#WTB Universe

[sequinsmile-x]

Yesterday

It felt like history was repeating itself for both of them.

Part of the Whatever Tomorrow Brings series.

Based on an ask I got for Route 66, but make it WTB.

-x-

Chapter 1/2 (chapter two will be posted in the coming days)

Words: 2.8k

Warnings: Mentions of injuries, hospitals, blood.

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

October 2013

Aaron had barely slept, an ache in his stomach that had started the evening before keeping him awake most of the night. He’d laid next to Emily for hours, fitfully catching what felt like a few minutes of sleep at a time as she snored lightly next to him, her hand pressing into his shoulder. 

He slips out of bed as soon as the sun rises, early even for him. He smiles when Emily grumbles slightly as he gets out of bed, and he leans down to kiss her forehead. He winces sharply as he stands back up straight, a quick, stabbing pain momentarily leaving him breathless. 

He gets ready slowly, deciding to forgo his usual coffee when he gets downstairs, knowing it likely wouldn’t do his upset stomach any good. His head was starting to be a little fuzzy, leaving him in a bit of a daze. Everything around him seemed slightly off, like he was behind glass. 

He grimaces as he drinks a cup of Emily’s tea, hoping it would settle his stomach a little, something his wife swore by whenever she felt unwell. He sits there as the rest of his family wake up, hoping he’d feel better by the time they come down to join him. 

Aaron can hear Emily upstairs, already in Amelia’s room helping the little girl get ready. Their voices muffled by the closed door of Amelia’s bedroom and its distance from the kitchen. Despite how terrible he felt he smiles at the sound of his family, his foundation in his worst moments. 

The woman he had loved for so long now he didn’t know how it felt to not love her, their two young children who were the best bits of both of them. Jack, who was away at college now, was a mixture of the three people who had raised him. Fierce and kind and stubborn, something that Aaron was sure would make him a good doctor, a career ambition he’d had since he was young. Born out of watching his mother become sick. 

Aaron often thought of the time he’d been apart from them. The fourth anniversary of them being reunited was coming up, and time had not completely healed those wounds. He could still remember how fiercely she had hugged him outside their old house, the way she had cried when she thought he was dead. 

He knows they'd never be completely free of it, of the damage that time had done, but it had brought them closer together. A new version of them emerging from the ashes of the old one. 

He feels another wave of pain through his abdomen and decides to take a painkiller, standing and reaching for the cabinet, again ignoring the increase in his pain as he does so. He pulls out the ibuprofen and takes a couple pills out of the bottle. Quickly returning it to its place as he hears his wife start to descend the stairs. 

“Aaron?”

He swallows the painkillers just as Emily walks into the kitchen, Amelia on her hip, both of them dressed and ready for the day. 

“Morning sweetheart.” He says, smiling, hoping he was successfully covering how he felt, not wanting her to catch on to it and inevitably worry. 

“Morning, you were up earlier than usual.” She replies as passes him on her way to the kitchen counter, kissing his cheek as she does so, and she places Amelia onto one of the stools there, groaning slightly as she adjusts the weight of the little girl in her hold.

“You, little miss, are getting a bit too big to be carried like that.” She says to the four year old as she lets go of her, sighing slightly as Amelia grabs the sleeve of her shirt.

“No, Mommy.” 

“Mommy is staying right here, ok?” Emily says patiently, managing to untangle the small fingers from her clothes as she smiles at her daughter. “I’m just making breakfast.” 

She turns to Aaron and raises her eyebrows, expecting the usual look of smugness on his face. Amelia was going through a very clingy phase with her, and no one but Emily would be able to calm her down. It was making life harder for the rest of the Hotchner family whenever she was away on a case, but she couldn’t say it didn’t warm her heart when her little girl ran towards her and wrapped her arms around her in a fierce hug when she got home after a few days away. 

Aaron usually gently teases her about it, a small smile or a raised eyebrow in her direction whenever their daughter refuses to leave her side, but this morning there was nothing. His usual mirth at the situation was replaced by a slight pinch between his eyebrows, a tension in his jaw.

“Are you ok, honey?” She asks, her concern deepening when he flinches slightly when she touches his back, as if he hadn’t been aware that she was there. “You don’t quite seem yourself.” 

He nods and smiles at her. “I’m fine. Didn’t sleep too well.” 

It’s not a complete lie, and he hopes that some more sleep after his lectures would make him feel better. He can tell she doesn’t believe him, that she knows him too well to know when he is lying to her, so he changes the subject, turning to Amelia instead. 

“What do you want for breakfast, sweetheart?” 

She smiles at him, a look in her eyes that had always got her and Emily whatever they wanted. 

“Lucky Charms.” 

Emily shakes her head. “Amelia, you know that’s a weekend cereal.” Amelia pouts at her and crosses her arms across her chest, “Don’t look at me like that, it might work on your dad, but it doesn’t work on me.” 

“Yeah,” Aaron says, a slight smirk on his face, “because Mommy definitely doesn’t give in and read you more than one story whenever it’s her turn does she?” 

Emily scoffs and playfully pats Aaron in the stomach as she reaches past him to get a bowl, but he winces and she frowns. “Are you sure you’re ok?” 

“Em. I’m fine. Stop fussing.” 

It comes out harsher than he meant it to, pain and a need to just be left alone making him irritable, and he sees her raise her eyebrows, her own annoyance at him taking over her concern. 

“Fine.” She says, placing the bowl back down, smiling at him in a way that lets him know she was pissed off, before she turns back to Amelia. “How about, I take you to school and we go on the way to that cafe we like?” 

Amelia nods enthusiastically and shimmies down off of the stool, putting her hand out for Emily immediately. “We can get donuts.” 

“We can share a donut,” Emily corrects, her annoyance at her husband not completely making her forget about her rules for week day breakfasts. She turns back to Aaron, “can you get Theo to school? I told him he has 10 more minutes before we’ll get him out of bed.”

“Of course,” he says, his gut twisting in a different way to how it had been all morning, guilt settling there and unsettling him even further, “Em-”

“It’s fine Aaron,” she cuts over him, leading Amelia out of the kitchen, “you don’t want to talk about whatever is clearly going on.” She flashes him half a smile. “I’ll see you later, ok. I’ll let you know if we get a case.” 

She’s out of the room and talking to Amelia again, the soft tone she reserved for their children as she converses with the little girl.

Aaron sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration.

It was going to be a long day. 

___

He somehow makes it through the morning, time moving like syrup as he drags himself through his routine. His concentration waning as time went on, a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his wife, telling him to just go home, that he clearly wasn’t well.

He pushes through. Making it from his office to the academy, the journey a blur, telling himself he’d go home once he did his lectures, sleep off whatever bug he’d seemingly picked up. 

As Aaron waits for the students to file into the room he suddenly starts to feel worse. His hands and feet start to tingle, a numbness he’d only felt once before taking over. Memories of laying on the floor of his old house, bleeding out onto a rug that Elizabeth had bought them, hitting him quickly. 

He clears his throat to cover a shaky breath, smiling tightly at the students in the front row who look at him strangely. 

Something was wrong. He needed to sit down for a second, clear his head, and then he was sure he would be fine for the next hour or so. He’d go after that, call his doctor, whatever this was clearly more than the bug he’d spent all morning convincing himself he had. 

“Are you ok Agent Hotchner?” One of the students asks, one of the brightest in his class.

“I’m ok.” He clears his throat again, closing his eyes briefly in a last ditch attempt to clear his head but it doesn’t work. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.” He says, the slight shake to his own voice not lost on him. His head was pounding, a headache coming on so quickly it leaves him breathless. 

He steps out from behind the lectern and feels unsteady, his legs collapsing underneath him. He hits the ground, the last thing he hears before his ears start to ring is someone yelling that they were calling for an ambulance. 

His eyes drift shut, and he thinks of Emily. 

___

Emily couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. A sickeningly familiar sense of dread crawled beneath her skin, threatening to overwhelm her. 

Aaron hadn’t replied to her texts. As soon as she’d dropped Amelia to school Emily started to feel a little guilty for how she had been with Aaron that morning. He was clearly unwell, something he couldn’t hide from her - clearly forgetting that she could read him like a book. He was always irritable when he was sick, worse than their children most of the time, and she was mad at herself for reacting. 

He usually replied, no matter what. A hangover from when Foyet had attacked him, panic always pulling her under when she couldn’t get hold of him, a fear she could never shed. He always replied, even if it was just a cursory response, something to let her know he was ok, that he would respond properly when he could. 

