#SOMEONE GET ME A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF FACE PAINTS AND BONES | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oathkeeper-of-tarth · 3 years

Text

The d’Avenir Treatise on the Essentials of Monster Hunting (Vol I) - Preface and Introduction

The timing of this whole thing with the campaign is pretty amazing, as it turns out. In the middle of absolute work hell and attempts to sort out my general apartment/living situation, a little while ago I entered a fic into the /r/CurseOfStrahd second annual fanfic contest. It was one of my attempts to kind of write out and process the way our own run through the module went, stretch out some poor, suffering, unused writing muscles, and it was also super duper self-indulgent. So I'm very, very proud to say it won first place amidst some really great competition, and super happy to rep my best girl Ez.

Summary: In the aftermath of Strahd's destruction and the not-quite-loss of her mentor, Ezmerelda d'Avenir sets out to tie up loose ends and lay some ghosts to rest, and continues carving out a path for herself in the Domains of Dread.

Word count: 9999, as there was a 10k limit. I had fun.

Rating/Warnings: T, with canon-typical violence, and dealing with death and loss in a general gothic horror setting. Spoilers for the Curse of Strahd module.

---

The d’Avenir Treatise on the Essentials of Monster Hunting (Vol I) - Preface and Introduction

Being a compendium of successes, failures, tricks, and warnings relating to detecting, tracking, fighting, and ultimately destroying undead, fiends, lycanthropes, and assorted monstrosities.

1.1. Introductory remarks

Their ride back to town is a quiet one. The silence is broken only once they are sitting, their hunting and travelling gear half-unpacked and strewn about, in the library just above van Richten's herbalist shop.

"Were we in any other profession, this would be a cause for celebration," van Richten's lips twist into a bittersweet wisp of a smile, and he pushes a warm cup of tea into her hands. "A demonstration of pride in an apprentice's first job well done, for all to see and revel in."

Ezmerelda tries to look up at him and meet his gaze properly, but her shoulders, her head, her eyes all feel too heavy. A leaden weight seems to have settled on every bit of her. She is tired, bone-deep, but the very thought of lying down and closing her eyes to attempt to sleep fills her with disgust and no small amount of dread. She knows exactly what she will see. The man, just on the cusp of middle age, entirely unremarkable at first... features quickly twisting into a mask of monstrous hunger, then to wide-eyed horror, and, finally, resorting to desperate pleas for mercy as the stake hits home and his screeching form dissolves to ash.

It feels like the ash still coats the back of her mouth. The tea smells of strong herbs, with just a whiff of something even stronger that van Richten must have snuck in from the liquor cabinet. Her hands clench around the cup, and a burning need to justify and defend herself drives her to finally speak up.

"I was ready," she insists. "I am ready."

"I know," van Richten replies, softly, sadly.

The tea scalds her tongue, but she drinks it anyway.

---

Getting up from the damp, cold floor of the tomb again feels like an impossibility. She can barely keep her head above the ground, eyes stinging with a mixture of blood and sweat and the glare of pure, magical sunlight. The clawed gashes on her ribcage burn with every weak, hard-won breath, and a metallic taste coats the back of her tongue.

But she is not done yet. She has one last lightning bolt left in her, and Strahd and his dusk elf lackey are so beautifully, perfectly aligned. Ezmerelda can't keep her lips from curling up into a smirk as she raises an arm and mutters her incantation, feeling that familiar tickle of static rising all around her.

She holds on, builds it up as much as she can, teeth grinding together, ears buzzing - until she can hold on no longer, and the energy flies from her, the flash near-blinding, the roar of accompanying thunder ringing in her ears.

She sees it hit home, the first traces of foggy vapour swirling around Strahd's convulsing form, and a beautiful satisfaction fills her.

Then, she lets herself go.

An instant or an eternity later someone is shaking her into jarring and painful wakefulness, jostling her head against the rough floor. Her mouth is filled with the bitter aftertaste of a potion, and she grimaces as she feels the familiar residue on her lips and chin.

"Fine, fine, old man, relax, I'm up," she manages, slurring the words, struggling to blink her eyes open and into focus. "I'm awake. Stop it."

But it's not him.

It is Ireena, wide-eyed gaze somehow growing wider still at her words. The reason for this becomes abundantly and agonisingly clear as she points to somewhere behind Ezmerelda... to where Rudolph van Richten lies, very pale and very still, a greater and more profound calm upon him than she has ever witnessed.

"No."

She didn't even see him fall.

"Why didn't you help him?" Ezmerelda knocks the empty potion bottle away, and it clatters loudly against the stone, finally finding rest near a streak of dark ashes. "What are you waiting for, what--"

"I tried. It was... it's too late," Ireena whispers, "I'm sorry."

Ezmerelda feels shame flood her immediately at the misaimed anger. "No. No, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I'm sorry. I just-- wait." Awareness of just where they are and what they were in the middle of doing suddenly overwhelms her, and she feels panic crawl up her spine. "Is it over? Did you stake that bastard once and for all?"

Ireena nods, mouth curling in visible distaste. "I did, just like you said to. Your last hit - it was enough to force him to turn into mist, and then, when... when he reformed in the coffin, I did it."

The relief Ezmerelda feels at that is so bitter it burns. "I missed it, then," she murmurs, and feels ridiculous immediately afterwards. Ireena shakes her head, and helps her sit up.

She allows herself a few precious moments of rest against the cold, damp wall of the crypt, eyes painfully locked on van Richten's still, still form. As soon as she feels half-capable of moving, she all but drags herself to his side. Feeling for a pulse, a breath, anything at all to help her disbelieve what is plainly before her eyes.

She finds no such thing. He's dead, and it feels like a stake through her own heart. After all her efforts, after getting into Barovia just to get the damned foolish old man off his self-destructive warpath and out, only to lose him now, to fail right at the end...

A pale shimmer falls over the scene before her, like a curtain right before her eyes. Ezmerelda blinks and shakes her head, but can't make it go away. She reaches up, and--

Erasmus all but swoops down to be face to face with her.

It takes her a moment to properly grasp what she is seeing. Erasmus. Somehow still there, his ghostly form hovering over his father's body. Gesturing at her wildly, pointing down at something, and, finally, using his ectoplasmic paint to draw... a circle within a circle, hanging in mid-air.

She follows his wordless instructions to the best of her current ability and, with some painfully suppressed reluctance, looks down at van Richten. And there on his finger is a ring that was certainly not there before.

Erasmus seems insistent and quite unusually agitated, so Ezmerelda takes the ring, trying not to register the coldness of the hand it was on, and puts it on numbly, feeling utterly beyond thought.

Suddenly, cutting through the fog that seems to have descended upon her mind, bubbling up like an idea from her own consciousness, a thought - a voice. A familiar voice.

'Ezmerelda? Ah. I see. Well, that could have gone decidedly better.'

She feels tears welling up in her eyes, an unstoppable burning in her chest. She wants to laugh until she can't breathe, or sob her lungs raw.

Instead, she sits back against the cool stone wall. As the adrenaline wears off, she becomes more aware of the extent of her injuries: the sting where foul claws raked across her midsection and upwards; the burns of magical fire on her palms. She fishes out the last potion from her pocket, and downs it in one greedy gulp. The relief is near-instant.

Her faculties at least somewhat returned to her, she opts for a laugh as she recognises the ring for what it is. Ireena looks at her with some concern, but Ezmerelda waves it away.

"A ring of mind shielding. Protect the mind, and store the soul, should the worst happen. Of course you of all people would come so prepared."

Ezmerelda twists the ring on her finger, marvels at the detailed engraving.

"Should I... we could... there's ways. To get you back. I mean..."

She trails off, and there is a brief pause before the voice in her mind pipes up again. 'No. No, I think, at long last, it is time for me to stop. And rest.'

Even though her entire being wishes to rail against this, to insist on the need for Rudolph van Richten to exist, and protest the injustice (just when she'd gotten him back!), Ezmerelda manages, barely, a soft, "I understand."

'There is still some work to do before that, though, no? Loose ends for us to take care of before, well...'

That, she feels far more comfortable with. It almost comes as a relief. "Yes, of course. First order of business, we will sit down, and we will work out a plan. And we will stick to that plan."

There is a soft chuckle in her mind.

"What's so funny? You love plans."

She imagines, in better, happier days, the old man - only slightly less old - shaking his head at her with a long-suffering smile.

'Thank you for humoring me, is all I'll say. Now, go handle things here properly and finish up, while I think of a list of priorities for us. Miss Kolyana is waiting for you.'

1.2. A brief reflection on personal experience

Ezmerelda is pulled into a room, hand clamped over her mouth. The door slams shut, and she almost stumbles as she is suddenly released.

"What in all the realms are you doing here?" The colourful half-elf carnival master hisses at her in a voice decidedly unlike the one he was just using in the downstairs taproom. Now that they are close, she can see the magical disguise of the Great Rictavio is utterly impeccable, but the eyes... the eyes are unmistakable.

They are also flooded with the closest thing to panic Ezmerelda has ever seen in them.

"I'm here to help you. You don't stand a chance on your own."

"How did you find me?"

Ezmerelda shrugs noncommittally, and doesn't look behind him. "I have my ways."

He shakes his head. "That isn't good enough. If his agents - and there are many, I assure you! - catch even a whiff--"

She finally glances at the ghostly form of Erasmus, just barely visible over Rictavio's shoulder, unable to be perceived by the one man he wishes he could reach out to and reassure. He meets her eyes and holds his finger up to his lips.

"I recognised your horse," she says, at long last.

"Dear Drusilla? Oh..." Rictavio seems to almost deflate at that, though his nervous pacing doesn't slow.

Erasmus' visage shows what has to be gratitude, or relief, or both. Then he closes his eyes, seemingly tired, and the shimmering remnants of him disappear from view.

"Damned stubborn, foolish girl..." Rictavio moves deftly around the small room, securing the shutters on its single window, locking the door from the inside, gaze darting around wildly. Then he reaches up and removes his hat, and Rudolph van Richten, looking more old and more worn than Ezmerelda was perhaps ever prepared to see, stands in his place.

"I had a plan, you know," he sighs, tossing the hat onto the bed. "One that I can now no doubt forget about entirely."

"There's no time for your endless preparation and planning. Any waiting game we try to play is a losing one. There's a young woman who desperately needs our help, a legendary weapon to be found, and there's a monster to hunt, feeding on an entire land. I've been to the castle, scouted out--"

"You've done what?"

Ezmerelda doesn't look at him and chooses to pace a small circle around the room herself. "The castle. Ravenloft. Getting in was a breeze - getting out was the hard part." She suppresses a brief shudder at the memory of her invisibility spell running out and Strahd's eyes boring directly into hers, as if he'd known she was there all along. "But, well, I managed. And more importantly, I found a way into his crypt."

Van Richten sits down on the bed, rubbing circles into his forehead.

"Ezmerelda, you can't be here." His voice sounds pained, almost. "You know you are not safe near me. My curse--"

"Sincerely, fuck your curse," Ezmerelda spits. "After all these years, it can wait a few days before striking. Can't be worse than what will happen to both of us and anyone involved if we can't manage to work together on this. We have to. I tried, by myself, but..."

She tries not to dwell on the terribly brief confrontation, the bite of the cold, cold grasp that seemed to steal the very life out of her, and her rather desperate escape.

"Ezmerelda," van Richten starts again, then pauses, and just looks at her - a long, heavy look. "Why?"

"There are still people who care about your well-being," she replies simply and softly, "no matter what you may believe."

Then she straightens her shoulders and allows the steel back into her voice. "So listen to me. We are going to stake that devil in his lair, and we are going to get out of this cursed land. Together."

For once, he doesn't argue.

---

Their lord and master may be gone, but there are plenty of foul things still crawling around Castle Ravenloft - and occasionally crawling out of it as well.

How lucky for the Village of Barovia, then, to have a monster hunter visiting.

"...so I think that should do it for that particular area of the barracks," Ezmerelda flicks a stray bit of zombie gunk off of her bracer, then casts an apologetic look at Ireena. "But who knows what else he has buried under there."

Ireena Kolyana, the girl haunted, hunted, and tormented by the vampire, deciding she's had enough of running, turning on him and wielding a sword of pure sunlight against him. Poetic justice, if Ezmerelda fancied herself a poet.

Ireena Kolyana, looking exhausted in a very different way, now caught up in burgomaster duties, barely finding time in her overstuffed schedule to hear about the results of Ezmerelda's latest expedition to the castle.

"You know," Ezmerelda begins, eyeing the stacks of papers and growing chaos on the desk between them, "if you ever get really tired of this, and miss life on the road..." she nods towards the window, and the wagon just outside it. "I have room for one more. And could always use a deft hand with a sword."

Ireena smiles, but the sadness underpinning it is palpable. "I can't, not now at least. There is too much to take care of here. And without Ismark..." a shadow falls briefly over her face, then she visibly forces it back. "Some day, maybe. I would honestly love to."

Ezmerelda nods, then moves to stand up, and holds out a hand expectantly. "Come on, you have time for a walk. A minute to escort me out and say goodbye, at least."

Ireena chuckles quietly and shakes her head, but pushes away from the desk and takes the proffered arm.

The sunlight is bright, tempered only by a wisp of white cloud here and there. Ezmerelda feels a light pull on her arm as Ireena stops on the threshold of the house for just a fraction of a moment. The hesitation is brief, barely noticeable, but the pause as if needing to catch her breath and the subsequent dawning joy - pure, almost radiant by itself - as the sunlight hits her skin--

Ezmerelda realises she's staring, blinks, and makes herself look away.

Their stroll is indeed brief, and as soon as they turn the corner and reach the parked wagon, Ireena sighs and stands half-ready to hurry back to her office and her duties.

"Hey," Ezmerelda puts what she hopes is a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I know you can handle all of this. Never doubt that."

This wins her a sincere smile. "Thank you."

Knowing there's no more point in delaying, Ezmerelda pulls away, moves to arrange her things around the wagon and prepare to leave.

"The offer stands," she says as she climbs into the driver's seat. "Keep it in mind."

"Maybe next time," Ireena replies with another sad smile. But then she pauses for a moment, almost as if thinking something over. Then she darts in quickly, and kisses Ezmerelda's cheek.

"Don't stay away too long," she says, quietly, then draws away again. Ezmerelda nods her agreement, and takes up the reins of her conjured horses.

Ireena waves her goodbye, and stands, looking on, bathed in sunlight.

And then the road turns, and she disappears from Ezmerelda's view.

'Well.'

"Shut up." Ezmerelda can feel her face burning. "Absolutely no need to read into things."

'You know I mean no offense. I only want the best for you.'

"I am perfectly fine," Ezmerelda grumbles. "Besides, this is the last thing she needs right now."

'You don't know that. Ask her sometime, perhaps, to tell you herself. Too many people have assumed too much about that young lady, I think. Myself included.'

"Oh, what do you know..."

There is a distinct sensation of stinging grief, never quite healed, as the voice comes again. 'You seem to forget I was young once. In love once. More... than once. And though it never ended well, like few things in my life did, the only thing I have ever regretted was not acting sooner. And regret is...'

"... the enemy of progress. I know." Ezmerelda sighs, the old man's oft-repeated saying rattling around in her mind as she snaps the reins and takes them down the road westward. "Maybe next time."

1.3. Materials and methods, an overview

Her balance is off still, but the past few weeks have brought incredible improvement. She flicks her rapier upwards, then lunges - back, forth, back, forth, fully and properly bearing weight on her right side in the training yard for the first time in months. The new prosthetic is truly a work of art and a masterful display of craftsmanship. Ezmerelda feels almost giddy at the sensation of ducking and weaving under the wooden limbs of the training dummy, feinting deftly, ignoring the burn in her arm and shoulder. The maneuvers are not yet close to her peak speed and fluidity and elegance, not after the long, arduous recovery she is only now reaching the end of. But it is all so very, very promising.

It also brings to mind - because how could it not, when for the better part of the past half-year she has had more time to think, and remember, and reflect than in her entire life? - van Richten's drills. He was always far more of a theoretician than practitioner of swordfighting, but he was certainly no slouch with a blade. The precision and perfection of form he insisted on instilling in her initially seemed to clash with her more free, improvisational, off-the-cuff approach, but ended up blending with it to great effect in ways that occasionally surprised them both.

She goes through attack patterns he's drilled into her and realises she misses him, the cantankerous old man and all his frustrating ways, and suddenly finds herself fervently wishing she wasn't doing this alone. She spares a moment to imagine the amount of fussing over her he would likely have insisted on, with his overprotective bedside manner that she used to chafe and scoff at whenever one of their hunts went badly for her. She thinks of all the lovely, fleeting drawings Erasmus would have made for her.

Her next step is careless, thoughtless, distracted, and as a result only a little off. The lunge is misaimed, unbalanced, and her knee twists unpleasantly. For the briefest flash of a moment she could swear she can feel the teeth sinking in again, and the horrible tearing.

Ezmerelda winces, fingers clenched around the rapier's handle, knuckles white. Her teeth grit as the wave of pain subsides so very, very slowly, but doesn't quite go away. She remembers, belatedly, that she has an audience.

"Ah, almost there," she calls back to the artisan eagerly awaiting her feedback, voice forcefully kept steady, without turning to face them, and taps her rapier on the metal plating running up from the heel. "We'll need to make another slight adjustment to the ankle joint, I think. But this is definitely and by far the best one yet. Let me get some more practice first, and we can go over the details in the afternoon."

Ezmerelda doesn't wait to see if her words are acknowledged. She hefts the rapier back up.

---

Before she reaches the first crossroads west of Vallaki, she turns the wagon south and into the woods.

"I have some unfinished business of my own to settle first," Ezmerelda states very matter-of-factly, preempting any interrogation from the ring's general direction.

The wagon trail to the top of the hill is easier to navigate than ever, and the camp is abuzz with activity, as it usually is. But this time the feel of it all is a bit different.

Ezmerelda knows it well; the air of a caravan packing up to leave.

Arabelle sees her weaving through the horses, strolling towards the large central tent, and darts towards her immediately, then freezes not three feet away. Ezmerelda can tell plain as the new Barovian day that she is torn between looking dignified and throwing herself at her in a hug.

So she crouches down and opens her arms first, and is almost knocked over when Arabelle rushes in.

"I want to show you something I've been practicing," Arabelle whispers conspiratorially, "but you'll need to lend me a dagger."

Ezmerelda's eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but she obliges the girl after only a moment's contemplation, still crouched down and one arm around her narrow shoulders.

The dagger is one of the smaller ones she usually keeps concealed, but even so it seems far too large in Arabelle's hands. Nevertheless, in a few surprisingly dextrous motions with only a couple of moments of hesitation, she seems to make it disappear - then produces it again as if out of thin air.

"Huh. Impressive. Did your uncle teach you that little trick?"

Arabelle nods, but her pride is palpable. "Papa was so mad! He says that both him and you are a bad influence and I am far too young to be handling blades."

"There's no such thing," Ezmerelda scoffs, but motions for her dagger back and tucks it away safely. "Where is your father? I wanted to speak with him."

"Luvash is busy," another voice cuts in cooly, and Arrigal steps out of the fading, scarce shadows, somehow slipping under her notice even with the bright streams of sunlight all around. "But you can speak with me."

Ezmerelda stands up slowly, and can see him sizing her up.

"Run along now, Arabelle," Arrigal says in a much warmer tone of voice, but without taking his eyes off Ezmerelda for even a moment.

Arabelle gives her one last look as she turns to leave, and Ezmerelda tries to give her a reassuring smile - but then she realises Arabelle doesn't seem concerned or reluctant or... anything at all. She seems supremely calm, and not seven years old at all.

Arrigal steps forward and, even as uncannily quiet as he always is, it startles her back into the moment. Then, he reaches out a hand.

Ezmerelda meets his gaze, steps forward, and takes it. The handshake is firm, and she smirks. "Looks like you backed the losing side, cousin."

The term of address rolls off her tongue with some bite of irony in it. Arrigal inclines his head in acknowledgement. "You can't say it wasn't a fairly sure bet. A matter of survival, of course. We do what we must to keep our people safe. But," and he draws a bit closer, as if letting her in on a secret. "I'm glad he didn't send me after you."

Ezmerelda nods, and decides she isn't in the mood for a debate. "You know, so am I. I would have hated having to kill you. Instead, here you are, in an excellent position for a little introspection, changing your ways... much better this way, isn't it?"

He shakes his head with a grin, and finally lets go of her hand. "You are a menace. But we follow the traditions, and you have a place here. Where are you going?"

"Borca," she says, and pointedly doesn't elaborate further.

Arrigal laughs. "Off to more of your grim business right away! Well, one has to admire your tenacity. You can stay, of course, and leave with us tomorrow. We will share the road at least part of the way."

So Ezmerelda stays, and exchanges news of recent caravan routes and planned Mist-traversal with Luvash. The fire roars to life as the sun sets. Tales are told, and she contributes some of her own.

"Regale us, cousin," Arrigal says, grinning wolf-sharp, arms open wide as if to encompass the entire camp, "with the story of the fall of the devil Strahd."

Arabelle is a delight, as always. The truce with Arrigal, if it can be called that, is uneasy, but holds. The ring is quiet.

Arabelle insists on riding with her in the morning ("You did fish her out of that lake... brought her back to us," Luvash grumbles. "I suppose there's no harm... I'll have none of that monster-hunting nonsense, though!"). Her delight at the summoned magical horses is palpable, even as she tries to hide it. Ezmerelda gives her the reins until they need to enter the Mists, and is only slightly surprised to see her managing well, with just a few pointers here and there.

The whole way, Arabelle demands stories of her and van Richten's exploits very matter-of-factly - interrogates, almost, at times. Her eyes are large, intent, focused, as Ezmerelda obliges, for hours.

"I knew you would win," Arabelle says at one point, breaking a rare longer stretch of silence between them. "Uncle didn't want to listen to me, but I knew."

Ezmerelda looks at her, matches her seriousness. "I hope he will learn to listen, one day soon."

1.4. Common pitfalls

Ezmerelda inches back to consciousness more than wakes, and hisses as she almost reflexively tries and fails to sit up. She recognises her own bed in the former guest room above the herbalist shop, but the details of how she got there are fuzzy at best, completely absent at worst. She is, however, very aware of a merciless pounding in her head and that she has most certainly just pulled some fresh stitches.

A swirl of colourful ectoplasm greets her when she next opens her eyes, Erasmus' fleeting but always lovely and cheerful greetings hovering above her.

Well. Ezmerelda forces a pained smile at him, knowing that if he is here, his father cannot be far, and--

Ah. Familiar footsteps on the stairs, and the distinct creak of the second one from the top, as Rudolph van Richten enters the room with uncanny timing.

He doesn't seem to be surprised to see her awake as he gives her a quick look-over, even as concern and frustration clearly war on his face.

"I thought we had reached an agreement," he begins at last, very deliberately calmly.

Ezmerelda doesn't reply.

"I thought," he continues with that same calm tone, "that we had made a plan. That was my distinct impression of our last conversation."

Ezmerelda clenches her teeth, then grinds out, "I couldn't just stand by and let that beast--"

"You could have voiced your disagreements with the plan and brought your concerns to me, instead of running off on your own in the middle of the night," van Richten is clearly struggling to keep his voice level. "You almost died."

"Fine, I am voicing my disagreements. We know it's a wereboar. Just go at it with our silvered weapons, set up an ambush where we found its lair... why wait? Why give it more chances to hurt people?"

"To be absolutely certain we have all the information. That we have looked at it from every angle, that we have not overlooked a crucial detail. Minimise its chances to hurt us."

"But by then it might have mauled half the village to death, or worse!"

Van Richten's gaze on her is sharp. "And if we get ourselves pointlessly killed, are the villagers any safer for our hasty, brash, ill-thought sacrifice?"

"Hasty, brash, and ill-thought. Fine, if that’s how it is, how you think of me," Ezmerelda throws her hands up, and wishes she could march off, slamming a door shut behind her for good measure, as childish as the thought makes her feel.

Van Richten sighs deeply, and pulls up a chair to sit next to her bed. Ezmerelda recognises it as one from downstairs, and feels a small stab of guilt at the thought of him setting up a vigil at her bedside.

