horse Jiang Cheng had ridden, his face absent any gratefulness or fatigue. "Young master Wei," he said simply. "Did you meet the little master?"

"Yes," Wei Wuxian replied.

It seemed to be enough of an answer for Wen Ning, who asked no more questions as they trotted away.

He must be thinking of his sister, whose hard work Wei Wuxian had required extensively to repair the barriers broken by Jiang Cheng months ago. Few cultivators had the core strength that Jiang Cheng did, let alone enough of it to break through three layers of defenses alone, but the fact that he did had been enough to frighten her and all the omega who lived beyond those invisible walls. They had all felt the clear air ripen with death, the ground shake, the crows hover in the distance as they had the one time Wei Wuxian had been absent from the Burial Mounds for over a week. The newest of them had not known how to react; those who had lived there for years remembered, and not even Wen Qing's calm had been enough to quiet them before Wei Wuxian arrived.

"I need to find a way to create more powerful barriers," Wei Wuxian said when they reached a rocky path through the mountains.

A short cliff of stone rose along the road they trod. Vegetation was sparse here, as though scorched by the sun, and the ground below the horses' hooves was cracked and burned like in the Nightless City. It was only the beginning of spring, but already the day felt hot and bright. Not a cloud could be seen. The rivers they had passed on their way were thick with the melting of snow.

"I need to make sure all of you can be safe even if I die."

"Master," said Wen Ning in worry. "Master, you should rest. You shouldn't say such things."

"It's necessary," Wei Wuxian told him, turning to look at him—turning his back to the cliff along which they rode. "If I can't make sure all of you remain out of harm's way in my absence…"

He was not certain, for a second, why his words stopped. He felt a shake through his body, as if something or someone had hit him from the side, and he toppled on his saddle before sitting upright again.

But then he heard the release of a tense string, the whistling of iron cutting through the air; and Wen Ning cried, "Master!" and jumped off of his own horse, which ran away, terrified.

Wen Ning was before Wei Wuxian now and holding an arrow in his hand. Wei Wuxian looked at his own shoulder and saw that another had already pierced him, digging deeply into his flesh, so that the shaft did not shake when even he moved the arm.

He turned his head to the top of the cliff.

Only the head of the bowman could be seen from behind rock before he rose. And then he was not alone, as Wei Wuxian hoped; several more people appeared, dozens of them, until over a hundred and fifty stood along the ridge and stared down at him with bows and swords in hand.

A man stepped forward in the middle of them all. A stout and unpleasantly-scented man, with a voice Wei Wuxian had heard first while trapped in silk and last while threatening him.

"Wei Wuxian," said Jin Zixun in triumph. "You finally show your true colors."

Wei Wuxian slowly grabbed the arrow notched into his shoulder. He pulled it out, keeping away the wince of pain threatening to overcome his face, and let it fall bloodily to the dry ground.

A few of the cultivators stepped back at the show of resilience. "I am leaving," Wei Wuxian told Jin Zixun coolly. "You can go back to your master, Jin Zixun, and tell him that I obeyed his threats peacefully. I will not attack you."

He expected Jin Zixun to resist and insult him, to lose his composure again as he was wont to. He did not expect him to grow white in the face with outrage.

"You have the gall to say this," Jin Zixun expelled, his words nothing short of screams. "You have the audacity to come here, Wei Wuxian, after what you've done to me!?"

"What have I done to you?" Wei Wuxian asked loudly. "I've seen not even a shadow of you in over a year, you miserable worm. What is it that you're trying to pin on me now?"

There was something nagging at him, a white-and-bright feeling of rage and despair laid parallel to his heart that he could give no name to. Wei Wuxian shivered and put it aside, trying more than ever before to keep his head clear, to remember his shijie laid in a bed and the threat which rested over her even now that she wore gold and not purple.

"Shoot him!" Jin Zixun ordered the hundred-and-more men surround him him. "Shoot him down!"

Most of them did not move, their eyes fixed to Wei Wuxian's left where the infamous Ghost General stood. Some more withdrew in fear, now that the plot was discovered and they were no longer safely away from Wei Wuxian's notice.

But a few armed their bows and loosened their arrows, and Wei Wuxian's horse whinnied loudly, rearing back, almost dismounting him entirely. Wen Ning ran before him and caught as many shafts as he could with his hands. Some missed him by a wide margin, others pierced his unfeeling flesh as they would a shield; one Wei Wuxian had to duck himself atop his horse, and the last buried into the animal's thigh.

It screamed, now nearly foaming at the mouth in fear. It bucked under Wei Wuxian and made him fall to the cracked earth with such strength that no doubt a bone should have snapped, had Wen Ning not caught him in time.

"Wen Ning," spat Jin Zixun from high upon the rock. "You should have stayed dead, you dog."

The feeling was there again by Wei Wuxian's heart: an awareness foreign to his own, gnawing slowly at his conscious.

"Wen Ning?" he murmured, realizing at last where it came from.

He tore his eyes away from Jin Zixun.

Wen Ning was still holding him upright, but his arms were shaking. An arrow stuck out of his back, another out of his belly. The black veins at his neck seemed to have spread under his skin, covering his chin and rising to his cheekbones.

His eyes were fixed to Jin Zixun above them.

"Master," he whispered. "I—"

He reeked of fear. His ever-cool body, always slicked with a layer of resentful energy, now felt as cold and slippery as ice.

Wei Wuxian grabbed Wen Ning's arm. He pulled the arrow out of his belly, saying, "Come on, let's go, let's run from here."

The fright only grew in Wen Ning and in him, cloying, sticking to skin like sap. He understood that Wen Ning could not move at all.

Wei Wuxian ground his teeth. He blinked away the ghostly sight of a drenched mountain pass, the feel of mud over his skin as he and Wen Qing waded for eons, looking for a sign of life.

"Jin Zixun," he called, placing himself before Wen Ning. "I've not attacked you or your clan in any way. You are the one breaking the peace between us."

"Liar!" Jin Zixun screamed at him, one of his hand fisted into the neckline of his robes. "You cursed me, you mad bitch!"

And he pulled down the golden cloth covering his torso, and showed all who were present the ghastly sight of his punctured skin.

A glance would have sufficed for Wei Wuxian to recognize the Hundred Holes Curse, but Jin Zixun did not stop at a glance. He spread apart the crossed line of his outer robes, showing the blood staining his underclothes in the shape of pebble-sized dots.

In the part of Wei Wuxian's soul occupied by his bond to Wen Ning, another image showed; that of Jin Zixun disrobing in a similar way, lit by dusk and fire, and looking down on him with his dark face cut against the sky.

The ache in his stomach tensed and shuddered. Blood filled his mouth again and made him taste iron.

Wei Wuxian swallowed it back. He held on to Wen Ning's arm behind him and spoke to Jin Zixun: "A fitting way for you to die, but not my doing."

"Who else could it be but you?" Jin Zixun yelled.

"What proof to you have that it was me?"

Jin Zixun looked around himself for help, but now many of the cultivators who had come with him were distracted by the horrible sight of him. The closest had stepped away from him in shame or fear, unwilling to risk catching the curse upon themselves.

"I did not curse you," Wei Wuxian said as evenly as he could. "Look upon your other enemies. You must have quite a few."

Raised bows lowered, raised swords stopped glowing with power, and for a moment Wei Wuxian believed that he would be able to walk away. He believed that Wen Ning's simmering terror would cool. He believed that he would see again the smile on Wen Qing's handsome face, or watch from afar as Jiang Yanli flourished in marriage and motherhood.

Jin Zixun tore the bow out of the hands of the nearest cultivator and notched an arrow to its string; he spat out, "Die, you deranged thief;" and Wen Ning pushed Wei Wuxian to the ground and jumped across soil and rock faster than the eye could see.

"No!" Wei Wuxian screamed as the dry ground cut his palms, "No, Wen Ning, stop!"

But it was too late—already cultivators were falling in the corpse's quest to alleviate the terror eating him, and his white eyes were spotted with black, his spirit gone despite the years Wei Wuxian had spent tying it to his flesh again.

Blood colored the yellow rock. Necks shattered under the grip of inhuman fingers. Wei Wuxian watched the sand drip redly from the edge of the cliff, tied at the throat by the vivid memory of Wen Ning's last moments as a living man.

He pushed himself upright, took Chenqing in his trembling hand—he played with all the strength of his frayed memory the songs that Lan Wangji had brought him, every single one of them learned by the fire of the bloodpool cave, all of them meant to appease the soul. Despair swallowed him whole and made the bright day somber. He could not see any more out of his own vision, only out of Wen Ning's.

Wen Ning had no soul now, however. One by one he massacred them, tearing limbs apart bare-handed, crushing heads and throats under his feet. Many of them tried to flee, some blowing alarms from the horns hung about their necks, Jin Zixun amongst them; but Wen Ning was faster than any of them. He was faster and stronger than ten humans could hope to be.

"Wen Ning!" Wei Wuxian yelled when the corpse grabbed Jin Zixun by the undone collar.

But Wen Ning did not feel or hear him. Wen Ning was led only by the terrible memories of that rain-drenched day, when the man he was now holding had hurt him and left him to die.

"Please," he saw Jin Zixun beg without hearing him, for his voice was choked out by Wen Ning's grasp on him; "Oh please, spare me—"

Wen Ning tore his head from his neck with no more effort than he used to carry Luo Fanghua's fabrics in his arms or play hand games with Wen Yuan.

Wei Wuxian heard nothing, saw nothing. His very heartbeat washed over his ears and eyes and made him deaf and blind. He stood frozen and alone before the rocky cliff from which blood dripped in the way of waterfalls. It was his own life, he knew, flowing thusly under the sun; his life from the moment he had lain naked over grass and to the very second extinguishing now.

He felt only from afar as an arm wound around his front, as he was held to someone else's body and made to take flight. Cold wind slapped at his face and the field of death below him vanished, Wen Ning staring in his direction in beatitude.

This fleeting awareness of his own body did not last long. Soon enough his lungs constricted and forced him to take in air, to smell the bitter scent of trees. His back knocked against wide shoulders, his skin shivered and crawled everywhere the arms held him.

