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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 1 month

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The Quiet Ones 1

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You live a quiet life, but your peace is fractured by a chaotic man.

Characters: Lloyd Hansen, short!shy!reader

Note: don't ask me why I did this.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me <3

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Asking for more or putting ‘part 2?’ is not feedback.

Love you all. You are appreciated and your are worthy. Treat yourself with care. 💖

You keep to yourself. That’s the safest, the easiest way to live. You keep your head down, your eyes to yourself, your voice bottled up.

You grip your phone as you approach the coffee shop. You stand on your toes to see through the painted windows and frown at the long queue. You won’t have to worry about that. Like everything else social, you’ve found a work around.

You look at your phone, the app showing your order as ‘preparing’. It should be done shortly as the progress bar fills close to complete. You can bear the claustrophobia for a minute or so until it’s ready.

You go to open the door but an arm reaches past you and does that first. You step back, patiently waiting for the other customer to precede you. They don’t move. You stare at their shoes. Dark blue velvet loafers with gold emblems on chains.

“Go on, baby face, I got it,” the man’s voice makes your skin crawl.

You shrink down and give a nod, throat clenching as you struggle to find your voice. You’re not much for conversation but you’re but impolite.

“Thanks,” you force out without raising your head.

You scurry through quickly, a bit to close to the stranger than you like, and you clasp your phone against your chest as you stand just away from the cluster of people awaiting their orders. You bounce on your feet as the noises join together to form a cacophony; the hissing steam, the clanging metal, the clinking porcelain, the calls of the workers behind the counter, and the buzz of the crowd seated or standing around the cafe. Sweat gathers on the nape of your neck as the chaos swirls a storm around you.

You pull your phone away from the front of your pullover and check the screen. Should be ready any moment and you’ll be free of the circus. You adjust your grip on the phone, almost jittery as another customer joins the wait at the pick up window.

You breathe out. It’s not usually this busy at this time. You have a routine. You can handle the expected. You order on your phone so you don’t need to talk to anyone. You wait outside until it’s almost done then come in too quickly claim your prize. But not today, something’s different and it’s throwing everything off.

It’s only on Wednesday’s that you venture down to the cafe. It’s the halfway point of your week so you mark it with a taste of motivation. The same order every week. A London fog latte. Simple and affordable. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated.

Your name cuts through the din, “...medium London fog.”

You drop your arm to your side and set your shoulders. You march forward through the parting bodies ahead of you and reach for the cup. Before you can grasp it, someone else scoops it up. You nearly cry out in horror. Someone’s stealing your order!

You turn to the tea thief but they make no move to flee. They hold the cup nonchalantly, turning it to read the sticker on the side, reciting the same name that just rose from the barista’s lips seconds ago. You face the stranger but again, your eyes are downward.

The blue loafers!

“Cute name,” he comments as he holds the cup out.

You once more try to take the cup but before you can, he has it out of reach again. Your lashes flick and your fingers twiddle helplessly. His large hand is firmly around the cup so even if you did try to wrestle it from him, you doubt you’d have any hope but to spill it all.

You look around but no one else seems to notice. They’re all staring at their phones or talking with the person next to them. The staff behind the counter are too busy appeasing the rush of orders.

“I’ve never tried one of these,” he taunts, “I’m more of a ristretto guy. Like my espresso.”

You shake your head and rescind your hand, balling it against your fist. What does he want? Why is he bothering you? You said thank you. Did he not hear you?

“Don’t get yourself in a tizzy,” he pushes the tea towards you, “there you are, sweat pea.”

You hesitate. You slowly unfurl your fingers and reach for the cup. As you wrap your fingers around it, you can’t help but brush his. Thick and strong and unmoving. He clings to it for just a moment before he lets you have it.

“Thanks,” you squeak again, this time louder so he certainly hears you.

“You got a sweet voice,” he puts his hand on his hip, a glimpse of a shiny gold watch face peeking out from beneath his sleeve, “I’d love to hear more of it.”

Your eyes round as you focus on the zipper of his thin jacket. You shake your head and meekly raise your cup awkwardly and dip your chin slightly. No thanks.

You turn and weave your way back through the crowd. Your heart is thumping in your chest. What an odd encounter.

More so, you’re dismayed that he saw you. That he noticed you. For years, you’ve done your best to be invisible. You prefer it that way. You don’t even think your neighbours know you exist. But that man, he seemed to see nothing but you.

You push outside and nearly drop your cup. You try to steady yourself. You’re all knotted up and tense. You tuck your phone into your back pocket and bring the cup before you nose, inhaling the sweet scent of the foam. Something about it isn’t as soothing as usual.

You turn down the pavement and wince as a sole scuffs close behind you. Suddenly, another set of steps walk next to yours, measured to keep in tandem with your own short legs. Blue velvet.

You walk faster. Is he following you? Why? What does he want? He’s much taller, you can’t outpace him.

“You know, when I said I’d like to hear more, I thought maybe over a coffee?” He suggests.

You don’t say a word as you keep your eyes forward, squeezing your cup tight as you try not to swish it around too much. You’ve never had to deal with this before. Men don’t see you. There was a time you hated that but since, you were grateful for that.

“I mean, I could do most of the talking, never had much of a trouble with that, jellybean,” he offers.

You shake your head. Your throat tightens. You can’t speak. You want to scream but you can’t make a noise.

As you get to the corner, you stop short. He steps past you but just as quickly catches himself and turns to face you. You gulp and look down at your cup. You can’t keep going. If you do, you’ll lead him right to your home.

“What’s going on, sweetheart? You forget something? How about we head back and I’ll buy you something sugary to go with that?”

You furrow your brow and step back on your heel. You bring your eyes up, a furtive glance at his face, brief and flickering. You just want to know what he looks like so you never see him again.

His blue eyes twinkle, his nose is long but proportioned to his chiseled face, his hair is combed back, the sides shaved, and a thick swatch of hair lines his upper lip. He’s older than you, you know that much, but you’ve never good at gauging age. You’ve never seen him before but you can’t be sure. You don’t look at many faces.

You pivot and cross the street without looking. You narrowly miss a bumper and get a honk in remonstrance. You can’t stop yourself. You’re panicking. You head down the next street as his footsteps follow. It’s all you can hear.

As you pass a bin, you dump the drink. You don’t pause as it plummets heavily into the trash and you fall into a brisk half-jog. You pump your arms, puffing wildly, dizzy as you search for a saviour.

You dash into the library. You don’t know what you’re looking for. Just for anyone to get this man to leave you alone.

You don’t look back as you enter and head straight for the front counter. You’re out of breath as you approach the rounded edge and tap the bell frantically. A woman emerges from behind the window wall and she greets you with a confused chime.

“Hello, can I help you?” She asks.

“Yes, I need...” you gulp and glance at the doors. You push away from the counter and spin, searching. You don’t see the man. He’s probably waiting outside. But you never looked back. You never really saw if he was following. “I...” you turn back to the woman, “never mind.”

You cross your arms and turn away. You cringe as you realise how ridiculous you must have seemed. Worse, you didn’t mean to bother someone just doing their job and over what? You’re own issues. You should go home, back to your reclusion, where you can’t be in anyone’s way.

👄

When you finally muster the courage to leave the library, your journey home is slowed by your paranoia. You have your phone out, held up so you can see over your shoulder with the front camera. You watch the screen more than the sidewalk ahead of you.

You get home without a second shadow. As you let yourself through the grated front door of the building, you can’t help but feel stupid. That man must’ve got the idea when you as good as ran in the other direction. You’re being dramatic.

You close the camera and put your phone away. You waist six dollars in your frantic flight. You mourn the tea latte as the heavy inner door clunks shut behind you. You drag your feet up the stairs as your keys jingle on your finger.

You apartment is at the very end of the hall. You enter and twist the latch. You slide the chain into place and hang the key ring on the little hook beside the door frame. You untangle your purse and leave it with your phone on the table in the corner.

You shuffle the few feet to the front room and look around. You find comfort in the familiarity of your little apartment. Your hideaway.

You go back to your desk and sign back in. You’re back later than usual but you can still make up the time. As long as there’s enough tasks left in the portal. You don’t have to let that man ruin your whole day. You’ll never see him again. In a few days, you won’t even remember him.

👄

Wednesday. Halfway through the week.

You scroll and click around your screen as you watch the clock in the corner tick on. Usually around this time, you’d be excited. You’d clock out for your break and go down to the cafe. As much as you looked forward to the treat, the walk alone was relaxing in its own way.

Not that day. Despite your efforts to shrug off the strange encounter, you haven’t shaken it. So instead, the kettle boils as a bag of earl gray sits in an empty mug. You’re not going. Maybe next week.