He wasn’t cruel enough to punish her like this, aware of exactly where her mind took her. She only had to close her eyes to see his blood on their old floor, to feel the weight of a tiny Amelia in her arms. 

To remember how it felt to live without him, to forget the feeling of his hand in hers. 

Something was wrong. 

“Emily.” 

She jumps slightly, on edge and not expecting someone in her office. She looks up to see Penelope standing in front of her, a concerned look on her face. 

“Pen,” she clears her throat, tries to dislodge the fear that had crept up it, “everything ok?” 

“We have a case, an amber alert.” Penelope says, furrowing her eyebrows. “Are you ok?” 

Emily nods, the look her friend gives her telling her that she doesn’t believe her.

“I’m fine.” She says, “get the team ready, I’ll be-” she’s cut off by her cell phone ringing, the name of Amelia’s school flashing across the screen, “It’s Amelia’s school.” 

“Oh,” Penelope says, “I thought Hotch picked them up.” She looks at her watch, and sees it is well past the usual pick up time. 

“He does.” Emily replies, answering the phone and ignoring the slight shake in her hand, her panic well and truly taking over, bubbling up in her veins and burning her from the inside out. “Emily Hotchner.” She answers, her married name slipping out without thought. 

“Oh Mrs Hotchner, it’s Rebecca from Amelia’s school.” The woman on the phone explains, her voice perky, out of sync with what she was saying. “We’ve tried contacting your husband but we can’t get through to him, and Amelia is still here.” 

Emily curses under her breath, flashing a look at Penelope before she stands up, looking at the time on her watch. “I’ll be there in about 30 minutes. I’m so sorry about this.”

“That’s ok, Mrs Hotchner,” the woman replies, “we’ll keep her entertained for you.” 

Emily exchanges pleasantries with the women thoughtlessly, not aware of what she is saying until she hangs up. She looks back up at Penelope. 

“I need to go get Amelia, I have no idea where Aaron is.” She stops in her tracks. “Shit, the case. Can you-”

“I will ask Morgan to take charge for now, and update you when you get back.” Penelope says, smiling at her. “You go get that delicious little girl of yours.” 

“Thanks Pen.” Emily says, a tiny bit of relief in her chest for the first time all day, a sense of peace that the other woman was always able to instill in her. 

It’s extinguished the moment she gets to her car and her phone rings again,  the name of Theo’s school staring back at her. 

___

She tries calling him twice before she gets to Amelia’s school, trying for a third time as she pulls into the pick up zone and gets out of the car, letting the call go through to voicemail this time. 

“Aaron,” she breathes out, standing at the door and pressing the buzzer, waiting to be let in, “I don’t know what is going on but please call me back.” She taps her foot in an attempt to dispel some of the nervous energy coursing through her, her phone buzzes, and she looks at the screen to see an unknown number is trying to call her, “Look, I’ve got to go. But please call me, I’m worried.” She hesitates for a second, her throat feeling thick. “I love you.”

She hangs up and takes a deep breath. “Do I somehow have a mystery kid I don’t know about that he forgot to pick up?” She murmurs to herself, answering the new call before it can ring out. “Hi, Agent Prentiss speaking.” 

“Hi, my name is Alex, I’m calling from Saint Sebastian hospital. I need to speak to Emily Prentiss.” 

Emily feels her chest get tighter, her breath stolen from her. “Speaking.” She chokes out, looking through the window on the door to see Amelia walking towards it with her teacher, the little girl laughing at something she couldn't hear.  

“I’m sorry to tell you that your husband was brought in not too long ago by an ambulance, and he’s about to go into surgery.” 

“Oh my god,” Emily stutters, unable to cover the shake in her voice even if she wanted to, “what happened?” 

“He has some internal bleeding, the doctors think it is from an old injury, given the scarring to his abdomen.” 

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Emily says, looking back to see Amelia was almost outside, that she only had seconds to pull it together. “Thanks.” 

She hangs up quickly, taking a shaky breath as the door opens, and steadying herself as Amelia throws herself at her, her arms tight around her waist, her face pressed into her stomach.

“Mommy!” 

Emily dislodges her briefly, kneeling down so she was at the right height to hug her daughter properly, needing it more than the little girl did in that moment. 

“Hi sweet girl.” 

All she could think as she breathed in the scent of her daughter's shampoo, smiling apologetically at the teacher standing in front of them, was that it was happening again. 

She might lose him again. 

___

He doesn’t know where he is, his mind fuzzy. His brain not complying with his desperate attempts at trying to remember the last thing he’d been doing. 

“Aaron?”

He freezes when he hears the voice. It had been so long since he’d heard it he’d forgotten what it sounded like. Lingering at the edges of his memory, never quite able to grab it, always just out of his reach. The moment he hears her say his name it all comes flooding back, hitting him like a wave. He turns to look at her, and his breath catches in his chest. 

“Haley?”

She smiles at him, the same smile he sees on his eldest son’s face all the time. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

-x-

Tag list:

@ssa-sparks, @lukeclvez, @lyds102, @glockleveledatyourcrotch, @hotchnissenthusiast, @danadeservesadrink, @ssamorganhotchner, @emilyprentissisgod, @notagentprentiss, @freesiasandfics, @emilyshotchniss, @thecharmingart, @paulitalblond, @hancydrewfan, @camille093, @whitecrossgirl, @moonlight-2-6, @rawr-jess, @florenceremingtonthethird, @jareauswife, @ms-black-a, @sneetchestoo, @aubreyprc, @zipzapboingg

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#Hotchniss #hotchniss fanfiction #hotchniss fanfic #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #aaron hotchner fanfiction #emily prentiss fanfiction #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #WTB #WTB universe

[rosyjuly]

i am OBSESSED with your "worked the blade" universe + have been devouring your director's cut versions - would you be willing to share any more?

thank you! WTB is one of the projects on the backburner that i'm always thinking about even when i'm officially not thinking about, so i'd rather not just yet, but i'd be super happy to do another director's cut for you! send me any bit or scene, i love doing DC-s :))

#you and me both eyeing that 2/2 chapter count on ao3 like 🤨 #rosy.ask

[veirsewrites]

I want to know more about the vamps in the WTB universe.... Can they get drunk? I remember reading in chapter 3 something about them being able to die from too many wounds, iirc? There's lots of asks I've missed though, so I may have missed one of those being answered. Love Arlo, I want his confidence and charm lmao. Can't wait for the next update, but no rush!

They can! It would take a ton of human alcohol since vampires heal fast. However, there’s special alcohols that can get supernaturals with accelerated healing wasted if they want! And MC’s bar is stocked full of them 😏

Vampires can only die if staked through the heart, head torn off or burned alive. Or poisoned with werewolf venom (don’t know if venom is the word I want to use but you get the idea). And I supposed getting horridly torn apart or squished so that the body parts could never be repaired back together. But I might be getting to literal.

And I’m happy you like Arlo/Aida! I like them too😊

#wtb ask #wtb lore

[fatimagic]

okay.  so i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to say in this post - probably more time than is reasonably healthy lol, because this is one of those episodes i haven’t yet written a lot of meta about. at least not spoiler-free. but i promised a well-thought out list, so here goes. to anyone currently watching, or considering watching wtb for the first time (which i seriously recommend anyone do), please note that this post is gonna contain spoilers up to and including the season four premiere. so.

i can’t talk about the final scene of 4.01 (my second-favorite txa scene after the final scene of the show) without first talking about the therapy scene. it’s absolutely one of judith’s best performances on the show. every time i watch it there’s new little nuances to pick up on. judith has talked a lot about her iconic one life to live courtroom scene feeling like a “coming out.” and i think even though the scene in the therapist’s office is NOWHERE NEAR as traumatic as the courtroom scene, part of the reason it’s so cathartic to watch play out is because it’s a different kind of “coming out” scene.

i’m personally not really a fan of applying phrases like “queer coding” to canonically straight relationships BUT since we’ve already talked about this show through a queer lens it got me thinking. one of those “universal queer experiences” a lot of us go through is having feelings for a(n often presumably straight) friend. and even though every other character on this show besides jonathan is straighter than straight, txa’s relationship does have a lot of “queer” (or, unconventional) attributes. if angela confessed to tony, she’d be losing not only her best friend, but also essentially the adoptive father of her child. and for angela, who grew up as a nerd with not a lot of friends, that’s a big fucking deal. there’s a moment in s8 (i think) where tony refers to txa as “the most important friendship in [his] lifetime”, and for angela, it feels the same. so to risk that? for anything? especially something as ~illogical~ to angela as love. right now, that’s impossible. she can’t do it. she loves him too much to risk not having him in her life. even if it’s not in the way she dreams about. having him in her life is more important to her than having him return her feelings.