He spat out blood. He struggled in the alpha's hold, mindless of the sound of his own name called so near to his ears. The hot breath he felt there like another lash of wind made him cry out and rage.

He fell from the sword while it was still high up, and had those same arms not caught him again before he hit ground, Wei Wuxian knew he would have died. He struggled anyway. He squirmed and clawed at the hands keeping him aloft until slick blood made his nails slide on skin, until his feet touched the rocky floor and he could at last push away the body smothering him.

"Wei Wuxian—"

"Get away from me," Wei Wuxian tried to yell, but all that came out was a dry heave of words.

His stomach ached like a blade in the belly. He retched over the ground, blood and bile dripping to his feet and the front of his soiled robes. He fell to his knees in his own sick, unable to breathe without pain tearing him apart.

Jin Zixuan tried to approach again. He tried to put a hand on his shoulder, to help him up perhaps, his voice coming unheard—but Wei Wuxian felt only the pain, the memories of Wen Ning in his head mingling with his own, and such a hand in such a place deserved only to be broken.

He grabbed Jin Zixuan by the wrist. He felt bone and tendon twist under his hold, heard the grunt of pain the man gave before pulling away. Only when he did so did Wei Wuxian push his own hands to the ground.

Never had standing up been so difficult, so painful, not even when he first fell into the Burial Mounds. He watched Jin Zixuan nursing his own wrist before him and heaved until he could speak.

"Do you want to die," he rasped out. "Do you have a death wish?"

Jin Zixuan looked at him as if the very sight of him ached. He was pale too despite the sun overhead, shaken by what he must have seen in that path further away. "I can help you," he said.

Wei Wuxian laughed. It pulled at the bright wound of him, exuded despair and not joy. He pointed wildly eastward, whence they came, and screamed, "I just killed over a hundred cultivators!"

"It wasn't you—"

"I just killed your cousin!"

"I saw you try to stop Wen Ning!" Jin Zixuan snapped. "I know it wasn't you, I saw!"

Wei Wuxian put both hands over his face. He wanted to tear away his own skin, to taste anything but iron, to vanish on the spot and never have existed at all. From far away he felt Wen Ning's still-bright terror getting closer by the second, as he followed the call of his master through the bond they both shared.

"You need to leave," he breathed to Jin Zixuan. "You need to—to go back to the Tower, you need to get shijie out of there, you need to—"

But he choked at the thought alone; at the image his mind of Jiang Yanli hung for his crimes, of her child orphaned for his deeds, of Jiang Cheng left bereft of the last of his family.

"I can protect A-Li," Jin Zixuan's voice replied from far away. "She is my wife, my father wouldn't dare lay a finger on her now. I can protect you as well—"

Wei Wuxian laughed again, and felt blood drip from his lips as it had dripped over the gore-stained cliff. "How?" he asked, lowering both his hands, watching through the darkness the man who stood before him.

Jin Zixuan wore the same eyes now that he had in that forest after Wei Wuxian pushed him away.

Suihua was not yet sheathed. It gleamed in the sunlight, immaculate in his hand.

"How could you possibly protect me now?" Wei Wuxian howled. "Or do you intend to kill your own father for the sake of me? The rest of the sects would just finish the job!"

"If you," Jin Zixuan said haltedly, "If you…"

He breathed. His bleeding hand twitched by his side.

"My father… he could never touch you either. He could never again do anything against you."

Jin Zixuan's hand rose to his chest. He bowed again in all the formal ways, golden and proud, his face showing only the same despair he had once pushed so forcefully onto Wei Wuxian. It was stained with dust and blood for having pressed to Wei Wuxian's back as they flew.

Wei Wuxian stared at him uncomprehendingly. He took in his posture and words and could not make sense of them at all.

When he did—when the terrible truth rang through him and made his chest shatter—he asked: "Are you asking me again to marry you?"

The shudder that shook Jin Zixuan, the deathly silence of him, was answer enough.

Wei Wuxian breathed out thinly. He wiped the blood off of his mouth again with one trembling palm. "You are," he said in disbelief, "the lowest of all scum I have met in my life."

Jin Zixuan gasped. He looked up with begging eyes. "I give you my word that I am not asking for any feelings I hold," he said. "I know you do not want me, I only mean to offer you protection. I swear that I would never touch you."

"You give your word so easily, Jin Zixuan, what worth is your promise now?"

The volume of his own voice threatened to have Wei Wuxian choke again. Still he felt no pity at all to see Jin Zixuan bow under his words as if they were blows; and the hand that the man extended to try and grab his arm, still holding Suihua, made only disgust shine in him. No matter that the other still grabbed hopelessly at the peony sewn to his chest.

"Go back to your Tower," he spat, shaking away Jin Zixuan's hold, feeling more and more of himself let go again to the white and blinding rage. "Go back to your wife."

"Wei Wuxian, listen to me," Jin Zixuan begged.

He stepped back. He bowed again more lowly than he ever had before, lower than his status asked for. Suihua fell to the ground as his fingers loosened, raising a cloud of dust. Threads pulled out of the cloth covering his heart and hung limply around his pressing hand.

"I can help you," he said, and honesty could have worn his face, sacrifice taken his name. He extended his unarmed hand forward in pleading. "Please, let me help you."

Time slowed.

It thickened and lengthened before Wei Wuxian's eyes. The beating of his heart slowed with it until he could hear it no more. Jin Zixuan suffered the same fate as red spread over his golden clothes; as the hand spread before him lowered and the one he held to himself fell.

There was another hand under it. One clawed and unfeeling, one so painted by blood that only glimpses of grey skin could be seen, and only the beginning of veins turned black by resentment.

Wen Ning tore it out of the hole it had just dug all the way through Jin Zixuan's back. It rested by his side, flesh and muscle hanging from its long fingernails, unmoving as the rest of him was now that all threats were eliminated.

Jin Zixuan coughed once; blood sprayed over his chin and neck and the ground before him; his knees gave out from under him and he crumbled to the dry soil, one hand a breath away from the pommel of his sword.

He never moved again.

There came a flutter of wind. The unmistakable sound of a sword cutting through the air. A voice, even, familiar and rough, screaming out in horror. Wei Wuxian could only watch the place that Jin Zixuan's face had occupied before he died and which Wen Ning's did now. He could only stare into those white, unseeing eyes; only feel the very fear and loneliness haunting Wen Ning from those hours under the rain when Jin Zixun killed him.

It's over, he thought, and he wanted to laugh.

For the years he thought he had a right to live after his first home burned, for the corpse of Jin Zixuan taunting him overground, for the memory of a kind man holding a hand to him in a filthy street of Yiling—he wanted to laugh.

The voice cried and howled, the hands it belonged to shaking him, the smell of upturned earth filling his nose and head. Wei Wuxian felt not the desperate embrace that those two arms gave him; he felt not his head be crushed against shoulder and neck, or the calls of his name spoken through sobs and tears.

Neither did he feel those hands pressing to the highest of his nape, in the same three spots he had learned long ago could make a man asleep before his knees hit ground.

The sky blackened, the air ripened, time found its flow again; and Wei Wuxian could only be glad for oblivion as his conscious left him.

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#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #fic: and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow #featured

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edward-richtofen-queen · 5 years

Text

My Siren in Chains

Fandom: Dead by Daylight

Characters: Reader, Survivors/Killers

Relationship(s): Phillip Ojomo | Wraith/Reader

Summary: As a fairly seasoned survivor, you had grown accustomed to the killers and survivors alike. Unknown to everyone else, you were in love with a killer and he was in love with a survivor. What will you give for a life with your lover?

Warning(s): None

Notes: Literally no one asked for this but I got bored and decided to make this anyway; enjoy! Also, I'm going to start writing this way—it keeps things more easy! "My Siren in Chains" is actually the title of an old poem I wrote back when I was little quite similar to this.

✼⋅•⋅•⋅⊱•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•∙∘❆༓❆∘∙•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⊰⋅•⋅•⋅✼

"Phillip," You mutter under your breath as he kisses your neck, your fingers grasping his cloak. Your back is pressed against the wood of the killer shack, his leg between your thighs as a hand pressed against the side of your head. He gives a chrrr type noise as he continues, his free hand training down your sides. The howl of the exit gates made him stiffen—time was already up? A soft whine escaped your lips as his eyes dimmed, he was clearly sad that you had to go. He had killed two people before finding you, leaving only one left to do generators. Your fingers cupped his cheeks as he nestled into them, your warmth a welcomed invitation. The soft humming of the hatch in the distance made Phillip carry you bridal style as you relished in his embrace. Setting you down, you gave him one last kiss as you slipped into the darkness of the hatch.

Back at the campfire, you were exhausted and a little upset—you were never given long with your lover, but you enjoyed his presence nonetheless. You missed the feeling of his lips, the warmth he made you feel in your heart, his undying love that you and himself had. The whispering of the Entity caught your ear, it's voice only making noise until now.

You are dating a killer—isn't that something?

You flinch—it knows. Of course it knows! You excuse yourself from the campfire and ease away from the comforting light with a torch, stabbing the wood into the soft ground. "I am. Is that not allowed? Please don't hurt him," You speak, greatly concerned for your lover's health. The Entity seems quiet for a moment as seconds smack you hard in the face, it beginning to speak again amongst whispers.

I won't hurt him and you can be together—If you can do something for me, little rabbit

∾❦∾

Letting out your famous Siren Song, you ran past The Trapper as he recovered from being stunned. Feet patting against the ground, you pushed yourself forward. You were given specific instructions by the Entity—survive your next trial and plant seeds into the ground. You had no idea what these seeds did, but you were in no position to ask. Exhausted, you lean up against a tree and it's texture brings nostalgia to Phillip. Pressing through your exhaustion, you run over to a generator and work with Claudette to finish. When the generator popped, the howl of the exit gates pumped adrenaline in your veins as you ran to the direction of a door as Claudette ran to the other.

Escaping was easy when Meg occupied Trappers time as she ran out the gates, everyone leaving at their own pace as you ran out, not noticing the seeds sprouting in blooming flowers.