"We can't go rushing in on half-checked information," van Richten begins, after a brief silence, looking down at his hands. "We can't, because... because I have done that, in the past. And people - good, brave, dedicated people who chose to stand against evil, people who trusted me - died as a result."

"I have been wrong," he continues, still not looking up. "I have followed faulty sources without the due diligence of thorough enough vetting. I have overlooked things, and I have lost many. I will not and cannot allow that to happen again. We have to be careful, patient, and vigilant, always."

"I'm not advocating for blindly rushing in," Ezmerelda protests, "I'm merely--"

"I won't have you on my soul as well. I have far too many already."

"And I won't have any more innocents on mine! We had all the relevant information two days ago. Four people could have been alive today if we had acted on time. We were right."

"And what about when you aren't, Ezmerelda? What about when you aren't?"

Ezmerelda looks him right in the eyes, steely. "Then I will make sure I am the one who pays the price for my own mistakes."

"Oh," van Richten smiles sadly, "If only that were possible."

---

The letter arrives just as she is preparing, to her great relief, to leave Port-à-Lucine for good. It is hand-delivered by an ostentatiously dressed man in a stylised fox mask, entirely - and Ezmerelda feels her lips curl in annoyance - unassuming and usual for the land of outrageous pretense that is Dementlieu. The way he seems to disappear in the moment it takes for her to glance down at what he has thrust into her hands is also something Ezmerelda finds hard to marvel at anymore.

Overjoyed to be able to return to the relative privacy and safety of her wagon, she tosses away her old harlequin mask in the sincere hopes of never having to put the damn thing on again. Then she throws herself on the bed and focuses on tearing into the sealed envelope, absorbing its mysterious contents.

After she reaches the end of the letter's brief text, she stays very still for a long while.

'Not a name I thought I would see again, if I am to be honest,' van Richten's voice comes slowly, sounding very wary.

Ezmerelda breathes out a frustrated sigh, an unidentifiable jumble of feelings warring in her chest and burning up her throat. She tries to reply several times, then stops, and closes her eyes. Collects herself, at least somewhat, and decides to focus on the practical. "How do we even know this isn't a forgery, or some sort of trap?"

'We don't. But it is a loose end I, for one, am not prepared to simply overlook.'

"She's tried before, but I never... I don't have time for this right now, I--," she throws the letter and the shredded envelope onto the chest at her bedside, and runs an annoyed hand through her hair, again, and again, and again. Thinking, or at least trying to.

'We have time. You and I both know it's not time that is the problem.'

They are nearing the end of their planned journey, finishing up their business with Alanik Ray and Arthur Sedgwick's latest investigations and bidding farewell to Dementlieu. And then it was supposed to be on to Mordent, to call in at the Mordentshire shop briefly, and afterwards to Darkon - to Rivalis, and the villages surrounding the old Richten estate. Some ghouls to fight off, wraiths to purge, ghosts to lay to rest, to help the villagers out, before... well. They'll come to that when they do.

Ezmerelda can't deny the detour would only be a brief one.

"A 'loose end'," she huffs. "Really."

'I am just trying to help you. Don't waste years of your life like I have, either bitter or wondering or fleeing. Confront your - our - past, at least this part. Lay it to rest, if you can.'

"The past does not lie behind us. It is part of what we are, and part of what we always will be," Ezmerelda recites, then sighs again. "Old Vistani saying."

A moment of silence. 'Make sure it is a good part, then.'

Ezmerelda's memory of her mother feels... not fuzzy, but perhaps a bit tweaked and twisted over the years, more by feelings overtaking it than by any fault of recall. The images of what she remembers and what now stands before her don't match, but have a strange, dissonant overlap, leaving visible in the centre a woman Ezmerelda could almost, almost imagine seeing in the mirror. One she hoped to never see again after that night of wordless parting, many years ago.

Years of imprisonment seem to have been surprisingly kind to Madame Irena Radanavich. She has wormed her way into some kind of favour with someone powerful here, no doubt, as has always been her utterly unscrupulous way. The cell is clearly a formality, more of an office than anything, a parlour for receiving agents and lackeys, as well as bosses. There is even a chair - a worn, old wooden frame with faded red upholstery - placed a little ways away from the bars, facing them. Ezmerelda also gets a distinct impression that the guard standing in the corner is not there for any visitor's safety or protection.

The woman in the cell seems to light up the moment she sets eyes on Ezmerelda strolling into the cell space with a pretense of casualness.

"My, how you've grown! My, and yet-- oh, darling," concern seems to flood her face and voice, and - there, a subtle, wry twist - Ezmerelda thinks she catches a false, even mocking undertone to it. A flash, and it’s gone, and perhaps she merely imagined it, or even wanted it to be there, an ache for some semblance of simplicity to box this woman in. "There's both more and less of you than last time I saw you."

"Really?" Ezmerelda scoffs, and almost wants to laugh. "All those tales I've heard of your vicious, clever, insidious scheming, and that's the best you can come up with?" She crosses her arms, and clicks her metal heel against the floor loudly. "Not an angle you can use against me, I'm afraid. Try again."

"You wound me!" A dramatic hand placed over her chest. "Treating your own mother like that, who has never had anything but your best interests at heart. Who you've never even come to visit."

Ezmerelda slips the opened letter through the bars, letting it land on the hewn stone on the other side. Then she moves to sit down on the solitary chair.

"I'm only here because I got your letter."

"Oh! Good. My dearest Ezmerelda, I was--"

"I am here to tell you I want you to leave me alone," Ezmerelda continues, acting as if she hasn't heard a word. "For good. Forget I exist, preferably. I want nothing to do with you, and I never will. And the only thing I might want to do with your plotting and scheming is foiling it, so it is in your best interest to leave me out of it all. And van Richten..."

The saccharine smile dips down, almost into a scowl. "And here I'd heard you'd finally seen sense and parted ways with that old fool."

"You hear much, I see," Ezmerelda replies, cooly.

"I have my ways. My sources. People loyal to me, who have yet to abandon me."

Ezmerelda feels the swipe like an airy almost-cut of a dagger that just barely misses. "Well, here's something new for you, then. Something your little web-weaving spiders seem to have missed. You'll be happy to hear he's dead."

"And right away you come back to me! Time to end your silly games, eh, Ezme? Good, good. A start--"

"You have no right to call me that," Ezmerelda cuts her off, rapidly losing her will to restrain herself.

"Come now, dear. That's no way to talk to your mother, your own flesh and blood. It's about time we set all this nonsense aside, don't you think? Your family--"

"You're no family of mine."

"Please," she scoffs loudly. "You sound like an angry child. And... oh, really, what kind of name is 'd'Avenir' even?"

"My name," Ezmerelda replies, perfectly matter-of-fact, and refuses to even entertain further discussion of the matter.

"I wonder how you'll do," Madame Radanavich smiles, but this time the threatening edge is obvious, pretense briefly abandoned, "all alone. Playing your little games of pretend with your make-believe name. You'll come crawling back to me yet."

Ezmerelda finds herself thinking of Erasmus, and almost believes she can see him, out of the corner of her eye. Tries not to think of what this confrontation might be bringing back for him. Thinks of the Martikovs welcoming her with open arms and offering shelter even in the darkest and dourest and most dangerous of days; thinks of Ireena with the sunsword and an entire wealth of feeling tangled in a tired, relieved smile somehow brighter than the blazing sunlight itself. Of nights around the fire in the camp outside Vallaki, and little Arabelle pulling on her coat, extorting promises of lessons in both swordfighting and divining. Of Arthur Sedgwick and his honest, caring eyes, and his patient instruction in properly using a flintlock, as his husband gleefully offers detailed scientific explanations of the weapon's workings from the side. She twists the ring on her finger.

"I'm not alone," Ezmerelda says simply, and feels resolute steel pouring back. She stops to consider her next words more carefully.

"I watched your actions and your curse destroy a good man's life. But I want you to know that you wanted to take from him, and in the end you took from me, the daughter you profess to care about so much. And now you crow at me about flesh and blood and expect me to, what? Beg you to let me come back? Back to what? A mouldy cell and as short a leash as the current master feels like giving you?"

"Bold words for one given to following an old wretch around like a sad pup, even as he keeps trying to kick you away," Radanavich sneers, then shifts back to sad pity in the blink of an eye. "Oh, yes, my dear, it's so very tragic... I've heard it all. Look at you - you're wasted on him."

"Oh?" Ezmerelda raises an eyebrow cooly, clamps down on the sting to her pride and the deliberate scrape against old wounds, and almost wanting to scream you are the reason he feared that daring to care about someone would be a death sentence for them. "And what would you prefer to be using me for?"

"How dare you! After all I've done for our family, while you throw your lot in with the man who killed your brother and imprisoned your mother!"

Ezmerelda feels suddenly tired, more than anything. "You know he did no such thing. And I've done very well for myself, despite you."

"Have you, now? What price have you paid for your... profession? What has it cost you already?"

"Nothing I wouldn't be ready to pay ten times over if it meant ensuring the safety of an innocent, or beating back those such as you. You still don't understand," Ezmerelda just smiles sadly, allowing only the slightest undercurrent of danger. "I'm neither lost, nor settling for anything, nor desperately grasping at a chance, nor tragically misguided. This is what I want. This-- this cause, this fight, this is exactly what I was meant to do. And I am very, very good at it."

"Oh, Ezmerelda, if excitement and adventure and glory is what you are after, I know of much that you could do! So many causes that your... talents... would be an excellent match for. You do have a certain reputation, and I know several highly influential actors who'd know exactly where to put your skills to use, no matter how they were acquired. You could do so well for yourself! Rise right to the top of the ranks in the blink of an eye, become truly great."

Ezmerelda shakes her head, and sighs, and moves to get up from the sad, solitary seat.

"Ezmerelda--"

She quickly turns towards the bars and leans in, baring her teeth and grinning widely. "I killed the devil Strahd," Ezmerelda smirks at the look of shock she gets in response. "I think your petty schemes are a little below me, don't you?"

She turns to leave, not waiting for a response. The guard leans back in his corner as she moves away from the bars, waving him off.

"Oh, do feel free to let your masters know," she tosses over her shoulder nonchalantly as she makes her way out. "Though I have to say I haven't really looked into whose lapdog you are nowadays."

Ezmerelda hears a frustrated growl behind her as the sickeningly sweet, pleasant mask falls for good. As the door slams shut behind her, she doesn't look back.

She lets the noise of the city drown out her thoughts as she slowly makes her way back to her wagon, more than ready to be on her way elsewhere. Until, after a while, a familiar voice comes swimming up through her mind.

'How do you feel?'

"I don't know," Ezmerelda murmurs, after a long silence. "Ask me tomorrow."

1.5. Notes on useful classification and categorisation

As she finishes rattling off the information she's gathered on a series of apparent annis hag encounters that van Richten asked her for, he looks-- well, 'impressed' is the only word Ezmerelda can think of to describe it.

In the ensuing moment of quiet, he takes off his spectacles, fidgets with them briefly, polishes off a smudge with his handkerchief. Then, he looks her right in the eye. "You, girl, are a veritable sponge."

Ezmerelda flashes him a smug smile, then remembers the other matter she wanted to bring to his attention. She clears her throat, and begins, with uncharacteristic hesitance. "I've also been looking into some... other things. Another way I can contribute, I think."

The only reply is a raised eyebrow, so Ezmerelda steels herself and decides to go forward with her planned demonstration. She quells the nervous fluttering in her stomach, and instead focuses on the points of her own fingers as they trace well-practiced patterns in the air. With a final flick and a quick mutter of the incantation she's quietly recited so, so many nights in her room when she was supposed to be asleep, the very air around her right hand shimmers with heat. A few tense moments later, a small mote of flame appears in her palm.

Ezmerelda bites back an exclamation of joy at the success, tries to keep her expression fairly neutral, and looks to van Richten expectantly.

His eyebrows are, very amusingly, trying to climb into his hairline. "Where in the world did you learn to do that?"

She lets the little flame dance between her hands, casually skip from one to the other, flickering giddily, and feels an odd sense of relief wash over her.

"I saw it in one of your books. Almost by accident, and it... it just made a lot of sense to me, even just skimming over it. So I thought, why not? If I could get a handle on a few of the spells, I could complement your arsenal quite well. Bring more to the fight."

Van Richten nods, but there is a wary undertone to his words. "As long as you aren't making any ill-advised deals and pacts - which, I'll remind you--"

"-- are all of them. I know. Don't worry. I'm only interested in things I can glean by myself."

"Well, I'm not much of an arcane practitioner, though I am quite familiar with a lot of theory. I'm afraid I won't be able to provide any elaborate training or instruction--"

"That's fine," Ezmerelda rushes to say. "I can continue like this. The research, the books - it's..."

She trails off, not quite knowing how and what to explain. Arcane magic is fascinating, surprisingly enjoyable, and strikes a deeply satisfying balance between being hard-won and feeling like it comes naturally to her.

It also feels... hers.

"It's very engaging material," she finishes after a little while. She moves to close her fist and extinguish the tiny fire, but something stops her at the very last moment.

"Indeed," van Richten replies simply, and gets up from his seat. "Well, I do need to go tend to the shop, but rest assured we will discuss the tactical applications of this later today."

Just as he is out the study door and about to start down the stairs, he pauses, and turns back to look at her, a bright and sincere smile on his face. "Very well done, Ezmerelda."

The flame flickers, ready to fly from her fingers, bursting with potential.

"Thank you," she murmurs long after he is gone.

---

It is deep nighttime when Ezmerelda shakes off the last tendrils of the Mists and sets eyes on the cliffs of Mordentshire. The wagon's wheels clatter over rain-slick cobblestones as she navigates the still-familiar streets of the seemingly unchanging harbour town. The cold sea wind makes her tighten her coat around herself, to very little avail.

She can't say she's missed the weather.

By the time she spies the sign neatly painted with the words Herbalist - Dr. Rudolph van Richten, she feels soaked through and entirely miserable, and spends only a moment giving the place a quick look-over.

The shop is in fine shape - if she didn't know better, Ezmerelda could easily believe its owner closed it up for the night and left just yesterday. The wolfsbane and garlic in the planters underneath each window are flourishing. She makes a mental note to make her first order of business in the morning calling in on the neighbors and discussing further arrangements with Mrs. Polk, in whose capable hands van Richten has been leaving things for years.

In the meantime, she fervently hopes for dry clothes and a workable fireplace.

A quick rummage between two bushy wolfsbane plants - the second and third one on the right - produces a spare key, and Ezmerelda remembers with mild amusement her shock at this mundane weakness in van Richten's usually impeccable and overthought defenses, years ago.

"Keys," he'd looked at her over the rim of his spectacles, "are hardly a problem for things that truly want to harm me."

The little bell chimes as she opens the door. Catching a glimpse of herself in the very precisely placed full-length mirror just opposite the entrance, she wastes no time before going upstairs. The second stair from the top creaks its old, familiar reassurance.

Ezmerelda enters the room that used to be hers, in between harrowing hunting trips and trying adventures, during her years training with van Richten. It doesn't seem to have changed much - nor does it seem to be in use as anything but spare storage space.

She does her best not to think about how empty and quiet the house is, or how she's never truly been alone in it. Instead, she hangs up her coat, rolls up her shirt sleeves, unpacks some of her things, and, by the time she gets a proper fire going, realises sleep is the very last thing she feels like doing. Her eyes alight on the small desk in the corner, and she instead decides to do something she hasn't in a while.

She sits down to write.

First, Ezmerelda takes off the ring and sets it aside, muttering a quick good night, Doctor under her breath. Then she takes out some of her collection, observations accumulated over the years - jotted down on everything from thick parchment to old wrapping paper. Combining it with the wealth of van Richten's remaining material and into something eventually coherent will no doubt be a challenge, but a challenge is not something Ezmerelda d'Avenir has ever shied away from.

It is just haphazard, quick notes on anything of consequence that comes to mind at first, carried by an odd nervous energy. A more systematic approach will have to come at some later point.

While knowledge is a key weapon in any hunter's arsenal, honing one's body as well as mind is absolutely necessary, she writes, tapping her foot on the wooden floor in a way that often drove van Richten to distraction. Many of the creatures of the night become, in their cursed states, inhumanly strong, and in such instances one must be particularly careful of engaging them in close quarters, for even the greatest strongman would be at a disadvantage.

However, not all of these encounters need be solved by violence. Many ghosts

She pauses, pen slowly dripping ink onto the half-filled page before her, and sees Erasmus out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head to face him, and for once in their long and unusual life-and-afterlife-spanning acquaintance, she finds she can't quite read him.

Many ghosts are held in their in-between existence due to unfinished business. Tethered to some regret or incomplete task from their mortal lives, they seek resolution and closure. Many hauntings can thus be resolved by investigation, and what I must term a primarily sympathetic approach. Of course, one must also always be wary and on the lookout for deliberately misguiding spectres who seek to play upon one's pity.

The first signs of dawn creep into the room by the time she has moved on from ghosts to wraiths to trying to sort out her notes about creatures that lurk underwater - old notes that have been, to her chagrin, very appropriately and unsalvageably waterlogged.

Ezmerelda manages to light another candle just before her current one sputters out, and rubs at her tired eyes. Then she pauses, gazing idly at the ink stains on her fingers.

She reaches over for a new page, setting her current work aside. There is something else she wants and needs to write, something other than dry facts or hopefully helpful guidelines. The first few sentences come in fits and starts, but soon enough she finds them flowing out of her pen almost of their own accord.

What I would like to make clear is that this is not an inherently bad place. The lands themselves can be beautiful - wondrous, even. Worth living in, and worth fighting for. And the people who live in them do not deserve to live in fear. I, and many others, could simply leave for some better, tamer prospects, yes - but then what? Nothing is gained if we merely surrender an entire world, a collection of lands so fantastically varied and so full of promise, to a cruel, merciless, hungry night. It can't all be abandoned as collateral damage in a great punishment intended for a horrible few. I can't, and won't, allow this to happen.

Maybe the foes are overwhelming, and the fight endless. But a life saved is a life saved. A victory is a victory. One innocent snatched away from a grim fate, one tendril of darkness beaten back - that is enough. But only if we persist at it, day after day after day. And evil may be impossible to ever completely destroy, but it is far weaker and less widespread than it could and doubtlessly wants to be, in at least some small part thanks to our continued efforts.

A dour prospect? Perhaps, for some. Ezmerelda smirks to herself, and gazes down at her veritable manifesto, and thinks back to that cell in Il Aluk.

What better life is there to lead? None, for her.

I, for one, don't intend to give up anytime soon. I hope that in you, dear reader, I can find one of like mind. And perhaps one day we shall find ourselves standing together.

She lights another candle, and continues.

1.6. Conclusions and remarks on future work

She clenches her hands as she steps into the sitting room that morning, decisions made after a long, sleepless night of contemplation. As if fate is conspiring against her, the first thing she sees is Erasmus, hovering over his father's shoulder. He turns to face her as soon as he notices her, a bright smile he saves just for her on his pale, ghostly face. She knows what a struggle it is for him to manifest this way, how much it takes out of him. The thought of his precious few minutes today being this...

It takes immense effort to speak up, interrupting van Richten's apparent focus on the post strewn about the table in front of him.

"I think... I think it's time for me to go."

"Go? Where?" He blinks, looking up from his papers.

Ezmerelda swallows, but hesitates only for a moment. "I don't know," she answers, chin tilted up, almost proud. "But I know we can't go on like this. I don't want to go on like this."

They butt heads and scrape against each other constantly. Chafe and grate and, and, and. She can't remember the last time they agreed on even the most cursory thing. It has reached a level where she fears his presence will become intolerable, and anything binding the two of them together become irreparably soured and tainted.

She refuses to allow this to happen.

Erasmus has drawn a coin. Two sides. He indulges in a small, semi-teasing pantomime, pointing at the two of them as his shimmering, ectoplasmic drawings hover briefly before vanishing like so much smoke, and Ezmerelda shakes her head sadly.

"I don't want to come to resent you, that is all. I don't think I could bear it if I did."

"If you think it for the best, by all means," van Richten says simply, and leaves it at that. He never turns to fully look at her. There is an undercurrent to his voice Ezmerelda can't quite place - something deeply tired, and far more complicated than plain sadness.

It rains heavily that morning as she sets off, as if the world itself wants her to rethink this. The muddy road squelches almost threateningly under her horse's hooves as she leads him forward.

Van Richten doesn't come out to see her off.

"I'll miss you," she breathes to herself, and half-hopes it somehow reaches both of the companions she is leaving behind. But she has only the rain and her horse's steady trot on the trail for company.

It is quiet.

---

Finally, the familiar mists of Darkon, and the countryside of Rivalis, lie before them. The inevitable, at a familiar estate fallen into quite a state of disrepair.

'No, leave it be,' van Richten said, at her hesitantly presented idea of including returning Richten House to at least some of its former glory on their list of unfinished business and loose ends.

Still, this is where he wanted to come. At the end.

Ezmerelda never saw it in its prime. She was a mere child then, kept well away from her family's machinations. Until she was (inevitably, irrevocably) drawn in, her fate forever entangled with that of the van Richten family. But even now, in all its disrepair, rich traces of what the gardens, the orchard, and the house itself used to be permeate the atmosphere, like ghosts themselves.

She walks across the hills of the grounds, all the way around the mansion to the family cemetery. She slows as she moves up to the two most recent graves, so easy to find, and thinks, briefly, of the body van Richten insisted on being burned before they left Barovia, just in case.

Just in case, she agreed, knowing all he knew about what foul magic and foul intentions could do to physical remains in the wrong hands, and built him a pyre.

The headstones before her are simple but elegant, as is the tidily engraved lettering on them.

Ingrid van Richten

Erasmus van Richten

'Well, here we are.' For a disembodied voice softly projecting into her mind, almost as through a mild haze or over some great distance, it is one of the heaviest things Ezmerelda has ever heard.

'A few words, if I may,' van Richten's request comes, gentle, and she nods, finding herself oddly wordless.

'I am so proud of you,' he begins, and the ferocity of it almost startles her. 'I hope you know this, always. If I have ever made you doubt this, as I pushed you away - I am sorry. I regret many things in my life, as one does, no matter what I like to say - but most of all I regret that I didn't tell you this sooner.

You are the best of my life. But more than that, you have grown far beyond me, into a finer person than most could dream of being. And I am sorry I wasn't there for you, that you had to do so much of it on your own. But know that when I see you... I couldn't be happier, or more in awe.'

There is a very brief pause, and then the voice softens again.

'I love you as my own, and am deeply honoured you would consider me, and that I get to consider you, family.'

Ezmerelda swallows once, twice, struggles, then finally lets her tears fall freely.

'Look at you. You don't need me anymore. And I can only hope your legend will far surpass anything I have ever done - there is so much ahead of you! Your light stands so very bright against the darkness. But I am glad, so very glad - selfishly, perhaps - that we were there together, at the end.'

"So am I," she manages a whisper. "Love you too, old man."

'Now I suppose it is time for me to go.'

Erasmus looks at her, bittersweet pouring from him in waves, and he gives a small nod. His form flickers, and then disappears, and Ezmerelda knows she will never see him again.

She knows how the ring works, too. The soul within it can choose to depart whenever it wants to. She knows she doesn't need to do anything - that she couldn't, even if she wanted to. It brings with it a strange sort of peace.

Ezmerelda inclines her head. "I hope you see them soon." Tell Erasmus I'll miss him, she wishes she could say.

She spins the now-inert ring around on her finger, a habit she will need to break. She wants to tear it off, and throw it as far away from herself as she can. She wants to never take it off as long as she lives.

A soft rain starts up, and Ezmerelda feels oddly grateful for the feel of it on her face, even as she knows there is no one here but her.

It is quiet.

---

With gratitude to the notes and tutelage of the esteemed Dr. Rudolph van Richten, whose guidance and wealth of knowledge have proved invaluable on countless occasions, and whose friendship changed the course of my life more than once.