but again, that’s the thing. he does return her feelings. every. single. day. i understand angela’s frustration about “always having to go first.” that’s been like 90% of my own dating life. always having to be the one to initiate the conversation or make the first move. and i’m ngl, it does eat away at your self-esteem after a while. and finding out that angela was the one who proposed to michael ends up explaining a lot about their relationship. this “going first” theme comes back later in the show and it’s a big character development moment for angela.

i have more thoughts so part 2 coming soon lmao this was just all i had time to type rn

#who's the boss? #wtb watch party #text #tbd maybe #but a version of this is definitely going in my meta collection

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Don’t like f&f? Postt a WTB saying you’ll only pay g&s. Then you won’t have to deal with f&f. Or block the f&f sellers so you don’t have to constantly get mad. Jeez I wonder what your blood pressure looks like. hope you have universal healthcare

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Confessions #Buyers and Sellers

[commedesgarconsliketheboys]

Last thing before I go to bed im naming all my favorite songs from each beatles album. Because this is the most ur gonna get out of me rn

ppm: do you want to know a secret

wtb: hold me tight

ahdn: and i love her

bfs: follow the sun

help: another girl

rs: The whole album. jk it’s girl

rev: here there and everywhere

sp: mr. kite but recently i’ve been on a lovely rita kick

mmt: i am thee walrus

white alb: I Will (ult fav)

ar: because

let it be: across the universe orig. written by fiona apple

honorable mentions: free as a bird, revolution, day tripper

goodnight 😴😴😴 i have a playlist with all of my favorites tho somewhere on spotify so thats usually what i listen to lol

[rapxquotes]

I could have anything I want but I still want you, that's the truth.

Work for It (feat. Big Sean, Gucci Mane & 2 Chainz) - DJ Khaled

#DJ Khaled #WTB #Big Sean #G.O.O.D Music #Gucci Mane #2 Chainz #Tru University #We the Best #Major Key #Hip-Hop #Quote #Quotes #Music #Lyrics

[goonlalagoon]

Waaay back when I first read ‘What the Butterflies Said’ by @sunrisenebula and drew this fanart, I also read the Only A Mere Florist  collection (from which WtBS sprang) and wanted to use the same concept for those stories.

Finally actually finished them up! They’re not in the order of the stories they correspond to here, but I like them best this way around.

#Young Wizards #my art #I'll probably post them separately at some point but I kinda envisioned it as a trio #If you haven't do go read OAMF and WTBS you will not regret it #I mean your heartstrings might #but it's so worth it #I tend to use STARS!!! as a shorthand for Wizardry/associated phenomenon in YW art #in this case the idea of being connected to the universe #which is why the LP is inverted so they're surrounded by stars but not currently quite a part of it #yes that is Betty doing ballet on the moon #which I realise doesn't tie in with a sunset but hey artistic licence #extreme artistic licence

[thevelvetroad]

For brutalism: 4,11 For WTB: 13,15 I can’t get enough of your writing. ❤️

thank you anon! that’s so sweet of you 

brutalism: 

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“But I am lucky, my girl,” she smiled through the tears, “Because the broken can be fixed, I’ve seen it. And I will be my father’s daughter, I will be Arya of Winterfell. I’ll live a happy life, there’s someone I love you see.”

from chapter 11 

11: What do you like best about this fic?

my favourite thing about this fic is how much i can play around with the asoiaf universe. i’ve spent a lot of time scouring maps of the East and writing up outlines of Arya’s travels from her crew members to the ports she docked in during her trip. i’m currently working on a map to show her journey. 

wtb: 

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to accompany us while reading?

it definitely changes but it’s usually music that sets the mood of the chapter. if it’s a happier chapter then definitely something light. if it’s angsty i’ll put some ambient music on. e.g. for the last chapter i literally just listened to this 58 second Broadcast song. 

sometimes i don’t listen to anything! but send me suggestions if you listen to a particular artist or song when reading 

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

i’ve been writing it for more than a year and over that time lots of things in my life have progressed, so i’ve learnt that the representation of mental health and all its symptoms is really important. it might not be the thing that people want to read in a fic but i think it’s super significant and suitable to do with the characters of asoiaf and got 

[demonac]

Why I love answering questions about my world

Based on comments on Tales From My D&D Campaign videos, it seems that one of the big attractions for a lot of people is the “size” and “richness” of the world and it’s history. Which makes it even more ridiculous that the setting doesn’t have a proper name beyond the placeholder “KT World”, but that’s another story…

Now, from the beginning, before the first session was ever played, I had a pretty good base for the setting - lands and peoples, conflicts of the past and present, myths and legends both large and small scale, laid out by my timeline (as described in my setting Timeline-making video). As the players shared their character concepts, and even more we played, the world grew, based on the additions they had made (including The Organization, the Hand of Sirius, a lot of Vistria, and the history of the war leading up to the creation of The Peacebond). In a custom (aka homebrew) setting, there is a constant interplay, where you take the elements added through roleplay, and the bits and pieces put in to serve the current adventures, and combine that with what already exists - you see connections that could exist, “wouldn’t it be awesome if…”, and you make pieces fit together, or you take a dead-end branch of lore and expand from it - adding leaves, which may themselves connect back to other bit, or sprout new leaves of their own. You have to remember that the things that you add don’t need to matter right now - they might never matter, and that’s okay - all they need to do is to make sense in your world, and your world becomes bigger.

So when the first TDDC videos went up, I think viewers could already feel that this was a big world that existed before the heroes - a place where things were going on out of sight, regardless of what the players did, without taking anything away from their own growing story.

Now, I'm not the best "community manager"-type of youtuber, because I am just too introverted (or at least that's my excuse). I’m the kind of person who likes my friends and family, enjoys spending time with them, but who doesn’t actually miss them when they aren’t around. Is that even a kind of person? Sometimes I wonder, but that’s me.

The one thing I do well (at least with the current size of my youtube channel) is that I answer the majority of questions users ask in the comments (even if sometimes the answer is “I can’t answer that”. But I really enjoy answering questions about the world, because when I can answer something without spoilers, there are two main possibilities: Either I get to reveal something about the setting that they may have missed, or which wasn’t in the videos, but it’s something I had thought about, and I like to share that… OR, the very question itself causes me to think about some new aspect, or add more depth to some vague, tiny part of the lore, and in doing so I am expanding the world that much more.

Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need to have seen or heard or felt things around which to imagine and built. Each of us hopefully spends their life building a repertoire of things which, whether you remember them explicitly or not, inform your ability to create new (or at least, new to you) ideas. If you enjoy writing and creating, like I do, you can probably go pretty far based mainly on this internal well of themes and concepts, plots and characters, scenes and music and the emotions they instill in you. But one truism which I frequently repeat is:

It is always easier to improve something that exists, than to make something new.

This is why proofreading is important, but especially proofreading by somebody else. It’s why a good editor makes books or scripts better. It’s why $100 million dollar movies come out with some huge glaring flaw that you instantly see - because people who were further from the project (with a more outsider point of view) didn’t get a crack at that script at an earlier enough stage to fix it, or maybe somebody was too attached to their creative vision and couldn’t see the improvement. It’s why the Star Wars prequels, when nobody could tell Lucas what to do, were a mess, even though Empire Strikes Back was awesome - it appears to be largely Lucas ideas too, but other people had strong hands in shaping and refining the script, honing it into something great.

I’m not going to say that a solo act can do this as well as a great writing duo or trio (wtb a great writing-partner, seriously), but if you can get more points of view, it can really help. And in something as big (and relatively fuzzy) as building a world, rather than a single tight story, you can just keep adding and adding, rarely needing to subtract - every question becomes a great exercise in the improv-like art of “yes, and…”

So most of the time, when I’m asked a TDDC world or history question to which I don’t know the answer, or where my answer would be flimsy or lacking, it gets me thinking, and I very frequently come up with some great new history to add to the world.

Just as an example, I recently mentioned “the Black Sand” in an Extras video (the videos where I give more explanations or background on things), and a couple people were surprised because they had missed or forgotten in a previous video (years ago) I explained that this particular patch of black sand encountered by our heroes was effectively a residue of the ascension of the God Vecna. Not his ascension to be a god - he was always a god. But his ascension as he left the rest of the world behind to devote himself entirely to the Astral Sea, planning to conquer the Source of All Magic, which would let him rule the universe forever (spoilers, he didn’t succeed - at least, not yet).