Tumbling to a new place, you realize that it's not the campfire, its—Autowreckers Haven! Your heart beats fast when you realize who's leaning against the counter of the gas station. "Phillip!" You cry as his head snaps your direction, his eyes lighting up as you jump into his arms. "Siren," His small but deep voice catching your ears as you nearly sob. "I missed you, baby," You coo as he holds you, his bandages falling from his arms. You hold him tight, bodies pressed and tangled together like snakes. "I'll be with you after every trial as long as I do what the Entity asks and you continue your killings—we'll be together!"

He gives you a purr in response as he cradles you to his body, your lips pressing into his bark-like ones. His entire body smells like spring and autumn, like trees and pinecones. Cupping his cheeks once more, you lean against him as your exhaustion finally catches up to you, blacking out in his arms as he holds you close.

#phillip ojomo #phillip x reader #phillip x s/o #wraith x reader #dbd fanfic #dead by daylight wraith #dead by daylight #wraith x s/o

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biquinhoduck · 5 years

Note

Cinderella, 101 Dalmations, and Snow White!

Disney Headcanon Prompts~

Cinderella: Did your muse experience any childhood traumas? Did they overcome them?

Dugan spent much of his early childhood living in the wilderness, without much contact with the rest of civilization. Between this and some of the gaps I’ve filled surrounding the ambiguity of his canon origins (especially regarding his birth parents and the difficulties of surviving in the Amazon during the time he’d gone missing), that’s a BIG yes from me.

Something that I haven’t brought up as much, tho, is the time he spent after having lived in the rainforest. Esp before his intro to the rest of the Duck fam. This diverges from his comic canon by a long shot, mainly due to his origin comic’s racist portrayal of indigenous Brazilians when Fethry goes looking for him aka I’m Not Touching That.

Basically, Dugan’s discovery in the Amazon was a VERY big deal when it became public (as with most modern feral children cases). This oft meant that the very people who were supposed to look after him either saw him as a means for childhood development research, or painted him an uncontrollable wild child who’d never find his place in the world by virtue of his ordeal. That kind of emotional neglect left a huge impact on him, and it’s yet another source of his attachment issues.

He’s still a fairly young child so he DEFINITELY has time to recover and adjust. Like, you’re looking at a kiddo who now has a loving uncle and a hecking big Duck family to boot, be it the result of Fethry’s drive to search for his missing nephew or Mary’s longing to give a child the forever family they truly deserves. Not to mention that he’s far, far away from the social workers who’d completely dropped the ball on him. It’s not always easy on him, but the important thing is that he’s now surrounded by people who care about him and unlike before, Dugan is by no means alone in his struggles. 💖

cue readmore bc otherwise holy mother of long posts

101 Dalmatians: Does your muse have a large collection of any particular thing?

He loves to bring animals in the house and would have an entire armada of forest animals making a home out of his bedroom it it weren’t for Fethry (let alone Mary, in any verse where she’s alive) putting their feet down when it comes to keeping around wild animals. He doesn’t really see them as pets/a collection so much as individual furry friends he invites on semi-permanent playdates, but since they never stick around for long, it’s not really a collection lol.

The closest thing would probs be some of the random stuff he likes to stockpile in his room (bird feathers from past “pets”, daisy chains that fall apart from drying up, pretty rocks, pinecones and small artillery for his slingshot, lots of nature-like trinkets that shouldn’t be splayed about his room).

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: How trusting of strangers is your muse? Would they accept a gift from a stranger?

Thaaaaat is a good question, because Dugan is naive as heck around strangers while simultaneously struggling to trust loved ones (especially adults) when it comes to how much they love/care about him. Despite this, he tends to take what strangers say at face value so if someone’s trying to manipulate him, he won’t pick up on it unless someone presses his buttons which is surprisingly easy tbh. Accepting gifts from them is no exception – after all, what kind of kid doesn’t want free gifts?

#asks #anon #child abuse mention #[[juuuuust in case cus like #the disney duck comics could get weirdly childphobic when it came to dugan and really this is the only way I can stomache it in canon tbh]]#dugan duckcanons

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displacedprincess · 5 years

Text

come one come all to this tragic affair

@wizardroyale

Word count: 3200

Triggers: inects, allergic reaction, health anxiety, potential death implied

ELENA

So it’d been a few weeks since...the incident. The one where Elena kissed Mateo and he’d rejected her— or, rather rejected himself for her. It hurt her, a lot.

She’d cried to Goliath about it afterward. He sat there hugging her and silently patting her hair while she raged about what a stupid boy he was.

That much was true, still, but at least they were...somewhat talking again, her and Mateo. It was awkward between them, yet again, but after that nice letter he wrote to her, she’d softened up. Her icy rage melted leaving only a mix of affection and frustration in its place. And that, they could work with.

“You could’ve just stayed in,” Elena said. “But thanks for agreeing to come on my walk with me. I feel like a caged bird half the time in that apartment.”

MATEO

“Mmm…” Mateo simply smiled quietly and hummed a little in acknowledgement as they walked. The truth was he had nearly been overcome with relief when Elena has asked him to join her for a walk. Things between them had been––tense. To say the least. And the past weeks had been nonstop worry and anxiety that he had broken their friendship beyond repair.

The weeks had also been filled with doubt and second guessing. The more he tried to reconcile what his choice had done to both Elena and himself, the weaker the argument seemed. He still wasn't convinced that he was a good choice for her, buuuuut...he also wasn't sure that had been his call to make.

For now, however, a simple walk in the park was a great place to start rebuilding their friendship—yet again.

“I really don't mind,” he shrugged, “It's a beautiful evening and if I'm being honest, I feel the same way a lot these days.”

ELENA

“You don’t have six bodyguards and a shark mermaid insisting you keep your unstructured time indoors.” Elena pointed out. “Why don’t you get out more alone?”

“You don’t have to live in a chicken coop because I do.”

She was careful to keep her hand from brushing against Mateo’s.

MATEO

Mateo's face warmed at her question. It was a simple question, really, but his answer was—complicated. Ok, maybe not that complicated. Just—silly. On the bright side, his months of self-imposed isolation had given him a lot of time for self introspection. However, as the months passed, the more frustrated he became with himself and his recent choices. Some more than others.

“Oh, you know—“ he hedged. Mateo rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled uncomfortably. “You have bodyguards making you feel like you’re in prison and I have my own mind.”

Exhaling a large breath, he continued, “I—I guess the thought of going out in public after—everything was just too much. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

ELENA

“No it doesn’t.” Elena said quietly.

She knew exactly what that was like. Maybe she’d never been accused of murder, but, well. She’d absolutely been too overwhelmed to go out in public before.

Too depressed, actually. But close enough.

“After my parents died, cameras were always being shoved in my face. Which was nothing new in itself but it felt so invasive. Hours after I heard they were killed, I had to address the country as their de jure head of state and government. I didn’t feel comfortable really being out of the palace until— oh.” Elena laughed bitterly. “A few months before the coup.”

“Mateo, you really need to shut me up when I go on woe is me tangents about my parents. I didn’t ask you to walk with me to depress you. This is to cheer us both up.”

She gestured around them. “It’s a sunny afternoon! We’re going to enjoy it.”

MATEO

Tell her to stop talking? Right.

“You know that will never happen,” Mateo replied with a small chuckle, “Anyways, I’m pretty sure that’s one of my official best friend duties—listening when you need me to. It doesn’t matter if it’s happy or sad. I mean, of course I want you to be happy!” he added quickly, “But—I don’t want to you to pretend you’re something you’re not either.”

The truth was that he remembered those days all too well. Of course she hadn’t wanted to be out in public! She had been a shell of her former self for a long time, barely hanging on by a thread. Mateo was just thankful he had been able to help her in small ways, though he always wished he could do more.

Like now, he wanted to reach out and touch her the way he used to years ago when everything was simple between them—touching her shoulder, taking her hand, even holding her while she slept was nothing more than a simple comfort back then.

But nothing between them was simple anymore and they were just now recovering from the last time he’d pretended things were, so he shoved his hands in his pockets instead.

“Besides, nothing you could say would ever depress me, you know that, right?” he flashed a crooked smile, “I always want to know what you are thinking.”

ELENA

She was much more observant than people gave her credit for. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shove his hands in his pockets. It was a move that both helped and hurt. It hurt he didn’t move to touch her, but it also helped that he had to force himself not to.

It meant they both would’ve preferred he touch her, didn’t it?

“What if what’s on my mind is something depressing, querido?” Elena countered, smirking at him. “Gotcha there, don’t I?” With a far too cheery grin, she skipped ahead of him a few feet to Messi-kick a pinecone. Really, her football talents were wasted on her being royalty.

She stood still to let Mateo catch up before falling back in step with him.

“Anyway. My mind has been far too depressing lately. I asked you out with me to make it the opposite.” A beat. “We should play a game!”

Here, the cheery grin returned, but it wasn’t out of place this time. “We knew everything about each other, so two truths and lie or never have I ever are both out. So that leaves us with Would You Rather, Word Association, or Existential Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

MATEO

What Elena didn't understand—had never understood, really—was that shouldering her burdens alongside her was far from depressing. No, Mateo found a strange sense of joy in knowing that he was doing something to take care of her needs.

But he certainly wasn't going to argue the point, it would just annoy her. And that was the last thing that he wanted. Especially when she was trying so hard to lift her own spirits—to the point of putting on a false smile. If she needed to be cheered up, then that's what he would do.

Mateo smiled, his heart fluttering when she smirked at him and skipped playfully ahead, kicking at the pinecone like a star football player. He shook his head, his lips pursed as he held back his own laughter at her antics.

When he caught up to her, he was nearly overwhelmed by the force of her smile. A real smile. God, she was so beautiful. And he was such a sap. He knew it. And he didn't care.

It was a good thing his hands were still firmly in his pockets.

“Sure, ok Elena,” he shrugged. “Hmmm…” he considered a moment before coming to a decision, “how about Would You Rather? You can go first.”

