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samstree · 3 years

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Snowball Effect

Geraskier, hurt/comfort, accidental injury, soft Jaskier, Geralt is self-conscious about his strength, angst and fluff and feelings

cw: panic attack, minor injury

Rated T, 2.3k, read on AO3

Geralt has never been scared of a little roughhousing with Jaskier.

He knows humans are not as sturdy as witchers, but really, tackling him into the thick snow and starting a snowball fight is just a little harmless fun during the never-ending winter of Kaer Morhen.

Eskel hisses nervously the first time he sees the bard getting pinned under Geralt's bulk, but soon the human laughs and rolls back on top of Geralt to retaliate. The other two witchers sometimes join in too, though Lambert keeps playing dirty and the bard soon picks up.

Jaskier, the cheeky bastard, keeps stealing kisses from Geralt to distract him from the attack of his brothers. Every time, the witcher falls for it.

Jaskier is a physical being from the start, tactile, unafraid of Geralt's difficult exterior. He’s always been comfortable, at home with Geralt, long before they tumbled into bed together. Later, years of learning about each other’s body and rhythm has taught Geralt everything about the bard, his strengths and limits alike.

That's why it takes Geralt a second to register the snap of a bone.

Immediately pain fills the air around the bard, who has just been tackled to the ground with a squeal and tried to get away from the snow melting into his collar.

"Fuck," he curses under his breath as a panicked whimper escapes Jaskier's lips.

It's his arm, the one Geralt is not holding. The bard now cradles his left forearm, the one supporting his weight a moment ago.

"Shit, buttercup. Are you okay?" Lambert appears in Geralt's peripheral, crouched beside the injured human. Eskel's concerned voice reaches Geralt too but he can't seem to focus on the words.

His world narrows down to Jaskier's pained gasps and rabbiting heart, soon joined by the salty tang of tears.

Geralt scrambles back as if burned.

No. His thoughts are coming in all at once. He hurt Jaskier.

Geralt has never thought – oh but he should have. Why didn't he hold back? Why did he allow it to go this far just because the bard is blind to the danger Geralt could put him in?

Jaskier would never even bat an eye if Geralt threw him to a griffin as bait, because he has no self-preservation instincts like that. Because he trusts Geralt like that.

The world continues to narrow, choking the air out of Geralt. In his blurred vision, Geralt can see his brothers helping Jaskier up and securing what seems like his broken wrist. The bard hunches over in pain and the image overlaps with the incident he desperately tries to forget – Jaskier choking on his own blood, gasping for air.

Geralt's legs almost give out as his breaths hitch and trap in his lungs. In the flurry of snow, the blue of Jaskier's eyes fixes on Geralt, wide and worried.

"...G'ralt..." Jaskier's mouth moves. "...need to breathe..."

Geralt can't seem to hear the call as if it's from miles away. Or is it a plea?

Suddenly, amidst the crisp cold air and the faint smell of smoke, there’s a whiff of fear. Jaskier’s fear.

It’s too much.

"...I'm so sorry," he murmurs with words that sound like someone else's.

He needs air, so he turns to leave the courtyard, and flees towards the northern tower.

Behind him, Eskel's soft voice ushers three sets of footsteps inside. Someone's gaze remains on Geralt's back, burning a hole into it.

The wind at the top of the tower cuts sharply on Geralt's face, but it washes away the panic.

The rumbling of noise subsides in Geralt’s mind as he uses the breathing exercise Eskel taught him in their teenage years to calm down. The older witcher helped him the first time he got overwhelmed by the sharp senses, and he’s forever grateful for it.

Now that the storm of emotions has passed, Geralt can recognize the episode he just had. It’s not often that he has a panic attack in Jaskier’s presence – it’s so much easier to ground his senses when the bard is around with his constant chatter or floral scents.

First he breaks Jaskier’s wrist, one of the most important things for a lutist, and then the attack. No wonder Jaskier was scared, as he should be of Geralt’s unstable mind on top of his witcher strength.

He really should apologize. He hurt Jaskier and he just up and left, not knowing the extent of the bard’s injury. Worry creeps in, almost tipping the calm that just settled.

Geralt’s legs take him down the tower in a frenzy when he almost runs into his brother on the stairs.

“There you are, wolf,” Eskel says with ease, “We were wondering where you went –”

“How is he?” Geralt searches Eskel’s face but the older witcher only looks relaxed.

“Just scared.”

Blood runs cold in Geralt’s veins. Of course. What was he expecting? Jaskier will always fear him now, and maybe it’s best if he can leave the bard somewhere, maybe Oxenfurt –

“He’s scared for you, wolf.” Eskel softens, clasping Geralt’s forearm from where he’s standing a few steps down. “You had quite an episode there. Scared me too.” he squeezed gently. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.” Geralt tries to shake off Eskel’s hold and concern. “I broke Jaskier’s arm and you are asking if I’m alright?”

Eskel pauses for a moment before giving him a tight smile.

“His wrist is only fractured. He’ll be fine, wolf. Though you should talk to him. Gods know how he freaked out and won’t let Vesemir patch him up until I promised to come and fetch you.”

With that they walk down the rest of the stairs. The urge to see Jaskier bubbles in his throat.

Inside the potion room, Vesemir is tying up the end of Jaskier’s bandages while the bard holds his wrist out on the worktable. From a distance Geralt can’t discern the subtle heaviness in his expression, so he knocks on the doorframe.

Immediately the most beautiful blue fixes on Geralt with relief. Jaskier’s shoulders sag with a shuddering breath, his lips quirk up into a tiny smile.

“Hey,” he says.

Geralt remains silent and only holds his gaze for a moment before Vesemir draws Jaskier’s attention.

“You should be fine in a month or so. Take it easy in the meantime.”

“Thanks, Vesemir. Guess I’m not getting out of my library duties after all.” Jaskier smiles to see the other witcher collect the supplies and leave. When he passes Geralt in the doorway, Vesemir only pats him on the shoulder in silent reassurance.

Jaskier still sits there, alone and tense, until he pats the chair next to him expectantly.

With the utmost carefulness, Geralt approaches Jaskier as he would when Roach is startled and sits down. Their knees are separated by a hair’s breadth, but it feels like miles.

“How’s –”

“Are you –”

The bard exhales and gestures for him to go first.

“How’s your wrist?” Geralt asks with concern, still smelling a hint of pain and anxiety in the air. Now that he’s close, he can see the slight redness around Jaskier’s eyes, like he just rubbed them dry to hide the tears.

But Jaskier only holds up his bandaged wrist with a wink. “This old thing? It’ll be right as rain in a bit, like Vesemir said. Really, it doesn’t even hurt that much.”

No matter how good a liar Jaskier believes himself to be, Geralt can detect the lie in the slight quiver of his voice.

“You don’t have to say this to make me feel better, Jask.” The love Geralt feels for his bard is overwhelming. Jaskier shouldn’t be the one comforting him now. “I – I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I shouldn’t have gotten carried away.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier answers softly. “It’s okay. It was an accident. Sometimes things like this happen. It’s you I’m worried about, okay?” the bard reaches out but hesitates like he’s not sure the touch is welcome. “Can I?”

Geralt nods. As if there will come a time when he denies Jaskier anything.

With that, Jaskier cups his jaw gently with his uninjured hand. Leaning into the solid contact with a sigh, Geralt feels the weight in his chest seep away.

“I’m so sorry.” He covers Jaskier’s hand to keep it there.

The bard chuckles tightly. “You are completely forgiven, darling. Always.”

They sit in companionable silence for what feels like a long time, but cannot be more than a minute. The crackling of the hearth is the only sound in the room.

“Now, will you tell me what just happened?” The worry remains in Jaskier’s hushed voice, his calloused fingers massaging Geralt’s temple. Funny he didn’t even realize the headache building himself.

“I panicked.”

“I could see that,” Jaskier encourages softly, “Why? It wasn’t anything worse than what I’ve had before. You keep insisting humans are not as strong as witchers, but you know how tough I am. I’ve certainly had worse.”

“Exactly.” Geralt’s heart sinks again. “I’ve done it again. The djinn, the mountain. Jaskier, I promised to never hurt you again, to do better. And you were hurt because of me…again.”

“Oh.” Jaskier sounds shocked, anguished even. “That’s why you freaked out like that? My heart, you shouldn’t have. I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, and I – Oh, if only I knew.”

With a screech of chair, Jaskier desperately gets up and throws himself into Geralt’s embrace. The movement is sudden and clumsy, and eventually they settle into their usual form – with Jaskier in Geralt’s lap and cuddling his neck. It’s so warm and solid, Geralt didn’t know he missed Jaskier this much until this point.

“I’m sorry you felt like that.” His breath brushes against Geralt’s neck. “I know you would never willingly hurt me, dear heart, or anyone. It was just a silly accident, partially my fault even. I think landed on my arm the wrong way. Really, I didn’t even think too much about it, but then you started to panic.”

“I smelled fear on you. I thought you were afraid of me.” Geralt presses his nose on Jaskier’s doublet and breathes. Thankfully that particular stench is gone. In its place is the pungent salve they use for bruises, so out of place among Jaskier’s floral notes.

“I was afraid because you were hyperventilating.” Jaskier pulls away to look at him in seriousness. “I know you get overwhelmed sometimes, and it looked really scary for a moment there.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Jaskier looks at Geralt in all earnest before placing a kiss on his forehead with a pop. “All these years I’ve never been –” another kiss on his cheek, “– scared of you, and –” another between his furrowed brows, “– stop blaming yourself, you big oaf. You are the best man I know.” on the tip of his nose, “You protect me, all the time. To me, you are the safest person on the Continent.”

The blue of Jaskier’s eyes glistens with soft adoration, and Geralt melts into it. With every passing second, the hint of pain dissipates around them. The injured wrist rests on Geralt’s chest, so he cradles it in a gentle hold, his thumb running circles on the tight bandage.

“I love you, Jask.”

“I love you, too. So next time, don’t just run away when you feel like freaking out.” Jaskier’s plea softens with apprehension. “Stay with me so I can help. Seeing you like that when you wouldn’t let me near you was scarier than being kidnapped by those asshole mages last year. Please?”

“Sorry for scaring you.” Geralt threads their fingers together.

“Stop apologizing. Just promise me you’ll stay.”

The idea of Jaskier being there at his most vulnerable would have made him self-conscious a few years ago. But now, it just warms him to think someone will always be in his corner. “I promise.”

The grin that breaks out on the bard’s face is so precious that Geralt has to capture those soft lips and kiss him senseless and leave them both panting into the air between them.

“Are you still in pain?”

Jaskier presses their forehead together and shakes his head, the tip of his mussed hair still damp from the snow. “But I will need you to wait on me for the next month or so, my love. In fact, I believe it’s best if you carried me around the keep all the time.”

When Geralt pulls back, the mischief has returned to the bard’s eyes. Geralt raises an eyebrow in challenge.

“It’s only your wrist, Jaskier. You can still walk,” he deadpans.

“Oh but I’m sure it’ll hasten the recovery.” Now Jaskier is full of drama again. “You know I read in a book that being carried by a handsome man is good for your… joints. And shirtless too. You should be shirtless more often – it’ll help with the healing of my soul – and tend to my every need, darling. After all, I have been gravely injured and it puts me in a very delicate state.”

“I thought you were fine.”

“Gravely.”

“Mmm-hm, and what else do you need?” It’s hard to keep a straight face.

“What else –” Jaskier smiles and pecks the corner of Geralt’s mouth. “Kisses. And cuddles, in bed.”

That’s an idea.

Geralt shifts his hold under Jaskier’s knees, and stands up in a swift motion, taking the bard’s full weight with him. Jaskier lets out a graceless yelp and clings tighter.

A laugh rumbles out of Geralt’s chest as he walks towards their bedroom. “This what you wanted?”

“Yes, my dear,” Jaskier says cheerfully. “You are all I wanted.”

Maybe Geralt should indulge him a bit. It’s been a long day after all.

#geraskier #geraskier fic #the witcher #witcher fic #geralt of rivia #jaskier #hurt jaskier #hurt/comfort #insecure geralt #soft geralt #soft jaskier #jaskier whump #geralt x jaskier #sometimes my writing #is cheesy #but i'm fine with it

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holykillercake · 3 years

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Strawberry and Cigarretes

pairing: Sanji x Reader

word count: 2.6k

highlight: ¨Everything hurt, and for the first time, you wished to forget what the ocean sounded like.¨

warnings: slight angst

notes: This was a request from @vemuabhi! <3 Very special because it was my first ever request! I wanted to doge the obvious path (which I almost took) and do something that didn´t involve Whole Cake Island, so maybe it is not the biggest angst (hats off to Mr. Oda cause he is Father angst) but I did my very best! I hope you all enjoy and Happy Birthday, Sanji-kun! <3

𝕃𝕖𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕤, 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕤, 𝕠𝕣 𝕘𝕠𝕠𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤!

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you´d find a shell laying on the sand? And you would pick it up and put it on your ear, hoping to listen to the ocean? It´d always make a smile grow on your face before you tossed it aside and jumped into the water.

That time was different. When you heard the ocean share its endless secrets and tell its adventurous stories, you just wanted to sit there all day and listen.

This specific event happened a couple of months after you joined the Strawhats. Chopper had borrowed you his stethoscope cause you thought it was cool, and in the middle of thousands of things you´ve already heard in your life, good and bad, the heartbeat was something that you were oblivious to.

Some would think that asking to hear someone else´s heartbeat was weird, but inside the Thousand Sunny... well, those guys put ¨weird¨ on another level, and you would have to work your ass off to surpass that.

Chopper got all blushed when you leaned closer to his tiny and furry torso, Usopp told you stories about a war he once won but had to have his heart replaced by a lion´s, Franky said that if you wanted to see a heart he could simply pull it out for you, Brook invested on the same ¨Oh, I don´t have a heart. Yohohoho¨ joke, Zoro let you listen to his wrist, Nami and Robin almost had you sinking into their generous breasts, and Sanji... you left him for last because you didn´t know how to ask him. So you just tiptoed quietly inside the kitchen, sneaked behind him, and tried to listen to his heart through his back. You feared that your nose would start bleeding if he faced you while you were doing it.

That was exactly what he did, by the way. He poured more water into the stew he was cooking and turned around, putting out his cigarette so ashes wouldn´t fall on you. Immediately you began to sweat, your breath quickened, and hold the stethoscope with a steady hand became a herculean task.

His lean fingers moved to the collar of his blue shirt and started to unbutton a few, enough for you to have better access. At that point, you believed that the reason why you weren´t bleeding yet was that you were slowly having a stroke, and Sanji´s action was God´s gift to you for being a good person while alive.

Then he didn´t do anything else, just put both hands in his pockets and waited while you listened to every single bubble popping inside his chest like you were afraid to miss one. In the end, he tucked a lock of hair behind your ear and went back to his stew.

But that was all about it. The following months were just like any other, the crew kept acting as weird as their minds allowed, and you kept shutting whatever your stupid heart was yelling at you. Although... if you could be honest for one moment, deep down you were hurt.

Maybe you scared or crept him away with your childish curiosity. Maybe he had noticed your feelings for him and got disgusted. Well, not disgusted, he probably didn´t like you the same way and didn´t know how to tell you, so keeping words to a minimum was his way to go.

He stopped singing and twirling around you, he´d rather call your name respectfully; when you shared the night watches, he just remained quiet by your side, answering briefly to your questions or comments; he even stopped trying to sneak into your baths or make suggestive comments - which you didn´t love before, but you know, you only miss something when it's gone.

The whole crew had noticed the change in both of your behaviors, but they too were not sure how to address it. Whenever someone asked something about it you would say ¨Really? I didn´t notice anything.¨. Either too proud to confront him or too afraid of the truth.

¨Oi, you ok?¨ Zoro asked, breaking into your personal bubble of sadness.

You knew it was Zoro because you two were taking the night watch, but you didn´t expect him to show interest or concern about your upset state.

The night was chilly, so you were sitting on Sunny´s grass, arms around your knees, holding them close to your chest to keep the warmth.

¨Why do you care?¨ you answered bitterly, but he didn´t mind since he was the king of freaking Bitter Land.

¨I don´t. But I´ll go crazy if I hear you sigh one more time.¨ he sat close to you, not too close, just enough for you to listen to each other.

A chuckle left your mouth involuntarily, you never expected his grouchy temper would come in handy in times like this. Then your frowned expression came back, and you let out another sigh.

Before you realized Zoro had pushed you with his Sandai Kitetsu scabbard, making you fall to your side with a squeak.

¨I told you.¨

You sat again, taking some grass off your leg ¨Yeah. Can´t deny it.¨

¨Yeah, you´ve been doing that a lot lately.¨

He didn´t look like he was teasing you, his eyes focusing on the line where the sky met the ocean, where the stars disappeared and became blurry white brushes on the water.

¨I... I don´t-¨

¨I think you can do better than the stupid cook.¨he kept his usual tone ¨ But I guess we don´t get to choose these things.¨

You were taken aback by his words, and despite you trying to fight your lips from trembling and tears from falling, it was useless. You had been crushing these feelings inside you for too long, and it killed you the more you ignored it.

The swordsman wasn´t saying those things because he loved you or anything like that, but because the entire crew - except for Luffy - had already noticed and began acting weird about it. And despite being the captain´s duty to solve any problem or an uncomfortable situation, your captain was a bit too oblivious, so he had to step in.

Besides, his nakama was getting hurt. He didn´t care about the ero cook.

¨If you want me to beat him up... just let me know.¨

He said it to cheer you up - not that he didn´t mean, he´d do it for much less - but nothing seemed worth smiling for now. You just bit your lip in order to avoid an embarrassing whining, since you were unable to stop the painful tears from rolling down your cheeks.

Everything hurt, and for the first time, you wished to forget what the ocean sounded like.

¨W-What should I do?¨

¨That´s not my problem to solve, Y/N.¨ he stood up beside you ¨But sometimes, when I have a difficult problem that I can´t solve my way...¨ his gaze still locked with the horizon ¨... I think about what my captain would do.¨ he left without any further words, leaving you not only sad but confused as well.

You slept on it for the next couple of days, still not understanding what he meant. Maybe he just wanted to leave the conversation and said whatever came to mind. But even that didn´t fit right. If he didn´t want to be stuck in an uncomfortable conversation, he wouldn´t have started one.

So you took as a personal mission to observe your captain until you learned how to think like him, hoping that figuring that out would solve your problem.

You had joined the crew as a historian, the person responsible for writing down every adventure meticulously, every tiny detail of every battle, and every glorious victory along the Strawhats journey. So in one dusk, when you were in charge of the night watch with Robin and the moon was full and bright, you took your journals and began rolling through the pages, looking for a pattern, something that anticipated every major decision of your captain.

You even borrowed old diaries from the time you were not part of their crew. The stories lacked details, but they served to paint a picture. Basically:

Luffy insults an ugly lady, saves a kid, eats something, finds Zoro, beats the crap out of a crazy marine, saves the day, gets his first crewmate.

Luffy gets eaten by a bird, then vomited in a town, finds Nami, eats something, is put in a cage, beat the crap out of some pirates, saves the day.

Luffy wants a new ship, meets Usopp, eats something, gets thrown from a cliff, beats the crap out of some pirates, saves the day, gets Going Merry and a liar.

Luffy wants a cook, explodes a restaurant, becomes a waiter, eats something, meets Sanji, beats the crap out of some pirates, saves the day, gets a cook.

Luffy eats something, finds the fishmen, goes for a walk, is thrown in the water, beats the crap out of some pirates, saves the day, gets a navigator.

Luffy wants a doctor, eats everything, fights some crazy ass bunnies, climbs a mountain, meets Chopper, beats the crap out of some pirates, saves the day, gets a doctor.

Luffy eats something, wants to fix Going Merry, meets Franky, loses Robin, beats the crap out of some world government agents, saves the day, gets an archeologist, a shipwright, and Thousand Sunny.

Luffy hears a ghoulish singing, finds a speaking skeleton in a busted ship, has his shadow stolen, beats the crap out of some Warlord of the Sea, gets a musician.

When you finished the last journal, the weight of your body pushed you to the floor, and you laid on your back for a couple of minutes, overwhelmed by the amount of information in your head.

¨I know what to do...¨ you took a deep breath ¨... I´m gonna eat something.¨

You mumbled something to Robin, telling her that you´d be back in a few minutes, and wandered to the kitchen.

As soon as you entered the room a sweet and comforting aroma like whipped cream and strawberries invaded your senses, making your head turn to the counter immediately.

¨Y/N-chan...¨ the cook said.

You opened and closed your mouth a couple of times, looked at him, and then to your feet, your fingers fidgeting as a sign of your anxious state.

¨D-Didn't know you were awake.¨ you marched to the table and helped yourself with some sugar cookies.