Looking up the answer for these commenters, so I could link to it, I saw the old Vecna bit, and it got me thinking about what Vecna, God of Lies and Secrets and the creator of the Undead in my setting - contemplating what he was like before he ascended:

Some legends make the mistake of portraying the Vecna as not having a physical form. The truth is that he had a real body, but as the God of Secrets, he was entirely silent and invisible - essentially undetectable. Scholars who know this debate whether other creatures could physically pass through Vecna's body, or whether other gods could sense his presence under certain circumstances, like when he was close - and wise people disagree on whether or not you could hear Vecna if he willed it so; some say that he could never be sensed, in any way, and it was for that reason that he created the Cloak and Mask which he wore when communicating with other beings. The Cloak was matte black (so-black-it-looks-two-dimensional-black), but that made it stand out against any background, even at night - and the Mask of Vecna was dark grey, with no eyes, but a broad white smile, and that is how he would appear to his closest minions, as he revealed to them the tiny corner of his plans which they needed to know.

Just like that, the world has grown. Does the appearance of Vecna make any difference to anything that will ever happen in the campaign? Probably not. He doesn’t even bother with this planet anymore. But it’s cool in its own right, and beyond that - we just added two potentially powerful artifacts to the world… and I know exactly who has one of them.

Anyway, ideas build on one another, and that’s how you grow your world - or at least, that’s why I enjoy answering novel questions that people have about my D&D world.

#TDDC #lore #D&D #Tales From My D&D Campaign

[sequinsmile-x]

Tomorrow

They could have had forever and it still wouldn’t have been enough. 

The final story in the Whatever Tomorrow Brings universe.

-x-

I've felt oddly emotional about this all day, all week really. Whatever Tomorrow Brings was the first story of mine that really started to pick up readers, and whilst I will miss this universe - it feels like the right time to say goodbye. I'll still be here, writing about our favourite idiots in love, just not this version of them.

I want to say thank you to all of you! To anyone who reblogged, liked or left kudos on any part of this universe. Thank you to the silent readers, those who come back time and time again. Thank you for loving my original characters so much - Theo, and especially Amelia, became so much more because of how all of you reacted to them.

This version of them, and their family, will always be important to me, and knowing they meant something to you too means more than I can ever say.

So this is it, the end of WTB. I hope you think I've done their story justice, and that when you revisit them in the future you still enjoy their highs and lows with them.

I love you all!

Please let me know what you think <3

-x-

Words: 7.7k

Warnings: Major character death, grief, illness

Read over on A03, or below the cut.

June 2037

They hadn’t had enough time.

It’s all she can think as she stands in the home office they once shared, her eyes fixed on Aaron’s desk. 

Vascular Dementia. Two words that permeated everything in their lives for almost three years, a diagnosis that rocked their whole family, and shook them to the very core. 

Emily noticed it first. How her husband seemed to suddenly be more forgetful, easily confused in a way he never had been before. When she looks back on it she realises it had been slowly getting worse for a while, signs she had missed before it became obvious. Memories of what it was like when her mother was sick haunting her. At first, they’d assumed it was the same thing, a cruel twist of fate that took her mother and her husband from her with the same disease. She could still feel the pit in her stomach, heavy and dense, when she remembered the diagnosis, the cause the doctors assumed laid behind it. 

It was George Foyet’s last laugh. His actions still impacting their family decades after he had briefly taken Aaron from them, only to permanently do it now. The injuries he had sustained had slowly put stress on his heart throughout the years, leading to this. 

Aaron had been the one who had to calm her down once they got home from that appointment, initially letting her rant and rave, cursing a man long since dead, until she started to cry. Then he’d hugged her, held her in the embrace that had been her solace for most of her life and comforted her, like he wasn’t the one who hadn’t just been told he was dying. 

“Mom?”

She turns from where she is standing, her chest tight as she turns to face her children, all three of them just inside the door, pulled shut behind them to give them some privacy. It’s why she’d sought solace here, to begin with, strangers in their home setting it up for the wake. It was setting her on edge, her nerves already raw. 

Jack is standing with his hands in his pockets, his lips set in a firm line, a clear attempt to hold his emotions back. It makes him look so much like Aaron that her eyes sting, the seemingly endless tears making their presence known. The sight of him in a black suit sending her right back to the last time he’d buried a parent. He’d been so young then, the life he had known dead and gone with his mother. 

Theo and Amelia are bunched together, the latter with her arms wrapped tightly around her brother’s bicep, holding him close, her head against his shoulder, tears on her face that she doesn’t even try to hide. 

“The cars are here.” Theo says, his voice shaking slightly, attempting to smile at her, “we’re ready to go when you are.” 

Emily nods and throws one look back towards Aaron’s desk, left exactly as it had been when he’d last used it, and she blows out a breath as she turns to her children. 

“Let’s go, best get today over with.” She says as she steps towards them. 

Amelia breaks free from her brothers and closes the gap between her and Emily, hugging her mother as she did when she was a little girl. Seeking her comfort like she was a child, not the grown woman she now was. Emily holds her just as tightly, rubbing her hand up and down her daughter's back as she cries.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she says, encouraging Amelia to walk with her, her arm around her waist, “you know how your dad felt about tardiness.” 

They all chuckle, humourless and sad but it’s something. She guides her daughter towards the front of the house, her sons walking just behind them, and she is grateful Aaron gave her them. The family they worked so hard for. 

They could have had forever and it still wouldn’t have been enough. 

__

April 2035

“You want to do what?” She asks, venom in her voice as she stares at him, her mouth hanging open from where she sits next to him on their couch. He looks so calm it makes her even more irritated, like he hadn’t just dropped life changing news on her. He doesn’t bite, doesn’t react. He’d always been frustratingly patient with her. 

“I want to sign a DNR.” He repeats, placing his hand on her knee and squeezing the joint, his fingers attempting to press comfort into her. “I think it’s the right thing to do.” 

“The right thing to…” she blows out a breath incredulously, and she shakes her head, “how is signing something that means the doctors just let you die the right thing to do?” 

All she can think about is what they were told 6 months ago, his increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. How to look for the signs. She’d barely let him leave her sight, worried she’d come home to find him laying on the ground. Images of what had been key themes in her nightmares over the years, flashes of a blood stain on a floor in their old house, becoming a very real possibility. 

“Em,-”

“No,” she says, cutting him off. She stands up, his hand slipping from her knee, and she starts to pace the floor. 

He stands too, still calm, and It infuriates her. Makes grief settle in her lungs as she becomes hyper-aware that she could lose him at any moment. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, his hands on her shoulders as he stops her, making her look at him, “it’s only going to get worse, the doctor said we should think about it.” He wipes a tear away from her cheek that she doesn’t even realise has fallen. “I need you on board with this.”

She’s heard what he hasn’t said. He legally can’t make this decision for himself anymore. She was his medical proxy, and power of attorney had been handed over after his diagnosis. He’d already got worse, she knew that. Confused and frustrated more than he wasn’t, and she hated that they were using some of his increasingly infrequent lucid days to talk about this. 

“Aaron,” she breathes out, “how am I supposed to sign something that says I don’t want them to resuscitate you if something happens?” She doesn’t try and cover her upset, her tears freely falling, there had never been any point in doing so around him anyway. “How are you so ok with this?” 

He pulls her into a hug, his hand in her hair, holding her almost impossibly close.

“I have no other choice.”

She isn’t sure how long they stand there before she swallows thickly, the words bitter in her mouth.

“Ok, I understand.” She says, and he kisses the top of her head, and squeezes her tightly. “I’m going to miss you when you…so you’d better live for as long as possible,” she’s still crying, her words losing the humorous edge she was going for, she pulls back to look at him and sees tears in his eyes too, “Ok?”

He nods. “Ok,” he leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead, “I’ll miss you too.” 

The next day he asks her where Haley is, and she has to excuse herself for a moment to pull herself together.

___

September 2008

Emily groans as she wakes up, unaware that she had fallen asleep in the first place. The first thing she is aware of, apart from the fact she’s on the couch, is the ever present nausea that rolled through her entire body. 

She places her hand over her stomach, pressing into the still flat surface. She’d only been released from the hospital the day before, and Aaron and the boys were taking the doctor’s instructions to make sure she rested very seriously. She smiles as she realises someone, Aaron, had laid a blanket over her. She looks down and sees Archie cuddled up in her arms, and it makes her eyes water, forever at the mercy of her hormones, at the thought of Theo placing the orange cat there with her before Aaron ushered him out of the room. 

She sits up slowly, blowing out a breath as she does, a pointless attempt to settle her stomach. She gives herself a moment before she stands, ensuring she has Archie with her, before she makes her way upstairs. 