You’re a bit depressed but you’re too nervous to make the venture. Oh well, you’ll save a bit of money. You could find a different place next time. That might be easier.

You stay logged in and claim a new task. Hey, you can be done work earlier if you can power through. You might even make a few extra bucks.

The kettle clicks and you get up to pour the water. You leave it to steep, forgetting it for the screen before you. Your fingers tap endlessly across the keyboard, filling the silence as you zone in on the words, transcribing messy ink to Times New Roman.

Your trance is broken by a sudden buzz. You sit up, the kink in your neck pangs. You need to stop hunching. The buzz comes again. Is that... It must be a mistake. It happens now and then, someone buzzes the wrong apartment.

You get up as it sounds a third time and you shuffle down to the speaker box. You hit the button, “wrong number.”

“No--”

You let go of the number before you can hear the response. They buzz again. You sigh. You hit the button.

“I’m sorry but you have the wrong number,” you repeat.

“I don--”

You release the button again and take a step back. Buzz! You’re getting annoyed. You hit the button. “Wrong--”

“Got a delivery. 212.” The man’s voice drowns out your own, reciting your name after your apartment number. Your finger stays on the button as you frown. A delivery?

“I’m not expecting a delivery.”

“Are you...” he says your name again.

“... yes.”

Silence, filled with the low hum of the speaker, “so, can I come up or...?”

“Uh, I guess.”

You pull your finger away and hover it over the other. Maybe it’s from work? There was the one time they sent a cheap mass production travel mug with their logo on it as some incentive. A poor attempt at employee appreciation.

You press down and hold until you’re certain they have enough time to get in. You wait by the door, ringing your hands. You hear the door at the end of the hall open on its old hinges and you peek through the peephole.

You watch the fuzzy figure come into focus with each of his long steps. He doesn’t hold a box nor wear the uniform of a postal worker. No, he wears those blue leather loafers and holds a bright pink paper cup with a white lid. From the cafe.

As he comes close, you get a pigeon’s eye view of the hair on his upper lip and his bold blue eyes. It feels like he can see you too as he stands smirking on the other side of the door. This can’t be real.

He knocks and you wince as the door shifts in the frame.

“Special delivery,” he calls through, “open up, baby face.”

#lloyd hansen #dark lloyd hansen #dark!lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x reader #fic #dark fic #the quiet ones #dark!fic #series #the gray man

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wkemeup · 2 years

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In Every Lifetime

summary: When Bucky’s first love from the 1940′s is found alive in cyro, he begins to question whether you’d turn from him in fear or disgust.

pairing: bucky x reader

word count: 5k

warnings: angsty angst (with a happy ending), bucky’s sad internal dialogue,

Bucky had half a mind to wonder whether his heart might truly escape his chest. It pounded infernally against his rib cage; violently shaking against the bones until they splintered and cracked, he was certain he might look down at the SHIELD emblem on his sweatshirt to find blood soaking through the fabric. Or perhaps the bones of his sternum piercing through his skin. Hell, he might have left his heart on the tile a few paces behind him – throbbing on the ground, exposed to the elements.

He hadn’t so much as taken a breath since he caught word of what Stark uncovered in the Atlantic. It was only meant to be an exploratory mission; a simple means of honoring his father’s legacy by scanning the ocean depths in search of a history Howard had idolized in his time. Simple, apparently, to a billionaire with nothing but time on his well-manicured hands.

But Stark had uncovered a sunken Hydra warship instead; filled with stolen paintings, priceless jewels, and artifacts of a lost era. To the surprise of the men piloting the underwater craft, the ship had also housed dozens of cryochambers; ones occupied by German and Russian soldiers still dressed in their formal military garb and ice crystalized on their skin. Human bodies still preserved, still alive after decades on the ice.

There was only one chamber housed by a civilian – no, a prisoner.

Bucky had heard the whispered rumors through the hallway; seen the sharp eyes glancing curiously in his direction. He’d gotten used to it over the years, but there was something in the cautious hesitation of the agents around him that made the hair on his right arm stand on edge. They were waiting for him to snap. It was personal, he realized quickly – whatever Stark found.

Your name was only said once, but it was enough.

He ran until his legs felt weak; weaving through the seemingly endless hallways within the compound. On a decent day, agents cleared a direct path when they caught sight of Bucky. He’d walk with his head down, hands shoved tight into his pockets. He’d make himself as small and unthreatening as possible; baseball cap over his head and a long sleeve jacket to hide the blinding silver on his arm. Still – they carefully moved from his path as if he were little more than untrained animal.

This time – they spared no pretense of eggshells as they threw themselves towards the walls. Classified documents fluttered into the air when he nearly collided with a terrified intern though he managed to swerve just in time to put a dent into the wall instead. Tight gasps followed with hands flinching to weapons on hips in the sudden panic.

Bucky kept on – channeling his attention only on his next step. Only on the next tile under his foot.

He couldn’t allow himself to process what he might find at the end of the hallway. He couldn’t. Because then he’d think of the letters you'd once sent him when he was curled at the base of muddied trenches, how he’d clung to the fragile papers in his sleep and folded them tightly to the breast pocket of his shirt. He’d remember how he used to tap a hand against that same pocket each time he crossed the line into battle, how it had garnered him strength he hadn’t known he’d had. He’d let himself ache for the letters that kept him alive until the steel pipe fractured under his weight and he dropped into the ravine – the handwritten words he’d read over and over again until tear marks blurred the ink; letters of the future you’d planned when he returned home to you.

Bucky couldn’t allow himself to think of that, because then he’d wonder whether you cried when his letters stopped coming, if you’d grieved for him. He’d wonder whether something broke inside your chest when you realized he was never going to be yours again; if you sobbed and cursed at the world for taking away the one thing you ever dared to want for yourself. If you shattered like he had the day your image returned to his memory.

If he let himself think of you, he might question whether you’d found the future you had once promised him with someone else.

Bucky never had the courage to find out what happened to you after all these years. It was an act of masochism, he reasoned, to read about the love of his life in pages on a computer screen; moments he was supposed to share with you as you met him at the end of the aisle, as he held your hand as you gave him a child, as he kept you warm and safe and loved all your years. A life stolen from him by the war – by Hydra. A love he should have been able to give and earn in return.

He couldn’t put himself through the pain of knowing – to be an outside observer to a life he would have traded everything to have.

Bucky had loved you so fiercely, he couldn’t stomach the thought of someone else standing in his place. He wished for your happiness – always, above all else, at his own expensive if he must. But he would not torture himself with it.

So, he never dared to search for you after he escaped Hydra and found his memories again. He didn’t want to know whether your last name had changed, if you’d gone on to have a wonderfully happy life as if you’d never known him at all, if you had children you adored, if you now laid in a grave beside a man who wasn’t him.

The shame of it – the selfishness – ate him alive.

He wondered if you knew all that time as he held your letters in his shaking hands amongst the echo of gunfire that he would have sent his blistering soul across ocean currents in search of you, if only to grant you the love you deserved.

***

Bucky was only a few paces outside Stark’s main lab room when he hit a brunt wall of muscle.

“Buck, stop,” Steve warned, his hands digging sharply into Bucky’s shoulders as he tried to shove his way around his friend. His left arm gave no leeway to Steve’s strength, while his right began to ache under the pressure. Steve gritted his teeth, pushing Bucky to the edge of the hallway. “You gotta let me talk to you first.”

Through the windows, artifacts from the Hydra warship were laid out upon countertops, surrounded by dozens of techs as they methodically de-iced the valuables and cataloged classified information for Fury before it would be turned over to the proper channels. Further into the room were pieces of the ship itself as if Stark meant to reconstruct the damn thing on solid ground. Bucky winced at the massive emblem of the skull and tentacles painted on a large steel slab of the recovered ship – faded in its time and weathered by the water, but it still managed to meet his eye and mock him.

“Steve,” Bucky choked out, not sure what else he planned to say after that as he caught sight of the series of cryochambers lined up against the back wall. His heart clenched, as did his hands. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me... Tell me I’m being crazy. Tell me it’s not her.”

It was a curse to know his best friend as well as he did, Bucky realized. Because he could read every slip in the carefully constructed mask upon Steve’s face, every line on his ageless skin, every twitch of a muscle in his jawline. Steve released Bucky’s shoulders and his features warped into an awful expression of remorse. Corners of his lips tilting down, a slight clench of his teeth. A line crossing his forehead just above his brow.

Steve’s gaze slipped down to his feet and with it, Bucky's stomach.