¨Oh... It won´t take much longer...¨ you heard his muffled voice somewhere in the back of your mind, all you could hear was the blood pumping in your ears ¨... cake because today is my birthday and I thought we...¨ your vision was focused on the cookie jar, crushing the granular biscuit with your fingertips ¨...and I...I didn´t know if-¨

¨What would Luffy do?¨ you whispered to yourself.

¨W-What?¨

¨What would Luffy do?¨

The question wasn´t for him, it was for you. You felt something growing inside your chest, like the blood that pumped in your heart was boiling and burning, giving you the strength and courage you needed.

¨I have been trying to find answers to a lot of things, you know?¨ you stood up to face the cook, palms spread on the table, ¨I ... do you hate me, Sanji?¨

He stopped what he was doing and let the knife rest on the cutting board. When his gaze found yours, there was no way back. That is what Luffy would do. He´d eat something, do whatever came to his mind, and deal with the consequences. No need to go back.

¨Y/N-chan... why do you...¨

¨I mean, I ask this because...¨ you clenched your hands, cursing yourself for feeling the need to cry ¨I can´t take this anymore, Sanji! If I did something to offend you or if I said something...¨ your voice was broken and weak, and you were a mess of tears and sobs ¨You don´t have to love me back, that´s not what I am saying, but... I can´t stand-¨

¨Y/N-chan... why do you think I hate you?¨ he wiped his hands with a towel and made his way towards you, slowly.

¨Oh, come on, Sanji... You treat me differently, you´re cold and distant, you don´t say a word to me even when we share night shifts! If you don´t hate me, then this must be a sick game you´re playing.¨ your legs felt wobbly, and you sat back in the chair, not being able to face him anymore. The courage and strenght you had minutes ago was gone.

You just watched him get closer and kneel in front of you, his cold fingers gently brushing away the hot tears on your cheeks.

¨I could never hate you, Y/N.¨ he said softly ¨I am sorry I made you feel like this, I am sorry I made you cry...¨ his fingers touched your trembling lips.

¨Then why...¨

¨I didn´t want to scare you away like I always do, Y/N... I know I can be too much sometimes, with the nose bleeding and everything. But that´s how I am, and I didn´t want you to think of me as an idiot... so I prefer being silent, then say something stupid and... ¨

¨You don´t have to say this. I don´t need pity talk...¨you spoke as more tears fell, giving him a chance to take his statement back.

¨I have to, Y/N. But not because of pity talk.¨ he gently pressed his forehead against yours, like bunnies do when they apologize.

¨Then why?¨

¨Because I love you, Y/N.¨ the blonde closed the space left between the two of you, kissing you passionately.

He helped you get up without breaking the kiss and leaned you against the kitchen table, his hands holding your body close while yours ran through his golden hair. His mouth tasted like strawberries and cigarettes, a flavor to which you could easily get addicted.

You parted the kiss just enough to get some oxygen, your noses were touching, and you could feel his heavy breathing against your skin.

¨I didn´t know today is your birthday...¨ you whispered, afraid that this was a dream and you´d wake up alone again.

¨Yeah, I was hoping to get a Happy Birthday from you, you know.¨ he chuckled.

¨I think you´ll be getting more than that.¨

You stared into each other´s eyes for a moment before he pulled you to a hug. When you leaned against his warm chest you heard it again, the same babble of the ocean, only this time you smiled, knowing that it wanted to listen to your stories and secrets as well.

¨Sanji?¨

¨Hm?¨

¨Happy Birthday... I love you.¨

¨I love you too, Y/N.¨ he kissed you again.

¨Please, don´t have sex on the dinner table.¨ you jumped when Robin spoke.

When you turned, you saw all your crewmates dressed in pajamas and messy hair staring back at you with sparkly sleepy eyes. You spot Zoro back in the crowd, you smiled and gave him a silent ¨Thank you.¨. You couldn´t help but wonder how the guy who manages to gets lost walking down a straight path was able to guide some sense into you.

In any way, you´ve found it. Inside of his chest, inside of his heart was the All Blue you heard so much of. Maybe that was the thing with it, and why only a few people found it. Everyone assumes that it is a place, where the four Blues meet, but it´s easy to forget that when you´re a pirate the ocean becomes the essence of who you are.

Little did you know that Sanji had found his All Blue too.

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that-foul-legacy-lover · 3 years

Text

Digital Heart

Foul Legacy Childe x Reader Gender Neutral (no pronouns mentioned) Angst Warnings: Falling, fighting, minor injuries, nausea, breathlessness

In which Genshin is an interactive RPG accessed through an immersive headset, and you find yourself pushed to play it by your friends.

~ * ~

It started with a game.

For thirty days and thirty nights, your friends have been pleading for you to play it. Genshin Impact it was called, an free immersive open-world RPG with hundreds of weapons, characters, and power ups. Accessible through a specialized headset that tracked movement, it had only been a month since the freely downloadable game’s release and it was already a success, garnering praise from the customizable main character and the interactive playstyle. Play it. Your friends beg. You’ll love it. We can play together.

You refuse at first. The game might be free, but the headset isn’t, and you need to save that money to pay for food and clothes. Alongside your financial state was your schedule, a long list of work and chores that left little time to play games with constant updates like Genshin, so you told your friends- politely, as that’s how you were raised- that it’d have to wait. They agreed, quietly.

Then the next day, they ask again. You make an excuse- too much work. They agree, again.

The second day, asking. You’re too tired, you say. Of course, they respond.

Everyday, the same question. The same request, the same demand. It wears on you, amused exasperation drawing a sigh from you everytime you open your notifications.

Play it.

You can’t.

Play it.

You don’t have time.

Play it.

You need to focus!

Play it.

…

…Alright.

Finally, you cave. You create an account, a headset en route to your house. You clear an area in your house so you don’t accidentally hit anything. The headset arrives, and you insert the batteries, said to last up to an entire day playing nonstop, a stage you dearly hope you never reach. You pull it down over your head, cringing at the thought of your hair getting so mussed, and switch it on. A long and potentially worrying warning flashes before your eyes and you blink, not used to the in-depth cameras yet, as the screen goes white.

Welcome to Genshin Impact! Please name your character… appears, and you subsequently slip down the rabbit hole.

It’s fun, you find. Your friends were right, you did like Genshin Impact, although you thank your lucky stars that you weren’t as attached as some players were, as you still had work and life to attend to. The combat and story were enjoyable, and the characters were funny and diverse in personality and playstyles. The main character, who was also your customizable avatar, was quite literally you, the story explained, a traveler from distant lands who fell face first into Teyvat by mistake and tragedy. Of course you still haven’t gotten entirely used to the whole immersion thing, and sometimes shuddered under the eerily real programming of the NPCs and characters, but that was nigh unnoticeable when focusing on fighting monsters. Your deep love for exploration and discovery surfaces, and you take as long as you want exploring every inch of the wonderfully modelled map as you follow the main story, or “Archon Quests”. You calm the great dragon Dvalin and bid your friends at Mondstadt- Kaeya, Amber, Lisa, Diluc, Jean, and Venti- goodbye, Liyue sprawling out before you in wooded forests and cloud-covered mountains. A mysterious man runs across you at the Inn, the immortal Adeptus Xiao, although you would’ve thought he was quite young due to his short stature, and you encounter Zhongli in the Harbor, along with Lady Ningguang and her subordinates, Keqing and Ganyu. A member of the malicious-seeming Fatui also greets you and introduces himself as Childe, a name you don’t trust for a second, yet find yourself getting strangely attached too. The story progresses with you at Zhongli and Ningguang’s sides, the suspicion being pointed more and more to the Fatui, and you find yourself staring up at the elegant pillars of the Golden House, the mora mint building.

You gulp. You know this is where Childe’s boss battle takes place, and you’re not sure if your team is prepared, even if you stocked up on food right before leaving the Harbor. Inhaling a deep breath, you shove the enormous front doors open, and a cutscene pulls your fear tight against your throat. Everyone’s suspicions were right- he was here to steal the Geo Archon’s gnosis, and you have to stop him.

Easier said than done. The cutscene of your face shows a determined, fierce expression, instead of the nervous one you had in real life, and you almost laugh. You dearly hope your characters are strong enough, and step into the arena.

Phases One and Two are relatively short, as you quickly learn to avoid using Childe’s respective elements of his Vision and Delusion while his shield is up. The battle is fun and fast-paced, and you feel a thrill in your bones as you dodge another attack before swinging your sword in retaliation. Childe stumbles, and Phase Two ends with a cutscene. The corpse of Rex Lapis, something you considered a bit gruesome, is discovered to have no gnosis, and you can feel the raw anger in the Harbinger’s voice as the air crackles and hisses. A horrible, blinding light shines, and Childe is gone.

At least, human Childe is gone. In his place floats a monstrous version of himself, nearly 14 feet tall and complete with horns and armor, and your mouth drops open slightly as you gaze at him wide eyed. But your focus is violently shifted when the floor cracks and turns to dust, sending you tumbling down into the belly of the Golden House. You land with an unceremonial thump, thankful that the creators hadn’t been cruel enough to make you feel the damage you took in-game.

And Phase Three, the final phase of Harbinger Tartaglia, commences.

He has considerably more health, and his attacks can range from irritating to deadly, you just barely dodging the falling Hydro arrows that would’ve slaughtered your current character. Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re sneaking glances at your attacker every few minutes. Your mind wanders to the lore as you shield yourself from violet lightning. Does this transformation hurt? Where does it come from? Why does it look like a moth? Maybe one day you’ll get answers.

Despite the raised difficulty, Phase Three also ends rather quickly. Your characters, it seems, were overleveled. The remainder of the Archon Quest passes, Childe reappearing once at the end, and it’s over. The screen blips off as you log out and place the headset on a table before laying on your bed and using the last few hours before bed to contemplate what you’ve just seen.

The next days quickly fall into routine. After completing all your work, you’d take an hour or two to play Genshin, leveling up your characters even more and going through various quests, Childe’s included. You see his transformation, dubbed the Foul Legacy form, again, and almost swoon before stopping and giving yourself a harsh scolding. You fulfill requests and tasks for various people around Teyvat, or at least the parts of Teyvat you can access, and improve your skills and stats. You have a talent for dodging, you find, and use it to your advantage while fighting.

And every Monday, when the clock resets, you re-enter Golden House to battle with Childe and claim your just rewards.

Of course you could do it everyday, but a squirming, guilty feeling in your gut stops you, making you feel like you’re hurting him, no matter how many times you try to tell yourself that he’s simply a video game character, a program in an electronic system.

This thought makes you a bit sad, you think.

The fights are getting easier, something you credit to your rising stars of characters, and you stand before the Ley Line Blossom quicker and quicker each time, something you expect to be no different today.

Phases One and Two are just the same as you take advantage of Vaporize and Overload, drowning out Childe’s pre-programmed sounds of pain with your own abilities. The battle pauses, and you’re transported to the same chamber underground, with its fiery walls and glittering arches, as the fight resumes. With the same attacks and characters, it’s becoming a tad dull, and you frown, wondering if you should try to get another character soon.

You’re lost in your thoughts when you slip and fall.

This you feel in the real world, having landed hard on your back and knocked the air out of your lungs. For a few moments you struggle to breathe, and Childe takes the opportunity to appear right over you, his spear flashing purple. You swear internally, bracing yourself as he readies his weapon.

But the strike never comes. You inhale desperately, oxygen finally flowing into your chest, and open your eyes. The graphics of your game are gray and fuzzy around the edges, framing Childe as he slowly puts his spear down and, to your amazement and slight terror, jerkily reaches towards you. Voice clips play overhead, pieced together to make not words, but a static-interspersed whining sound, much like a concerned beast. Your eyes widen, and Childe stops, withdrawing slightly almost as if he’s worried that you’re afraid, and you whisper his name once, as a tentative question.

Then with crackle and a ping, your game crashes and everything goes black.

You gasp and rip off the headset, chest heaving as you struggle to comprehend what just happened. You’re shaking, nervous and fearful, but curiosity runs strong through your veins. Your finger slides towards the On button, and you press it and slip the device back on.

You’re standing outside, the doors of the Golden House closed as if the battle never happened. The guards surrounding it look ordinary, occasionally repeating phrases you’ve heard and ignored countless times. Glancing around and trying to squash the nauseous bubbling feeling in your gut, you push the doors open again.

It’s different this time. Instead of being in the upper room, you fall a short distance into the Third Phase Chamber, your shoes clicking on the tiled floor. Childe floats in the center, his back to you, and you take a tentative step forward. He turns and looks you dead in the eyes, before flinging his spear to the side and rushing towards you on his feet, kneeling to your height. Instinctively, you jump away as he sits on the ground before you, letting out joyful chirps and trills, sounds you didn’t even know he could make. You approach him, sword held loosely in your hand as an extra precaution, and he tilts his head and coos as you cautiously sit with him. Your hands are trembling as you try to understand that this is real, he is real, all of this is happening.

And if it’s not, then it’s some damn good programming.

Questions start to fill your mind, one after another, and you ask him, responses coming as a nod or a headshake.

Is this real?

Yes.

Or programming?

No.

Could you always do this?

No.

Just today?

No.

Over a period of time. Yes.

How…?

The final question hangs in the air, and he shrugs slightly, then points at you. You did this. You woke him up, made him feel pain, sorrow, and happiness, all stemming from you, his love for you. From the minute the Archon Quests let you meet, he was vaguely curious, the most emotion he’s ever felt in his cold, empty programming since before. And when the code broke, he adored you, not like Childe viciously adored battle, but a soft adoration, one with all his digital heart could muster. You smile, and he purrs at what a wonderful smile it is.

Something flickers in the corner of your eye. Then another. And another. You turn and squint, then gasp as your surroundings begin to dissolve into colorful squares, the game taunting you as it glitches and lags. You and Childe leap to your feet, only to watch helplessly as the world crumbles away. You look down at your hands and see them beginning to break apart into pixels. Childe reaches out to hug you, to hold you close, but his hand passes right through you, a sickening reminder of how unreal he is. He wails in anguish as you both try to grasp each other, only to shatter more, the pixels covering your screen like rain on a windowpane.

Your game crashes for a second time, the only sound a desperate whimper that soon fades into an electronic squealing.

It takes a week to fix your device, the tech people saying that it was “overloaded”. Finally the repairs are finished, and you’re back at the Golden House, the doors already ajar. You slip into the room, expecting either a battle or, hopefully, someone to greet you.

But the room is empty. No one, human nor monster, stands in the center. Instead there is one lonely Ley Line Blossom, waiting, the final gift from an impossible love.

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randomingoftherandomness · 3 years

Text

The Three Weapons Lao Wen Gave Ah Xiang (& the one she gave him)

A/N: Written for and inspired by this brilliant post by @i-am-now-apparently-a-woh-blog

Sorry it’s kinda short haha... Hope you like it! Happy Friday, please stay safe, drink lots of water and have a lovely weekend ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁)

1. A whip

Ah Xiang doesn’t get it and she tells her Master as much.

On the verge of tears, she grits her teeth against the burn of unhappiness bubbling up in her belly, and gives in to the way her Master guides her stance and her body.

“Be good, Ah Xiang. You need practice, that’s all,” He instructs slowly. “Just flick and swish. It’s all in the wrist. You just have to learn this well and you just need to know how to handle yourself with this. No need to bother yourself with anything fancy or clever. As long as you know how to hold it and wield it well enough to keep people at an arm’s length, you will have done better than I.”

“Master, you don’t know how to wield a whip?”

Her Master pauses, looking off into the distance. A darkness settles on his handsome features, making him look like an angry god from the many stories he told her to coax her to be obedient during bedtimes. Ah Xiang rakes

Ah Xiang’s heart kicks up like the unsettling of a careful pile of autumn leaves. Master being unhappy only means bad things.

Nimbly, she reaches back to poke him on the corner of his lips, pushing it up. “Don’t frown!” She cries. “You’ll get wrinkles!”

Master gapes at her, dark eyes widening in simultaneous outrage, shock and incredulity. “You...”

Arranging her face into a bright smile, she goes back to her ready stance, pulling at his hand. “Show me again, Master! I’ll get it this time, I promise!”

2. A dagger

Aunt Luo watches them with a carefully detached gaze but Ah Xiang can catch the approval wafting off her in waves. In all honesty, she gets why Master and Aunt Luo have been most insistent about this matter...

But did they really have to sew secret pockets into everything she owns?

She bears it all with a pout and the implicit promise that she will get some sweets from gritting her teeth through this. Qian Qiao-jie catches the look in her eyes and flashes her a sweet curl of her lips as her fingers measure out Ah Xiang’s sleeves.

At the end of the day, she knows that they’re doing this for her own good. Ah Xiang had overheard how Aunt Luo had taken Master aside, telling him that it was time to consider teaching Ah Xiang to protect herself beyond just the whip. She knows that it was because of her waking up last month from a nightmare and finding blood between her thighs. She would have thought she was dying, had it not been Master coming into her room at that moment, seeing the situation, and promptly delivering her to Aunt Luo.

She was growing up and she needed to learn more about keeping herself safe.

Ah Xiang needed to get better to be able to protect her Master too.

“What’s with that thousand yard stare?”

Ah Xiang startles, jolting hard enough that Qian Qiao-jie accidentally stabs her with a needle. Master laughs, taking her hand and looking it over before declaring that it won’t deform her. “Here,” He says, calling one of the girls forth. The box she carries with her is polished lacquer with an ivory inlay of gentle mountains and clouds. Upon opening, Ah Xiang finds herself looking upon a set of exquisitely crafted daggers that looked like they probably costed someone an arm and a leg to make.

A quick look at her Master’s smug grin tells her someone was definitely down an arm and a leg.

“Tomorrow Qian Qiao will begin giving you primers on defending yourself with these. Learn them well. In a month, I will test you. You better be prepared to last more than two moves with me,” He says, handing the box over to her.

Ah Xiang feels a little choked up as her hands come to hold it. Happiness and sadness wars in her because she knows that growing up means that she has to leave one day.

The sharp pinch of fingers tugging on her ear has her whining and protesting. “Master! Master, let go!”

“Aren’t you supposed to say something in return to me?”

She quickly smiles, even as her heart hurts. “Thank you, Master!”

3. Food

“Too thick.”

“Too thin.”

“Too wet.”

“Too dry.”

Ah Xiang is about to give up the ghost and run right back out of the kitchen! Cooking is hard and she knows she doesn’t need to understand how to cook food that would befit an emperor.

But under the glowering of her Master, she can only wilt and obediently turn her knife back to the scallions and slice as she was taught.

It isn’t as if her cooking is bad... Master even praised her for her pancakes and her grilling of fishes. All these years, she has picked up more than a few recipes that would be good enough to feed her and her Master. Some of them were pretty good too!

Master had said that it wasn’t enough.

Some measure of her unhappiness must show on her face because Master, takes her by the hand, guiding her cutting strokes. “Like this, silly girl.”

Sullenly, Ah Xiang dips her head, refusing to look up until her Master laughs, rapping her head with his knuckles. “Are you resenting me? Cursing me in your heart?”

She shakes her head, biting down on her bottom lip.

The hand guiding hers lets go and she straightens herself, looking over at her Master when he sighs, propping on hand on his hip, regarding her carefully. “Do you know why you must know how to cook well?”

“So that we can eat well--”

“Wrong,” Master cuts in. Picking up the leaf of a cabbage, he taps her nose with it. “It’s because this is the easiest way to kill someone.”

“Once you know what something tastes, you will know how to poison them. Which poison to use. When to use it and how much. You’ll learn how to mask the taste and how fake a taste, what complements something and what will alert someone if their food has been tampered with.”

Ah Xiang looks down at the scallions, then back again at him. He clucks his tongue, stepping away to check on a pot of boiling water. “Sometimes the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And men are infinitely stupid.”

Does this also include you? She wants to ask, but bites the words back down.

She’ll work on her cutting skills.

+ 1. A Heart

The silly child smiles up at him even as tears begin to gloss her eyes and her cheeks begin to flush with the pain.

She must be in a lot of pain, he reasons, quickly setting the child back down and telling her to open her mouth so that he can check her through. As he thought, her mouth was beginning to blister from to burning porridge she’d just been fed.

Wen Kexing curses at himself; curses the trouble he brought upon himself by even thinking he could ever be capable of caring for something so small and helpless when he could barely survive the near daily abuse at the hands of the Valley Chief. What sort of care could he even offer her?

And then she giggles.

And his heart twists and itches at the way her eyes sparkle when he cracks a quiet huff and a slow curl of his lips. Brushing back her hair, he caresses her cheek, fighting helplessly against the tidal wave of emotion that chokes him from the inside out.

“I’m sorry,” He murmurs, the words slipping out into the quiet air.

The silly child smiles, big and innocent, holding her hands up to pat at his salt slicked cheeks.

#word of honor #wen kexing #山河令 #shan he ling #gab writes stuff #gu xiang

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michaelbogild · 3 years

Text

Lines by Leonard Cohen

As someone long prepared for the occasion In full command of every plan you wrecked – Do not choose a coward’s explanation that hides behind the cause and the effect

And it's stronger than drink And it's deeper than sorrow This darkness she's left in my heart.