It was late enough to know everyone else would be up there, and Aaron would have inevitably come to wake her up, to encourage her into their bed, once the boys were asleep. She sneaks into Theo’s room on the way past, smiling as she places Archie in bed with him, kissing her son’s forehead before she slips back out. 

She’s about to check on Jack when she hears him and Aaron in her bedroom, their hushed conversation travelling out through the gap in the door. Her curiosity spurs her on as much as her exhaustion does, and she steps into the room, spotting them in the ensuite. 

“What are you two up to?” She asks, her smile widening as they both turn to look at her, shaving foam on both of their faces, clean skin showing through the patches they had already dragged the razor across. 

“Dad’s teaching me how to shave,” Jack says, a shy smile on his face. 

Emily exchanges a look with her husband and is proud of herself for not smiling. Jack, in no way, had enough facial hair to justify shaving, just the first hint of it on his upper lip, the odd hair on his chin. 

“Well, have fun,” she says, “I’m going to get into bed.” 

“Do you need anything sweetheart?” Aaron asks, already setting the razor in his hand down, ready to do whatever she requested. 

“I’m ok,” she replies before looking back at Jack, “see you in the morning, honey.” 

“Night, Emily.” 

She climbs into bed, pulling the covers tightly around her as she tries to curl into a ball, another attempt to settle the constant twisting in her stomach. She dozes, the quiet sound of Jack and Aaron talking in the bathroom turning into white noise, and she’s unsure how much time has passed when she feels Aaron climb into bed with her, gentle as he pulls her back into him, his palm covering her belly.

“Are you ok?” He asks, kissing the back of her head, his thumb stroking at her belly button. 

“I feel like shit,” she replies honestly, a slight whine to her voice, “but no more than usual.” 

“I can go get one of your pills if you want,” he says, already pulling away, but she stops him, her hand over his on her stomach.

“No, I don’t need it,” she says, turning her head enough just to look at him, her lips pressing into his, “this helps.” 

He looks at her as if he doesn’t believe her, but settles back down behind her anyway, his body moulding into hers, the space they had made for each other years ago. 

“That was sweet,” she says, linking their fingers together on her abdomen, “Jack asking you to teach him how to shave.”

Aaron hums. “He was so shy about it,” he says, smiling into the back of her head, “Did I ever tell you that I taught Sean?” 

She squeezes his hand a little tighter, any mention of his little brother always prone to make him sad, their relationship so fractured she wondered if it would ever be fixed.

“No, you didn’t,” she says, raising their hands to kiss his knuckles, “although, it makes sense, your dad wasn’t around.” She turns, the movement making her stomach roll, so she can face him properly, her forehead against his. “You’re a fantastic father, you know that?”

He smiles at the praise, his dimples on display. “And you’re an excellent mother.” 

She chokes out a laugh, although it sounds close to a sob, her hormones driving her crazy.

“Our kids are so lucky to have us,” she quips, her hand running through his hair. 

“They are,” he replies, pressing his lips to hers, “but you can be the one to have the sex talk with them.” 

She laughs, properly this time, and she nods at him. “Fine, but you have to teach them how to drive.” 

___

June 2037

She’s sitting on the couch, the tv on a mindless channel, when the front door opens, the sound of the key in the lock seemingly echoing throughout the house. 

It’s muscle memory, a pavlovian response to years, decades, of Aaron walking in, his familiar footsteps against the hardwood floor, that has her momentarily forgetting. 

“Mom, it’s just me,” Jack calls through the house, and she berates herself for the stab of disappointment she feels. 

It wasn’t Aaron, it never could be again. 

“I’m in the living room.” She calls back, hopeful that she had kept her voice even. 

She knew her children well enough to know they’d discussed keeping an eye on her. It would have been Amelia’s idea initially, she knew that. Her daughter was still staying with her, sleeping in her childhood bedroom as if she didn’t have an apartment just 30 minutes away with her partner. She wasn’t here right now, and Emily knew it wasn’t coincidence that Jack was here when the house was otherwise empty.

“Is Mills still staying here?” Jack asks as he walks into the room, making a show of looking around for signs of his sister as he sits next to Emily, joining her on the couch.

“Yeah,” Emily replies, smiling, “She went home to get some fresh clothes, make sure Jamie has watered the plants correctly.”

Jack raises his eyebrow, “There’s a wrong way to do that?” 

Emily laughs, the sound foreign to her ears, “Apparently.” 

They fall back into the silence that had fallen over the house in recent weeks, laying over them like a thick blanket. Cloying and suffocating. 

“How are you doing, Mom?” Jack asks, his voice soft, kind. A mixture of the three people who had raised him. 

“I’m ok,” she replies automatically, a tight smile on her face.

Jack sighs. “Mom, you don’t have to do that. Not with me.” 

She frowns, her eyebrows creasing together. “Do what?” 

“Pretend everything is ok,” he says, “We’ve never lied to each other.” 

Suddenly it’s like she’s watching his life play out in front of her. Like he’s every version of himself that she has known all at once. The terrified kid on the brink of losing his mother, the angry teenager once again torn away from the life he knew. The grown man, the father, she had sitting in front of her. 

The years had gone by so quickly. 

“No,” she replies, “We haven’t.” She looks down at her lap and plays with her wedding rings. She has Aaron’s on a chain around her neck now, sitting close to her heart. “I’m just…really fucking angry,” she says, looking back up at her eldest, her eyes welling up as she admits it out loud for the first time, “so angry that he’s gone.”

“I am too,” Jack admits, shaking his head. “It seems so unfair.”

“I hate him for leaving me behind,” she says, her voice shaking, “and I hate that I hate him. Because I’ve loved him for most of my life.” 

Jack hugs her then, closes the small gap between them and puts his arms around her. She returns it gratefully, feeling a sense of relief for getting just a small part of what she was feeling off of her chest. 

“He asked me to look after you, you know,” Jack says as he pulls back, a sad smile on his face. Emily tilts her head at him slightly, her eyebrows creased. 

“He did? When?”

Jack chuckles dryly. “The last time I went to see him and he was lucid,” he shakes his head at the memory, “Sara stepped out with the kids, they were restless, and he said I needed to look after you. That you’d be so busy looking after everyone else you’d forget to do it yourself.” 

She huffs out a laugh and wipes a tear from her cheek. It felt absurd. That he’d been dying, waiting for the end, and he’d been worried about her. 

“That ridiculous man.” She says, another laugh choking on a sob, the sound dying in her throat. “Fuck, I miss him so much already.” 

Jack nods his head. “Me too.”

___

November 2013

Emily smiles as she hears her husband's footsteps heading towards the kitchen, home late from meetings that she knew he’d rather have skipped. She looks to Amelia, the little girl happily sitting on her mother’s hip, and smiles, bouncing her slightly as Aaron comes into view.

“Look, sweet girl, Daddy’s home!” 

“Daddy!” Amelia squeals, her hands already reaching out for him. He walks over and takes the little girl into his arms, kissing his wife quickly as he does so. 

“Hi sweetheart,” he says, kissing Emily again.

“Hi,” she smiles at him, “how was work?”

“Long,” he replies, adjusting Amelia so she was comfortable in his embrace, her tiny hands playing with his tie, “I’ve got to tell you something, and you’ve got to promise to stay calm.”

She freezes, her eyes fixed on him as her throat feels tight. “What?”

“I got called by Theo’s school earlier.” 

She frowns, confusion spreading through her veins. She’d seen Aaron since school would have ended, Theo was up in his room reading, acting like it was a normal day. 

“What? Why? What’s wrong?” She asks, her words tripping over each other, fierce protectiveness and worry that only their children could bring out in her rising fast.

“They have some concerns because he hasn’t been eating lunch, and today they saw him giving his lunch money to another kid.” 

She leans against the kitchen counter. “Is this kid bullying him?” 

Pre-emptive anger fills her lungs, ready to go shout at whatever child was involved, and she glares at Aaron when he has the audacity to smile at her for a second, her reaction clearly predictable to him.

“They asked him that and he refused to tell them, they asked if we would speak to him.” 

She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “He’s been making such good progress, Aaron, I don’t want him to go through this again-”

“Baby,” he says, placing a hand on her waist, “let’s not jump to conclusions, we’ll talk to him after dinner, ok?” 

She nods in response, fighting against every instinct to run up the stairs and ask her son what was going on. 

During dinner, Aaron has to place a hand on her leg, squeezing the muscle tightly as she watches Theo eat. She notices the speed at which he does so, and she chastises herself for not noticing it before. 

Once Amelia is in bed, they call him into the living room, a nervous look on his face as he settles on the couch opposite his parents. 