ELENA

Elena turned to Mateo with a truly sinister grin, complete with an evil finger pyramid of villainy. Oh, Mateo. Sweet, naive, trusting Mateo. Like she was going to let him play this game without forcing some really awful choices on him.

Fortunately, it was only a harmless conversation game.

“Excellent. I’ll start vanilla. Would you rather...always be stuck in traffic, or always have a slow internet connection?”

MATEO

Mateo wasn't sure if he should be worried or slightly turned on by the look Elena turned on him. That was the look she had when she was up to no good and things could go one of two ways for him. Bad or—well, considering that they were in a very public place and weren't currently...you know...It most likely meant he was in a world of trouble.

Clearing his throat, he pushed the inappropriate thoughts aside, hoping his too warm face hadn't given him away. He smiled and said, “Hmm...that's tough. I suppose I'd rather be stuck in traffic because if I had to I could just get out and walk. But if my internet sucked—” he put his hand to his forehead in a mock dramatic pose, “Good bye YouTube! And we all know that would be a travesty.”

He thought a moment, trying to come up with a good question. Oh! He had a good one. He looked over at her, grinning crookedly, “Ok, your royal highness, I've got a hard one for you,” he began, bumping her playfully with his shoulder as his eyes sparked with humor, “Would you rather lose the ability to read or the ability to speak?”

ELENA

Elena let out a truly offended gasp at Mateo’s challenge and narrowed her eyes at him. Rude, honestly. He knew how much of a language nerd she was! That was like asking her mother to choose which child was her favorite!

“First of all, how dare you. Second of all, to speak, absolutely! Literacy is sooooo important. I’d rather be a mute that could read and write than someone who can speak but not read or express my thoughts in writing.”

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so hard to answer. Awful to think about, but the choice was simple.

“Anyway, I always like the written versions of my addresses to Avalor better. So, yeah, speaking for sure.” Elena loosely bobbed her head from side to side as she considered her next question. How evil did she want to be?

Trick question. In the game of Would You Rather, the answer was always excessively. “Would you rather lose all the memories you’ve gained in the past year, or lose any money you’ve ever earned?”

MATEO

He couldn't help but laugh at her outrage. Half of the fun of this game was in the reactions. And Elena was nothing if not passionate about literally everything.

And just as quickly as the laughter came, his throat tightened and it was gone. Oh. He blinked. Actually the answer to that question was ridiculously easy. There was no question really. The last year's worth of memories? God, there were so many that he treasured above any object money could buy. Sure, there were some painful, horrifying memories there, but he wouldn't want to give up a single one of the memories he'd created with Elena even if it meant never having a single penny to his name.

“I—I'd keep the memories, definitely,” he said simply, his voice thick with emotion, though he tried to act natural.

With the next question that popped into his head, he wondered if maybe he should try to steer the game back to fun and playful. But. Mateo was never known for his great choices, so he said, “Ok, would you rather,” he took a deep breath and looked straight ahead, “live with a broken heart or live without love?”

ELENA

At his answer, Elena felt the acid rise in her throat, as it always did when she got a new wave of self-loathing. See, she knew she was selfish and fucked up. Elena would have chosen to forget. If she could forget being in love with Mateo, she could forget the pain she still woke up to every day.

Elena was always dramatic, but took a stone cold bitch page from her mother’s book. She hated what her breakup with Mateo had made her become.

Mateo’s turn was uncharacteristically devious, and Elena would’ve congratulated him if it weren’t so laden with hidden questions. He wasn’t going to like her answer.

“I’d rather live without having loved, to be honest.” The princess answered, heaving a sad sigh as she looked up to the partly cloudy sky. “There are no lessons to be learned from a broken heart other than that it just hurts. I’d be stupid to choose heartbreak, ha.”

“Would you rather have thought bubbles appear above your head for everyone to see or everyone you know has access to your search history?” Elena then asked, turning her head to face him with a cheery little grin, as if she didn’t just say what she’d just said.

MATEO

Mateo froze in his tracks with a gasp. If she wanted to hurt him, he wished she would have slapped him or something, it would have hurt less.

His mind was racing as fast as his heart. Somehow, while he knew she was hurting, he thought—hoped—it would fade into a distant dream in time. A fleeting memory of a lost love. A small ache compared to the precious moments they'd shared. Well, he hoped that for her. He knew better than to think he would ever get over Elena. But this wasn't about him. She was stronger than him. Better than him.

She would give up everything they'd had together to get away from the pain? He'd hurt her that badly in his attempt to protect her? That she'd rather never have known his love than live with the memory of it? God, how could he have been so stupid?

Enough. He couldn't do this anymore.

“Elena. Wait,” he choked out, taking her hand and tugging her back to him. “Please, wait. I—” his eyes stung but he looked resolutely into her eyes, “There's something I have to tell you—”

He paused, momentarily distracted by a loud buzzing near his ear.

ELENA

Elena was suddenly jerked backward and spun around to face Mateo. He hadn’t been this forceful with her since demanding she go up the fire escape ladder first during the zombie apocalypse 2k18. Her mouth hung open in shock at his random boldness, and she stood there, blinking. What was so urgent? Probably nothing she actually wanted to hear. If it wasn’t a declaration of his undying love that ended with a kiss, she didn’t need to hear it.

To diffuse the tension in her own body, she wriggled her hand away from his with a musical laugh tainted with shaky nerves.

“Ay, Mateito. If you’re going to choose now to tell me you’ve been gay all along-” there was a faint buzzing near her ear, which Elena assumed to be a fly. After a beat, it hadn’t gone away. She scowled and swatted at it, with a hissed “Get fucked, eh?”

She turned her focus back to Mateo. “I’m sorry, querido. What were you s- ow!” a sharp pain in her arm sent her gaze that direction.

And she was sure she went white as a sheet when she realized what the source of the buzzing must have actually been.

MATEO

Wait. What? He stared at her, mouth open in disbelief. After months of regret. Of barely managing to keep his hands to himself. Of dreaming about her. Of seeing reminders of her everywhere he looked—

“No! That's not what I—” he froze as she swatted the air near her head. His eyes locked onto the buzzing insect and he felt like everything had suddenly devolved into slow motion. That was a wasp. And wasps were bad for Elena. Very very bad.

“Elena, no!” He cried out as she swatted at the insect again. Jumping forward, he tried to swat the creature away from her, attempting to direct its attention to him. But he was too late. Fear filled him as the wasp nimbly dodged her fingers and his clumsy swats and swooped in, hitting its target. Elena's arm.

His eyes flicking to Elena's face, he felt terror rising up mirroring her own as she realized what had just happened. Just as her knees gave out he caught her, lowering them both carefully to the ground.

His head was spinning as she gasped for breath, the venom working its way through her body faster than he'd imagined possible. Every second, her breaths became more labored and her skin more red and splotchy.

Though he was nearly overcome with terror for her safety, he knew what needed to happen. He couldn't lose her. Not like this. Not ever. He had to do something.

“I'm here, mi amor. You're going to be ok,” he murmured in what he hoped was a soothing voice, smoothing her hair away from her face.

She'd made enough bad jokes over the years about being “equipped to handle every obstacle death sends my way with this ultra powerful epipen” that he knew where she kept it and how to use it. So with trembling hands, he dug through her purse, through zippered pocket after zippered pocket.

“How many zippers can one bag have?” he muttered, frustrated that he had not found it yet. Finally! In an inner pocket of her purse, he found the slim box that he hoped would save her life. Tearing it open, he uncapped the pen, shuddering involuntarily at the needle. He did not care much for needles.

It was a mark of how serious the situation was that he slid her skirt up to reveal her bare thigh beneath without so much as a second’s hesitation. Adjusting his grip on the pen, he found his mark and tensed, gritting his teeth as he jabbed the needle through her skin, releasing the antidote into her bloodstream.

And he waited with bated breath, whispering comforting words to her as he prayed he'd been fast enough. Hoping beyond hope that she was going to be ok.

“Elena?” he asked tentatively as her breathing quieted a bit, “Are you—ok? How can I help?”

ELENA

The first time Elena had been stung by a wasp, she was five years old. She’d been playing with Gabe in the palace gardens when she’d disturbed a wasps’ nest, and it wasn’t until someone heard Gabe scream because Elena wasn’t breathing that her allergy to wasp stings was discovered.

Elena couldn’t sleep for a few weeks after. All she could think about when she got sleepy was how hard she tried to stay awake in the gardens that day, and how she just couldn’t.

The second time, she was eleven years old, and Goliath had been quick enough with the epipen to prevent the worst while they waited for transport to the hospital. She didn’t lose consciousness that time; maybe. Elena didn’t remember anything clearly past clinging to Goliath and crying for her mother and father, and she only had a vague recollection of flashing lights, being flat on her back, and unfamiliar voices.

Here, wasn’t much different. There was the realization that she was probably going to die. There was Mateo. Mi amor. There was Mateo. Zippers. There was Mateo. There was Mateo. Mateo. Mateo. Mateo. Mateo...

#tw health anxiety #health anxiety tw #allergic reaction tw #tw allergic reaction #tw insects

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mattzerella-sticks · 6 years

Text

Poison From Your Sweet, Sweet Lips

After hunting for thirty-plus years, it takes a lot to really send Dean into a downward spiral. But a recent case stirs up some desires he thought he left far in the past, and leaves him feeling shaken. But just what did he see, what does he want, and how can he recover from the shock and horror of what waits in the night?

(Set sometime after Jack and Mary get back from the Apocalypse World, where Michael and Lucifer were defeated, Gabriel runs Heaven, and Jack hunts with the Winchesters.) (ao3)

He didn’t mean to break the skin. It just wouldn’t stop tingling, itching – burning. Dean wasn’t even sure how long he’d been scraping his nails up and down his arm, focusing on the sensation more than the words and images and feelings from earlier in the day. Pushing those thoughts and memories down further and further so they don’t rise and spill over from his throat and out his mouth. Now, instead of staring at his wall he’s mesmerized by his bloodstained nails, and how he can’t stop picking, and the trail seeping down his arm, over his pale, unblemished flesh.

‘It’s not there,’ he thinks, ‘It’s gone.’

‘But you miss it don’t you?’