#ezmerelda d'avenir #rudolph van richten #curse of strahd #dnd #dungeons and dragons #fanfiction #my fic #oathkeeper writes things #erasmus van richten #ravenloft #gonna take my horse to the old svalich road #tabletop

63 notes · View notes

killerskillercaptain · 3 years

Text

Forget Me Not - part I

this work is based on this request

pairing : levi ackerman x reader

wc 1,8 k +

themes : reincarnation au, canonverse to modern au, Levi and Reader both reincarnate in modern au, Levi remembers his past life, reader does not.

warnings : lots of angst, death of reader, cursing.

You dragged your blades along the flesh of another titan's neck, tearing through it just enough to kill the giant. You watched the titan fall and crash while you landed on the ground using your ODM gear.

"Shit !" you muttered a bit panicked

Those were your last usable blades, all of the others already broke and the remaining ones were too damaged, weathered by the long and repetitive moves.

You looked around you, there were so many soldiers dead, their bodies lying flat on the ground, but you couldn't spot a single blade fit for use near any of the corpses, all of their swords had either been snapped in half, crushed or are still planted on the giant bodies trying to eat you alive.

Never had a battle been so demanding and tiresome, you don't recall seing a mission this gruesome, and you were a vet ! If there was a hell on earth, this would be it. Even the weather wasn't in your favor; it was raining blood, the air was filled with a repugnant smell that you soldiers were all too familiar with, the smell of titans body fluids and body parts rotting not far away from you. All of this was bearable you thought, grown accustomed to, what was never tolerable was the cries of your comrades getting eaten alive. The sound of their bodies crushed or getting bitten sounded new each time. It was strange, there was all this killing going on, all these horrible deaths happening right now, the rain and the muffled sounds of bones being crushed at the palms of faith, and some last words you could barely comprehend, but strangely enough, time seemed to stop for you, everything around you began to become distant and you could feel what resembled a calmness inside the turmoil inside of you. What was this odd feeling you thought, looking down at your hands, you observed the spoilt blades of your two swords, your hands weren't shaking anymore, and you found yourself in a bizarre state of apathy.

Did you accept your nearing death ? Were you going to stop fighting and let today be your last ? What could you do ? There were still more titans than soldiers, you were on your knees, incapable of making them move, even if there was a blade you could use on a body somewhere, you wouldn't be able to reach it without getting in the visual field of a titan, it would be like rushing to your death. You were stuck, your years of experience had taught you to assess quickly and effectively situations, and you knew you couldn't kill or save now, you could only run for your life, an option you couldn't bring yourself to do, maybe someone will come, someone with reinforcement and equipment.

You couldn't desert a battlefield. Looking up at the sky, you closed your eyes, cancealing the horrors of your surroundings, you prayed for one person to show up, only one person could make a way out of this hopeless situation.

Eyes still closed, you thought about Levi Ackerman, you wondered where he could be right now, you thought about the way he methodically does his job, nice and clean, no one being able to match his skills, you thought about how much he hated casualties and pointless deaths. As foolish and frivolous it was, you thought about his jet black hair and the way it would fall on his face while he escapes from a titan's grip, how his jaw clenches when he's faced with a particularly bothersome specimen, you weren't aware you picked up on those things until now, not to forget how his body spins, like a dancer in a deadly ballet. You also thought about how he always kept an eye on you every time you were together on a field, his eyes always trying to locate you somehow, you caught him so many times throwing worried glances at you, especially in dangerous situations, more than any other of his comrades. Did it mean anything ? You never thought about it that way, come to think of it, you never knew what Levi Ackerman thought of you, were you just a another comrade to him or someone more important ? Those questions were going to stay unanswered. All those times you caught him eyeing you, overprotecting you, asking you if you ate, slept, rested at the most random of occasions.

And him ? Did he know what you thought of him ?

You felt the ground tremble underneath you all of a sudden, you looked beside you and you saw a giant human-like feet, its nails extremely dirty, a long and deep cut carving an opening at its ankle, leaving the insides completely visible. When did you get accustomed to such disgusting sights ? The titan bent over, watching your form, you were looking up at him now.

He has a friendly face you thought.

You pictured Levi in your head, for maybe what you thought was your last moment. He hated futile losses.

"Don't you dare die on me" he always said.

An ear piercing sound blew out of nowhere and a black signal tore the sky apart. You saw a small figure jump from tree to tree using an ODM gear, you didn't recognize who it was until the silhouette landed next to you, only inches away. Blood and rain on his face, Levi pulled you up by your underarm.

"GET UP ! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING ?

"I don't- i don't know what had gotten into me Levi"

"I DONT WANT TO HEAR IT MOVE IT"

He let go of your arm and grabbed you by the collar of your cape and forced you to stand on your now shaky legs.

"I'm out of gas Levi"

"What ?"

If you've never seen Levi panic, you did now. His eyes darted around frenetically, from the titans to the dead bodies then back to you again. He was grabbing you by the arm again, you could feel his long fingers digging into your forearm, he was tense and panicking. Panicking because both of you didn't have horses, but mostly because he had only one gas bottle left.

Levi looked down, trying to asses the situation and come with a plan for both of you to shun the titans and get out safely while having just enough gas for one person. Feeling a hot puff on the top of your heads you both looked up just in time to see two big eyes and a large mouth ready to chop both of your heads off, Levi shot his grapple hooks and pulled you by the waist with him, you escaped this one, but he couldn't guarantee the others, this situation couldn't go one he thought. You landed far enough to be out of reach from the titan who just attacked you, but you could already spot two blonde abnormals noticing you and coming for you. Levi quickly grabbed his gas container and detached it from his gear.

"Here ! Take it ! This should be enough for you to escape far from titan territory !" Levi shouted under the heavy cascade of rain.

"What ? No !"

"Don't be fucking stupid ! Take it ! I can manage to escape without it somehow ! Forget about completing the mission ! We retreat NOW !"

You reached for the container and placed it on your own gear before standing up. One of the abnormal had come so close now you could see the veins on his ridiculously large stomach. Levi grabbed your arm one last time "I'm going to shot my hooks at the nearest tree, i'm gonna distract this one so you can escape ! You take the opposite direction"

You nodded while the ground shook harder now that the titan was in front of you, his gigantic form casting its shadow over you. You actioned your hand grips, your hooks flew right into a tree in the opposite direction of where Levi went, you prepared yourself to use the gas to speed up.

Levi thinking the titan would naturally follow him instead, landed on a giant oak before turning around. His face darkened as soon as his eyes landed on you. You were struggling to get past the titan who was still chasing you and ignoring Levi, how come you weren't moving fast, the amount of gas should have been enough.

Levi's felt his heart stop and sink down his stomach, he instinctively reached behind him and pulled up the container he still had.

It was full.

He had given you the wrong gas container.

He mixed them up and gave you the empty one.

That's why you were so slow, too slow.

Too late.

Looking up, afflicted, he launched forward screaming your name, but it was in vain and he knew it. He couldn't take his eyes off your small figure getting picked up by a giant human hand who didn't have the any struggle catching up with you.

You think you heard him scream

You think you heard him scream your name

You're not sure, but you think you heard him slash the titan's fingers and landing with you on the ground, the titan's blood pouring down on both of you, hot and sticking.

For a moment, you thought you were going to make it, but you got suddenly conscious of the grotesque laceration on your lower abdomen and knew that this was it. You weren't going to make it.

An indescribable pain, a man's cry of misery, and cold blood running through your veins, you watched your vision go black, and for a split of second, the feeling of falling down an immense pit was all you could think of, the voice of Levi's cries resonating against the walls of what you assumed was your consciousness.

"I'm sorry ! I'm so sorry !" "Forgive me !"

***

When you opened your eyes, the sunlight blasting through a nearby window blasted your vision, when your eyes adjusted to the lightening, you realized you were in a room painted with an immaculate white.

How did you get in this hospital room ?

Wait, how did you know this was a hospital room ?

Because it looks familiar

You tried to recall anything prior to this instant, but you couldn't. Your mind was blank, you grabbed your head with your two hands, how come your memory was so blank ?

Outside of the building, you could hear chanting ambulances and honking cars in the distance, making your head throb painfully. You looked at your right, a bed table was there, on top was a bottle of mineral water, your keys, and your purse with a stethoscope dangling from it. There was also flowers dipping in a small amount of water inside a glass.

Your purse ? Your keys ? You don't remember coming here by yourself ! You tried to get up and get out of bed but the thumping inside your head quickly urged you to lay back down rapidly. You closed your eyes to try and shut the pain but heard footsteps shuffling cautiously inside the room, eyes still closed you heard a familiar soft and young voice ask if you were awake.

114 notes · View notes

starr-fall-knight-rise · 3 years

Text

HASO, “Perfect Timing.”

Alright everyone. I am beginning to realize that maybe expecting myself to write a story every week day with a job and trying to get into grad school and writing a second novel might be a bit..... excessive?

So I am going to try for three times a week. I hope you all stick around :)

And I hope you enjoy today’s story as well.

Adam stood with his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width. He would never have noticed by himself, but the men and women around him stood a little straighter and stepped a little faster under his watchful eye. Once upon a time they might have only hastened their work if he directly asked them too, but just his mere presence these days could send his crew scurrying to do their work. He hadn’t really changed anything about the way he commanded his men. He was firm when he needed to be but allowed for brevity when it would suit the situation.

However, a few years and some tough lessons was slowly shaping him into the kind of man who could command thousands, sharp posture, calm confidence, and a keen eye.

But then again anyone who could appear professional while wearing high top heelies was a man to be reckoned with.

Sunny walked up next to him her pearlescent white armor glowing under the light as she leaned on the shade of her matching spear. Her head was held high like his. Where once she had been locked up, and defensive, she now stood with the calm confidence of someone who understood what control meant.

Together they had come a long way.

She tilted her head, “You really think he’s going to let you race this…. It’s a million dollar piece of military hardware, they don’t stand a chance.”

Adam didn’t move, hands still clasped behind his back as he stared up at the F-90 Darkfire he was preparing for the race, “I wouldn’t be so sure…. I’ll be lucky to come in last place.”

Sunny frowned confused, “I saw those shuttles, they were junk shows.”

He lifted his head as the F-90 was rolled across the deck.

“This is a race, it isn’t combat. She was built for dogfights which means she is going to be heavier than the others. Wing tip to wing tip she is also going to be a little longer than the other shuttles and jets making maneuvering around obstacles more difficult. Sure she likely has a more powerful engine, but that can be as much of a detriment as it is a leg up.” He gestured in the vague direction of the race course, “We are going to be racing through the planet’s smaller rocky ring. It has an unusual amount of larger, thick chunks which we are going to have to manuver around: the kind of conditions you might see in science fiction movies when they talk about an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are generally too far apart to cause any real issue, but here the rocks are dense, and my flying is going to have to be on pont, having a more powerful engine is going to make her more touchy, and my fitness on the controls is going to have to be absolute.”

Sunny tilted her head listening as he continued. She liked it when this side of him came out. There was something about the analytical, logical side of Adam she found….. Very appealing.

He walked forward to examine the jet himself, “Furthermore, I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a few jets there that weren’t exactly junk shows. A few of them were pretty top of the line, and most of them were built for racing. Lighter, sleeker, faster, and with more engine control than mine.

A lot of my maneuverability is lost out of the atmosphere. This isn’t about how well you can manipulate wind currents, this is going to be all about the very minute rotation of the rear and and wing engines. Their wings are smaller and closer in meaning they are going to rotate more easily than me.

She walked up with him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You forgot to fact in one thing.”

He frowned and looked up, “Oh, what did I miss.”

She smiled slightly, “The skill of the pilot, and I know for a fact that we have the best pilot this side of Andromeda. You can have the best plane in the world, but if you have a shit pilot, then a good pilot in a flying trash can has a chance of winning.”

He Smiled, “Thanks, I needed that.”

He stepped back, “Still it doesn't pay to be too cocky. I have a feeling these people have raced this before, they are going to know what they are dealing with, and I am going tinto this completely blind. This is a test to see if my instincts are better than their practice…. Who knows it could be a very close run thing.”

He moved forward to do an extra check on the outside of the ship despite having a whole team of people to do it for him. Adam had learned to delegate a lot of his responsibilities onto others to avoid burnout, but this was one thing he never left to other people. He came back after a thorough check of the ship and stopped next to her.

His head was tilted to one side as he looked at the machine sitting before him.

“It is missing something.”

Sunny turned her head to look at him, “What?”

He smiled, “Do we have anyone here who has experience with graffiti?”

***

Donavan Red met him when he entered the hanger, wearing his flight suit and holding his helmet under one arm. He had gone for some of his more simple equipment. Didn’t want to give the guy an excuse to blame his skill on technology.

Red looked him over.

“Nice suit, princess.”

Adam just smiled thinly looking around at the other pilots, “I see I might be under-dressed.”

To be far though, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would have described the dress code, if he had to put it on an invitation.

The most apt description seemed to have been.

Dress for Pissing contest.

The men and women wore their uniforms in the same way NASCAR drivers might, covered in logos and patterns. Some of them were clearly custom ordered with personal designs on the backs or the helmets, some sporting flames, others cartoon animals, one guy was just covered in black and white skulls.

The affect up close was ok, but from a distance he just looked like an over excited dalmatian, or maybe some kind of flamboyant cow.

A few of them went for color themes, neon red on black. Neon green on blue.

Most of them tried to coordinate with the matching colors on their ship, each trying to outdo the next.

Red smirked.

The docking bay light began to blink red as the airlock was engaged, and the all turned to watch as the doors opened, and Adam’s jet rolled into the docking bay. She was simultaneously both very impressive and very not impressive. She was an instrument of war, and he rockets lined up on either side of her wings said as much. Adam had once considered her rather sleek in comparison to other jets of the day, but looking at her now in comparison with the racing planes and he couldn’t help but compare her to a pitbull or a bulldog next to greyhounds or whippets.

She rolled up slowly and Red raised an eyebrow.

“A whose guy huh?”

Adam smirked, “I don’t know, I kind of like it.”

They both looked up as the F-90 stopped in place, and along her side in delicate blue cursive script was the name Cinderella. The man who had done the graffiti had even taken the time to add some stylized pink roses to the front and end of the word giving it a finished look.

Donavan seemed both amused and annoyed at the same time.

The men and women around him turned to look over ridicule dying on their lips as they saw the smirk on his face.

It was made pretty clear.

He was going to beat them, and when he beat them, he was going to have a princess logo on the side of his jet, never mind all of their cool paint jobs.

Donavan frowned but then turned to everyone, “Alright load up!.” Adam did as ordered, switching seats with the young pilot in the cockpit and strapping himself in. he adjusted his controls, did a quick once over, and then pulled some power from his engine. There was going to be an overwhelming desire to go fast, but he knew that speed wasn’t going to win him this race.

The jets began lining up next to each other, and to his surprise, one of the sleek racing models sidled up next to him, and when he looked over, he saw Donovan Red cambering into the cockpit.

That didn’t exactly bode well, but what was there to do about it.

He felt cool oxygen spilling onto his mouth and nose as the orange tinted visor dropped down over his eyes. He opted not to use the heads up display preferring to see everything around him as he was flying.

They were all in a line now, and up ahead a large projection appeared on the docking bay doors.

Red lights began to blink as the docking bay was cleared of everyone except for the jets.

The image of a woman appeared on the screen before them.

It was one of the women he had seen before in her cut off jean shorts and tight tank top.

“Ladies and gentlemen start - your - ENGINES!”

All around him the room was filled with a roar as the group of people pushed their engines to an idle.

He could feel the jet underneath him as it thrummed and whined vibrating into his gloves and down into his skin.

His very bones could feel the trembling.

“The course is simple, one lap around the rocky interior ring of the planet. Rules are only this, no leaving the ring, no weapons, and no teams, every man for himself. If the race moderators see any of this, you will be thrown from the race.”

She smiled and leaned back to reveal two green flags in either hand.

She began to wave them.

“On your mark!”

He took a deep calming breath forcing his hand to relax.

“Get set.”

He felt his heart beating hard against his ribcage, his stomach crawled up into his throat, and he felt the sudden and overwhelming need to pee.

“GO!”

THe airlock doors shot open faster than they should have been able, a clear sign someone had bypassed safety protocols. Caught off guard by this, Adam shot out of the gate slower than he would have liked. Already the racing jets streaked ahead, their quicker sleeker designs looking right at home against the blackness of space.

He had to remind himself that in space, without wind resistance, sleek didn’t mean shit.

If he was good enough he could have piloted a brick to win.

He gave more joice to the engine and shot forward. He cut under one of his other opponents and then cythed up next to a second.

He was there for only a moment when he saw something coming in from his right.

Instincts had him move fast, and he turned horizontal shooting upwards just as another jet tried to push him out. He was flying over the two of them now, and gave another burst shooting forward and past them.

This open stretch was the only time he was going to be able to use the power of his engine to his advantage, so he gave her a little more juice and shot forward catching up quickly with the racing models at the front. Two of them cut sideways attempting to block his path. He cursed, forced to fire his engines backwards so as not to go crashing into them.

The ring was approaching quickly now, and he could see very clearly that they had not been kidding. The belt was dense, less mate out of fine sand, and instead made up of billions of rocks some the size of him, others the size of cars, and even some the size of large houses. It was the strangest sort of formation he had ever seen around a planet, and he wondered idly how they stayed in orbit.

The two jets ahead of him cut right and then left as a rock came barreling towards him.

He shouted and rolled to the side barely avoiding a head on collision, his instincts saving him where his active brain could not.

He snarled.

“Pull it together.”

There was no time to be thinking, there was only time for flying.

WIth a practiced hand he toggled a switch on the side of his thumb, and his helmet was suddenly filled with the sound of music and drums. His brain focused inward and stopped thinking. He shot over and then under rolling between rocks just inches away on either side. Off to his right the planet below was glowing with the light of it’s star, a lightning blue halo around it where the atmosphere glowed.

He cut the left dove down and then rolled up.

He could see the other jets ahead of him cutting in and out through the rocks. His breathing grew even, his body relaxed, his brain heard nothing but the beat of the music and saw nothing but the obstacles ahead of him.

One of the jets pulled up next to him from behind recklessly rolling around one of the rocks. They were racing wing tip to wing tip now.

They cut right and left under and over he rolled left they rolled right. They were shaky just hanging on, but his flying was smooth.

Up ahead one of the other jets lit up with glowing orange as a set of flares broke from it’s back end shatting against the debris behind it. Rocks were thrown off their normal course and went smashing into each other turning the rock field ahead of them into a meat grinder. Adam shot forward and dived downward while rolling tight, behind him the racer was unable to replicate the move and a piece of rock caught their wing sending them spinning off to the side and out of the ring.

Adam dodged a piece of debris coming in from his left, flipped upside down and shot diving upward and then righting himself just under the jet up front.

He could see the leader now, and recognized it as Red himself .

The jet above him attempted to drop down and knock him out of position, but he gave a burst to the engine and shot forward.

The jet behind him punched downward and nearly collided into a rock before pulling back into the palace.

Adam took their place in second.

Red could see him coming.

Another set of flares was released.

He checked his forward momentum and rolled three or four times to his right. G forces tugged at his consciousness forcing blackness to the edge of his vision. He tightened the muscles of his chest and stomach forcing blood back up into his head as he breathed out in short controlled bursts.

A rock flew overhead, he cut low, bumped up and then executed a rolling turn over a massive rock pulling in behind red and just up to the right to avoid another burst of flares.

The two of them were fighting for the front now.

And red was good, he knew how to handle a jet, but so did Adam.

They roared past a field of rocks splitting apart as a massive chunk came between them. Adam roared forward, and panicked for a single moment as he saw an impenetrable wall of rock appear just before him. Then a crack appeared. He fired the forward engine and cut horizontal passing through an opening that left him only feet to spare. Rock rose up to meet him, and he rotated his engine up dropping vertically before cutting sideways and passing under a rock. Teeth gritted, he punched upward passing through a gap just as it closed behind him.

A yell of exertain escaped his lips as he pulled straight up cutting up the side of a massive mansion-sized rock before diving right back down into the thick of it.

Red was gone, he didn’t see him anymore.

Was he up front?

And then the sleek black jet dropped down from above cutting him off.

He cursed and swerved low past another rock forced to cut diagonal back into line.

He pulled up wing to wing with the men again.

They dove, they pulled up and they took a wide turn ac coordinated together as a military formation never more than four feet apart.

They were going faster than they probably should have reacted. second by second he rolled left Red went right. They both met in a dive rolling past each other, wings almost touching before cutting upwards mirroring each other in opposite directions. The sound of the music melded with the path of his flight.

They were racing side by side just as one of the other jets roared over them careening out of control in a desperate attempt t o reach front. They watched him dive pull up cut left, and then a rock rolled right into their path. The two of them barely had time to react as the rock hit their right wing and then sent them slamming into the next boulder. There was an eruption and a brief ball of fire as oxygen was consumed from inside the cockpit. Debris blossomed up around them in a miniature explosion.

Adam greeted his teeth, eyes wide .

What was once a race suddenly turned into a battlezone. He and Red dove together rolling around the debris desperately trying to avoid getting cut in two. At these speeds, one hit would be the death of them. His heart raced in his chest as he pulled forward cutting in the triangle made by three boulders side by side. Red mirrored him below.

A chunk of metal shot towards him, and he toggled his right wing burst just in time, lowering his left side just in time for the chunk to go flying past him. He pulled up with a gasp as a massive chunk of rock cut up before him. Red shot below and he rolled over the top coming into second place.

Up ahead a mining barge ascended through the line of rocks.

Adam roared with exertion as he pulled up and leveled out shooting right under the attached arm of the barge. Red lights erupted over it’s hull in a proximity warning as he went just inches overhead.

The barge driver, clearly spooked twisted to the side and the arm of the barge rolled with it, catching a boulder and sending it flying towards the grouping next to it, there was a sudden explosion of rock and again he was forced to roll to the side. Up down, over and under, cything between lines of rock.

He was almost hit once, then twice.

He toggled the forward engines, slowing himself down and then shooting straight up before continuing forward.

The rocks around him were rolling unpredictably colliding and then exploding into smaller pieces. There was no way he was making it through that alive.

He was rolling diving spinning twisting, and then, he felt it…. Something he had only felt on occasion. The world around him went silent, everything seemed to slow, and he was filled with…. With a feeling. It was like light, bursting out from his chest, rolling up through his skin and into his head.

He entered a moment of perfect execution. He cut into a tight roll his wings cything through the minute gaps between debris with timing so perfect it shouldn't have been humanly possible. Rocks passed by him at hundreds of miles an hour inches away from the glass of his canopy, one wrong move and he’d be dead. He cut through a gap that gave him inches on either side rolld right dove down, turned left, spun once and then twice, and made a completely vertical ascent. Rocks flew past him on his right and on his left.

Up ahead he could see a gap slowly closing before him. He opened up his engine and shot forward so fast everything was a blur.

The rocks collided behind him as they snapped shut, and he flew into the clear firing forward to slow himself, and then red was there too descending from above spinning and wobbling, almost out of control and careening directly towards a house sized boulder.

He panicked firing up and down at the same time and sending him into a spin.

He was heading directly towards the rock .

WIthout thinking Adam locked onto the rock, and fired. A rocket under his wing detached and shot forward exploding violently just in time for Red to pass through unharmed. Red jolted awkwardly and rolled to one side. Adam cut past under from right to left and rolled straight over red to avoid a rock.

There was a moment where the two of them were staring at each other through the clear canopy.

Eyes met for an instant, and Adam could see the wide eyed fear on the man’s face., Then Adam rolled ahead ducking under the last rock and then bursting out into space.

He let the F-90 have her moment, and completely opened the engine shooting forward and cutting through the finish line which flashed bright green. In that moment He was hit with such a sense of exhilaration and joy that he couldn't imagine anything better. Who needed drugs, who needed love, who needed any of that when you could fly.

Hed did a triumphant loop whooping the whole way.

Of course, a feeling like that can never last long and slowly began to fade away. THe reality of what he had just done was both terrifying and amazing to the point he felt his body begging to shake. The tension and fear he had been holding back exploded inside him just like that joy and he found his hands trembling on the joystick.

He let it overtake him. He had been like this since he was young and fighting it would only make things worse. Despite his shaking hands he flew back to the docking bay and landed his jet with the precision of a surgeon. Finally when the engine was off and the flood stable underneath him he slumped back in his seat shaking and racked with rolling tremors. He closed his eyes and breathed long and slow.

