#The dark forest of terror makes a grand return in this!

[draconixiaa]

Below the Bedrock Layer // Palace of Crimson

[Major Character Death] [Ao3] [@dreblrspookyweek]

Once upon a time…

There was a palace.

A palace of a wealthy man. It had [bloody] red carpets, [poisoned] fine dining, and lights that flickered in and out of darkness, bringing life and death… falsity and truth.

And before it was the palace of a wealthy man, it was the home of an old man.

A man who has lived since ancient times, bearing witness to many lives and deaths and deceptions and clarities; a man whose soul was distraught and weary and needed comfort and rest.

Because this man dies and lives again: he is immortal through death, a phoenix unburning.

This man was murdered in this palace.

“Huberttt~,” cried Billiam, in his usual drawl, “Your contract period is almost over!”

Hubert, sterling hair and whitened eyes, was hiding behind a stone pillar. Eyes squeezed closed- 

Breathing jagged, gasping quietly-

and hands squeezing behind his back.

In the damp air of the basement, the sound of pacing was drawing nearer.

Hubert was the old master of the mansion.

A building hidden serenely away from civilization in the midst of a grand forest- Hubert’s masterpiece.

“It’s been ten years, Hubert,” Billiam’s voice slithered across the austere stone- which was polished to perfection without a glimmer of dust.

And soon to be spilled with Hubert’s viscous blood.

Hubert had been Billiam’s butler for ten years. The keeper of this mansion for twenty more. He had finished building it thirty years ago, and had begun its construction by the fortieth mark back in time.

Ten years ago, Billiam came to this mansion with a wicked sword between his fists and held it at Hubert’s throat as he signed in red ink his butlership.

Five years ago, Hubert realized his death was not too far away.

“Oh, butlerrr~! How much longer can you hide?!”

The steps grew closer.

He tensed.

Gripped the wall.

Five years ago, the crimson tendrils appeared from beneath the bedrock.

[As they always did.]

Hubert thought it was a bizarre, yet familiar sight that brought him both nostalgia and dread. Yet he had no memory of it.

He was but a builder and a butler, and nothing more.

…Sometimes though, Hubert felt a bit more kinship with the raven that knocked on his doors.

Every day, month, year that passed-

Hubert felt a bit closer to death’s door.

The steps paused.

“I’ve found-”

Hubert used his grip on the pillar to propel himself away.

“-you!”

He had gone in the wrong direction.

“There’s no more space to flee!” Billiam’s glassy sword coruscates with a terrible rufescent light, his voice echoing through the chamber. “There’s no more time you can buy!”

The Egg was shivering beneath his feet. Its tendrils grasped at his legs. 

He stepped backwards through its entanglement… Strangely, he felt as if they were soothing him.

A sense of unity and calm amidst the terror of oblivion.

Billiam strode towards him, his pristine white suit pink under the Egg’s soft glow.

“Do you have any last words?” Billiam hummed, a humorous light in his mahogany eyes. Mahogany- the reddish kind.

Hubert’s back touched the soft shell of the Egg.

“I… don’t,” he replied in a higher pitch than what he had expected. “Uhm… make it fast?”

“You’re not going to beg?” Billiam’s voice lifted. He had stopped just a meter in front of Hubert.

Hubert offers a dry laugh. 

Then in one fluid motion-

Ducked,

Threw himself forward,

Tumbled,

And thrusted himself off the ground into what would’ve been a sprint…

Had not Billiam been too slow to react.

Hubert collapsed into the ground on his side, blade slit through his chest.

Surreal, the pool of blood.

Infinite, his awareness of the moment.

The agony and numbness in his torso.

The whiteness coursing through his conscious body.

The Egg enshrouding him.

Billiam, screeching in panic.

And Hubert realized, a silver thread snapping in his mind-

He was the Egg. 

The Egg was him.

And now they were one again.

Now that his body had returned to the bedrock, his soul too, had a place to go.

In fact, the Egg was the bitterness in his soul welling up upon the world.

Hubert, who was no longer just Hubert, but also Cornelius, Dream, and many other names that he could then recall, felt vengeful.

Vengeful, and hungry.

He [the Egg] must sustain himself [itself] until [he] the Immortal could return to the surface, revitalized like an ember into a flame once again.

Some explanation that I didn't have the energy to insert into the story:

Basically, there becomes a point in time where the Immortal [Dream]’s soul becomes incredibly exhausted, and is no longer able to hold itself together. Thus, parts of it- the most ‘exhausted’ parts of his soul- begin to drift away. But, since a soul can’t survive without a body, the Egg, its vines, and its spores have become a manifestation of the separated soul. Said departed section(s) of soul needs sustenance, especially away from its main body.

The formation of the Egg is a sign of Dream’s approaching [death]. It may, in some times, cause Dream’s death, such as in the case of Cornelius, who grew too old. Hubert was old, but half of his death was caused by Billiam’s own will (the other half the Egg caused).

So basically, Dream either dies and returns to the Egg, or gets killed by the Egg through methods of manipulation.

Then, after he returns fully to the Egg, it’s gotta incubate and eat more stuff for some time until he can be reborn again.

Inside the Egg, Dream is able to remember all of his past memories.

Dream’s immortality is incomplete. something about DreamXD. GN.

#dreblrspookyweek #dream #dreamsmp #tales from the smp #tftsmp masquerade #creative writing #egg #red egg #a very red tentacled egg #death and rebirth #but honestly not really

[a-weird-writer]

WELL IF YOU INSIST- I WANT TO KISS THAT ELEGANT MOTHERFUCKER OF SCHILT DAMN IT

Of the Eight Judges, Hellbat Schilt excells best at kissing. His lips silk to touch, cotton against your fingertips. Moist, gentle mist, his most delicate parts bend to the one-of-a-kind youth whom holds his hidden heart.

Schilt is a grand monster to behold, but an even more gentle presence to love. The incredible amount of humanity Schilt shows contradicts his assigned title, no less stubborn than any other living being desperate to live.

A foe of many faces; Cold as ice, soft as fresh clouds with the grounded lifeforms he deems worthy of his mercy. One with jewelic nightfall, a free bird in the flock, swimming free like a leaf in the deep ocean sky.

Schilt is a sinster creature, the dark beast-well hidden between anicent, reploid ruins. Told in many old stories that keep the misbehaving childern of Neo Arcadia dead awake in pure terror; Afraid to be stolen, taken into the endless curtain black of the old, abandoned world. Destroyed, devastated beyond repair. Never to return home again.

He whispers a sweet summerbreeze that locks you in a devilish daze, the looming shadow beneath your cresent moons, parted open in curious anticipation, sealed under his supreme control.

Drinks your voice, your sounds, your moans like fine wine. Leaving not a single lonely drop untasted, unclean. Dripping a forbidden glazing on your ears, smelling of forest rain and fresh raked leaves.

Temptation, soul-sucking judgment, merciless in bringing down the hammer. He'd rather be with no one else than you, loyal as ever to the object of his affection. A devil, a bat, a blood drinking heathen of the deepest night.

Schilt is a divine, vampiric malice that won't let you go if you wander too far into the cave's darkness. He is very lovely to look at indeed, but also hungry. Tread carefully, God help you if Schilt wants you too much.

You can barely breathe by the time Schilt finishes, cocky about how fast you fall like a ragdoll into his awaiting arms. Gaze lost, staring deep at your whole world, the pretty pink star lonesome in pitch black all-consuming void only longing to eat you whole.

You melt like butter into his mouth, baren to the intense heat of his stronger body. Blood pumping and heart racing, Schilt can smell just how roused you are. But the fun shouldn't end so early, too soon. Especially when you're so exposed. Vulnerable to the predator before you, mindless silly putty on the ground.

How can a cat resist playing catch with the corpse of the mouse?

Your mouth empty, too empty even, begging to be devoured entirely. No one can ignore the call of the wild, the alluring invitation of willing prey.

Fangs grazing your bottom lip, threatening a pleasurable prick of pain. Claws below your chin, dragging across your throat like knives, digging lightly enough to not break skin.

Schilt savors you like your the last person on this ruined Earth, and he is determined to prove just how much you make him feel, how much a paindul day far apart from you does to him.

Weak in the knees, at the dark mercy of his sharp tongue, you know better then to ever underestimate the great bat. Without a thought spared you give onto him, to the devil and his filthy dirty promises; submitted forever in the trail of endless devoted smooches and love bites littered like polka dots on your naked flesh, intimate and forthcoming.

Beware the great bat.

Though he may kiss you, cherish you in ways you have only dreamed of, he will remain an eternal slave to his nature

and bite.

#ask #anon #anonymous #hellbat schilt #megaman zero #hellbat schilt x reader #schilt x reader #tw suggestive #tw kiss #tw kissing #megaman zero x reader #megaman z x reader #megaman #tw bite marks #tw biting

[eliz-elai-rigel-star]

Golden Wastelands: A Basin of Pure Regret (a theory)

By: Eliz Elai

I was too blind to not notice this earlier 🙈

The reason the Wastelands has a FRIK TON of pipes is because they have attempted to drain the Dark Water or whatever liquid waste they had. We see these pipes connect from the main areas (Broken Temple, Graveyard, Battlefield) all the way to Shipwreck - where the pipes come to an end and that yucky mud is spilled in the beach into the ocean.

That's probably why massive bodies of water are polluted in Wastelands. Let’s say that the dark waters are some sort of liquid waste similar to the ones that are produced by industrial factories, here in my country - some lousy factories and establishments like to connect pipes to water sources like rivers and beaches, and dump ALL THEIR STUPID WASTE. Of course NATURALLY - THAT’S NOT GOOD!! They ended up polluting the oceans and caused the wildlife to die or either mutate, I have a theory that the reason crabs that have black spots are aggressive is because they have evolved to let the darkness be a part of them and consume light in return.

Wastelands is supposed to be as grand and beautiful as Valley, with similar architecture and technology. But this time in wastelands: we get to see the consequences when humans take too much and abuse their environment for personal gain. That is why I think the transition between Valley - Wasteland is PERFECT. We slide into a slope and fly through clouds with buildings along the sides (similar to the races) but then....... glory instantly get replaced with terror as the lighting changed from courageous red to dark green (we know from Disney movies that green is evil). Even the sounds they make through the portal are similar- Valley has those 'bells' that we hear when entering the Colosseum, with cheers from the background. Wasteland has those similar 'bell' sounds, but then it turns unsettling as you hear some shyt like horror game ambiance sounds.

AND NOT TO MENTION, that wastelands is in a much lower area than Valley, and we literally get FLUSHED DOWN to Wastelands. Wasteland is a LITERAL SHADOW OF VALLEY.

Oh and also:

Valley was the first realm to introduce duality and competition, with all the races and stuff. In Wasteland we see this turn into conflict and war. And Valley is not the only area parallel to Wastelands, it also borrowed elements from Forest. We see a structure similar to Forest Temple in the early areas of wasteland, this is a mechanism that produces those Diamonds that power their gates, boats, etc, and it is made from the lights of mantas (poor babies getting pressed into darkstones). So it also features themes of animal abuse and resource overuse.

SUMMARY 📣(boy I got carried away this turned out so long)

! Wasteland is like a huge arse basin (or toilet) that catches all the bad consequences of previous realms. HECK that’s why it's name is the -WASTE- LAND. Basically a whole arse toilet to catch all the shyt.

🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋

Also a little side note with Season of Aurora spoilers: I heard that the song that is going to be played in this area has something to do with nature and pollution, and maybe a little bit of war. So I guess TGC is really selling the 'man made destructions' theme of Wasteland.

🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋

Also please ignore all my grammar mistakes (if I made any) I was typing these ideas as they came in my head. And my keyboard likes to autocorrect me sometimes.

You can go to Wasteland Shipwreck yourself, and try walking on the yucky substance in the pipes. (spoiler alert it’s disgusting)

#skychildrenofthelight #skycotl #skygame #thatgamecompany #sky:childrenofthelight #sky: children of the light theory #sky: children of light wastelands #sky: children of the light #sky: cotl theory #sky: cotl #elizelai #that sky theory

[wanderfan2000]

Moral of the story: NEVER let a ghost candle from Unvoa drain your life...

I though about drawing Wander with Litwick, at first the space traveler adores this ghostly candle but it turns out, it was actually tagging along with Wander while draining his life. When Wander hears this, he is shocked to find out he is now Litwick’s new source for fuel! He needs to get away from it, but how can he when it already has a strong grip on him? 

This was not the first time Wander was drained of his power.

#My Art #Wander Over Yonder #Litwick #Pokemon #The dark forest of terror makes a grand return in this!

[goatpaste]

evil mane six you say... im listening👀

e! yeah this is like from a nearly 6+ year old AU of mine from when i originally into mlp and stuff 

lil cringe but i really wantd to update it because i liked some design/story concept from it

some of the basic world building for this AU was that the Crystal Empire never disappeared and went on to basically be the cantorlot of this universe, and ponies relied on a crystal based technology system and magic became less of a focus as crystal magic was something everyone could use.

Sombra is a good king of the empire, with a large happy family. Dear friends to the wizards of cantorlot, Celestia and Luna. Sombra also made of the elements of harmony in my AU but this is about these bad bitches

twilight in my AU was a unicorn who looked up to the wizards of Cantorlot and wished to train under their wings. she learned many powerful spells from them and the books of great unicorns.

however Twilight became obsessed after learning of the elements of harmony, an ancient relic that had gone into slumber years ago claiming it wouldnt return until it was needed. however twilight thought herself to be smarter and able to force it out of hiding so that Equestria could have a boost in magic believing it would further society to have another source of power.

Twilight had no idea what she was working with and began to work behind the backs of celestia and luna. Tuning into Lord Tireks ability to absorb magic she used it for herself to drawn out the magic of the elements. However she was rejected and the spell turned on her, turning her to a monstery figure would mind could only think of taking the elements powers.

Shining armor was there with her when it happened trying to stop her, but instead became apart of the magical rejection. Only his body was effected and he was forced to stand by and watch his sisters mind become corrupted. Now she is locked in tarturus with Shinning armor as the doors gaurds, hoping they can find a way to heal her. 

Rarity is much like her normal self, the only difference is she much more work focused and lives in the crystal empire. She was so goal oriented that she had no friends and simply went day to day working herself to the bone trying to make each dress better than the last. 

it drove her made when she began to believe her style was becoming repetitive and she simple would do anything to get out of her runt. so she left the empire and went out into the snow around the kingdom seeking out an old mine full of unique and beautiful stones. 

Little would she know she would come across a locked away evil that would take over her mind, feeding on her greed and want to be the best. she would act much as normal Sombra, taking over the crystal empire and demanding the most beautiful stones and jewelry and gowns of the people. it would be this event that would set the new elements into motion, king sombra and friends stopping rarity. (id like to thing her villian name could be oddity...)

when i originally designed these villian designs pinkie was defiantly meant to take over nightmare moons place. 

Pinkie pie’s family lives in the crystal empire, as crystal farmers. Pinkie pie herself would work at the castle as a party planner from planning the birthdays of sombras children, to grand galas to diplomatic brunches. She is close friends with Princess Ivory.

However when rarity took over Pinkie pie was held captive as a jester for rarity. some believe the close contact with a creature radiating darkness infected pinkie pie. because there was hardly any build up, just one day Pinkie pie seemed to snap. right in the middle of a party she went berserk and began to destroy everything. The royal court chose to let her off assuming she was sick or had a sugar crash, the list of what it could be was endless. Pinkie pie word return again to throw Princess Ivory’s party and nearly kill her. Pinkie pie would have no memory of what she did only to come concious and learn she was banished from the court and to ever see Ivory again. it broke Pinkie’s heart and it was a moment of weakness. her mind was clouded and she turned into a monster of a mare named ‘The Timeless Party’ and planned to party the whole planet to its core until it could party no more.

with the new found elements of harmony powers pinkie pie was saved, she hasnt returned to the castle but still gets note from Ivory despite refusing to see her out of fear of hurting her. 

Rainbow dash was a clouddale pony, she never left the city and happily worked at the weather factory and thinking of the day she would be a wonderbolt. Until the day she lost her wings, she could no longer fly like other pegasus and began to adjust to her new life. she moved to the ground and became a park ranger. she lived a happy simple life coming to enjoy the new experiences that came her way that she never thought she would thought she would enjoy.

Until a stroke of misfortune hit her, literally hit her. A bolt of lightning hit her and she swore she died, Until she  awoke and found she wasn't. instead she was covered in dark rolling clouds that she could manipulate and shape to her will. 

Rainbow dash found she could fly again and faster than ever before and with no fear of lightning or hail. the weather knelled to her. little did she know with the use of her power she brought on violent storms, floods and lightning made forest fires. Rainbow dash chose to stop her new powers until she could get them under control, but found this itch like a voice in the dark parts of her mind. telling her to let go and enjoy her powers, they were a gift after all.

it wasnt long until rainbow dash changed and seemed to no longer care about her damages. with this came the ancient unicorn, Starswirl the bearded. An old unicorn of old equestria would had frozen his aging to ensure his students could full take over for him one day. however star swirl was full of himself and could never see the bigger picture. He would freeze rainbow dash in ice and leave her in the cold mountains. 

with the story reaching tarturus shining could over hear twilight talking about starswirl and asking shining armor if he really thought rainbow dash was the villian and if starswirl choices were truly for the best. 

Fluttershy lives in ponyville outskirts but ponyville in this world is mostly underwater and a tourist town for the large spa/hotspring resort run by and supported by a colony of seaponies and sirens. 

Fluttershy barely patreons there except to quietly get a spa once a month. and leaves without a world.

she still works with animals but mostly runs a pet cemetery for animals that drowned in the local waters or potentially eaten by rouge sea creatures. Fluttershy sadly would die in her own cemetery having fallen and hit her head on a tombstone. 

however after not being found she would be reclaimed and returned to the living by the earth. believing she was given a second chance and was not one with the earth Fluttershy didn’t notice that it was darkness that brought her back.  Fluttershy didn’t question her need to send the world back to a state when animals thrived and ponies were scares.

(a villian name i had for her was Queen Pangea)

With the mostly underwater Ponyville in this AU applejack comes from a family of both seaponies and sirens. herself mostly taking after the siren side of the family. She comes from a farming family of seaweed farmers that contributes to the spa and Ponyville’s many economy source. 