He shivers, eyes fluttering closed as his voice speaks up. It scrapes at the back of his mind, clawing its way back up. Sending shivers up his spine like the first hit after years of sobriety.

‘The power…’ he continues, ‘The freedom…’

“Shut up,” Dean growls, digging deeper into his arm. The pain dulls the other’s voice somewhat, but it carries on like a bad song at a party. And no matter how far into the bathroom Dean tries to hide, how powerful the faucet water is, he can still hear it through the thin walls of his mind.

He hadn’t thought about him in forever, but today’s events have proven that no matter how hard he tries to salt and burn the past, it’ll still be there to haunt him.

“So what’s the story?”

Dean leans against Baby, watching as Sam and Cas make their way over to him and Jack. The Nephilim distracts himself on his phone, only glancing up to smile at the two before continuing scrolling.

Sam reaches them first. “Same as the witnesses,” he shrugs, “There’s no connection between any of the victims.”

“What’s left of them anyway,” Cas says.

Dean raises a brow, “…Left?”

“We were able to see the victims’ bodies,” he explains, “Thankfully whoever did this didn’t take their identifications. Only because the police would never have been able to find out whose parts they found.”

“Holy –” Dean huffs, stomach turning. It shouldn’t get to him, this many years into the job, but knowing what a half-there corpse means still makes his nerves fry and his knees knock together. “So,” he continues after a deep breath, “what are we thinking? Werewolves?”

“There weren’t any hearts on the bodies,” Sam says, “But… the spread of the victims doesn’t match up with any lunar cycles.”

“And we don’t have any reason to believe vampires either,” Cas adds, “At least two of the victims were reported missing early morning, and discovered before the sun had set.”

“How does that rule out vampires?” Jack, phone away, blinks up at them. “I mean,” he continues, “Couldn’t they have had help? From my conversations with Alex, vampires were not above using humans as bait.”

“Maybe,” Sam says, “But get this, when they swept the area for clues, one of the officers strayed from the pack.”

“And?”

“And they found her,” Cas pulls out the photo from his trench coat, handing it to Dean, “They didn’t hear a thing.” Dean forces himself to look at the grisly scene. The young woman, probably fresh from the academy, hangs from her own intestines. A once blue, pristine uniform was stained with her blood.

“So,” Dean hands the picture back, “We’re looking for… what, exactly?” Sam and Cas share a look, one that doesn’t sit well with Dean.

“We’re… not sure,” Sam starts, “Every new angle we get on this pulls us farther and farther away from anything we’re used to dealing with.”

“So, what?” Dean asks, “We’re looking at something new here?”

“I’m not sure…”

Dean turns to Cas, now. The angel is looking at his feet, hands stuffed into his jacket. His face creases, and Dean watching the gears spinning as he tries to work through his thoughts.

“What’re ya thinking, Cas?”

“The bodies… I don’t know,” he says, words slow and unsteady, “When we were examining them, I sensed this – this energy. It was… familiar.”

“So angels?” Dean asks, Jack and Sam leaning in with interest.

“Not angels,” Cas shakes his head, “Demonic… with a little something extra.”

“Demons would fit,” Sam says, “But there weren’t any signs – no weird weather patterns, cattle deaths. I even asked the sheriff if he smelt any sulfur! Not a thing.”

“Still…”

“Look,” Dean cuts in, clapping a hand on Cas’s shoulder, “We don’t have much to go on but that. I say, until we find anything else, we treat this as a demon hunt.” Cas smiles at him, causing his stomach to flip in an all-new way – a way he likes. He squeezes once more before dropping his hand back to his side.

Sam waits a beat, but agrees with them. “So,” he says, “since we have an… idea of what we’re hunting, I think we should strike before anyone else gets hurt.”

“Where would we begin?” Jack asks him, “All these people were taken in different parts of the city?”

“But their remains were all found at the entrance of the woods,” Cas says, “They weren’t always consistent… but at least four of the victims were found near this stream on the East side.”

“So we start there,” Dean says, “We should split up –“

“Split up?” Sam splutters, “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“This… this thing –“

“Probable demon.”

“Demon, monster – whatever!” Sam barks, “It’s already got twenty-two bodies under its belt –“

“Twenty-two?” Dean blinks, his throat suddenly dry, “We… why didn’t we get that in the report?”

“A lot of them didn’t have enough left behind for identification,” Sam shrugged, sadly, “Police think the perp might have started in on homeless people or tourists – those that no one in the town might have noticed.”

Dean wipes a hand down his face, sucking in a harsh breath between clenched teeth. “That’s just great,” he mutters, “Really freakin’ great… all those… all those people –“

“It’s strong, whatever it is, Dean,” Sam continues, “we can’t be certain that splitting up won’t just make it easier for them to take us out.” Dean tries not to let his brother’s worry get to him, but he’s still focused on the number of people they were too late to save. He’s spiraling, but thankfully Cas clears his throat before he freefalls.

“I’d agree with you, Sam,” Cas speaks up, drawing the brothers’ attention, “But I’m going to have to side with Dean on this one.”

“Cas…”

“Look at the time, Sam,” he says, “I think that by splitting up, we’d be able to cover more ground before the sun sets and by then numbers wouldn’t matter. The monster has better knowledge of the surroundings, so if we want to put an end to this now, we must act quickly.”

Sam frowns, his cheeks dimpling in dissatisfaction. “Still…”

“Jack and I will be in constant communication,” he adds, “That way, if Dean and I find anything, I can alert you and vice versa.” He looks at Dean, “Besides, I think we’ve handled enough crises together that as long as none of us face this threat alone, we’ll be alright.” Dean smirks the tiniest bit, looking at Sam. The look on his brother’s face is exasperated, but fond.

“Alright,” Sam relents, “Jack? You good with this plan?”

“I want to end this,” he says, “This seems like the best plan we have.”

“Great!” Dean claps, drawing all eyes to him, “Let’s get moving, then. Cas, take shotgun – that way he doesn’t have to move when we drop you and Jack off, Sam.” The younger Winchester huffs something under his breath, rolling his eyes and stuffing his long frame into the backseat next to Jack.

Cas opens the door, but pauses with one foot on the frame. Dean catches his eye, raising his brow in question. “Nothing,” Cas says, “Just… appreciating the power.”

“Shotgun doesn’t hold much of a sway,” Dean scoffs, “I mean, you can’t pick the music.”

“…Can’t I?”

He quirks his own brow to match Dean’s – in challenge. Dean doesn’t want to be the first to turn. But the fierce intensity of Cas’s gaze is like coal under his feet, and he can’t handle the burn. He ducks his head in defeat, “…We’ll see.”

Cas’s choices aren’t that bad.

The sun is just starting to set over the horizon. Dean and Cas have been at this for hours, but after passing the same tree for the third time, he’s ready to call it quits. Pressing himself against the small carving, he whistles over to Cas, who has taken to the birds.

“Yes, Dean?” he asks, trotting over the brush and thistles coating the ground, “Did you find anything?”

“Only a pinecone in my boot,” Dean grumbles, “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree – pun intended. Whatever was lurking in these woods must only come out at night.”

“I’m not sure,” Cas tells him, turning, “The energy here is… off. The animals feel it, and it has been throwing certain balances into upheaval.” Birdsong catches their ears, and Dean tries to quell the soft coo working its way up his throat at the sight of Cas, nodding along in conversation.

He pushes himself off the tree, wiping his hands. “So,” he says, “Did the birds see where the monster went or what it looks like? You gonna make ‘em sing like a canary?”

Cas looks at him, squinting and tilting his head. “…It’s not a canary, Dean,” he says, seriously, “It’s a blue jay.”

Dean nearly snorts a chuckle, but someone beats him to it. Its raucous laugh rings out, bouncing against the trees, and startles the birds from their perch. The sound is followed with harsh ruffling and heavy steps.

Dean meets Cas’s wide eyes, “Shit.” They give chase, Dean taking lead, knocking away heavy branches and jumping over fallen logs, Cas trailing behind. Dean can barely make out the creature, its shadowy figure darting just out of sight – always a few steps ahead of them.

He’s rounding the bend when he hears it – the crack of wood caving in on itself. Dean looks to his left where a large oak hurdles towards him. He’s frozen, gaping up as the trunk comes closer and closer until –

“Dean!”

He’s pushed away, tumbling with the weight of someone else down a steep hill. They roll until they reach the bottom, curving into a barren field. Dean opens his eyes, ready to fight, only to be face to face with Cas. His blue eyes are flitting all across Dean’s face. He’s pinned him there, squeezing his wrists too tight to be comfortable or fun.

“Are you okay?” Cas asks him.

Dean sighs, “Yeah… yeah, you got me out of there at the last second.” He pushes up, forcing Cas to kneel between his legs. He scratches at his neck and looks back up at the hill, where the jagged remains of the tree sit ominously. “That was real close,” Dean says.

“Too close,” Cas says, “I should let Jack and Sam know where we are.“

“Why bother?” Dean huffs, standing. He holds a hand to Cas, pulling the angel up alongside him. “I mean,” he continues, “Not like we know where he went.”

“He?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Dean shrugs, “Height, build… didn’t get a good look at the face but that voice? It’s a dude.”

“Very well,” Cas powers on, “Still, we should check in. It’s going to be dark soon, and I don’t believe we’ll be out of the woods when the sun sets. If we meet up, we will have more eyes.”

Dean doesn’t want Sam to make his way over. He didn’t tell Cas, wasn’t sure how to bring it up, but he recognized the laugh. It cut clear through his heart, scraping like nails on chalk in his mind. Made his heart stop and throat close. The only problem is he couldn’t match the sound to a face or a name. His body had such a striking physical reaction, but for the love of him he couldn’t connect the dots. The string is hanging in the wind, dangling precariously over the dark chasm of his memories, reaching out. But either he can’t remember… or he doesn’t want to.

And if it’s the latter, then it’s for a good reason – one that warrants Sam being far away from here.

Snap.

They turn to their right, where the sound came from. Dean pulls out his gun, finger perched on the trigger. From the gleam of silver Dean catches at the corner of his eye, he can tell Cas is ready with his blade. They take a tentative step forward, only to jump back when something flies out.