“Am I in trouble?” He asks, concern painting his features. 

“No, sweetie you’re not in trouble,” Emily says, smiling at him in a way she hoped was reassuring, “we just need to talk to you.” 

“School called me today,” Aaron adds, and Theo’s eyes widen, his nose scrunching up slightly, “they told me what happened with your lunch money.”

“It’s fine,” he says, slightly defensively, “I told them it’s fine.” 

“Theo, we’re just worried that’s all, you should have told us if someone is making you give them your lunch money,” Emily replies, her hands in her lap as she plays with her rings. 

“He’s not making me,” Theo says, sighing after he does, clearly not intending to reveal what he had. 

“Ok,” Aaron says, exchanging a quick look with his wife, “what’s going on then?” 

Theo stares at them for a second, before looking at the floor. “His name is Adam, his mom can’t afford to give him money for lunch, and she works nights so can’t make it for him,” he shrugs, still avoiding eye contact, “so I give him mine every other day.” He flicks his eyes back up to them, before looking back down, “I tried to give it to him every day but he wouldn’t take it.” 

It shocks them into silence for a moment, and Emily looks at her husband before she stands, walking over to her son and crouching in front of him, ignoring the protest in her knees as she does so. She hooks a finger under Theo’s chin and makes him look at her. 

“Theo, that’s incredibly sweet,” she says, making sure her voice doesn’t portray the emotion she’s feeling, “and I’m very proud of you for being so kind, but you have to tell us, or a teacher, if you find something like that out. It’s not up to you to fix that.” 

He looks past her to Aaron, and without turning around she knows her husband has nodded in agreement with what she has said, before Theo looks back at her. 

“Ok.” Theo agrees, nodding. “Can I go play my game now?” 

Emily huffs out a laugh. “Of course.”

Theo stands up and hugs her, running over to do the same with Aaron, before he’s out of the room. Emily stands up straight, groaning as her knees ache. Aaron is next to her before she stands completely, his arms wrapping around her from behind.

“How the hell did we make the world's sweetest kid?” She asks, leaning into her husband as he kisses her temple. She turns in his arms and bands her arms around his back, mentally planning the call she’d make to the school in the morning. 

“I have no idea,” Aaron says against her skin, “we’re sending him to school with double the lunch money tomorrow, right?” 

“Damn straight we are.” 

___

June 2037

Theo calls her before he comes to the house, as conscientious as he had ever been. She hugs him tightly the second he walks in the door, the first joy she had felt in weeks thrumming through her veins.

“Congratulations, honey. I’m so happy for you.” She says as she pulls back, smiling at her son, hers only widening as he smiles back.

“Thanks, Mom. We’re so relieved it’s finally happened.” 

She looks past him onto the porch and sees he’s alone, frowning when she looks back at him. 

“Where are they then?” She asks, raising her eyebrow at him, “I want to hug my son-in-law and my granddaughter.” 

Theo, and his husband Sam, had been fostering a little girl called Florence for years, since she was only a few months old. They’d found out that morning that they were finally getting an adoption hearing, that their daughter would finally be fully and legally theirs. 

“Flo insisted on going to the park,” Theo says as he rolls his eyes at the little girl's behaviour, “I dropped them off on the way here.” 

Emily hums in her throat as she walks towards the kitchen, Theo following suit, “Tell her Nanna remembers everything, and I’ll keep this in mind next time she tries to scam cookies out of me.” 

“You’re a soft touch and you know it,” he says, taking the coffee pot from her hands and proceeding to make it for her, “you’d give any of the kids whatever they asked for.” 

She can’t argue with that, it was something Aaron had said multiple times since Jack’s first child had been born. However protective of their children she had been, it was increased tenfold for their grandchildren. She’s suddenly reminded of something, and she smiles at her son.

“Oh, I was in the attic going through some of your dad’s things, and I found something for you.”

She’s already walking towards the dining room where she’d been keeping some things, the self-imposed job keeping her busy, when she hears Theo call after her.

“Mom,” he sighs, “what have I told you about going up there, we’ll do it for you.”

Emily rolls her eyes at his over-protectiveness, making sure she’s back in the room so he can see, 

“Honey, it’s fine,” she says, her hands behind her back, the item she wanted to give him hidden from view, “you ready?” 

“Ready.” He says, smiling indulgently at her. She raises an eyebrow and he sighs at her, closing his eyes and putting his hands out. 

Emily carefully places the worn stuffed animal in his hands, the orange fur faded through years of love, and age. She knows Theo knows what it is immediately, his smile widening as his eyes open, settling on his oldest friend. He chuckles and holds the toy a little tighter.

“Hi Archie,” he says, shaking his head, “it’s been a while.” 

“He was up there in a box of your old things,” Emily explains, “I thought you could give him to Flo.”

“Thanks, Mom, I love that idea.” He says, briefly looking up at her before he looks back down at the orange cat, “Do you remember when Dad and Jack drove to get him after we left him behind in that god awful apartment?” 

“Yeah,” she replies, the memory of it seizing up her chest, “I do.”

Theo looks up at her, his dark eyes shining. “I wish he was here, that I could tell him about the adoption too.” 

“Oh, honey,” she says, closing the gap between them and putting her hand on his arm, “He loved her so much, she was part of this family the second you brought her here for the first time,” she smiles sadly at him, her throat tight, “another Hotchner girl who had him wrapped around her finger.” 

Theo laughs through his tears and nods, “You’re right.” He clears his throat and tries to smile at her, “Will you come to the hearing? We’d love to have you there.” 

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” 

___

February 2025

Emily can’t help but wince as she hears the brakes on the car squeal as it pulls into the driveway. 

It was Amelia’s 16th birthday and, as promised, Aaron was taking her on her first driving lesson. He’d taught both of the boys. There had been a few tense moments that had led to crossed words, but overall it had gone smoothly, both Theo and Jack passing the first time. 

She knew that Aaron was worried about teaching Amelia. Their youngest was the one who pushed back the most, the one who attempted to break boundaries. 

Amelia and Aaron had always been close, the blip in their relationship when she didn’t recognise him after they had gone into hiding mostly a distant memory. Things were changing now she was a teenager, the usual distance put between child and parent that always hurt, but she knew this was different for Aaron. It reminded him too much of when their daughter, only a baby at the time, shied away from him and acted as if he was a stranger.

Emily schools her features as the door opens, Amelia bursting in, excitement flowing off of her.

“That was so cool,” she exclaims, slumping down onto the couch next to her mother, “I love driving.” 

Emily laughs at her daughter’s enthusiasm, “You had fun then?”

“Oh, so much fun!” She replies, “I’m going to go FaceTime my friends, what time is dinner?” She asks, already standing up, her phone in her hand.

“We’re meeting your brothers at 7 pm, so we’ll leave here at 6.30.” Emily answers.

“Oh, maybe I could drive to the restaurant?” 

Emily finally looks at her husband and has to stop herself from laughing at the way his eyes widen.

“I think we’ll let your dad drive, honey.”

Amelia is already mostly out of the room, agreeing with just a noise as she disappears. It’s only when her bedroom door upstairs closes that Aaron slips onto the couch next to Emily, his head leaning back. 

“That bad, huh?” She asks, no longer hiding her amusement. 

“You have no idea.” He says, turning his head to look at her. “She knows no fear, and that, apparently, extends to the rules of the road.” 

Emily does laugh at that and she shifts towards him, pressing her lips to his cheek. 

“Poor, baby.” 

He puts his arm around her, pulling her into his side, and she goes willingly, snuggling up into him. 

“I love her so much, sweetheart. I’d go to the end of the earth for her, but I don’t know if I can teach her how to drive.” 

Emily places her hand on his leg and runs her thumb back and forth over the material of his pants. 

“She can’t be that bad.” 

“She asked what the indicator is, 5 minutes before the end of the lesson. We’d been using it for almost an hour.” 

Emily hides her smile in his neck. “We all start somewhere love.” She shifts to kiss his cheek. “Are you sure this isn’t all mostly because your little girl is growing up?” 

He pokes her in her side, tickling at her ribs. “No profiling.” He sighs, turning his head to kiss her temple. “Are you sure you can’t teach her?” 

She pulls away from him, her eyebrow raised. “Oh no,” she says, smiling at him, “we agreed a long time ago, I do the sex talk, and you teach them how to drive.” 

He groans and closes his eyes, his head leaning back against the couch again. 

“Your dad warned me about this years ago,” he says, almost as if he isn’t aware he’s talking, “he told me you were a nightmare to teach.”

“He said what?” 