Applejack’s colony would suffer a infection of darkness that effected a good chunk of the siren population including a bunch of applejacks family and herself. It started with it switching on and off were they would go into schooling frenzies and attack wildlife or other seaponies and sirens. Ponies began to speak bad of sirens believing them to be showing their true nature, which only pushed applejack over the edge. she would begin hunting the waters and destroying other seaponies livelihoods and the things the spa required, even running off guest.

Starswirl has plans to take care of the siren colony that has begun to terrorize ponyville, and shining armor questions if he really has the best choices in mind and wonders if the sirens are at all like his sister and need help. 

#rmullet #lol sorry for the long ramblings #i just liked this au i think its a lil fun #long post #villian mane six au #mlp #twilight sparkle #shining armor #rarity #pinkie pie #rainbow dash #fluttershy #applejack

[reinvent-and-believe]

saying your names

Prompt: hallucination Relationships:  Geralt & Visenna  Rating: T Content Warnings: unintentional but constant misgendering by a parent; depiction of gender dysphoria in a small child; reference to child self-injury (scratching); abandonment issues; minor book spoilers Summary: Visenna's child is claimed by a witcher through the Law of Surprise. When she bears a daughter instead of the promised son, she thinks she's cheated Destiny. But Destiny rarely accepts such defeat. (Or - the trans Geralt mommy issues fic)

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

-

i. The Brave Knight

There’s an old fairy tale from far-away Toussaint, one Visenna remembers her grandmother telling her when she was little more than a babe, of a cohort of the bravest knights who gathered at the behest of the first duke to slay monsters and defeat villains and protect the land from all manner of evil. They were five in total, but none rivalled the gallant Sir Geralt, who defended the innocent and the weak, who perfectly embodied the Virtues, who fearlessly and faithfully loved the beautiful maiden Liliana. It’s a story like no other, full of heroics and chivalry, grand quests and epic romance. Visenna remembers sighing as a little girl, of braiding flowers into her shining copper hair and pretending to be Lady Liliana, rescued by that most puissant and most chivalrous of knights.

She hopes that her own daughter will love the tales as much as she did, so she recounts them while Greta lies in bed, wide dark eyes barely blinking as she soaks in every detail. She’s two now and obsessed with stories, any silly rambling thing Visenna remembers from childhood or improvises about the forest creatures near the village, but none have captivated her quite like this tale.

The next day, Visenna hears her daughter whacking at the swaying cattails at the bank of the river with a stick. “I defeat you!” comes the tremulous cry. “I Sir Geralt! I brave knight!”

It’s a small thing, and silly, yet Visenna goes cold.

ii. The Babe

When she realizes she’s with child, Visenna knows it will be a boy, feels it as sure as she feels the wind on her face, the blood pounding in her veins. She’s happy for a time. She knows the horrors women face, has seen, has felt firsthand the cruelties the world inflicts on beautiful little girls. Better a boy, then. Better a boy with a chance at a good life, a boy she can teach and train, a boy who won’t beat or violate or torment.

A mere month before the babe is due, the man returns, and finds her with child, and tells her what he’s done. He blames Destiny and the Law of Surprise and Tradition as Visenna learns a new type of cruelty men can inflict.

And so she hardens herself, tells herself that she will not become attached to what’s growing within her, this life promised to pay a life debt. “Don’t be absurd,” her friends tell her, through nervous glances. “You always assume the worst. It may well be a girl. The witcher won’t have need of a girl.”

But Visenna knows it, feels it with every spark of chaos within her and every pulse she sends out. The babe will be a boy, and she will have to give him up to the witchers, to be trained and transmuted into something other, something more and something less than the child she’ll birth.

And so Visenna grows cold.

When the midwife puts the squalling red girl with dark hair and wide dark eyes in Visenna’s arms, she sobs for days, sobs until she has no tears left and her eyes are raw and swollen. She won’t let the tiny thing out of her sight, barely lets others hold the babe, even in her utter exhaustion. Destiny may have promised her child to the witchers, but Destiny made the folly of giving her a daughter instead of the promised son.

iii. Greta

Greta will not wear her clothes.

At first, it’s almost a game. Visenna dresses her in a frock while the three-year-old protests then glares in turn when she’s overridden. She moves stiffly in the garment, pulling at the sleeves and tugging at the skirt, but she complies. But the minute she’s out of her mother’s sight, the dress comes off, and Visenna finds her naked, regardless of the weather. And the process repeats.

The struggle over clothing is only the beginning. Generally obedient, respectful, intelligent, Greta is nonetheless not an easy child, prone to inconsolable fits of panic and distress, prone to disappearing if not constantly monitored. It’s as though Visenna has birthed two different children. There’s the sullen, timid girl who hates wearing clothing, who barely speaks, who flinches at the sound of her own name, who stiffens in panic sometimes when she’s called, who cries at the slightest provocation, who goes missing only to be found after a frantic hour of searching lying on the floor in the narrow space between her bed and the wall, staring blankly, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Then there’s the other child, the one who cuts dark curls short with the pruning shears from the shed, who runs fearlessly through the woods, slaying invisible monsters all around, yelling and laughing and breathless.

When a young couple with a son not much older than Greta moves into a nearby cottage, Visenna hopes that companionship will stabilize her daughter’s volatile, inexplicable moods. Instead, it leads to an immediate altercation: on the first day Greta and the boy Marek play together, the boy’s father shows up on Visenna’s doorstep, furious, with a wide, bleeding gash in his hand. He’d found them wearing each other’s clothes, he tells her. Greta had refused to surrender Marek’s clothes, and when he moved to force her out of them, she’d bitten his hand. “Like a rabid beast,” he spits out as Visenna runs past him to the small shack where Greta makes herself as small as possible, shaking all over.

Visenna shoves a few coins at the man with a glare. “Buy your son another outfit,” she snaps, and when she kneels down to Greta’s level the terrified child’s arms wrap immediately around her neck. She takes her child home in the roughspun tunic and trousers.

(Maybe she should punish the child for biting, but Visenna knows the ways men can be cruel, had seen the terror in her child’s huge brown eyes. Even if he meant no harm in trying to retrieve his son’s clothes, she can’t help being glad the child bit him rather than permit his touch.)

Visenna has never listened to Greta’s thoughts before, rarely listens to anyone’s on purpose, hates the uneasy sense of violation the act stirs up in her. But as she carries the silent, shaking child home, the thoughts ring so loudly she can’t keep them out.

Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl.

Then:

Not a girl.

Not a girl.

Not a girl.

Not a girl.

iv. The Child

The morning after the incident with the neighbor, Visenna lays two outfits side by side on the bed: the tunic and trousers nicked from the neighbor boy, or the dress most frequently tolerated, a plain shift of soft linen, comfortable and loose.

"Which would you rather wear today?" Visenna asks, making the beds as usual. She hears the sharp intake of breath, sees out of the corner of her eye the hesitation, and then the child grabs the boy's clothes and cradles them in trembling arms.

Visenna visits a tailor and trades in little frocks for breeches and shirts. She watches her child’s face light up when she presents them, watches the child run reverent fingers over each garment, little hands doing their best to neatly fold each piece.

She stops calling the child Greta; stops calling the child anything but child. The child doesn’t seem to mind this namelessness; on the contrary, the child thrives. The too-thin frame rounds out with healthy, nearly chubby development as the child begins to eat more than a few bites at each meal; weak, skinny arms and legs grow strong with constant running and playing in the woods near the house. Banished is the pale, terrified little girl; only the rambunctious, talkative, joyful child remains.

"When I'm a knight," the child tells her one day, coming in from the yard wearing a bucket as a helmet, "I'm going to ride a big horse."

"Oh, a big horse," Visenna echoes, ladling the soup into a wooden bowl and blowing gently to cool it. "What will you name the horse?"

The child considers this. "Does it have to have a name?"

"All creatures need a name."

The child doesn't speak for a long while. Then that piping, gentle voice rings out. "What if the horse hates its name? It won’t be able to tell me."

Visenna sets the bowl down on the table. She doesn't ask any of the questions pounding through her head as she looks at her nameless child, lost in thought. She doesn’t think about Destiny, how a witcher may well show up at her door at any moment looking for their payment, doesn’t think about taking the child there herself. "Helmet off," she says instead, running a hand through dark curls when the child obeys. "Come, eat your soup."

v. The Butcher

She first hears whispers of the Butcher of Blaviken when she’s traveling through Poviss, brought north by an outbreak of smallpox needing healers. She hears of the vile, deranged, white-haired witcher who slaughtered nearly an entire village unprovoked, even women and children. She thinks little of it. The child she left with the witchers over half a century ago had brown hair, and the years would not have turned it so quickly, not on a witcher.

If he’s even still alive.

She puts the thought away, carefully, as she has for decades.

She thinks of it a little more in Kovir. “You’re one of them!” shrieks a woman in the tavern, pointing at a bulky man sitting in the corner. “One of them witchers like that Butcher! I seen your wolf necklace!”

All eyes train onto this disfigured witcher who is not Visenna’s child. (Does her child bear scars like this? Do his shoulders stoop in such defeat?) He scrubs a square hand over his face, looking almost pained, before he shoves away from the table in silence and leaves.

School of the Wolf, then, just like the witcher she’d surrendered her child to with naught but a letter left at the inn where he was staying. Your Child Surprise will be at the crossroads by the river at midday. A few brief, stilted sentences explaining that the child was different from other boys but Destiny had chosen him nonetheless. A terse plea that the witcher treat the child with kindness, to protect him if he could. A postscript, written in a shakier hand than the rest of the letter. My son’s name is Geralt.

Vesemir. The child’s father had called him old, grey-haired even then. Is Vesemir this Butcher, the ruthless, barbarous old witcher who leaves a trail of fresh corpses in his wake? Had she entrusted the helpless child to a merciless brute all these years ago?

It’s not until the notice board outside of Tridam that she understands. It’s a fairly standard notice concerning some vague, nondescript monster that’s caused disappearances, pleading for help from any witcher, excepting the butcher Geralt. Show your face in Tridam and we’ll finish you off like they should have done in Blaviken.

Her child, the Butcher of Blaviken.

She doesn’t know what happened in Blaviken, can’t find a clear telling. Killed a woman, some say, killed an army, killed all but three people, killed everyone down to the dogs and cows and sheep in his rage. Tales grow in the telling, she knows, but she can’t dispute it. Perhaps he is evil incarnate, perhaps by sending him to the witchers she doomed the continent to bloodshed, perhaps he is the monster in these furious whispers.

But she can’t help remembering the tiny, terrified body, rocking in the corner of a shack, those wide eyes staring up at her in panic. “Like a rabid beast,” the man had said, but Visenna found only a petrified child shaking in the corner.

vi. The White Wolf

The young man swaggers towards Visenna. Between the bright turquoise doublet, the enormous feather swooping dramatically through the air on his jauntily tilted hat, and the self-assurance of his stride, he looks like a veritable peacock.

It’s her own fault. She knows she’d been staring, but the sound of that name on his lips…

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?” His smile is bright and surprisingly genuine, reaching all the way up to his eager blue eyes. He’s younger up close than she’d imagined from across the tavern, barely more than a boy. “Though not half so lovely as you, I daresay. Might I interest you in a drink?”

She nods, silent. Watches him charm a passing barmaid who blushes and quickly returns with the desired ale. He slips into the chair across from Visenna, resting his elbows on the table and lacing his long fingers together beneath his chin, fixing her with a wide-eyed, adoring smile.

Before he can speak, she asks, “Your song. About the witcher.” She pauses, unsure what she means to ask. “Did you write it?”

Somehow the boy looks even more delighted. “Indeed I did! By the gods, it’s wonderful to chat with a fan. It’s one of my most recent compositions. How did you like it?”

“Hmm.” The boy’s song had been so jarringly different from any reference to the child she bore than she’s ever heard. In the bard’s honeyed voice, he sounded almost heroic. She hesitates. “Do you know him?”

“Only a little,” he admits, but there’s a slight flush on his childish face that he attempts to cover with bravado. “The song is the true telling of our grand adventure. I accompanied the White Wolf on his quest to defeat the Devil of Posada, the most terrifying monster to ever...well, terrorize the good people of the Valley of the Flowers.”

“And he’s...he’s not what people say?” Those huge brown eyes staring up at her, tiny body trembling. “Not a butcher?”

“Oh my good lady, not at all!” The bard’s expression of dismay is guileless, earnest. “He saved me, put himself between me and harm’s way when we were captured by the elves, offered his own life for mine.”

A life debt. Just as the child’s father had promised the Law of Surprise to the old witcher, the vow that had set the course of Geralt’s life before he was even born. And now this strange boy owes Geralt a life debt of his own.

“So that’s why,” she confirms cautiously. “Why you write songs for him. Make him the hero when men would be more than happy to remember him as a monster.”

The boy hesitates, his charismatic blustering slipping as he bites at his bottom lip. He reaches distractedly into his pocket, finding some trinket he rolls about in his palm to occupy his busy, nervous hand before he slowly answers. “Even if he hadn’t saved my life I would have written about him. Well, not if I hadn’t survived that particular encounter, of course. But if I’d gotten away myself, or if I hadn’t followed him into the wild in the first place, I would still have written about him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I…I don’t think he’s known very much kindness.” The bard doesn’t look at her, quite, as he speaks, slower and softer than before. “You ought to see the way he responds to a simple compliment, you’d think his head might explode, he twitches and looks bewildered and grunts angrily. It’d be amusing if it weren’t so very sad.” He’s quiet for a moment, tracing the wood grain in the table with his eyes as he gathers his thoughts. “But he’s kind, even if the world isn’t. He gave his reward for the contract to the…well, to someone who needed it more. And before that, he…” He glances down at the dull gold coin between his fingers, rubbing absently at worn, beveled edges, his face flushing prettily. “He liked my singing.”

She watches the bard, lost in thought and fiddling with a lone coin, for a long while.

vii. Geralt

A slip of a thing running through the woods. Frightened. Alone.

A fight. Gruesome, brutal, fast.

The stench of decay.

“And me? What did I do? I bandaged a wounded man who’d fainted away and put him on my cart and didn’t leave him to expire. It’s an ordinary matter.”

“It’s not so ordinary. I’ve been left...in similar situations...like a dog.”

Blood. Not running, red and healthy and clean; slow. Thick. Dark. Foul.

Infection.

Youths dancing in lusty delight on a warm spring night. A woman with raven curls, naked and wistful in his arms, the warmth of a bonfire lighting her face a beautiful gold. Children screaming, playing in a dried moat. A queen, formidable and sneering, full of contempt.

Hideous wounds, threatening the leg. Amputation may be necessary, without immediate intervention.

Resin in the air.

Ashen hair matted over the clumped, drying cake of blood deforming half of a pale face.

Black potion with a green seal. And then darkness.

Visenna awakes with a start.

The druids’ campsite is still, the last embers of the fire the only light in the darkness of the forest. She pulls the woolen cloak around her thin shoulders, grabs her medical bag, and goes to find the witcher that was once her child.

She finds him a pale and bloody mess on the back of a cart, eyes open and unseeing. He’s racked with feverish chills as his body desperately attempts to fight the infection poisoning him.

She helps the merchant move Geralt carefully onto blankets on the ground. She tends to him, as she’s tended to thousands of others. She cleans his wounds, scraping destroyed, decaying flesh away from healthy tissue, pulling the gentle pulses of chaos from the earth to purify his blood, draining infection and necrosis and narcotic alike from him.

She’d cleaned blood and dirt and debris from scraped knees, once, the too-fast beating of a little, huge heart pounding so loudly she could feel it. The wounds of childhood.

His pulse is slow, the drumbeat of a dirge.

She’s warm all over, suddenly, then cold. Her vision swims before her eyes.

A little more. The pulsing wanes, wavers as she begins to join him in the dark void beyond consciousness.

No.

She breathes, her eyes closed, then returns to her work.

She feels him stirring before he makes a movement, senses him swimming to the surface, coming to. He’s quiet, still, blank. When his eyes open, he’s staring at the treetops above them. His face is impassive. Lifeless.

The way she would find him, sometimes, after he went missing as a child. Staring at nothing. Trying not to be.

She can hear it in his voice. He knows.

His leg will heal, now. She’s done all she can.

She moves on to the bedsores, massaging ointment carefully into the open wounds. His body is stiff and unyielding beneath her touch.

She gives him what she can. “It’s my profession,” she says. Her voice is steady, cool. It’s no excuse, no answer, but it’s what she has. “The only thing I’ve ever been good at.” This much at least is true. This much she can give him.

She’s always known she would meet him again. She never sought him out, never avoided him. “People linked by destiny will always find each other.” She hears it, as though it’s someone else’s voice.

“I want you to look at me.” It’s a snarl. Not a sound she’s heard from those lips before. “How do you like my eyes? Do you know, Visenna, what they do to a witcher to improve his eyes?”

She knows enough. She meets his gaze.

Those eyes, the greatest marker of his difference, his inhumanity. They’re golden, now, instead of brown. His pupils are wide, round, black, pained. They aren’t so different. So monstrous.

Just the eyes of a terrified child lashing out in desperation.

“Do you know it doesn’t always work?” he demands.

“Stop it, Geralt.”

And something breaks.

“You don’t get to use that name!” There’s a frantic rage dripping off every syllable, hatred and agony, like a festering wound ripped open and left to bleed. He glares at her with a wild fury. “Vesemir gave me that name.”

And he’s a child, he’s three years old and screaming like he’s being tortured when she calls his given name. He’s five and distraught over the thought of a horse who hates its name and can’t tell anyone. He’s four and he’s a trembling mess with blood beneath his fingernails, shaking and unable to stop ripping at his own flesh.

“You trusted Destiny rather than trying to find me yourself,” he begs.

A child with nothing in the world running through the forest and into the arms of a witcher.

There’s a tear running down her face. It’s the only thing she can feel. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” Visenna says softly.

“Why?”

She’d known since before he was born that she wasn’t to keep him. That Destiny had other plans.

When she thought she had a daughter, there was hope.

“The answers will only hurt us both.” Carefully, Visenna presses him back into the makeshift sickbed.

“Yen was right.” His voice is low, barely audible, a broken murmur. “It’s not enough to be destined for each other.”