“No,” Bucky all but whimpered, stumbling a single pace until his back met the glass. “No, she—she was supposed to be happy, Steve. She was supposed to move on with her life. How—How did she—”

“Stark’s got people working on it,” Steve answered quickly before Bucky could spiral further. Bucky’s focus shifted back the windows of the lab and as if Steve could read the next question on his friend’s mind, he said, “It’s really her, Buck. I don’t know how or why, but it’s her. And she’s alive.”

Bucky would have lost his balance if not for the wall propping his body up. He could still feel his heart beating somewhere in his chest – suffocating him, smothering him. Or maybe it was still laying on the ground by the doors to the east wing evading the careless steps of rookie agents rushing through their drills. Maybe his chest was empty. Maybe that was why he felt so numb.

“Is she awake?” His voice was barely a whisper.

Steve shook his head. “Sam is going to be there when she does.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, a scoff that burned like jealously in his throat. “Sam?”

He earned a glare in return.

“We have to assume she still believes both of us to be dead, Buck,” Steve explained, resting a hand against his hip. “You can’t throw her into shock by just walking in the room. A lot had changed since she last saw you. She doesn’t know where she is or when she is. Her last memories will have been on that Hydra ship. She’ll likely be on defense from the moment she wakes.”

A sticky residue slid along Bucky’s palm and he looked down to find blood trickling from the ends of his fingers where he’d dug his nails into his skin. It was only then that he remembered the sleeve of metal on his left and the history it carried.

There was relief, he realized, in the stories he’d tortured himself over of the life you might have had without him. If any of it were true, you never would have known what became of him. You’d never have to meet the Winter Soldier or witness the hand that doled out such violence over the decades. You’d never know the monster he’d become.

You’d have lived a peaceful, happy life free of his demons and the blood he spilt. He’d never have to confront the possibility you might take one look at him and cower in fear of what he’d done, of the man he turned into – that you might not want him anymore.

“We don’t know the timeline of when she was captured,” Steve continued, his voice wary now, tentative, “but we know she was found wearing a field nurse uniform.”

Bucky blinked; the air pulled from his lungs.

No, that couldn’t be right. Bucky had committed all of your letters to memory. You would have told him if you were studying to be a field nurse, if you’d intended on shipping yourself out to the front. It would have ruined him – the thought of you amongst the violence of the trenches like he was. He could suffer his own burdens tenfold, but he could not tolerate the thought of you in such danger. It would have drowned him. He would have remembered that agony.

“I’m as surprised as you,” Steve said in what sounded like a sliver of an apology on his tone, “but Stark’s certain. It’s authentic.”

Bucky swallowed. It tasted bitter. Blood, maybe. Or bile.

“Sam will call for us when she’s ready to talk,” Steve said upon noticing the slight discoloration in Bucky’s skin.

Bucky didn’t say anything else but he managed a short nod. Then, he was left on his own; he and the hoard of demons digging their vicious claws into his spine, dragging him back to the darkest corners of his mind.

***

It was three days before Sam called for him.

It wasn’t fast enough. It was too soon.

Bucky almost looked over his shoulder for the shreds of his heart on the tile floor as he made his way to the med bay. His right hand was sore and bruised from the long nights in the gym – breaking and reopening old wounds on his knuckles against the leathered bag. The thinly healed skin nearly fractured as he drew his hand to a fist to stop the shaking.

He did his best to keep himself centered on the facts – that you’d enlisted yourself as a field nurse mere hours after learning of Bucky’s presumed death in the alps, that Hydra had taken you and your squadron captive one month before the end of the war, that you’d been declared MIA shortly after and, like him, history believed you dead.

You took the news of waking to the future in stride – better than Steve had apparently. It didn’t surprise Bucky one bit given your affinity for technology and Howard Stark’s Expos you had eagerly joined him to every year. You were always stronger than anyone gave you credit for. Stronger than him, certainly.

Sam told him you were as helpful to the SHIELD analysts as you could be; giving full reports on everything you could recall before you were put under the ice, from the shift of the Hydra guards to the small talk you’d once overhead from your cell. It was information that would have decimated Hydra’s forces had an Allied warship rescued you before the ship met its home at the bottom of the Atlantic. It did little use to them now than to help to locate old bunkers and destroy the remnants left behind, but it was one less Hydra base on the map and Bucky’s chest was a little lighter knowing only rubble remained in its place.

Steve was the first of them to visit you.

You’d been prepared for it, told by Sam a full two days after you regained consciousness. He waited until your vitals were strong, until you’d grown as accustomed as you could to the news of the twenty-first century before he’d told you of Steve’s survival. It was meant to be a test; to see how you reacted to Steve before they dared to bring up Bucky.

It wasn’t the same, Bucky had tried to argue. Not for the nature of your relationships, but because of the separate lives they led in the years since you last saw them.

Steve had gone down as a hero in the forties and that hadn’t changed when he woke from the ice. He was an idolized symbol of selfless courage. He was Captain-fucking-America.

But Bucky? Bucky had spent those years mutilated into a weapon. Tortured. Beaten into submission. His mind warped from his body and weapons placed in his hands. He’d been made into a killer, a monster. He wasn’t whole – not mentally, not physically. He bared little resemblance to the version of the man you’d once written letters to until tears spilled to the fragile paper – letters that had kept him from crumbling under the pressure of war and the weight of responsibility on his young shoulders. He wasn’t the man you once knew.

Steve had grown more cynical over the years and now bore a wall around his chest after the loss of Agent Carter, but he was still the same man who crossed enemy lines in search of his best friend and brought an entire squadron back with him. He was still the hero who sacrificed himself to the ocean to save New York. He still looked like that man you remembered.

Bucky flexed his left hand, examining the sharp reflection of impervious metal. This hand held no memory of you the way his right once had. It had not held your weeping frame the night his number was called on the radio and his life was committed to an army he’d never volunteered for. It had not sweetly brushed the hair from your eyes or warmed your frozen fingers on cold winter nights. It had not touched you with adoration and awe until you came apart under bated breath.

No, this hand was violence incarnate. It was born of vengeance and blood. It had no place near the woman he loved. He’d sever it from his body if he could, if only it would ease the fear you might hold in your eyes when you finally saw him again.

He cut his hair, foolishly hoping it would be less jarring for you to see him this way. He’d done away with the shoulder length locks shortly after moving into the compound, following Sam’s ridiculous advice that a physical separation from the Winter Soldier might do him some good. He never told Sam that he flinched a little less, hated his reflection a little less, each time he looked in the mirror after the scissors had done their work. Perhaps he should have.

He'd trimmed the edges himself in a dimly lit bathroom the evening he learned of your survival. It was a little shorter than he kept it in recent months, but it reminded him of the cut he had the day he was shipped overseas. He hoped it might be familiar to you, that you might look at him and see the man who had once held the tips of your fingers through the open window of an Allied war ship until it pulled from the dock and you disappeared from view.

Sam had told you the basics of what happened to him all these years. Bucky had insisted upon it, though he did not offer an explanation why. He did not tell Sam that he thought you might change your mind upon learning the truth of his past, that you might fear the monster he’d become. He didn’t know if he’d survive the rejection if he saw it on your face.

Sam had only furrowed his brow at Bucky’s request, as if he’d read straight through his sharp inflections and taunt expression, but he’d agreed to share Bucky’s past with you.

You’d still requested to see him.

Bucky wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps you wanted to confirm what you’d been told with your own eyes or you wished to grant him the closure to your relationship neither of you had gotten before you walked out of his life completely. Either way, Bucky caught himself looking for pieces of his shattered heart down the long hall to the med bay.

By the time he reached the door to your room, he was certain he was going to be sick. He’d prepared himself the best he could for the rejection he was certain to find upon your features; fear or disgust or pity – he wasn’t sure which would hurt the most. He steeled himself against the wall, trying to find his courage when he heard your voice for the first time in seventy years.

He thought he’d remembered the gentle inflections in your tone, the smile and the levity in your voice. He thought he’d held a clear enough picture to not be brought to his knees by little more than the soft laughter you shared with Sam Wilson as he told you stories of his early days as Captain America’s wingman. He thought he’d be strong enough for this.

He was wrong.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice nearly startled him out of his skin. Steve glanced into the room where you were sitting cross legged on the bed with Sam sitting in the folding chair to your left, before he turned back to his friend. “You ready, pal?”

Bucky swallowed, though it did little to coat his dried throat. He shook his head.

Steve gave a short nod of understanding and took one step into the room. Your laughter hushed behind muffled hands as Sam shushed you playfully as if the teacher had just strolled into the detention room.