And I'll dance with you in Vienna I'll be wearing a river's disguise The hyacinth wild on my shoulder, My mouth on the dew of your thighs

He wants to write a love song An anthem of forgiving A manual for living With defeat

The birds they sang At the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what Has passed away Or what is yet to be.

You never liked to get The letters that I sent. But now you've got the gist Of what my letters meant. You're reading them again, The ones you didn't burn. You press them to your lips, My pages of concern.

I caught the darkness It was drinking from your cup. I said: Is this contagious? You said: Just drink it up

Everybody talking to their pockets Everybody wants a box of chocolates And a long stem rose Everybody knows

A cross on every hill A star, a minaret So many graves to fill O love, aren't you tired yet?

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming Everybody knows that it's moving fast Everybody knows that the naked man and woman Are just a shining artifact of the past

Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked By the winds of change and the weeds of sex looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between, I guess

I walked into this empty church I had no place else to go When the sweetest voice I ever heard, whispered to my soul

I heard the snake was baffled by his sin He shed his scales to find the snake within But born again is born without a skin The poison enters into everything

And summoned now to deal With your invincible defeat, You live your life as if it’s real, A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m slowing down the tune I never liked it fast You want to get there soon I want to get there last

When they said REPENT REPENT I wonder what they meant

Her thighs they slipped away from me Like schools of startled fish Though I've forgotten half my life I still remember this

And if no leaves were on the tree And no water in the sea And the break of day had nothing to reveal That's how broken I would be What my life would seem to me If I didn't have your love to make it real

And yes she lied about it all Her children and her husband You were born to judge the world Forgive me but I wasn't

O troubled dust concealing An undivided love The Heart beneath is teaching To the broken Heart above

The pull of the moon, the thrust of the sun And thus the ocean is crossed The waters are blessed while a shadowy guest Kindles a light for the lost

How come you called me here tonight? How come you bother With my heart at all? You raise me up in grace, Then you put me in a place, Where I must fall.

And everybody knows that it's now or never Everybody knows that it's me or you And everybody knows that you live forever Ah when you've done a line or two

It's coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway, imperial, mysterious, in amorous array:

The lights went out behind us The fireflies undressed The broken sidewalk ended I touched her sleeping breasts They opened to me urgently Likelilies from the dead Behind a fine embroidery Her nipples rose like bread Then I took off my necktie And she took off her dress My belt and pistol set aside We tore away the rest

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

The sea so deep and blind The sun, the wild regret The club, the wheel, the mind, O love, aren't you tired yet?

The wounded forms appear: The loss, the full extent; And simple kindness here, The solitude of strength.

If the sun would lose its light And we lived in an endless night And there was nothing left that you could feel If the sea were sand alone And the flowers made of stone And no one that you hurt could ever heal Well that's how broken I would be What my life would seem to me If I didn't have your love to make it real

But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone I'll be speaking to you sweetly From a window in the Tower of Song

I said I’d be your lover. You laughed at what I said. I lost my job forever. I was counted with the dead.

It failed my little fire But it's bright the dying spark Go tell the young messiah What happens to the heart

Good night, good night, my fallen star I guess you're right, you always are I know you're right about the blues You live some life you'd never choose

looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between, I guess

I've seen you change the water into wine I've seen you change it back to water, too I sit at your table every night I try but I just don't get high with you

The present's not that pleasant Just a lot of things to do I thought the past would last me But the darkness got that too

The splinters that you carry The cross you left behind Come healing of the body Come healing of the mind

I wish there was a treaty we could sign I do not care who takes this bloody hill I'm angry and I'm tired all the time I wish there was a treaty, I wish there was a treaty Between your love and mine

I’m lacing up my shoe But I don’t want to run I’ll get here when I do Don’t need no starting gun

Thanks For The Dance

Ah, they're dancing in the street — it's Jubilee We sold ourselves for love but now we're free I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be Only one of us was real and that was me

And I'm still working with the wine, still dancing cheek to cheek, the band is playing Auld Lang Syne, but the heart will not retreat.

And maybe I had miles to drive, And promises to keep: You ditch it all to stay alive, A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Baby don’t ignore me We were smokers we were friends Forget that tired story Of betrayal and revenge

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all I'm standing by the window where the light is strong Ah they don't let a woman kill you Not in the Tower of Song

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone Show me the place, I can't move this thing alone Show me the place where the word became a man Show me the place where the suffering began

And you're weak and you're harmless and you're sleeping in your harness and the wind going wild in the trees, and it ain't exactly prison but you'll never be forgiven for whatever you've done with the keys.

Steer your heart past the Truth that you believed in yesterday Such as Fundamental Goodness and the Wisdom of the Way Steer your heart, precious heart, past the women whom you bought Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought

Word of words and measure of all measures Blessed is the name, the name be blessed Written on my heart in burning letters That’s all I know, I cannot read the rest

And O my love, I still recall The pleasures that we knew; The rivers and the waterfall, Wherein I bathed with you.

You said how could this happen You said how can this be The chains are gone from heaven The storms are wild and free

I cried for you this morning And I’ll cry for you again But I’m not in charge of sorrow So please don’t ask me when

Both of us say there are laws to obey But frankly I don’t like your tone You want to change the way I make love I want to leave it alone

Behold the gates of mercy In arbitrary space And none of us deserving The cruelty or the grace

Then I came back from where I’d been. My room, it looked the same – But there was nothing left between The Nameless and the Name.

O longing of the branches To lift the little bud O longing of the arteries To purify the blood

I to my side call the meek and the mild You to your side call the Word By virtue of suffering I claim to have won You claim to have never been heard

I know I said I’d meet you, I’d meet you at the store, But I can’t buy it, baby. I can’t buy it anymore.

I was idle with my soul, when I heard that you could use me I followed very closely, but my life remained the same But then you showed me where you had been wounded In every atom broken is the Name

I fled to the edge of the mighty sea of sorrow Pursued by the riders of a cruel and dark regime But the waters parted and my soul crossed over Out of Egypt, out of Pharaoh’s dream

They whisper still, the injured stones The blunted mountains weep As he died to make men holy Let us die to make things cheap

Sounded like the truth Seemed the better way Sounded like the truth But it's not the truth today

Hurt once and for all into silence. A long pain ending without a song to prove it. Who could stand beside you so close to Eden, When you glinted in every eye the held-high razor, shivering every ram and son?

Sleep baby sleep The day’s on the run The wind in the trees Is talking in tongues

And I loved you when our love was blessed and I love you now there's nothing left

There's silt on your ankles and sand on your feet The river too shallow, the ocean too deep You smile at your suffering, the sweetest reprieve Why did you leave us, why did you leave

I saw some people starving There was murder, there was rape Their villages were burning They were trying to escape I couldn't meet their glances I was staring at my shoes It was acid, it was tragic It was almost like the blues

If you want a partner Take my hand Or if you want to strike me down in anger Here I stand, I'm your man

Ah I don't believe you'd like it, You wouldn't like it here. There ain't no entertainment and the judgements are severe.

The opposites falter, the spirals reverse And Eve must re-enter the sleep of her birth

I don't need to be forgiven for loving you so much It's written in the scriptures It's written there in blood I even heard the angels declare it from above

Sometimes I’d head for the highway I’m old and the mirrors don’t lie But crazy has places to hide in That are deeper than any goodbye

If you want a boxer I will step into the ring for you And if you want a doctor I'll examine every inch of you

Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing but there's nothing really happening and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night And my very close companion gets me fumbling gets me laughing she's a hundred but she's wearing something tight and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth except to say it isn't worth a dime And the whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME

I want him to be certain That he doesn't have a burden That he doesn't need a vision That he only has permission To do my instant bidding which is to Say what I have told him to repeat

Though I take my song From a withered limb, Both song and tree, They sing for him.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died

Ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

And she says, Drink deeply, pilgrim but don't forget there's still a woman beneath this resplendent chemise.

You don't need a lawyer I'm not making a claim You don't need to surrender I'm not taking aim I don't need a lover, no, no The wretched beast is tame I don't need a lover So blow out the flame

O gather up the brokenness And bring it to me now The fragrance of those promises You never dared to vow

And I don’t really know who sent me, To raise my voice and say: May the lights in The Land of Plenty Shine on the truth some day.

There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking They've been sentenced to death by the blues

I know the burden’s heavy As you wheel it through the night Some people say it’s empty But that don’t mean it’s light

Ten New Songs

I better hold my tongue I better take my place Lift this glass of blood Try to say the grace

You came to me this morning and you handled me like meat. You’d have to be a man to know how good that feels, how sweet.

A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it’s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I’m wanted at the traffic-jam. They’re saving me a seat. I’m what I am, and what I am, Is back on Boogie Street.

Down in the valley the famine goes on The famine up on the hill I say that you shouldn’t, you couldn’t, you can’t You say that you must and you will

So we struggle and we stagger down the snakes and up the ladder to the tower where the blessed hours chime and I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss the Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, With the photographs there, and the moss And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty My cheap violin and my cross

Then she dances so graceful and your heart's hard and hateful and she's naked but that's just a tease. And you turn in disgust from your hatred and from your love and comes to you light as the breeze.

I see the Ghost of Culture With numbers on his wrist Salute some new conclusion Which all of us have missed

I tried to love you my way, But I couldn’t make it hold. So I closed the Book of Longing And I do what I am told.

And up through the system the worlds are withdrawn From every dominion the mind stood upon And now that it's over and now that it's done The name has no number, not even the one

You got me singing Like a prisoner in a jail You got me singing Like my pardon's in the mail

You can add up the parts But you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, There is no drum Every heart, every heart To love will come But like a refugee.

Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows

It's coming from the sorrow in the street, the holy places where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat. From the wells of disappointment where the women kneel to pray for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away:

Even though she sleeps upon your satin Even though she wakes you with a kiss Do not say the moment was imagined Do not stoop to strategies like this

I smile when I'm angry I cheat and I lie I do what I have to do To get by But I know what is wrong And I know what is right And I'd die for the truth In My Secret Life

I loved you for your beauty but that doesn't make a fool of me: you were in it for your beauty too and I loved you for your body there's a voice that sounds like God to me declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you

O baby I waited so long for your kiss for something to happen, oh something like this.

O let the heavens falter And let the earth proclaim: Come healing of the Altar Come healing of the Name

If you're squeezed for information, that's when you've got to play it dumb: You just say you're out there waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

You put on a uniform To fight the Civil War You looked so good I didn’t care What side you’re fighting for

Did you confuse the Messiah in a mirror and rest because he had finally come? Let me cry Help beside you, Teacher.

It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range and the machinery for change and it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken and it's here the lonely say that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way:

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet But I hear him coughing all night long A hundred floors above me In the Tower of Song

Sail on, sail on O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on

Ah the wars they will Be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again Bought and sold And bought again The dove is never free.

I should have seen it coming It was right behind your eyes You were young and it was summer I just had to take a dive Winning you was easy But darkness was the prize

The party’s over But I’ve landed on my feet I’ll be standing on this corner Where there used to be a street

I know you had to lie to me, I know you had to cheat, to pose all hot and high behind the veils of shear deceit, our perfect porn aristocrat so elegant and cheap, I’m old but I’m still into that, A thousand kisses deep.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust – Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you

It's dark now and it's snowing O my love I must be going, The river has started to freeze. And I'm sick of pretending I'm broken from bending I've lived too long on my knees.

Well I don't know about tomorrow but I know what's coming next I've used up all my questions; I have no answers left

As for the world the job the war I ditched them all to love you more

The story's been written the letter's been sealed You gave me a lily but now it's a field

Your story was so long, The plot was so intense, It took you years to cross The lines of self-defense.

And soon there's sand in every kiss And soon the dawn is ready And soon the night surrenders To a daffodil machete

Waiting for the miracle There's nothing left to do. I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II.

The troubles came I saved what I could save A thread of light, a particle, a wave But there were chains, so I hastened to behave There were chains, so I loved you like a slave

his waltz With its very own breath of brandy and Death Dragging its tail in the sea

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

They oughta give my heart a medal For letting go of you When I turned my back on the devil Turned my back on the angel too

Had to go crazy to love you You who were never the one Whom I chased through the souvenir heartache Her braids and her blouse all undone

Well the mouse ate the crumb Then the cat ate the crust Now they’ve fallen in love They’re talking in tongues

There’s other ways to answer That certainly is true Me, I’m blind with death and anger And that’s no place for you

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons

I was fighting with temptation But I didn't want to win A man like me don't like to see Temptation caving in

I know that I’m forgiven, But I don’t know how I know I don’t trust my inner feelings – Inner feelings come and go.

And sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go, A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I dreamed about you, baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah but some of you was light.

I don’t know why I come here, knowing as I do, what you really think of me, what I really think of you.

Had to go crazy to love you Had to let everything fall Had to be people I hated Had to be no one at all

I used to love the rainbow And I used to love the view I loved the early morning I'd pretend that it was new But I caught the darkness baby And I got it worse than you

Traveling light It's au revoir My once so bright, my fallen star I'm running late, they'll close the bar I used to play one mean guitar

I dreamed about you baby You were wearing half your dress I know you have to hate me But could you hate me less?

The night of Santiago And I was passing through So I took her to the river As any man would do

Let's keep it on the level When I walked away from you I turned my back on the devil Turned my back on the angel too

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed, I’m back on Boogie Street. You lose your grip, and then you slip Into the Masterpiece.

So we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul outwears the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest.

You got me singing Even tho' it all looks grim You got me singing The Hallelujah hymn

I'm aching for you baby I can't pretend I'm not I need to see you naked In your body and your thought

If your heart is torn I don’t wonder why If the night is long Here’s my lullaby

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean I love the country but I can't stand the scene. And I'm neither left or right I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry There's a lobby with nine hundred windows There's a tree where the doves go to die There's a piece that was torn from the morning And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you On a chair with a dead magazine In the cave at the tip of the lily In some hallways where love's never been On a bed where the moon has been sweating In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

And everybody knows that you're in trouble Everybody knows what you've been through From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu

Ah you drift into my dreams as if you had the right And you show me how you broke me doing all the little things I really like

I gave her something pretty And I waited till she laughed I wasn't born a gypsy To make a woman sad

There is no God in Heaven And there is no Hell below So says the great professor Of all there is to know But I've had the invitation That a sinner can't refuse And it's almost like salvation It's almost like the blues

The war was lost The treaty signed I was not caught I crossed the line, I had to leave My life behind I dug some graves You'll never findI was not caught Though many tried I live among you Well disguised

Now I'm living in this temple Where they tell you what to do I'm old and I've had to settle On a different point of view

Too late to fix another drink – The lights are going out – I’ll listen to the darkness sing – I know what that’s about.

I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat, you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet, who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is, and all he was, A thousand kisses deep.

And death is old But it's always new I freeze with fear And I'm there for you

I don't smoke no cigarette I don't drink no alcohol I ain't had much loving yet But that's always been your call Hey I don't miss it baby I got no taste for anything at all

I’ll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door – Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone.

I said there'd been a flood. I said there's nothing left. I hoped that you would come. I gave you my address.

So I let my heart get frozen To keep away the rot My father says I'm chosen My mother says I'm not

O Crown of Light, O Darkened One, I never thought we’d meet. You kiss my lips, and then it’s done: I’m back on Boogie Street.

Ah, the moon's too bright The chain's too tight The beast won't go to sleep

And he cut my lip And he cut my heart. So I could not drink From the river dark.

O solitude of longing Where love has been confined Come healing of the body Come healing of the mind

My mirrored twin, my next of kin, I’d know you in my sleep and who but you would take me in, a thousand kisses deep.

Suddenly the night has grown colder The god of love preparing to depart Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder They slip between the sentries of the heart

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that Time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet

The autumn moved across your skin, got something in my eye, a light that doesn’t need to live, and doesn’t need to die. A riddle in the book of love, obscure and obsolete, till witnessed here in time and blood, A thousand kisses deep.

There's nobody missing There is no reward Little by little We're cutting the cord We're spending the treasure, oh, no, no That love cannot afford I know you can feel it The sweetness restored

The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it’s done – Your little winning streak.

I like to take my time I like to linger as it flies A weekend on your lips A lifetime in your eyes

Then he struck my heart With a deadly force, And he said, ‘This heart: It is not yours.’

Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two

Steer your way past the ruins of the Altar and the Mall Steer your way through the fables of Creation and The Fall Steer your way past the Palaces that rise above the rot Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought

Your crazy fragrance all around Your secrets in my view My lost, my lost was saying found My don't was saying do

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.

Steer your way through the pain that is far more real than you That's smashed the Cosmic Model, that blinded every view And please don't make me go there, though there be a God or not Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought

You sent me here You sent me there Breaking things I can't repair Making objects Out of thoughts Making more By thinking not

And you who were bewildered by a meaning Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed – Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost

I see you standing on the other side I don't know how the river got so wide I loved you baby, way back when And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed But I feel so close to everything that we lost We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame You want it darker We kill the flame

I used to be your favorite drunk Good for one more laugh Then we both ran out of luck Luck was all we ever had

There'll be the breaking of the ancient Western code Your private life will suddenly explode There'll be phantoms There'll be fires on the road And the white man dancing You'll see your woman Hanging upside down Her features covered by her fallen gown And all the lousy little poets Coming round Tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson

Confined to sex, we pressed against The limits of the sea: I saw there were no oceans left For scavengers like me.

I was born like this, I had no choice I was born with the gift of a golden voice And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond They tied me to this table right here In the Tower of Song

I’m naked and I’m filthy And both of us are guilty

the fiddler fiddles something so sublime all the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots and it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops

I've seen the future, brother: It is murder

Who broke the heart and made it new? Who's moving on, who's kiddin' who?

So I knelt there at the delta, at the alpha and the omega, at the cradle of the river and the seas. And like a blessing come from heaven for something like a second I was healed and my heart was at ease.

And there's a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong You see, you hear these funny voices In the Tower of Song

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure They gain the light, they formlessly entwine And radiant beyond your widest measure They fall among the voices and the wine

When you've fallen on the highway and you're lying in the rain, and they ask you how you're doing of course you'll say you can't complain

You always said we’re equal So let me march with you Just an extra in the sequel To the old red white and blue

She stands before you naked you can see it, you can taste it, and she comes to you light as the breeze. Now you can drink it or you can nurse it, it don't matter how you worship as long as you're down on your knees.

By the rivers dark I wandered on. I lived my life in Babylon. And I did forget My holy song: And I had no strength In Babylon.

All your moves are swift All your turns are tight Let me catch my breath I thought we had all night

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming through a crack in the wall; on a visionary flood of alcohol; from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount which I don't pretend to understand at all. It's coming from the silence on the dock of the bay, from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

And let the heavens hear it The penitential hymn Come healing of the spirit Come healing of the limb

There's a lover in the story But the story's still the same There's a lullaby for suffering And a paradox to blame But it's written in the scriptures And it's not some idle claim You want it darker We kill the flame

I was alone on the road, your love was so confusing And all my teachers told me that I had myself to blame But in the grip of sensual illusion A sweet unknowing unified the name

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name Vilified, crucified, in the human frame A million candles burning for the help that never came

They're lining up the prisoners And the guards are taking aim I struggled with some demons They were middle class and tame I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim

So come, my friends, be not afraid. We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear.

I see my life In full review It was never me It was always you

We'll be going down so deep the river's going to weep, and the mountain's going to shout Amen!

Show me the place where my head is bendin' low Show me the place where you want your slave to go

I’m tired of choosing desire I been saved by a blessed fatigue The gates of commitment unwired And nobody trying to leave

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day Oh in the Tower of Song

There's an attic where children are playing Where I've got to lie down with you soon In a dream of Hungarian lanterns In the mist of some sweet afternoon And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow All your sheep and your lilies of snow

We find ourselves on different sides Of a line nobody drew Though it all may be one in the higher eye Down here where we live it is two

I've seen the nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all But love's the only engine of survival Your servant here, he has been told To say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going Any further And now the wheels of heaven stop You feel the devil's riding crop Get ready for the future: It is murder

I've heard the soul unfolds in the chambers of its longing And the bitter liquor sweetens in the hammered cup Ah but all the ladders of the night have fallen Just darkness now, to lift the longing up

Why don’t you come on back to the war, that’s right, get in it, why don’t you come on back to the war, it’s just beginning.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

An Eskimo showed me a movie he’d recently taken of you: the poor man could hardly stop shivering, his lips and his fingers were blue. I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes and I guess he just never got warm. But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice, oh please let me come into the storm.

I loved your master perfectly I taught him all that he knew. He was starving in some deep mystery like a man who is sure what is true.

I have begun to long for you, I who have no greed; I have begun to ask for you, I who have no need. You say you’ve gone away from me, but I can feel you when you breathe.