Behind him the others came limping in.

None of them were completely unscathed, at least one person was dead. His hands continued to shake as the airlock doors shut, and as soon as the room was pressurized, he opened the cockpit. As soon as it did, Sunny came running into the room and up the ladder. SHeleft her spear on the floor and helped him to climb out. His legs were shaking and he almost fell if it weren’t for her support.

She knew him too well, sitting him down on the lowest step and kneeling next to him.

“Are you ok?”

He grinned at her, “That was…. Holy shit.”

He held up his hand to watch the shaking, “I’m having an earthquake.”

It was just then that Red jumped out of his jet onto the floor. He staggered when he did but pushed away the men who tried to help, “What the ever loving FUCK just happened. The field had NEVER been like that. Jaz DIED out there, what the FUCK.”

The people milled around in confusion.

Red turned to him, eyes narrowing as he stalked over. Adam sighed and looked up as the man stopped to stand over him

“I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair.”

The man paused confused, “What?”

“I broke the rules. Means I forfeit.”

Red looked almost nonplussed, “What are you on about?”

Adam slowly took to his feet taking a few more deep wreaths to steady himself before drawing to his full height. He was stead now and looked down at Red with an unwavering gaze. He held out a hand, “I used weapons during the race, that was against the rules. These weren’t flares to move the rocks. I used a targeted missile during the race and that means I broke the rules.”

Red stared at him.

Then he snorted, “Damn the rules. You saved my ass.” he turned to look at his people, “I am more than man enough to acknowledge that.” HE turned back to Adam, “You saved my life you crazy bastard. I am not even sure how you are still alive ….. Because that flying…. That was….. Holy fuck.” He grinned and took Adam by the shoulder, “you shaking, man.” He held up his hand to show a tremor, “Me too, now let's go get some drinks and talk this out. I owe you after all.”

The two of them walked off through the forest of shaken pilots, “You are the kind of man I can see myself doing business with.”

229 notes · View notes

rymndsmth · 3 years

Text

querencia (jang han seo)

🎤 hello and gather around fellow himbo lovers, here is a small fic about our beloved and his life after That guy kicks the bucket. also idk how i managed to turn this into a love story? anyways lmfao, hope y’all enjoy!

Everything felt so different.

Truthfully, Han Seo never imagined what his life could be like, would be like, without the proverbial ever tightening noose around his neck. One that had been unexpectedly and disappointingly placed on him as a child by the one person that was supposed to remove such things. He was now free of that person, and the fear that stemmed from veering off the path set by them, but wasn’t entirely too certain that he was free of that feeling.

His muscles couldn’t shake it. The sudden chill to the bone, the anticipation of retaliation from an act that hadn’t yet occurred. Such an act that could never occur anymore given that his brother was dead. He knew this, but his mind had never been good at accepting possibilities that were positive.

This much was evident in the case of his relationship with Vincenzo. There was no reason why the stoic yet baby faced Mafia member would want to keep him around, at least not any that he could see. So, Han Seo spent the first few weeks asking the question both silently and aloud, will you kill me? Vincenzo had the motive, it’s not exactly like his hands were clean in his previous dealings with Babel, and he most certainly had the means.

It wasn’t until Han Seo was told that because he was trying to make amends, he wouldn’t end up in the Jang family crypt well before his time that he started to feel at ease. Still, for months after that conversation, he still had the nagging feeling that some invisible fist was lurking around every bend.

Regardless of that, Han Seo decided he would not waste his liberation however short lived it might have been. He made up his mind that he was going to do all the things that he was either too scared or outright forbidden to do before. The first thing on his list was to clean up his business. Luckily for him, the Guillotine file made it easy to weed out the snakes in the grass and allow him to steer Babel in the direction that the core of the business was about.

The hardest part was going to be restoring the public’s faith in the organization. Cha Young told him as much, and advised him not to agonize over it as there will be new corruption that will grab their attention (and hers). He intended to be the Chairman that such a company deserved, and therefore continued to study no matter how nonsensical and outdated the information seemed.

The second order of business was moving out of the place that felt more like a prison than a home to one that he liked. The realtor immediately recommended a few luxury places, but he turned them down to their surprise. Maybe it was due to the fact that he had seen what the quest for material wealth had done to his family (or more realistically because he wanted to be closer to newfound hyung and his girlfriend).

Either way, the house he settled on had its luxuries, but in a more affordable and quaint neighborhood. Han Seo even went as far as to attempt painting on his own, which went as well as expected for someone that didn’t even know the difference between a brush and a roller.

Being able to do what he wanted proved to be chaotic at times. There was no one to stop him from going on last minute trips to Jeju just for oranges and a quick dip into the ocean. Or to take away all the sweet and savory snacks that he found at these things called convenience stores.

He would stay up all night sometimes, not to binge watch all the shows he missed out on, but just to sit in silence. He didn’t know that the quiet could be so nice. That it was a space of tranquility and relaxation rather than one filled with anxiety. Of course, Han Seo more often than not regretted the choice not to sleep and ended up at the cafe a few blocks from his place.

While obviously no one had better coffee than the one at Babel, he found himself going to the cozy spot with increasing frequency because of her. The first time he saw her, she was deciding on which apple to choose from the basket beside the register. He then noticed that her canvas bag was filled with art supplies, and decided that it was a brilliant idea to draw a conclusion.

I think the one to the right would make a great subject on paper, he grinned.

She stared at him in a way that made him contemplate whether to not she was related to Vincenzo hyung before replying flatly:

I’m looking for the tartest one to go with my tea.

He was left a bumbling mess of flustered sounds and rapidly blinks, not getting the opportunity to insert some retort that undoubtably would’ve put him deeper into the realm of idiot.

The following morning he went again. No cup of coffee, not even the ridiculously overpriced espresso at Babel, would give him that jolt of electricity he felt under her gaze. And sure enough, she was there. This time her apple sat upon a folded napkin right beside her tea, and in front of them both was her sketchpad. On the page? A picture of the fruit. He couldn’t control the noise of exasperation that left him as he passed her table. On his way out he tossed over his shoulder with a grin so wide it hurt:

Nice drawing.

Their interactions continued in that same vein. Short, filled with just the right amount of bite. The balance of who had the best and last say constantly shifting, becoming somewhat of a competition.

You’re outside today, is that weed your subject?

As if there weren’t enough clowns in this neighborhood already.

You buy a lot of lattes for an artist that’s supposed to be starving.

Ironic coming from the gentrifier walking around a working class neighborhood in thousand dollar shoes.

He had look up what that g word meant after their last exchange.

There was something else he never got to do in his past. Sure, Han Seo had the occasional date or two, but commitment? That was out of the question. It wouldn’t have served his brother well if there was anyone around that would motivate him to step out from his hold. The realization that he never had a serious relationship hadn’t hit him until he started to have inconvenient thoughts during board meetings about stuff like taking a long afternoon stroll, and holding hands with her.

Han Seo could barely focus on the stack of jargon dense reading before him. He sent Vincenzo a text saying that he was coming over with soju, not waiting for a reply before making the short journey to Geumga. Cha Young’s face fell when she answered the door, muttering that she thought he was her delivery, but lit up once she saw he brought along alcohol. After poking around the rice he begged for them to share and sighing loudly for half an hour, Vincenzo ushered him out. He implored him to get a hobby so that these late night visits wouldn’t become a habit.

He was confused by that. Weren’t studying and running a company hobbies? On his walk back home he spotted a flyer that someone was offering private classes for beginners painting. The nightmare of a time he had trying to get the walls in his kitchen evenly colored popped up in his brain, instantly making him tear off one of the numbers. He didn’t exactly know how learning to paint homes was going to be a practical hobby, but hell, he would have something to show Vincenzo later.

While he was on one of his impromptu trips to the seaside, Han Seo had his assistant set up the class for him to take when he returned. As a gift for the instructor, he thought it would be nice to bring them an extra bag of oranges. If the session sucked, or if he hated it, at the very least there was going to be something to brighten the mood.

The day he got back, he even went as far as to tidy up the place on his own and put some fresh flowers around so the air was lightly scented. He practically waited at the door until the alarm sounded to let him know that his instructor arrived.

Is this a joke? She huffed.

No, I didn’t even know you were the teacher! His protest was adamant. I was on a trip and even brought back Jeju- He paused. Han Seo knew he wasn’t the brightest, but bringing up the oranges seemed like it would upset her given their previous history.

You brought back what? Her brow raised.

Mmm, good energy! Don’t you feel the vibes from the ocean? He spread his arms wide.

Han Seo waved her inside hurriedly, trying desperately to get past the awkward exchange. Of all people, he never would’ve thought it would be the neighborhood’s cute sass machine. A small noise of happiness couldn’t be stopped from escaping him as she accepted the invitation. Her eyes scanned the place without restraint, nose wrinkling when she took a look at the kitchen.

Where are your supplies? A slender finger ran across the surface of his counter.

Supplies? He thought that was included in the price for the lessons.

She sighed, placing a sketchbook, brushes, and small pots of paint onto the table. It was now very apparent to him that the advertisement did not mean what he thought it did. Thank goodness he also didn’t decide to open his mouth about that beforehand, it probably would’ve made her smack him with her bag.

Here, the materials were slid over when he sat. Paint something.

His facial expression surely mirrored what he was thinking. Han Seo had no recollection of ever trying to do this, not even during the course of his way overpriced private school education. She urged him on with a nod, only relaxing into her chair when he flipped open the book and picked up a fine brush.

There was nothing in particular he wanted to paint. Hell, he didn’t even know if he wanted to paint at all. This was simply something random that came up when he needed it.

To avoid being chastised, he dipped his brush into the light blue color and started swiping randomly across the blank page. He swapped the brush and added some dark green, then pink, and finished if off with small dots of white. At the end it looked like something a toddler would’ve considered a masterpiece. She eyed it with surprising interest.

You clearly didn’t know what you wanted to achieve with this, or why you were doing it at all.

Han Seo was about to interject with a prideful defense before she continued.

That’s good. It’s better to work with an unbiased mind. Her eyes met his. Your technique is shit though.

He laughed, like truly laughed. It was a full bellied, unashamedly loud, attack of sonic waves. She seemed to find it amusing, a hint of a smile dancing across her lips.

Alright, let’s start with how to actually hold a paintbrush.

There was no telling when their interactions had gone from less than playful banter to warm and friendly (still with a side of joking). Han Seo couldn’t put his finger on it. Did it happen during the second lesson where he mistakenly put paint on her hands, and didn’t settle for no when he said he would wash them off for her?

Or was it the time he was running late for work, but the barista already had his order prepared because she told them that he was on the way? Perhaps it was the time she had to reschedule their Saturday morning for the evening instead, and all he could think about was trying to replicate the color of her alcohol flushed cheeks onto the page before him.

Han Seo had never done the whole confession thing before, so he wasn’t sure about how it worked. An unfamiliar kind of anxiety crept up his spine as he poured glasses of wine and organized a fruit plate. Soft music played in the background accompanied by the crackle of the expensive candles he bought specifically for the occasion. Her mouth parted slightly as she took everything in once she arrived for what was supposed to be an ordinary session involving watercolors.

Wow, got a hot date later or something? Her legs seemed to automatically take her to the table.

Actually, He brought the glasses over to where she sat. It’s for you.

Oh…She gasped. A few seconds passed that felt more like minutes before she picked one up and held it high. Cheers then!

Something about it made him feel like he made a mistake. Did he misread their change in demeanor towards one another? Was she truly just being kinder to him because she considered him to only be a friend? Han Seo tried to not let the embarrassment he felt seep into the room, keeping a smile locked and loaded for when she made a witty remark about stuff like him painting in the most inappropriate white button down.

Don’t you have something to say to me? She quipped, neatly putting her things away after he finished.

Me? I- no…I... He clenched his fists. Why couldn’t he come out and say it?! This was as good as a chance as he was ever going to get. If he let this opportunity slip, he wasn’t sure if there would be one again. He had to act, he had to-

What sounded like a small growl came from her as she raked her hand through her hair. She pulled him closer by the collar of his shirt, her nose just shy of rubbing against his.

Jang Han Seo, when are you gonna stop driving me insane? She murmured, labored breaths dancing across his cupid’s bow.

If only she knew how true and reciprocated that question was to him too. From the moment he couldn’t fight against thoughts about her entering his mind, to the smile she wore when he stepped across his threshold, and the way she said his goddamned name, it was all enough to make him want to combust. To burst out of his skin, transforming into something or someone else entirely. A person that fully accepted that there were no more restraints on their lives, that they was no more fear and no more betrayal. Someone that was completely in control, and free to take what was theirs. And so he did.

It was painful, almost, the first time he kissed her. The second time even more so. By the third time, coupled with the question of her tongue prodding at his bottom lip, Han Seo had shedded the last of his previous being. He cupped her face, thumbs toying with her curled sideburns as he consumed her. Quiet whimpers made way for desperate cries, shivers were replaced by the searing heat of skin on skin.

The high he’d chased fruitlessly so many times throughout his life was finally achieved with his arms wrapped tightly around her, their bodies pressed together as she shuddered and sighed his name. He was in disbelief that what he had experienced was real, so he chased it again and again, receiving the same result each time his sweat slicked forehead bowed to meet hers.

Han Seo would learn that it could be obtained outside of that space they filled with the tangible evidence of their desire. It was also in buying melon flavored ice pops to eat in the park together on sunny days. The look on Vincenzo and Cha Young’s face when he timidly made the introduction. Her expression when she took her first bite of Hee Soo’s tteokbokki. When Mr. Nam and her had an hour long debate on which shade of red made the most realistic fake blood color. The flashing Best Chairman Ever coming from her phone when Babel secured their biggest deal yet without any dirty deals behind the scenes.

That feeling, one that outshone the other by such a long shot that it was nearly eradicated, had been there all along in the life he’d made. She just helped him see it.

#*throws this and runs to take my dog for a walk*#jang han seo #vincenzo #fics.n

43 notes · View notes

lover-of-trash-and-people · 3 years

Text

shadow and bone rewatch s1e6 while drinking mid-range scotch

I wish I have a face that is as unlined and pretty as Ben Barnes' when I'm 39

Arken you dirty dirty liar

the face Alek is making at his lies that he knows are lies firstly because he knows the art of lying so well and also because he can read people very well

okay Ivan is kind of a bad bitch with his smirk at Arken's lies

alek's eyes narrowing and his little smile when Arken says 'im an entertainer' bitch I love this show

*grabs hand, pulls up sleeve, and discovers Arken's hand is full of marks indicating successful passages through the fold* 'well, that is certainly entertaining' I love this man with all my heart

him screaming is so fucking hot, is that weird for me to say

Nina being the Darkling's spy is quite interesting

Ben giving the Darkling crazy eyes when Arken owns up to his guilt is so cool

also wtf is Arken a fool trying to negotiate with possibly the strongest man in the world

kind of loved the darkness literally eating him

also love Alina learning to use her powers better when she is alone than when she is with anyone else, wish we got to see the cut in this season as per the books, ah can't have everything I guess

the camera pan to Jesper's gun at his side, amazing

god Jessie is literally so beautiful I need to see her bring Alina to the peak of her power so bad

netflix you better renew this series to let the plot run to its completion

HOW THE FUCK DID THEY CAST THE CROWS SO PERFECTLY

INEJ FUCKING TREMBLING JUST THE TINIEST BIT AS SHE BOWS SLIGHTLY TO ALINA SGSHSBSJJSJSSJ MY TWO QUEENS

'And where is my Summoner?' my little Darklina heart ouchie I really wish you hadn't used and manipulated her like this Alek it was incredibly fucked up especially considering you actually caught feelings

'Ivan and I won't fail you' oh Fedyor my baby, my angel, you don't deserve what is coming

Helnik literally recreating Titanic lmao stop this is a joke

I too would jump off the raft if I came to consciousness to see a gorgeous woman with magical powers with her hand on my back

omg but why is ryevost so pretty though

'I know exactly how she felt. The King's soldiers treated me the same way... I'm not myself today.' why must you do this to me, why must you fuel my darklina soulmates agenda idiocy

I don't quite think I have a problem with the Zoya Darkling relationship as much as I have a problem with the line they chose to reveal it to use with.

my drink's over and I don't know if I should have another, considering that it's 7 am

the tenderness with which he looks at Zoya and takes her hand and then when he says 'I shall relax when I have Alina' makes me believe more that the man that is reduced to tears time and again in front of Alina could in fact be the master manipulator I know him to be

god I can't wait for Zoya's character arc

'I speak six languages, it's part of my job' why is Nina literally the fucking coolest

Alina blinding the oprichniki was so hot, I can't wait to see more of her power and her ruthlessness

I know I've said it before but good god is Jessie Mei Li gorgeous

HER LITTLE SMILE AMONGST ALL THE PANIC AS SOON AS SHE SEES MAL, THE AUDACITY OF THIS SHOW TO MAKE ME FEEL THIS WAY

THE SCORE COMING IN AT THE RIGHT MOMENT, THEIR HANDS MEETING, HER SMILE AGAIN DHDHSBSNSNSNSNAN IM IN PAIN

REALLY?! YOU'RE GONNA GO DIRECTLY FROM MALINA TO HELNIK WITH NO CONCERN FOR MY HEART?

I simply cannot get over Calahan's accent lmao it's really funny

'im not afraid of you' he says to the insanely gorgeous girl with magic

HIM HANGING HIS HEAD IN DEFEAT TO INDICATE NINA HAS MADE VALID POINTS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I CAN'T BREATHE

'You're just a man. Like all the others.' she says and then forgets her train of thought looking at him as he strips. god I love this

not sleeping all night and then scotch is not a good idea, I think

'I promise not to ravish you' 'I hate the way you talk' her hand on his chest, his hand gripping hers, my fucking heart feels like it's about to explode

good god these shooting locations and sets are so beautiful

Alina throwing the flask at Mal and Mal going 'OI!' I fucking can't, I guess I am a

simp for childhood friends to lovers, give me more of that banter and childhood friend energy, I am thriving

wow it literally seems like they took book! Mal sl*tshaming book! Alina and made show! Alina sl*tshame show! Mal, hmm, interesting

'They would have split us up!' MAL'S LITTLE SMILE AT THIS, and the 'You wrote me letters?' Mal's nod, the Malina yearning stare, the Malina hug, 'thank you for finding me' 'always. I'll always find you.' NO MALINA YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU HAVE MADE ME ABSOLUTELY FUCKING FERAL

I understand they had to split time between my ravkan babies and the crows and that is why there were several aspects that were sort of not reflected on enough but Alina's training at the Little Palace, Alina's cut, Mal's personality, a teensy bit of backstory for the crows, maybe one lockpicking scene from my boy Kaz

random note: we have far too many idols and paintings and pictures and whatnot of Hindu deities in our house apart from the specially designed temple (we are Hindus, so maybe it's not that weird but it's a little weird)

Kaz's cane is a literal star, it's so beautiful my heart wants to explode

'Why would Heleen get the Crow Club?' *literally fucking gets up and walks aways instead of answering the fucking question* I LITERALLY CAN'T BREATHE I'M LOSING MY MIND

'I know that voice' WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE ME FIGHT FOR PLATONIC SHIPS IN FANDOMS

'We won't starve' omg get you someone who packs food for you when you go on the run together hiding from your ex who wants to capture you and use your powers as a weapon against your consent

Mal looking surprised at her summoning sunlight, Alina looking cautiously at him waiting for him to disapprove or run for the hills in fear or smth like that, 'I'm sorry it took me this long to see you... But I see you now' my dumb little shipper trash heart ouch

they really said we're gonna feed you this part asian couple as the protagonists in this show in 2021 and guess what I'm eating it's really tasty I'm very satisfied as a south asian

NINA'S LITTLE SMILE WHEN MATTHIAS WAKES UP WITH HIS ARM AROUND HER

'I can feel how much you hate sleeping next to me' 👀👀👀 BITCH SAID IMMA SPILL THE TEA AND THEN SHE DID

it's 8 am and guess what I'm getting another drink my parents have c*vid and are in govt qu*r*ntine centres there is nobody to supervise or stop me

I too say 'Why do you have to say things like that?' to my pretty crush when she flirts with me

Nina smiling at Matthias bragging about his conservative ways is my aesthetic

'No, it's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall and yet, oh, there you stand.' MY FUCKING QUEEN

Matthias laughing uncontrollably at Nina saying something which isn't even that funny is a whole ass vibe

Kaz Brekker saying 'The Black General' ooh fuck yeah

YESSSS STEP OUT OF THAT CARRIAGE ALL SEXY BLACK GENERAL

isn't alcohol supposed to like kill germs? well, the amount in my system definitely will

I love my crows so much (always but this time particularly for setting that alarm in the stolen carriage)

ooh Polina recognising Inej by the knife yesss let's go writers

this Ivan Jesper showdown is all I needed from life and yet did not know about

Ivan taking off his cloak was, um, sexier than I wanted it to be

I just realised how thirsty I am going to sound in this post

'Has no one told you that keftas are Fabrikator-made and resistant to bullets, hmm?' 'Oh, I do love a challenge' LITERALLY EVERYTHING

im sorry to be pointing out flaws in a perfect show and adaptation but the line delivery on 'You robbed me of my brother, now I'll rob you of your life' from Polina was kind of weak

'You're a-' *gets knocked out with the back of a gun* LMAO we love the hints

got excited at the prospect of kaz v. zoya until I realised they will not be letting the opportunity of kaz v. darkling pass up

my goodness is Amita Suman a splendid actress

I AM NOT KIDDING WHEN I TELL YOU I SQUEALED WHEN I SAW DARKLES EMERGE OUT OF THE SHADOWS IN FRONT OF MY BABY BOY KAZ

THERE BEING ACTUAL FEAR OR ATLEAST DOUBT ON KAZ'S FACE, THE LITTLE BACK STEPS AS

THE DARKLING WALKS TOWARDS HIM, AAAAH I CAN'T

THE DARKLING STOPPING AT KAZ SAYING 'SHE FLED ON HER OWN' AND THE HINT OF TEARS THAT WE SEE IN HIS EYES

'IT WAS PRETTY CLEAR SHE WASN'T INTERESTED IN BEING A CAPTIVE ANYMORE' YOU TELL HIM, KING

*ACTUAL FUCKING TEARS IN THE DARKLING'S EYES AS THE SHADOWS APPROACH*

NOT ME YOWLING LIKE A HYENA THAT THIS CHILD OUTSMARTED THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN EXISTENCE WITH A FAKE MAGIC TRICK

'Are you sure you added enough cloves?' literally warranting a wide ass smile from my queen Alina making my entire fucking day

for some reason, no matter how much I push it from my mind, Ben Barnes dressed up as the Darkling, dancing to 'push it' keeps coming to mind, it's absolutely ridiculous

I got somehow distracted with interviews but good things came out of that as it gave my body the time for the booze to kick in

and I would just like to say that I love Leigh for all she has given me

Alina is so fucking compassionate, I have no much love for her. I can feel her guilt and her sorrow as Mal talks of Mikhail and Dubrov

don't particularly like how the stag plotline is woven in, could have been executed better

'You're afraid you might start to like me?' *flaps furs like a bird's wings in frustration*

'I DO like you' my fucking heart you idiots

the sexual tension is so palpable and the moment is so intimate I simply cannot

OMG SHE FUCKING FELL

that moment where you think he might let her fall despite having read the books and he doesn't and he tells her his name I- <3

YOU DARE TRANSITION FROM A HELNIK SCENE TO A KANEJ SCENE YOU REALLY HAVE NO MERCY FOR MY HEART HUH

people have talked about this endlessly but Freddie's little jaw tic after he says Inej because Inej is wounded and he can't physically bring himself to help her I fucking cannot

THE MUSIC PICKING UP AS KAZ LOOKS TO THE DARKLING'S CARRIAGE I CAN'T WITH THIS SHOW ANYMORE

and now for one of my favorite scenes in television and cinematic history, David Kostyk throwing a book at Jesper Fahey without even knowing who he is merely because he opens the door of his carriage and says hello to him before getting knocked out by Kaz Brekker while trying to run away

Immediately followed by another, the scene with David Kostyk raising his finger to put forward his point in front of the Darkling and the Darkling trying to let him know he doesn't have to before obliging is one of my favourite scenes in the world

also sir please stop being devastatingly attractive in your glorious appearance with your face and your black kefta and cloak because all that comes to mind is Ayesha Erotica's Emo Boy and I'm afraid that is terribly inappropriate.