“Sam, a word?” Steve requested, gesturing to the hallway. Even from his position behind the wall, Bucky could still glimpse the tight expression on Steve’s face through the doorway. Sam must have picked up on who was waiting on the other side of the door and quickly excused himself.

Sam didn’t scowl at Bucky like he’d anticipated as he stepped into the hall. Instead, all he offered in his expression was a soft encouragement. Lips curved subtle into a smile, a short tap of his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Sam and Steve disappeared down the end of the hall without another word.

Bucky exhaled a tense breath and did not allow himself the time to reconsider before he stepped into the doorway. He did not dare to look up when he heard the sharp intake of your breath or the rustling of the sheets as you scrambled quickly to your feet. He only caught a glimpse of the navy-blue sweatpants provided by SHIELD and your bare feet on the cold tile as he stepped closer. It was enough to bottom his stomach.

You shifted your weight. Nervously, he realized.

“I—” Bucky started, though his voice came out broken and raspy. He swallowed, trying to find his voice again. “I know this is a shock and I—I don’t want to make this harder for you. I’ll answer any questions you have. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know and then I’ll— I'll leave you be. You won’t have to see me again.”

He flexed his left hand in the pocket of his hoodie, hiding the metal fist from your view. He was certain you might be able to see through the fabric completely and uncover the monster underneath. But you did not cower in fear of him. You did not speak at all. Bucky couldn’t will his gaze away from the floor.

“I know Sam told you what happened to me,” Bucky continued, if only to break the agonizing silence. “You know about Hydra and... and the Winter Soldier. You know what I did for them. What I was. What they... turned me into.”

It was a question, he realized as the words left his lips. He couldn’t be certain whether Sam had held up to his promise because you had yet to move from your position – holding firm, steady, in his presence. He expected you to flinch when he spoke, to wince as he took a step in your direction. But you did not move. You barely took in a breath.

“So much has changed,” Bucky whispered, his voice breaking. “I’m not... I’m not the man you remember. The things Hydra did to me... The things I’ve done...”

“It's really true?” your voice fluttered through Bucky’s senses enough to steal the words from his tongue. Light and beautiful and still, etched in an agonizing weight he couldn’t understand. “Sam had said but... I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid to.”

Bucky winced; his gaze still centered on the floor. Of course, you'd be afraid of him. Of course, you’d be frightened of the thing he’d become. He tried to swallow the tang of copper in his mouth and found he could hardly even will himself to breathe. He took a hesitant step back.

But your breath hitched as he put space between you, as if you’d been burned, and you reached a hand to him. It landed so gently against his left forearm that he almost hadn’t noticed it. His gaze sharply snapped to your hand as your finger squeezed against solid metal shielded only by the fabric of his sweatshirt. Your thumb brushed over the ridges on the cloth.

“I was afraid to believe you’d really survived,” you explained gently, the thick ache of tears in your tone. “I was afraid to hope. To allow that for myself.”

You drew back a shaken breath and Bucky dared to let himself peer at the very edges of his vision, only enough to see the relief of a smile on your lips. You were as beautiful as he remembered; your eyes always too impossibly kind for what he deserved. You looked at him with such grace, such love, he didn’t know what to make of it. How to process it. He wondered how you could even stomach looking at him.

“Sweetheart,” you eased and his knees nearly buckled. Your hand slid up his arm, tender touches against the machine he despised until your chilled palm rested on the side of his face. Always cold, he remembered. He'd spent so many evenings trying to warm your frozen hands between his own, taking any excuse you’d give him to hold you a little while longer.

“Sweetheart, look at me,” you asked again.

Bucky could never find it in him to deny you, not even when he knew it would crush him.

Slowly, he lifted his eyes, allowing himself to take in the details of the freshly laundered SHIELD sweatshirt and the slight discoloration in patches of your skin he recognized as burns from the ice in cyro. He let himself really look at you for the first time since he left you behind on that dock and a sob crept up to smother him before he could shove it down.

Your arms were around him in an instant, pulling him tight to your chest as you eased him to sit with you on the edge of the bed. He felt the gentle trace of your palm over his spine, in his hair, along his cheek, and it shattered every piece of him. Broke him and remade his soul again under your touch as his body trembled in your arms.

Only once he was able to catch his breath again, did you say, “I’m so proud of you.”

Bucky looked at you, stunned, and it earned him a soft smile in return.

“You survived more than anyone has ever endured – awful, terrible things,” you continued, brushing your knuckles gingerly along the side of his jaw. “You survived and you kept your promise. Seventy years later. You came home to me.”

His lips parted, features softening in disbelief. He licked at his lips, heart racing. He shook his head. “But I— The things I’ve done—”

“I know. I know and I’m still here.” You took his left hand into yours, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and revealing the metal beneath. You did not wince at you touched the cold vibranium, did not contort your features in disgust or fear. Instead, what crossed your face was an expression of gratitude.

“I slept through those decades while Hydra controlled you and hurt you,” you said, your voice thick with regret, “but you’re safe now. You’re here, among friends. Among family, from what Sam tells me.” You smiled at him then, something bright and wonderful enough to loosen the chains in his chest. “And I... I know time had passed differently for us. I know that you have lived decades while I slept. For me, the news of your death came mere months ago and I—I still love you, Bucky. I will always love you. In whatever form you come to me in. With whatever past. I will take you. I will always take you. But I would understand if you—”

Bucky hadn’t realized his own courage until his lips were on yours. Too sudden, perhaps. Maybe too soon. But after an agonizing second of shock, he felt your smile press into his cheeks as you relaxed against him, as you kissed him back for the first time since he was called to the front lines.

He wasn’t good with words. Not these days. So he hoped he might be able to convey everything he could not say with this kiss.

That he could not fathom a world where he could willingly say goodbye to you again. That he loved you even on the days he did not remember your face or your name. That he would learn to forgive himself with the kindness and compassion you so easily granted him. That he would give his soul to whatever god was responsible for bringing you back into his life again, even if it was Tony Stark.

You were breathless when you pulled away, though Bucky could have happily drowned to kiss you just a moment longer. Your lips were swollen, your eyes glossy. He could have stayed in that moment forever if time would let him, would preserve that memory under glass and steel if he could. You laughed then, as you always had after he’d left you flustered, and for a moment, Bucky remembered what it felt like to be the man you loved. Full. Whole. Happy.

“I never stopped loving you,” he exhaled, his voice stronger than it had been in days.

“But it’s been so long,” you asked, whether it was in challenge or awe of his confession, he didn’t know.

But Bucky merely shrugged and traced the edges of your swollen lips with his thumb. “I promised you a lifetime once. I’ll give you this one too if you’ll let me.”

It seemed as though he’d been the one to render you without words this time as your only response was to kiss him again – softer, gentler than before, tender and chaste. Your fingertips lingered on his cheek as you pulled away, looking at him no different than you had all these years ago – like you saw every ounce of good in his bones and loved him desperate enough to forgive the rest, even when it could not grant it to himself.

He was different now. He knew he was. And he supposed you were, too.

But the love still remained. Unconditional. Unwavering.

In this lifetime, the one before, and whatever came next.

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes x female reader

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christiansorrell · 4 months

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Tacticians of Ahm is itchfunding NOW!

For the last year or so, I've been designing and playtesting Tacticians of Ahm, a game inspired by tactical combat roleplaying designs meant to keep classic grid-n-minis TTRPG combat but to reinvent it in a way that keeps it fast and exciting without slowing your entire session down to a crawl!

Pick up the rulebook and get all future updates for free HERE!

Tacticians of Ahm is a tactical combat-focused tabletop roleplaying game in the corrupt3d fantasy world of Ahm. A bit-rotten blight has appeared in the Northern Sea and from it flows the Corrupt1on, fractured light and shattered shapes sowing chaos across the realm. As Tacticians, you alone are prepared to face the darkness spreading across the lands and reunite the scattered peoples of Ahm.

Unique Elements of Tacticians of Ahm:

Always-hit, set-damage grid-based combat!

Class-specific attack patterns, abilities, and more!

Easy-to-use weapon and ability diagrams!

Rules light out-of-combat play using a single d20!

A digital fantasy world corrupting with age!

You know it's a video game, but your characters don't!

If videos are more your speed, check out this intro to the game:

youtube

Inspired by video games like Into the Breach, Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, Tacticians of Ahm was created out of a desire to maintain the rewarding tactical choices and big dramatic moments of traditional grid-n-minis TTRPG combat without slowing the pace of play by removing as many of the frustrating aspects of play as possible and streamlining the rest. Combat is fast and furious! You can always easily read your abilities, know the damage you will do (and when you can do it), and more.

Check the Itch page for more info and pick up the game!