A child runs through the woods and finds a witcher waiting.

Brown curls become ashen locks. Eyes swirling brown and gold and green.

“Something more is needed.” He’s not speaking to her anymore. He’s staring up, at the treetops and through them to the stars above, his eyes losing and regaining focus. “I...I want…”

“No.” Her voice is soft, and she sees him relax into the smooth cadence in spite of himself. “Go to sleep, Geralt.” She hesitates as his eyes grow heavy, begin to drift shut, and she can’t help leaning toward him to gently whisper, “And just between us, Vesemir didn’t give you that name.” She lets herself reach out, carefully brushing white hair off his sweating brow. “It doesn’t change anything, but I’d like you to know that.”

“Visenna…”

“Sleep. I was just a dream.” She hesitates, watching silently as he fights the exhaustion, like a child fighting to stay awake past his bedtime, begging for one more story. “Sleep, Sir Geralt.”

He does.

viii. Sir Geralt

She does not see him again.

She travels to Sodden and heals the injured, soldier and mage alike.

She hears tales, as she has for years.

Geralt’s kidnapped a young Cintran princess for unspeakable, nefarious purposes.

Geralt died on Thanedd, caught up by chance in the mages’ bloody revolt.

Geralt led the forces of Lyria and Rivia against Nilfgaard, earning himself a knighthood and a position in Queen Meve’s army.

(She doesn’t believe any of them, doesn’t let herself care either way, but she hopes the latter is true. Hopes he lives out the rest of his days a brave knight, as he always dreamed of becoming.)

Visenna works. Cleans and stitches and bandages wounds, wanders from battleground to battleground. There’s no shortage of work for a healer.

So many tales of Geralt the witcher, Geralt the traitor, Geralt the butcher, the knight, the outlaw, the hero, the father. Of his victories and defeats, his loves and enemies, his transcendence, his demise.

Visenna listens to them all. Collects the stories, the lies, the praises, the calumnies. She draws them carefully within her. Carries them with her as she continues on the path.

For all the rumors and speculation and ballads, of all things, for all the different Geralts, there’s one that’s hers and hers alone. A skinny, adventurous child with brown curls and a bucket-helmet falling into his eyes who swings a gnarled oak stick as a sword. He’s ever vigilant, ever ready to defend the weak against the unrelenting onslaught of monsters only he can see.

#the witcher fic #the witcher #geralt of rivia #visenna #trans geralt #my fic #still don't really know how i feel about this but here it is #witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

[staticscreenwriting]

LOVE LIKE THE MOVIES // BUCKY BARNES // 3

THREE - Little Shop Of Horrors

Masterlist

Summary: This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Bucky Barnes, finds himself thrown into a world that seems so different from everything he’s ever known. The girl, (Y/N) knows entirely too much about rom-coms and is quite particular about the way she eats her popcorn. Bucky meets (Y/N) a few months after returning to NYC. He knows almost immediately that becoming her friend is inevitable. This is a story of boy meets girl. This is a story about love. (Bucky Barnes x female!Reader // a few spoilers for TFATWS)

[additional note: I am German. Sometimes I get the tense wrong or make mistakes. I am useless when it comes to punctuation. Go easy on me, please.]

Bucky vividly remembers being about 10 years old and sitting on the living room floor watching his father assemble a heavy cabinet made from dark, massive wood. It had intricate gold ornaments along the sides and around the edges and even at that young age, he knew that it must’ve been expensive.

He likes thinking back to that memory, mostly because it’s one of the few that he can still tightly hold onto and recount the exact way he’s felt then, and partly because it’s so seemingly insignificant. It’s nice to know that some of the memories he regained after having his mind wiped clean, are tiny unimportant ones. It’s not just the big moments and grand gestures that make life worth living. Sometimes it’s the little things, the small details you look back on and fondly remember with a smile on your face.

Looking at the furniture before him, Bucky can’t imagine what his mother would think of these cabinets. Everything is white or beige or grey and there’s a lot of shiny black fronts and glass doors. The place is huge, so huge they have to tape arrows on the floor so people don’t get lost, and it smells of artificial vanilla and sawdust.

It’s not like he hates the furniture here, it’s just a lot and quite honestly, he’s not sure what really matches his personal style. Hell, he hasn’t had a personal style since before he went to fight in the war.

“ Ooooh, this one is very you! “ (Y/N) exclaims as she lets herself fall onto a fluffy brown 2-seat sofa.

If it wasn’t for her, Bucky wouldn’t be here. Not only because he wants her to come around more often and actually be able to sit on a couch, but also because she was literally the one driving them both here.

“Watcha doin? “

That was the text that started it, and before he knew she had pulled up to his apartment building, arm hanging from her open car window, and yelled “Get in loser, we’re going furniture shopping! “

Bucky assumes that is another movie reference though he doesn’t dare ask her about it.

“Nope, that’s a two-seater. Too small. I want to be able to sleep on it. “

“ Or, and hear me out on this one, you could get a new bed to sleep in. “

He doesn’t have any reply to that. It’s not like he doesn’t want to sleep in his bed, it’s just — it’s too soft. It’s too comfortable. It makes it easy to fall asleep and dream. And it’s never pleasant dreams. It’s nightmares. It’s faces that haunt him. Innocent faces. Eyes filled with terror. Fear. Fear of him. It’s nightmares. It’s memories.

When he doesn’t answer, (Y/N) pulls herself back up from the sofa and wanders on “or we’ll just have to find a bigger couch, that’s fine too. “

And at that moment he’s entirely grateful that she doesn’t push him any further.

They wander around the store for a while longer, slalom in between sofas and recliners, swerve in and out of mock-up rooms, all the while (Y/N) keeps throwing puns at him incorporating the Swedish names of the furniture.

Hanging out with her kind of reminds him of the times he hung out with Steve when both of them were so much younger. Of course, it’s nothing alike. He’s not even close to the person he was then, the boy he was then. The thing is, back then everything was easy and light. Being here with her and listening to her horrible puns, that’s easy too. For right now, he doesn’t even notice the weight that’s constantly resting on his heart or the perpetual shadow that seems to rest above him. This is easy and it feels so nice.

They step into yet another room, this one painted a dark forest green. Against the wall, there’s a dark wooden cabinet holding books and a fake tv and in the middle is a corner sofa made from dark brown leather. It’s big enough to fit both him and (Y/N) and maybe even Lady if she’s okay with cuddling up a little to either of them.

“ I like that one,” Bucky says and lets himself plop down on the couch. It’s comfortable but not too soft. It’s just right. Is this what Goldilocks felt like?

(Y/N) sits down next to him, rests her feet on top of the couch table and for a second it’s just them and the black screen of the fake tv and the intercom system calling out for little Kyle to be picked up at the Småland play area.

“ Honey, “ (Y/N) speaks up after a moment, “ I think the tv is broken? “ her voice ringing through the mock-up in a thick Transatlantic accent, making her sound like the women in the movies he grew up with.

“ Huh. Ain’t that something ?”

“ Well didn’t you fix it like I told you? “

“ Guess I must’ve forgotten,” Bucky plays along, trying to suppress the smirk pulling the corner of his lips upwards.

“ Ugh, remind me again why I married you? “

Bucky shrugs his shoulders casually “ my good looks? “

“ Oh, don’t flatter yourself. It’s very unbecoming. Good thing is — “ she announces as jumps up, pulling Bucky up with her and right over into the next mock-up living room. “ We have another tv.”

As Kyle’s parents are called out again, (Y/N) and Bucky tumble from one room into the next. From kitchen to bathroom to fake little balcony. All setting the stage for another chapter from their made-up marriage. Scenes from a movie never made, a book never written. A beautiful kaleidoscope of could-be and never-was. A nice fantasy to get lost in.

If this was a rom-com, (Y/N) thinks, this would be the falling in love montage. Some killer indie track would play in the background and it would be featured in at least one Buzzfeed article about romantic gestures.

But it’s not a movie, it’s real life and she isn’t the romantic lead and Bucky is — well he would make a great leading man now that she thinks about it.

They make their way back to the green living room with the brown couch and the ‘broken’ tv and fall back against the leather, laughter shaking their bodies, tears of joy stinging at the corners of their eyes. As she catches her breath, (Y/N) taps Bucky softly on the right shoulder and drops her voice to a whisper.

“Honey,” she says “I don’t know how to tell you this but uh — there’s a family on our balcony.”

Bucky’s eyes follow her outstretched hand and sure enough on the adjacent fake balcony is a family of 4 staring back at them. And just like that, they fall back into a beautiful harmony of laughter.

“So explain to me again what this movie is about?” Bucky asks as (Y/N) takes another sip from her coke can.

“Dude buys a plant, it starts eating people.”

“And this is gonna show me what women want these days?”

A joyful chuckle falls from (Y/N)’s lips. “I mean … there is a love story and a moral about how far you’re willing to go for the people you love even if it might be morally questionable, but maybe — maybe we should consider this one the Halloween special.”

Bucky shrugs his shoulder as if to say “okay fine with me” and leans back against the car seat. The massive screen of the drive-in is currently playing some kind of ice cream commercial that has (Y/N) softly humming along to the jingle.

This trip wasn’t planned, in fact, they’d been on their way back home when a billboard at the side of the road caught (Y/N)’s attention and put a huge grin on her face, so wide it could’ve split her face in two.

That’s how he ended up parked neatly in a row of cars, Coca-Cola in hand, popcorn resting in between him and (Y/N) waiting for the commercials to end and the movie to begin.

“You’re gonna love this one,” she’s told him beforehand. He’s a little skeptical about it but he’s not gonna tell her. Bucky is just so appreciative of the fact that she bothers trying to introduce him to these things. They might not end up being for him but it’s a good feeling to have someone care this much. Someone who hasn’t been with him through all the shit. Someone who doesn’t feel responsible because they pity him. Someone who doesn’t owe it to Steve to look after Bucky…

“So … I still have some homework to do.” He chimes in thinking back to their conversation on his living room floor.

“Homework that involves me?”

“Mmh. Doc thinks I should learn some more things about you. Apparently, it’s not enough to know that you’re crazy about movies and talk a lot.”

“I do talk a lot.” (Y/N) agrees and pops a piece of popcorn into her mouth. “I don’t know what to tell you. What you want to know?”

“Anything.”

Since coming back from oblivion, Bucky hasn’t really made an effort to get to know anyone. Growing closer to people only means there’s more for you to lose. More people you can potentially hurt. He doesn’t usually learn new things about people because he doesn’t ask. Because he doesn’t want to know. It’s a lonely life but it’s safe. It’s comfortable.

But this is different. He’s in too deep now to stop. And yeah, maybe this is his homework. Maybe he asks because his therapist told him too but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. He wants to know about (Y/N). Even the little things. The insignificant details.

“Well as I said before, I’ve studied literature and creative writing. I want to be an author. That’s uh — that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. The thing is it’s very hard to actually get people to give your writing a chance. Especially now. The world is in such a weird limbo after everyone came back. There’s no room for my art right now. So I work as a waitress to make ends meet. “

“What would you write about?” Bucky asks and in her eyes, in the surprise that’s so clearly written on her face, he can see that people don’t ask her that all too often.

“I don’t know, life? “

“Love stories?”

She lets out a mix between a scoff and a snort “what do I know about romance? I can tell you all about the love the movies and the songs and the books want to sell us, and don’t get me wrong, I love that. But I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced true and honest romantic love. So how could I ever write about it ?”

For a moment silence falls upon them. It’s neither comfortable nor awkward. It just is. Sometimes that’s enough.

“Look, I might not know a lot about love either, but I do know that dreams are worth holding on to, no matter how out of reach they seem. If it’s something you believe in and that you’re passionate about, it’s worth fighting for it.”

“Huh, didn’t put you for such a motivational speaker. Where’ve you got that from”

“Didn’t think the skinny boy from Brooklyn was ever gonna save a whole bunch of lives and fight in a war. Steve was the walking proof that you can do anything. “

“You miss him, huh?”

People don’t usually ask about Steve. They either don’t care how Bucky feels about the whole situation or they know it’s a tough topic and avoid it altogether. The worst part is he doesn’t even know how to respond. Yes of course he misses Steve, more than anything really, but there’s also a little bit of resentment swinging along. With Steve here by his side, it always felt like there was someone there who understood exactly what Bucky was going through. Someone who also had to figure out how to navigate this new life. But now with Steve gone, he feels so utterly alone.

“Every day.”

“Look I’m not going to ask what happened because quite honestly I’m still trying to grasp the fact that there are aliens and superheroes and wizards — “

“Wizards are not a thing.”

“You sure?”

Bucky lets out a slightly annoyed sigh “Yup. 100%”

“What’s the Strange guy?”

“Sorcerer.”

“That’s not the same?”

“No.”

(Y/N) considers for a moment, eyes screwed up in uncertainty before she shrugs her shoulder “ alright if you say so. Anyway, my point is, I don’t know if you have that many people to talk to and I don’t know if you even want to talk about Steve but if you do … well you can talk to me. I know I talk a lot but I’m also a really good listener. “

There’s no doubt in his mind that she is. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to talk about Steve yet though. Not when his heart is still at war whether or not to be angry. Not when he’s still so uncertain about his own complicated emotions.

“Thanks, I uh — I appreciate it.”

Loud music starts to play and (Y/N)’s head snaps towards the screen just in time for the title card to pop up in big colorful letters as three women shimmy across the street and start singing.

Bucky can’t help but let his gaze travel back towards (Y/N) every once in a while. There’s something about her he can’t quite figure out, but the way her eyes light up as she watches the movie and the smile on her face, it gives him a warm feeling. Like bad things don’t exist for the 90 minutes they sit together and watch a film.

“Sooooo?” (Y/N) asks as she parks the car in front of Bucky’s place. Her eyes still hold a sparkle that’s both mischievous and excited.

“I actually liked this one a little.”

“A little?”

“Look it’s not gonna be my favorite movie but I had fun. But uh — maybe that’s just because I’ve watched it with you.”

(Y/N) grants him a beautiful smile. It’s full of warmth and care and honesty. And he’s glad he told her, even if it makes him vulnerable.

“You telling me I’m a good friend?”

“Guess so.”

“Well, you’re a good friend too, Bucky.”

He hopes she’s right though he has a hard time believing it. He’s never seen himself as the greatest friend. Everything he did for Steve he did because he knew Steve would do the same. It came so naturally from both of them that it never felt like he was doing anything special or exceptional. It was as easy as breathing.

“Do you wanna come up? We could order some food.”

“Oh, I can’t. Gotta pick up Lady from Robin’s place. But as soon as your couch is delivered count me in as the first sleepover guest. “

“Will do. Hey, you think I should name the plant we bought (Y/N) 2?”

“Depends, you wanna feed the neighborhood Dentist to it”

“Maybe.”

They fall into another fit of laughter and even though it’s not that funny, and even though it’s really dumb and silly actually, Bucky enjoys it so much. He can’t remember a day when he laughed this much, felt this light.

“Oh, by the way, I’m throwing a pre-Halloween-party next weekend. If you’re free you should totally drop by.”

“I um — A friend is coming around that weekend.”

“Then bring your friend! The more the merrier, right ?”

Sam is gonna be down, there’s no doubt in Bucky’s mind about it. Sam isn't the problem, he never is. It’s Bucky. Going to a party is terrifying for someone who’s never known anything but the 1940s. This can only end up in disasters.

And yet …

“Okay, I’ll let him know.”

“Cool. Awesome. Just uh — Just text me when you know. Also, there’s no special theme so you can dress up as whatever.”

“I’m not dressing up.”

(Y/N) blows a raspberry against her arm “lame! But whatever, you do you.”

He guesses that means as much as “suit yourself”.

They bid each other goodbye with a hug and a promise from (Y/N) to Bucky to text him once she’s home just so he knows she’s safe.

To her, that’s a gesture so sweet and endearing it sends a jolt through her heart. To him, it’s as natural as breathing. You do what you can to keep those safe that you care about, even if it’s just a simple little text.

“You dressed up!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Man, You’re wearing a costume. I’m looking at you right now. I can see it. You dressed up.”

“These are just my clothes.”

“These are just your clothes? Your normal clothes?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wearing Converse now?”

“ mmh.”

“Your Jeans are cuffed, man. I’ve never seen you cuff your jeans.”

“It’s something I do now.”

Bucky isn’t a very religious person. He doesn’t pray very often. At that moment though, he prays to god and every higher spirit one might choose to believe in, to open up the earth and let it swallow him whole.

“Look,” Sam says and gives Bucks a friendly pat on the back “you don’t gotta be embarrassed by it. I dressed up!”

“Yeah, what even are you, by the way? An exterminator?”

“I — what? No! I’m a ghostbuster.”

“Okay. Whatever that is.”

“Whatev— Bucky, Man you really gotta go with the times a little. I know you’re practically ancient but the Ghostbusters? Catch up!”

“Whatever. I'm not dressing up. Can we go?” Bucky sighs in exasperation, making Sam’s grin grow even bigger. Bucky knows that he’s just playing into his game, that Sam loves riling him up. That doesn’t mean it’s any easier to not let it get to him.

“Alright alright. Hold your horses. I’m ready. Let’s go … Danny Zuko.”

Bucky wants to punch him then but Sam is out the door faster than Bucky can even react, his loud laughter sounding through the hallway.

There are people everywhere. Sitting on the kitchen counter, lounging on the couches, leaning against the wall by the open windows. Everywhere. The apartment is small and with so many people inside, it looks absolutely packed. Like sardines in a tin.

Music echos through the place, a song Bucky faintly recognizes from the radio but can’t name. Sam seems to enjoy it though, his body already swaying along to the tune.

“Hey Buck, where’s your girl?” He asks as both of them let their eyes travel across the room and over the crowd.

“She’s not my girl and I don’t —“

In the middle of the room is a fish tank. It separates the living room area from the dining room and kitchen. Blue and green hues radiate from it as colorful fish circle around and swerve in and out of the plants.

But Bucky hardly noticedsthe fish, as his eyes fall onto the girl at the other side of the tank. The water sends a blue shimmer across her skin but her smile doesn’t lose any of the warmth it always holds. She looks beautiful. She always does but there’s something about her tonight that’s different from all the times he’s seen her before. Something ethereal.