'No, you look great.' *literally looks down from embarrassment or blushing* MALINA RIGHTS?

THE LOOK ON THE DARKLING'S FACE BEFORE HE SAYS 'NO ORDINARY TRACKER, NO ORDINARY GIRL' BITCH IM OUT OF BREATH

'ORPHANS OF KERAMZIN, REUNITED.' 'ADORABLE.' HE FUCKING SNEERED IRL I FUCKING CANNOT

GOD IT'S SO GOOD

35 notes · View notes

lunarsaga · 3 years

Text

EPISODE 5: The Band of Seven, Resurrected

WELCOME TO EPISODE 5! So far, episode 6 is up on my Patreon already, and episode 7 is in progress. Support me on Patreon to see stuff first!

IMPORTANT: I am starting to integrate the art into the story a little differently! Instead of just visualizing a moment in the scene, the image will replace the lines it's depicting. It'll work more like a hybrid graphic novel, that way it'll flow better. (So don't skip over the art, read it like you would a western comic!)

Reminder: [Dialogue like this is English!]

EPISODE 5, LESSGO! ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆

It was a bit of a long flight between the bone-eater’s well and the spot where Luna last left her sister and her friends.

They were still headed northeast, still trying to find Naraku. But Luna’s supply of ammunition only lasted so long, and she decided she probably needed more medical supplies if they were all gonna make it past this war with Naraku. So she’d gone back to the modern era for a few days, and called Alice to get her connections with other Hunters in Japan—so Luna could make more Sacred Salt rounds without having to explain to international customs why she was getting a bunch of empty shotgun shells, non-native herbs, and a few other assorted (weird) things she needed.

So she’d gone home for a few days. Thankfully, she didn’t have to walk; Airisu (who still objected to Luna calling her ‘Alice’, but agreed to the simple nickname ‘Ai’) in full demon form could fly pretty fast, but she ran out of steam after about an hour. It took them a full day (including rest time) to get back to the village, and the same on the way back.

But before they joined back up with their friends, Luna had a stop to make.

It ain’t hard to miss, she thought snarkily, he’s like a damn homing beacon.

Finally, among all the green of the forests, she spotted a speck of white. Easy. “There they are!”

Ai set them down just behind the little group of travelers—Rin, the little imp Jaken, the big horse-dragon (Ah-Un, Luna believed?), and heading the line was, of course, Lord Fussy Britches himself. Rin spotted them before they touched down, and greeted delightfully:

“Miss Luna!”

The Hunter’s arrival brought the others to a halt, and for some reason, Luna found a very smug satisfaction in the incredibly irritated, over-the-shoulder side eye she got from Sesshomaru. But she paid him no mind; she was here for Rin.

Luna held out her hand, unfolding her fingers to reveal three beautiful pearls, strung on a little leather cord. Each of them glinted with an odd pink sheen and were warm to the touch; anyone with any sort of spiritual senses might’ve picked up on the soft energy radiating from them.

Luna tied the cord tightly at the ends and moved to slip it over the little girl’s head.

“As if she would ever need such a ridiculous thing!”

Luna swore one of these days, she was gonna drop kick that little frog. “Look, dude—”

“It’s Jaken, insolent human!”

“—I’m just looking out for her. No need to burst a blood vessel.”

“What is she to you?”

Luna was actually shocked to be addressed by Sesshomaru himself. He was still giving her the side eye, but there was less irritation and more of… something Luna couldn’t place. Maybe she was flirting with death, but she couldn’t resist.

She stood tall, chin high, and responded: “What is she to you?”

There was the anger: contained, but frigid and harsh as the Arctic behind those amber eyes. Sesshomaru did not answer her, but Jaken sure did.

“How dare you, human! Your nerve is surpassed only by your stupidity to speak to Lord Sesshomaru that way! Surely you wish for death!”

Only sometimes. “Can it, Kermit!” She snapped at him, “I ask because he’s always leaving her alone, with nothing but you to protect her! You, who are half her size and don’t have much in the way of defense!” She moved her challenging gaze to Sesshomaru again, steadfast. “So I ask again, what is she to you, if you leave her with barely any protection so often? Because to me, she’s a friend and I care about her, so I brought her these as a last resort option, in case you’re not around and she needs help.”

There it was, that unreadable expression again. Sesshomaru was definitely incomparable at hiding his true emotions—something Luna could absolutely not stand. Tense silence hung in the air for a moment, before Luna shrugged, holding her hands up.

“Hey, think of it this way,” She said, trying a sly little smile, “You’re a busy guy. It’s one less thing you have to worry about. And if she never needs them, at least it’s a pretty necklace.”

Man, this guy was good at keeping quiet. But now, the icy glare was gone. Luna swore she could see just the tiniest arc of a silver eyebrow before the demon turned back around on the path they’d all been heading.

“Jaken, let’s go.”

Flabbergasted, Jaken tripped over himself trying to follow. “Y-yes milord!”

Grinning, Luna got back down to Rin’s level. “You take care, okay kid?”

“I will! And thank you so much for these— I don’t think I’ll need them because Lord Sesshomaru always comes to save me, but I’ll wear them anyway!”

“That’s all I ask,” This little angel was definitely gonna need it at some point. “But if you do need me, I’ll always be there for you, okay? I promise.”

The smile on Rin’s face could’ve melted the ice caps. “Thank you.”

Luna stopped her as she started to leave. “Hold on, one more thing. Each one only works once before it shatters, so you gotta save them for when you’re really in trouble, okay?”

“Okay, I will! Bye, Miss Luna!” Rin grinned, waving at her friend before hurrying after the demons.

Luna chuckled, turning back to Ai for a second before something occurred to her. “Hey, Sesshomaru!”

He didn’t turn to look at her this time, but he did pause in his walking.

Good enough. “I heard there was something going down in the Northeast—direction of the Ox and Tiger. Something to do with Naraku. Thought you might like to know.” She didn’t wait to see if he heard or registered what she said; she just hopped back on Ai’s back, and the two of them took off.

“I hope you know conflating bravery with stupid pride is more than likely to get you killed one of these days.” Ai said as she lifted into the sky.

“Oh most definitely,” Luna laughed. “But as much of a pompous man-child as he is, you can tell he cares for that girl more than he’s willing to admit.”

“That may be, but he’ll definitely kill you if you keep disrespecting him.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take, for Rin’s sake.” Luna’s voice was soft, carried off by the wind. “That little angel’s been through enough, she deserves someone in her corner.”

~ ~ ~

Finally catching sight of their friends again was a bit of a relief for both Luna and Ai. It had been a long couple of days, going all the way home and coming back. Part of Luna hoped they’d get just a little bit of rest before whatever shit hit the fan next, but another part knew the odds on that were pretty low. Still, it was nice to be back.

Kagome was the first to spot them as they flew in. “It’s Luna!”

“Luna’s back!” Shippo proclaimed joyfully.

“Hey, y’all,” Luna greeted as Ai touched down. She hopped off the demon’s back as her friends offered their greetings. “What’d I miss?” She asked.

Miroku was the one to answer. “Quite a lot. It seems that we may encounter a new enemy: the local villagers recently informed us of a group of mercenaries called the Band of Seven. The villagers believe these ruthless killers may have been brought back from the dead.”

With a grin on her face, Luna shrugged at the idea. “Undead mercs, huh? Nothin’ we can’t handle.” She held up her fist for her sister to bump it, and as Ai changed back to her human form, Luna noticed their little group was smaller than it should’ve been. “Where’s Sango?”

Kagome bumped fists with her sister, smiling at Luna’s nonchalant comment. “She went off with Kilala. I sensed a Jewel Shard nearby earlier… so I think she may have gone to look for Kohaku.”

Luna didn’t have time to respond. Off in the distance, she heard the distinctive echo of a sound she was all too familiar with.

Inuyasha hopped up onto a tree limb, hoping to get a look at what was happening. He couldn’t see it, but he sure as hell could smell it. “And it ain’t from just a handful of people, either.”

So much for a second to rest, Luna chuckled to herself as she tightened the straps on her backpack and immediately kicked into gear. “What’re we waiting for, then?”

And off they were, charging headlong into danger as always. Luna could sense something was up; more so than usual. The stench of blood was never a good sign in the first place, but there was something else setting off warning bells. Something she couldn’t put a finger on.

The smell got stronger and stronger, until… they reached its source. Despite the amount of nasty shit she’d seen in her ten years of hunting supernatural monsters, there were some things that still turned her stomach, and seeing a single human being standing in a veritable ring of blood and gore was definitely one of them. His black hair was pulled into a twist; his lips were painted red, he had blue tattoos like tear tracks under each eye, and one side of his kimono was tucked up under his belt. The dude was just squatting in the middle of the carnage, eyeballing the barrel of a matchlock gun like it was his first time seeing one (which, hell, it might be, she thought to herself; in this time, they would’ve only recently been invented). He seemed completely unbothered by the dozen and a half bodies of freshly murdered warriors and their horses surrounding him.

Inuyasha was the one to get to the scene just ahead of the others, calling back over his shoulder: “Stay back! Don’t come over here!”

Instinctively, Luna remained in front of her sister, her arm out to try and block her view. Her stomach was churning, and her hand was poised to pull her gun if needed. No way this guy could be human… right?

“Did… that one person do all this?” Kagome’s voice was a shocked whisper.

It was then that the guy in the middle noticed them. He stood, his sword over his shoulder and his head cocked slightly to the side.

“Are you the one I’ve been looking for?” He asked, a grin on his face as he shielded his eyes from the sun. “Are you Inuyasha?!”

“Got a bad feeling about this.” Luna mumbled, “That guy isn't a demon, is he?”

“I don’t think so,” Kagome uttered back to her, “I don’t sense a demonic aura….”

“How’d you know my name?!” Inuyasha demanded.

He got no answer out of the guy with the sword. Instead, the guy squealed: “You’re adorable!”

A dumbfounded silence fell over the group. Luna glanced around at the others to make sure she didn’t just lose her mind—but no, the general consensus among her friends was along the lines of ‘what the actual fuck?’

“I especially love those fuzzy ears of yours!” The guy continued, licking his lips. “I want them~”

Alright, so this guy was nuts. Luna had had enough of ignoring the bad vibe she was picking up from him. She dropped her bag next to Kagome’s bike and readied herself for a fight: detached the ammo bag and shotgun holster from her pack and slung them over her shoulder, slipped her short sword through one of the belt loops on her jeans, and pulled her shotgun to make sure it was in hand and loaded. She kept her eyes moving back and forth between Inuyasha and the dude with the sword during the next exchange:

“Who are you?” Inuyasha demanded, “What are you after? You don’t smell like a living person, you reek like corpses and graveyard soil!”

No answer.

“Inuyasha,” Miroku said in realization: “Could he be—?”

“Yep,” Inuyasha confirmed, before calling out to the guy with the sword again: “Some villagers were talking! They said some disgusting specter rose up from the grave. That’d be you, I presume!”

Right, zombies, Luna thought to herself; if he really is undead, the Sacred Salt won’t do as much as it would a demon… It’d sting, but what I really need is-… She smirked and holstered her gun again, grabbing a different weapon from the bottom of her bag.

“Are you one of the Band of Seven?!” Miroku asked of the specter as Luna was tuning back in. “Answer me!”

After a long pause as the specter seemed to size the monk up, his response was even worse than before. “Inuyasha really is good looking, but you’re pretty sexy yourself~”

Luna snorted so hard she thought she was gonna eject her brain through her nose. Ai whacked her in the arm as a warning.

“No one minds if I suck him up, do they?” Miroku grumbled.

“No.” Inuyasha said, flatly.

“Hold on!” Kagome said, “He’s got a Sacred Jewel Shard! He must’ve been revived with the power of the Shard!”

“So that was what I was sensing,” Luna mumbled, “but why does it feel off...?”

“Where’d you get the Jewel Shard?!” Inuyasha once again attempted to pose a question to their opponent, only to once again receive a weird, adoring response:

“You know, you’re cute when you’re angry~!”

“Shut up!” Inuyasha shouted, jumping forward and drawing his sword. “Alright, dead man, you’d better start talking to me, and I want real answers!”

The expression on the specter’s face shifted from one of reverence to one more sadistic as he regarded Tetsusaiga. “That’s an interesting sword you have there… let’s see whose is stronger.” He lifted his own sword, making an odd motion around his head and shoulders with it as if he were gearing up for something. “Yours or mine?!”

When he brought his arm down, something that looked almost like a bolt of silver lightning shot from his blade. Inuyasha barely had the chance to block it as it cut an arc through the air toward him.

“Inuyasha!” Kagome called out in surprise.

“Stay back!” Miroku threw his arm out in an attempt to shield the others. “It’s some kind of trick sword!”

“That’s my cue!” Ai shifted into full demon form, jerking her head at the sisters and the little fox. “All aboard!”

Kagome climbed on no issue, but Luna glanced at Miroku, who made no move to follow them. “You coming?”

“I’ll be alright, you keep them safe.” Miroku said, resolute. Not about to argue, Luna climbed on the demon’s back and Ai leapt into the air above the fight.

“You gonna be okay holding all of us after that long flight?” Luna asked her friend.

“I’m fine, it’s the same weight as you with your pack on.” Ai sassed back.

“Yeah well, fuck me for being prepared,” Luna laughed, starting to prep the other weapon she’d brought.

Kagome managed to tear her eyes from the confrontation below to try and see what her sister was doing. “What did you bring, Luna?”

Luna grinned as she clicked the last accessory into place, then turned back to show her sister. “This? This is my baby.” She held up her favorite weapon: it was a fully-customized folding compound crossbow as long as Luna’s arm. She pressed a release on the side, and the arms shot into place, making both Shippo and Kagome jump.

“Whoa!” The fox demon exclaimed, “What kind of a weapon is that?!”

“It’s a crossbow, Shippo,” Kagome explained, “It’s kind of like my bow, but the arrows are smaller and it’s easier to fire.”

“Self-loading, too,” Luna smirked as she strung it up, “The ‘arrows’ are called bolts or darts. This thing can shoot way faster than a longbow, and since we’re dealing with Zombie Harley Quinn down there—” She grabbed a bolt from her ammo bag to show it to them, “—we’re gonna need these. They’re tipped with pure silver. Great for dealing with Vampires, Werewolves, The Undead, and The Unholy.”

Shippo reached out to touch it, but Kagome stopped him, shaking her head rapidly. “It’s safe to assume you shouldn’t touch anything Luna has in her bag, Shippo.”

The kid swallowed nervously. “G-got it...”

Below them, the fight continued. Inuyasha could barely avoid each strike of the snakelike sword, and his opponent only seemed to be having more and more fun.

“What do you think of Jakotsu of the Band of Seven, huh?!” He shouted as he swung the sword once more.

“Not too much!” Inuyasha came back at him with Tetsusaiga, but to no avail.

Kagome gasped. “He needs help!”

“That’s what this baby’s for,” Luna grinned, patting her crossbow. “Ai, can you stay out of reach of the sword but get me close enough to shoot?!”

“It’ll take a miracle!”

“Better start praying, then,” Luna lined up the shot, finger still as stone on the trigger. There was a familiar voice in the back of her head; she could hear her father saying: “Aim for where they’re gonna be, not where they are.”

I know, dad. She tried not to sigh audibly as she managed to get Jakotsu’s head in her crosshairs and pulled the trigger, quick as a viper.

And… almost missed him.

The consecrated silver bolt seemed to burn through the air as it shot just centimeters shy of the specter’s nose and grazed his arm, burning a hole in his kimono. He whipped his attention to the woman who shot it.

“How dare you interfere?!” He snarled, rearing his arm back and whipping his blade toward them.

Luna felt her stomach drop.

“You idiot!” Ai snapped at her, trying to fly out of range of the sword as Kagome and Shippo both clung, screaming, to Luna’s back. Just as the sword arched toward them, there was a familiar cry of:

“HIRAIKOTSU!”

And Jakotsu’s blade was then tangled around the aforementioned boomerang. All three riding on Ai’s back sighed in relief when they saw Sango swoop in on Kilala. Ai touched down just as Kilala did, transforming into her human form and unceremoniously dumping the sisters on their asses.

“Are you all okay?” Sango called over to them.

“We’re fine!” Shippo answered.

“Perfect timing, Sango!” Kagome said.

“Some weapon, Luna!” Ai huffed in the Hunter’s direction. Luna just stuck her tongue at her.

Jakotsu was practically red in the face, shrieking in frustration: “What is with all you vile women?! Can’t you see I’m trying to battle Inuyasha?!” In the same breath, he whipped his sword again, toward Sango this time. The movement freed Hiraikotsu, and ended up leaving a small slice on Sango’s arm as Jakotsu pulled it back.

“Stay out of this!” He continued, “None of you will interfere!”

But their “interference” had served Inuyasha well enough: it gave him just the opportunity he needed to rear back and punch the specter in the face.

“Shut up! I’m tired of listening to your pointless babble!” Inuyasha growled.

Jakotsu grunted as he tumbled back, then rubbed his cheek and pouted like a kicked puppy. “That was cruel…”

“Oh, get over it!” Inuyasha snapped, “Now tell me who gave you the Sacred Jewel Shard before I have to seriously hurt you!”

Kagome and Miroku rushed to see if Sango was okay, but she assured them that it was just a graze; she was fine. Her attention was more on the subject at hand.

“I have a feeling that the shard came from Naraku,” She said, somberly. She looked at Kagome. “When you sensed a Jewel Shard earlier… it was Kohaku. I saw the Saimiyosho around him as well.”

“That means that your brother is still under Naraku’s control…” Miroku said. Sango nodded.

Luna had set her weapon down next to her backpack, and came back with a bandage for Sango’s arm. Her mind was going at a million miles an hour, trying to figure out how the hell they were gonna handle this—first an undead band of Ronin, now they have something to do with Naraku. What was Naraku playing at...?

“Gotta wonder what the hell is next…” Luna mumbled sarcastically.

Seconds later, she would regret asking. A cloud of black smoke poured over the cliffside, drifting right toward them.

Like he knew what was happening, Jakotsu got up and collected his sword. “Inuyasha! You should get out of here while you can! Bye!” And with that, he was just… gone.

“What the hell—” Inuyasha broke off with a startled yell when the cloud reached him. “Its poison!”

“But where’s it coming from?!” Miroku wondered.

“We need to move.” Luna reassembled her bag in less than thirty seconds—side effect of doing it so often. “We can figure out what the hell is going on when we’re safely away from here!”

Why do I feel like we stepped into something huge here? Luna thought to herself as the group of friends moved away from the cloud of gas.

#fanfic #inuyasha oc #inuyasha au #the lunar saga #kagome higurashi #inuyasha fanart #inuyasha #sesshomaru #sango #miroku #shippo

17 notes · View notes

ninbayphua-moyan · 3 years

Text

Moonlit Sparrow Through Parted Clouds

Thunderous grey clouds hung heavy in the sky as I made my way towards the lecture hall. My body ached with a bone-deep exhaustion and each leaden step I took felt heavier than the last. I stopped, wanting to turn back, but time and time again, my body refused to obey as my legs carried me towards my destination.

Half an hour later, I found myself standing outside the empty lecture hall despite the countless hesitations along the way. Sighing, I sank to the floor and closed my eyes, too tired to remain upright. That’s what university does to you. It sucks out your soul, your passion, and your youth, leaving nothing behind but an empty husk of a human being.

A familiar voice calling my name pricked my hazy, sleep deprived brain and I cracked open my heavy eyelids. My facial muscles moved like clockwork, automatically forming a smile to greet my friend.

“You look like a corpse!” Chu Ying exclaimed worriedly at the sight of the heavy dark circles beneath my vacant eyes.

“Haven’t been getting much sleep this week…” I replied with a nonchalant shrug as I quickly scrunched up my eyes until they turned into little crescents of laughter, “assignments due soon.”

Seemingly convinced by my explanation, she gave me a look of sympathetic encouragement and left. The second no one was looking, I let the smile fall. Amazing what a simple smile could conceal. You could probably murder someone, smile, plead innocent and everyone would believe you. Sighing softly under my breath, I grabbed my bag and joined the gathering crowd of students as they trickled into the dimly lit lecture theatre.

My laptop sat quietly on the desk, an empty word document laid open on its illuminated screen as the lecturer’s monotonous voiced droned on and on in the background. I should have been taking down notes but my mind was too preoccupied with my issues with the Undergraduate Office to focus on what the lecturer was saying.

A rhythmic vibration drew my attention towards the phone sitting on my lap. Glancing at the pop-up notification, a wave of anxiety and hope surged through my body as I registered who the sender was – the Undergraduate‘s Office. Quickly, I pulled up the email and immediately felt my heart sinking after reading the first line.

All seminar groups are full and we cannot move students.

Lies.

Another notification, this time, from my personal tutor.

It’s only week 3, relax.

Disappointment. Betrayal. Frustration. Anger. I clenched my trembling hands into fists as the tsunami of emotions threatened to explode and spill out of my shaking body. Half of me wanted to storm over to the Undergraduate’s office and let loose the unbridled rage coursing through my veins at the unfair treatment. The other half of me wanted to lash out at my tutor’s condescending advice. My body trembled at the barely, ever so barely contained anger.

Sixteen thousand pounds. That would be eighty-four thousand two hundred and seventy-nine ringgit each year in school fees. Fees which didn’t even include the amount I needed to spend in order to buy the books required for the modules. Sixteen thousand pounds per year just to get an education, an education that I wasn’t even getting at this point and her advice for me was to relax? How could I when my parents worked their entire youth away, saving every cent just so they could send me, all the way to Britain to get a proper education! Did they even know what the stakes of sending me abroad to study was?!

My father’s average yearly income is twenty-four thousand ringgits, barely twenty-eight percent of my yearly school fees. Was it that unreasonable to want to be in a class that will allow me to learn and improve after paying for that much money out of my parents’ own pocket?! Why would anyone in their right mind come half way across the globe, paying that ridiculous amount of money, and being so far away from family and home for years, just to fool around? If that had been my intention, I wouldn’t even have bothered going to university in the first place, let alone coming all the way to Cardiff!

University will be fun they said. You’ll meet open-minded people passionate about learning they said. Hah! That’s the biggest misconception if there ever was one. First of all, the university doesn’t care about whether you actually learn anything so long as you're paying the fees. The majority of lecturers or seminar leaders will only do the most minimal amount of work required and by that, I mean three hundred words of prose only per weekly assignment. What kind of creative work could anyone produce under three hundred words? In prose! Some don’t even bother with critical commentary which is just as essential as the creative pieces. Not only does the lack of practice in writing critical commentaries and limited word count for the creative pieces inhibit students from developing any work of significance, it also underprepares students for the three-thousand-word portfolio due at the end of the semester.

Secondly, British universities are also especially discriminatory towards outsiders or people of colour, often treating minorities and international students with hostility or disregard. I’ve experienced this discrimination first hand upon requesting a seminar change. Despite having emailed the Undergraduate Office at the same time with the exact same reasons, I was denied the change whilst my British classmate was immediately allowed to swap seminars. The office even went so far as to lie about the class being full even though I was told by the professor leading that very seminar that it wasn’t. So much for the integrity of the institution.

At the end of the day, international students are nothing but cash cows to British universities.[1] Not only do they have to pay double of what British students pay in terms of fees, they also have to deal with the discriminations that come alongside being an outsider. I understood that in this day and age, education was a business, and that the university itself was, essentially, a business, but doesn’t actual passion for learning still count for something? Or was I wrong in believing in that as well? Oh, so naïve, so very naïve!