#indie ttrpgs #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpgs #rpg #fantasy #tactics #into the breach #fire emblem #final fantasy tactics #dnd #dungeons and dragons #Youtube

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bloobluebloo · 1 month

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have you ever played splatoon 1? if yes, what's your opinion on the way the gameplay handles in-universe propaganda (having the main characters give you biased information and getting more accurate information through collectibles)? do you think it's something that would work in zelda games? (also, if you haven't played splatoon you should, i think you'd love octavio)

SPLATOON! See Splatoon is ideally the sort of game setting that I enjoy. I have played Splatoon 1. Then I bought Splatoon 2 and played a bit. And then never bought Splatoon 3. I still have games in their shrink wrap my backlog is so big. I still need to finish Fire Emblem Engage 😭

Ehem! In any case! To answer your question! I have indeed played Splatoon 1! Now I think fundamentally, the way Splatoon and Zelda impart information to the player is not all that different. Even in Zelda, we learn information that is more "accurate" aka information that will allow a glimpse of how the side you are fighting for isn't essentially guiltless. We have instances like the Shadow Temple and the Arbiter's Grounds, which shows the merciless side of the Royal Family, and being able to interact with the Gerudo in OoT and draw conclusions as to how they really are despite the overt racism the rest of Hyrule displays towards them, to name a few. What is different between the two, however, is how that information is framed. In Splatoon, you learn that the Inklings and the Octarians are fighting for survival essentially, for the remaining dry land. Of course the characters will impart biased information to you as the player as they are interested in preserving their own people. The losing party, in this case the Octarians, were forced to flee and hang onto survival in ancient human shelters. We learn that at some point in time the Octarians and the Inklings had worked together, so why is this no longer the case? Is it greed and fear at their shrinking landmass that caused their alliance to fracture, that they couldn't come to some sort of agreement on how to use their resources? The game still eventually makes you view the Octarians as your enemy, because in the grand scheme of the story they are your enemy, but the lore that you learn frames it as the inevitability that comes with the consequences of war and the scarcity of resources aka there isn't really a good side or a bad side, it is just what it means to live in a post-apocalyptic world, maybe in a way an inheritance of human greed and their need for survival.

In Zelda, however, the way the story is framed is different. Even though we learn of the misdeeds of Hyrule and the Royal Family, there is no consequence attached to their actions. When they persecuted the Sheikah, and unjustly so, for their possession and knowledge of Sheikah technology, the Sheikah were either forced to concede and live out their lives peacefully or rebel and forever become an outlawed group in Hyrule. The people who were imprisoned in the Twilight Realm were never really paid any reparations from Hyrule; their evil status was maintained, and the onus was on Midna to understand that the dwellers of light were not all that bad. Her solution was to destroy the mirror of twilight, forever severing her world from Hyrule, which says a lot doesn't it. The Shadow Temple acknowledges that the Royal Family tortured and killed any dissenting voices and those they considered an enemy, but that is not really ever brought up in a context where it is considered a wrongdoing. There is also something to consider here, and that is that Zelda's lore presents, objectively, that Hylians and the Hyrulean Royal Family are favored by the gods. This isn't even propaganda; this is in-game fact. We, as players, can see that it follows the pattern of propaganda that imperialist nations tend to spread to legitimize their rule, but in the game's story it isn't presented in that way. So, unlike the Octarians and the Inklings who are equal factions vying for control over land for the sake of survival, the lore is objectively telling you, all things considered, that there is always one side that is already favored, and that is the side that will be the one that is good. For something like Splatoon to work in LoZ, LoZ's lore would need major tweaking. For one, it would have to present Hyrule's enemy, whoever it is, as truly having legitimacy for opposing Hyrule. It would also have to go out of its way to demonstrate that, in some shape or form, that godly favor does not make one good, it just makes one more powerful and influential. It would have to change in a way where you are shown that maybe you aren't necessarily fighting for good and preservation of light and peace, but essentially for your own survival and the survival of the people you care about. The cost is not the defeat of the ultimate evil, but instead the loss of the survival that your enemy is also fighting for. It would have to put both the plight of Hyrule and her enemies on the same level. We came close to that in the Wind Waker, where Daphnes had urged Link and Tetra to find their own land, free of Hyrule's old history but, as we can see, we have backpedaled quite hard on that, with Hyrule's imperialism being framed as the ultimate good. (I LOVE OCTAVIO, he reminds me so much of OoT Ganondorf, sometimes I call him DJ Squidorf just for my own amusement)

#ganonthots

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nataliesscatorccio · 10 months

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i love Tai i just love Tai so much she is such a girl who betrays herself she is such an emblem of Strength and Choice and Leadership to those around her and at every turn her psyche takes that out on her. she is Overcome and Out Of Control and Lost in her own body while maintaining the statue of herself that everyone else sees. "Shauna, you can fucking do anything!" it's the philosophy she embodies on the field in the wilderness running her campaign. you can fucking do anything! and the cost of that is how small and fractured she will have to make her own internal voice to do that Anything she planned for, how cramped the box is she's going to lock the Other Self in (roughly the size and shape of a basement crawl space) fearing the immensity of "Its" desire and intuition and faith, how scared she is going to be when she looks in the mirror one day and sees It, because It has been hidden away for so long Tai can't recognize It is just her own reflection staring back at her. the self saying Go To Her the self with wants and desires and knowledge about the world that Tai isn't allowed to say she has. the self she has been feeding all these years in secret!!! without even realizing it, in another betrayal of herself. feeding her on soccer pitch violence and secret relationships and impulses and uppers and basement sacrifices. feeding her in the dark. because the truth is one Tai can't live without the other. if one starves they both starve. they ARE one Tai. one heart constantly breaking itself against the cage of her ribs, trying to splice itself in two to maintain the image she must maintain to be taken seriously in a world stacked against her by design. betray betray betray. she'll keep stuffing her own voice down keep telling herself and everyone else that "It" is too big and too scary and not any good for her or anyone, keep killing herself to maintain a life she's only half in and only half wants, until she has no choice but to push everyone who might see the Other her out of her life, until she hurts them when they don't listen to make them listen, until she has to run away afraid of the wild lashing out thing she thinks she has become, afraid of her own power, mostly afraid of what she might do with it because she has proven time and time again to herself that she can't trust herself. a girl like all the others, who sees her hunger as an evil to overcome. feed her!!! feed yourself. or you will scavenge and starve or eat the ones you love. only when you feed her are you free from the torment of her desperation, only when you feed her are you whole.

#she is the girl you can always always always trust to give you sound advice to be the most loyal bitch in the room #but her own life is a curated mess and she never follows her own advice and treats herself like shit #yellowjackets #taissa turner #tai turner

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thescribeoflostmemories · 11 months

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MY VOWS TO YOU of pierro x f!Reader in canon genshin universe please!!! So excited for june!!!!

Flaming bonds being tested.

Reader x Pierro

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Music: Waltz No. 2 by Dimitri Shostakovich & Priestess in the darkness musicbox+orchastra (Fire emblem)

note : Implied cursed/ khaenri’ah reader, take that into account and I just randomly puke these all out while I was bored out of my mind during a meeting.Y’all proud of me? Also I have no such thing as summer vacation 🫠 I hope you like it.

- P

"Delusions too die hard, only the savage can reign supreme in this twisted wonderland. But what say, you? Who kindled but the last light of day." - Scribe

“I will lift up your sorrows,”

How many thousand suns have passed, and how many thousand moons, you must?

When did you exchange vows with one such as the man titled as your forevermore lover?

"My lady, Lord Harbinger Jester has arrived."

Jester, it does nothing to ring a bell in your mind on who that was.

"My lady, Breakfast is served." You’d rather spend the days alone, even with a cold bed to dream.

You had no recollection outside of your own name, broke away from sweet repose to this strange rozen land. The tall and small were under this Jester’s command, only a few could only withstand.

“Is it you, who have brought me here?” The bed is stale like bread, and it seems it only occupies you as the owner. Wallowing in contempt as you stare longingly out for the remainder until the blue hours come and go. You’re on the cusp of being exposed in your enclosure, frail and darkness inches closer than the ones that glances up from below.

‘Your cup will never empty,’

Upon the round table the man has laid for you, a small party he did threw.

Pierro is the name that you accrue. He had roused you from the hold of the archon, he did not dispute.

“Meister,” You heard of that title once before. Under the waking moonlight, he speaks of those that dare to oppose them with their might. Surely, what does he propose to justify his price?

“Evr’ything would come to light.” He says as if he had found the path to destroy the hand of heavenly edifice.