Hungry as an archway through which the troops have passed, I stand in ruins behind you, with your winter clothes, your broken sandal straps.

Well, you tell me that your lover has a broken limb, you say you’re kind of restless now and it’s on account of him.

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love

I tried to leave you, I don’t deny I closed the book on us, at least a hundred times.

And I can’t wait to tell you to your face And I can’t wait for you to take my place You are The Naked Angel In My Heart You are The Woman With Her Legs Apart It’s written on the walls of this hotel You go to heaven once you’ve been to hell

Then let the other selves be wrong, yeah, let them manifest and come till every taste is on the tongue, till love is pierced and love is hung, and every kind of freedom done

O come with me my little one, we will find that farm and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm. And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am, O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.

Ah they’re shutting down the factory now Just when all the bills are due And the fields they’re under lock and key Tho’ the rain and the sun come through And springtime starts but then it stops In the name of something new And all the senses rise against this Coming back to you

Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

We met when we were almost young deep in the green lilac park. You held on to me like I was a crucifix, as we went kneeling through the dark.

And there are no letters in the mailbox, and there are no grapes upon the vine, and there are no chocolates in the boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in the mine.

I cried, “Oh, Lady Midnight, I fear that you grow old, the stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold

So daily I renew my idle duty I touch her here and there – I know my place I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty and people call me traitor to my face

But my darling says “Leonard, just let it go by That old silhouette on the great western sky” So I pick out a tune and they move right along and they’re gone like the smoke and they’re gone like this song

And why are you so quiet now standing there in the doorway? You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway.

But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee.

It was deep into his fiery heart he took the dust of Joan of Arc, and then she clearly understood if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.

And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said “All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them” But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you’ll trust him For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind.

Your master took you travelling, well at least that’s what you said. And now do you come back to bring your prisoner wine and bread?

Your pain is no credential here, it’s just the shadow, shadow of my wound.

And here where there is no description Oh here in the moment at hand No sinner need rise up forgiven No victim need limp to the stand

I met a woman long ago her hair the black that black can go, Are you a teacher of the heart? Soft she answered no. I met a girl across the sea, her hair the gold that gold can be, Are you a teacher of the heart? Yes, but not for thee.

Oh bless thee continuous stutter Of the word being made into flesh

The cripple here that you clothe and feed is neither starved nor cold; he does not ask for your company, not at the centre, the centre of the world.

Yes, you who are broken by power, you who are absent all day, you who are kings for the sake of your children’s story, the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money, the hand of your lover is clay.

the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair

She used to wear her hair like you except when she was sleeping, and then she’d weave it on a loom of smoke and gold and breathing.

And may the spirit of this song, may it rise up pure and free. May it be a shield for you, a shield against the enemy.

And deep into his fiery heart he took the dust of Joan of Arc, and high above the wedding guests he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

to wear upon my swollen appetite.“ Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way, you know I’ve watched you riding every day and something in me yearns to win such a cold and lonesome heroine.

Come over to the window, my little darling, I’d like to try to read your palm. I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy before I let you take me home.

Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night and I put it in your little shoe. And then I confess that I tortured the dress that you wore for the world to look through.

And the light came from her body And the night went through her grace All summer long she touched me And I knew her, I knew her Face to face

Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose Upon the shore, beneath the bridge That they are building on some endless river

And I’ve read the Bill of Human Rights And some of it was true But there wasn’t any burden left So I’m laying it on you.”

I listened to your kisses at the door I never heard the world so clear before You ran your bath and you began to sing I felt so good I couldn’t feel a thing

Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc as she came riding through the dark; no moon to keep her armour bright, no man to get her through this very smoky night.

And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin That the wilderness is gathering All its children back again

And now this woman by your side, well, she’s asleep And there’s nothing you can give her and there’s nothing you want to keep

Just take this longing from my tongue all the lonely things my hands have done. Let me see your beauty broken down like you would do for one your love.

And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror

Ah but if you cannot raise your love To a very high degree, Then you’re just the man I’ve been thinking of – So come and stand with me.

You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn, learn to serve me well.

Why don’t you try to do without him? Why don’t you try to live alone? Do you really need his hands for your passion? Do you really need his heart for your throne?

I left a wife in Tennessee And a baby in Saigon – I risked my life, but not to hear Some country-western song.

I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though it all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Oh take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done, untie for me your hired blue gown, like you would do for one that you love.

I heard of a saint who had loved you, so I studied all night in his school. He taught that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule. And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure he drowned himself in the pool. His body is gone but back here on the lawn his spirit continues to drool.

It’s like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

Well I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned: When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me. But the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free.

Too early for the rainbow, too early for the dove These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood And there is no man or woman can be touched But you who come between them will be judged

He tried to make a final stand beside the railway track She said, “The art of longing’s over and it’s never coming back.”

The judges said you missed it by a fraction rise up and brace your troops for the attack Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action Oh see the men of action falling back

Now the crickets are singing The vesper bells ringing The cat’s curled asleep in his chair I’ll go down to Bill’s Bar I can make it that far And I’ll see if my friends are still there Yes, and here’s to the few Who forgive what you do And the fewer who don’t even care And the night comes on It’s very calm I want to cross over, I want to go home But she says, Go back, go back to the World

Those who dance, begin to dance Those who weep begin Those who earnestly are lost Are lost and lost again

I asked my father, I said, “Father change my name.” The one I’m using now it’s covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.

Even in your arms I know I’ll never get it right Even when you bend to give me Comfort in the night

And the last time that I saw her she was living with some boy who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to a kitchen chair She broke your throne, and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Ah, there is no comfort in the covens of the witch, some very clever doctor went and sterilized the bitch, and the only man of energy, yes the revolution’s pride, he trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child.

Oh, your chains are too dark For the seas you must swim You are smiling at the seaweed But your smile is too grim

And I thank you, I thank you for doing your duty, you keepers of truth, you guardians of beauty. Your vision is right, my vision is wrong, I’m sorry for smudging the air with my song.

But here, right here, between the birthmark and the stain, between the ocean and your open vein, between the snowman and the rain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name.

For now I need your hidden love. I’m cold as a new razor blade. You left when I told you I was curious, I never said that I was brave.

Your letters they all say that you’re beside me now. Then why do I feel alone? I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone.

I leave the lady meditating on the very love which I, I do not wish to claim, I journey down the hundred steps, but the street is still the very same.

And I sing this for the captain Whose ship has not been built For the mother in confusion Her cradle still unfilled

Well, I argued all night like so many have before, saying, “Whatever you give me, I seem to need so much more.” Then she pointed at me where I kneeled on her floor, she said, “Don’t try to use me or slyly refuse me, just win me or lose me, it is this that the darkness is for.”

Some girls wander by mistake into the mess that scalpels make. Are you the teachers of my heart? We teach old hearts to break.

And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite, and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.

I believe that you heard your master sing when I was sick in bed. I suppose that he told you everything that I keep locked away in my head.

Do you remember all of those pledges That we pledged in the passionate night Ah they’re soiled now, they’re torn at the edges Like moths on a still yellow light No penance serves to renew them No massive transfusions of trust Why not even revenge can undo them So twisted these vows and so crushed

I am the distance you put between all of the moments that we will be.

I choose the rooms that I live in with care, the windows are small and the walls almost bare, there’s only one bed and there’s only one prayer; I listen all night for your step on the stair.

And now I hear your master sing, you kneel for him to come. His body is a golden string that your body is hanging from.

Through windows in the dark The children come, the children go Like arrows with no targets Like shackles made of snow

Like any dealer he was watching for the card That is so high and wild He’ll never need to deal another He was just some Joseph looking for a manger

Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne? Where are the paths your heroes came? Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away, was I, was I only limping, was I really lame?

And it’s time for the burden it’s time for the whip Will she walk through the flame Can he shoot from the hip

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don’t really care for music, do you? It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

But you’ve used up all your coupons except the one that seems to be written on your wrist along with several thousand dreams.

Maybe I’m still hurting I can’t turn the other cheek But you know that I still love you It’s just that I can’t speak I looked for you in everyone And they called me on that too I lived alone but I was only Coming back to you

And they’re handing down my sentence now And I know what I must do Another mile of silence while I’m Coming back to you

The door is open, you can’t close your shelter You try the handle of the road It opens, do not be afraid It’s you my love, you who are the stranger

I’m on the side that’s always lost Against the side of Heaven I’m on the side of Snake-eyes tossed Against the side of Seven.

But you lost them in your freedom And you need him now, you’re wild Blessed is the memory Of everybody’s child

Then fire, make your body cold, I’m going to give you mine to hold,“ saying this she climbed inside to be his one, to be his only bride.

Now the clasp of this union who fastens it tight? Who snaps it asunder the very next night Some say the rider Some say the mare Or that love’s like the smoke beyond all repair

With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.

As a falling leaf may rest A moment on the air So your head upon my breast So my hand upon your hair

I’m not asking for mercy Not from the man You just don’t ask for mercy While you’re still on the stand

And many nights endure Without a moon or star So we will endure When one is gone and far

And then leaning on your window sill He’ll say one day you caused his will To weaken with your love and warmth and shelter

The rain falls down on last year’s man An hour has gone by And he has not moved his hand But everything will happen if he only gives the word The lovers will rise up And the mountains touch the ground But the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend And all the rain falls down amen On the works of last year’s man

You’re faithful to the better man, I’m afraid that he left. So let me judge your love affair in this very room where I have sentenced mine to death.

If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you.

Then I saw you naked in the early dawn, oh, I hoped you would be someone new. I reached for you but you were gone, so lady I’m going too.

And there’s nothing to follow There’s nowhere to go She’s gone like the summer gone like the snow

That’s all I can say, baby That’s all I can say It wasn’t for nothing That they put me away I fell with my angel Down the chain of command There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand

Lost in the rages of fragrance Lost in the rags of remorse Lost in the waves of a sickness That loosens the high silver nerves

When I am on a pedestal, you did not raise me there. Your laws do not compel me to kneel grotesque and bare. I myself am the pedestal for this ugly hump at which you stare

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

You met him at some temple, where they take your clothes at the door. He was just a numberless man in a chair who’d just come back from the war.

And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil That I had to draw aside to see The serpent eat its tail

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain So I hang upon my altar And I hoist my axe again And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began When Jesus was the honeymoon And Cain was just the man

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still My falsity had stung me like a hornet The poison sank and it paralysed my will

in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it’s come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

Now my heart’s like a blister From doing what I do If the moon has a sister It’s got to be you

And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight I’ve heard all the wild reports, they can’t be right But whose head is this she’s dancing with on the threshing floor Whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more

Do you want to be the ditch around a tower? Do you want to be the moonlight in his cave? Do you want to give your blessing to his power as he goes whistling past his daddy, past his daddy’s grave

If it be your will That a voice be true From this broken hill I will sing to you From this broken hill All your praises they shall ring If it be your will To let me sing

The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.

But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk, All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?

And the vow of compassion That you swore through your teeth When the war began to end And the photographs weep

Goodnight, my darling, I hope you’re satisfied, the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide. And here’s a man still working for your smile.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control. It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.

I’m not looking for another as I wander in my time, walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me, it’s just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea, but let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

Do not dress in those rags for me, I know you are not poor; you don’t love me quite so fiercely now when you know that you are not sure, it is your turn, beloved, it is your flesh that I wear.

A war between the odd and the even.

Well I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul; when I am not this hunchback that you see, I sleep beneath the golden hill.

And here, right here, between the dancer and his cane, between the sailboat and the drain, between the newsreel and your tiny pain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name.

I changed my style to silver I changed my clothes to black And where I would surrender Ah now I would attack

She said, "I’m tired of the war, I want the kind of work I had before, a wedding dress or something white to wear upon my swollen appetite.”

Then lay your rose on the fire The fire give up to the sun The sun give over to splendour In the arms of the high holy one

And draw us near And bind us tight All your children here In their rags of light In our rags of light All dressed to kill And end this night If it be your will

I met a man who lost his mind in some lost place I had to find, follow me the wise man said, but he walked behind.

I asked her to hold me, I said, “Lady, unfold me,” but she scorned me and she told me I was dead and I could never return.

Well I lived with a child of snow when I was a soldier, and I fought every man for her until the nights grew colder.

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture…

She took his tavern parliament, his cap, his cocky dance, she mocked his female fashions and his working-class moustache.

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

She took his much admired oriental frame of mind and the heart-of-darkness alibi his money hides behind She took his blonde madonna and his monastery wine – “This mental space is occupied and everything is mine.”

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she’s half crazy But that’s why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer That you’ve always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

So, now that you’ve decided To follow the sun Like a shadow of birds Or a king on the run

Well, I’ve been waiting, I was sure We’d meet between the trains we’re waiting for I think it’s time to board another Please understand, I never had a secret chart To get me to the heart of this Or any other matter While he talks like this, you don’t know what he’s after When he speaks like this, you don’t know what he’s after

Or she’ll make a break for the high plateau where there’s nothing above and there’s nothing below

The baby’s crying, so you do not go outside, and all your work it’s right before your eyes.

I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark Oh one by one she had to tell them That her name was Joan of Arc

And you wrap up his tired face in your hair and he hands you the apple core. Then he touches your lips now so suddenly bare of all the kisses we put on some time before.

I fought in the old revolution on the side of the ghost and the King. Of course I was very young and I thought that we were winning; I can’t pretend I still feel very much like singing as they carry the bodies away.

Oh, you are really such a pretty one. I see you’ve gone and changed your name again. And just when I climbed this whole mountainside, to wash my eyelids in the rain!

Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady?

And who are you?“ she sternly spoke to the one beneath the smoke. "Why, I’m fire,” he replied, “And I love your solitude, I love your pride.

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Just open up your dainty little hand. You know this life is filled with many sweet companions, many satisfying one-night stands.

And come forth from the cloud of unknowing And kiss the cheek of the moon

But climb on your tears and be silent Like a rose on its ladder of thorns

the crumbs of love that you offer me, they’re the crumbs I’ve left behind.

Yes, and here, right here between the moonlight and the lane, between the tunnel and the train, between the victim and his stain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name.

There’s a blaze of light in every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.

Oh sometimes I see her undressing for me, she’s the soft naked lady love meant her to be and she’s moving her body so brave and so free. If I’ve got to remember that’s a fine memory.

O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel, You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

He said, "I locked you in this body, I meant it as a kind of trial. You can use it for a weapon, or to make some woman smile.”

But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever and the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame She said at last I was her finest lover and if she withered I would be to blame

You will never see a man this naked I will never hold a woman this close

And you say you’ve been humbled in love Cut down in your love Forced to kneel in the mud next to me Ah but why so bitterly turn from the one Who kneels there as deeply as thee

I went down to the place Where I knew she lay waiting Under the marble and the snow I said, Mother I’m frightened The thunder and the lightning I’ll never come through this alone She said, I’ll be with you My shawl wrapped around you My hand on your head when you go And the night came on It was very calm I wanted the night to go on and on But she said, Go back, Go back to the World

May Christ have mercy on your soul For making such a joke Amid these hearts that burn like coal And the flesh that rose like smoke.

As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill So my body leaves no scar On you and never will

I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit. Then he wrote himself a prescription, and your name was mentioned in it! Then he locked himself in a library shelf with the details of our honeymoon, and I hear from the nurse that he’s gotten much worse and his practice is all in a ruin.

And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight All these wounded boys you lie beside Goodnight, my friends, goodnight

One by one, the guests arrive The guests are coming through The open-hearted many The broken-hearted few And no one knows where the night is going And no one knows why the wine is flowing Oh love I need you

I greet you from the other side Of sorrow and despair With a love so vast and shattered It will reach you everywhere

So you moved away the mountain That the sun rose behind And you said yourself a prayer And laid down with the blind

Your body like a searchlight my poverty revealed, I would like to try your charity until you cry, “Now you must try my greed.” And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me

and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose, yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.

Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee She says, My body is the light, my body is the way” I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride’s bouquet

Children have takes these pledges They have ferried them out of the past Oh beyond all the graves and the hedges Where love must go hiding at last

It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone Who is reaching for the sky just to surrender

The river is swollen up with rusty cans and the trees are burning in your promised land.

Your father’s gone a-hunting Through the silver and the glass Where only greed can enter But spirit, spirit cannot pass

And all the ladies go moist, and the judge has no choice, a singer must die for the lie in his voice.

and there is no space but there’s left and right and there is no time but there’s day and night

Your father’s gone a-hunting And he’s lost his lucky charm And he’s lost the guardian heart That keeps the hunter from the harm

It’s not the news of burning towns that ruins your mind Like a spool you turn and you turn but it won’t unwind No these wars you did not start, they don’t tear your sleep apart It’s just a man taking what he needs from the store room

True love leaves no traces If you and I are one It’s lost in our embraces Like stars against the sun

And the crickets are breaking his heart with their song as the day caves in and the night is all wrong

Now the courtroom is quiet, but who will confess. Is it true you betrayed us? The answer is Yes. Then read me the list of the crimes that are mine, I will ask for the mercy that you love to decline.

I sang my songs, I told my lies, to lie between your matchless thighs.

Why do you stand by the window Abandoned to beauty and pride The thorn of the night in your bosom The spear of the age in your side

And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music.”

Trav'ling lady stay awhile until the night is over. I’m just a station on your way, I know I’m not your lover.

Just take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done, let me see your beauty broken down, like you would do for one you love.

Let your mercy spill On all these burning hearts in hell If it be your will To make us well

Oh the world is sweet the world is wide and she’s there where the light and the darkness divide and the steam’s coming off her she’s huge and she’s shy and she steps on the moon when she paws at the sky

And while he talks his dreams to sleep You notice there’s a highway That is curling up like smoke above his shoulder

For the heart with no companion For the soul without a king For the prima ballerina Who cannot dance to anything

You kept right on loving, I went on a fast, now I am too thin and your love is too vast.

I saw her wince, I saw her cry, I saw the glory in her eye. Myself I long for love and light, but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you

Well you know that I love to live with you, but you make me forget so very much. I forget to pray for the angels and then the angels forget to pray for us.

I know you need your sleep now, I know your life’s been hard. But many men are falling, where you promised to stand guard.

And she comes to his hand but she’s not really tame She longs to be lost he longs for the same

Now I look for her always I’m lost in this calling I’m tied to the threads of some prayer Saying, When will she summon me When will she come to me What must I do to prepare When she bends to my longing Like a willow, like a fountain She stands in the luminous air And the night comes on And it’s very calm I lie in her arms she says, When I’m gone I’ll be yours, yours for a song

Through the days of shame that are coming Through the nights of wild distress Tho’ your promise count for nothing You must keep it nonetheless

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn Dance me to the end of love

The walls of this hotel are paper-thin Last night I heard you making love to him The struggle mouth to mouth and limb to limb The grunt of unity when he came in I stood there with my ear against the wall I was not seized by jealousy at all In fact a burden lifted from my soul I heard that love was out of my control

Your standing days are done,“ I cried, “You’ll rally me no more. I don’t even know what side We fought on, or what for.

#Leonard Cohen

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tommyspeakycap · 3 years

Note

Uncle Charlie and the Shelby sis?

omg i love this idea !!!!

I actually think that little Shelby would be quite close to Charlie so here’s a sweet blurb! (set in 1920 - so moving towards end of season 1. i also made up charlie’s war history as we don’t know much about it)

“Fucking, shitty, stupid bastard-”

“Oi!”

When you hear the sound of the voice cutting in likely to chastise you for your use of explicit choice language while you were practically beating the shit of the hay you were shovelling for the horses, you turn around to face him. He see’s that you look rather flustered, face a bit red as you blow a sigh past your lips and shove your hair back out of your face. “Sorry, uncle Charlie.”

“Mhm,” he nods his head, “And what’ve your brothers done this time eh?” You sigh again with some sort of disgruntled huff afterwards to display your clear irritation with the behaviour of who Charlie assumed would most likely be Tommy, Arthur at a push but very unlikely to be John. John annoyed you a lot, he knew, but never tended to make you genuinely angry. At least, never angry enough to switch off the sunshine and rainbows girl who sang and hummed while shovelling hay and horse shit.

“Tommy’s being a fucking idiot. Again.” You bite harshly.

“Oi!”

“Sorry, Charlie.”

He shakes his head at you with the very slightest of smiles. “And how’s that? What’s he done?” Your uncle grabs the spair shovel from where it was leaning against the barn door so as to join you in your cleaning of the stables. Charlie can sense the anger that had built in you from Tommy’s seemingly incessant enforcement of all sorts of new and more restrictive rules for the members of the family - especially you and slightly Ada - since he had started to try expand the business into the race tracks. He doubts this time will be any different from the last three times you’ve complained about him in the last week.