___

June 2037

Emily closes the door behind her as she gets home from a coffee date with JJ and Penelope. They’d forced her to go, an attempt to get her out of the house that she was strangely grateful for. The last time she’d seen them had been at Aaron’s funeral, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to speak to them beyond the usual pleasantries, all of her focus on her children and holding herself together. 

“Mom, good timing,” Amelia says, appearing into view, “I was just thinking about dinner.” 

She can’t help but smile as she looks at her daughter. It was strange to think Amelia was now older than she had been when she’d met Aaron, then when she’d married him. She didn’t know how it had happened, how the once little girl was now this woman standing in front of her. Her dark hair piled on top of her head, the nose ring she’d had put in as a teenager, the one Aaron hated at the time, still going strong. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Emily replies, placing her purse down, “how was work?”

“It was good, I met Jamie for lunch.” 

Emily smiles at that, at the flash of something she doesn’t miss across Amelia’s face. She’d been staying here since Aaron was admitted to hospital during the couple of weeks before he died. At first, it was under the pretence that their house was closer to the hospital than her apartment. Then it was so she could help Emily with the funeral. Since then they hadn’t spoken about it. Amelia still here, sleeping in her childhood room, and only popping home to grab some things and briefly see Jamie.

“You don’t have to stay here you know,” Emily says softly, “I’ll be ok.” 

Amelia freezes on the spot, and frowns, an expression that was just so Aaron it makes Emily smile. “Mom,-”

“I appreciate it, Mills,” she says, closing the gap between them so she can reach out and hold her daughter’s hand, squeezing it tightly, “I appreciate it so much, but you can’t just put your life on hold for me.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” She says defensively, her eyebrows creasing even deeper.

“Jamie must miss you,” Emily offers up, smiling tightly, “I remember how quiet it seemed around here when you first moved out.” 

Amelia sighs and squeezes her mother’s hand. “I just don’t want you to be by yourself.” 

Emily smiles at Amelia before hugging her, blowing out a breath as she feels how tightly she holds her back, her fists grabbing at the back of her shirt like she hadn’t in years. 

Amelia had always been the loudest of their children. The most outspoken, the one filled with comebacks and sass, witty in a way Aaron had always claimed aged him. It made it easy to forget that she was also the most emotional of the three of them. Always so in tune with the emotions of those around her that she almost felt what others were feeling. 

“That’s very sweet of you, love,” Emily says, pulling back from Amelia and smiling at her, “but I’ll be ok.” 

Amelia uncurls one of her hands from behind Emily and wipes tears from her cheeks. 

“I remember when I was younger I’d always be so jealous that you all remembered what happened with Foyet and I didn’t.” She admits, her lower lip trembling, “ Like I’d missed out on something huge that bonded you all together. But…I never knew what it was like to live without Dad. And now I do and I hate it.” 

It tips Emily over the edge, her own grief hitting her again at full force at the sight of her daughter falling apart. She hugs her again as tightly as she can, trying to provide the comfort she doesn’t feel herself. She doesn’t know how long they stand there, locked in a tight embrace in the hallway of what used to be a busy home, but they take the time they need. 

“How about,” Emily says, pulling back enough to look at Amelia, gently wiping tears from her face like she hadn’t done since she was little, “we go get enough tacos to last a week, come back here and eat all of them, and fall asleep in front of a movie we’ve seen a thousand times,” she smiles, and Amelia does too, both of them ignoring the shake to them, “and then you can go home tomorrow.” 

Amelia laughs and nods, “That sounds perfect.” Before Emily can pull away, and head towards the door, Amelia hugs her again. “I love you, Mom.” 

“I love you too.”

___

January 1999

They’d talked about it. It was something they’d discussed on and off for years. Vague conversations about kids that started as thinly veiled comments in their early days, to more serious discussions as their relationship progressed. 

They both wanted children, she knew that. Sometimes she’d catch Aaron staring at her as she took her birth control in the morning, something she had consistently taken since she was 15. Despite that, she was still nervous as she waited for him to get home, her old habit of picking at her thumbnails coming back, her leg bouncing up and down. 

She was due a birth control review, the reminder from Joanne’s office on their kitchen counter, and to her, it seemed like the right time, the moment to take the step they had been skirting around for a little while now. She wanted to have a baby with him, to build their family. To be a mother. 

“Are you ok, love?”

She jumps and looks up to find him looking at her, his eyebrow creased in concern. “Sorry, I didn’t realise you were home.” 

“Clearly,” he quips, sitting next to her on the couch. He kisses her, his palm on her cheek. “What’s wrong?”

She forces a smile at him. “What makes you think something is wrong?” 

He tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “Well, you didn’t hear the door open,” he starts, before his hand seeks hers out, bringing it into her eye line, “you’ve torn your cuticles to shreds,” he puts his arm around her and she settles, “and, I’m your husband, I like to think I know you.” 

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Stupid profiling.” Her eyes meet his and he’s looking at her expectantly. She blows out a steady breath. “My birth control review is coming up,” she says, flashing him an unsteady smile, “I got the reminder today. I was thinking…I might not go.” 

She watches as he processes what she has said, realisation hitting him within seconds, his expression barely changing, only noticeable to her.

“Oh.”

“I could,” she says quickly, “get another year's worth, but I just thought-”

“Don’t go.” He says, smiling at her, cutting her off before she could spiral any further. She feels warmth spread throughout her chest, happiness threatening to overwhelm her, her smile wide enough to split her face in two.

“Really?” She asks, her voice quiet, afraid if she was too loud she would break this moment between them.

“Really,” he replies, kissing her fiercely, “let’s try for a baby.” 

She smiles against his lips, kissing him again, shifting so she was sitting on his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. 

“I love you so much,” she says in between kisses, never fully pulling away from him. 

“I love you too,” he replies, pulling her impossibly closer, his hands sneaking under her shirt. 

“Aaron,” she exclaims, laughing as he lifts the material, her shirt coming over her head, “what are you doing?” 

“Making a baby with my wife,” he says as if it was obvious, and she shakes her head at him, undoing his shirt despite her laughter. 

“I took the pill this morning, honey,” she replies, groaning slightly as he pulls her further into his lap, “it’s going to take a little time-”

He cuts her off with his lips on hers, his fingers trailing the lining of her bra, he stamps another kiss to her lips before pulling away. 

“I know,” he says, kissing her again, “but we can have fun practising.” 

She smiles at him, her cheeks aching with it. 

“I can’t argue with that.” 

___

May 2037

He’s sleeping by the time the doctors let her into his room. They’d stabilised him as much as they could without breaking the DNR signed years ago. Sits next to him, her hand over his, and she blows out a breath and tries to calm herself. 

“I was by myself when Mom died.” Emily says to the quietness of the room, the silence threatening to crush her. She threads her fingers through his and pushes hair off of his sleeping face. “You were on your way. I was by myself but I didn’t feel alone. I haven’t felt alone in so long. You’ve always been there,” she wipes a thumb under her eye, the tear she wiped away immediately replaced, “or the kids have. But I feel it now. I feel so alone and you’re still here.” 

“Em?”

She looks at him and sees he’s awake, groggy but awake, and she smiles at him.

“Hi honey, how are you feeling?” 

“Terrible,” he admits, his voice weak, “what happened?” 

“A stroke,” she says, unlinking her hand from his to move some of his hair from his forehead, “A small one, according to the doctor, like that makes it better.” 

He smiles at her, a glint in his eyes that lets her know he’s in there, that she’s talking to her Aaron. A rarity these days, a precious jewel in amongst all of the confusion and fear there usually was. 

“How much did you yell?” He asks, raising his eyebrow.

“Enough.” She replies, smiling at him before they lapse into silence again. 

“This next bit is going to be hard.” He says, linking their fingers together. It was something they had done hundreds, thousands, of times throughout their time together. Something automatic. Something she had often done without thinking. A passing show of affection, a quick way to say ‘I love you’ without words. They’d stopped needing to say it so long ago.

She closes her eyes and tries to memorise it. The feel of his wedding band against her skin. The warmth of his hands. The roughness of the callouses he still had on his thumb, even all these years after he retired, as it rubbed back and forth over her wrist. She tries to remember it all, to make sure it’s seared into her memory. 

She’d forgotten how it felt to hold his hand once before. It wasn’t something she wanted to lose again, not when she was already losing him.

“I know.” She replies, sniffing as she tries to hold back emotion, shaking her head slightly as if she could get rid of it. As if it was rain on a jacket, easily wiped away. “I love you. So much. Mother always said that I love you too much.” She tries to smile but fails, her chin wobbling with the force of her sadness. “This is the first time I think she may have been right.” 