‘For I shall be your wine,’

Arrogance, a slow and insidious murderer. “For whom do you serve?” an inadequate query for one fittingly such as thy father. Voice hoarse from years of

“The lady of solemn promise.” he replied back, hollow and alone whisked away by the thread of fate tied to ev’rmore fractured amore.

March on the sands that strayed, from dimmed Khaenri’ah.

‘I light your way in darkness,’

Tearing, progress. You had exhausted all efforts, unplugged.

Realize your epiphany as gentle hands covet yours. Feeling the spine-chilling wind against your back.

In the past, you had recall of twin suns that sink into one, and strange black stars that soar through your scry.

Searching for dark Khaenri’ah

‘With this ring, I ask you to be mine.’

Your hand blessed once more with his soft whispers of perennial burning blue pyre.

To dine. Intruth; your fleeting light he cannot deny. Their love, shall cry, and die. In lost Khaenri’ah.

#reader insert #fatui x reader #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #fatui pierro #pierro x y/n #pierro x reader #pierro x you #genshin pierro #my vows to you

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amalthea-fictions · 1 year

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Hi there! I'm Amalthea and I like to write! Feel free to make a request!

WORKS

🔥 Kyojuro Rengoku X Reader [KNY] 🔥

Fractured Sunlight [Aftermath of Mugen Train]

Kankagari [Pregnancy]

Red Light District Under Cover [Request]

🍃Suzukaze X Kamui [Fire Emblem Fates] 🍃

Snow [Fluff]

Taking a Hit for the Other Person [Angst to Fluff]

Kamui's Kimono [Fluffy Drabble]

Fruit Salad [Fluff, only on A03]

An Important Question [Marriage Proposal, only on A03]

Epilogue [Angst to Fluff, only on A03]

Camilla [She Reacts to Kaze X Corrin, only on A03]

As King and Queen of Valla [only on A03]

🌌 Shepard X Garrus [ME] 🌌

Commander Shepard's Nickname [AKA Trolling James Vega]

Alternate Shakarian Reunion [ME2]

🐉 Charlie Weasley X Reader/Jacob’s Sibling [HPHM] 🐉

Small Moments [Fluffy Drabble]

Quidditch Rescue [Exactly what the title says LOL]

Charlie Learns You Can Speak to Dragons [Request]

Charlie Hurt to Comfort [Request]

Charlie Gushes About You [Fluffy Drabble]

🦅 Talbott Winger X Reader/Jacob's Sibling [HPHM] 🦅

Talbott's Surprise [Request]

Love Potion Mishap [Request]

🐍Sebastian Sallow X Reader/MC [HPHL]🐍

Don’t Mess with MC [Seb vs. Beasts Class Bully]

💫Aaravos X Reader [TDP] 💫

General HCs [Request]

Stuck in Mirror with Artsy Reader [Request]

Platonic: Aaravos being a big bro to a young reader [Request]

#Requests OPEN!#❤❤❤❤#sorry that I’m horrible with making titles #Demon Slayer X You #rengoku x reader #Suzukaze x kamui #kaze x corrin #fire emblem kaze #Mint Chip Ship #I don't care how old FE Fates is I will ALWAYS write for KazeCorrin #shakarian #charlie weasley x mc #charlie weasley x reader #hphm x you #hphm mc x tablott #talbott x mc #aaravos x reader #tdp x reader #sebastian sallow x mc

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sleepyhead-poll · 3 months

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ROUND 1D, MATCH 16 OUT OF 16!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Linhardt von Hevring:

linhardt has like 1 goal in life and its to be able to sleep as much as he wants and research whatever he wants without any pressure from anyone or anything <3 quote from his wiki page: "he often flutters from interests and is only able to focus on whatever fancies him in the moment. Additionally, his extreme disinterest in anything off-topic will cause him to become drowsy and/or fall asleep." he's neurodivergent as hell

Bro just wants to sleep instead of going to war. He took a nap in the cafeteria with a fucking pillow. Bro is so sleepy and wanting to nap all day that he can’t even be bothered to introduce himself properly “Linhardt. Goodbye.” Anyway he is the best sleepy boy :)

Besides being the Goddess' sleepiest soldier, Linhardt is literally introduced in a cutscene falling asleep mid-lecture and his personal ability is called Catnap ('Snooze' in Japanese). Catnap allows Linhardt to recover HP if he doesn't take any actions during a turn. 🙏 Bro is sleeping on the battlefield

He's just a sleepy boy who brings a pillow around to sleep and doesn't give a fuck. His conversation during the great tree moon(april)? About how it's the best time to sleep? He's damn right.

Not really currently but they're really cool and sleepy and also bi

Just a sleepy guy who wants to nap over studying and battling.

Eepy eepy boy:) also most likely autistic

he’s so eepy!!!!!! the eepiest!!!!!!!! it’s one of his defining traits also he’s one of the only characters you can gay marry in the game

Chill and sleepy.

He is such a sleepyhead. He tends to come across as ditzy or spacey to others, when often he is just so so so sleepy. He caries around a pillow sometimes because he'll sleep wherever and whenever. He doesn't seem to care that others find it distasteful, because he's happy getting lots of sleep. He may have narcolepsy; but it doesn't seem to be an established word in canon so most people things he's lazy or avoidant of things, when he really just can't help it. As the teacher you can acknowledge him though and validate that being sleepy doesnt mean hes wrong, as long as he works hard when he's awake. Despite his sleepy though he's there for his friends in battle (usually as a healer in my games since he's not a fan of violence) and just lives a long nap afterwards.

Sothis:

She is THE sleepy. The first cutscene of this game occurs in the protagonist's (Byleth) dream where they watch Sothis awake for the first time, complete with a ton of yawning and nagging. Throughout the game Sothis exists as a voice in Byleth's head who frequently succumbs to tiredness when she and/or Byleth runs into confusion. (Spoilers ahead!) The reason for this is that Sothis existed in the ancient era as a god-like individual who was murdered while stuck in a deep slumber, recovering from exerting her powers. After hundreds of years Sothis' remains became separated as a sword and a magical stone that powers it. The stone was implanted into Byleth when they were born, creating a connection between them and Sothis due to the circumstances surrounding their birth. At the start of the game Byleth manages to reawaken Sothis and she appears to them as a sleepy, amnesiac child to them because of her fractured state. Later on, Sothis fuses herself with the protagonist's soul to save them from certain doom and she stops appearing to them until much later when Byleth falls into a deep ravine. In the darkness, Sothis urges Byleth to wake up, having undergone a similar slumber as she had centuries before to heal. Sothis' story is very deeply tied to sleeping and I could ramble even more but this is long enough as it is

#round 1 #round 1d #fire emblem three houses #fe16 #linhardt von hevring #sothis #poll bracket #poll tournament #polls #character polls #sleepyhead poll

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sam-glade · 5 months

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Find the Words Tag

Tagged by @mrbexwrites here and @mister-writes here - thank you💜

I'll pass it onto: @cee-grice @squarebracket-trick @chauceryfairytales @ceph-the-ghost-writer. Your words are: brick, tree, cloud, sun.

I've got enough of The Prince's Shadow to find these words surely...

From @mrbexwrites: dark, bright, part, thing

DARK

Gullin clapped him on the shoulder and turned around, taking a key crystal on a small chain out of his pocket. He wrapped it around his Knife and stabbed the air, then turned the Weapon as if it were a key. A vertical slit appeared a foot above the ground, then grew sideways, to the size of a barn door. Inside it, there was the Void littered with unreal stars. Gullin stepped into it without hesitation. The slit shrank, until it disappeared, leaving Lissan on his own, in the dark, empty clearing.

BRIGHT

The mention of the brat soured Erya’s mood, not helped by the bright sun beating relentlessly on the paved courtyard outside the Central Command. She exchanged her spectacles for dark-tinted ones and pulled the sleeves over her hands — her knuckles were sunburnt already. Bracing herself, she stepped out into the light.

PART

“I’d like Nikols Thunderglass to take on this role.” Erya blinked at her, but no, she’d really just… suggested her own second in command for the post. Very rarely would a captain general part with their right hand, but then Anthea would be one of these few cases. This wasn’t the main issue with the suggestion.

THING

Gullin paused at the intersection of the Chestnut Promenade with the road that ran along the bank of the river. Turning right, he’d get to the pub where his friends were probably gathering, and they’d toast him and congratulate him, and for the first time since he could remember, this was the last thing he wanted.

~*~

From @mister-writes: catch, teeth, hand, and remember.