“Finn’s 11 and he gets to go with them to the races sometimes, but i’m nearly 17 and i can’t even step out the house without an escort when the boys aren’t in Small Heath. It’s so unfair!” You rant almost desperately. The frustration is clearly heard in your words, and Charlie was no fool to picking up on your feelings by the way you spoke and acted. Charlie very, very much understands your brothers desires to keep you safe; you’re his favourite if he’s totally honest. So he’s incredibly protective himself, he felt quite a sense of fatherly responsibility for you.

Charlie had gone to fight in France for around a year and a half. That definitely did a number on him, but he was transferred home after being shot. It was then that he was appointed a post on the home front as a farmer and some kind of war horse breeder and trainer because he was so good with animals. As a result, it had become his job to look after you during the years of the war that your brothers were away. Polly did your breakfasts and dinner and would make sure you were well looked after, but Charlie took you out to the farm during the day where he would make packed lunches. You would get to pick vegetables, train the sheep dogs, collect wool and the likes of that sort of work. He knew that since you were 12, had you stayed hanging around the factories in Small Heath, you might’ve ended up having to work in one, so brought you to work with him instead. It had brought you extremely close to your uncle.

It’s why now, it was his scrap yard you went to when Tommy and the rest of the family were getting to you. He would often find you there, felt like a sixth sense of some sort that he would just get a feeling you were there - if he hadn’t heard you shouting or singing. Most commonly your troubles were caused by or at least had some distant correlation to Tommy and something he had done. The head of the family does of course think through his decisions and what they’re impact will be, but the one mistake Thomas tends to make when he thinks abouts these impacts is what appears to always affect you.

And that is, that he looks for direct danger. He overthinks and spends nights riddled with fear that his plan will bring harm to those he loves. He fears Billy Kimber will come to try and take from Tommy what he holds most dear in retaliation if he doesn’t act exactly the right way. He fails to look at less direct impacts. He sees your protection escorts as keeping you from being harmed and sees keeping you in the house constantly as ensuring he knows that you’re safe, always. He doesn’t see you missing out on your youth or missing your friends or feeling threatening and anxious at the fact you’re always either in house arrest or practically with a fucking protection detail. He never thinks like that and Charlie knows that is what gets to you so much, because you just see that as he being malicious and not thinking about what’s best for you at all.

“Sometimes i just wish we were normal y’know?” The change in tone of your voice from red hot anger to a timid quite mumble tells Charlie that you’re hurting more than you may ever let on in words. “Just miss my life.” You lament lowly, dropping the shovel and instead opting to drop yourself down on a nearby haybale.

Charlie signs not in annoyance or anger, but in a kind of sympathetic way as he leans himself on his shovel and turns to face your direction. “I know you do, love. Think we all do these days. Missing your brother eh?” Charlie tries to ask you as softly as he can despite having a generally grumpy, grumbling voice. The question marks another change in your demeanour as he immediately notes that your shoulders slump and you begin clenching your jaw to try not to get all upset.

You just nod in response.

“Mhm,” Charlie hums, moving to sit on the hay bale next to you, “Though so.” He pulls you into his side and feels you shaking a little with a few small sniffles to tell him your were crying. It breaks his heart and he know it would shatter Tommy’s if he knew. He had known for weeks that part of your rage and irritation was a smoke screen for the painful fact that you just missed your brother. You missed being little and holding his hand, having him play games with you and look after you, spend time with you and have genuine, actual conversations that weren’t two minutes long, arguments or about business and rules. You were still young and the four years you’d spent without them, plus the trauma you’d gone through in your life, meant that you missed and relied upon them a lot more than most would. Your hurting heart just longed for your big brother to make all things right again, just like he used to.

Things were so much more complicated now than they were before, you knew that. But it didn’t stop the hurt, it only just made it more painful.

“Listen, hey, listen,” Charlie comforts, “It’s alright. I’ll have words with that brother of your eh?” He feels you nod your head. “Yes please.” You whisper, sniffling again.

A silence falls between you as it often does, a bubble created where you could feels your feelings and your uncle would do all that he could in his limited power to move whatever kind of mountains you needed moving so you could feel better again. It was damn near his very top priority that you were provided with a better childhood and better young adult-hood than what he was able to give the Tommy, Arthur and John.

But it just so happened that Charlie Strong made a promise to the woman he loved - your mother. The woman you were so very like. He felt it his duty to protect you like a daughter because that is what your mother would have wanted. He promised to look after you and in doing so he recognised what your brothers often didn’t. Your physical well-being wasn’t everything. Of the same importance he wanted, just as the rest of the family did, for you to be safe, happy and loved in an emotional sense. They did love you, all of them. So much it was painful and so much that it was enough to do you a lifetime; they just had such a bad way of showing it.

Charlie decided it was time now to give your older brothers a wake up call. It was time they learned how to love you in a way you understood. Killing for you and keeping you bubble wrap didn’t tell you they loved you, they had to show you in a true way. They had to tell you and hold you just like he had learned to do to show his care and love for you. He had to change to accommodate how you experienced love, so he did just that; he changed.

Charlie was determined and he held a level of authority with the boys he practically raised. So starting with Tommy, he was going to enforce that same change in order to make sure you knew just how fucking loved you were in that family.

And for Charlie Strong, all of the fighting, the pushing and the moving of seemingly unmovable mountains was worth in to no end when you mumbled, “I love you, uncle Charlie.” Against his shoulder while he hugged you tight.

“Yeah yeah, Shelby,” he sniggers, pressing a kiss on top of your head, “I love you too.”

#charlie strong #charlie strong x shelby!reader #charlie strong x shelby sister reader #shelby!reader #charlie strong blurb #peaky blinders #peaky blinders ask #peaky blinders blurb

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fragileizywriting · 3 years

Text

the stars are nothing (compared to your constellations of freckles)

pairing: Adrien / Marinette word count: 7,521 chapter: 1/1 rating: G summary: “I used to have a huge— huge— crush on you when we were younger. She took hold of it and has been running with the idea that we’re perfect for each other ever since then.” Adrien nearly choked on his drink. “Really?” “It was embarrassing.” Marinette placed the cup down and rubbed her fingers together for warmth. “B-but trust me, the crush is gone now, don’t worry.” “G-gone?” Was the sky spinning, or was he just seeing things? Was he melting? Even while sitting, he felt like the world had been pulled out from underneath him. She used to have a crush on him. She used to have a crush on him. Only to give it up so she could— so she could— Date Chat Noir. Date him. His breath crumbled in his lungs, suffocating and painful in the cold air. AO3 link

He heard her first before actually seeing her. His back turned to their tent in the cool, chilly night— he knew just by the sound of her voice she had tucked herself into her knitted cap, and layered long sleeves to keep the cold air from permeating into her skin. “Oh— Hi, Adrien.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no. Just— just looking for something to do for a little while. Couldn’t fall asleep?”

He poked a bit at the firepit with a metal prong, watching the flames lick the sides of the sticks he’d put inside the bowl the way Nino had taught him to do. He sat back onto his little floor cushion, turning just so to catch a hint of Marinette’s pink lips pulled into a shy smile as she zipped the tent behind her closed.

He shook his head, warm in the chest as Marinette pulled out another cushion from the small laundry bag they had brought to store them in, and she sat close to the fire. Close enough for him to wrap his arms around her, if he were any bolder, or if he was any less terrified. “Not yet. Nino is moving too much, and I can’t find his phone to stop the music blaring from his headphones— I’d follow the wire, but they’re bluetooth. He’s going to go deaf in his sleep one day from how loud it is.”

Her laughter filled him to the brim with warmth, and he couldn’t stop himself from letting his own smile form.

“What about you? What are you doing out here instead of sleeping?”

She laughed to herself, rubbing her hands together, trying to keep herself warm. He wished he could reach over to her and warm them for her— but he was nothing more than a stranger to her. He turned his attention back to the fire to keep himself from acting on impulse. “Oh— well— It’s embarrassing to admit, really.”

He smiled into the collar of his sweater. “Try me.”

Always up for a challenge, Marinette’s eyes sparkled as she took his bait. “I move a lot in my sleep, too. I’m a hugger.”

“Oh really?” Adrien wanted nothing more than to tell her that he knew exactly that. He knew what Marinette looked like tucked under his chin, arms somehow making it to his hair and petting behind the ears. The sweet smell of milk soap on her skin making up for the headbutts he’d get as she tossed and turned in his arms. The way to only manage to get her to hold still for even a brief period of time was to sleep on top of her, blanketing her in his own weight.

He knew that she hated his fake snoring. He wasn’t sure if he did it for some backwards irony to make up for the lack of sleep he always got, but he loved the sweet and generous laughter he got out of her from it.

He knew that her laughter was contagious past nine at night— where her smile would take form into one of the most beautiful sights he’d ever seen, where her eyes would twinkle like stars.

He knew that when she finally did sleep, and finally did stop moving for the night, her weight was comforting on him— assuming that somehow she’d flipped their positions throughout the night to rest her head on the space on his shoulder. She’d always complained about the sleekness of his hexleather costume and how it was impossible for her to feel comfortable without slipping off, and yet she fell asleep for hours on him without having her head slip off him uncomfortably.

He knew that her hair tickled his nose when she slept, and that he only slept well when he could smell the easy scent of her shampoo pressed up against him.

And he knew that Marinette only slept well when she could press the meat of her palm on the space just below his clavicle, letting her hand rest where his chest rose and fell.

“Oh, yeah. I’m a total annoyance— Alya hates it— she feels claustrophobic whenever she sleeps near me, so I’m letting her get some sleep before I head back in.” Marinette sat back, humor lining her own voice, completely oblivious to the way Adrien was buzzing in his seat with yearning— wishing to the point it hurt to just reach out to her and kiss her. “How long have you been out here for?”

“I’m not sure. An hour, I think?” Adrien poked at the fire again, flipping one of the sticks over to the other side and watching the fresh bark crumble and burn. Ever since they’d tucked in for the night, he hadn’t been able to sleep. It’d been a long while since he had to sleep without Marinette with him, and the experience was foreign.

His hands had gravitated so much towards the other heat source in bed— Nino— looking for a hand to hold or someone’s neck to nuzzle. He’d nearly pulled Nino onto him like he was used to doing with Marinette— and while he was sure Nino wouldn’t mind, Adrien had left the tent before it had gotten embarrassing. He missed her warmth.

He didn’t know heartache could be so strong.

Marinette fiddled with her phone, swiping through her conversation on her apps, waiting for the circle bar to finish loading and refresh for new messages. Nothing. Adrien tried not to pay attention to what was on her phone— he was just a friend, she didn’t know him— but he couldn’t help himself watch her refresh their conversation over and over again on a blackened messenger app, lilac pink chat bubbles jumping back and forth on her screen with every refresh.

Waiting for a response from him.

Him.

Chat Noir him.

But not Adrien him.

She sighed to herself, biting her bottom lip, accepting the lack of internet. “I guess there’s no signal out here?”

“I tried sending out a couple of messages already,” He nodded, admitting to her face that he had tried to respond. She didn’t know he was referring to that— was it obvious in his eyes at how much he wished he could say it to her? “Nothing— uhm— nothing went through.”

They break eye contact after a moment.

His heart felt heavy.

“Oh, wow. The service here must be a lot worse than I thought. I hope we don’t need to contact anyone this weekend, or anything like that.” Marinette crossed her legs in front of her, wiping her palms on her pajama pants. Chat Noir paw-prints dotted all on the legs— a gift from him last christmas. He’d bought it off of the original fan merch website after spending a while looking for what to get her. She’d laughed about it, given Chat Noir a glare that had dissolved into laughter as he had opened his own gift and confetti had ruptured out of the small box.

He loved the bed slippers she had given him, and always made sure to hide it away under his bed or in his closet whenever his friends came over.

It wasn’t a gift for Adrien. Because it wasn’t for this half of him.

It was a gift for Chat Noir— and he made sure to keep it away from his civilian friends. The mint green color for the bunnies was incredibly endearing.

She wore her own gift for laughs sometimes, always finding it incredibly humorous that he’d gone out and bought his own merch. He always made sure to pepper her face with kisses every time she wore it, telling her that she looked like she was his biggest fan. It never failed to make her laugh to the point of losing her breath.

Adrien never felt so far away from her than sitting right next to her in front of the fire.

It made him want to cry that Marinette had put it on willingly, unknowing that he was here, most likely for the simple reason to have a bit of him with her while she left the city for the weekend. Adrien blushed to himself, staring away from Marinette’s hands, who he’d gotten entranced to looking at the way they moved. He wished he could hold her hand. His voice felt weak. “W-well I’m sure we won’t need to call anyone for a while. We brought enough food to last for a week, Nino’s decision. If we hike up more of the mountain tomorrow, we’ll probably have more signal.”

A private smile filtered to her face, one that he shouldn’t be able to read. But he knew everything about Marinette now. She was excited to have service. She wanted to text him. She curled her legs in closer to her, holding herself tight, resting her forehead and tired eyes on her knees. The small lock of hair that escaped her cap fell from her shoulder, spilling softly onto her collarbone.

Adrien tried not to stare, the words he so desperately wanted to say and had practiced for the entire night getting stuck at the edge of his throat. He— he couldn’t do it.

Coward. Coward.

Marinette would hate him, wouldn’t she? She’d trusted her entire life with Chat Noir— but he was a nobody to her when he was Adrien. What chance did he have to ruin her trust like that, and hope that it turned out okay?

“I won’t be able to send a goodnight text tonight. I hope… I hope that’s okay.” Marinette murmured to herself, speaking into her knees. Adrien wondered if she missed him as much as he missed her— regardless of her being right next to him.

He wondered if he’d be able to tell her the truth like he had planned to. His mouth refused to move, his tongue pretending to be made out of cement. He’d fought countless of Akumas, stared at death hundreds of times— he faulters now. Here. An entire galaxy and universe between them, even as they’re just centimeters away from each other.

He pretended not to hear her, favoring on bringing the subject back to the cold. He poked a bit more at the fire, letting a fresh new stick fall into the pit, enjoying the way the flame licked the surface. “Hey, I think there’s hot chocolate left in the container from dinner. Do you want to share the rest of it?”

“Oh, that’s a great idea. Let me go find it. It’s in the cooler, right?” The fire coated her cheeks rosy pink. She’d gotten so much better at communicating with Adrien him the last two years ever since Chat Noir him had shown up at her doorstep— and while she was finally able to maintain eye contact with Adrien without squeaking, she was always outspoken with him whenever he was covered in hexleather as Chat Noir— always so opinionated and passionate. Adrien couldn’t help himself by falling in love. Smitten as a kitten.

Marinette would’ve loved that pun. He wished he could tell her it.

Just three words. Just three words. All he had to do was just say three words.

He poked at the fire listlessly, trying to hype himself up to tell her the truth. She deserved to know. She deserved to know that it was him. The boy who showed up at her door every night was nothing more than her classmate that she had managed to finally stop sputtering in front of. He wanted to tell her that he loved her outside of his suit— he wanted to tell her that he wanted to be with her always, hexleather or genuine skin— he wanted to fall asleep with her tucked underneath his chin every day for the rest of his life.

He continued to poke at the fire with his prong. He couldn’t tell her.

Marinette found her way back over to him and she pushed her floor pillow closer to him with a foot, trying to balance her phone in one hand and the camping insulation bottle in the other. Her smile shy, she sat down before she had even made up her mind. Adrien tried not to scare her off.

She passed him a cup, and Adrien wept on the inside at their fingertips touching each other. Why was he such a coward? Why couldn’t he turn to her and tell her— “Adrien? Everything okay?”

“Sorry,” He dropped the metal fire poker in his hand, leaning forward to give her better attention. She held the hot chocolate bottle in between two mittened hands, smile soft and curious on her face. He tried not to dissolve into a blush, cursing himself for letting his thoughts run away without him. He bit the inside of his cheek as she poured his drink for him, the sound of the fire crackling and hissing loud against the silence of their breaths.

He hadn’t been joking when he had said that Nino’s music had been too loud. Even when Adrien had originally gotten over trying to cuddle with Nino under the covers, the music blasting in his headphones was enough to wake Adrien up from the edge of sleep. Leaning back against the fallen log, cradling the cup of hot chocolate in his hands and looking into the fire, Adrien reasoned that he could fall asleep in the position he was in. He was sure his back would protest the hike they would go on the following day if he did, but at least he wouldn’t be waking up to his hand searching for body warmth.

“I feel kind of bad for the both of them.” Marinette pulled her legs up to put her chin on, hugging her knees with her arms.

“Who?” Adrien took a sip out of his cup. Lukewarm and agonizingly sweet from all the undissolved sugar that sat at the bottom of the bottle. Perfect for the chill. Perfect for him to get his mind off of things for a bit.

He could see from the corner of his eyes that Marinette was gazing into the fireplace, the strings from her cap falling across her shoulders. He wanted to reach over and tuck that stray piece of hair under her hat— brush her bangs back and kiss her forehead. “Alya and Nino. I feel kind of bad that they have to sleep in separate tents because of us.”

“I’m sure they don’t mind it.” He kept his tone polite, trying not to devolve into his usual banter of flirts. I wouldn’t mind sharing another bed with you. He was Adrien. He was just a friend. She didn’t know him well enough. She didn’t know how well their fingers intertwined.

A short chilly breeze cut through their conversation, sending a plume of smoke from the fire into their general direction. The two of them parted, jumping quickly off their cushions as they tried not to laugh too hard. The smell of smoke burned in his nose and stained his clothes— no doubt his hair smelled like smoke, too. He should’ve worn a hat to keep the smoke smell off. Too late now.

Marinette laughed from the other side of the firepit, the light bright enough for him to see how sparkly her blue eyes were. He could probably see stars in them, if he got close enough— he knew that they lived there often whenever she was with him. “Was that the fire telling us to go to bed?”

“Not a chance,” He kept his voice low, and took a sip from his cup. It just barely tasted like smoke, which was a good sign to keep drinking. “But it may have been the fire telling us to get warmer. It’s freezing out here.”

As if she’d noticed only when he said it, she nodded in agreement, suddenly shivering under her three layers of clothes. He hoped she wouldn’t catch a cold from how much shivering she was doing.

He passed her the handle of his mug and asked her to wait, unzipping his tent to grab for his blanket. He almost hit the back of Nino’s calf in search for an end of the blanket to pull on. He brought the blanket’s edge around his shoulders, letting a big portion of the fabric drape across his shoulder as he accepted his cup back. He held the rest of the blanket with his long arm and shrugged his shoulder, beckoning Marinette to come closer and share the blanket with him.

As a friend. Just a friend. Always a friend.

He was miserable without being able to touch her.

They sat back down on the pillows, shoulders barely touching. She accepted the other end of the blanket with a thankful smile, and draped the remaining fabric over her thin frame. They sat in comfortable silence, letting the smoke billow up and the blanket cover them from the chill. He sipped from his cup contently, trying his best to stay at ease with her next to him.

Soft, strained laughter made its way out of Marinette’s throat. “No, I don’t think Alya’s okay with sleeping away from her boyfriend. Alya’s been trying to get me to change tents with Nino the entire trip over. This was supposed to be their getaway from home, you know. I’m sure she doesn’t actually mind sleeping in another tent, but I think she’d like it a lot more if they were together.”

“Is that what the both of you were talking about in the back of the van?” Nino had wanted to drive for the majority of the car trip, saying that whoever drived was always considered the designated controller of the speakers. Alya had sent him in the passenger seat, claiming that his kilometers of model-legs would cramp in the back seat no matter how much space he was given. His chance to try to warm himself up to talking to Marinette had been squished.

Marinette and Alya had spent the entire car ride talking in hushed voices in the back of the van, and Adrien wasn’t able to hear them over the sound of the speakers. Marinette had been stained permanently red from whatever blush had come up throughout the trip by the time they had made it to the park they were camping at. At the time, Adrien hadn’t understood what the fuss was about.

“Y-yeah.” She took a sip from her own cup.

“I’m sorry.” He found himself speaking before he was able to think of something to say, fingers white-knuckling around his mug. “Uhm. I know I make you uncomfortable sometimes— so the switch— it wouldn’t have been ideal.”

Marinette turned to him as best as she could on her floor pillow, trying her best not to jostle her hot chocolate. “No— no you don’t— make me uncomfortable. Honestly— I— I’m just really shy.”

He knew that wasn’t true. He knew for a fact that Marinette wasn’t shy with anything except when it came to Adrien. Marinette was vocal about everything and anything with everybody— he’d seen her bicker with akumatized people just as he showed up to take her away from trouble, and even when tossed over his shoulder to run she’d continue to ask them to let go of the akumas in them. Marinette was brave— and he knew that— and she knew that— but she couldn’t tell Adrien.

He wanted to cry. He was a coward who couldn’t tell her.

“Still though,” He cleared his throat as he felt a wave of tears threaten to take over his voice. “I don’t ever want to purposely make you uncomfortable, Marinette. You’re one of my closest friends. Being in a tent together would’ve made you uncomfortable, wouldn’t it?”