Old memories started to surface amongst the turmoil of emotions. My father and his worn-out clothes, refusing each time to buy new ones for himself just to save a little more money. My mother mending them as best she could whilst we slept, never once complaining. Images of my father’s prematurely greying hair and bloodshot eyes as he worked his health away to provide for his children’s future. My mother’s back bent low, labouring away at some project or another in order to make ends meet. Yet, they never once showed us how tired or how tough things were. There was always enough food on the table and they always had a smile on their faces around us. Sometimes, I noticed that they would eat a lot less than usual but whenever I asked, they merely joked and said they were trying to lose weight. They could have enjoyed their youth, their honeymoon, but they decided to save it all, sacrificing their health and comfort just to ensure mine by sending me here.

I remember the times where they would secretly check their wallets whenever I begged them to buy me a book. Oh, how those very books painted and fuelled my illusions of Britain’s perfection. If only I had known the reality of it all before applying to study here. But it’s too late for regrets now.

A sharp stinging pricked the back of my eyes, tears threatening to fall as my body shook with suppressed, uncontrollable rage. Maybe if I was a little braver…maybe if I fought a little harder…maybe if I confronted them a bit more…maybe…maybe…maybe…

Then as quickly as they appeared, the tsunami of emotions faded away, leaving behind an empty husk. My clenched fists loosen and fell limply at my sides as a quiet, bitter laugh escaped my lips. Nothing was going to change. No matter how hard I fought, the end results will remain the same so what’s the point of even trying in the first place?

As the cold hard reality of the situation finally presented itself, I slumped against the chair, my empty laptop screen staring blankly back at me. Resignation dragged me deeper and deeper into the murky depths of my mind. I was drowning. No one knew and no one cared. But that’s fine. The ending remains the same regardless. Always the same…

The sound of rustling papers and loud chatter momentarily draws me out of the murky waters. Realising that the lecture had ended, I gathered my things and shuffled towards the exit, my mind returning once more to the depths of the void. Outside, the rain was pouring. I plodded down the streets drenched to the bone as my legs moved mechanically towards my flat. A stifling numbness engulfed my mind as I trudged on in silence, the howling wind battering my shivering, rain-soaked body from all sides. Rounding the corner, I pulled out a key-card and entered the cramped grey flat. Out of sheer habit, I grabbed the letters from my letterbox and stuffed them into my coat pocket before heading upstairs.

Entering the dingy room, I dropped my backpack on the bed and sank to the floor. Hugging my knees to my chest, I stared vacantly at the bleak wall. My phone rang insistently in my pocket but I didn’t answer, too tired to move. The crushing weight on my lungs forced out whatever little oxygen I managed to draw, making each breath a struggle. The clamouring voices in my mind grew louder and louder, growing in intensity yet forcefully contained, like built-up pressure without release on the brink of implosion.

You’re useless

I’m…not…

You can’t even stand up for yourself or fight for what you believe is right

Yes I can! And I’m trying! I’ve –

You’re a disappointment to your parents and your family

I’m not! I swear! I –

You’ll never amount up to anything

That’s not true! I –

You’re pathetic

No –

Nothing but a Failure

Stop saying –

Human garbage

Please! Just –

Waste of space

“SHUT UP!”

Silence. Nothing but the sound of my ragged breathing in the darkness.

The world would be better off without you

I don’t know how long I had stayed there on the floor but by the time I came around, my dripping wet clothes were nearly dry. The chaotic calamity within had finally died down and I was filled with an eerie calmness. A deafening silence blanketed the air, pierced only by the hypnotic rumbling of trains across tracks. Ah yes…the railway…my ticket to solving everything…just two blocks away…and it’ll all be over…permanently…

Forcing my lethargic limbs to move, I wobbled onto my feet and stumbled towards the door. A tiny parcel fell out of my pocket and the handwriting on it made me paused. It was my mother’s. Even under the dimness of the moonlight trickling in, there was no mistaking that immaculately cursive hand.

Letting go of the door handle, I kneeled down to pick up the neatly wrapped package. Then, slowly, as if afraid it would fall apart at the slightest touch, I began unwrapping the parcel. Upon opening the box, tears welled at the corner of my eyes. Six little cylindrical bundles of haw flakes were carefully packed within, each attached to a tightly rolled up strip of paper. Gently untying the scrolls from the sweets, I began reading them one at a time.

Jie![2] I got you your favourite sweets! Wanted to buy you more of them but Ma said there wasn’t enough space in the box. Don’t worry, I’ll send you a big box of them once I’ve saved up enough money.

– Di[3]

My heart ached as I thought about how much it must have costed for them to ship the parcel all the way from Penang to Britain. And with the little amount of pocket money…it must have taken Di-Di months of saving to be able to afford buying that one bundle of sweets…

Jie, just because you’re the oldest doesn’t mean you have to hold everything in on your own y’know? It’s okay to rely on others a bit more from time to time. Enjoy the sweets you idiot, you’re crazy about those haw flakes. No idea why you like them either, they aren’t even that nice.

– Mei[4]

Tears pricked the back of my eyes as my sister’s grumpy voice echoed in my ears. I could even see the disbelieving eye roll at my odd preferences in sweets after the last sentence. How I’ve missed our senseless squabbles and late-night chats….

A-Yun, being an international student in the UK isn’t always the easiest thing, especially when you’re a minority there. You’ve already taken the necessary steps and have done all you can in that situation. Remember, it’s the end result and not the process that defines a victory. Remember what Sun Tzu mentioned in The Art of War? ‘The most important rule to victory is to know when to pick your fights and how to fight it’. Not all battles need to be fought to win the war. Never forget our family values and never lose sight of your goal. Don’t worry about finances, let me handle that. Just focus on your studies and aim for that first-class honours. The best revenge is to succeed despite their efforts to stop you. Continue to work hard and don’t give up. Know that regardless of the outcome, your Ma and I are proud of you and that we love you very, very much.

– Ba[5]

A sob catches at the back of my throat as tears flowed freely down my cheeks. Acute pangs of longing weighed heavily on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

A-Yun[6] ah, if it ever becomes too much to bear at Cardiff, come home. Ma will make you your favourite dishes. I know you want to do well but don’t overwork yourself. Remember to get enough rest and try to change your bad habit of skipping meals. Two boiled eggs alone don’t count as a proper meal either!

– Ma[7]

A sheepish giggle escaped my lips despite the tears, Ma’s exasperated voice ringing in my ears. I could almost picture the look of indignation on her face as she judges my terrible meal choices before proceeding to fill my bowl with steamy boiled dumplings.

Ah…Ma’s famous boiled dumplings…the saltiness of minced pork marinated with soy sauce and sesame oil…the refreshing sweetness of spring onions and carrots contrasting the pork’s saltiness…flecks of finely chopped hei-mu-er adding a chewy texture to the tender meat whilst thin sheets of delicately wrapped dough encapsulated it all…the slight bitterness of the herbal broth complementing the savoury dumplings…[8] My stomach growled in protest as I smiled fondly at the memory.

Wiping away the remaining tears, I unrolled the last strip of paper. Elegant brushstrokes painted familiar characters in horizontal lines. A wave of nostalgia washed over me as I recalled sitting on A-Gong’s [9] lap in the garden as kid, watching him practice calligraphy. I remembered how he used to read his poems aloud as I gaze at his hands guiding the bamboo brush across the ivory sheet, entranced by its flowing movements. Each word written was like a piece of art, each stroke of ink painting a meaning of its own.

Tranquil night’s darkness, the moon shines bright, From the mud the lotus rises, its petals pure despite. Vermillion red blossom like wildly raging flames; Elegant, virtuous, delicate, yet exquisitely untamed. The wise once said that adversity yields flair, An upright heart, oblique shadows don’t scare. Dripping water with time wears the stubborn stone, Sturdy wood too can be cut with rope saws alone! [10]

A strange tranquility wrapped itself around me as I read the poem, A-Gong’s calm and mellow voice resonating in my ears. It was almost as if he was standing right before me with the usual toothless smile and twinkling eyes on his wizen face. Tenderly cradling the small box of sweets, a faint smile graced my lips. Their vermillion red and gold wrappings shone with a certain warmth under the soft light of the moon. Gently unwrapping one of the thumb-size bundles with shaking hands, I popped a disk-like piece into my mouth.

Immediately, a wave of warmth spread throughout my cold and hollowed body, almost as if it was infused with the life-giving heat of home. The familiar tart sweetness of the hawthorn berries cleared the heavy fog that clouded my mind and for the first time in a long while, I felt energy slowly seeping back into my worn-out soul, reigniting the snuffed-out fire within. Strange how something so small, barely the size of my thumb, could bring so much comfort and hope. That night, the moon shone a little brighter than usual, and the normally barren sky seemed to be exploding with billions of twinkling stars.

NOTES

[1] Alina Schartner & Yoonjoo Cho, ‘“Empty signifiers” and “dreamy ideals”: perceptions of the “international university” among higher education students and staff at a British university’, Higher Education, 74 (2017), 455-472

[2] ‘Jie’ means older sister in Chinese

[3] 'Di’ means younger brother in Chinese

[4] 'Mei’ means younger sister in Chinese

[5] ‘Ba’ means father in Chinese

[6] ‘Yun’ is written as ‘云’ meaning ‘cloud’

[7] 'Ma’ means mother in Chinese

[8] Hei-mu-er is the Mandarin term for black cloud ear fungus, a type of mushroom often used in Chinese cuisines.

[9] ‘A-Gong’ means grandfather in Chinese (specifically, the Hainanese pronounciation)

[10] This is a self written and self translated poem I wrote. The original Chinese version can be found here.

[11] ‘Moonlit Sparrow Through Parted Clouds’ is a play on 守得云开见月明 meaning the moon will shine brightly again when the clouds part, and 麻雀虽小五脏俱全 meaning though a sparrow is small, it has all the vital organs.

Author's Notes:

So this is one of my earlier prose pieces from uni (all the way back from first year lol). I don’t usually post prose? Not prose of this length at least. Anyways, I thought I’d take the leap and try posting them online now since I decided to start doing that for my poetry pieces? The rest of my prose pieces throughout uni somehow ended up becoming interlinked with several recurring characters though there are some inconsistencies since they were initially intended as stand-alone pieces rather than a series of somewhat loosely linked short stories. I’ll be posting them in story timeline sequence (or at least as closely to a sequence as I can since I didn’t exactly plan out the timeline of these pieces either) rather than in the sequence it was written in so there might be a slight fluctuation in writing style cuz they do kinda change over the years? Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading Part 1~

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Since exams are over and graded and I've officially graduated, I can finally post my work online without having to worry about Turnitin picking it up as plagiarism because apparently you aren't allowed to plagiarise yourself according to university which is absolutely ridiculous but I'm not the one making the rules here so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, please don't reupload my works without permission.

#ninbayphua 墨彦 #prose #short story #I'm new to sharing stories or prose I've written online so please be kind #constructive critisms are always welcomed #please don't repost without permission

17 notes · View notes

ais-for-alex · 3 years

Text

The Scars of Our Past: Chapter 23

Hope y’all enjoy the chapter 🥰

“Why is it every time I see you, you look even more exhausted than when you left?” Fabian said only half joking while looking him up and down critically. Leo huffed a sigh as he dropped his bag and plopped down next to his friend to start lacing up his skates.

Leo chuckled in response, “I don’t know man, it’s just been… an emotionally charged week.”

“Yeah? Didn’t you just move in with that guy, I thought you would be happy? Is it already not working out?”

“No,” Leo answered quickly, making Fabian glance over at him in surprise, “no, it’s been great, Finn is great. There’s just…” Leo let his voice trail off, not entirely sure what it was he wanted to say. His mind flicked back to the night before, falling asleep in Finn's bed, the man himself wrapped up tight in his arms, the warm velvety timer of his voice lulling him into unconsciousness as he painted pictures with his words. Then this morning when he woke up alone, the warm sheets his only companion.

When the early morning sunrays began streaming through Finns open blinds Leo had slowly blinked his eyes open a bit nervously. He couldn’t help the butterflies fluttering inside him, he was scared to see where he would stand with Finn now that the cover of night had been stripped away by the golden light of morning. However, it seemed his fear was unwarranted as the redhead was nowhere to be found once Leo had finally opened his eyes. Glancing down at the empty space Finn’s body had once occupied, Leo found a slip of paper; one edge was ragged like it had been torn from a notebook and in neat angular handwriting was a message.

Good morning Nutter Butter. I went out for a run to clear my head this morning so I probably won’t see you until later. Have a good day at practice, I’ll see you tonight.

At the bottom he had signed his name and added a little doodle of a fish. Leo smiled softly reading the words over again, he trailed a fingertip over the paper feeling the little indents from where Finn's pen had pressed into the paper. And when he wandered back over to his own room to get ready to head to practice Leo took that paper with him, he so very carefully tucked it into his nightstand wanting to keep it safe.

“There’s just a lot,” he finally finished.

Fabian nodded, seeming to catch some of the meaning behind those words, “Hey, you know what? How about after practice we head to the coffee shop and you can tell me about that lot that you have going on. Maybe an outside opinion can make it easier, or even just talking about it might help.”

Leo felt a little jolt of affection for his friend, after all Fabian had been the first one to welcome him to Gryffindor with open arms and had since remained as a constant support.

“That actually sounds really great.”

“Alright, well it’s a plan,” he said with a crooked grin, “but now we need to get out on the ice before Madam Maxine comes searching for us, cause believe me it would not be fun.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” Leo said with a laugh following Fabian out of the locker room and towards the ice. The two of them parted and began working through their warm ups, Leo melted into the motions stretching and loosening his shoulders, his hips, making sure his muscles were warm and ready to let him fly.

Once he had finished his warm ups Leo set to work on the second of the new jumps Madam Maxine had added to his program. The quads were challenging, that’s an understatement, Leo thought to himself as he pulled his body off the ice for the umpteenth time rubbing at the sore bruise forming on his ass cheek.

“Leo, come.”

Leo glanced up to see that Madame Maxine had glided elegantly onto the ice herself and was beckoning him over to her. Skating closer Leo blinked a bit in shock, he was always thrown when he came across someone taller than himself and his coach positively towered over him on her skates.

“You’re making progress,” she said, accent thick around the words.

“Thank you Madam,” he nodded.

“You still need to work on your expressions though, your face is completely blank when you skate. I can see the gears turning in your mind as you perform.”

“Uh… yeah, I’m still working on that,” Leo said, feeling a self-conscious flush rise in his cheeks. He still had no idea how to make his feelings come across in his performance, after all he had begun figure skating as a way of running and hiding from the feelings inside him, how was he supposed to simply just let them out for everyone to see?

“Have you settled on a composition? You should really be working with your music at this stage.”

“No, um not quite,” he said, brushing a bit of hair out of his face nervously. Leo knew that he should have picked his music a long time ago but for some reason anything that he listened to just didn’t feel right, it didn’t fit.

“Hmm, you have one more week to choose,” she said sternly, “if you have not selected a piece by then, you will not be ready to compete.”

“Alright, I’ll have something by then,” Leo replied, Madam Maxine simply nodded and gestured for him to continue his work before she skated away to speak to Gilderoy. With a little sigh Leo got back to it.

***

Leo groaned at the ache in his bones when he finally left the ice, making his way into the locker room on his blade guards. Sitting down on the bench to unlace his skates Leo snagged a water bottle and his phone from his skate bag only to realiz there were several new notifications waiting for him. He huffed a laugh at the name that popped up when he clicked on the message.

(Mighty Mouse): Video attached

Leo clicked on the video and suddenly Logan’s face was filling up his screen as he held the camera in front of himself.

“So, when I got to the rink for practice today, guess what I found waiting for me?” Logan’s voice fell from the phone's speaker filled with exasperation. He shifted the camera to what looked like his stall in the team’s locker room, pushed to the side was a pile of what looked like children’s hockey equipment in the Lions colors.

“This,” he said, turning the camera back to himself dramatically, “is the aftermath of what one James Potter considers a prank.” Logan reached down and grabbed something out of the pile and held up a ridiculously small jersey that had read Tremblay 10. “He came in here and replaced every single piece of gear in my stall with equipment meant for six year olds,” there was a pained look on Logan’s face as he said that but Leo couldn’t help the cackle that ripped through him at the thought of Logan walking into the locker room to find everything in his spot miniaturized.

“And then!” Logan continued on the video, “when I being a little confused as to where all my crap went, asked what was going on, this bastard had the audacity to look me dead in the eye and say ‘Oh, I thought these would fit you better, with how small you are and everything.’”

Leo completely lost it at that coupled with the crazed look on Logan’s face, he could barely breathe through his howling laughter.

“I swear, if he didn’t need them to play I would have taken his knee caps right then and there,” Logan zoomed the camera a little closer to his face and let his voice fall a bit to a whisper, “but I’ll get him back, believe me I’ll get him back.” Logan’s eyes glowed with mischief, “I’ll keep you posted,” he said with a wink just as the video ended.

Leo was still chuckling as he clicked the next attached video clip which looked like it was sent a little later than the first. Logan was now in what looked like a weight room, he had changed into a Lions logo muscle shirt, a pair of basketball shorts, and he had his curls tucked up under a snapback. Leo struggled to pull his focus onto the words coming from Logan’s mouth as his strong arms and shoulders were now in full view.

“So,” Logan started glancing over at the door to make sure no one was coming, “I’ve devised the perfect payback.” Logan grinned deviously at the camera and held up a little container that made Leo gasp when he recognized it, “well, if you don’t know, this here is citric acid and even just a tiny bit will turn something into a tart little surprise.” Logan chuckled and grabbed a bottle of blue Gatorade, “this is James’s, he’s pretty much the only one that drinks the blue. Honestly, he’s a little obsessive about it. Well, let’s see how much he likes it with… let’s say a hefty amount of citric acid in there.”

“Oh no,” Leo couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out as he watched Logan unscrew the cap and dump more citric acid than should ever be consumed into the Gatorade. He gave the bottle a shake and placed it over by someone’s gym bag.

“And now we wait,” he grinned and wagged his eyebrows at the camera suggestively as the clip cut out.

Leo didn’t hesitate for a second before clicking on the last video Logan had sent, from the timestamp only a few minutes ago. This clip was a little different, Logan was no longer holding the camera; he must have propped his phone up against an unused weight plate as Leo could now see the rest of the weight room. There were now several more people there using various machines, Leo’s eyes instantly snapped to where Logan was off to the side doing deadlifts, he had to stop himself from gasping aloud at the sight. Tearing his eyes away from Logan to glance at the others, he spotted none other than Sirius Black standing and chatting with a slightly shorter man with a mop of curly brown hair and thin wire framed glasses. The two were near where Logan had placed the contaminated Gatorade bottle. As they talked the man with glasses, who Leo assumed must be James, reached down and snagged the bottle. Leo cringed in anticipation as he watched James laugh carelessly at something Sirius said then finally bring the bottle up to his lips.

James had taken the biggest gulp imaginable of the sour liquid and Leo watched the exact moment his very soul left his body as it hit tongue. What happened next must have only been milliseconds but Leo still could see as James face first went green, then ghostly pale, his eyes wide and panicked before he sprayed the drink directly into Sirius’s face.

Leo was laughing so hard he wasn’t even making noise anymore just clutching his stomach and shaking from it as he watched James drop to his knees and spit trying to get the sour taste out of his mouth while Sirius was spluttering in disgust. In the background Leo could hear the rest of the guys in the weight room laughing just as hysterically. Suddenly, Logan's face came into frame just as the video ended.

“What was that about?”

Leo glanced up at Fabian who had settled next to him to unlace his own skates. Still trying to suppress his laughter, Leo just shook his head, “nothing, just a friend doing something stupid.”

“Yeah? You know, I think that was the first time I’ve seen you actually laugh like that.”

“That’s not true,” Leo immediately shot back, “I laugh all the time, it’s not my fault you aren’t as funny as you think you are.”

Fabian made a scandalized face and put a hand over his heart, “Ouch, that hurt. I am mildly offended. I am a hoot.”

Leo scoffed at that.

“And besides I’m talking like actually laughing, not that polite little chuckle you do.”

Just then Leo felt his phone buzz in his hand, when he glanced down he nearly choked at the image waiting for him. Logan had taken off his shirt, revealing his entire chest and torso glistening in a sheen of sweat leftover from his workout, his curls were fluffing out from under the edges of his snapback and he had his face scrunched up like he was laughing super hard. The caption ‘I Won’ was written across the image, in the background Leo could just see both James and Sirius glaring daggers at him.

“Is that this ‘friend’ that seems able to make you laugh uncontrollably?” Fabian asked leaning over to sneak a peek at the picture.

“Hmm, yeah,” Leo answered, his eyes still roving over the image of Logan on his screen, a soft smile pulled at his lips, “this is Logan,” he turned the screen a bit showing Fabian.

“Wait, Logan? As in Logan Tremblay? From the Lions?”

Leo simply nodded.

“From that look on your face I take it he has something to do with everything you’ve had going on lately?”

He nodded again.

Fabian chuckled and leaned down to pull off his skates, “Well, hurry up and get changed then you can tell me all about him, and Finn.”

Leo rolled his eyes fondly but slipped his phone back into his bag and began pulling off his own skates. It wasn’t long before the two of them, now clad in their street clothes, had made their way to Polaris Coffee claiming a cozy booth in the corner to chat.

Leo wrapped his hands around his drink, the heat bleeding through the ceramic into his palms. He couldn’t help but think back to the last time he had sat in this coffee shop, a different redhead smiling at him across the table. Fabian was almost uncharacteristically quiet, evidently waiting for Leo to feel comfortable enough to share the things that have been on his mind over the past weeks.

“So…” Leo began not entirely sure where to start.

“So…” Fabian mimicked raising his eyebrows teasingly, making Leo laugh. A bit of tension bled out of him as he took a sip of his coffee, he let the warm rich flavor wash over his tongue and calm his nerves.

“I think I’m falling in love with my roommate… and his best friend,” Leo said, jumping straight into the heart of the matter. And just like that it was like a dam breaking, words tumbled out of Leo’s mouth as he told Fabian about his time with Finn and Logan. He glossed over the parts about his past, but he told him about every subtle look, every gentle brush of fingertips, and sweet embrace. By the time he had run out of words Leo’s heart ached with the knowledge that he was utterly fucked by the intensity of his feelings for these two.

“You know,” Fabian started setting his mug down with a soft clunk on the table, “to me it sounds these people mean a lot to you, I’m honestly not seeing a problem here.”

Leo sighed and flopped back against the booth, his head knocking against the wooden part, “They really do, and well, I guess it’s not so much of a problem as just a bit complicated. I mean I like them, both of them. But Finn and Logan have this… thing between them. Like I get the vibe that they like each other, but then there’s moments with each of them that makes me think just maybe they like me. I just… I don’t know Fab.”

“Have you tried talking to them?” Fabian asked, “Like I know that sounds like the cliché answer but honestly, I think that’s really the only way you’ll be able to know how either of them are actually feeling. About you, and about each other.”

Leo snagged his mug off the table and took a sip before replying, “I know,” he sighed. “I know I need to talk to them. I don’t think it’ll be bad with Finn, from what I’ve seen so far he’s pretty open with his thoughts but Logan, Logan will be a challenge.”

Fabian shot him a sympathetic look at that, “Well, I’m always here for moral support,” he raised his mug in a little salute.

Leo chuckled and rolled his eyes but clinked his own mug against it before taking another sip of his drink.

Read on ao3

Chapter 22 Chapter 24

#sweater weather #coast to coast #leo knut #logan tremblay #lumosinlove #o'knutzy #finn o'hara #writing #figure skating #hockey #the scars of our past

9 notes · View notes

t-o-m-hollands · 4 years

Text

PARIS PART II of III

Warnings: Swearing, heavy drinking, smut. +18.

SUMMARY: Timmy is an artist living in Paris in the 1950′s. You come to him to model for a painting but you have an unusual demand for the artist.

R E A D P A R T O N E H E R E

1st of October, 1952 - Paris.

It’s Tuesday and Timothée is tired. It’s 1 in the afternoon but his head is still aching from last night. It's been seven months since you left Paris, and somehow, life has gone on.

The sun is shining mercilessly bright and he wishes he was back in his studio, so he could hide from it. But it’s a place he spends as little amount of time as possible in as of late. Instead he’s sitting on a bench just below Sacré-Cœur, wearing last night's clothes, a mess of curls framing his tired face. In one hand a cigarette and in the other a freshly printed copy of the Tatler. On the front page is your face, radiantly beautiful, in a wedding dress and veil, diamonds in your ears and diamonds on your head. Next to you is your Freddie, looking straight at the camera, unnecessarily smug; or so Timothée thinks. Inside the magazine there’s an entire montage in the happy couples’ honor, complete with exclusive pictures from the high-society occasion.