CATCH

Gullin had sent a sergeant here a couple of days ago. Her name was Linna, and she wielded a Staff shod in a thin layer of cold iron. She was good enough to catch the Brigadier’s attention. She needed a chance to shine, to justify a bursary for officer’s commission. She didn’t return. She’d been accompanied by a guide from the Infantry, but his report didn’t add up. Gullin suspected that he’d turned tail and ran when things started to heat up. Hence the Brigadier himself came to see what had happened to her and to deal with the rampaging Sword.

TEETH

“Lie still, sir.” The unfamiliar voice was coming from a distance, but he listened to it nevertheless. He didn’t feel like trying to move again, and instead focused on swallowing down the bile. He sucked in air through clenched teeth while taking stock of all his limbs and appendages. His head hurt. So did his left arm. His left side smarted. Broken ribs or just fractured, he wondered as he was getting used to the pain.

HAND

Anthea sat at the head, imperious as always in her favourite wine-red gown, with a silver circlet with a delicate multi-rayed star on her brow. She held herself straight, with her head high, and the Shadow’s eyes lingered on her familiar features. Her lush, dark hair was immaculately gathered in a silver filigree net at the back of her neck, and her steel-grey eyes looked at her peers with the comforting hardness. Light caught the silver signet ring with the Moon-and-Star emblem on her right hand as she set down the cut-crystal wine glass. She wore the ring over a thin black glove made of fine leather.

REMEMBER

Gullin stopped by the Hall of Contemplation first. He put the broken Staff on the temporary memory shrine there, where it would wait until Linna’s family was notified and they would make arrangements for the funeral. That was, if she had any family. Gullin was feeling increasingly guilty that he couldn’t remember anything about it. He instructed the enlisted Sword standing guard there to put up a notice with Linna’s name, to give her comrades a chance to say their farewells.

#tag game #writeblr #writeblr tag game #find the words tag #the prince's shadow

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saficswrites · 3 months

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New part new post baby! We have officially reached ten chapters, finally leaving the prologue as we work towards part one of Radiant Dawn.

This story is long, especially by my standards, it's currently like five times the length of “Her Summoner” at over 36,000 words.

There are a lot of warnings, I’ll have the major trigger warnings below the linebreak alongside the link but if you want more details on what warnings apply to what chapter please check out the previous post I made for this fic to see those details.

(https://www.tumblr.com/saficswrites/740178733734019072/the-prologue-is-done-we-did-it-chapter-8-is?source=share)

I’m so proud of myself and Red for getting this far and so thankful that people seem to be enjoying this, its been a wild ride and I’m really excited to keep working on this project.

With that I really hope you enjoy!

Love you all ❤️

Major content warnings are: Pretty extreme violence and gore sometimes to the point of outright body horror, references to rape and sexual assault and the trauma of characters victim to it (only ever in the very first chapter thus far), suicidal thoughts depression and at one point nonlethal self harm, and a scene exploring a characters fractured mental state and insanity that’s incredibly uncomfortable to read and will likely be triggering to some.

Please check the tags as well and if anything seems like its too much then don't take the risk of reading it, this is a really dark story overall and the prologue especially is just a tragedy outright. I completely understand if it’s too much for some people.

I do my best to properly put warnings on my fics to minimize the risk of hurting anyone with my writing, but I do make mistakes sometimes. If you notice anything in the first 10 chapters that should be on the trigger warning list that I missed please let me know and I’ll update accordingly.

#fire emblem fanfiction #ao3 link #fanfic #wlw fanfic #ao3 writer #writing #fire emblem #petrine fire emblem #micaiah #tellius #fire emblem path of radiance #fire emblem radiant dawn

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ehlnofay · 9 months

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Summerfest Day 5 - FORGOTTEN

At the foot of the Statue of Akatosh, there is a crumpled linen gambeson. Its fabric is pale pearly grey, still smelling ever-so-slightly of sulphur; the place where the sides tie at the front is torn and stained brown with old blood, and the quilting is spotted with mould. Sewn onto the chest with meticulously jagged stitches is a black cloth emblem of a wolf.

Every so often – when the Imperial City’s humid air leaves everything damp with dew for days on end, or when the rain patters down through the smashed-up roof – Jeelius takes to the cloth armour with hot water and lemon juice and spells it dry. He hadn’t done anything to it at first. No-one had done anything to it at first – still reeling, trying to understand what had happened and what it meant. Every cleric that served in the Temple of the One had been raised with it – if not physically, they’d heard stories of it since they were children – and it was jarring to have it so literally ripped away and apart, returned chewed up and spat out. (Even if it was a miracle. Even though it was a miracle.) No-one knew what to do with anything at all. The gambeson barely registered, until it rained.

Nowadays, when it rains, the water floods the Temple’s fractured hall and runs down the marble steps into the street. Poor J’mhad is stuck trying to figure out how to dry it all every time, several of the priests trying ineptly to help or just pressing themselves against the wall, shivering. When it rains, the water cascades down the statue and pours over the steps of the dais. The gambeson, tucked away between the claws of its foot and the stump of a marble pillar, is drenched every time. It was harder to ignore when it stank of must and mildew. It was ruining the Temple air and making the visiting worshippers sneeze. So Jeelius washed it.

And he’s kept washing it since.

They’ve talked about more sustainable solutions – an acolyte suggested getting rid of it – but Jeelius couldn’t stand the idea. It felt – wrong, somehow. The gambeson is part of this place; a memorial to whatever exactly happened here, before the golden dragon killed the devil and cleared the skies. It’s important. It belongs.

Maybe he’s being sentimental.

(He remembers collecting that gambeson from its hiding place in the bushes. Then, he watched its owner sponge it down with a care that felt incongruous with their gruff voice and hard-eyed face.)

Regardless, neither he nor Tandilwe would hear of its removal, so it stays. He’s never tried to clean off the blood – that, too, feels in some way disrespectful – but he wipes it down in the fashion he remembers watching all those months ago, keeping it fresh and free of dust and mould. It’s comforting, in its way. Another new little ritual.

There are a lot of new rituals. It’s rather a lot to adapt to. Jeelius was drawn to priesthood for its stability, for the comfort he found in rites and traditions as unchanging as the Nine themselves; for as long as he’s been in this vocation he’s been performing customs centuries old. The world changes so quickly – history compounding, moving inexorably onward – but faith stays still, a single thread remaining through time as all others snap and fray. This, at least, does not change.

Until it does. The Temple of the One has no roof anymore; moss grows in the cracks of the flagstones, so thick and springy that he feels it through the soles of his slippers. They still maintain the braziers that held the Dragonfires, but now more care is paid to the statue – not so much to its maintenance, since it is newer than the braziers by millennia and larger by multitudes, but to its overwhelming presence, its implications, the necessity of restructuring the physical space and activities of the Temple around it. J’mhad is petitioning for gutters to be put into the floor of the halls so that the rainwater has somewhere to drain to. No-one is eager to alter an ancient structure – but J’mhad points out, not unreasonably, that it’s a bit late to worry about that now, and that this minor renovation would preserve the stone from damage and erosion that would be far worse in the long term.

It isn’t just the place, either. Nothing is the same anymore. In the immediate aftermath, people are scrambling – the priesthood included; Jeelius speaks to hundreds of people in those first few days after who still have the smell of sulphur and ash in their hair, who tell him about barricading their doors and hiding out through that final attack, who tell him about friends and family who weren’t inside when it started or whose walls and windows weren’t strong enough. Jeelius says soothing things, like he’s supposed to – leads them through prayer, like he’s supposed to – hides his shaking hands under the skirts of his robe and doesn’t look anyone in the face and doesn’t fixate on his own helplessness when other people are trying to talk through theirs, selfish, like he’s supposed to. When the people he speaks to aren’t seeking counsel – or once they’ve finished asking for help – they gawk at the statue, ask is it truly an avatar of Akatosh, did it really fight off the Daedra, are they gone for good? Did Jeelius see it? Does he know for certain?

He wishes they’d stop asking. He doesn’t want to think about knowing for certain; he wants the same easy belief he had before any of this. He wants, like everyone, to go back to normal; he knows that nothing ever will.

(He didn’t see it. He was in Tandilwe’s cellar. He doesn’t actually remember any of it – all he knows, all he’s been told, is that he had a knife and Tandilwe couldn’t make him let go. If he was going to die he was going to die quickly.)

He tells the ones who ask that he didn’t see it.

No-one seems to have seen it, not in its entirety. The Avatar itself, bright as the sun and screaming gold, is a common enough story, but there are no witnesses of whatever happened in the Temple in the chaos preceding its arrival.

(There’s only a gambeson left on the floor.)

But Jeelius doesn’t think about it, because in those early days the Crisis isn’t really over, no matter what the Council says. Everyone is still lost in the terror of it, trying to scrape out some path back to living, to understand how to keep moving. (Jeelius stops sleeping. Too many people need his help, and he’s scared to close his eyes.) Everyone is waiting with gritted teeth or bated breath for the next attack.