At that moment, Bucky feels a fluttery feeling in his heart, in his bones, in his blood. He knows this feeling, has felt it before, a long time ago. Maybe, he thinks, maybe there could be more than friendship there.

And that thought absolutely terrifies him. Because falling for someone makes you foolish and dumb and vulnerable. And that’s awfully scary.

Taglist // if you want to be added or taken off just message me :) //: 

@zaynzierulez // @je-like-you // @dracoxxyoflam​ // @jackiehollanderr​ // @majo240820 // @kay-gilles // @booksb4looksstuff​ // @jckie94​ // @charmed-asylum​ // @shawnie--jo​ // @yllwtaxi​ // ​​

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky imagine #winter soldier x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier imagine #avengers imagine #avengers imagines #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #james barnes x reader #james barnes x female reader #he has too many names this must be enough

[bleachbleachbleach]

Fic: Away, Away

This was written for Day 13 of @hitsuhina-week! If you prefer, you can also read this on AO3. Which is my preference, because Tumblr keeps eating my spacing whether I use Rich Text or HTML so it looks absurd on here. >.>

Aftermath / Going on a Trip Together Hinamori Momo + Hitsugaya Toushirou Pre-Series

--

This will be the last time. 

(Whisper it, so he won't hear.)

--

Every spring, Junrinan finds its way to the western mountains. (The souls of Rukongai wander.) There is no grand procession: They disperse across the vast range, often alone and sometimes in twos. They are always careful not to cause disruption, because while one soul in a forest full of spirits generally isn't worth the effort, seven is a meal.

They are three. 

Soon, they will be two. Hinamori can't stop whispering her new name, hi na mo ri. It's early to be out here, but the snows were mild this year and new growth is already peeking from beneath the thick, rich leaf rot. She feels an affinity with this year's tender saplings, a feeling that grows hotter with every whispered repetition of her name. Her grandmother had given it to her, showed her how to write it. She'd studied her name harder than she had the exam.

Hinamori has an acceptance letter. In April, she is leaving. 

Hinamori nearly walks straight into a nettle spirit--the hair-eating kind--draped across the game path plain as day.

"Do you wanna be bald?" Toushirou grouses as he yanks her back just in time. "I guess it fits. You're acting like a blind old man." 

Hinamori blinks, brushes imagined hair from her face. It's the fifth time she's tried to walk straight through a spirit in as many days. 

"Studying is bad for your eyes," says Toushirou. He doesn't care for moony Hinamori. Momo had paid a lot more attention to what was in front of her. But she's Hinamori now. At least, that's the only name she'll write, dragging her thin stick through the dirt outside the house. So that's what he calls her.

Toushirou squeezes through a bumble of pot-bellied mushroom spirits and Hinamori follows him, stepping carefully into his tracks.

"You'll need to keep reading even when I'm not around. It'll go if you don't practice," she says.

Toushirou makes a noncommittal sound.

"I'll send you letters full of kanji and quiz you on them when I visit." I'll learn how to write them pretty, she promises, just like Baachan does.

"Will you write me back?" she asks.

"Probably not."

This hurts her. But Toushirou plans to go the rest of his life without writing a single thing. It's not personal.

"Why would I need to tell you what happens in Junrinan?" he says. "You already know."

--

And if I forget?

--

Life in Junrinan doesn't change. That's what Toushirou was promised. The winters are quiet and slow, and in spring they go to the mountains. Summers are for farming, and autumns for harvest. Then winters are quiet and slow again.

Spring passes with bracken and angelica in hand. It is counted in the spirals of ferns as their number grows in the baskets. Some are dried; some are steeped. Mostly, they are sold. Many of the men in Junrinan spend springtime waking before dawn to sprint to the mountain, forage the lowlands, and return to the village for evening revelries, but Toushirou and Hinamori and their grandmother have always spent the whole of the season between the trees. The mountains prefer it when you stay. 

This will be true no matter how long Hinamori is gone.

April 12th through July 20th, then our first break, she says, scratching numbers in the dirt. But Junrinan doesn't have dates the way the Academy does. She draws the way the trees will change. The change happens in a long straight line, and beyond July 20th there is an emptiness rather than a repetition. How do you draw an unwritten future?

Hinamori writes her name again.

--

In the spring, everything is full: Toushirou enjoys the wet green of it, the late snows and vernal flooding. The water flows down from the mountains ice cold and the forests are loud and thick with spirits.

The spirits have no names that are written and no faces that have ever stayed the same, unremembered but immemorial. They are loud. Most of them respect the borders of his body. They brush against his legs with thick wet fur or scrape his cheek with leathery wings. They coil around his throat, treating him like a tree or rock. Some of them are trees and rocks. They are the mountains and forest, just like the wandering souls of Junrinan. They all belong here, more or less.

Toushirou can see most of them. When the blurry ones pass through you, it's feverishly unpleasant for the split-second it happens and then is nothing at all. The blurry ones, Toushirou figures, aren't actually in this forest. They are like shadows at sunset, cast long and far from their bodies. Their true bodies roam a different world entirely.

That's what Hinamori wants to do. 

Hinamori used to clamor for shinigami stories any time one of them passed through town. She'd been told one time that all travelers carried stories and now expected it.

The shinigami never expected her. Unless commerce was involved they didn't tend to acknowledge souls, or even look at them. So they always seemed surprised by Hinamori, like it hadn't occurred to them that they'd meet a real, full person out here. Which is fair enough, Toushirou grudgingly allows--there are plenty of souls in Junrinan so old and staid they cannot move, nor speak. (Don't touch them. It's unlucky.)

We don't talk about those.

The shinigami talk story: The story of black dye. The story of a tall bathhouse. The story of grilled meat on sticks. The story of the time they saw a noble. The story of a big fish. The story of a bigger fish. The story of the bullet train. The story of my sister, who isn't very interesting but is the only thing that comes to mind right now sorry. The story of 19th seats should be paid more. The story of the soul who wanted a story. 

Almost none of the stories are about death.

"Little girls shouldn't go into those mountains," one shinigami once said, which is as close as a story ever came to it. "Nasty stuff in there. They're called Hollows, you know. Real bad guys."

The shinigami patted the sword at his hip. He'd just told Hinamori a story about the third son of a lesser noble whom everyone loved and thought deserved better than the shadows of his elder brothers. And how preposterous is it, really, that he should have to prove himself when his brothers never did? Pushed out here into the boonies, seeking honor and fame. He really feels for the guy. Don't you? Don't you?

"You seem to know a lot about 'this guy,'" Toushirou offered.

"I'm a master storyteller," said the shinigami.

I've killed a Hollow before, you know, boasted the master storyteller. He'd led a unit of twelve men into those mountains out there, which were so quiet you could hear your own heart beating. When you can hear your terror--that's when you're on the cusp of valor. His eyes lit up. I was the one who cut the mask, he said.

Twelve is obviously far too many (seven is a meal), and those mountains have never been quiet. Toushirou didn't think he'd really been.

In the spring, though, there's a dark scar where once there'd been a copse of trees. Shattered branches and burned ground. His grandmother says it smells like Hollow. 

"They see things differently," his grandmother half-explains, of the shinigami and their Hollows and the silence of their mountains. Of course this would seem a different place to them.

"They're idiots," says Toushirou, though suddenly he's not sure. The scar is hair-raising, and his stomach roils. Maybe they really shouldn't be out in the woods.

"The shinigami know more than you," says Hinamori, taking his hand in hers. She grips it tightly, reassuring, or maybe annoyed. Both. She has a lot of school spirit for someone who hasn't even been yet.

But she doesn't let go of his hand, even after they've returned to the cover of the live trees, kitsune fire nestled in the brambles at their feet.

Toushirou makes the mistake of noticing a spirit that tends to linger just out of sight. It feeds on your instinct to look, and it grows higher and higher the more you crane your neck, so sure you'll be able to sneak a glimpse of it. By the time you realize the trick, you've always been had. It's very annoying.

--

This will be the last time.

(Scream it.)

--

"It's so dark out here," says Hinamori, in spite of the kitsune and all the rest. Lots of spirits glow. She is still holding his hand.

Toushirou thinks of the small lamp Hinamori had bought to study by, the wild shadows it cast on the interior walls and the way it had made all hours bright. He thinks of all the hours she hadn't slept. All because some shinigami had told her a story about a school. 

Anything would seem dark by comparison. He can't remember the last time she hadn't had her lamp on when he went to bed.

Hinamori is going to snap the bones in his hand. He yelps. Tears prick in his eyes. "What's wrong with you?"

She doesn't let go, and then she doesn't let go.

"It's so quiet," she says faintly. Her free hand wavers over her heart protectively.

It's so dark. It's so quiet. Quiet enough to hear your terror.

Except it's not. It's not dark.

It's not quiet.

The forest is full, air thick with chirrups and buzzing, screeching, hooting, chittering. Bodies clack and bones shudder. Reeds whistle and something large makes a whomping, resonating tone. Foxfire hisses as it makes sparks, throws phosphorous motes that dance high above. A heartbeat glow marches up the ridged spine of a lizard spirit. The forest is as it has always been.

Toushirou's eyes widen. 

"You can't hear them anymore."

To Hinamori, it is all darkness and silence. 

She sinks to the ground, burying her head in her knees as though to hide from the quiet. From the black. She drops his hand.

"Momo--"

She shakes her head. She opens her hands to the sky like she's waiting for a bird to land. For a split second, a small warm flame billows from her palms. 

Then the entire forest catches.

The thought had been innocent enough--to be her own light in the darkness, conquer her fear. But the forest only hears the conquering. It's the kitsune who don't take kindly to Hinamori's light. Their fire screeches up and outward and then all the spirits are in frenzy. A meal! scream some; and others, a threat! A danger to be expunged. A strange thing not of this forest, these mountains.

Outsider! the world around them hisses. Away.

away, away

Hinamori screams as the flames leap forward--the claws, the vines, the terrors and all in between. She throws herself in front of Toushirou. 

Toushirou can't find his voice at all. The wide whites of his eyes feel the propulsive gust of the forest coming down on them. On Hinamori. No! he can't shout, cold fear coiling over his frozen legs and pricking at his shoulder blades. Something serpentine rushes past him and he's on the ground. His head smacks hard against a writhing tree root and he tastes bile, feels nothing. 

Hears everything.

away

When he wakes, snow is falling, wet and sloppy. Kitsune are nibbling at the singed edges of a hanafuda. Hinamori is in her grandmother's arms. She's crying.

--

Before Hinamori started studying, with her bright lamp and her long nights and her feverish poetry scratched into the ground, before the hunger came, she'd woken one morning to a futon streaked with her blood. Her grandmother said that this was womanhood.

"The tea will stop the bleeding," she assured a tearful Hinamori as they scrubbed at her futon, pinking the waters. Toushirou beat at the stain with his feet, splashing everywhere.

"You don't have to touch it," Hinamori had said quietly, her eyes fixed on the water. "It's my mess."

"Baachan said I have to help," Toushirou objected. "Besides, am I supposed to just sit here and watch you bleed?"

--

Just one last time.

--

Hinamori isn't hurt, but she is in pain. The forest doesn't want her anymore. (She is leaving.)

"The forest sees them differently," his grandmother says, the other half of her earlier explanation. "Them," meaning shinigami. "Them," meaning Hinamori, now.

Shinigami see and are seen differently. They belong differently. Toushirou had only ever distinguished them by their black clothes, and sometimes their attitude. But his grandmother talks about reiryoku, about reiatsu, about the realms the shinigami travel through and the spirits they are blind to. The spirits that belong to different worlds than theirs, even when they're side by side. Some worlds are bound to one another, tied by fate and duty; others are repelled.

As Hinamori's reiatsu blossomed with her womanhood, slowly folding outward past her skin, beyond her body, her worlds were chosen for her. Like the bleeding, there's a tea to help this, too, but it's not the same. 

There is no going back.

"What're you looking at," Toushirou scowls at her. He's not sure what to do with her pain. There's nothing he can do for her pain. But she's looking at him differently, a little less like Hinamori and a little more like the rest of Junrinan does, and that scares him.

She asks him if he'd felt anything. Something cold.

She's asked him before. Every day since the incident, she's asked him.

His answer is always the same. No. Just fear.

He should be helping his grandmother. They're here in the forest for a reason, and that hasn't changed; they have foraging to do. But he doesn't want to leave Hinamori alone. 

"Don't be afraid of it, Shiro-chan," says Hinamori. Hinamori, who's now afraid of the dark.

Hinamori, who is leaving.

--

She doesn't have a choice. When her power comes into her she knows there is only one place she can go. It's a place she has always wanted to go. (She has always wanted to go places.) But now she has to.

She smiles. 

If she is going to go, she's going to fly. She will love, and yearn, and cry. She will give all of herself to the future before her, even when it means that precious things can be only memory. If there is something Hinamori leaves in him when she goes, it's flight. 

Someday, Toushirou will remember to remember that.

--

"Will you write me?" she asks.

--

--

(You will be written.)

--

She returns for the summer, then is gone again. Winter, then gone again. But she doesn't come home for the spring. They'll be going to the realm of the living. They will fight Hollows, just like the Gotei 13. She explains the meaning and stroke order of the characters, go tei,  though she doesn't explain what the Gotei 13 actually is. That part must already seem obvious to her. Shinigami stuff. That's all Toushirou will ever need to know. Seems pretentious.

When Junrinan returns to the mountains this year, Toushirou and his grandmother stay behind. "It's dangerous," she says. She squeezes his shoulders.

It's dangerous now. 

There is no going back.

Junrinan may not change, but life does, and by the second summer, Hinamori has mostly forgotten the shapes of the forest spirits. Toushirou is forgetting them, too. 

The difference is, Hinamori has found replacements. She talks about incantations and sword stances, friendships and histories. She has been to the realm of the living. It's only been a year, and already they have nothing in common but their memories, ever-receding. 

Sometimes she wakes up screaming. She doesn't say why.

--

Toushirou dreams of a chill ripping through him. He dreams of a place where there are no mountains as far as the eye can see.

--

He wakes to Hinamori.

#hinamori momo #hitsugaya toushirou #hitsuhina week #bleach fic #IT'S FOR THE CULTURE #I wanted to play with the idea of the districts of Rukongai having their own cultures and practices apart from what we know of the Seireitei #I thought it would be interesting to imagine that it's because these things are not legible/perceivable to our shinigami narrators #because their existence is tied more closely to other worlds and realms #So just like there are things that humans can't see wandering their world there are things that shinigami can't see either #👻👻👻👻👻👻 #yes this is the angery fic that hates me but its deadline is today so now it is done!

[noblecrumpet-dorkvision]

Overland Travel as a Dungeon

With D&D being canceled last night due to Roll20 issues, I’ve had time to do extra prepwork! I’m trying something new to take the tedium out of overland travel by making it more like a dungeon with “rooms” depending on the choices the players make (the labels are GM-only for my own reference)

I’m also making Long Rests during travel more difficult (so I don’t have to challenge them with deadly encounters at every step): Each long rest, players will need to choose between regaining their hit points, regaining half their max hit dice, or regaining their spell slots/long-rest-recharging features. In other words, three long rests will end up equaling 1 true long rest. They can choose the same thing multiple times in a row.

All encounters are established ahead of time, but which ones they encounter are based on their decisions. My rules for designing the encounters:

75% of encounters must progress the story (7/9 advance the plot here)

Each must be foreshadowed in the players’ options. They should know the extent of dangers of their choices.

50% should be non-combat (traps, RP, skill challenge, etc)

Here are the encounters the players face while in the swamp:

Inclement Weather

A torrential rainstorm begins to rage. (these ones are non-plot encounters)

Seek cover and wait it out: The tree the players rest beneath loosens from a rush of water and falls over, burying and suffocating those that fail the save. Three successful Athletics checks frees them.

Keep moving carefully: A spinosaurus hunts the players using the rain to cover its approach.

Night Terrors

There are no encounters during the day but the players will need to make survival checks to stay on the newly-flooded path. At night, our warlock-turned-wizard has dreams relating to their shadowy ex-patron, who desperately wants control of her back but an amulet is keeping the patron at bay. When she awakens, one of her allies was mind-controlled into stealing the amulet and throwing it into the muck. After the charm fades, shadow stags attack once the warlock is vulnerable (I took large Giant Elks and combined them with undead Shadows, and had their dash create a trail of magic darkness).

Flooded Path

The road passes through a valley that got flooded by the rain.

Cross the Water: The players spot a crocodile in the water. It ignores them for now but it seems the water might be dangerous. They will also need to figure out how they are doing it (boat, swimming?) and make checks. Lizardfolk and a giant crocodile relating to the players’ past can be encountered here. They are hunting and will attack initially, but the players might be able to end combat early if they persuade them.

Find a Way Around: There is a forest filled with strange green mist, similar to a corrupted plant-hydra they saw earlier. They will need to make survival checks and regret not letting the ranger from last session help them. A hag has been corrupting the land near here, and they will get attacked by 3x owlbears with a 5′ poison aura and corrosive claws.

Old Themryl

Depending on which ways the players went, they can access different parts of an old kingdom or try to find the main road again (but, nearing the exit of the swamps, the players might want to lay low for story reasons). The other story stuff in this fork is hard to explain lacking context so I will just explain the encounters.

Investigate skulls on pikes: The players can find Themryl Gardens, a cemetery desecrated by skulls on pikes with glowing eyes. It is currently being raided by a blackguard with 3 skeleton servants. He is trying to break into a mausoleum but his skeletons are too weak. If disturbed, he summons two Flameskulls from the pikes nearby to attack.

Inside the mausoleum is a Spectator guardian. A glyph of warding trap is on a sarcophagus, which also has a secret compartment with story stuff and treasure. the corpse within is also story-related and leads to Old Themryl Keep for the other half of the info.

Find the Road: The players meet a bard belonging to their destination’s innkeepers’ guild. He seeks Old Themryl and will pay handsomely to be led there to gain inspiration for his songs. Players can ignore him if they choose, but at least they will learn about the plot dungeons if they wish to return.

Investigate the bodies: Players find bodies riddled with arrow wounds (but no arrows), crawling away from a thicket before they died. In the thicket is the half-sunken ruins of Old Themryl Keep. It is protected by Sword Wraiths (but with stats for longbows) on the battlements.