Dean fires first, the gunshot echoing and scaring off even more animals.

It didn’t even matter – all Dean did was waste a round. Lying at their feet was a dead bird – a blue jay. Probably not the one from earlier, but he couldn’t tell. Cas would know.

Snap.

“He’s playing with us,” Cas says, kneeling towards the creature. He scoops it into his hands and glares at it. After a few seconds, his concentrated frown deepens into annoyance.

“Cas?”

“My powers,” he whispers, going wide-eyed, “I can’t… I can’t heal him.” Dean looks towards the bush, where the monster snaps another twig, more impatient than before.

“We’ll be walking into a trap, won’t we?”

“Most likely,” Cas says, leaning back down to let the dead bird slip softly from his hands. He covers it with fallen leaves and offers a few words in Enochian. He stands at full height, the softness in his eyes shedding into a hard fury. “Whatever we’re facing… he’s powerful. And…”

“And?”

“Familiar,” Cas says, again, frustrated, “I can’t help but feel we’ve faced something like this before. It’s like hearing a song… but the melody is off, and the words are not quite the same… I’m sorry if I sound –“

“No, no,” Dean assures him, “I… I get it. I feel the same way… sort of.” Cas tilts his head, as if to ask how, when another animal is thrown from the brush: a tawny rabbit, neck broken. Its lifeless eyes stare up at them, and cut their conversation short.

“We shouldn’t keep him waiting,” Cas says instead, walking forward. He looks back at Dean, “Coming?”

“Right behind you.”

Dean brings up the rear – alert to whatever might come at them from the side. The angel doesn’t look anywhere but ahead. They follow a marked path, the monster slicing and slashing into tree bark, giving the wood an eerie smile. Dean brushes a few fingers against one and bites back a gasp, the electric shock firing up his hand and leaving fresh tingles in its wake.

He keeps his hands to himself after that.

Cas and Dean stop soon enough in another clearing. There’s no sign of life – creature, animal, or plant. The grass is dry and grey, crumbling underfoot wherever they step. There’re carcasses and bones littered everywhere, and Dean gags when he recognizes what looks like a femur. It’s too much, the smell of rotting flesh hitting his nose and sending his brain into overdrive. He searches for Cas, gripping his free hand.

“Any,” he struggles, voice wavering, “Any word from Jack?”

“I sent out a prayer,” Cas says, “It’s up to them to find us in time.”

Snap!

There’s a large cave a few yards away. Its smooth rock entrance is painted in blood, and the bones planted at its ground only serve to make the mouth look more terrifying.

That’s where the sound came from.

“I’ll take ‘Creepy Murder Hideouts’ for $2000, Alex,” Dean mumbles. Cas’s stare assures Dean his humor is not appreciated. He squeezes Cas’s hand in apology before letting it drop, re-centering himself, and tuning the horror around them out.

“Well,” Dean says after a while, “It’ll be rude to keep him waiting.” He steps forward, leading the charge. Cas stays a few inches behind, trench coat fanned around him like a cape.

Snap

Snap!

Dean passes the ‘teeth’, stepping into the cave. There are a few tentative steps of darkness, but not for long. He pulls a flashlight from his pocket and flicks it on, letting them catch glimpse of the monster’s home.

He wishes he didn’t.

Where the blood around the cave was painted in chaos, its only purpose to serve as warning for anyone who came across it that they’ve found their doom. Inside, each stroke was made with intent. There are symbols and sigils streaked within, the dark red of dried blood shining whenever a beam of light catches it.

Dean moves forward and away from Cas, pocketing his weapon to trace at one of the symbols.

“You said there weren’t any angels involved, Cas,” Dean whispers, “Then how come there’re all these?”

“I… I do not know,” Cas admits, voice warbling “It’s… These are… I…” Dean turns to him, watches as his eyes ping pong across the cave walls, taking it all in. “These symbols… I recognize a few… but not… haven’t seen –“

“Cas?”

“Don’t you feel them, Dean?” Cas turns to him, eyes glassy and distant, “Like black tendrils, gripping at you, trying to tear you apart? So many voices… like before but not… I don’t… I can’t…” He trails off, looking to his right, towards something Dean can’t see.

“Cas…?” Dean reaches out, eyebrows drawn close together in worry, “Talk to me. Tell me you’re – oof!”

Cas spins on his heel, knocking Dean back as he scurries deeper into the cave. “Cas!” Dean shouts, “Cas!” He chases after him, uncaring of who hears or not. It doesn’t matter to him what’s waiting inside knowing that Cas is vulnerable.

He follows the heavy pounding of Cas’s footsteps, turning and twisting down the surprising length of the cave’s tunnel systems. Throughout it all he could barely see six inches in front of him. But the light at the end has him picking up his pace, uncaring to the way his lungs were burning.

He slides into an opening, sagging against his knees in exhaustion, trying to catch his breath. When he feels he has a hold on it, he looks up – and loses it once more.

The flashlight is pointless, as the room is engulfed in the bright light of the tear in the fabric of the universe. It glows and pulsates with that strange energy, larger than any rip Dean has seen before.

And standing right in front of it is Cas, his back to Dean. He’s gazing up at it with hands in his pockets, his posture more loose and relaxed than before, frighteningly so.

Dean is on high alert, taking careful steps towards his angel. “Cas?” he says, “Buddy, is that… we should probably step away. Wait until Jack –“ He loses his voice, unable to speak past the sheer terror and wrongness he feels when Cas turns around.

It’s not him. It’s not his Cas. This Cas’s collar is flecked with blood, his hair is mussed and his eyes dark, and everywhere across his skin are black tendrils, goo flowing where blood should be. He’s grinning at him with sharpened teeth, predatorily, ready to snap.

“Lev…” Dean croaks out, “Leviathan.”

“Hello, Dean,” he says, then glances at something slightly to the left, “And hello, Dean.”

“What –“

Darkness. He slumps to the ground.

“ – try and wake ‘em up… I’m bored!”

“Patience, love, why must I keep reminding you of this?”

“Because I’m a naughty piece of shit who loves your ‘reminders’.”

Dean wakes with a silent groan, trying and failing to stretch his aching limbs. His arms are pulled tight behind him, around a jagged rock that pokes deeper the more he wriggles. His legs were left free, fanned out beneath him in an open ‘V’. There’s a weight pressed up against him, and he blinks to adjust to the tear’s light to see Cas, still knocked out. Dean shakes his shoulder, trying to jerk him awake. There’s a slight twitch behind Cas’s eyes, and Dean keeps going. “Cas,” he whispers, “Cas, come on. Cas –!”

Rough, calloused hands grab his chin and pull his gaze forward, locking eyes with a recognizable pair of green eyes.

“Well look here, baby,” the other Dean says, face dirty with sweat and blood, his grin feral, “I guess we can start playin’ after all.”

Dean shudders involuntarily, backing himself further into the rock behind him. “What?” he asks, “Who are… what?”

The other Dean lets go, leaning back in a fit of laughter, his arm clutching at his stomach. “Oh man, did I hit you too hard?” he wheezes, wiping an errant tear from his eye, “Don’t you recognize me… or, well – should I say you?”

“Now don’t patronize him love,” Leviathan Cas growls as he stalks forward, wrapping his arm around Dean’s stomach, tangling their fingers together. Pressing up against other Dean’s back, he hooks his chin over Dean’s shoulder and scrapes his stubble against his. “This must be confusing,” he continues, “It’s not everyday you run into other versions of yourself.”

Dean wants to make a comment: about how this isn’t the first doppelganger he’s come across, that even if it was he’s a big boy, or maybe even about the tender press of his twin’s lips against the bundle of creatures’ flesh suit. He wants to, but all his confidence and bravado shrivels when his Cas finally stirs awake.

“…Dean?”

“The gangs all here!” Dean crows, stepping out of the Leviathan’s hold, “Now we can really get this party started.”

Cas’s eyes widen at the sight, turning to Dean. He doesn’t know what he can tell the angel, his mind still coming to terms with what he’s seeing.

“Now come on, keep your eyes on me,” other Dean whines, “I take it personally if I feel ignored.”

“So, what?” Dean finally finds his voice, “In your universe you’re a big baby? Not impressed, honestly.” Other Dean smirks at him.

“You shouldn’t be impressed,” he says, eyes flicking black, “You should be scared.”

And he is. The cloying, sick feeling has returned, choking him with the sheer sense of wrong. There’re no bodies littered about the cave floor, but Demon him reeks of rotted flesh and organs, his clothes as dirty as his face. A sneaking suspicion has him trekking his eyes away from his face and down his right arm, where the veins are red and bulging around scar tissue, and he’s swinging a jawbone blade in hand.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cas says, “You weren’t… at no point should either of you have existed at the same time.”

“Call it fate… destiny – I don’t care,” Demon Dean shrugs, “Where we come from, we played our cards exactly how we should have.”

“And it was all happily ever after wasn’t it?” Dean chokes out, “All sunshine and rainbows?”

“Those don’t exist where we come from,” Leviathan Cas tilts his head, cutting at Dean’s heart, “Not anymore. Our universe is… pure. No mess, no fuss, just survival – people stripped to their most base instincts and desires.”

“So Purgatory,” Dean says, “you turned your universe into Purgatory?”

“You’d be surprised how great it is when there’s nothing holding you back, Dean,” Demon him adds, rubbing his hand up and down Leviathan Cas’s cheek, “You get to do all the fun things Daddy tried to beat out of you.” Dean flinches, the words striking below the belt, just as they intended.

“But the Leviathan,” Cas struggles to understand, “my vess… my body could not handle the strain it… it nearly killed me.”

“Only because you let it,” Cas’s doppelganger points out, “The Leviathan are repelled by willpower. The stronger you’re beliefs, the harder it is for them to take control. I wasn’t swayed from my convictions… I managed to tame and absorb these creatures. They work for me – are a part of me. I reveled in their power. I stared into the abyss and didn’t blink.” Cas is forced into a stunned silence, eyes trained on his shoes, unable to meet the other Cas’s smug look.