“Dubbed the wedding of the season this intimate affair took place on a drizzly September morning between baron Freddie Fairfax and his blushing new bride. Freddie, who is the son of the 9th Earl of Abington, was overheard by some guest remarking over the beauty of his new bride, who was wearing a bone-white couture gown signed Christian Dior and accessorized with a diadem, an heirloom of the Fairfax family that has been in their possession for generations and borrowed to the bride on this special occasion. The nuptials were exchanged in St Margaret’s Church, gloriously decorated with bunches and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums, aconites and white lilies, in front of an audience including representants from most of the royal households of Europe and the English social elite. The reception took place at the Earls 25,000 acres estate in Oxfordshire and upon arrival the guest were served ice cold”

Timothée stops reading and throws the magazine down on the bench. For a long time he sits there, watching as people climb their way up the stairs to the church, and smoking cigarette after cigarette until his throat feels sore. It’s a fine October day, the air crisp and clean. The leaves on the trees changing from emerald green to vibrant shades of orange and yellow. Some have already fallen to the ground. A melancholic part of him, the majority in fact, can’t help but to think of it as a metaphor of his life. He’d met you and the entire world had seemed in bloom. Now it was rapidly fading.

Someone sits down beside him on the bench, but he ignores them, mind too far away to care.

“You are monsieur Chalamet, I presume”. With a startle he looks at the person next to him. It’s an elderly lady, possibly in her 80’s, with hair in a sophisticated updo, burgundy lips and sparkling eyes. She’s clothed in an expensive fur coat and with diamonds on every finger. He suddenly feels dirty in his unwashed clothes.

“Yes madam, and who are you if I may ask?” he answers politely.

“Marguerite Beauchêne-Wright” she introduces herself, stretching out her heavily bejeweled hand. He shakes the elderly woman’s hand. It feels strangely cold in his.

“And what can I do for you, madam?”

She doesn’t answer at first but looks down on the magazine between them. “Pretty, isn’t she?” she asks. He doesn’t answer at first, doesn’t know what to say to that. “Yes, very pretty” he answers at last.

“It was a terrible wedding” she continues. “Terrible”.

“And how do you know the bride?” He asks, feeling rather uncomfortable

“She’s my grandniece” she says and looks up at him again, studying his face. “She lived with me for a period, here in Paris. I believe you know one another?”

He doesn’t answer her question, knows she already knows the answer to it, instead he asks “and why was the wedding so terrible?”

“Oh” she says and swats with her hand, but there’s a look of worry on her face he can’t look past. “When the bride’s wearing the wrong dress, or the bridesmaids won’t behave, or the food’s terrible, well those are all things one expects at a wedding. But when the bride marries the wrong groom, well, that’s not quite as easily overlooked. Then you find yourself actually praying for an ill-fitted gown instead”.

He stares at her in confusion. “What do you mean, the wrong groom?”

She observers him with shrewd eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Madam, with all due respect, I not sure what you want with me” he says slowly. He finds himself wondering if maybe he’s still asleep and this is a strange dream produced by too much absinthe. If he’ll perhaps wake up in a ditch soon, with a hangover from hell.

“But don’t worry” she says with a kind smile “We can still fix this”.

He wonders if he should leave, for this is not a conversation he wants to have, especially not with a complete stranger. But despite himself he says “there’s nothing to fix”.

Then she takes him by surprise, for she grabs the magazine from the bench and hits his arm with it, not hard, but enough to get a reaction out of him. “Ow!” he bursts out, “what was that for?”

“For you to get a grip of yourself! Don’t be so defeatist, I told you we can fix this. You still love her and she loves you, not that absolute buffoon”.

“It’s too late, she’s already married him. And I'm over it” he lies, trying to keep on to some kind of dignity in this bizarre situation.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you haven’t moved on from any of it, I know an idiot in love when I see one, and you’re it”.

“Gee, thanks” he mutters, rubbing the sore spot where she hit him with the magazine.

“Now, what are we going to do? Are you going after her?”

He stares at her in disbelief, “no, she’s married, I told you, it’s too late”.

“Do I need to use this again?” she threatens and holds up the magazine, but there’s a humorous gleam in her eyes that makes him smile.

“Why are you trying to help me?” He asks.

“Well, quite frankly dahling, I'm not trying to help you. But that girl, my dahling niece, is miserable.” There’s sadness now in her old eyes and something twists uncomfortably in Timothée’s chest.

“It’s that bloody women's fault, her mother!” She bursts out, taking him aback. The venom in her voice almost palpable, “She’s whispering ideas of self-sacrifice in her ear. Not that her father’s any better – defeatist! That’s the only word to describe him! Never could fight for himself. To think that my dahling sister could have given birth to such a fool. And now my grandniece...” she trails off, sadness in her voice again.

“Now your grandniece has a title and is married to one of the richest people in England.” He states firmly.

She throws the magazine down on the bench again and swats her hand in front of her, as if to get rid of a particularly annoying fly, and the diamonds on her hand sparkle in the sun. “Yes, but it’s not what she wants. Is it? What she wants is, well, it’s you.”

There’s something so penetrating about her eyes and the way she looks at him. Crinkled and full of wrinkles her face may be but those shrew eyes shine bright as ever. They are very familiar eyes, a strong remembrance to another pair of eyes that haunt his dreams. He looks away,

“But she did decide to marry him, that was her decision. Doesn’t mean I don’t understand it, but there’s where we’re at. There’s nothing to be done.”

“I saw the painting you made of her” She says in a voice that make him think she’s fishing after something and in the corner of his eyes he can see her inspecting him. He lights a new cigarette and avoids her eyes. “The one with yellow tulips?” she adds, making it sound like a question.

“’s just a painting” he mumbles, feigning nonchalance.

She continues to observe him before sighing. Then, she pats him on his arm and in a gentle tone she says “we both know that’s not quite true”.

And suddenly he wants to weep. Weep in a way he hasn’t since he was a child. Without holding back, without grace or shame. Weep, and subject the poison from his body. But he doesn’t. Clenching his hands around the rim of the bench with all of his strength he manages to keep the storm at bay. Only when he feels he has his emotions locked up and under control does he look at her again. Her familiar eyes, full of sympathy, observes him and something inside his chest is screaming.

“Could I paint you, madam?” he asks with a smile, to lighten the mood.

She throws her head back in laughter. “Oh, how sweet of you, but I'm afraid my modelling days are far behind me. But if you ever need something, a listening ear or” and she looks at his dirty clothes “or perhaps a loan, then feel free to keep in touch.”

She gently pats his shoulder, then gets up and leaves.

February 12th, 1953

In a dimly lit club in Pigalle Timothée is writing a letter. Smoke surrounds him and the dim light shining through gives the illusion of a halo around his head. It’s a bad place to conduct letters in. People around him are cheering and talking, singing and howling with laughter while a modern band plays experimental jazz. It is rowdy, and it is wild, and it’s the perfect distraction.

It’s a shabby sort of place, where the floors are sticky with god knows what, the music is loud and the liquor comes cheap. Timothée thinks it’s heaven.

A man sits down next to him in the bar and orders a Gin Rickey.

“Terrible, aren’t they?” He questions in a broad American accent, gesturing toward the band as the bartender hands him his drink. Timothée nods in agreement and gestures with his empty glass to the bartender, implying need of a refill of his whiskey neat. The barman catches his gesture and pour him a new glass of Glenlivet and hands it to him just as the band begin a new tune.

“Hardly Duke Ellington” he says to the stranger and nods to the scene. He folds the unfinished letter and puts it in his pocket for later. The other man snorts in response, “that’s putting it kindly” he says, amusement in his voice. Timothée takes a good look at the stranger. He looks to be about his own age and is wearing a nice grey suit and hat tilted to the side. With a square jaw, a tall stature and piercingly blue eyes he could pass for a movie star. Lighting a cigarette, the man then offers one to Timothée, who gladly accepts the offer in a gratified manner. He’s been running low on his own stash these last few days.

They start talking. Discussing the differences in American and French jazz, the best drinking holes in Paris and who really is the great American writer. Timothée claim it’s Hemingway (“mark my words, he’ll win a Nobel price one of these days) whereas the stranger argues for F. Scott Fitzgerald (“the way he writes about the promise of the American dream, no one can rival Fitzgerald” he proclaims and Timmy wants to argue that surely he writes about the failed promise of the American dream, but they move on to a less dividing topic). The discuss bourbon and whiskey and rum as the bartender refill their glasses and the liquor no longer burns his throat and his eyes have adjusted to the smoke in the room as they mindlessly chat on. Timmy finds out that the strangers name is William and that he’s originally from California though went to boarding school in ‘good ol’ England’ but that he’s spent the last year in New York. Also, that he’s just separated from his wife. Timmy in turn tells him of his own life in broad strokes, his American mother and French father, art school and life as a painter in Paris. A few drinks later still and they get a hold of an old, wooden table at the far back of the room and so they cross the room, avoiding collision with the dancers, all in various states of drunkenness, and they begin a game of cards. The jazz band plays on.

William turns out to be quite the gambler and Timothée, who’s been walking around for months now with a feeling that he has nothing more to lose, can’t help but bet on the few things he has. They laugh and play and share stories of their youth while the jazz band play louder and louder. Perhaps the good company and distracting surroundings goes to his head, because a couple games in and Timmy is indebted to the American. He has had a bad hand overall as of late and he tells his opponent as much. The man in turn laughs and leans back in his chair, his cards in one hand and a cigar in the other. He takes a long drag from it before blowing out smoke across the space between them. Around them people dance to the chaotic music.

“Hell, I’m feeling generous tonight and you’ve been good company. Not many people I can talk to here in France, my French is terrible. So, you’re a painter, how about a painting, then? And I’ll write the whole thing off.” he suggests and smiles broadly.

Timothée hesitates. His apartment has been unusually empty of paintings as of late. The few ones he had he sold just last week in order to meet rent. Inspiration to paint new ones had not been with him. Not since you left. Everything he had managed to paint had come out drained of colour and bleak and he ended up losing interest in it.

He only has one painting left. But he couldn't, could he?

“Alright” Timmy agrees. Because what choice does he have? Maybe it’s time to put this ghost to rest, once and for all. Your gone and no wishful thinking or practices in gratefulness can change that simple fact. You’re married and there’s nothing he can do about it, despite madame Marguerite’s words of your misery ringing in his ears. There’s nothing he can do to save you now. You’ve made your choice, and all there is now is the aftermath. The post mortem. You have to live with that decision and so does he. Even if he doesn’t want to. So, why should he keep the painting? The baron got to keep the real you after all, and the only thing he has is the picture of you. A picture that can’t talk or laugh, can’t smile or play with his hair or touch him or dance to Chopin or lecture him about classical music. A painted image that he has stared himself blind at for these past few months, grieving that he cannot bring it to life, while the baron got the real you.

His unfinished letter burns in his pocket but he ignores it.

And so they leave, on unsteady legs and heads swirling with liquor, and the jazz band plays them out to their worst tune yet as they exchange the smoky club air for a cold night’s breeze.

“Fuck” William mutters as they enter the night. “Fucking freezing” he adds and shivers in his nice suit. “No worry” Timothée slurs “not far”. They stumble their way across the cobblestoned streets. “You damn Frenchmen” the other man mutters after some distance, “always got to fucking walk everywhere, taxis where invented tor a reason, you know!” Timmy snorts and points to a building just a couple of meters away. “Live there, yeah?”

And with a lot of effort they help each other up the stairs to the loft. Once inside William asks if there’s any brandy, for ‘recovery purposes after their hellish journey’ and so, they drink some more. They start discussing politics, a bad idea all around, before venturing into the less dividing topic of French cinema. It’s not long after that they’ve both fallen asleep, William slung on the sofa, his long limbs hanging over the edge, and Timothée’s sprawled out on the carpet, the bottle of brandy clutched firmly in his hand. (For recovery purposes.)

A few hours later and Timmy’s hurling down the toilet. He wants to check his head for bullet holes, that’s how bad it’s aching. After having cleaned up, although there’s nothing to be done about the mess of curls that is his hair, he joins the American in his living room.

William is sitting up on the sofa, but it looks very much as if he’s just woken up, hair a mess and a 5 o'clock shadow, his expensive suit all wrinkles now. The sun is shining mercilessly bright and its rays lights up the room as he rubs his eyes. “Coffee?” he requests in a gruff voice. Timothée nods, before realizing that any movement of the head is a terrible idea as pain shots through it.

“What a fucking night” William mutters some time later as they drink their coffee. “And I’ve got a meeting with the lawyers this afternoon, not the sort of thing one should do hungover.”

“Oh yeah?” is all Timothée manages to get out, head still too sore to put any thoughts together.

“Yeah, divorce proceedings”

“Rotten business” Timmy states and the other man laughs. “Rotten business, indeed” he agrees and cheer him with his mug of coffee. “Still, a necessity that must be endured.” He looks around the loft. “But I’ll have a new painting to hang in my bachelor pad, that’s something to write home about!” he says, more cheerful now.

And fuck, he’d forgotten that part.

Feeling nauseous again he puts down his coffee cup. “Yeah, you’ll have a new painting” he agrees, mostly to fill the silence.

“Haven’t seen any of your work yet though” William considers. “You might be shit. My five-year-old niece might be a better painter, and I’ve just promised to write off your debts to me” he adds and laughs. Timmy gets up, there’s no putting this off. “I’ll go get it and you’ll decide” he says and heads for his bedroom.

The paintings leaned against the wall. He doesn’t turn it, doesn’t want to see it one last time. There’s not enough brandy in the world for that recovery. Something inside his chest is rioting against the very idea of handing the picture over to anyone else, but he pushes down the feeling of nausea and heads back to the living room, canvas clutched firmly in his hands.

“Well” he says and holds it up, so the other man can see. “Here’s your winnings”.

William looks up at it and then, the strangest thing happens. His entire being freezes, his mouth ajar, stuck mid-movement as he had begun to say something before having seemingly been struck by lightning. Bells are ringing alarmingly in Timothée’s head, going off like sirens. Somethings wrong.

He observes Williams glossy eyes taking in the portrait in front of him, mouth still agog in chock. He places to painting on the dingy little table but William still doesn’t take his eyes off it. He gets up slowly and walks over to the painting, as if in a trance, like a man bewitched, and he reaches out a hand to touch the painting and with hesitant fingers he gently touches your cheek. The nude portrait of you, the one Timothée had painted on the day that you left him, posing slung on the very same sofa William’s just slept on.

And it hits him then, like a collision.

That this is William. The William. The man who broke your engagement and sailed across the Atlantic with his new bride. A bride he’s apparently already separated from.

“How, how-” William begins but he seems unable to finish the sentence.

A sudden feeling of being a side character in somebody else’s story settles inside of Timothée. Words like destiny and star-crossed comes to mind as he observes the other man and his wide, wild eyes, the way he looks at the painting in absolute wonder.

“Is, is she still here? Is she still in Paris?” and his voice is weak but full of hope. Slowly Timothée shakes his head. “She’s left.” He confirms, and the crushing disappointment is so clear in the other man’s face that it feels cruel to continue, but he does. “She’s married now. To a baron”.

William’s head snaps away from the painting for the first time since he saw it. “Freddie?” He asks, voice bitter and Timmy nods. “That fucker” he swears “he always was sniffing after her” he adds resentfully. He looks back at the painting and his expression soften, but he looks sadder too.

“That’s why you came here, isn’t?” Timothée asks hesitantly. “To look for her?”

William nods, seemingly unable to look away from the picture. He reaches for it and an overwhelming urge to stop him, to remove the painting from his sight washes over Timothée. To hand this portrait of you away to a stranger had seemed like a sad but unavoidable thing to do. But to give it away in due for his debts to your ex fiancé… It felt dirty and cruel.

But what choice did he have?

And so, he watches William take the painting and watches him leave with the only thing he has left of you.

Because Timothée is 26 and he still hasn’t got any money. And he can’t compete with handsome William, or to Freddie the baron. Because Timothée is 26 and all he’s got to show for it is an apartment he can’t afford anymore and a broken heart.

He runs to the bathroom and hurls in the toilet again, unable to ignore the feeling of nausea and guilt any longer.

That night you come to him in his dreams. Like a vision you appear at the end of his bed, drenched in water. White, wet silk clenching to your body, hair slicked to your face and such a haunted look in your eyes that he involuntarily reaches out for you, to hold you, to help you, to save you. He’s not quite sure. But before he can reach you the scenario changes. Because suddenly – as is the way of dreams, you’re the Tate museum watching John Everett Millais Ophelia. Your standing next to him, water dripping from your drenched body down on the floor. He looks at you, but you keep your eyes on the painting.

And when he looks back at it, it’s no longer a portrait of Ophelia lying dead in the water. It’s you.

He wakes with a jolt, drenched in cold sweat, gasping for air. It feels like he has to force fresh air into his lungs, like he’s been under water for too long. He feels around himself, automatically, to feel for your body, make sure you’re safe.

Bur you are miles away.

February 14th, 1953

Timothée writes a new letter.

It’s 5 am and I'm drunk and I am thinking of you and in a few hours it’ll be 12 am and I'll be drunk and I'll be thinking of you. And so the story goes.

I met your William, charming bloke, shame about his wife. He came here looking for you, you know? Don’t worry, I told him you got married to a baron. Your wedding pictures looked lovely in the Tatler, by the way. Diamonds suits you.

I haven’t painted much since you left. I have no inspiration. For anything.

You know, we've made a beating heart out of my pain. It’s a living, breathing creature and it walks with me everywhere, hidden somewhere under my ribcage. Like a second heart. Where I go it follows. What I feel for you, it’s a Frankenstein's monster kind of grief, bits and pieces cut out from us both, turned into a living creature. Can you hear it beating for you? Can you hear it screaming out for you? Saying ‘where did she go? Where did she go? Why can’t I follow?’ Like a child begging for its mother. Come back, come back and collect your second heart, take it out of my body, remove it from me, I cannot stand its begging. I'd kill the monster, but it’s the only thing I have left of you now. Don’t think I could stomach the loss.

I’m not the same I was before I met you. This love has made a different man out of me. This love has made a bitter man out of me. This love sure feels a lot like drowning. In my dreams you come to me, all Ophelia-esque and suffering, and I want to pull both our bodies out of the water, but you’re determined to sink and I don’t want to let go of your hand and so – we drown.

I know it’ll pass, this longing I have for you. It must. I cannot keep walking these streets wrecked with grief. One day at a time. That’s what I tell myself each morning as a watch the sun rise over Paris, my head and heart pounding in revolt, one day at a time.

There’s a Swedish saying that goes ‘a lot of water shall run under a lot of bridges before I forget you’. What it essentially means is that it’ll take a lot for me to forget you, or the way you made me feel.

But I'm sorry. One mustn’t be morbid. I won’t write you again. I’ve tried to be grateful; I am trying. I hope married life is treating you well. I hope you’ve gotten all you ever wished for. I hope you’re happy. I honestly do. You deserve the best life has to offer. I’m just sad I can’t be the one giving it to you. Being without you is a hard thing to be grateful for.

One day at a time.

Yours,

Timothée

The next morning, he calls the model agency. Later, just as his headache is subsiding, a blonde model named Lucy knocks on his door. She’s chatty and friendly and moves around too much when he paints her. Her laugh is loud but childlike and she keeps the conversation going. He plays a Benny Goodman record and her hips gently swing along to the rhythm almost involuntarily and she sings along in a sweet voice to ‘The Sunny Side of the Street’.

Outside the sun is shining and the whole world seems at rest. It’s not the same – God knows it’s not the same – but for the first time in months it all seems, not alright perhaps, but bearable.

Later that night as he washes himself clean from the yellow paint that’s stained his fingers, he tries to push the feeling of guilt down from where it seems to be stuck in his throat. When that doesn’t work he tries to wash it down with absinth but as he lays down on the livingroom floor, too tired to make it into the bedroom, he watches the golden painting of Lucy gleam even in the dark, he wonders if perhaps absinth is what makes guilt grow.

1st of Mars, 1953

Timothée wakes to sunlight streaming in through the large and unwashed windows. For a long while he lays there completely still, sprawled out on the white linen sheets, curly hair draped over the pillow; trying to force his eyes to get used to the light. His head is pounding, and his body aches, but the sensation feels as familiar as the scent of turpentine and oil paint. Slowly he moves his limbs, first wiggling his toes and his hands; as if to count them all, and then, with monumental strength of character, he gets out of bed. Naked as the day he was born he walks over to the window. Far down on the street Paris is already awake, cars and passer-byers chasing down the streets. Some have changed out of their heavy, winter jackets to lighter coats as the bustle off to their individual destination.

It is the first day of spring.

He turns away from the window, in search for some clothes but stop in his tracks. As if seeing the room with new eyes he takes it in. Around the bed lay bottle after bottle of liquor, the sheets are old and dirty, the room hasn’t been dusted in months, and various pieces of clothing lay scattered everywhere.

He can’t go on like this. It’s time, whether he wants it to be or not. He has to go on.

He pours down the absinthe, the rum, the whiskey and the brandy down the kitchen sink and watches as it disappears. He cleans and wipes the floor, washes his sheets and clothes and then carefully folds them and puts them away in his closet. He finishes his painting of Lucy and then starts on another. He calls his delighted art dealer and informs him of the progress, tells him that he’ll have more ones in no time. He then swallows his pride and calls madam Marguerite, asking for the loan she offered. Pride won’t keep him warm if he loses the apartment due to not paying rent. She too sounds delighted and tells him he can pay her back by coming over for dinner. They both need the company.

And so, he walks to her apartment, a bouquet of daffodils in hand, smelling like clean laundry and with his newly brushed hair it all feel an awful lot like going to church. Upon arriving at Marguerite’s home, a maid opens the door for him and he tries not to smile when she wrinkles her nose and takes his old and patchy coat. The apartment is palace-like in grandeur, white marble everywhere, and decorated with expertise. She leads him into the lounge and announces him.

“Mr. Chalamet, madam”.

“Yes, thank you Louise” Marguerite answers and the maid leaves them.

“A cocktail?” she asks, holding up an empty martini glass. He politely accepts and looks around the room as she prepares it. “Is that a Picasso?” he asks astonished, pointing at a blue portrait of a woman on the wall opposite.

“Yes” she says and hands him a martini.

“How- how?”

She smiles at him indulgently. “I knew him in my youth” she explains and takes a sip from her own drink. He stares at her in amazement. “You know Pablo Picasso?”

She scoffs. “Oh, don’t be jealous of that, man’s an absolute fool”.

And so, they talk, all through drinks and then dinner. About art and music. About both of their childhoods, different though they both may have been. She tells him stories from her long and impressive life. About dahling Humphrey. After dinner, which had been a superb affair of duck confit; served on the finest of porcelain and paired with the finest of wines, they’d gone out on the terrace for drinks and smokes. He sticks to his old Lucky Strikes and she to imported Russian cigarettes, (a habit she’d picked up during the war, she’d told him).

“Darling Humprey would have liked you, he would have rooted for you” she says and leans back in her chair, a Hermès blanket in her lap to keep her warm.

“Oh really? Was he a good gambler?”

“Oh god no, he was terrible better. And a sore loser.” she says and smiles in the fond way she does when she thinks of her late husband.

“How reassuring for me” he says dryly.

“Dahlinh” she begins in a drawl that would have made Betty Davis proud, “what should be reassuring is that I’m fighting in your corner, and I don’t believe in a losing hand”. Then, changing the subject she says “My niece is quite right you know, your knowledge of classical music is subpar, so I'm educating you. Next week, I'll take you to the opera.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, indeed. Gianni Schicchi. I have a spare ticket so feel free to bring someone along with you”.

“Puccini?” he says with a grimace.

“Now boy, I'm fond of you but if you say bad word of Puccini I will throw you of this balcony myself”.