Inside, there is a simple statue puzzle and mysterious ghostly antics. The puzzle opens the next chamber.

Next room is a hallway with two normal sword wraiths. One door in the hall is caved in. Another door will open but buries the door opener in muck (trap). Last door leads to a grand hall.

Grand hall is knee-deep in water with rubble islands and a throne peeking above surface. Sword Wraith Commander is here, and summon other sword wraiths. The commander deals bonus lightning instead of necrotic and has a lair action on round 20 where he electrifies the water for a high amount of damage. Players can avoid by the islands or throne, but the minions may push them in. If put to rest, story stuff happens.

Last room has a noble’s treasure and a handmaid’s journal that dispenses plot, and leads to the cemetery for the other half of the info.

Downed Caravan

The players come by a caravan trying to fix their wheels/axle and trying to treat wounded members. One would think they were attacked by bandits, but in reality it was a patrol of corrupt soldiers demanding tax from these merchants from an enemy kingdom from New Themryl (the PCs destination). If the players help the group, they are offered a way into an enemy kingdom with shelter, and rewarded with some of their goods. If not, well... the PCs don’t gain anything. They’re just assholes.

---

And then the players arrive at their destination!

There were multiple paths, options to backtrack and explore, RP elements, mini-dungeons, skill checks, puzzles, traps, and big monsters... just like any dungeon! Feel free to steal any of this and especially the concept of “travel as dungeon” because I think it’s going to be more fun. But we will find out on our next session of the Dorkvision stream! (Sundays 9PM-12 eastern and wednesdays 7-10PM -  https://www.twitch.tv/noblecrumpet)

#dungeons and dragons #DnD #homebrew #overland travel #hex crawl #encounter #random encounter

[vvitchering]

Witchers of the Wolf School travel in packs. There’s strength in numbers and plenty of coin to be had for the bigger contracts they can handle as a team. The Path is less harsh, less painful, with brothers at their backs.

Wolves lack the ferocity of their Bear and Griffin cousins. Which isn’t to say an individual wolf isn’t dangerous, they certainly could manage on their own. But their true strength lies in their bonds with each other; in their ability to coordinate and work together.

Occasionally there are times when the blood lust is needed. The beast is too large or too powerful, or simply requires more than the wolves can muster. There’s another reason they travel together. A pack is needed to monitor the potential use of more...extreme decoctions.

The recipe for Bloodmoon isn’t written down in any field guide or alchemy collection. It’s passed from master to initiate in hushed, solemn tones. All wolves know it and all equally fear the knowledge. It strips away the humanity they cling to, leaving behind something raw. It trades sanity and reason for unchecked power and feral instinct. 

It’s a last resort for instances where death is assured, but the fight must be won, regardless of the cost.

--

Geralt isn’t sure what they’re hunting. It’s big, it’s wiped out entire herds of livestock on its own, and it’s left the whole surrounding area scared to death to leave their homes. It’s much too dangerous a contact for a witcher to take on alone. Thankfully, he is very seldom alone. 

Eskel thinks it could be a mutated fiend. The tracks seem similar enough and the behavior matches, but they’re hundreds of miles from fiend territory and the sheer size of the creature makes Geralt reasonably sure they’re not dealing with a simple freak of nature. Lambert watches them bicker, thrilled that, for once, he’s not the cause of the tension in the group.

Jaskier ignores them all and focuses intently on tuning his lute. His job came post-hunt, when it was safe for him to poke and prod around the beast’s corpse and create exciting stories about its demise while the witchers claimed their trophy and harvested any parts of value. 

He looks up from the tuning pegs when Geralt throws up his hands and storms out of the camp, muttering something about finding the damn thing himself since Eskel is so keen on sitting around theorizing instead. 

Jaskier has siblings so he’s quite familiar with the look of exasperation on Eskel’s face as he watches his brother stomp away into the woods.

“Not gonna go after him?” Lambert asks.

Eskel sighs.

“Nah, let him walk it off. He’s too damn prideful about that bestiary he calls a brain sometimes.”

 Afternoon turns to dusk and Geralt doesn’t return. They eat a meal of rabbits and wild mushrooms and still Geralt doesn’t reappear. It’s not like the white wolf to wander off alone for so long and Jaskier becomes increasingly concerned as the evening creeps in. Geralt knows better than to stray too far from his pack, especially when there’s an unknown threat waiting somewhere out there. 

The frogs are just beginning to sing when the tranquility of the evening is marred by a rumbling and deeply unsettling roar. It rattles around in Jaskier’s bones and makes something deep inside him cower in instinctual terror. It’s like nothing he’s ever heard before and he almost feels frozen on the spot, like a deer in the presence of a hunter. 

Eskel and Lambert are on their feet even before the roar has finished reverberating around their little camp. Lambert immediately takes off in the direction the horrible sound came from while Eskel turns to face Jaskier long enough to say,

“Do not follow us, Bard.”

And then he’s gone as well.

Jaskier likes to think he’s an easy traveling companion. He’s delightful company, pulls his own weight, pays his own way, and polishes the reputations of witchers everywhere with his music. He does admit to one shortcoming, however, which is his inability to sit still when he knows there’s a grand battle unfolding, the likes of which is just begging to be immortalized in song. 

It’s for science, for history, for precious posterity, even, that Jaskier leaps to his feet, checks his boot for his hidden dagger, and jogs determinedly into the brush. 

--

It’s properly dark by the time Jaskier finally catches the sounds of a fight close by. He can hear indistinct yelling, the clang of swords, and the roar of what he assumes must be the creature they’re after, just as deeply disturbing as the first time. Oddly, he can also see light up ahead, though he’s very deep in uninhabited forest. As he draws closer, he realizes the light is coming from several small fires in the tops of the surrounding trees. Either the beast breathes fire or someone has let loose with Igni. Neither option bodes well.

Abruptly, he’s hit with a wave of fear. Geralt never came back to camp. What if he’d encountered the beast on his own? Would he have been able to hold out against it long enough for Eskel and Lambert to arrive? Ice cold dread drips throughout Jaskier’s body. 

He crouches behind a bush and reaches out to comb his way through the foliage to get a glimpse of the battlefield. More fires dot the trees around the small clearing. He immediately spots Eskel and Lambert, who both look exhausted and injured. Lambert is favoring his right leg while Eskel has one hand on his sword and the other clamped tight over a painful looking burn on his neck. They look broken and haunted in ways Jaskier has never seen them before. 

His eyes dart to the opposite side of the battlefield, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dreaded beast before he’s forced to retreat. What he sees makes his heart seem to stop dead in his chest. 

Geralt stands beside the corpse of what must be the beast, breathing like a horse run ragged. The flickering light of the fires reveals he’s covered in black spider-webbed veins that show through his pale skin. His eyes are black like tar. At the sight of his friend alive and whole, Jaskier breathes a sigh of relief. Geralt must hear the exhale and turns his head slightly in search of the sound. 

Jaskier has seen Geralt under the influence of potions before. He’s no stranger to the veins and the eerily blank black eyes. But this feels fundamentally different, somehow. Geralt’s gaze is cold and more than slightly unhinged, without a single hint of recognition or warmth. Jaskier has never looked at Geralt and felt any type of fear in his heart until now.

Geralt lifts his face slightly, inhaling noisily, scenting the air. Zeroing in on Jaskier. Another bloodcurdling bestial roar has the bard sinking to his knees in all consuming terror and sudden understanding. It hasn’t been the creature producing that terrible inhuman sound. 

It’s Geralt.

(tbc!)

[EDIT] You can now read the whole completed fic on my ao3!

#my fic #the witcher #wolf school witchers run in packs because I say so #yeah I don't really know what this is either but it grabbed me by the throat and made me write it #witcher au #mine #no beta no editing we die like witchers

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Aredhel and Eöl

[I’m not sure if this is the take I want to stick with on Aredhel and Eöl, but it’s an idea that popped into my head and I wanted to explore it. There are a lot of fraught topics in here, so if I have messed things up, I apologize. There are triggers for abusive/controlling relationships.]

When Aredhel arrives in Aglon, she expects that her friends will soon return to join her. As the months pass, her enjoyment of the grand forests of this new land fades into impatience, then annoyance, then anger. At times she thinks of riding further east, so seek out both her cousins and this strange people of the Naugrim she has never seen, but at first she tells herself the wait will be only a little longer, pride forbids trailing after those who once abandoned her and now purposely snub her - for after so long, and with no question that they must have heard of her presence, their absence can only be deliberate. She had wanted to boast to Celegorm of her battles against the giant spiders and other terrors of the dark valley, but the stories of her adventures have grown old with waiting.

She rides further and further afield into the expanse of Middle-earth, and one day reaching the Celon on the borders of Himlad, she impulsively fords it and dives into the wood, its trees greater than any she has yet seen, blocking out the sun. She thinks to cut directly through the forest, and so come to Estolad and see the Secondborn of whom rumours have drifted north. She did not leave Gondolin to seek her cousins only, but adventure, and newness, and all things strange to her, the wonders of this wide land.

In the pathless forest she loses her way, who has never been lost in woods since she was a young girl (and then only for the joy of it), even in the great forests of Oromë in Valinor. For a time this is exciting, but as nothing reveals itself to her eyes but the same trees endlessly repeated it griws tedipus and wearisome. The sight at last of a hall and hearthfire is a joy to her, and the stranger who welcomes her intriguing. His accounts of the Naugrim and their deeply-dolven halls in the mountains, the treasures he shows her of both their making and his own - better even that Curufin’s, she thinks disloyally - and the descriptions of their making (for, though not a craftswoman herself, she is Noldor still and delights knowing how the work is done), keep her as a delighted guest for weeks, and his tales of the fearless dark before Sun and Moon during the years of Morgoth’s chaining enthrall her for weeks more. He is as good company as she has ever had, and yet new and different and fascinating like none others she has met. He tells her the story of Thingol and Melian, meeting in this very wood, ringed about by delightful allusions, compliments, and significant looks, and a new excitement stirs that she has never felt before. She wanted Middle-earth - and here is Middle-earth, in all its wonder and history and strangeness, desirous and enraptured of her.

When he asks for her hand, she accepts with the same impetuousity that has governed all the rest of her life.

At first, she is happy in his company, wandering together under the stars or hunting alone. Eöl prefers craftwork to hunting, but she rejoices in it and is far more skilled in Oromë’s arts than the servants, chasing boar and venison. She learns the ways of the wood and it ceases to appear directionless and unform to her. One days she says she feels she has become acquainted with the trees, and Eöl laughs and takes her into a new part of the wood, where she is astonished to see the strangest being imaginable, a tree with the limbs of a man and with hands taller than Aredhel’s whole body, whom he greets in a language beyond her comprehension. Learning the being’s language is a fascinating work of years, and his history yet more delightful; he has lived in Beleriand since the days the first elves awakened.

She is bitterly disappointed that Eöl will not take her to visit the dwarves in Nogrod and Belegost, but they are careful of their secrets, he explains, and would not abide him bringing a stranger uninvited to their fortresses. Nor will he permit her to visit the humans to the south, whom he views as uncouth intruders. Yet in spite of this they are happy, and all the more so after the birth of their son. She is troubled that he will not name the boy; he says that children ahould be named for their personalities, and an infant does not have one yet. In her own tongue, she names the boy Lómion.

One day, a little after Lómion has learned to walk, she suggests to Eöl that she could pay a brief visit to her cousins, who must be worried about her after so long; her anger at their neglect has cooled, and she wishes at least to let them know she is well. Prior to her marriage, neither her partiality for the Fëanorians nor Eöl’s hatred of them had been discussed; in the later years his sentiments became clearer, but still rarely expressed, and she likewise had spoken little of them. Now he calls them Kinslayers and murderers and thieves and invaders, and forbids her to see them - her fury rises in return, asking what he must think of her if he regards her kin so - he snaps that he does not blame her for their crimes - and in an intemperate instant the fateful word “Their - ?” leaves her lips, and he stops short, frozen, as if he had never seen her before. He holds her gaze, and memories deeply buried force themselves to the surface again - of darkness and blood and the heat of battle and the burning desire for freedom and the cold shock afterwards - and they are both shaking, and his gaze snaps away like the gate of a fortress crashing shut.

He leaves the house, and does not return that night, and she sleeps alone. On his return the next day, he does not speak for hours, sometimes staring at her intensely, sometimes letting his gaze slip away, attempting to look at anything - everything - else. In the evening he sits tensely, crouched in a chair, fingernails scraping at his arms as if he wished to scour away his own flesh.

He avoids the bed that night as well. So does Aredhel.

In the morning he breaks his silence in tones hard and chill as granite. Aredhel may depart as she wishes. His son will remain with him.

She refuses this. She will not leave her child, not under any circumstance and certainly not with a father who has not yet named him. She has not deceived him: he knew of the Kinslaying long before he saw her, he knew she was a Noldo and a Finwëan, and he had never asked her anything about it. She will not deny that she was in the wrong; yet something within her, too, has frozen in seeing her husband stare at her as if he had unwittingly married an orc.

They move into separate bedrooms. He never touches her again, save out of the most mundane necessities. It is two years before he will allow her to be left alone with their son; when Eöl is not present, a sevant must be. When he sees that she makes no difficulties and does not appear to be contaminating the child with Kinslaying Noldor ideas, this gradually lightens; at the same time, the bonds around her tighten. Eöl never repeats the offer that she may depart, mistrusting her, fearing what she may say to her kin of her treatment, fearing she could say he holds her son captive.

She seeks for the Ent, feeling the need of a friend and someone to talk to, but he is gone.

Years later, when Lómion is older, and called Maeglin by his father, Eöl takes him on his journeys to the dwarf-kingdoms, teaches him metal-working, and delights in his swiftly-growing skill. For the sake of their son, Aredhel and Eöl reestablish something that is more civility than silence.

Once Lómion is old enough that she can trust him to keep silence to his father, she finds relief in speaking to him of the things she misses, things she has not spoken of in decades, the beauties of Valinor and of Gondolin that once she wearied of, but were far less prisons than this gloomy forest. One day many years later, when he has reached his full maturity, Lómion - with the boundless optimism of youth - disregards her warnings and asks his father that he and Aredhel may visit her family. Eöl goes into a cold fury and threatens to chain him up.

When her son suggests they leave together for Gondolin, she rejoices, feeling freedom quicken the air air again, her heart beat faster with the thought of it. Lómion is old enough now that he could have been wed and had children already, were they not trapped in the forest; he has a right to choose what life he wants.

Fortune betrays them.

Why does she plead for her husband’s life when he kills her? Is it for some lingering affection? For the wish that their son may not be an orphan?

She looks at her brother and thinks, I want there to still be one of us who is not a Kinslayer.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #aredhel #eöl #maeglin #cw abuse

[tealquacks]

Sunlight Over Me (No Matter What I Do)

Originally posted here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27618575

Massive thanks to @dontatkiwi for helping me edit this.

Enjoy!

——————

Dream gave him black armor that glistened in the moonlight. Schlatt, for as strong as he was, swayed under the weight. The heat. Dream’s words sounded funny, as if he was speaking to him through water, form shifting like a verdant mirage. They stood in a grey stone tower, staring down at the world. Schlatt leaned against the balcony. The sun slowly inched up over the horizon, golden beams burning his eyes. Manburg sprawled out below them in all of its glory, the podium still decorated for the festival. Birds chirped and called for their mates, flapping from tree to tree. The air smelled fresh and cold, a gentle breeze carrying the smell of the sea. It would be a beautiful day, an even more beautiful night once the war was over. Schlatt sighed.

They wanted him to fight, didn’t they? Even though he had everything to lose. Wait, he didn’t. He’d already lost everyone, except for Fundy and Manburg. Now that was his everything, all he had to live and die for. How lonely. But still, he would fight. He was big and strong and so was his heart, and everything would be fixed soon. Schlatt reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask. He drank slowly. It did nothing to satiate his thirst. If anything, the burn of the alcohol made him feel thirstier than he’d ever been before. His mouth opened, then he shut it hard enough to make his tongue bleed. Quackity’s name died on his lips. His tongue throbbed from the pain, but it was worth it to keep that name out of his mouth. He didn’t need a weakling around him. He never needed anyone. He could win wars with the smallest gestures, he could topple towers with his whiskey scented breath. The rapid pounding of his heart was a war drum. He took another swig, washing away the iron taste of blood.

Quackity had had the audacity to look at him with tears in his eyes before scampering away. The White House was ugly as shit and deserved to be taken down, so something beautiful could grow in its place. But Quackity just couldn’t understand that. They fought. Schlatt didn’t remember what he said, just that Quackity shot him and left in fear. Quackity was a deer. A deer. His darling little fawn. Deer. With big black eyes and terror coursing through his veins. And Schlatt was a wolf, a predator, an emperor. He was stronger than everyone. Cowards, all of them.

“All of you are fucking cowards.” He muttered. Dream turned his head, giving him a masked glare. Schlatt flipped him off, and laughed. He slumped against the tower wall, metal clanging against stone. No knives would be put into his back. Not tonight. Not by a deer or a man in a box or anyone else.

Dream wouldn’t talk to him. They weren’t friends, they didn’t even trust one another, but the end justified the means. They could at least agree on that. If Dream was his second in command, they’d at least get shit done. But when he and Quackity worked together…

It was good at first. Quackity was easy to sway to his side with a simple talk. They drank wine before going to bed, a glass for each of them, and Schlatt would always pick on Quackity for stirring a bit of honey to negate the bitterness. Things felt less foggy back then, and he could spend a whole day without drink. Then Quackity wanted them to marry. Quackity wanted so much, but couldn’t read the room for shit, couldn’t see what needed to be done for Manburg to prosper. He never knew what was needed. Soon a glass for each of them turned to half a glass for Quackity and three for himself. After Quackity left, three glasses turned into downing close to the entire bottle before collapsing into bed, cold and alone. His room was filled with empty bottles.

An arrow flew at the tower. It impaled itself in the stone. He didn’t even flinch. The people around him erupted into action, knocking arrows and shouting about holding the tower. It needed to be held. He took his helmet off, sweat dripping down his face. He ran his fingers through his unkempt hair. A matted portion right by the base of his left horn stopped his fingers in their tracks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed or combed his hair. Surely his horns would look horrid, too, crusted with dirt, and his goat like ears were probably matted, too. He laughed quietly, wiping the sweat off his face.