But instead they receive word that the Gates on the roads are closed.

People who had been away from home and terrified to travel begin to return.

No matter how long they wait, the shoe never drops. Jeelius won’t say it, but by all that is holy, sometimes he wishes it would. The Oblivion Crisis defined the world until it didn’t, and now everyone everywhere is living without it and he doesn’t know how to do that anymore. An artist sketches out the scene of the Temple battle as seen from the window of an insula a district over, and when it’s printed as a wood-cut in the Black Horse Courier Jeelius sees a looming statue and the winking of a blade in the demon’s ink-lined face and has to sit behind a pillar until he’s breathing again. After he takes up the self-appointed duty of maintaining the discarded cloth armour, he finds that breathing in the smell of cut lemons is the only thing that will calm him down.

The worshippers stop being desperate and start being curious. It’s easier to help them, now, regardless of his feelings about it. Then come the pilgrims, to pray at the site of Akatosh’s avatar, of his great victory, with endless more questions, none of which Jeelius feels he is answering to their satisfaction.

Did you see Martin Septim? they ask. Did you witness his exaltation? After the last of the Septims is named a saint, they come to pay respects to him as well as Akatosh. They speak of him in such reverent terms as make the ridge of Jeelius’ spine stand on end – though it could well be deserved; he doesn’t know, he never met the man.

(He remembers a letter he saw scribed in Cheydinhal. Dear Martin, I’m abandoning you for another priest I found…)

The pilgrims have a lot of questions, but no-one asks about her.

It’s – odd, Jeelius thinks. He supposes it’s the environment – the people who travel here are here to see the statue. The avatar. They’re here for worship, not gossip. Only he hears talk from the other priests. Hears talk in the marketplace when he goes to run errands. Reads the Black Horse every week and shares news with the others in the Temple and talks through the end of the Crisis in excruciating detail with almost everyone who visits, and it never comes up. No-one is worried. No-one even wonders. It’s as though the miracle has erased them from existence, as though the Divine saviour overwrote the human one.

There’s not even a note in the missives, a brief mention in conversation: no news of the Hero of Kvatch. Jeelius keeps an ear out but there’s never any news of the Hero of Kvatch. Just a bloodstained gambeson to wipe down with water and lemons.

No-one is worried. Why would they be? What is there to worry about now that the crisis is over and done? But Jeelius looks at the blood and thinks of red-stained robes and haemorrhaging in the abdominal cavity. Everyone else might gaze up in wonder at the statue of the Avatar – indomitable, irreproachable, something more than flesh and blood – and praise it as their deliverer, but Jeelius’ saviour stole a toffee apple in front of him and called him names and travelled with him back to the Capital because he said he was afraid.

Jeelius’ saviour was a child. And they’re missing. And everyone knows – they have to. They knew all about her before. But now that there’s a miracle in the Temple district and no use for a hero…

Out of sight, out of mind.

The pilgrims keep coming, and with them come travellers who aren’t here for worship – just to see the avatar for themselves. Someone asks, once, if it’s real.

Jeelius keeps performing his duties, as ever; wringing his comfort from them as best he can, despite how different it’s all become. Twice a week, more depending on the weather, he lays the gambeson flat and sponges it with lemon water, then puts it exactly back where it was.

He still doesn’t know why it feels significant, but it is.

Maybe he wants to make sure he has it on hand, just in case. Just so he can return it, if they ever come back.

#:)#tesfest23 #the elder scrolls #tes #tesblr #oblivion #jeelius #oc tag #pax #my writing #fay writes

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rafent · 5 months

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✦ 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐇 ✧

* warrior mastery drabble ( fell xenologue spoilers )

Crumbling remnants of bygone emblems encircled the bracelet altar. Missing eyes, missing limbs, missing heads - statues all found in varying states of missing just like one twin sundered from another.

Just like Rafal.

𝐈 ;

Those aged limestone warriors with their cracked faces and crawling hairline fractures often judged him, seven against one. Across the first half of a hundred years he thought them unsettling, broken effigies whose misery he had never been forced to truly measure until he was and truly alone.

Long, long ago - Nel's placid attention backed by the noisiness of their Winds - Rafal hadn't needed to take in the sad, sunken measure of Lythos Castle to its most profound depths. At least not in any way he thought to matter. Lythos hadn't been his home, after all. Not in Nil's eyes. Only a straw roof he borrowed, easily caved in on his lies. Something transient, deeply impermanent, beyond both the reach and right of the imposter he'd been.

But now; now, in greater truth, it was. It was home. A belated home, just as all concepts and things came to Rafal belated. The love for his sister. The regret for his Winds.

The knowledge that nothing he'd done for power had been the everything he hoped it would be.

" . . . "

𝐈𝐈 ;

Nel would wake in a thousand years.

Upon her awakening Rafal would beg her forgiveness, if forgiven, they would make the passage to another world together; there where life awaited them as a pair. If not, he would stay. And Nel would go. Regardless of one outcome or another, in that time he could not neglect his health. That vehicle which would make either of these true.

When he was hungry, he foraged outside the castle and returned. More monk than dragon in the consumption of mushrooms, berries, and taproots. When hopelessness settled, he patched the tearing walls of his mind with the Divine One’s promise. When grown tired, he curled up next to his sister and slept with fraught lines.

Each and every one of that sister’s cellular functions had stopped, perfectly equivalent to a corpse, but Rafal’s power placed her putrefaction in a state of stasis, with the abject sterility of a doll lacking need for food or water or waste. Still he wiped Nel’s face clean, once every morning and night, as filial son might do unto sickly mother. He held her hand in just the same dutiful way.

All such fractions and more composed the whole of his memories. The chalk-white etchings he tallied onto the walls, painting significance onto the annals no-one else could know. The daily prayers spun from his greatest wishes. His life saved extending to be shared, seeping from hot to cold - brother unto sister. Rafal's cyclical existence in the manner of a serpent engorged on its own tail, a life without seams and an endless passage of days that bled one into the next-

into the next, into the next, into the next.

...

𝐈𝐈𝐈 ;

Between his episodes of madness, of those periods abounding with quiet, not quiet, loud, too-loud swirling darkness and doubt, it was one beacon alone which anchored him while stranded out at the loneliest sea.

it took a thousand years for another Lumera to revive another Divine One. Rafal remembered that. Rafal thought he could be able to do it; far more than could, he would. If Nel did not wake up today then tomorrow. Or the one after that. He clung to his tomorrows in that way, greedy and never satisfied, like the priceless metals that had at one point proven their world's currency. Even as each and every one passed him overhead and turned into yesterday.

"Today, sister. It will be today," he would whisper to her, to Nel, on a scratchy voice calloused by atrophy and disuse. An insistence to him that wasn't meaningless.

Rafal who feared that without practice he would forget to speak entirely, that if - when - his older sister awoke, he might not even be able to say his name. Rafal who trimmed his nails and strained the dirt from his hair not for the way he looked, but for how Nel might one day look upon him. Because when sullied by the elements he showed those signs clearer than anyone, white all over, any hint of muck or soot turned him grey.

So he kept clean; kept as sharp of his senses as Revanche and Represailles did - polished, oiled, propped aright neatly in the corner for a future where they could be used together. Unwavering in those habits as the years passed.

As so many of them did.

...

? ? ? ;

Five hundred years. Five hundred summers.

As estival heat waned to autumnal ambivalence, as winter settled into the nooks of the skeleton castle and clawed its way toward the heart where Rafal sat beating, he banked the fire - the hundred, thousandth, hundredth-thousandth fire - and watched its smoke. His blood-colored eyes an aged vacuum that sucked in the sight of the guttering flames and reflected back a strange resilience of their own.

His form, his gaze, all of it unyielding; like a pale warrior made of stone. As if among the ruins of the seven statues that once stood tall around him, Rafal could be their eighth. A monument belying idealistic inner strength, not the power of a dragonstone he once elevated above all else.

The burning wood crackled. Plumes of chilled air parted from him on a quiet, chapped laugh. On a thought of retrospects.

Didn't that sound like something the Divine One would say?

「 RAFAL 」 has mastered Warrior

#◜ ₊ — 𝓡 ˚ ₊ 𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐁𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 ╱ drabble.#i've wanted to detail rafal's thousand year timeskip for a while #and thought this sort of strength/warrior motif drabble would be perfectly appropriate to do it #1000 years of total isolation in a world devoid of all other life WHILE retaining his sanity?#if that's not the makings of (internal) strength what is really

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