“No, sweetheart. It’s never too much.” He squeezes her hand. “It’s never been too much. I love you, and I don’t regret a single second of all of it.” 

She tries to laugh but it comes out as a sob, her spare hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Not even the part where a serial killer forced me and the kids into hiding?”

“Not a second of it.” He repeats, and he smiles at her like he hasn’t in weeks. She sees their life together in it. Everything they’ve survived. All the love they shared. The arguments and the inevitable apologies that followed. The comfort and the tears, the way they had got each other through. Impossibly more in love each day than the last. 

She was going to miss it, miss him. 

“Me neither.” She says, smiling at him despite her tears. “I’d do it all again.” 

They talk until he falls asleep, and she allows herself to act as if this was normal for them. That this wasn’t one good day in amongst so many bad ones. 

She tells herself it isn’t the last good day, that they have more time, until it becomes clear that it was.

___

They are alone when it happens. Just the two of them as his ragged breathing comes to a slow stop, her hand tight around his. She feels selfish for how grateful she is that it happened that way, that she’d been afforded their final moments together. 

A lifetime of love, and happiness. Bitter arguments and tears. Joy and grief and each other. All coming to a quiet end. 

She wouldn’t change a second of it. The pain she feels as her children arrive, the brave face she slides on so easily, was the price she paid for getting to love him for so long. 

___

January 1993 

He was late. 

It was his first day at his new job and everything that could have gone wrong that morning had done so. It felt like everything had been against him since Haley left, like the universe had decided it just wasn’t enough for him to be left by his fiancee just before their wedding. 

Aaron turns down yet another hallway that seems to lead to nowhere and he sighs, wondering vaguely to himself how the hell he was supposed to provide security for the people who lived here if he couldn’t even find his new boss's office. 

“Are you lost?” A voice says from behind him. He turns around and that's when he sees her, looking at him with her eyebrows raised. She was beautiful, almost ethereal, her dark eyes full of mischief. “Do you need help?” 

“I…I need to find Ambassador Prentiss’ office.” He says, cursing himself slightly at the stutter at the start of his sentence. She smiles a little wider, and he wonders if she has this effect on everyone she meets. 

“Oh, that’s easy,” she says, walking over and standing next to him, “I tend to just follow the air of judgement and patronisation on the air,” she winks at him, “it smells oddly like Chanel Number 5.” He opens his mouth, unsure what to say and she laughs at him. “It’s down the corridor and to the left, I’ll walk you there.” 

“Thank you.” He says, unable to stop himself from smiling at her as they walk together. “How long have you worked here?”

He knows it's a stupid question based on her appearance alone, that anyone wearing sweatpants and a tank top likely wasn’t on the clock, but small talk had never been his thing. He’d always left that part up to Haley. 

She laughs at him. “Oh I don’t work here,” she smiles. “I’m Emily, I’m sure you’ll learn all about me soon enough.” They come to a stop outside of an office door and she gestures to it. “Here we are.”

He smiles gratefully at her. “Thank you, Emily.” 

“No problem…” She drifts off, looking at him expectantly. 

“Agent Hotchner.” He offers, a tight smile on his face, the title still strange to him. 

Emily smirks at him. “Your mother called you agent?” She asks, her eyes sparkling and it makes him laugh, something about her leaving him unsettled but wanting more. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Aaron. My name is Aaron.”

“Well, Agent Aaron Hotchner, it’s nice to meet you,” Emily replies, her smile widening. “And if you need anyone to show you around here let me know.” 

She goes to walk off, to return to whatever she had been doing when she had taken pity on him in the hallway, and something in him screams at him to stop her. Inexplicably wanting more time in her presence, to get to know more about her.

“Emily,” he says after her, waiting for her to turn back around, her eyes meeting his again, “I’d like that.” 

“Ok then, see you tomorrow Agent Hotchner.” She smiles at him, bright and beautiful and he can’t help but wonder if everything was about to change for the better. 

“Yeah,” he replies, returning her smile, “see you tomorrow.” 

___

“If tomorrow starts without me, don't think we're far apart, for every time you think of me, please know I'm in your heart.” - David Romano 

-x-

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#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfiction #hotchniss fanfic #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss fanfiction #aaron hotchner fanfiction #hotchniss fan fic #emily prentiss #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #WTBVerse

[veirsewrites]

How old is A and Mc out of curiosity? Thought MC and A were thousands of years old but it implies A is actually centuries old. Also how old does one have to be a High vampire? A couple thousand years old?

Hi! They are around 200-300 years old. The "wtb lore" tag should have more info about the vampires in this universe.

A high vampire (lower case) doesn't really have an age limit, it depends on how strong they are. And vampires usually get stronger with age. So around 100-150.

A High Vampire (upper case) needs to be at least 200 years old, able to control themselves, strong and have a presence that would command respect from other vampires.

So MC is a High Vampire for their ability to influence others, while A is a high vampire simply for their age and self-control.

#wtb lore #wtb ask

[fatimagic]

@poseyslegtattoo and like...the thing i think people don't get about wtb is like yeah, even though tony is a dopey jock sometimes he's actually really smart and supportive and he teaches angela things??? like it's a joke to the *audience* that tony is ~sensitive~ and one of the maids and likes feminine things, but in-universe he's also never ashamed of liking musicals and baking brownies and picking out lace curtains and shit. the joke is how other people react to him. it's such a refreshing subversion (esp. for the 80s) of the whole "dopey dumbass with a gf way out of his league" cliche. and obvs. the show did have major problems with homophobia (*cough* jonathan) but they also really said fuck gender roles plus he legit loves his not-wife bye i'm emo.

#who's the boss #otp: you got the job #text #poseyslegtattoo #who's the boss?

[honnismoked]

to newcomers of the stealing my own art joke;

i had a blog named frisk-quartz-universe running alongside whimzy-the-bee at one point. i used two different aliases at the time, with lemonqueen being the one for fqu, and cucipi being the one for wtb. (i go by both alongside vee now.)

at one point, i got the most ridiculous ask on fqu, telling me that someone was stealing my art, and linking to wtb. 

my followers subsequently lost their shit in a fit of laughter and as a result, many memes were made. m a n y . so much so that i even made a fucking post mimicking the sans fight about it. ( pt 1 and pt 2 )

tl:dr; 

this is one of my many legacies. i hate it and love it.

#{🐝} out of character.

[originaldetectivesheep]

Satsuriku no Tenshi - keeping at T3

Despite a large number of red flags on this one, I bet that there would be enough worthwhile horror and intellectual puzzlers to make it worth tanking through the very bad chuunibyou setup: this turned out to be the case, but just barely, and in a way that's reminiscent of an accidental garbage-time backdoor cover when every other bet has already blown your coupon.

wtb these production values for "city of no roads" in this winter's junji itou collection

Forming, in-universe, kind of a very large escape room run by and catering to the kind of people who wear Naruto headbands to school, and clearly inspired at a meta level by the kind of puzzle games that the meatspace trend is emulating, Satsuriku no Tenshi is constantly struggling at the narrative level between the high tension of its immediate threats to Rachel's life and sanity, and the perversely rigid upper-level structure of rules that define the environment.  It's a game that's trying to be deadly, but it remains a game organized as a game -- the contrast enhances the parts where the feel is trying for disorientingly-dreamlike, but at some point you have to fish or cut bait.  If this is a dream, there are no stakes and this is all in her head.  But if it's real, there are immense questions of infrastructure and the particular channels of insanity that may not need answering, but at least will do damage if just glossed over.

tbf "young gene simmons wearing cosplayer contacts badly" is actually pretty scary

There's a certain appeal that can be gotten out of the point-to-point solving of a puzzle game, which looks like what this show is trying to do for its main structure.  However, that appeal's lessened by having to put up with a rogue's gallery of screechingly-overacted kiddy-grade psychopaths, whose ultra-basic low-effort dialogue and stock-catalogue motivations undermine the idea that this is in any way a psychological horror show.  There is enough challenge in the puzzle as a viewer, and enough disturbing gore as a death metal freak, that I'm not dropping Satsuriku no Tenshi outright, but in keeping it at T3, likely to be dropped if it doesn't improve, that improvement will have to be soon, and it will have to be significant.

#anime #satsuriku no tenshi

[rapxquotes]

You gon' make me give up everything I worked for.

Work for It (feat. Big Sean, Gucci Mane & 2 Chainz) - DJ Khaled

#DJ Khaled #Big Sean #Gucci Mane #2 Chainz #WTB #We the Best #Tru University #G.O.O.D Music #Hip-Hop #Quote #Quotes #Lyrics #Major Key #Music