God it was so fucking hot. The sun was so gold, so glorious, and hung heavily in the sky. It felt like an omen. A swarm of people ran to the tower all wearing the same armor, chest plates and helms that made them look like a flock of black flies. He took a drink from his flask, fire burning his throat. He couldn’t remember what the hell he’d put in it. Alcohol, and some of his other favorite things.

Dream grabbed his arm. It hurt. He shouted something that Schlatt couldn’t hear. But Dream looked away and jumped from the tower. Of course, Schlatt followed, stumbling over the balcony, toppling head first down, down, down, his body landing with a splash in a bit of water. The sun was high in the sky— where had that time gone? He crawled from the murky water, kicking his boots off into the fields. They landed in a half grown patch of wheat, resting in the rich farmland. He felt so hot. The sun, the sun, the glorious sun, pummeled him with heat.

Lucky for him, his grip on his flask didn’t waver when he fell. He guzzled from the flask and staggered to his feet, shoes squelching in the black earth. The people shot at one another. Arrows hailed down from the high balcony of the tower. Some went up, too. Fireworks crackled, thick, sulfuric smoke filling the air. He walked away from the tower.

This wasn’t his fault, it couldn’t be. It was Wilbur’s. Fucking Wilbur, that sanctimonious bastard with all of his grand ideas of victory and freedom. Just because he was pretty and eloquent didn’t mean he was a good leader. Wilbur was a warmonger, an idealist. So the logical thing was to banish him. Yet he still decided to start a war against him, his presidency, the peace he had made. All he wanted was to bring peace, where had the peace gone? He’d done all he could. Gotten rid of all the evil bits, all the useless bits. The weak parts. He’d scorched the land down to the soil, new things would grow.

Fireworks crackled nearby. He unclasped his netherite leggings, letting them fall to the ground. His chestplate went too, both of them striking the earth with a satisfying thud. Someone shot at someone. Someone was screaming. Every firework blast made his head throb, the shouts piercing his head like a knife. He drank again, stumbling forward. The grass looked so green. Manburg looked so beautiful, decorated for the festival. He closed his eyes. Tubbo had so much potential, it’s a shame he couldn’t see past the short term. It’s a real shame.

When he opened them, he was standing before the ocean, sinking into the sand. He stared out at it. The air smelled like salt. Waves pounded the beach, as if the tide was at war with the earth he stood on. But the waves had made the beach, and the earth was nothing but a place for him to mold as he pleased. A high pitched noise came from nowhere. He kicked at the sand. He took a swig from his flask, the alcohol sloshing around until the last drop went down his throat. He dipped it into the raging waves. Water sounded so nice, especially the ocean, glimmering like diamonds in the bright sunlight. He’d been drinking. And yet, he still felt so, so thirsty. With one hand he tilted it up into his mouth, with the other he loosened his tie. The sharp taste of salty water hit his tongue, and he gagged at how cold it was. Still, he swallowed. God. Where was he?

Manburg. His Manburg. With raging oceans and deep forests and supple farmland. He had made it so, so wonderful. Washed the bugs from the nation, but now they returned like a swarm of locusts. His heart felt like it would explode. Everything around him was so blurry and too bright, the heat was driving him crazy. It had to be the sun. So thirsty. The salt tasted bad. Bad things were fine, they made you stronger. And if there was one thing he was, it was strong. He had to be, or they’d eat him alive, and leave his bones to bleach in the sun.

The world around him felt blurry, the world shifting. Like a mirage, almost, ears ringing. He stumbled over something. Darkness fell around him.

When he opened his eyes, there was a wooden floor beneath him, and more bottles. He finally was free of the horrible sun, and surrounded by bottles of drink, a perfect combination. Looking around, he noticed the dirt walls and the hole in the ceiling, and realized that he was in his little hideout, where he would go in the day to hide. Of course, there was alcohol. He poured the salt water onto the floor, picked up a bottle, and sipped from it. Whatever was in the bottle was strong, almost tasting like a protein shake, nice and refreshing. Wonderful. He drank. Maybe after all this blew over, he and Fundy could work out together. And he could work things out with Quackity. It would all be fine. Of course they’d have to spruce Manburg up a little, take down the ragged, unorganized buildings, and build from the ground up. Then he and Quackity would be married in winter and be one another’s warmth. Come springtime, they’d watch Manburg grow. Together.

No, that wouldn’t happen. He was weak. Quackity was weak.

He gracelessly lowered himself to the floor, legs shaking like a baby deers. Once sitting, he pulled out a lighter and a cigar. He flicked his thumb on the lighter once, twice, then took a long draw of the cigar. It did nothing to calm him. Someone poked their head in. Then they ran away. He took another draw of his cigar, hands shaking. Then, he drank again. Draw, drink. Draw, drink. His heart banged against his ribcage. His heart was a war drum. Once all this was done it would all be back to normal. There would be peace, he could rest, and be at peace. He’d go back to being president. And everyone would kneel to him and he’d celebrate be happy even without the alcohol and the drugs.

Happiness. Peace.

A flood of noise rushed into the place he was hidden. He tilted the bottle up, licking around the glass rim before letting it pour down his throat, trying to chase the high. It burned his throat like bile, but had a sickly sweet aftertaste.

Someone touched him.

“Schlatt, what are you doing?” A warm, familiar voice said. Schlatt frowned, squinting at the source of the noise.

“...Wilbur?” He slurred. He looked around, eyes finally focusing on Wilbur. His coat and scarf were tattered, stained with soot and blood. So many people were around him. Dream, Tommy, Purpled, Tubbo, and Wilbur. Everything smelled like gunpowder and iron. They stared at him. Their eyes burned like the sun. He chuckled.

“What are you doing?” Wilbur repeated. Schlatt looked around frantically, a smile blossoming on his face.

“What the hell? Is this a surprise birthday party?”

He knew it wasn’t. As if anyone would care enough to celebrate his life. He took another long drink of whatever was in the bottle, emptying it, and picking another one up from the floor. It burned his throat in a wonderful, familiar way. Wilbur shouted at him, but that damn high pitched noise made his words incomprehensible, making his ears twitch frantically. The drink was good at least. A protein shake, maybe. With creatine, probably, something that would make him big and strong, untouchable, unhurtable, hammer curls, his head spun. He tried to catch his breath, taking deep, even breaths. He counted, trying to calm himself. The voices around him picked up but he couldn’t discern one from another, it was simply a cacophony, a horrifying sight, and he couldn’t breathe.

People around him talked. He finished the bottle, and dropped it, then took another bottle from within his jacket. He tilted his head back, taking a long drink. Up, in the sky, no, standing on the roof—

“Fundy?” He screamed, “Fundy what are you doing here!?!”

“Schlatt, are you fucking drunk,” Fundy deadpanned.

“Fundy are you— “

Fundy dropped down from the roof, right in front of him. His fur was matted in places with blood and dirt. He’d been fighting. The one person he thought he could trust. Staring at him. Big black blank eyes. Like a deer, a deer in fox clothes.

“You BITCH!” Schlatt howled. He lashed out at Fundy with the bottle. Who’d lift with him now? Fucking bitch.

“Schlatt, you fucked up the country, you fucked up everything! You had a dream and I followed it and you brought it downhill.”

Schlatt drank. He didn’t want to hear it. His heart wouldn’t stop violently hammering against his ribs. His arm hurt.

“You ruined it!” Fundy continued, “you ruined everything we had!”

Maybe the shake had something in it. Was he talking? His skin felt wrong. Too hot. The sun crawled through the windows. It crept through the ceiling.

“I thought you were something,” Fundy shouted.

Schlatt glared at him.

“Oh my fucking God. Yeah, I am something, I’m what you’re not, Fundy.”

His cigar had burnt out. He needed another puff to stop his hands from shaking. With quivering hands, he flicked the lighter. No flame came out. He’d need more butane. He flicked the lighter again, and a tiny flame lept out. There we go. He lit his cigar, taking a long, deep pull. The world around him was spinning, like a little carnival ride.

“What am I not?” Fundy barked. Schlatt breathed acrid, grey smoke into his face.

“I’m a man,” Schlatt hissed.

Everyone gasped. Wilbur went up in his face. His mouth moved, but the words that came out didn’t make sense. He slammed the bottle into Wilbur, over and over, until Fundy came back into his eyesight. He broke the bottle against his armor. So many people were shouting. Someone had a sword— he had a sword? Rage took over. He slashed it at Fundy. Chased him. Then stumbled back. If he was speaking, he couldn’t tell. Thought and words had all blended into one. What the hell was in the drink?

He didn’t care. He grabbed a new bottle and chugged.

Something sharp pressed against his forehead. His eyes fluttered, before finally focusing onto whoever was in front of him. Blond hair, blue eyes— Tubbo? No. Tommy. Tommy held a crossbow up to his head. A twinge of fear made his heart lurch in his chest. Was he going to kill him? Don’t, don’t. He stared at the crossbow.

“Victory or death,” Wilbur exclaimed, so proud. He would’ve been a shit President. Schlatt couldn’t help but give a small chuckle. This was his country. His. Nobody else knew his plans to rebuild, and they’d all fail. They weren’t as strong as him.

“You know if I die, this country goes down with me.”

“No it doesn’t, Schlatt,” Tommy said, voice calm and level. Schlatt laughed, and drank. He swallowed down the liquid. Right there in front of him stood Quackity. Sunglasses hid those doe eyes from him. His heart felt like a clenched fist. It hurt.

“I had everybody turn on me,” he said darkly, “in my time of need, everybody left. You left.”

His fist connected with Quackity’s face before he could even think. Quackity stumbled back. More words stumbled from his mouth, but he didn’t know what he was saying anymore. He wanted to collapse. He wanted to not have to be strong anymore. His breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t breathe.

“You made a mistake, you made the biggest mistake by not taking me—“

“You’re pathetic, Schlatt!” Fundy crowed.

“This is your fault and your fault only,” someone else said. They weren’t wrong. He’d fucked up over and over.

Schlatt just mumbled and cried out whatever he thought. His body was separated from his mind. He didn’t know what he was saying. Bad, bad, everything was bad and doomed, oh god.

Tommy pressed the crossbow against his chest. He coughed. The breath left his body. Oh god they were going to kill him. Under the bright sun. The sun. People were talking. Too many people were talking, voices mingling with the ringing in his ears, a horrifying symphony. He wheezed. Something was burning. Toast? Wilbur looked at him. Said something. He drank. That had to help. Nothing could help. Something was happening.

He didn’t feel good. One last puff. Had to help. Had to get him stronger. Didn’t feel good. His heartbeat crescendoed. So many people were looking at him but they wouldn’t help, they wouldn’t help, were they just going to watch? It hurt, it hurt so bad, why wouldn’t they help him?

The pain in his chest made him crumble. His head hit the hard floor. A weak gasp escaped him, and his empty eyes gazed up through the hole in the ceiling.

The sun stared down at his body.

#mcyt #dream smp #jschlatt #Wilbur Soot #myct fanfic #tw death #Fundy #itsfundy #quackity #tw drugs #dreamwastaken

[alice-angel12x]

☁ Drider!Shouto x reader

Dystopian AU/ Monster AU

[Sorry if shouto is a bit ooc]

The world fell into ruin when the all powerful All For One took over all of japan. He took control of everything, and who ever dared defy him would face a horrible fate. Once he had control he shapped society the way he found entertaining. It's not like they could stop him. He had a large following that helped spread his rule and terror. Those who had a transmitter, or transformation quirk were safe. They were treated like people or held in higher regards. Those who had mutation quirk were called monsters and were locked away.

So All For One seperated people. Those who were safe where human. Brainwashing them into believing they were better then those monsters. Those who were Mutated were teated like wild and unpredictable animals, The monsters. They were mocked, humiliated, tortured, and locked away from the pretty cities, and only human Capitals. Some were unfortinate to be born with a mutation quirk, but some were forced to have this fate by All For One. By curing people with said quirks, some were criminals, rebels, or innocents to show his power. Those who are 'lucky' just get their quirk taken and turned into a slave.

What about those who were quirkless you ask. Well... They are slaves.

____

Just outside of the grand Capital, there was a large Dome loomed over the forest. It covered 50 miles worth of land. Inside was a forest, a river, rock hills, cliffs, and caves. Inside were the monsters. This is were they are locked away, and put into their natural habitat. Left to starve, except the occasional 'mouse' that was let inside for them to feed on. With no other food they are left with no choice. As the mouse tries to run and hide the monsters hunt it down and devour them. This hunt is recorded and broadcast all over the cities. As a sick entertainment for the rich, Powerful, and citizens. But for the quirkless slave or the mice it is a form of warning to stay in line and to know our place.

___

"Oh looks like our little mouse could not out run that pack werewolf," the commentator said with so much enthusiasm in his voice.

"Yeah John looks like he's dog food now," John's partner joked.

The slaves all watched in horror, as they watched their friend get eaten alive. The quirkiness were all in their cages and forced to catch the monitor, as a constant reminder that soon that will be their fate. To become a meal, a mouse for sent to die for entertainment.

"They ate Ochaco," a close friend of hers sobbed.

I didn't know her personaly, but she was a really nice girl. She didn't deserve to go out the way she did. I sat in my cage, trembling as I watched the carnage. Denki, Momo, Jirou, Sero, and know Ochaco.

They were all the unfortunate mice picked. I survived another month. Sadly my luck ran out the next month.

"Haha this little rat will do," said a gaurd as he opened my and quickly grabbed me.

I tried to struggle and break free from him, but something hard hit the back of my head. I blacked out.

........

"Welcome back everybody, it's that time again. Our favorite little game of survival. Today our lovely little mouse this month is Y/n L/n. A bit on the petite side, could probably squeeze tight spaces. She's a pretty face, it's sad it's wasted on a mouse. Well place your bets now folks. Who will she find herself being eaten by," John the host said with a laugh.

I opened my eyes to see that I was in a forest. It seemed go on forever, but quickly relieazed where I was. I was inside the dome.

"Jeff sound the dinner bell!" John said as the sound of the air horn filled the dome.

I ran, I didn't know where I just ran into the forest. There was no point in banging on the door. No one was going to answer. So I ran through the forest till I saw a clearing. The same clearing were Ochaco was eaten. I came to a halt right at the edge of the forest. I hesitated as flashed of Ochaco's mangled corpse appeared in my head.

Suddenly I heard growling behind me. I turned to see the pack of werewolves. The leader was a ashy blond with spiky hair and blood red eyes. I slowly started to back away, as he took a step foward.

"Sorry, nothing personal. Were just starving and everyone needs to eat," a red headed werewolf said with a sorrowful look on his face.

"Kirishima shut up! Lets just make this quick before some other monster gets her," said the leader.

"Bakugou, could you be a little more sensitive," Kirishima said bitterly.

"Yeah, well your sensitivity almost cost us last time," Bakugou shot back.

While They were arguing, I quickly made a run for it. Dying by werewolves is probably the worst way to go. I could hear them give chase once they relieazed I ran. Just beyond the open field was tall grass. I managed to loose the wolves, as I came across willow tree by a lake. I stoped their to take a break, when I heard hissing.

Looking up into the tree was a Naga. He had green hair and eyes to match his green tail. He was skinny and so malnourished he didn't have the strength to move anymore. I quickly left that spot and kept moving, till I came across some caves.

It was almost night and it started to get dark. So I went inside the cave, to learn to late that what is a hole in the ground three steps in. I fell into the darkness and blacked out.

_____

Dark and lonely. Thats what I would describe my life to be. A lonley spider in cave.

While the other people in the some wait for their next meal I'm working on making my way out of this hell hole. As I continued to dig my tunnel when I felt my webs vibrate, something fell into my webs.

I slowly made my way over to the cave entrance, surprised too see a unconscious girl tangled in my webs. She had soft silky h/c hair, and smooth s/c skin. I slowly started to inspect her entirely. As I did I found a mouse brand burned onto her skin.

Like me, a monster brand was burned on my side. I untangled her and placed her down softly on the ground. She felt So warm in my arms, I almost didn't want to let go. So I took her deep within the caves, too hide her from the monsters. But also to keep her here, with me.

___

I slowly started to wake up, as I sat up I found my self in a cave. Looking down I was laying on some sort of silk thread, or web. Actually the whole room was covered in webs. I slowly started to stand and started to rip the remaining webs on me.

Suddenly I heard something crawling. Then I saw it a Drider, though I never saw one before. He had half red and half white hair, with a big hurn on the left side of his face, all over his body he bore scars, and on the right side of his chest was the monster brand burned on his skin.

   "Umm, hello," I said as I slowly sat back down. He did block my only exit.

"Hello.... I'm suprised your not screaming, or trying to escape," he said bluntly with a neutral face.

"Well your blocking my only exit, and even if I scream no one is gonna hear me so, yeah... I'm y/n by the way," I said as I held out my hand.

"Umm, I'm shouto the Drider," he said simply slowly shaking my hand.

"So.. Umm, why did you spare me. I thought you would be hungry like the other people up there?" I said looking up at the ceiling.

"Well I have a slow matabalizem, so it takes a while for me to get hungry. I.. I was just lonely," he said with with a light blush.

"Oh... O-okay, I'd be happy to

acompany you, shouto," I said with a smile.

Shouto seemed stuned at first as he seemed to just stare at me for a bit. Suddenly it seemed his eyes began to water, then he pulled me into a tight hug. As he did he stood up to his full hight, which lifted me a few feet of the ground. I slowly and hestitanly returned his hug. His spider half looked like it was an albino verson of a black widow.

As I was studying I could hear him smelling me... It was weird but I didn't say anything. Suddenly I heard a buzzing noise.

____

I could hear them. The humans flying spies, they were looking for Y/n. Gently placing y/n down on the nest, I went to investigate.

I saw it the flying cameras. I quietly sneaking up behind it and quickly smashing it with a rock. They weren't going to take my friend away from me.

-----

As the weeks went by Y/n and Shouto got closer and closer. Y/n would help with Shouto's tunnel, and sometime shouto would go out to the surface to bring berries for y/n. She would clean up any wounds Shouto would gain.