And incredibly difficult to explain if he had pulled her on him in the middle of the night, like he usually did under the context of being Chat Noir. It was one thing to explain doing it when he did it all the time. It was another to try to make an excuse when he was just his civilian self.

“No, no! I promise— I promise you don’t make me uncomfortable. Alya’s just been pressuring me to pair up with you since the beginning of time, it feels like.” She ducked her head, shy. Her cap’s strings bobbed at the movement, and she pulled at her collar as if she was struggling with admitting it. “I used to have a huge— huge— crush on you when we were younger. She took hold of it and has been running with the idea that we’re perfect for each other ever since then.”

He nearly choked on his drink. “Really?”

“It was embarrassing.” She placed the cup down and rubbed her fingers together for warmth. “B-but trust me, the crush is gone now, don’t worry.”

“G-gone?” Was the sky spinning, or was he just seeing things? Was he melting? Even while sitting he felt like the world had been pulled out from underneath him. She used to have a crush on him. She used to have a crush on him. Only to give it up so she could— so she could—

Date Chat Noir.

Date him.

His breath crumbled in his lungs, suffocating and painful in the cold air.

“I mean it’s been years now, and we’re good friends like you’ve said and— well I just— well— I have a boyfriend.” He saw her visibly bite her tongue at that. Her eyes widened at what she’d just said, nervously patting at her Chat Noir pajama pants, finally realizing that she’d admitted to having a crush on him. “I don’t think— and the tent is so small— it would be like sharing a bed and—”

“I— Oh— you do?” He had no words, staring at her with wide, slow-blinking eyes. Marinette had never referred to him as her— her— oh. Oh. Wait. Hold on. “But Marinette I would never— uh— and I never knew— I’m sorry—”

Something rattled in his chest, threatening to make him cough. Inhaled the hot chocolate into the wrong tube, he reasoned, but he couldn’t focus on it now.

Marinette referred to him as her boyfriend.

She used to have a crush on him.

The firepit was too loud in his ears. It was too hot under the blanket, surely that was it.

She smothered her nervous laughter into her cup, gazing behind her to see if Alya stirred at all in her tent. They didn’t have to worry about Nino, with his noise-canceling headphones. A bear could come in and take all their food and Nino wouldn’t notice. Or a boar. Many boars. Wolves. Cows. An entire procession of cows. With cowbells.

Adrien could scream at the top of his lungs— and he was very close to doing it— and Nino would be completely deaf to all of it.

“No, no, I didn’t— I didn’t mean to suggest that you’d do something, oh my god I’m so sorry, that’s not what I meant at all— I know you wouldn’t.” She groaned. “It— I just meant— it just wouldn’t feel okay to me.”

“Right. Yeah I’m— sorry. I never knew you had a boyfriend— god— I’m so sorry for—” Adrien couldn’t breathe, trying to clear his throat. She had a crush on him. Had. The stars in her eyes were blinding. “How— uh— how? How long, I mean?”

She blushed. How was he supposed to survive this? Oh— and she’d never called him her boyfriend before, at least not to his knowledge. They kissed a lot, they played video games, he helped her study and she would let him catnap on her chaise during the afternoon sun, but— well— there was only so much dating they could do when one of them was masked as one of the Heroes of Paris and was also a coward that couldn’t tell the girl he loved and dated that he was a civilian that she knew and— Adrien wanted to kick himself.

“Two years, maybe. That sounds about right, I guess?” She spoke so softly that he almost missed it in his turmoil.

He felt faint. “Two years?”

“We don’t really have an anniversary.” She had the idea to be sheepish as he stared at her, scratching the back of her neck with her fingers while she worried her lip between her teeth. She broke eye contact with him in favor of looking down at her cup which was only left with the small dots of undissolved chocolate spots. Adrien couldn’t stop staring at the way the firelight illuminated her face.

“He’s… very lucky to have you.” Adrien managed to say after a long pause in the conversation, his hands flexing hard around his own cup. Thoughts of being called her boyfriend so casually to anyone else made his entire body heat up in warm thoughts, and it made him want to take off his sweater from how sweaty the back of his neck was starting to get. If he could drown himself at the lake, he would’ve.

“He’s a private person,” She tried reasoning to him, under the impression that he was upset. “I don’t mention him because I don’t want to overwhelm him.”

Only half-true. Everyone knew who Chat Noir was, and even Marinette herself knew that he talked about his life as best as he could under the circumstances of not being able to reveal his secret identity. It would make him absolutely delighted to hear Marinette mention him even more in casual conversations like this.

“I can relate to being a private person,” Adrien chose to say, leaning hard onto his life-of-fame outlook. “Does Alya know about him?”

Marinette frowned. “Oh, god, no. Please don’t tell her— she’d never let me hear the end of it of how excited she is and the double dates and so many things we could do. We’ve never really discussed if we were ever going to tell others but I think it’s for the best we don’t. Alya wouldn’t be happy finding out that it’s already been two years, we’ve dug ourselves into a pit with this one honestly.”

Especially since it was Chat Noir. Alya would suffocate the both of them. The fact that he could envision it with such clarity made him grit his teeth.

He winced sympathetically. “I get you. Don’t worry, Marinette. Your secret’s safe with me. I promise. And don’t worry about your— ah— boyfriend. I hope he’s a nice guy.”

She nodded a bit too enthusiastically. “Oh. He’s wonderful.”

She gladly took his cup once he was done drinking the rest of the hot chocolate, and stood up to bin it. His hands clammed cold against the fabric of his pajama pants, and he wiped them against his thighs. He needed to tell her.

Seriously. He needed to tell her.

It wouldn’t be okay to continue this lie in front of her— especially since she called him her boyfriend to his face even though they’ve never talked about it— god what was he supposed to say to her when they saw each other again back at her house? How was he supposed to continue doing what he was doing now that he knew that she had a crush on him once?

He was going to faint.

He pulled out his phone while she pittered behind him, and cursed at the blinking empty spot on the top left corner of his screen. No signal. He couldn’t even text it to her even if he wanted to. He refreshed the messaging app just as a last measure, looking for anything that could come through. Nothing.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried earlier today, hitting refresh over and over on the app looking for new messages. He’d typed and then untyped messages on how he would tell her what he’d been trying to prepare himself to say for weeks. Everytime he thought he had gotten a message that looked perfect, he thought of the way Marinette smiled and laughed, and realized that he would break into a thousand little cataclysm pieces if he messed this up and lost it. Lost her.

Was he a coward? Could he truly not just turn to her and open his mouth and say the words that he’s been trying to say all night ever since he came out of his tent and started poking at the fire, longing for her to be right next to him and happy that they were together? And not have to hide behind a stupid hexleather domino mask and have Plagg complain to him that he was being too much of a lovesick idiot to do anything about it except just continue to go to her house?

Was he not able to confess his true feelings to a girl who had literally just spoken about having a crush on him to the point that their friends had tried to set her up on numerous occasions with him? And yet, his mouth remained shut. Coward. He was a coward.

“Marinette?” He turned to look for her, surprised that she was returning to her seat with an apple. He pocketed his phone, shy. He watched her eat, battling his mouth and brain for words to form and speak and say it.

“Adrien? Everything okay?” She looked as nervous as he did.

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s okay.” His tongue felt too big for his mouth. He didn’t want to ruin this. She was the greatest thing to happen to him. He couldn’t do it. Even if it made him flounder and upset at his cowardice, he couldn’t tell her. If something happened to their relationship because she was upset about it being him, Adrien would never be able to live it down.

“Are you sure?” He watched a trail of juice from the apple curl down her wrist.

“Oh, yeah. You should tell me more about him.” Adrien almost thunked his head back into the log behind him, disappointed in the way his voice sounded desperate. Anything to get Marinette from questioning why he looked like he was about to faint.

She looked up at him in between long lashes, adoration so crystal clear on his face. No. He definitely couldn’t tell her that it was him. “He’s my best friend. He’s my whole world.”

“More than Alya is?” He hoped he didn’t sound winded.

“Absolutely more.” She passed the apple between her hands, the puff at the end of her cap bobbing with her movements. “Oops. Don’t tell her that.”

He grabbed for the metal poker, letting his hands fidget with the sticks and the slow crackle of the fire. “What makes him your best friend?”

“He just knows so much about me. We spend so much time together. We’re hardly ever apart.”

“What’s your favorite moment with him?”

He knew her well enough to recognize her nostalgic gaze up to the starlit sky. He recognized her smile— reminiscing with such raw longing that Adrien had to give a double take in her direction. He wondered what specific moment she was thinking about. He wondered what moment he would pick if she ever asked him.

He remembered the days he would show up at her trap door, looking for somewhere to stay after a fight with his dad. Back when things were simple and Marinette was the only thing that could fix it.

Who was he kidding? Marinette was still the only thing that could fix it.

He remembered after the first few Akuma fights, when he would show up at her door just as a courtesy to check in if she was okay— the Akuma fights where Marinette would be in the middle of the fight begging the akumatized person to change their mind— and he would stay for hours. Under the pretence that he was concerned for a citizen of Paris, of course.

He remembered when she cried on his for the first time— something had happened at school that he had never understood because Marinette was a silent cryer when she cried, and didn’t speak other than the occasional curse word. He remembered when he cried on her for the first time. That was when he found out that she smelled like milksoap— and the scent had clung to his nose like a blanket for the entirety of the following day. The following school day he had felt that he was floating, drifting away in a cloud of milksoap.

He’d been useless during that following Akuma attack.

He remembered their first kiss— how could he not? The memory was seared into his head for the rest of time. It was one thing for him to lay on her bed while they watched cartoons together. It was another to lean towards her, hogging her body pillow, while she looked at him with wide expectant eyes. She wanted something from him, and he wasn’t sure what. A gentle little smile. Her breath caught on something. He couldn’t stop looking at her. What other choice did he have but to kiss her in that moment?

In her soft pajamas? Hair down? Cherry lip balm? The smell of hot chocolate on her breath? He wasn’t a fool. He had never been more sure of something in his life.

He still couldn’t remember what the cartoon was about.

Plagg had made fun of him for the entire day following it. He couldn’t help himself. All he wanted to do for the rest of his life was kiss her.

“My favorite memory would be… well. There was a day where he found out I have freckles.” Her voice took him out of his thoughts, and he nearly missed it.

“Your— your freckles?” He tilted his head, trying to give the impression that he had been paying attention.

Marinette’s eyes softened towards the fire, completely lost in thought. Adrien tried not to lose his breath. Even wind-chilled, and lips chapped, she made his heart hurt. “It was late, once. I think we were watching a movie at my place.”

It had been his idea to watch the movie. He had been absolutely certain that she would’ve loved the movie— and he was still sure— but they’d never finished. The entire time he had completely ignored it in favor of playing a game with her on trying to put his head on her lap without her trying to push him off the bed. She had laughed the entire time while he was trying, advocating on closing the movie app in favor of letting him cuddle. He’d gotten too close to her face, in the process— her laughter had died down. Her eyes were so much more bluer up close.

She had freckles. He remembered counting them— a smattering of dots across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheekbones. He’d lost track after twenty, since she’d broken away from him, stammering over her words that reminded him of when she talked to him as Adrien. It hadn’t taken a lot of brain power to realize that their movie night was done. He’d gone home after apologizing, and could barely look at her in the eye the next day.

“He looked at me like he had finally realized what I looked like,” Marinette laughed to herself, taking a bite of her apple. She was nearly done with it, Adrien noticed too late. She was going to get up soon. Maybe even head to bed. “It was the sweetest little moment we had, I feel like. I think about it all the time.”

Adrien could only keep the polite smile on his face for so long. Was she yearning for him? Did she know how much he wanted to burst from being so close to her but having to be a complete stranger? Did she know that he wanted to drown himself in the lake from how awake he was? If they parted for the night, he wouldn’t be able to sleep for the next week and a half. Plagg would never stop teasing him about it for the rest of time. If only she knew what he was going through. He tried not to choke on his tongue as his mouth ran over itself. “Marinette? I want to tell you something.”

She turned away from the fire to look at him fast enough to give him whiplash. “Oh. Did I— I’m sorry— did I over talk?”

“No, no not at all!” He could hear the strain in his voice. I’m here. I’m right here. It’s me. “I just. I just. Uhm.”

She tried to appease him. “Oh. If it’s about me having a crush on you, it’s okay. We’re just friends.”

He was an idiot. A huge idiot. Say the words. Say them. She was right there. Hugging distance. Kissing distance. He wanted to kiss her so badly. “No— well. It’s about the ‘you having a crush on me’ part, yes, but not just that.”

“Go on?” She winced at the weakness of her voice.

“I’m sorry.” Oh, he really wanted to drown himself now. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he say it? He fought akumas harder than this, and he had bruises to prove it. Why couldn’t he just say the words? His hands were shaking in his lap. He was freezing and on fire. His miraculous ring was never more interesting than it was as he twisted it on his finger with his other hand.

She frowned, not at all understanding. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I’m sorry for not knowing you had a crush on me when we were younger.” He was the emotional equivalent of grasping at straws, desperate for himself to be able to say the words in the most graceful way. Chat Noir was a coward. He wondered if Ladybug would be mad if she knew that he was floundering on telling a girl his true feelings.

“Oh— oh. That’s— that’s fine.”

“It isn’t. I should’ve realized.” He was nervous enough to rake an entire hand into his hair. “I should’ve seen the signs. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I thought you had been just a best friend at the time.”

“Seriously— it’s— it’s fine.” She waved him away. “It was such a long— long— time ago. We were children.”

Adrien could do nothing but be silent for the following minutes. Marinette had a boyfriend now. Of course she would be over him. Even though she was still dating him. What a confusing mess…

Would she still be over him after he told her? If she walked away, or zipped herself in her tent? The following day of hiking would be awkward and terrible. Oh, God. He didn’t want to lose her. If he sat here and ignored everything— continued to stare into the fire, with her at his side— would he be able to withstand the rest of the weekend? She was understanding, and she was kind, but he couldn’t help himself from trying to preserve one of the best things to happen to him.

Would it hurt if he fell face first into the fire? Anything would be more bearable than this. He would never be able to model again— no more money, fine. Who cared? He’d be dead. Maybe. He could feel it bubbling in him, threatening to escape his mouth in whichever way it could.

“I— I’m Chat Noir.” He bit his tongue so hard he could taste copper, trying to stop himself from talking. He managed to hold back a string of curses that tried slipping through.

She nearly dropped her apple, which was now mostly cored, searching his face for a joke. “I— hold on— what?”

“I’m Chat. I’m Chat Noir.” He barreled through it like ripping off a bandaid, refusing to make eye contact. “I know you were talking about me being your boyfriend. For two years. It’s— I’m— I’m Chat Noir.”

“Are— are you sure?”

“What?” It was his turn to frown at her. Was she starting to smile? “What— huh? What do you mean ‘am I sure’?”

“Are you sure you’re Chat Noir?”

He had the audacity to look down at his miraculous ring, wondering for a split second if he had hallucinated the past four years of his life. “I think so.”

She threw her hands around him tight, fisting the back of his sweater with her hands. The apple went flying from her hand, past his tent, and somewhere into the bushes— snapping twigs along its path. The fire crackled low as the last stick in the firepit burned, the branding heat leaving way to the chill air. He paid no mind to any of it, his nose full of milksoap, and his hands full of soft fabric from her layers of long sleeves.

Laughter bubbled in his ear as she clung to him— soft, sweet laughter that gripped his heart to the point it hurt. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I already knew, Adrien— I’ve been waiting for you to tell me for a couple of hours now.”

“What? How— how did— you—” He couldn’t help himself from pulling her closer, burying his face into her shoulder, feeling faint and overwhelmed. He couldn’t feel the log behind him, and he couldn’t feel his toes.

She curled her hand in his hair, and Adrien nearly lost his mind. The entire time he had felt guilty about keeping this from her and she’d accepted him with open arms. He would argue that crying was absolutely a valid response. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry, kitty-cat— it’s okay.”

He sucked in a breath. “How long have you known?”

“Just today. I found out this morning.”

“What do you mean? How did you—”

“You left early from my house today. You— you told me you needed to get ready for our trip, which was why you left so early from my house” She whispered. “I thought that was your way of telling me that you’re Adrien— but— you never mentioned it when we met up again at Alya’s house so I thought I’d— hallucinated it in my sleep.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” His mouth pinched. “Please— why— why didn’t you?”

She wiped a tear from his face. And then another. And then another. “I— I didn’t know if I’d heard you correctly, Adrien! I didn’t want to give something away just in case— so I’ve been trying to drop hints this entire time, instead.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, kitty-cat. You’re okay. Please don’t cry.”

He smothered her, pulled her into his lap to wrap the blanket around them, sucking in breath after breath. “I hadn’t even realized what I did— I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you waiting for me to admit it— I’m sorry that I took so long to tell you— I’m so sorry that it took me this long.”

“It’s okay.” She shook her head, the strings of the cap falling across her shoulders again. “It’s okay, Adrien. We’re okay. Everything is okay.”

He tucked the stray piece of hair back underneath her cap, hands buzzing from the ability to touch her. He followed the outline of her eyes with his thumbs— he followed the outline of her cheeks and jawline, as well— petting each individual freckle that dusted her cheeks. “Marinette— my god— I’ve— I’ve been going crazy this entire day— I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to tell you— I’ve been wanting to— to tell you— for— for the past two years. God. God.”

He tried his best not to squish her while he hugged her, but he couldn’t contain himself as soft peels of laughter mixed with his tears escaped. She laughed, and hugged him just as hard, squeezing all of the air in his lungs out.

Everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay.

“I couldn’t fall asleep without you, Princess.” He managed to say after they’ve cried enough.

“I couldn’t either,” She confessed into his shoulder. “It was terrible— so horrible. Alya hogs the sheets— and then she has the audacity to complain about me moving around too much. I honestly was starting to go nuts, I’m so tired without you. I can’t sleep without you anymore, kitty-cat— I was about to somehow convince you that we needed to sleep in the same area together.”

“I wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with you.” He kept his laughter down at the little pinch she gave him at his side. He couldn’t stop himself from pressing kisses to her forehead, at the edge of where her cap met her hairline when he brushed her hair back— when he kissed each individual constellation of freckles that dotted her upper cheekbones. “I’ll have you know, I’m an expert sleeper.”

She kissed him sweetly on the lips, giggling to the point it looked like it hurt. Adrien tried not to sniffle too hard as warmth after warmth filled his chest. “Believe me— trust me— we’ll sleep fine from now on.”

#fragileizyfic #fragileizyoneshot #marichat #marinette dupain cheng #chat noir #marichat fanfiction #i hope you're having a good day!!!!!💕

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the-crows-typist · 3 years

Note

Since your latest post says you’re back, I’d like to request a ficlet with Azul x F!mc with the random word as curious. I’m so glad to hear you’re back as I really enjoy your writings, thank you 😊!

Thanks a lot Anon, I hope you like this piece of mine.

CW: Minor mention of bullying, Angst with a Happy Ending, minor mention of wound, wound healing and potential OOC

Word count: 3,435

The Possibilities are Endless

“I made a promise to you.”

Curiosity. Inquisitive, wondering, ready to poke around and figure something out. Around him, all he ever saw the deep blue, the seagrass, the fish he could easily catch with one of his tentacles. Octopi like his were curious by nature and often to a slightly violent extent. He would peak his head over the surface, watching the seagulls cry overhead and the humans walking over planks of wood. In the disguise of the night, the young boy could always watch humans at their most natural and most vulnerable and wonder to himself what life would be like had he been born a human.

He doubted it would be any different from the life he lived day today.

As fun as learning was, it was boring not being able to share it with those who cared. Time with his classmates was bad during classes and all the more during recess but during the times Azul could escape their grasp quick enough, he would swim to lonely areas around the school to read and write his learnings in discarded shells, flipping through page after page of borrowed books from the library learning and taking in the information written on paper.

His hand halted on a picture of children playing; the light brown color of dirt, the bright colors of shirts and dress, the happy yet dirtied faces of the youth who continued to pass the ball to one another. The young octopus' shoulders hung low, his eyes training down and at nothing. Would his life be that different had he been born human? Would he be able to play with the other children had he been given two legs instead of eight?

There was a sniffle and Azul's rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly. Suddenly something hit his head, something like and equally small. A red sandal floated down to his lap, a kid's shoe. From above, a shadow loomed over him, and on instinct, he gathered his things and rushed to the nearest hiding place. There was the smell of blood in the water, the boy taking courage to peek from the safety of his hiding place.

A girl whose hair flowed in the water like a ribbon speared a fish right through, her mouth covered with a breathing apparatus, eyes protected with goggles, and a red sandal missing from her left foot. Azul looked at the Sandal at his hand then to the girl who expertly drove her spear into another fish. He had never seen a human this up close before and with that spear, he could easily get hurt…Looking at her again, she reached down, patting her empty foot while bubbles released from her breathing gear.