“And you?” Dean asks the other him, “Obviously why I got the Mark here won’t match with how you got the Mark there so…?”

“With Cas all souped up on Leviathan juice, we needed something that could take him down,” Demon him shrugs, picking at his nails with the First Blade, “Crowley wasn’t feeling too good about being cut out on all that power, so he decided to ‘help’. Sam and I decided, what the hell, not like we have any aces up our sleeves. This one,” he jerks his thumb back at the Leviathan, the other Cas smirking softly, “wouldn’t listen to ‘reason’. So with Sam setting up base in Crowley’s, we went on a little trip to a bee farm.”

“Cain wouldn’t budge, no matter how Crowley spun the situation,” he said, “So I challenged him to it. Winner keeps the Mark… loser gets – I think you can guess. It was exactly what we needed on our side. Who needs an army when you have a super-powered demon on your side am I right?”

“It doesn’t look like you were fighting for long though,” Dean says, “How did you… you and he…”

“Hook up?” Demon Dean chuckles, winking exaggeratedly at him, “After a while, I was starting to get pissed with Sammy. He was going on and on about the ‘dangerous effects of the Mark’ and ‘you’re losing your humanity, Dean’ blah blah blah blah blah. I was getting sick of it. So… during one battle, Cas managed to catch me alone. Put a deal on the table for me – offered me something I’ve been craving for a long time now.” He twines his free hand with the other Cas’s, grinning, “I’m sure you can guess what that was.”

“I take it your Sam wasn’t happy with the team up?”

“If he was, he didn’t put up a fight,” Demon him tosses out, “but when you’re stabbed through the back you don’t have much time to do those types of things.” Dean’s breath hitches at the cold way the Demon version of himself talked about his brother. Like he was just another of a long list of bodies he let hit the floor.

“After that, there wasn’t really anything standing in our way of taking control,” Demon Dean carries on, “What with Cas sitting pretty on his perch up in Heaven as the new God and me overthrowing Crowley… we had everything we ever wanted.”

“So why leave?” Cas demands, glaring at Dean’s evil copy, “Why step through the portal.”

“Honestly we didn’t know we’d end up here when we touched it,” Demon him says, “Things like this don’t pop up everyday, especially in our bedroom.” Dean can see Cas flinch out of the corner of his eye, “And I don’t take kindly to things interrupting our special alone time, just when I was about to –“

“Anyway,” Leviathan Cas speaks over him, “After… cleaning up, we investigated and landed here –“

“Got a good look around, took some pictures, held up the Hollywood sign,” Dean rattles off, snarling, “So end your vacation and get out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” Leviathan Cas says, walking towards him. He holds Dean’s cheek, grazing his thumb under his eye. Dean can feel his Cas’s glare even if he can’t see it. “Do you know how boring it is to have everything you want? When all challenges you’ve faced have been conquered?”

“Sounds like paradise.”

“Well it wasn’t,” Demon him says from behind the Leviathan Cas, arms folded across his chest in a huff, “We were just going through the motions for the longest of times. Every morning we’d walk throughout our world reminding our subjects who to fear; there’d be the occasional reminder being dragged forward once or twice to feel the smooth slide of my blade. Then we’d carry on to the afternoon where we would attend the daily gladiatorial battles, watching as humans, angels, demons, and monsters fought for their glory. And later in the evening they’d receive it – a five-minute head start before I hunted them down and skinned them for our collection. It was getting too… easy.”

“So your little stay in our universe is just so you two can get your groove back?” Dean splutters, “Are you guys for real?”

“They do say nothing spices up a relationship like returning to your roots,” Demon him says, “I think conquering your world will put us back on track to where we were before.”

“Dean is right,” Leviathan Cas stands, turning to embrace his lover with a fire burning behind his eyes, “Our first night here was… glorious. We had stumbled upon a vagrant during our scouting, and I watched as Dean had pounced on him, slowly torturing the life from him. He flayed strips of skin from his body… pounded bone into dust… used his intestines to keep him from wriggling away as Dean pulled nail after nail, slicing one finger after the other. It was titillating. Making something spark inside me that hasn’t been lit in years. Soon hours had passed, Dean working his magic. I couldn’t control myself any longer and joined in the chaos. As I was reaching climax, I watched from behind Dean as the man’s eyes glazed over with death, his last sensation that of Dean spurting over his wounds as I came in Dean.” He pulls a string of teeth from his coat pocket, holding them up in the tear’s glow, “He made me a keepsake so we could remember the fun we had.”

“Not like we could keep the skin,” Demon him had shrugged, “I fried that up for breakfast after we cuddled over the bloody corpse.” He winks at Dean, “Goes great with scrambled kidneys and hash brains.”

Cas chokes beside him, dry heaving the bile that sits in his stomach, trying to keep it down. Dean can’t even begin to pick apart the story he heard. Each part a cacophony of terror and disgust that are fighting for dominance over which part this reflection of him, this thing that used to be him in another world, did that was the worst. The answer though was simple – Demon Dean himself was the worst part. Because he had done it, had found nothing wrong with doing it, and would do it again.

“And the others?” Dean forced himself to ask, to focus on anything but the manic glee and arousal on full display, “They played a part in your weird sex games?”

“A man’s gotta eat, Dean,” Demon Dean snarks, tapping at his stomach, “And chasing people through the woods really works up the appetite.”

“And you?” Cas asks his copy, regaining control of himself, “Did you… hunt?”

“It’d be no fun if I participated,” Leviathan Cas shrugs, “They’d be nothing but bones with the snap of my fingers. Besides… my interests are voyeuristic in nature.”

“A regular ol’ Peeping Tom,” Demon Dean jokes, “But you gotta love him – flaws and all.”

“From what I’m seein’ you two are nothin’ but flaws – hrrgn.”

Demon him has pressed the First Blade right against his neck, and the teeth are tugging against his skin. Green eyes have blinked back to black, and Demon Dean’s leaning in close. “Wanna say that again, pretty boy?” he threatens, “I’m not a fan of people who make fun of what’s mine.”

Dean tries another comment, but the pressure chokes and strangles any word that tries to escape.

“Down, love,” Leviathan Cas places a hand on his Dean’s shoulder – the shoulder, “Don’t take it out on them. They’re just misguided and… well, weak.”

Cas speaks for the both of them as Dean splutters for breath, “…Excuse me?”

“From what we can tell, it seems you two have had ultimate power at the tips of your fingers,” Leviathan Cas explains, “And wasted it. Letting it go because of some misplaced sense of morality. Always doing what you expect is right,” his gaze flitters between the two, “Not because of what you want.”

“Put it simply you two are nothin’ but wet blankets,” Demon Dean mocks, “Probably spend your days twiddlin’ your thumbs and holding back. Because if you’re happy than somethin’ must be wrong, am I right? I mean, Heaven forbid you feel good about yourselves.” He points between him and his lover, “We feel good. This is good.”

“What you two share is nothing more than an addiction,” Cas hits back, his words biting into Dean’s heart, “You push each other deeper and darker into depravity, feeding off your worst impulses. No wonder there’s nothing left in your world – you two are toxic.”

“But isn’t that just love, angel?” Demon Dean asks, gripping Cas’s hair and pulling him close, “I can take the poison as long as it comes from your sweet, sweet lips.” He springs forward, shoving his tongue down Cas’s mouth, battling him into submission. Cas’s legs kick out underneath, eyes open and glaring with such power Dean cowers at the sight.

Demon him lets go, wiping at his spit-slick lips. “Feisty,” he says, “But not as good as the original.”

“He is the original, you sick monster –“

“Now Dean,” Leviathan Cas cuts him off, “Is that any way to talk about yourself?”

“He’s probably jealous,” Demon him purrs, leaning against the other Cas’s shoulder, “Thinks I’ve probably tainted his widdle angel –“

“Shut up!”

“Why don’t you make me?” the other him says, plopping onto Dean’s lap with a giddy laugh. He grinds against Dean’s groin, and Dean wants to vomit feeling how hard the demon is. “It’d be fun,” Demon him taunts, “Didn’t you ever wonder? Oh I know… you have. No one knows your body like yourself, and I can show you a few places you might not have even thought about.” He leans in to whisper at Dean’s ear, “Normally I’d be on the other end, but I’m feeling charitable.” Then he slides his tongue across Dean’s cheek and dives into his mouth.

Dean can’t move. Demon Dean takes his pliant body underhand and keeps moving up against him, rutting and touching. Blood flecks fly off him and onto Dean, staining his clothes, imprinting him with the stench of his copy. It’s dirty, disgusting, and immoral… but the worst feeling – the one that is niggling at the base of his brain – is that it feels right.

Through the press of their mouths Dean can feel the Mark singing to him, filling all the cracks in his soul with the promise of being complete. He thought he would never have to hear Amara’s voice again, but that universe’s Darkness is still trapped in the Mark, and knows exactly which buttons to press to mess with Dean’s head. Make him crave the release he thought he didn’t need. He’s flexing his hands against his binds, searching for something he can’t name.

“Like that?” Demon Dean asks, nibbling at his lips, trailing kisses down his neck. Dean can’t focus, his mind dizzy in a haze. “You know,” the other him continues, “if you want… I can share it with you. I can see it in your eyes… you miss it. Miss this feeling. Like strings being cut – getting the power to do what you want when you want it. It’s intoxicating… such a rush –“

“Dean, no!” His Cas says, cutting through the fog the Mark emits, “Fight it! You’ve been able to resist it before, you can do it again!”

“You say that now,” Leviathan Cas snickers, leaning towards Cas, “But are either of you really strong enough?” He clutches at Cas’s trench coat, dragging him forward, “He’s not the only one who can have a second chance, you know? I can teach you how to tame them, give you the ultimate power. Make you useful again.” The Other Cas’s hand starts glowing with a dark energy, and the power leaks out.

Cas’s eyes go wide, and he tries to lean away. He’s muttering in Enochian, pressing himself against Dean.

Demon Dean has his own hand held up, the Mark glowing an even brighter red than before. “What do you say, Dean?” he asks, “Want to be the best you that you can be?”