As the weeks went on y/n became more, and more weak. The berried weren't enough to sustain her. She could even afford to move or spend any energy, or she will starve even more. So in desperation, Shouto worked on the tunnel even more. Till he finally did it, he finally tunneled his way outside the dome.

Quickly and quietly he scools y/n into his arms and escapes from this hell. Shouto travled for days, getting as far away from the city, and the dome as possible. When they finally settled down, high up in a tall tree, Shouto went out and hunted down a strong stag.

Cooking it and feeding it to y/n. As time went on y/n did regain her strength.

_____

I slowly crawled down the tree with y/n in my arms. I was so nerves, always worrying if somethi g would come and take y/n away.

We finally made it to the ground , and I let y/n down. She stood still for awhile then she started to.. Roll around on the ground with a wide a smile.

"Were free Shouto. It feels so good," she exclaimed as she jumped up and hugged me.

"Y/n... Thank you for staying with me. Even when you were close to dying. I never want to lose you, and I treasure you, Y/n," I said as is quickly pulled her into a passonite kiss.

And I was happy went she slowly melted into my kiss. This is my paradise. She is my Utopia.

#monster au #shoto torodoki #bnha shoto #shoto x reader #fluff #mha x reader #bnha

[fatehbaz]

Weird, eerie, uncanny ecology

--------------------------

Horror fictions are very much about ambiance, place, surroundings and environment. Sometimes this engagement with place, as in the work of China Mieville, involves the invention of new and weird topographies, while for other writers, the places described are known regions and even seemingly familiar locales. [...] It was the New England landscape, with its “vast and gloomy forests in whose perpetual twilight all terrors might well lurk” that gave birth to Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne (and surely also to Lovecraft [...]). Jeff VanderMeer openly admits the importance of the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal as well as the Saint Mark’s wildlife refuge in Florida as sources of inspiration. [...] The most strikingly original aspect of the best weird fiction’s expression of place is the ways in which it deforms or veers [...] our ordinary [...] ways of talking about the environment. [...] Strangely enough, though, [some] ecologically engaged critics have barely cast an eye towards this kind of writing. [...] This overlooks the functioning of explorations of place in horror. [...] Our world [is] weird, our reality horrifying. Living in the Anthropocene implies [...] that we are aware that the world has dimensions that exceed the grasp of our senses, [...] there are dimensions or depths to the real. [...] The genius of horror and the supernatural [...] is the acknowledgement of a gap between the real [existing autonomously outside of humans] and the Natural [translated and systematized by human sciences, cultural institutions]. [...]

If ecology is the study of organisms and their relations to their   environments -- relations between objects and the other objects composing places around them -- then being a realist ecologist is being sensitized to  that which not only is visible but which is also withdrawn or wholly other; that which is reality but also ungraspable within some naturalist accounts of the ambient world. [...] Re-encountering familiar scenes after having read horror is to see these scenes with heightened senses, with an awareness of straining for sight beyond sight. Thus the weird hardly leads us away from the places in which we dwell. On the contrary, it brings us back to them with x-ray attentiveness and extraordinary humility.

Brad Tabas. “Dark Places: Ecology, Place, and the Metaphysics of Horror Fiction.” Miranda. 2015.

--------------------

When would-be settlers arrive in a so-called new world land, they are disconcerted by the strangeness of what they find: impenetrable swamp-forests and unintelligible biodiversity [...]. In order to forge a future in such a land, settlers need to be able to master this space by seeing it as another kind of potential place -- “relational, rectangularised, beholden to agriculture” [...]. The transformative work of settlement involves reshaping the threatening, chaotic, destabilising and alien elements so that the place can be re-born as home: familiar, safe, controlled and controllable.[...] For this reason, settlers must also proceed by adopting an oblique angle of vision which enables them to see -- in their mind‘s eye -- their permanently situated homeland-to-be. [...] As the ecosphere in a settler place undergoes radical transformation [...] existing cultural landscapes become submerged under roads, buildings, farmlands, towns, cities and reserves [...].

In order to make their new homes in existing Indigenous homelands, settler populations induce ecological crisis by altering the environment, seeking to reproduce European geometries and ways of life. Settlers set about felling forests, draining swamps, diverting waterways and converting wetland plains to make way for pastureland and urbanisation; they divide the land into alienable parcels comprising differentated zones and categories [...] and they implace vast numbers of new plant and animal species, unleashing feral ecologies in the process. The organisms selected for introduction in so-called new world palces are those deemed “familiar,” “useful,” “missing,” and “missed” (McDowall) and they are intended to replace the “monstrous” creature that already populate these places [...]. Despite efforts to elongate or stretch it to fit over the place, short settler history is undone by longer Indigenous histories, revealing the doubleness or splitness of the place [...]. Anamorphosis, then, is profoundly a perspectival mode of settlement, and it accentuates the discontinuity, defamiliarisation and decomposition associated with founding a so-called new world place. It signals doubt and disturbance and it is not controllable as a trick of the artist’s trade or as a fashionable perversion or contrived effect or matter of cunning or virtuosity. Rather, it is a distortion that is experienced in intermittent and profoundly vertiginous ways by settler culture. For settler populations, the horror of settlement is to be returned to a state of freefall, with the solid ground of the settler endeavour shearing away or appearing to disappear.

In such moments, the settler nation emerges as a fantasy or absurdity or spectral “non-place”; cataclysm is revealed as a permanent half-state; settlement becomes disintegration.

Anna Boswell. “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” Transformations. 2018.

----------------------

It disturbs the very idea of what it means to be local, to be accustomed to and understand one’s environment. [...] The multifarious texture of home, or locality, is itself an abstraction. Morton writes that ‘The wet stuff falling on my head in Northern California in early 2011, could have been an effect of the tsunami churning up La Nina in the Pacific’, and heavy rain ‘simply a local manifestation of some vast entity that I’m unable directly to see’ (2010: 52). This vastly interconnected way of reading the environment intensifies dark ecology’s bid to render landscape and resources as systemic, complex, and in-process, as well as variously connected to human being. It also problematizes views of the environment that make it originary (how one might mischaracterise national parklands as ‘raw  nature’ for example, when in fact it has been changing and settling for many thousands of years), pristine (when in fact it includes much that is dirty and violent), or separate (when we are already breathing it, when it exists as much in our gut microbiome as it does in the protected Grand Canyon) [...]. No longer capable of the ‘man-in-space’ postmodernism of the 1980s, we are aware of ourselves now as deeply enmeshed in the processes we consume[...], resulting art forms attempt to approach flattening ontologies: local with universal, humans with objects, quark with mountain.

Danielle Barrios-O’Neill and Michael Collins. “At Home with the Weird.” Revenant. 2018.

-----------------------

For Fisher, the eerie is something altogether more abstract and strange than that of the weird in the way the eerie concerns itself with the presence or absence of something, and such places (or non-places) are often where there is an absence of humanity, or where there is something or some agency at work that is just beyond our realm of understanding: “The eerie concerns the most fundamental metaphysical questions one could pose, questions to do with existence and non-existence.” As such, the eerie “is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence. The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there nothing present when there should be something.” [...] On a material level, the eerie is often not located in the humanistic confines and locales of the family and home. Often, it is located in marginal spaces, in landscapes, sites, and structures where there is either a distinct lack of human presence, or there was once a human activity which has since disappeared. Various ruins, such as [...] ancient sites [...], to more modern locations such as abandoned buildings and houses underline several aspects to the eerie, as the failure of presence that is the absence of humanity almost certainly leads to various forms of speculation as to the source of said absence. [...] More importantly, Fisher asserts that the eerie turns on the issues of agency in the way that:

It is about the forces that govern our lives and the world […] In the case of the failure of absence, the question concerns the existence of agency as such. Is there a deliberative agent here at all? Are we being watched by an entity that has not yet revealed itself? In the case of the failure of presence, the question concerns the particular nature of the agent at work. We know that Stonehenge has been erected, so the questions of whether there was an agent behind its construction or not does not arise; what we have to reckon with are the traces of a departed agent  whose purposes are unknown. [...]

Non-places refer to capitalist and technological sites [...] that, while having a human presence through that of work or transit, are a-historical, non-relational and lack any definitive connections with their locale. Augé sites non-places as spaces of   transit or temporary waiting and congregation -- shopping malls, business parks and corporation “campuses”, motorways, roundabouts, carparks, and hotels – all places that give a semblance of seamless connectivity and ease of movement. From an architectural and organizational viewpoint however, non-places are considered sterile and affectless, exuding an overriding sameness [...]. Through their overriding spatial conformity, and the mechanical nature they invoke in the individual towards consumerism and social control, non-places invoke forms of eerie alienation upon the body in that they allow the individual to psychologically disconnect, to drift in an aesthetically impoverished landscape and the seeming absence of presence.

Bob Cluness. "I am an other and I always was…" On the Weird and Eerie in Contemporary and Digital Cultures. University of Iceland MA Thesis. 2019.

---------------------

Unlike the sublime, with its axiomatic relationship with nature and its place in a history of “the outdoors,” the uncanny is more readily associated with anti-natural concerns - degrees of deadness; animated corpses, ghosts, and artificial beings; dolls, automatons, and doubles. [...] Modern shopping malls that replicate identical layouts [...] right down to the pearly patina of the laminex on the bench-tops. The placelessness of trading zones is particularly insidious because of the recurrent [...] acts of consumption such spaces are styled to bring about. Generica: a neologism adapted to describe the urbanity of middle America, structure by the uniform architecture and visual parroting of Wal/Marts, Apple/bees, Best/Buys, Starb/ucks, and Borders. [...]. This doubling of place not only arouses the unnerving suspicions -- “I’ve been here  before,” and “am I here, or am I in fact elsewhere?” – but additionally reaffirms the underlying unnaturalness of all place-based experience. The local is eerie on account of it being familiar. In other words, it is precisely because the local is “homely” that it is capable of being shot-through with the “unhomely.” The uncanny exists because there is an environment. [...] As multinational corporations seek to comfort and disarm through their “commonplace” design, they also run the risk that such places become indirectly disturbing in their duplication. Things are ambiguous where there is too much multivalent, ambient information coming in from all angles.

Human-animal-machine. Everywhere-anywhere-nowhere. Alive-dead-simulant. Evolve-devolve-mutate.

Rebecca Giggs. “The Rise of the Edge.” Draft. 2010.

---------------------

#compilation of some recent similar excerpts

[zeldasayer]

Loving Din IX - The Sun Rises

Pairing: Mandalorian/Din Djarin x Reader

Summary: Din finally returns from securing your family’s safety.

Warnings: Smut, language, blood, EMOTION, so much AFFECTION

It has been weeks since you told Din not to come back until he burnt everything to the ground. To take out those who wanted to hurt Baby, and him, and finish this once and for all, securing your safety as a family. You thought it was hard not knowing why he left, but it was hell knowing and being certain he was in danger. Your despair shifted to rage then to terror so quickly it gave you whiplash. You pace the halls of your mothers residence all hours of the night, longing for his return. Begging the stars for some kind of sign that your love and Baby were safe, but nothing ever came. It was always so deafeningly quiet and it was driving you insane but you refused to let your hope die. You had never been so sure you met someone for a reason until you and Din Djarin stumbled across each other so long ago and your life changed forever. And that’s something you just couldn’t give up on.

Then, one evening, as you pace the same halls, humming the same songs, thinking of the same man, you see a ship pass through the windows. The Razor Crest.

Your heart hammers in your chest instantly and you wonder if maybe you’re dreaming. I must have finally just passed out at the top of the stairs, you think. Because there is no way he’s back. You’ve been standing for so long in just your big t-shirt you’re starting to get mad that you can’t make yourself move. You’re full of shock and wondering if you should throw yourself down the stairs just to make sure this isn’t a dream. Could he really be back?

You shuffle down the grand staircase as swiftly and quietly as you can, your bare feet slapping against the marble.

You pull open the door and there he is.

“Din.” You say with a heavy breath and your heart stops. He’s sweaty and bloody. Hair matted and splattered down his face, eyes heavy, his lips are parted and head tilted to the side. He wears only the armour.

You step forward, reaching out for him and he drops to his knees. Wrapping his arms around your waist, he nuzzles your stomach.

“I came straight here.” His voice is harsh, but quiet. “We’re safe now.”

You nod, running your fingers through his dirty hair and you feel his grip around you tighten.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N.” Din says into your stomach. “I am so sorry.”

“Din, get up.” You say but he just, somehow, holds you closer.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My sweet girl. I’ll never do this to you again.” He says, shoulders shaking softly.

Din looks up at you, with the face that seemed so familiar even the first time you saw it, like you had dreamt of him every night before you even knew of his existence and he asks with glassy eyes, “Do you still love me?”

“Din, get up.” You choke, biting your lip to silence your inevitable sobs as your eyes begin to fill with tears and you turn your gaze away.

You’ve never seen him this way before, so desperate and full of fear. On his knees begging. It’s completely overwhelming to see him so controlled by his emotions, a man usually so demure. It rips your chest apart that he needs you to say it.

“Do you?” He asks again, his voice caught in this throat.

You clasp your hand over your eyes as your chest starts heave, but you keep your other hand running through his hair. “Of course I do.”

You feel him stand as your hand drops to his shoulder and drags down his chest. Din nudges your other hand away from your face, but you keep your eyes closed and he takes your face in his hands.

“Look at me, my moon. Please.”

You open your ocean-filled eyes, “I love you, so much.”

Clutching your face in the most delicate manner that he ever has, Din brings his lips to yours and he kisses you. You taste the tang of blood and the salt of his sweat and you are so full of joy because you know that he is here and he is alive.

You break away in a sudden realization. “Baby. Where is Baby?”

“He’s at the safe house. In perfect health, not a scratch on his precious head.”

You nod.

“However, he is... much more powerful than we could have ever imagined, Y/N.”

“What?” You whisper.

“He can control elements. It was terrifying and magnificent and he did it to protect me. He saved me.”

“Saved you?”

“It got close, my moon. But I’m here.”

“Oh, Din.” You cry and kiss him again.

“I’ll take you to him right now, and we’ll all be together again. Safe and warm in the sun.”

You nod. “Yes! Din, of course. But you should rest first. And bathe.”

You rub your thumb over the dried blood on his cheek, then drag your pointer finger down the bridge of his nose.

He closes his eyes, “I missed that.”

“I only have fruity shampoo.” You say softly as Din sits submerged in the bath.

“That’s fine, I can smell like you.” He sighs.

You smile and kneel at the end of the tub, “Lean forward a little, darling.”

Din obliges and you start pouring cups of the bath water over his head to wet his hair.

“Peach, or strawberry?” You hum.

“Peach.” He hums back and you squeeze the shampoo into your hand.

You rake the product through his hair and you have a fleeting flashback to sitting in his position just a few weeks ago, half alive. Heartbrokenly believing you may never see the man who you’re bathing in the middle of the night by the pale moonlight again.

You kiss behind his ear and then his jaw and Din turns back to catch your lips with his, reaching across to secure his hand in your hair. You pull away with an extra quick peck and continue massaging your lover’s scalp, Din groaning softly at the rhythmic light scratching of your nails.

You pour more water over him to rinse out the shampoo and come around to his side to sponge the sweat and blood from his face.

The blood makes your lip quiver and Din traces his fingers along your wrist when he notices. When he’s clean, you stand for him holding a big fluffy black towel and when he steps out of the tub, you wrap it around his waist. You’re so close you can smell his skin and it’s overwhelming. You put your palm flat against his chest, like you’re making sure he’s really here and he covers your hand with his.

Your eyes shoot up to his and you throw your arms around him.

“You’re going to get wet.” He warns quietly.

“I don’t care.”

Din sits at the edge of your bed, drying his hair with another towel and you stare at him. All you want to do is drink in every bit of him. His simplistic beauty and soft ruggedness. He is lush and delicate like a forest, and as passionate as a forest fire and you have missed him so.

You pull your damp t-shirt over your head, so you are only on your underwear and you lean against the dresser, arms crossed over your abdomen. You look down in a moment of discomfort, realizing he hasn’t seen you nude in weeks but through your peripheral you see his movements slow. He’s watching you.

You wonder if he’s having the same conflicting emotions as you. Should your first moments together again, clean and safe be only about closeness? The synchronization of your breathing, intertwining of fingers. Delicate lips ghosting and voices humming lowly. Inhaling each other as a reminder you are both here and alive and existing in the same space. Or do you succumb to the desire stirring deep as you are overcome by his presence. The ache of sadness has been replaced with the ache of want, to feel wet finger tips tracing, to hear your name drip out of his mouth and into yours. To be completely consumed by him and his relentless thick love.

You lift your head and float over to him, taking the towel out of his hand and dropping it on the floor, you climb into his lap.

You waste no time, pressing your mouth to his, grazing your fingers over the fine hairs on his chest. Din slips his hand under your hair to the base of your neck to anchor you against him. Your hardening nipples brush against his chest and he moans into your mouth, you use the opportunity to pull his lip with your teeth, letting go to kiss his chin and up his jaw.

You find the part of his neck that drives even him wild and both of his hands plunge down the back of your underwear, squeezing your ass at once. Digging his fingers into the soft flesh, like he can’t get enough in his hands and it almost hurts, but you love it.

You wrap your arms around his neck and shower him with your adoration. Kissing and licking and humming his name like a prayer and you feel dizzy already. Getting high on how tiny you feel against him and the warmth pooling at your core.

One of his hands releases your behind and comes around to the front. Pulling your panties to the side, Din lazily drags a finger up your slit, and you inhale sharply.

His big dark eyes look up at you with love and desire. He swallows thickly, “You’re already so wet.” His mouth stays open after he speaks as he searches your face and you shrug.

“I missed you.” You coo and Din smiles, “it’s been so long.”

You kiss his smile and he groans your words back against your mouth, “It’s been so long.”

Din wraps his other arm around your waist to keep you still as he begins to circle your clit with an agonizing pace and pressure. You sigh, letting your forehead knock gently against his. Not before long, he has you breathing heavy though your nose.

“Come on, let me hear how good it feels.” Din whispers, his mouth gaping like yours, as he looks you in the eyes. He dips his two thick fingers inside you and you yelp. He’s stretching you with just his fingers and you feel hypersensitive from your recent lack of touch. You rest your finger tips on the sides of his jaw and you whimper from the exquisite feeling of quite literally being putty in his palm, and he knows it.