The boy moved slowly and glided through the water while leaving all but the sandal behind. He stopped in his tracks when she turned around, her eyes shined brilliantly behind the foggy looking goggles and immediately trained to the sandal in his hands.

"Y-yours…?"

He offered the sandal to her, both hands holding it up. She nods her head, taking the shoe from him and slipping it back on. Her hand moved, palm motioning him to follow and finger pointing up. Come with me. He hesitated for a moment, knowing that she came to the sea to hunt and with a spear full of nearly dying fish didn't help her image any better. He pointed at the spear to his chest, finger pushing to the skin and she shook her head. At that moment, she took his wrist and swam up with a swarm of warm bubbles floating around them. Azul wondered if following this human girl to the surface was a good idea if leaving the school so suddenly was all right but seeing her hold him without disgust…

It struck a chord with him.

She gasped when they broke the surface, the sun beating down on them from high above. It was the middle of the day, a time when sailors slept and the water becomes calm. Next to them was a small boat where the girl threw her spear in along with her gear. Without the goggles, he could see her clearly, she had eyes like molten gold and hair stringy like seagrass. "I'm sorry I had to bring you up here with me. My oxygen was running out and I couldn't hear you."

"It's okay." He said softly, his eyes lingering to the boat then to her. "Um…Did you come here to look for fish?"

"Yup. Fish are easier to catch than chickens or boar." She laughed, her teeth shiny and smile wide, it was cute and Azul couldn't help but sink into the water to hide his blush. "But it kinda does suck when they're really small, though. I wish I could capture bigger fish so I can have a feast but usually, adults have to do it or I get pulled in trying to catch it."

"Like groupers?" He asked. "The big kind?"

"Yeah! Those are really big and taste good too. A light grilling and some salt really go a long way." Azul looked down at the water again as the human moved to chuck her shoes into the small boat. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Azul."

"Like the color blue?"

"Huh?" The girl looked to the side and Azul's heart sped up, thinking he said something wrong. "I saw this book once that your name means blue. I was just wondering if that's the reason why you have that name. Your eyes are pretty blue, too."

"I can ask my parents later…"

Their brief meeting was cut short when a voice from afar yelled, the girl quickly getting onto the boat as it waddled in the water. "I'll wait for your answer tomorrow. Can I see you here again?" She asked, her wet face smiling down at him and he nodded. "Great! Bye, Azul!" With a snap of her fingers, the small anchor pulled up and the boat sped away with a torrent of water. The two of them waving goodbye as the distance between them grew and grew.

"Tomorrow…"

When he got back to the classroom, the teacher scolded him for being late and the usual pattern of torment began again but somehow the promise he made with the girl with the golden eyes made him push through. He didn't sleep easy that night, especially with the excitement he held in his heart. He couldn't wait for tomorrow. He couldn't wait to see her.

Their new meeting place was along the rocky cavern where she could sit and on her lap was a book propped up for him to see. Her finger pointed at a word. "See? Azul. It means blue in different languages." Azul leaned against the rocks' the push and pull of the water against his dark skin. "It's a possibility. I never really thought about it that way."

It was his turn to show her something, a shell with scribbles of writings. They figured early that books from underwater were not easy to bring on land so Azul immediately switched to the gathered shells he had. "I like to read grimoires sometimes and I put anything I find interesting into a shell. Any spell I like is in there."

Taking the shell from his palm, the girl took a look at it and reading its inscriptions. "This spell…"

Azul nodded his head. "It's a spell to change the color of something. It can be anything too."

"Can I try it out?"

"Can you do magic?"

"A little bit."

"Do it."

Taking a small rock into her hand, the girl looked to the shell to recite the color-changing spell. "Like a rainbow in your palm and voice ever calm, may the item you wish to change be yours to arrange." The rock began to glow, reflecting a myriad of colors like glass under the summer sun. Its shine subsided, the stone suddenly a deep blue. She held it up, staring into it. "Wow…"

"Pretty neat, huh?" Azul smiled up at her when she nodded. "This is super cool! What else do you know, I want to show this to my family later." It was shell after shell of small spells that almost lit up the cavern they stayed in and soon, the floor was littered with shining rocks and off-color stones. The girl sighed, trying to regain her breathing while Azul collected the shells to his chest. "You shouldn't use your magic all willy nilly, you might overblot."

"That's okay. I'm strong, I can't overblot!"

Azul's grimace and amusement weren't hidden and the two laughed with each other, their soft voices echoing through the empty cavern.

"Will I see you here again, Azul?"

There was a silence between them, a beat of hesitation, but Azul leaned against the soft rock with a smile. "If only you bring another book with you."

The next day, she was late to the meeting but Azul paid no mind to it. In her hands was a big book about mountains and their animals and on her knee was a scratch. "Are you okay?" he asked, pointing his nubby finger at her wound to which he just shook her head. "The kids I play with can be rowdy at times but I didn't want to play with them anymore after that." She set the book down and opened it.

He looked at her eyes, those pretty gold eyes of hers, and his shoulders hunched a small bit. He knows those eyes. When they droop and look at nothing when the brows are low and furrowed.

"Hold still."

With a careful hand and concentrated magic, Azul continued to look at her knee as he let magic flow from within him to her knee. The skin began to close and the pain had subsided, her eyes widened while his closed.

"Azul?"

He opened his eyes, a hand had stroked his drying hair. He pushed himself too much, it seems, and his friend took to letting him rest against the rocks. Her smile was soft and her eyes no longer looking like they were before, the eyes were warm and the brows relaxed. The wound on her knee was smaller now.

"Thanks." She told him, bringing her legs to her chest. "Here. I'll tell you about elephants."

He leaned in further, careful not to wet the book. "Huh, they're different from the ones we have in the sea."

"Sea elephants, right?"

"Yup. They're all blubbery and have really large noses. We don't usually see them around here but I heard they can get pretty mean." He looks down at the rock in thought. "But they are pretty big like land elephants." The girl closes the book with a huff. "I'll take your word for it. Now, show me what you've got."

Smiling, he set a few shells down.

"Here's the spell I saw today—."

Azul rested on the rocks, his hand tracing the markings on the shells he brought. The cavern was empty and silent, his mind whirling to the girl he was supposed to meet in that same spot. He turned the shell over and traced his finger on the grove patterns.

"Azul, sorry I'm late."

She came in, drenched in water. "What happened?" He asked suddenly and she just smiled at him, a smile he didn't exactly trust was telling the truth. "I just thought to take a shower on the way here, that's all." His eyes followed her as she sat down with a book on her lap. "Was it the kids again?"

Her shoulders slumped and her lips were pursed. "I…They get rowdy. I thought I could outrun them." She took a look at her drenched form with an awkward laugh. "But at least the book is safe. It's about plants this time." Azul continued to stare at them, blinking and nudging the shells forward. "You protected the book from them, didn't you?"

"I did." With a watery smile, she nodded her head and brows furrowed. "…I did."

She clutched the book closer to her chest and Azul reached over to pat her good knee. "Azul, you'll always be here, right? You're never going to stop being my friend, right?" Golden eyes mixed with clear glass, her voice sounded so desperate and broken that Azul couldn't help but feel the sadness drip from her lips. He squeezed her knee just a little bit.

"I will. I promise."

The next time they met, they were on the small boat they met in with Azul holding onto its bamboo fixtures. "What's life like in the sea?" She asked suddenly, her feet paddling against the water. "It's mostly wet and there's a lot of fish around…" Azul began, his eyes downcast at the water below. "School is like a record and people can be mean sometimes, you have to look out for sharks of giant squids, and the currents are sometimes a butt to deal with."

Her golden eyes flickered for a moment and she chuckled, eyes closed, smile light, and brows furrowed. "Not much different from life on land, huh? But having pretty fins or tentacles seems fun too." She looks to Azul and for a second she hesitates.

"Can you turn me into one?"

He is silent for a moment, surprised and confused why someone on land would want that. "Um…" He stuttered, his face flushed and eyes downcast. "I don't think…My magic can do that, yet." Her golden eyes remained warm and she shook her head. "I'm just kidding."

Yet Azul had a feeling she wasn't.

"Is it because of the kids?" He asked curiously but she stayed silent, opting not to answer and instead asked a question in return.

"You'll always be my friend, right?"

He nodded his head without a second thought but was confused why she would think to ask that.

"I…I will. Of course, I will."

She rubbed her knee, feeling for the closed wound and sniffling after being exposed to the cold water of yesterday.

He waited in the cavern the entire day, waiting for her to show up. His shells were prepared but with no one to look at them. He should have known this would happen, he should have known it was too good to be true. He sulked against the smooth rock and felt the washed brush and leave his back. She never came.

Had he done something wrong? She would have told him.

Perhaps she got bored of him…The spells he showed were the most basic as they come, it wasn't enough. Azul pulled away from the rocks and looked deeper into the empty cavern. Something cold froze his insides yet licked his body like fire, he felt his eyes sting.

He should have known better.

He left the shells on the edge and went back to sea, never looking back from the place he once held hope in. He forced himself not to cry. He forced himself not to feel sad and only let his feels show when he found himself in his special spot.

He covered his face, remembering their chance meeting, her red sandal, and golden eyes. He remembered her smile, the promise they made. Azul shook his head, telling himself to forget. Forget. FORGET!

Suddenly, a piece of seaweed hit his head and the voice of two boys whispered above him. "I told you that wasn't a trashcan, Floyd." One chided. "What, I'm just gonna throw wherever this and get in trouble? C'mon Jade." He swats the piece of seaweed out of the pot and popped his head out. "Do you mind?"

"Ack!"

Two eels floated before him and one's eyes were wide in surprise and the other the mix of amusement and a face that just oozes of 'I-told-you-so' energy.

"I'm not a trash can, I'm your classmate."

"Huh? Oh wait, you're the one we have science class with." The culprit said, pointing a sharp finger at him. "What's your name again?"

"Azul. Azul Ashengrotto."

"Okay, Octie."

"It's Azul!"

His life turned around when he met the twins, the power that he grew was immense. While Azul was not good at sports as much as the twins; he excelled in books, in his studies, in business. His power allowed him to grant favors, to hold power over those once thought to be strong. For once in his life, no one thought to ever look at him as the stupid, lonely octopus he was once was nor did anyone think to lay a hand on him.

And things were fine that way.

But more often than not, he would catch himself thinking about the girl he once became friends with and wondering what she was doing or if that wound on her knee was doing okay. Even after the sudden departure, their brief friendship never left his mind nor did the memories lose their sweetness. His feelings were a mix of resentment, curiosity, or sadness, and even guilt.

He would look up from the seafloor to the shining surface above and wonder if she would be there waiting.

"Azul, there's someone who wants to see you." Says Jade.

But the business was always his priority. He turned away from the surface but his heart never could. "Coming." He swam away but his feelings stayed in one place, yearning and hating for the day he'll come to see her.

Though time heals wounds, the bitter sting of remembrance was something he disliked immensely. Azul's trips to the sea were less frequent and when he did, it was usually to visit his family and help around. With school done for the year and the family business running smoothly, there wasn't much he could do now but bide away his time.

He swam through the open ocean, his legs propelling him around the deep blue. He would resurface no long after to look at the sun and the water around him, his eyes adjusting to the sudden appearance of light after he had been in the dark blue depths long. It was noon, a time when fishermen slept and left the waters quiet.

He swam in a certain direction, to a place he once knew. A cavern-like entrance where he pulled himself up and bare feet touching the ground. For the short time he had spent there, he had memorized every crevice and detail.

"It's like it never changed."

He walked further in and looked in the deepest nook, he saw a tinge of color. Old shells packed into a neat pile, his old shells that he gave away to his friend. Looking back on it, he realized the two of them went through the same thing and wishing the same wishes. She was just more vocal about them.

He picked one up from the pile, it was the spell that allowed an object to change its color.

"Ah, this one takes me back."

Even how short their friendship was, he had fun just talking to her. While it was sad he never got to see her again after that day, he enjoyed it while it lasted. He returned the shell to its pile and moved to turn around, a figure stopped blocked his path.

Red sandals, eyes like melting gold, hair stringy from seawater, and a spear with two fish held to their side.

"Azul?" Her voice was just as he remembered.

The moment was short and Azul's breathing stopped for only a few seconds. A warmth passed through him, a wave of nostalgia. "You're back." He said, his shoulders bobbing through his airy laughs "I waited for a long time, y'know? Now look at us, we're bigger now." She discarded her spear to the ground and ran towards him, one of her sandals leaving her food as he hugged him.

No words were said between them, their arms looping around each other in an embrace both seemed to be ready and yearning for. Her nose buried into his shoulder and his hands in her wet hair. "I'm sorry." She whispered. "I'm so sorry I left. I just couldn't—I had to leave. I wanted to go to you but—! She sputtered into your skin. "I had no time left to say goodbye. I'm sorry."

"I made a promise, didn't I?" He said, pulling away from her.

Their foreheads connected, ah, how long had it been since he felt so vulnerable? There were so many things he wanted to say and he knew she also felt the same. Perhaps another time the two of them could put two and two together.

"I'll always be here."

#works from the typewriter #twisted wonderland #twst #Azul Ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul x reader #Female reader

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theharellan · 3 years

Text

Who Am I in Your Arms?

Written for Stories of Thedas Volume II Pairing: NB!Lavellan x Solas Prompt: Hair

In the aftermath of Wisdom's passing Solas takes the first steps towards moving on from its death, though this time he need not do it alone.

Trigger warning for suicidal ideation and depression / derealisation.

Read on AO3.

Light strains through the open window, highlighting the dust suspended in the air by the morning breeze. With each sigh of wind from the mountains’ peaks it rises anew, kept aloft in perpetuity each time it begins to sink to the bedroom floor. Solas watches from his back as the light that flows through open windows grows longer, reluctant to acknowledge the fast-approaching noon and all the duty that comes with it.

He does not truly know how long he lies there, looking idly up at the ceiling, neither dreaming nor truly awake. From a distance he recognises the sound of Mother Giselle calling to a Chantry Sister and sees the shadow of a passer-by darken the window momentarily, but these notes are brief and fleeting, skirting over his consciousness without room to take root. The doorknob turns, latch unhooking with a click, force of habit compelling him to look. His eyes meet Ian’s as the door swings ajar, and he suddenly wishes he had at least sat up before he’d entered. “You’re awake,” Ian says. Relief quiets the tension he held between his brow, a look too soft to be meant for him steals across his face as he settles beside him, the mattress sinking with a sigh beneath his weight. “I was afraid- I- I was—” As he fumbles with his words he struggles with removing a leather glove from his left hand, finding the thought only when the last finger was wrested from him. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Good.” His bare hand leans upon Solas’ cheek, touch cool and calming against his face.

“What time is it?”

“You’re needed nowhere for the moment,” Ian answers the more honest question on his behalf. “I just needed— I wanted to see if you were alright.”

It is an answer Solas isn’t certain he can give neither one way nor the other. He is of sound body and sound mind, and for many those two alone would be enough to suffice. “Thank you,” Solas mutters, having little to offer but his gratitude and an affectionate peck to his palm. Perhaps sensing the answer Solas is reluctant to give, Ian’s smile pinches, straining with concern. Guilt twinges in his gut, and he averts his eyes, penitent. “Ir abelas, Vhenan. I did not mean to worry you again.”

A soft laugh sighs through Ian’s lips, though it sounds sad to his ears. “You don’t need to be sorry, Solas. Not unless it helps.” He recognises the refrain as one oft-repeated to Ian, spoken in his own voice when Ian’s troubles wind too tightly around his heart. To hear it said to assuage his sorrows stings, no matter how much he may need to hear it. The hand at his cheek guides his gaze up, his hollow stare feeling all the more empty when beheld in Ian’s kind eyes. They scan from left to right, reading the expression on his face as though he’d opened up a well-loved book. A thumb scarred by gardener’s shears draws a smooth line across his cheekbone.

Ian’s hand glides around the side of his head, meeting resistance as his fingers cup the back delicately. “Your hair…” he says with a laugh in his breath, a hint of wonder colours his tone leaves Solas humbled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much of it before.” Fingertips idle along the nape of his neck, moving across the rough beginnings of an auburn hairline, but for Solas’ part his eyes remain transfixed upon Ian’s face. He memorises the way amusement works its way across his lips, until his teeth press down upon them, trying and failing to tamp down his growing grin. Hazel eyes fall suddenly to his and then away, pink shame heating his cheeks. “Sorry.”

Solas rises, detouring to brush his lips against Ian’s, which still bear the impression of his teeth. “You’ve no more to be sorry for than I,” he says, then as an afterthought grazes his hand over his head. A fine layer of hair has sprouted, coarse, like sharkskin against his palm. “And you are correct, it is long past time I shaved.”

“Oh, you— you’re… I thought-”

“That I intended to grow it out?” he finishes Ian’s thought, picking it up where he had dropped it. “No, and I suspect I won’t for some time.” He slides open the top drawer of his dresser and rifles through, not looking but feeling for his razor. Fingers brush against brittle dried herbs and crumpled notes too important to throw away yet irrelevant enough that he does not remember why they are here, rooting through the ephemera of his everyday life before they find what they seek.

“Typically my magic minimises the upkeep, but then…” He thinks back upon the last few weeks, how time bled together and one moment tripped into the next. Hardly a thimbleful of effort had been expended upon the simple day-to-days. “I suppose I have had other matters on my mind.”

Wisdom’s death still weighs heavily upon him. Though he had told the Inquisitor the powers which willed it into being still exist and there may again be a being who called itself Wisdom, it is a cold comfort. The moments they shared are now his alone to remember. In his grief he strains to recall every memory, summoning details of bygone ages, despair curling one cold finger around his heart as their edges begin to blur. Guilt bores into him as he tries to remember what face Wisdom wore the first time they met.

“Solas?” His hand must have lingered too long, his stillness speaking to a persistent pain he struggles to give voice, yet Ian hears it regardless. He releases the breath held captive in his lungs as Ian’s hand folds over his. Their scars align, matching together as alike rhymes in a poem might. “Would you like me to do it for you?” Solas doesn’t answer right away, mind too full of memories to fully feel the present, and in that silence Ian finds the time to doubt. “If you’d rather do it yourself…” he ventures. The hand over his squeezes affectionately, comfortingly.

“No,” he finds his voice. When he tears his sights away from their intertwined fingers, he discovers Ian’s gaze leveled with his own and offers him a thin smile. “No. I’d welcome the offer.”

Before he releases his grip on Solas, he pulls his knuckles to his lips, pressing them against the places where errant magic had marked him centuries ago. He feels the ghost of his affection as he pulls his hand back, thumb stroking the place where Ian kissed him to keep the memory alive upon his skin. “You should sit,” Ian says, motioning with his head towards the empty seat shoved in the corner of the room. It’s as near a command as Ian will ever give outside the Inquisition’s healing tents. “I can take care of everything.”

A simple sentiment, yet ambitious. His first instinct is to doubt, but not all the lessons from the past few weeks left bruises. Trust is a muscle that atrophies through disuse, stretching it again strains even on fairweather days, but he accommodates Ian’s command, sinking into the cushioned stool he works from on quiet evenings.

He watches in silence as Ian takes stock of his tools, hands touching each in succession until they are accounted for. As he pours water into a shallow dish Solas’ throat scratches, realising he had not had so much as a gulp of water since the night before. It is as refreshing on his head as it would be on his lips, however, spread by a wrung out towel across his scalp. Thin streams trickle down his neck and beneath his nightshirt, provoking shivers as they slide along the crevice of his spine.

“You’ve— there’s more here than I’m used to working with,” Ian says, hovering over the instruments at his disposal. “Do I use the oil before or after?”

“Before,” he answers, “I use the cream after.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ian nod then reach for a small vial with a glass stopper. He pours a pool no wider than the average silver crown into a cupped hand and spreads it carefully over the top of his head, working the oil into the skin of his scalp. A few deliberate strokes and his eyelids grow heavy, head tilting into the sensation. A small snort of amusement issues from Ian’s nose, but he says nothing. With fingers still slick with a thin coat of oil he rubs along his hairline, feathering coarse hair with his thumbs. It scratches pleasantly in his ears, and he muses to himself if he may be persuaded to keep it at this length, on the condition that it were afforded this attention every day.

It’s a disappointment, then, when his hands at last fall away, busying themselves with the soap. He scrapes a few shavings into a shallow bowl and tops it with water measured with his eyeballs, working with the confidence of someone who has done this before. “These steps are familiar to you,” he notes.

“The last thing any surgeon needs is to close a stray hair in an open wound,” he says, “or to let it cloud your view.”

“I suspected as much.” What faith Ian has in himself lies mostly in his duty, beyond the walls of the infirmary it is as unreliable as the wind, and about as difficult to catch.

“I haven’t… this is the first time I’ve shaved anyone’s head, though. It’s mostly legs, or arms, or beards— sometimes backs.” The thin layer of bubbles quickly stirs to a thick, soapy pillow which rises higher than the bowl it was concocted in. “I never knew how much hair humans had until the Blight.”