He smiles, but she reminds him so much of her grandniece in this moment and something in his chest is calling out for you

Later that week he calls Lucy and they go out dancing. He doesn’t take her to Pigelle, wants to keep away from its smoke-filled rooms and sticky floors. Escapism isn’t heaven. Not anymore. Instead he takes her to La Noyade, a nice place where nice people go to have fun. And they dance, and she makes him laugh and it’s not world-altering or butterfly-inducing but it’s a good way to pass the time. They mindlessly chat about movies, and music and film stars over glasses of Champagne and they never once wade into personal territories. She wears a nice and tight dress in a sunny color, her golden blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, and as he watches her seductively move her hips to the live band's music, he finds himself thinking ‘why not?’ And when she kisses him with painted-pink lips under a streetlamp he kisses her back. Because why not. And when he takes her to bed that night and fucks her into the mattress, her moans ringing in his ears, and her yellow hair sprawled over his pillows he nearly manages to forget you.

Nearly.

He holds her as she falls asleep and he tries to get used to the unfamiliar scent of her hair, the unfamiliarity of her body next to his. One day at a time.

(In his dreams you come to him, through the haze of a misty beach. You take his hand and guide him into a boat. And there you lay, as the boat drifts away and you watch the stars. You hold him close, and breathing feels easier. The rioting creature inside his chest finally at ease.)

Walking of the stairs of L'Opéra Garnier one can’t help feel anything but small. The supreme grandeur of the palace is designed to make you feel inferior after all. The high ceiling, gloriously painted by Isidore Pils, is enough to knock the breath out of anyone, and then white marble and gold for as far as the eye can see.

Timothée is wearing a tuxedo, the cheap rental kind, and the collar hasn’t been starched properly. It itches, and he fights the urge to scratch at his neck, and so he keeps his hand occupied by taking Lucy’s hand in his, and they make their way forward.

They make their way down the grand foyer. All around them people are dressed up to the nine’s in evening dresses, furs and tuxedos and more diamonds than he’s seen in his entire life, and god, Timothée misses Montmartre. Through the crowd he can see madam Marguerite, fitting her surroundings perfectly.

“Madam” he greets and kisses her cheek.

“Timothée” she responds, and she sounds fond. However, before he can introduce Lucy to her Marguerite looks over his shoulder and excitingly exclaims “Oh, there you are darling!” Without thinking he turns around to look at whomever Marguerite is greeting.

His body reacts before he does and goes completely still and for a moment he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him.

It’s you.

With your hair up in an eloquent hairdo, wearing a black velvet gown that he bets costs more than his apartment, and diamonds around your neck, you’re walking towards them. Arm in arm with you walks a man Timothée recognizes from the Tatler, Freddie, with blond hair and upturned nose. He’s certainly not wearing rental wear. “Timothée?” you ask in a weak voice as you reach him. You’re seemingly unable to believe your eyes. “Is it really you?” And with your painted blood-red lips you lean in to kiss his cheek, but they never touch his skin. You pull away and he sees how Freddie’s arm tightens around your waist.

Then you look at Lucy.

“Oh, yes of course, this is Lucy she’s my, uh” he halters.

“Muse” Lucy fills in and Timothée wants to protest, wants to catch the word midair and change it for something else, something less familiar. But he can’t. So, he watches in silence as she stretches out a hand for you to shake, which you elegantly do and even though you’re politely smiling there’s a frozen look on your face that unsettles him. With effortless grace you introduce yourself.

Then, “and this is my husband, Frederic”. You smile up at him and something inside Timothée chest is wreaking havoc. Freddie looks bored.

“Should we move along?” Freddie says in a drawling, posh voice that makes Timmy’s skin prickle in displeasure.

“Of course” Marguerite says, and leads the way, calling out ‘hello’s’ and ‘dahling’s’ to various familiar faces as she goes. Lucy crosses arms with him and they follow the older women's lead, you and your husband at your heel.

Timothée feels disorientated, head swimming with thoughts. There are too many feelings at once inside of him, too many different emotions fighting for dominance. But somehow, he continues to put one foot in front of the other and before he knows it, they’re in the auditorium. They’re in one of the boxes, and Marguerite places herself front row, next to an elderly gentleman she greets with fond familiarity. In the row behind them Freddie guides his wife and then sits down next to her. He and Lucy take the two seats behind them, Timothée ending up in the seat right behind you. He sees how Freddie leans in to whisper something in your ear, but he can’t hear his words. All he can see is that you stiffen, and slowly shake your head.

He looks at you, you’re perfect updo, not a hair out of place, the immaculately painted lips, the swan-like neck and perfect stiff posture. Your face still with that unsettling frozen look, as if you’ve retracted somewhere far inside yourself and he remembers how you used to dance in his studio, unguarded and free. Laughing and dancing while he painted you. A sudden urge to take your hand grabs hold of him. To take your hand and lead you away from all of this, away from the man sitting down beside you. To loosen your hair and limbs. To take you home and play Chopin and make you laugh again. Erase that frozen, still look from your face.

The lighting dims in the auditorium and then the orchestra begin the dramatic first chords of the opera but Timothée finds it hard to concentrate. Lucy has her eyes set on the stage, her hand on his knee. He feels like a trapped animal.

He thanks his lucky star that it’s at least only a one-act opera he tries to focus on the performances, but his eyes keep moving back to your neck. Your dress is backless and if he reaches out his hand, he could touch your skin. But doesn’t. Knows you wouldn’t want him to.

When O Mio Babbino Caro starts playing he sees how you lean forward, mesmerized by the beautiful voice of the soprano and he smiles, for he remembers you telling him it’s your favorite aria. But he sees how Freddie puts a hand on your arm, making you sit straight again.

‘Huh’ Timothée thinks and looks at your husband, ‘so this is what pure hatred feels like’. He digs his nails into his hand, leaving little half-moon shaped marks.

Eventually the wretched thing ends and after having applauded the performers and the orchestra you all rise up to leave. You turn and look at him and he wants nothing more than to reach out and touch your cheek, tell you how beautiful you are, how brave and wise and kind, and how undeserving the man next to you is. But he doesn’t.

Once outside it’s decided that you and your husband are going back to George V with your aunt for drinks. Politely you invite him and Lucy but he reclines with a bad excuse. He observes you, and even with your perfectly polite manners it’ like you’re walking around half-asleep, still with that frozen look in your face that’s beginning to scare him. And Christ, you’re just so guarded. You bid your goodbyes, and kissing her cheek he thanks Marguerite for the tickets, but when he tries to say goodbye to you, he can see Freddie’s arm tighten around your wait again. So instead of leaning into a kiss on the cheek he politely bows his head and you and in a gentle voice he says “goodbye then, it was nice seeing you again”. You smile back, eyes glossy and for a moment he wonders if you’re about to cry but a moment later you’ve pulled yourself together and politely bids goodbye to Lucy. And then you’re walking away, Freddie’s arm still around your waist.

* The next morning he goes to visit madam Marguerite, a book in hand. Louise lets him in, looking down on him as usual. “Would you like me to mend this, monsieur?” she asks, both sarcasm and contempt clear in her voice, as she looks takes his coat, indicating the big tear in one of the sides. “If you wouldn’t mind” he answers cheekily and walks past her.

Marguerite is sitting on the terrace eating breakfast, Le Monde in front of her. He puts down his copy of Jane Austen’s Emma in front of her.

“There” he says and sits down in the chair opposite her “your literary soulmate”.

She scoffs “Mr. Knightley really isn’t my type”

He rolls his eyes, but smiles fondly at her “No I shouldn’t think so. And I meant Emma, not Mr. Knightley. You and Emma are the same”. “Oh what utter nonsense!” She burst out, indignant, “I’ve never meddled a day in my life!”

Timothée stares at her in disbelief.

“Honestly!” she defends herself “I didn’t know they were coming to Paris until the day before and then, well, it seemed unnecessary to tell you”.

“You should have warned me she’d be there” he says sternly. “If nothing else then because then I wouldn’t have invited Lucy”.

She has the decency to look ashamed. “Oh, I dare say I should have warned you. But I was afraid you’d cancel, and I needed you to see it with your own eyes.”

“See what?”

She looks him dead in the eye then, a grave look, “the change in her, of course”.

He stays silent, doesn’t know what to say, drags his hands through his hair in distress.

“So” she says after a few moments of silence, “what do you make of Freddie?”

“The words princeling comes to mind”.

She observes him for a second, a sceptic look on her face, “I’m sure that’s not the only word that comes to mind”. He can’t help but smile at that, because she’s right. “True, but those are not words I'd use in front of a lady. She bursts out in laugher. “Darlinh, I practically invented swearing, no need to hold back in front of me.”

“What do you think of him?" He asks instead.

She huffs. “I prefer Picasso”. *

14th of Mars, 1953

Timothée is painting. Specks of yellow and gold adorn his hands and white shirt. The afternoon sun is lighting up the room and Chopin is playing for the first time in months on the record player. The knock on the door startles him, and since he was in the process of painting the details of Lucy’s eyes a stroke of dark paint ends up on her eyebrow as his hand jerks in surprise at the sudden noise.

“Fuck” he swears, and with a great deal of annoyance does he go to open the door.

You look surprised as he flings the door open.

“Sorry” you say, apologetically. “Is this an inconvenient time?”

He doesn’t answer, can’t seem to find his voice, just steps aside, inviting you to come in. You do, and move into the studio. He walks after you, seemingly in a daze.

“Drink?” he asks eventually, interrupting the pressing silence.

“Yes please” you answer. He looks at you, your hair is elegantly styled and your wearing another expensive looking dress. You’re not looking at him though, but instead at the golden portrait of Lucy he’s in the process of making. You don’t say anything. There’s still that still look on your face and it unsettles him.

He hands her a glass of gin. “Where’s dear Freddie then?” he asks, in a feigned nonchalant manner as he offers you a cigarette. You step closer to him so that he can light it. You’re so close he can smell your familiar perfume, and feel the heat from your skin. He looks down on you as you try to get the end to gleam. He can count your eyelashes from this distance, see every single feature in your face, every crook and corner. In the beginning, when you had first come to this studio, he had felt obsessed by the idea of painting your perfect likeness. But the closer he looked at you, the more impossible it felt. “Freddie is at a business function. I was not required” you answer and steps away from him, blowing out smoke into the room. “And where’s your muse?” you ask, and there’s a certain amount of resentment in your voice that you can’t seem to keep at bay.

“Right here” he answers simply, looking at you.

“And Lucy?”

“I don’t know” he responds truthfully. “I got your letter” you say, calmly.

Ah,

“Sorry” he says. “Shouldn’t have sent that. I was drunk”.

You keep looking at him, seemingly deep in thought. And before he loses all courage he asks, “may I paint you again? One last time?” “In what colour?” “In all your colours, just as you are” he answers, and then “I don’t have rose-colored glasses when I look at you anymore”. The room goes very still for a moment. “Do you still want me?” you ask, voice small. And with sincerity clear in his voice he answers. “More than ever”.

“No” you say and put down your drink, stubbing out your cigarette in the ashtray. “No, I don’t want you to paint me”.

Something twists painfully in his chest.

“That’s not what I want you to do to me” you continue and step closer.

And then you kiss him.

He grabs hold of you and kisses you back, trying to express every ounce of longing he’s felt since you left into the kiss. But he can tell part of you is holding back. “Don’t do that” he says in a low voice, pulling away from you. His eyes are bright and shining. “If you’re with me, you’re with me. Don’t keep foot out the door. If you’re with me; be with me. If you don’t want to be, then you have to leave. I don’t want you half-heartedly. I understand you can’t stay with me longer than today but if you’re with me then don’t keep your mind on him.” You stare at him, taken aback. “Well?” he asks “is this what you want?” Your answer is a red-hot kiss. Your answer is your hands, trying to tear his shirt off of him. Trying desperately to get your hands on his skin and he wants to cry from the sheer relief of feeling you touch him again. Frantically you’re tearing at his clothes. He grips your hands to stop you. “Slowly” he whispers in your ear. He can tell that you’re worked up from your labored breathing, chest rising and falling quickly, your eyes gleaming as you look up at him. The frozen look finally gone. You look alive again. He can tell that all you want right now is for him to lay you down and fuck you as hard and fast as he can. But he doesn’t want to rush this, knows this is all the time he’s going to get. And he feels like a man living on borrowed time. He kisses you, languidly, and your lips taste like gin. He leads you down, so you’re lying on the soft carpet, hovering above you. For ages all you do is kiss, your hands roaming his body, like you can’t stop touching him. Eventually he starts to remove your clothes, the silky material of your dress soft like water in his hands as he takes it off you, sneaking in kisses all over your body as he does so. You in turn help remove his dress shirt and trousers. Until eventually there’s nothing but air separating you. He looks you directly, deep into your eyes “Sure?” he asks, because he must hear it. Couldn’t live with himself if you ended up regretting this. “Yes” you say, voice barely louder than a whisper, but it doesn’t waver. The last rays of golden sunshine lights up the room and maybe it’s his overactive imagination, but he swears the light forms a halo around your head. He’s prowling over you, settled in-between your legs. He thinks you must see, surely you must see, all the wonder in his eyes that he feels when he looks at you. He kisses your sensitive nipples and you shiver in delight. Your hands in his hair and you move up against him, desperate for him to touch more of you. He bites, nips, licks and sucks your breasts, leaving wet traces as he goes and god, he’s missed this; missed you. The taste and feel of your soft skin, your gasps and moans, your hands tugging at his hair. Some part of him, a particularly cynical part of him, thought he’d must have made it up, that in the aftermath of you leaving his brain had beautified the memories of you until you’d reach almost divine proportions. But it was all real.

He grinds his body against yours, fill his hands with your breast, kisses you everywhere he can. He reaches down a hand to the wetness between your legs. “So wet” he murmurs against your skin “have you been thinking about this all day?” He pushes a finger inside you and you buckle up against him in response. “Mon cœur” he continues as he presses wet kisses against your throat, and adds another finger inside you, touching you with expertise in just the way he knows will send sparks of pleasure all down your spine. He remembers exactly how you like to be touched. “I asked you a question”. “Yes” you moan. He looks down on his fingers, moving in and out of you, glistening with your wetness. “Have you missed it?” he asks, voice low, and he speeds up the pace, his thumb moving over your clit. Your head thrown back you let out a deep moan and in a breathless voice you answer “yes, yes, missed it so much”.

Your hair has fallen out of its elegant hairdo, your cheeks flushed and wet and lips swollen from kisses. You look wild and free.

“I’ve been thinking about this, touching you; fucking you, ever since the opera” he leans down and kisses your clit, fingers still moving inside of you. And then he sucks on it and you explode around his fingers, cramping down around them, hips bucking and moans falling freely from your lips.

He strokes your cheek and kisses your face as he lets you catch your breath. Eventually you start kissing him back, softly at first, then ardently. He so hard he feels he could self-combust but as he lines up at your entrance, he looks you in the eye and asks “sure?”

“Never been more certain” you reply, voice like honey, and you wrap your leg around his waist, trying to guide him inside you.

He lets you get used to him, adjust to his size, before he starts moving. Your hands are in his and he can feel your wedding ring against his skin.

You try to incite him to move faster, bucking your hips against him, but he doesn’t speed up. Doesn’t want to go too hard on you.

“I’m not made of porcelain” you hiss, frustrated “you’re not going to hurt me. Fuck me like I'm yours”.

He’s starts fucking you with more force then, grinding where he knows you like it. Your nails are scratching his back, pulling at his hair. Sounds – moans, whimpers and begging's of more – escaping your mouth uninterruptedly. You can’t seem to stop them. He looks down on you and he swears out loud. The good damn sight of you like this, he knows he’ll never get the image out of his head. Knows that in months from now – when you’re back in good old England with your husband and he’s all alone here in this apartment – that he could paint this moment with picture-like perfection. Your glossy eyes filled with bliss, wild hair and flushed skin, lips still painted red and formed in a moan. But he won’t. He’ll let it be a memory, the thought of anyone else seeing that painting too unsettling for words. You come again then, eyes tight shut and head thrown back, mouth wide open in a silent scream. He feels your orgasm, can feel you spasm around him and he swears he’s gone to heaven. And as the final rays of sunlight disappears outside, he calls your name – half prayer half cry– and releases inside you, white hot pleasure racing down his spine, and then the whole room goes dark. The only reasons he knows the world hasn’t ended are your warm and sweaty body beneath him. The only sounds in the whole, wide world are both of your breathless gasps. * After, you put on your clothes in silence, avoiding the others eyes. He feels almost shy. The thing inside his chest is crying, knowing that you’re minutes away from leaving again, that this time it’s forever. How do you do something even though it kills you? “I’m sorry, for everything” you say and it startles him. “For everything?” “Yes. I’m sorry I came back” you avoid his eyes as you speak “well, I’m sorry but I don’t regret that part. And I’m sorry I can’t stay. I’ve never meant to hurt you.” Because it’s the right thing to do.

You are staying with your husband. This is your decision. He can’t force you to leave, or stay. He can’t save you, no matter what Marguerite says. Not when you’re determined to drown. “I’ve loved you wholeheartedly and I have no regrets. I’ve loved you of my own free will. You don’t owe me anything.”

The frozen look is back on your face and your spine straight again, hair fixed in place. You’ve put your armor back on. And like this, you leave.

* 18th of April, 1953

It’s a fine morning in April and Timothée is headed over to madam Marguerite’s apartment, a box of treats from her favourite patisserie in one hand and bouquet of magnolias in the other. Later this week she’s taking him to the opera again, Rossini this time, and he wants to give her something as a thank you.

Outside on the street an ambulance is parked. He walks past it and starts climbing the many stairs to her apartment. When he gets to Marguerite’s floor he’s taken by surprise. The apartment door is wide open and in the doorway stand a sobbing Louise, being comforted by a medic. Dread settles in his stomach.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and he can hear the panic in his own voice. “Where’s madam Marguerite?”

Louise starts sobbing even louder and the kind-looking medic pats her sympathetically on the shoulder.

“She passed away in her sleep last night. This woman here found her this morning”.

Something falls inside Timothée and is lost forever. The ground feels unsteady under his feet and for a second, he waivers. “Have you notified her family?” He asks.

The man shakes his head, “no, not yet”.

“I’ll do it” Timothée says firmly, letting it be known that this isn’t up for discussion.

* “Frederic Fairfax speaking” Freddie’s drawly voice answers when Timothée calls your London address.

“Hello, it’s Timothée Chalamet, could I speak to your wife, it’s urgent”

Silence for ten long seconds.

“No, anything you want to tell her you can tell me” Freddie eventually answers and there’s tension in his voice.

“Is she not in?”

“Yes, she is, but I'd rather you take this with me, Mr. Chalamet”.

“I see” Timmy answers, and he somehow manages to keep the rage he feels out of his voice. “But I have some very distressing and urgent news I have to pass on”.

“Then I suggest you share them with me”

Timothée wants to bang his head against the wall. But he keeps his voice calm. “You see, her greataunt Marguerite has passed away.”

“I see” the other man answers in a cold, unfeeling voice. “Well, if that was all, Mr. Chalamet, good bye.”

And he hangs up.

* May 1st, 1953.

In a red brick building on Chancery Lane, London, Timothée is sitting smoking in an armchair. The solicitor’s office looks like you would imagine a solicitor's office to look like, with oak furniture and cabinets full of files with important documents, outside busy men in suits hustling by and secretaries in pen skirts tapping on their typewriters’.

Madam Marguerite’s solicitor Mr. Lancaster looks on the crowd gathered for the reading of the will.

There’s Timothée, lounging in his chair, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else and avoiding looking at you. There’s you, perfectly poised and wearing black, hands clapped in your lap to stop them from shaking. Then there’s your parents, your black-clad mother sniffling into a tissue and your father, with a grave look on his face.

Freddie is nowhere to be seen, and this surprises Timothée.

“Shall we begin?” the solicitor starts, organizing the papers in front of him. There’s a general hum of agreeing from the crown and Mr. Lancaster clears his throat. “Very well then. I had the great fortune of knowing Mrs. Beauchêne-Wright and I considered her a personal friend. She was a remarkable woman” he clears his throat again and Timothée shuffles with his feet, still not understanding why he’s been called to be present at this occasion. “An extraordinary woman” he repeats and look down at the papers in front of him. “Very well then” he says, before beginning to read from the will. “This is the last will of me Marguerite Beauchêne-Wright of 55 Rue de Châteaudun 75009 Paris -”

* It’s raining outside, a gentle but persistent drizzle. TImothée stands under his umbrella and observes as your mother storms off, her husband at her heel, into a taxi. She slams the door and they drive off, water splashing up on the sidewalk. His head feels foggy. The whole situation feels unreal. He’s standing outside the red brick building smoking, trying to get a grip on the situation. In a few hours he has to get back to Victoria station to take the night train back to Paris.

You walk out of the solicitor's office, a dazed look on your face, seemingly not even noticing the rain falling down. You seem him and walk up to him and he lifts his umbrella so you’re under it too.

“Gotta admit, didn’t see that one coming” he states and hands you his cigarette. You take it gratefully and inhale deeply.

“No” you say, some seconds later, “no I didn’t quite see that coming either”. A homourless laugh escapes you. “They’re furious about it” referring to your parents. “Asked if they could contest the will. Mr. Lancaster told them they didn’t have a leg to stand on”. “So” you say and look up at him. “What are you going to do with the money?”

The money. Marguerite’s entire estate divided between him and the woman in front of him. There had been a few smaller bequests to various people and charities, but the absolute majority of the fortune where to be split between you. Even after all the death duties it was by all consideration a fortune.

“Dunno” he answers. ”Haven’t really thought ahead that far”. And then, because he can’t contain his curiosity anymore. “Where’s dear Freddie then?” You’re silent for a moment, avoiding his eyes as you watch the rain create patterns in the puddles. “Freddie’s left.” you say eventually. “He’s seeking for a divorce. God knows he’s got grounds for it.” the cigarette shakes in your trembling hand. “I’ve been a terrible wife all things considered.”

He’s stunned into silence, too much life-altering information having been dropped on him already today. Eventually he gets a hold of himself and states, because he already knows it to be true, “he knows about us, doesn’t he? About what happened in Paris.”

You nod, and two tears fall down your cheeks. “They’re furious with me.”

“Who are?” he asks, confused.

“My family” “Why?”

A grimace, then “doesn’t matter”. Drop the cigarette on the ground and stomp it out. “Mr. Lancaster says we have to go to Nice. Apparently, most of her possessions are there and we need to go through them. He says that since we own the house now, we can live in it while we do so”.

He observes her for a moment. “I have an exhibition in Paris this month, I can’t leave before that’s done.”

You smile, but it’s still devoid of humour. “And I have a divorce to settle.”

The rain keeps falling around them.

“How about this” you say “we’ll go there in July, a summer on the riviera doesn’t sound too bad, and we’ll...” you trail of for a second “and we’ll settle everything then”.

Gently he puts his fingers under your chin and tilts your head up so that you look at him. You look as if you’re bursting at the seams, like you’re at your last straw. “Alright” he says and leans in to gently press a kiss on your forehead. “Alright, sounds like a plan”. And then he looks you in the eyes again “Everything will be alright, you know. Everything will be fine”.

You smile again, and this time it’s more genuine. Then you lean in, and place the softest of kisses on his mouth.

Then you leave. A/N: jesus christ, I spent a good 25 minutes of my life googling the rules of aristocratic titles in England. Freddie’s father is an earl, that makes freddie as the oldest son a baron and his wife a baronet? Right? If that’s not correct then, well, sorry, but those rules are mind boggling.

Other things I've googled a lot is the language of flowers and what different flowers symbolizes.

That ‘Swedish saying’ timmy refers to in his letter is not a saying but in fact from a song by Veronica Maggio called Stopp and very badly translated by me.

Also. I know that timothée’s letter is a bit... disturbing, but the thought of it wouldn't leave my mind so I had to write it.

I am planning on writing the last part, but this story always takes a lot of effort to write so it’ll be a while.

#timothee chalamet #timothee x reader #timothee x you #timothee x y/n #timothee chalamet x reader #timothèe chalamet #timothée x reader #timothée x you #timothée chalamet #timothee imagine #timothee fanfic

181 notes · View notes