They’re inching closer and closer, ready to mold them into the same warped versions from their world. Dean doesn’t see a way out, so he focuses all he can on the warm weight of Cas next to him – hopefully they can resist long enough they would die before they turned.

He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want this Cas.

He never wanted them to happen like this.

Demon Dean’s hand is hovering over his wrist, the intense heat he gives off scalding. His fingers are about to touch his skin and –

Boom!

They didn’t have the radio on the entire drive back. Sam tried to find something, but a rough ‘Turn it off, Sammy’ from him kept all hands and minds away from music. Dean didn’t look away from the window the entire time, his hand cradling his right arm.

He got out of there unscathed, as did Cas.

Jack and Sam had found them with little time to spare. The nephilim had reacted without thought, extending his powers to push the doppelgangers off of them and towards the cave walls. Sam rushed to check on Dean and Cas, but faltered when he noticed just whom they were facing.

“Shifters?” Sam had asked. Dean shook his head and pointed weakly to the rift.

It was two versus two; Dean and Cas too weak from shock to even stand properly. Demon him had taunted Sam, talking about his own brother and how they had handled his corpse: propped above their marital bed, eyes sewn open. Leviathan Cas tried to strike after that – but Jack was more powerful.

He didn’t kill them – he couldn’t kill them. Their deaths would release only another can of worms they couldn’t face again.

But Jack could weaken them. He started with one – pulling a small tendril of goo from under the other Cas’s skin and grinding it into nothing. Then another, repeating the process the longer they stayed in the wrong universe.

It hurt to see the tender way Demon him had cradled his Cas, carrying him over towards the rift. Demon Dean had looked back, speaking directly to him. “We’ll find a way back,” he promised, “If we’re two things, it’s immortal and stubborn. Nothing can stop us.”

He vanished, as well as the rift moments later.

Jack caused a cave-in just to be sure.

When they get back to the Bunker at daybreak, having driven all throughout the night, Dean doesn’t wait for Sam to take the keys out before he’s running off to his room, head ducked down in shame.

“Dean, your arm!”

He looks up towards Cas, the angel watching him from the open door. ‘Didn’t I lock it?’ He wasn’t sure how much Cas had seen, or how long he’d been there, and all he can do is make a soft, low pitying sound from deep in his chest.

Cas gives him a fond look, and steps in. He reaches out to Dean, “Please, allow me –“

“No!” Dean flinches, hating himself even more as Cas’s face drops into something sadder. “N-no…” he says again, quieter, “I… I need it.”

Cas sits at the edge of Dean’s bed, giving him distance. “What do you need it for?”

“It helps,” Dean says, breathing harshly through his nose, “Keeps m’focused. Grounded. From thinking about… wanting…”

“They’re gone, Dean,” Cas says, “There’s no chance of them coming back.”

“How do you know?” he hisses, “How can you be sure?”

“I…” Cas looks away, clenching and unclenching his fingers in thought. Dean thinks he sees dark swirls spinning out from them, but blinks away the illusion.

“I can’t,” he finally says, turning to Dean, “But I won’t let their threats hang over me. And neither should you.”

Dean wants to believe, having spent the entire ride back arguing with himself about what’s next. The bloodstains on his sheets clearly show who won there. When Chuck and Amara disappeared, he thought they had taken any lingering influences the Mark might have had on him.

He was a fool to hope. The curse still held power over him, whether it was from his universe or any else’s. There could be thousands of places where he still has the Mark, and any one of them could break through next and offer Dean the same thing the other version of him had promised.

And he doesn’t think he’d be able to fight it.

“I’m just like they said,” Dean says aloud, “Weak…”

“What?”

“I’m weak,” Dean repeats, eyes brimming with unshed tears, “I was gonna say yes – again. I forgot how… forgot how good it felt with it – the power. I knew what would happen, knew who was waiting behind the scar, but I still… I still felt I was gonna say yes. Even if it would turn me into him,” A tear slips past, “I’m weak.” His chest is wracked with a loud sob, and he moves to bury his chin in his chest. He hiccups, trying to reign himself in – but once the floodgates were breached there was no stopping him.

“Dean,” Cas says, grabbing for his hand, “Dean look at me.” He shakes his head, but Cas just puts a finger under his chin and pulls him forward. He’s looking right into Dean’s eyes, shining with a fierce conviction that makes him shudder. “You are one of the strongest people I know. You would have fought the Mark – would have been nothing like him.”

“You don’t –“

“Today was nothing more then a bad day,” Cas assures him, “You didn’t expect to face them, didn’t think that you’d ever be offered the Mark again. I could feel your determination to resist near the end, using it to strengthen my own fortitude. You weren’t going to say yes… you were going to fight, even if it was for naught.” He uses his other hand to run his fingers through Dean’s hair, giving him something to focus on other than the pain. Dean’s sobs start to weaken, breaths coming out nicer and more even.

“They weren’t right,” Cas whispers, “They aren’t strong… we are. We knew that all that power was wrong, and we fought against it. I tried to send the Leviathan back, worked with you even when all I wanted to do was stay in the safety of my insanity. And whereas I took that power to further some selfish, ill-conceived plot, you only bore the mantle of Cain to save the world. You struggled to keep your humanity, and saved the world not through violence but through love. Your ability to care has stopped countless battles, saved millions of people. You’re stronger than that other Dean. You’re… you’re stronger than me.”

Dean shakes his head. “N-nuh-uh Cas,” he says, “You’re the strong one. I don’t… I don’t know how many times you’ve been knocked on your ass, but you just keep going. You power through all the drama and fight to protect us even though there’s no reason for you to. You could have checked out at any time – after Lucifer was caged, after Purgatory, Metatron, Amara, every day you can just walk away and live your life but you don’t. You stay and you work to help people because you care. Even now, you faced the same crap I did and you’re here comforting me! If I had gone through even half the stuff you’ve been through… I don’t know if I’d be able to…”

Cas smiles, sliding his hand down from Dean’s hair to his cheek reverently. “To me all of that is but a blink in my existence, Dean. You’ve faced a lifetime of hardships, yet are still as bright and pure as the day you were born. That takes strength.”

The finality in Cas’s voice erodes any other argument Dean might have. He just lets Cas pad his thumb over his cheek, wiping away any traces of their cracked reflections.

“Some days,” Dean says, finding his voice, “It hurts holding back. To not go for what I want. It… it sucks not giving in. Things I want that I… I don’t think I can have.”

Cas tilts his head, “What makes you think you can’t have them?”

“S’like what they said,” Dean admits, “If I have them… then I’m happy. I don’t get to be happy.”

Cas smiles at him, sadly. “You, more than anyone, deserve happiness, Dean.”

“And you?”

He freezes, startled by the question. “Um,” he blushes, looking away, “What about me?”

“Don’t you deserve happiness?”

“I am,” Cas tries, forcing the words out, “I am content as I am now.” He doesn’t dare meet Dean’s eyes, pulling his hands away towards his lap, leaving Dean with cold skin and an empty heart.

“Well I’m not,” Dean whispers. Cas whips towards him, eyes wide. Dean presses further, “I want more. This… this… whatever we are isn’t enough for me. I don’t want a day to pass where you don’t know you’re special and kind and needed but I can’t… I can’t get the words out right, no matter how I try. But if you’re happy where you are then I… I should learn to be, too. Because my happiness kinda hinges on your-mmph!”

Cas surged forward, capturing Dean’s lips with his. He squeezes Dean’s cheeks, scratching blunt crescent-shapes into his skin. Dean has barely any time to react, for as soon as Cas was on him, he’s pulling away, focused on a spot beside Dean’s head.

“I’m… sorry, if that was a bit forward,” Cas says, voice raw with thick emotion, “But I… there were no words I could think of that could… could communicate the sheer joy I felt when you said those words.”

A huge grin breaks out on Dean’s face. Now he’s reaching out, taking Cas’s chin in his hand. “I don’t mind,” he says, “I’ll never mind. We’ve wasted too much time not doing that.”

“I agree,” Cas says. He looks down at Dean’s arm, gingerly prodding the area around his wound. “Do you mind if I…?”

“Yeah,” he says, “But could you… do you mind if you…?”

“Yes?”

“Stay, after,” Dean looks away, feeling as his cheeks start to flush. “I feel better, but there’s still… I still –“

“You don’t have to explain, Dean,” Cas tells him, “I’ll stay.” Dean’s grin softens around the edges, and he presses a dry kiss to Cas’s cheek as he mends the skin on Dean’s arm.

They don’t take anything off – Dean already knowing he’ll have to wash his sheets in the morning, the dirt from their captivity already staining the clean linen. Cas presses himself on the pillows, and Dean to Cas. He’s twined his arms around Cas’s waist, and looks up through his lashes.

“You think you could…”

“I won’t let go,” Cas promises, his embrace tight and warm and right.

Dean wiggles closer, pressing his face into Cas’s chest, trying to burrow in. Their legs are tangled, and the trench coat is surprisingly soft where it rubs against Dean’s skin. It’s childish and silly, he knows, to try and use Cas as a security blanket. But after today, nothing sounds better then curling up with his angel as Cas’s warm body chases away all the nasty thoughts just waiting for Dean to let his guard down.

“We’ll never be like them, right?” Dean has to ask, waiting for the answer that’ll either pull him back from the precipice of sleep or push him deeper into unconsciousness.

Cas gives it to him. “Never.”

Coming from Cas’s lips, Dean almost believes it. But their lives are lived one day at a time – never knowing what will happen next. Dean might go on his last hunt, Cas could use up his final life, or even their universe could suffer from one last tear, collapsing in on itself. Their past and the actions that led them to where they are never truly fade away. They’re etched under the skin, leaving their marks and surging to life every now and then.

But being in Cas’s arms, Dean feels that facing those ghosts won’t be as hard next time.

#Supernatural #Spn #Spn ff #Supernatural fanfiction #Supernatural fanfic #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Destiel #Demon Dean Winchester #Leviathan Castiel #dark fic #tw: torture #tw: violence #tw: corpses #tw: cannibalism #tw: non-con #tw: addiction

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