“Your little pussy is so hot and wet in my hand, angel.” Din grunts.”You needed this.”

You nod your head slowly and you can feel him hard beneath you and the thought alone makes you thighs involuntarily clamp around your love’s hand, it makes his lip snarl. You’re too sensitive, but you want all of him.

“Wait,” you whimper, slipping off of Din’s lap and he leans back with his hands propping him up, feet planted firmly on the ground, legs spread. He watches you intently as you shimmy out of the panties he’s ruined, and you start on the towel tied around his waist.

You pull the towel away and Din’s incredible cock throbs under your stare, he looks up at you.

“Din..” You sing softly, straddling his thigh, taking his length in your hand.

“Yeah, baby?” Din asks, tilting his head back with a sigh. You lean over slightly to let your spit you’ve kept pooling in your mouth drip off your tonigue and onto his head so you can stroke him with fluidity.

“I just want to fuck, okay? Is that okay?” You ask sweetly, stroking with a stronger hand.

“We can do whatever you want.” He says, rolling his head from side to side.

“I want to make you feel good,” you whisper, pulling your other leg up to straddle his lap again. “My hero..” You lift your hips up. “You keep me safe and protected.” You sink down on to him slowly until he fills you completely and you keep him there as he sits up, pushing your hair out of your face and cupping it in his large hands.

You melt against him as the pressure of being filled by his hardness starts to be too much. Din grips the base of your neck with one hand, and your ass with the other and buries his face in your shoulder.

“I love you,” he chokes.

“I love you, too.” You sigh as you start to move in his lap.

You wake to he sunshine warming your skin. It’s a harsh bright winter light, which in any other case would make you groan and roll over, pulling the blankets over your head. But not this morning. You’re weighed down by Din laying between your legs, asleep with his face on your stomach. Arms up at your sides. It’s been so long since you’ve woken up with him like this, you don’t know how you survived without it.

You run your hands through his soft hair and you can smell the peach shampoo. You giggle quietly and Din stirs before blinking his eyes open.

He smiles into your stomach, and the familiar tickle of his moustache makes you sink deeper into the mattress. You want to squeal with glee.

Din rests his chin on this folded hands on your stomach. “You ready to go see the little one?”

“Yes!” You cry, “Oh I’m so excited.”

Suddenly a dark thought creeps in and you sit up on your elbows. “Din, What if he doesn’t remember me?”

“Why wouldn’t he remember you?” Din looks puzzled. “Did you not notice?”

“Notice what?”

“When we... went on our trip...” Din nods, tiptoeing around the the painful subject, and you nod back, “I took your portrait of us.”

“You did?” You gasp.

“Yeah.” He breathes. The portrait he speaks of is your stress relief piece. The painting you return to in between projects or when you need a break. It’s started off simple, just the three of you. But as your sweet little life together went on, you added to it. Painting in Baby’s favourite places, and the covers of your favourite books. Pomegranates and bowls of bone broth soup. Capturing Baby’s different expressions and your eccentric clothes. The sunsets that made you feel the most alive and Din’s magnificent side profile.

“He, uh..” Din clears his throat. “He points to you on it every day.”

“Oh,” you say as your heart swells averting your eyes from his as you feel like you may cry all over again, “Well isn’t that just wonderful.”

There’s a sudden knock at the door and Din’s head turns. Your mother’s voice hisses from the other side. “Y/N, the Razor Crest is outside!”

Din looks back to you.

“Oh, shit.” You sigh.

Your mother did not take well to Din’s return, even trying to hit him upside the head, but you intervened. The tiny woman so full of rage juxtaposed by her floor length pink silk robe with fur hems on the sleeve and collar was enough to almost make you laugh, but you beg your mother to trust you. Reminding her that some things are best kept secret. That, like your father, Din has his own truths.

Your mother straightened up with wide eyes and stared until you realized what you said.

“Oh, no. Din isn’t gay,” you say, shaking your head and taking his hands. He snorts but looks down quickly when Wilhemina shoots him a glare, “But he has a past, and when he’s ready to talk about it, he’ll talk about it.”

“Wilhemina,” Din says, squeezing your hand. “I love your daughter more than anything in the galaxy. All she’s ever done is support me and inspire me.. and love me with all of her heart. And I betrayed her by handling a situation inexcusably because I thought it was the right thing to do. Her patience, intelligence and beauty knows no bounds and I am going to work every day to be worthy of it. Just know that what happened, had to be done. I promise.”

The ship ride to the safe house is quiet but full of anticipation as Din tells you about the tropical planet you’ll be living on. He speaks lovingly about the bungalow and how he’s already brought all of your books and art supplies over along with Baby’s toys. He reaches back for your hand as he confesses to being over the moon about being together again. The family he’s always dreamt of, and how he can’t wait to keep trying for more, but that he understood you would all need time to adjust.

When you land, Din takes your hand and helps you out of the ship and to your bungalow on the beach. The air is thick with humidity and you can hear rustling of palm trees in the breeze all around you. You look up at Din, his face reflecting the glow of golden hour and the sight makes your breath hitch.

“Is Baby happy here?” You whisper.

“He loves it.”

“Are you happy here?”

“I will be now that you’re here.” Din says.

“Then this is the way.”

Din wraps his arms around you so you’re pressed against him, “I think you finally said that right.”

You laugh, swatting his chest and you walk through the front door.

Din shows you around your new home. It reminds you of the cottage back in the village, except sprawling hills of grass and forest are replaced with white sand and sapphire blue water. You can hear the waves crashing into the shore from yours and Din’s bedroom and it excites you. Everything is bright and gauzy, and the whole place is lit with a pink and orange glow as afternoon seeps into evening.

Din leads you to the back of the bungalow to two big French doors and he pushes them open to a small deck and a few steps that disappear right into the sand.

You clutch Din’s arm when you see him. Baby, playing near the shore. He’s with a woman you don’t recognize, but he looks happy; cackling and picking up sand just to let it fall between his fingers and you dismiss the mother bear instincts that came creeping in for a moment.

“Baby!” Din calls, and his little green head turns. He smiles sweetly to his father and when he notices you standing next to him, his small mouth drops open. Baby stands straight up with his arms above his head and squeals, then reaches forward with his grabby hands as he tries to move in the sand.

You lose your breath as you release Din from your grip and you run through the sand to your precious boy.

Tags: @otherthingsinhead @aeryntheofficial @maryan028 @readsalot73 @osric-the-l3m0n-l0v3-demon @capsironunderoos @antclottz @intense-sneezing @igotmadskills @applesislife @marrvelle-fics @killtherandomness @holyground1996 @taoiichii @kyoko-yuuki @bookwormmarvel @xplrreylo @the-resident-demon @sad-anxious-girl @jaegers-and-kaijus @drinkfantasy @forbidden-darkness @hyveee @fangirlfreakingout @petalduck @fahhhhq @thatonebishsstuff @midnightsinger @jenniferdaniels12 @hiscyarika @tryn25

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! I kept writing Dyn!! Sh*t hits different now that there’s been a “face reveal” even though we knew full well what Pedro looks like huh? Anyway. Sorry the pacing on this one is trash. Love, Zelda

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian fluff #the mandalorian smut #the mandalorian x reader #dyn jarren x reader #din djaren #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #star wars fanfiction #star wars #baby yoda #mandalorian smut

[anon-e-miss]

Thank you about ricochet so thats why jazz needs to pay debt to save his twin So umm Lets continue with dryadprowl I wanna the splitspark twins reaction to the real life dryad?

There was no wind, no sky. Prowl toyed with the blanket. It had been nearly three vorns since he had left the Grove in search of Smokescreen. Three vorns  without a blanket or a berth to recharge in. No wind. No sky. He felt claustrophobic. The habsuites built in the Grove’s trees had few walls. His personal suite on Crosscut’s titanium oak had been open on three sides. The canopy had provided enough privacy, and when that had not been enough he had drawn the curtains around his berth, but those curtains had been translucent. He had never been enclosed. No wind. No sky.

Prowl had been hanging exposed for two vorns, chained to that ugly, over groomed obsidian pine. As he took some measured intakes, Prowl’s spark calmed. He may had not been enclosed but he had been confined, now at least he had been freed from his chains. For now. Though his spark wanted desperately to believe these mechanisms would help him find Smokescreen and help them to get... not home but safe. Somewhere, anywhere, safe, Prowl did not trust. He released the blanket and turned over his servo to stare at his root crystal. It was so odd to hold it again. It was both a relief and a terror.

He was weary, drained in a way that no recharge would remedy. Prowl’s crystal needed to be mounted to a tree, a shrub, something, so he could extend his roots and take life in from the air and the sky. It was not yet dire; he would not wither into nothing over the course of a single dark-cycle, but he would wither if he did not find a host, or hosts. There was nothing in this habsuite that would sustain him.

Bluestreak cooed in his recharge and curled his tiny digits over Prowl’s bumper. The relief Prowl felt was too deep and too great to ever describe. He was inclined to hate Jazz for ripping Bluestreak away from him, and for running away as he had begged for his creation back. But the thief had reunited them, time would only tell how much of a villain he was at spark. If Lockdown showed up in the light-cycle, Prowl supposed he would know.

The berth was stiff, and the pillows lumpy but Prowl laid himself carefully down on his back. It was a million times better than hanging by his wrist from that tree. He did not have to dig his peds to save himself from damage. His shoulder had troubled him since the dark-cycle where he had given emergence chained to that obsidian pine. He had strained it, as he had strained through the evacuation process and it had not had the opportunity to really heal. There was a fair chance it would always trouble him, even after the cables around the joint healed. Such an injury was invisible, it would not reduce his value to any collector, Prowl thought with some bitterness. He would die before he fell into the servos of one again. He would kill himself and Bluestreak before they were again put in chains.

There were no chains now. Only a blanket, a pillow and a worn berth. Prowl’s optics dimmed. Recharge would not settle his spark deep weariness but it would restore some of his strength. When the light-cycle came, if betrayal came with it, he had to be strong enough to fight. Bluestreak lifted his helm, seeming befuddled by the new horizontal position he found himself in with his originator. The seedling cooed and nuzzled his sleepy helm against Prowl’s chassis and his round optics dimmed. His shine was dulling, Prowl’s was too. If the light-cycle brought hope with it and not betrayal, he would find a mount, somehow. For now, however, he recharged.

Laughter woke Prowl joors later. For a moment it disoriented him, but only for a moment. Jazz had creations, twins in fact, they had played with Bluestreak while he had been kept from Prowl. It would be unkind of him to hate them on sight. Prowl stared at the door. Would it be locked? The knowledge as to whether or not they had been betrayed would be answer by where or not the door opened at his command. Prowl pulled the blanket up over himself and Bluestreak and dimmed his optics. Not yet. He was not brave enough to seek the answer yet. The laughter faded. A door snapped shut, and Prowl listened, his spark in his throat, but no one came for him.

At some point, Prowl drifted back into recharge and then back into waking again. He heard Punch speaking in a muffled voice as the high, sweet laughter returned. The thumbing of little peds echoed. Someone squealed, Prowl froze again, but then there was laughter and not only that of a sparkling but that of Jazz. They sounded happy. They lived in a habsuite with no windows for fear of roving gunmecha, but they were happy. Innocent? Resignation? Prowl watched the door as Bluestreak fuelled from his well. He could feel his supply  dwindling. To give his creation substance, he needed some of his own. On peds he refused to admit were shaky, Prowl rose, and tentatively, he reached for the door. It opened as he nudged it with his ped. As it slid open, Prowl saw a red mechling perched on Jazz’s shoulders and a yellow one pulled at his legs. The trio stopped. They stared at Prowl. Prowl stared at him.

“Come on out, Prowl,” Jazz said and he lowered the one mechling from his shoulders. “Have a seat, Ori’s mixin’ up medgrade for ya. Sunny-bitty can ya get the blanket ‘n pillow from grand-ori’s berth? Prowl’s got an owie ‘n we wanna make sure it don’t hurt’m too much.”

“Okay,” the yellow mechling inched passed Prowl and collected the pillow and blanket he had just abandoned.

They were young. Only first tier sparklings, and they were slender reeds. Their progenitor was thin under that armour, thin in a way that Prowl would not have thought to describe as sleek but gaunt. They did not have enough. Enough fuel. Enough shanix. Prowl realized what a cost they were paying having him here, drinking their fuel. It was impossible not to feel guilty, even if the choice had not been his at all.

“Thank ya, Sunny,” Jazz smiled with a particular radiance when he looked at his creation. Prowl felt a pull from with in his spark to trust him, though his processor resisted with equal force. “Sit down, Prowl. Outta the way Sides, don’t trip’m up.”

Prowl slowly, maybe shyly, made his way over. The mechlings hovered, watching him with naked curiosity. As Punch had done before, Jazz carefully arranged the pillows so to cushion his doorwings. He draped the blanket over Prowl’s lap and that... that was unexpected but it was not uncomfortable, it might even have been the exact opposite. The little yellow mechling reached his servos into a basket and held up strands of strung crystals.

“We made ya presents,” Sunny, as Jazz had called him, declared. His twin reached into the basket and lifted up more.

“Oh,” Prowl said. Jazz took the longest string, which turned out to be a loop. He leaned over Prowl and draped it over his neck.

“Crystal chains,” Jazz explained. “Ori thought they might be a good patch before he goes back out to the forest ‘n digs ya up a good host.”

“Thank you, both,” Prowl said. The crystals were small but they felt refreshing against his dulled plating. Jazz draped another two loops over Prowl’s neck, and then slid four smaller looks over his wrist. This was the sort of gift dryads gave to each other as tokens of friendship, love and support. It was unexpected that these mechs would think of it. It was sweet that the mechlings had been so enthusiastic over the chore.

“And the crown!” Sunny ordered and Jazz chuckled as he took the look of larger crystals and placed it on Prowl’s helm.  The mechling nodded approvingly. “Y’re pretty!”

“Thank you... Sunny?”

“Sunstreaker but we’re pretty fond o’ nicknames ‘round here. Sideswipe, ya got anything else?”

“We made a lil one for Bitty!” Sides or Sideswipe said and he held up a small loop of perfectly smooth crystals. “Grand-ori said they couldn’t be pokey for the bitty.”

“That’s right,” Jazz said. “Prowl? Mind if I put it on ‘m.”

“No,” Prowl said, and the mechlings looked crestfallen and he felt a wave of guilt. “I do not mind. Please do. Thank you, mechlings.”

“Y’re welcome!” Sideswipe said as he grinned from audial horn to audial horn. Jazz gently lifted Bluestreak’s servo from Prowl’s bumper and slid the bracelet on. Bluestreak wriggled his digits and reached up to grab the long loop dangled down Prowl’s amble chassis. He sighed, and his optics had a blissful glow.

“I do think that helped wit yer shine,” Punch declared when he finally appeared with a heaping tray of fuel. Prowl felt nauseated with guilt. He did not want to be taking energon from these mechlings’ mouths. “Start wit some medgrade, Prowl. Then will get some good minerals into ya.”

“I do not want to impose,” he said. Jazz took the cube of medgrade from the tray and place the long strong into it. He looked Prowl in the optic.

“Ya ain’t goin’ hungry under our roof,” he said. “Ya need regular fuel, don’t ya? Not just what ya get from the environment?”

“Yes,” Prowl confessed. He did not think it wise to lie. Jazz nodded.

“There ya go. As long as yer here, we’ll share our fuel wit ya. Sides, Sunny why don’t ya make Prowl a plate?”

That was clever, Prowl thought as he sipped at the medgrade. He had the cube balanced in his servo as Bluestreak was content to doze draped in the crook of his arm. The mechlings seemed to thrill at the responsibility and they made up a plate of ore crusted gels and oil cakes. When Prowl finished the medgrade, he still did not have a servo free to feed himself. The logical thing might have been to hand Bluestreak off to Punch or Jazz but he could not bring himself to suggest it. Sunstreaker climbed into Jazz’s lap and then climbed across the couch.

“I’ll help!” He exclaimed. Sunstreaker took a gel from the plate and held it to Prowl’s mouth.

“Be careful, Sunny,” Jazz warned. “Don’t knock’m.”

“I am careful,” the mechling said with a bit of sass.

Prowl could not help but take the proffered fuel. Sideswipe would not be left out and he stole the tray from Prowl’s lap in order to hand Sunstreaker the gels and cakes. Jazz inched across the couch, his optics trained on his mechlings and Prowl. He was conscientious. It was bizarre. Sunstreaker dropped a rust coated gel into Prowl’s mouth and the dryad could not help but dim his optics. This was a flavour he very much enjoyed. He chewed and swallowed. The mechlings smiled.

“That yer favourite?” Sideswipe asked.

“I think it is,” Prowl replied, unwilling to lie to the mechling.

“We have more!” He exclaimed.

They insisted on feeding Prowl every single rust coated goodie. When they were convinced that Prowl had eaten their fill, they served themselves from the communal tray. Punch and Jazz only took their own fuel after everyone else was done. There was one gel left, after they each took their share. Punch put it on Jazz’s plate, and Jazz transferred it to Punch’s. It seemed to Prowl to be a time honoured ritual, one Jazz won. He was the provider. Before anyone else went without, he would. The mechlings dug out their puppets and showed them to Prowl. After Bluestreak woke and took his fill from Prowl well, the mechlings insisted on performing a little puppet show. They were loud, and they were wild. Cradled in Prowl’s lap so he could look out at their antics, Bluestreak smiled and cooed.

“He likes us!” Sideswipe exclaimed.

“Of course he does,” Prowl replied, without thinking. He saw Jazz watching him from his perch on the opposite end of the not so wide couch, and pretended not to notice. “You are lovely mechlings.”

The Twins gave him matching grins and asked if Bluestreak would like to watch another “show”, Prowl said yes, what else could he say? In the corner of his optic Prowl watched Jazz relax. Ensconced in his old chair, Punch smiled. Even as Prowl’s battle computer insisted betrayal could still be right around the corner, Prowl’s spark did not believe it. He did not quite believe it anymore.

#maccadams #anon-e-miss writes #tf prowl #tf jazz #etc #dryad prowl #thief jazz #bamf punch #kid!fic