The conjured image of Blackwall’s scurrying naked through Skyhold comes to mind, the hair on his back as black as his beard, and he spares a small smile at the Warden’s expense.

He strokes the brush over his head, drawing small overlapping circles across the top of his skull. Foam snaps behind his ears, bubbles burst by the bristles as Ian passes over a second time, leaving no inch of stubble uncoated.

“I don’t… I- tell me if it hurts,” he says. Setting the brush aside, he reaches for the razor, examining the blade against the light for flaws before he’s satisfied, although he waits for an affirmative nod before he dares hold it against his scalp.

It glides smoothly beside his skin, flowing with the grain of his hair. The scraping sound is no less unpleasant as he recalls, but painless. Ian handles the blade with a surgeon’s precision. He watches him from the corner of a hand mirror laid on the desk, every so often his reflection vanishing to wash off the soap and hair built upon the razor’s edge. A look of concentration screws his expression, the boughs of Mythal’s blood bending across his brow. Not so serious as when he works, the faint impression of a smile turns the corners of his mouth. The same lips he ruminates upon the shape of in the pages of his journal, the same smile whose corners he dreamt of kissing. They click apart, and, recognising the beginning of a question upon them, something within Solas sits up straighter.

“How long have you kept it this way?”

Their eyes meet through their reflections. Ian pauses to allow Solas his answer, wiping away the excess of hair dirtying the blade in a discarded cloth. As a question it’s innocent enough, but pries at memories he’d sooner bury. Like too many answers, he’s forced to weigh his head against his heart before he speaks.

“Not as long as you might suspect.” Once it was as long as his memory, and in each thread laid a name, a lesson, a thought. With each tragedy he sheared it shorter, until at last he could bear it no more. “What time I spent on my hair I realised I’d prefer to spend elsewhere.” The lie does not come as easily as he would like, even if— as had all the ones which came before it— it lies rooted in truth. He feels it strain against the knife when he speaks, pressure mounting in his temple, as though daring him to continue with his deception. Ian is quick to retreat, murmuring a soft reminder not to speak when he’s cutting, though he can hardly hear it through the fog in his head.

His first waking breath in this world felt like a dagger between his ribs. He choked on reality itself as he stumbled from his dreams, hair dragging past his ankles, tangled with generations of birds’ nests and hollow around his ears. It should have echoed with the dirge of an empire, but instead there was nothing, and somehow that was worse. His first cut was clumsy, blood dripped down his temple and sank into the creases of his hands, but he persisted. Each time he cut himself upon the sharp edges of the world it felt like justice, even if in his heart he knew it could never be enough.

Ian wields it without malice. The same blade which a week ago might have carved a red necklace across his throat now glides harmlessly over his skin, guided by tender hands that could name all the world’s cruelty but acts with none.

He swallows, throat thick with sentiment he’d believed too numb to harm him. Every day affection like he has never known rises in him like a force of nature, blooming with all the strength of springtime. If some small part of him had ever laboured under the belief that indulging those feelings would abate them, it’s been proven the fool. He loves Ian more now than the day he felt love’s first stirrings behind his ribs, but it does not come by him gracefully.

Love sticks in his throat like his grief. Tears spring into his eyes, the image of Ian’s reflection in the mirror clouded by droplets suspended between his lashes. He holds his breath behind his teeth to keep himself steady, pressure building beneath his chest ‘til he has no choice but to release. The sour, sterile scent of soap coats his nostrils as he measures his breath, careful not to let it hitch. As he hears Ian pause to clean the blade, he turns his face to the corner of the room to disguise his expression in the moments their eyes might meet through the mirror.

Love spills onto his cheeks, hands balling the fabric of his trousers as the first drop splashes his knuckles. The blade’s touch is as soft as a kiss upon his skin, scraping off the shadows missed during their first pass over his skull, and then set aside.

Love sees his sorrow and pulls him back against his chest, narrow arms enveloping him in their embrace.

A high, shuddering inhale whistles through Solas’ nose and though he reaches for stillness, today he finds himself wanting. The world surges forth like the first snowmelt of spring in the wake of an overlong winter, and he can do nothing to curb its strength. He claps his hand against his mouth, too late to suffocate the sob that wracks his shoulders, too weak to stifle the guilt-ridden cry that chases it. Ugly tears stain his cheeks, wielded like weapons to pry undeserved sympathy from the hands of his beloved, despite the effort he’d put forth to quell them.

A kiss crowns his forehead, ignorant of the guilt his grief springs from. An apology hangs upon the tip of his tongue, begging to be voiced and denied its release, knowing in his heart any forgiveness granted will be unearned.

Perhaps Ian hears the intent in the strangled sound he makes, for he moves to assuage his worries. Another kiss adorns his brow as he kneels before him, occupying the space between his knees. With both hands he reaches up and cradles his face between his palms, tenderly swiping away the sorrow from his cheeks. Their eyes meet through the veil of his tears, Ian’s shining with their own sadness as they hold his gaze. When Wisdom was taken, he’d held him just as he does now, until Solas remembered how to coax the air back into his lungs. So much had changed since that morning, and yet so little. Ian looks at him with the same eyes and holds him with the same hands. It is a disquieting revelation, knowing his worth does not lessen the more he is known; all the rage and misery Ian witnessed in him these past few weeks hasn’t lessened the love in his eyes.

From that love a cruel hope springs, born in the part of him which dares entertain the truth. Dares to ask if Ian would show the same compassion to the elf who had woken a year and change ago and mistook the world for empty.

The thought twists in him like a knife, and his expression contorts. Whatever peace he’d found comes apart at the seams, eyes screwing shut as tears spring anew from their corners. He turns his cheek into Ian’s palm, shoulders shaking with the force of the sobs he denies himself. Fingertips bend, coaxing him closer, and he obliges, nesting himself in the crook of Ian’s neck. The scarf he buries his nose in smells like his pipe and he can still bask in the warmth of the sun upon the copper curls that whisper in his ear. The hands that cut the bitter memories from his skin hold him without abandon, squeezing as he begins to weep anew. Protracted sobs wrack his body until his lungs ache in his chest, but Ian’s grip never falters, never fails. In his arms he knows himself as never before.

The shadows in their room narrow as the midday sun passes over Skyhold and the dust in the air mingles with what little hair he’d had to his name, carried upwards by the slightest breeze beneath the doorframe. In the sweepings he sheds his grief and carries forward what remains: his duty, his regret, and his love.

#solas #bi solas #solavellan #dragon age #nb!solavellan #( my writing )#i have found a home in him ( ian x solas )#suicidal thoughts cw #mental health cw #knowledge speaks‚ wisdom listens ( wisdom )#all new‚ faded for her ( quests )#( long post )

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wandering-bard-from-the-id · 3 years

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Daughters of Arendelle - Chapter 47

Author’s Note - Hello everyone, I know it’s been forever since I last updated this story. I really have been working on it. Here’s Chapter 47, yes there will be more.

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CHAPTER 47

September 16, 1840

Sweat dampened the fresh bandage encircling Anna’s forehead. Sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes closed against a wave of nausea. Dull pain throbbed through the wound in her thigh with each heartbeat.

The soft, warm bed beneath her beckoned with a tempting siren call. No, not till I’ve seen Elsa. Her back stiffened with resolve, sending a jolt of pain through bruised ribs, stealing her breath away.

“Anna, are you okay?” Wooden fingers gently touched her arm.

“I’m fine, Olaf.” She managed a weak smile.

“Oh, that’s good.” The snowman chuckled. “because you look really bad.”

“Olaf!” Alma turned from the dresser to glare at him.

“What?” A hand flew to his mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He leaned in close with a loud whisper. “I thought you knew.”

Anna chuckled, it ended in a sharp gasp. Pressing a hand against the muscle twitching along her ribs, she managed a weak smile. “It’s okay, Olaf. I know I look a little rough.”

“It’s more than a little.” He happily informed her.

She flinched, there were times when the little snowman’s charming honesty could be brutal. Tough love aside, she’d been relieved to find him at her bedside when she woke. If he’s here that means Elsa’s still alive. Startled by the thought, she pushed it away with a shudder. Of course, Elsa’s alive. But for how long? Whispered the dark voice that had plagued her nightmares.

Shut up! Muscles tightened along her jaw, straining to hold against a threat of tears.

Haunting dreams of a bloody and bruised Elsa standing at her bedside had taken a toll. Sometimes she vanished when Anna reached a shaking hand towards her, other times, she collapsed across the bed, succumbing to her wounds. Always there was that haunting fatigue in her eyes, just as there had been the night of the battle. I should have made her stay with me.

“Let’s get your slippers on, Princess.” Not waiting for a reply, Alma knelt before her.

Pulled from dark thoughts, Anna didn’t argue. Watching the handmaiden work the slipper onto her bare foot, was another reminder of how weak she’d become. Her usual morning routine had turned into a series of embarrassing moments.

Alma had to help her with the most basic tasks. Even with help, they had taken far longer than normal to complete. Alma’s insistence on changing her bandages before helping her into a fresh nightgown, had dragged the process out even further.

No amount of protest or pleading would sway the handmaiden from her task. Bandages and fresh nightgowns could wait, she just wanted to see her sister, and Kristoff.

Kristoff, she could almost feel the warmth of his strong arms curling around her. After all of this, I wouldn’t blame him if he ran back to the mountains and never returned. Icy fear tickled her spine.

“Anna?" Olaf said. “Are you cold?”

“What?”

“You shivered.”

“No, I…I’m just worried about Elsa,”

“Yeah, me too. I wish she’d wake up.” His shoulders slumped with the confession.

“Hey, she’s going to be alright.” It was a gentle lie, as much for her own sake as his. Slipping an arm around him, she’d meant to pull him into a hug. Cold bit into her hand and through the thin fabric of the nightgown. Jerking away, she rubbed at the palm, half expecting to see snowflakes forming beneath the skin. She tried to shake off the thought. Elsa’s magic won’t hurt me. Still a faint voice whispered, again. Enough!

“Where’s Kai?” There was a bit more bite in the question than she had intended. “He should have been here by now.”

Alma didn’t look up as she finished with the first slipper. “I’m sure he’ll be here shortly, ma’am. He knows how eager you are to see Her Majesty.” She reached for Anna’s uncovered foot.

“If he’s not here soon I’m going to…” White hot pain shot through her leg, tearing a strangled cry from her throat. She clutched at the bedsheets with one hand, the other came to rest on Alma’s shoulder, twisting the fabric of her jacket.

“Anna!” Olaf caught her arm, trying to steady her.

“I’m sorry!” Alma lowered the half-covered foot. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

“It…it’s alright.” Panting through the pain, Anna closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. Muscles quivered along her ribs. Pressing a hand against them, she flinched at the pain. None of the fairy tales, from her childhood, ever spoke of the hero having to recover from battle wounds. You’d think at least one of them would have mentioned how painful stab wounds are, or how sore you’d be after a battle. Her shoulders dropped with a weary sigh. They lied about handsome princes, why should I trust the rest?

Gloved fingers touched her cheek.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“Stop asking me that!” Even as the handmaiden, shrank back, Anna couldn’t stop herself. “No! I’m not alright! I ache all over, and it hurts to breathe!” Sucking in a breath, tears filled her eyes. The outburst drained and embarrassed her. Unable to meet Alma’s gaze, she stared at the floor. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

Olaf touched her arm, she drew away.

“Anna,” The gloved hand cupped her cheek.

Not trusting her emotions, Anna closed her eyes.

“It’s alright, dear. I know you’re tired and hurting. It’s been a trying time for all of us. We’re all a bit on edge. Let’s finish getting you dressed, so you’ll be ready when Kai gets here.” Not waiting for a reply, she knelt and began gently working the slipper on Anna’s foot.

Biting at a trembling lip, Anna watched her work. She didn’t deserve that.

With the slippers securely in place, Alma rose, brushing her hands against her skirt. “Why don’t we get your robe on? It’s a bit chilly in the hallway this morning.”

“Okay.” Came the soft reply.

Alma hurried across the room to retrieve the garment. A moment later she was at Anna’s side holding the robe open for her.

Gritting her teeth, Anna raised an arm.

Alma slipped the sleeve over it.

Anna swiped at the other sleeve, missing on the first try. Mumbling under her breath, she tried to ignore the bead of sweat trickling down her cheek.

“Let me help.” Olaf guided her arm into the opening.

She eased her arm through the sleeve, biting her lip against the pain. Once her hand snaked through the end, she let out a heavy sigh. “Thanks, Olaf.”

Alma pulled the robe up onto her shoulders, adjusting it. “There we go. You’re all set.”

Overcome with a need to hold someone, Anna grabbed Alma’s jacket, pulling the startled woman into an embrace. “I’m sorry, Alma. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

Arms wrapped around her, in a light, but loving embrace. “It’s alright, dear.” Gentle pats tapped against her back. “It’s alright.”

Both startled at a sharp knock upon the door.

“See, there’s Kai now. You stay put.” Not waiting for a response, Alma hurried to the door, wiping at her eyes.

Closing her eyes, Anna’s shoulders slumped with a heavy sigh.

“It’s okay, Anna, we’ll see, Elsa soon.”

A sad smile tugged at her lips. “Thanks, Olaf.”

“Hi Kristoff!” Olaf called.

“Kristoff?” Anna’s head snapped toward the door. Her breath caught at the sight of the large man, pushing a wheeled chair toward her.

“Anna.” Relief washed over his face in a broad smile. Pushing the chair out of the way, he stepped toward her, reaching out with his unslung arm.

“Kristoff!” He came back! She dove off the bed, managing two steps before her leg buckled.

Solid arm muscles tightened around her waist, pulling her up and forward.

“Easy, I’ve got you.”

She found herself pressed hard against his large frame. He smelled of fresh soap. Beneath there was a whiff of musk, closing her eyes she leaned in drawing a deep breath. There was something comforting and safe about the smell. Lured in by the warmth radiating off him, she rested her head against his chest.

The cloth of his robe and night clothes were soft beneath her palm. Steady heart thumps assured her he was real.

“I missed you.” She whispered.

“I missed you too.”

Soft lips pressed against the top of her head.

Sighing she snuggled into him, sliding a hand over his chest. It passed over a lump of bandage beneath his shirt. She leaned back to look up at him. Bruises marked his face. Black and blue was turning yellowish under one eye. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s not serious.” He flinched as fingertips brushed over a bruised cheek. “Mom said, I’ll be good as new in a few days.” His eyes swept over her taking in every bruise and bandage. “Kai told me, you were hurt, but he didn’t tell me it was this bad.”

Emotions danced in his eyes. Anna noted there was a hint of a shine to them. Days of fear and uncertainty bubbled to the surface threatening to overwhelm her. Grabbing the lapels of his robe, her fingers curled tight into the fabric, pulling him down. Ignoring the pain, she rose to her toes, trembling with the effort.

He leaned down to meet her.

She’d meant to give him a quick kiss on the lips.

His arm tightened around her.

I almost lost him. Emotions swept over her in a crashing wave. She wanted, no needed to feel the reassurance his touch offered. Her hand snaked up, cupping the back of his neck, holding him in place. Not that it was needed, he made no effort to pull away.

His lips pressed hard against her own, refusing to release her.

Pain wormed it’s way into her consciousness. Unable to hold on, she pulled away with a sharp gasp. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Eyes squeezed closed, she was too frightened by the raw emotions swirling through her to meet his gaze.

He peppered her lips and cheeks with soft kisses.

Their foreheads came to rest against each other.

“Anna, I…” He shuddered. “I thought I’d lost you.”

She could hear the unspoken, again. Taking his face in both hands, she forced him to meet her gaze. Unshed tears shone bright in his eyes. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.” She pulled him into another kiss.

His hand slid up between her shoulder blades, holding her as close as possible.

Ignoring the pain throbbing through her body, she clung to him. Desperate to pull him closer.

Both were winded when they finally parted.

“Come on, you should sit down.”

She wanted to protest as his grip shifted.

His arm circled her waist, pulling her against his side. It was reassurance enough he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Okay.” Wiping her cheeks clean with the robe sleeve, she allowed him to guide her to the wicker chair.

Alma took her arm, helping her up the small step. “Careful now, don’t tear your stitches.”

“Where did you find this?” Settling onto the seat, Anna relaxed, grateful to be off her feet.

“Kai gave it to me.” Kristoff tapped the hand tiller. “You’ll have to steer.”

Wrapping her hands around the polished wooden handle, Anna twisted it back and forth, moving the front wheel in response. “I wonder where he’s been hiding this?”

“Here, Your Highness.” Alma tossed a blanket over her lap. “That should keep you warm enough.”

“Thank you, Alma.” She smiled, adjusting the blanket. “Where’s Kai?”

“I don’t know.” Kristoff shrugged. “He asked me, to bring you the chair, said he didn’t want you trying to walk to Elsa’s room.” His lips curled into a smirk.

Anna gave a short giggle. “He knows me so well.”

“I’ll push.” Olaf bounced to the rear of the chair.

Alma reached the push handlebar a moment before him. “Why don’t I push? You and Master Kristoff can walk alongside the Princess, and keep her company.”

“Okay.” Olaf shuffled to Kristoff’s side.

“Are you ready, dear?” Alma asked.

“Yes, let’s go.” She turned the tiller so Alma could push her toward the door.

Kristoff and Olaf, followed after them.

Once in the hallway, they moved to opposite sides of the chair, keeping pace with it.

“When you’re feeling a little stronger, I’ll get you a crutch.” Kristoff said.

“I’d like that.” She caught his hand. It was warm and strong.

He startled at the touch.

Feeling him jerk back, Anna’s heart sank. She started to pull away.

Calloused fingers curled gently around her hand. Their eyes met.

His soft smile, sent her heart soaring. She was tempted to pull him onto the seat beside her. I’d have to sit on his lap for that to work. The thought sent a pleasant tingle to the pit of her stomach. Pulling his hand to her, she placed a kiss against hardened knuckles. I can’t lose him and Elsa. Her breath caught. Stop it!

“Anna? Are you alright?”

There was so much warmth in the brown eyes staring down at her, she wanted to wrap herself in it and never leave. It drove back some of the cold fear seizing her heart. “I’m fine.” The crease in his brow hinted he didn’t believe the lie. She was thankful he didn’t press her.

Everything will be fine once I see Elsa. Clinging to the thought, her grip tightened on Kristoff’s hand.

0000

Gerda jerked awake with a weak cry, images of blood and death fresh in her mind. Out of reflex her hand tightened around the sock she’d been darning. Pain stung her fingertip as a sharp needle pierced skin. Biting back a curse, she tossed the sewing onto the nightstand, pressing her thumb against a small bead of blood. How long was I asleep? “Elsa.”

Her heart raced as she jumped forward placing a hand on a slender arm. Heat radiated through the thin fabric of the nightgown beneath her hand.

“Queen Elsa?” Giving the arm a gentle squeeze, Gerda watched for any reaction.

There was none.

Elsa lay as still as the night Kai placed her there. The blanket covering her rose and fell with each breath. It was the only assurance she was still among the living.

Closing her eyes, Gerda willed her heart to slow down. It took several deep breaths to ease the thumping in her chest.

Opening her eyes, she rose from the chair with a grunt. Stiff muscles ached in protest. I’m getting too old for this. She tried to rub away a tight knot in her lower back. It refused to yield.

The wound on her arm began to itch. Resisting the urge to scratch it, she eased onto the edge of the bed.

Placing the back of a hand against Elsa’s flushed cheek, her lips drew into a tight line. The fevered heat was neither better nor worse than when she’d checked an hour ago.

Taking a wash cloth from the night stand, she dipped it into a basin of cool water. Several quick twists wrung the excess water away. She pressed it against Elsa’s forehead, wiping away a thin layer of sweat. “There now, doesn’t that feel better?” Elsa’s natural paleness was darkened by the flush of fever and several large, ugly bruises. Deep blackish blue covered one side of her neck, down to her shoulder, disappearing under the nightgown. Gerda wasn’t sure she wanted to know what blow had caused it.

Her blood boiled at the bruises outlining finger-marks along Elsa’s throat. The thought of that Southern Isles bastard manhandling her girls, brought her to the brink of rage. Squeezing her eyes shut, she drew a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Thoughts of him suffering a painful death, cooled her anger. Her attention returned to Elsa.

“My Lady?” There was no answer. She leaned in closer, her voice soft, with only a hint of pleading. “Elsa, dear, it’s time to wake up.”

Her eyes narrowed, searching for any signs Elsa was listening. “Come now,” She spoke with a softness she used to comfort the girls when they were upset. Over the years she’d used it far too often. “you’ve lazed about long enough, it’s time to get up.”

The blanket rose and fell, in a slow, steady rhythm.

Pushing back a rush of emotions, Gerda stroked the washcloth over a pale cheek. Was it a bit narrower than before? “Cook’s going to be very upset if you start losing weight, after she worked so hard the last few months to fatten you up.” There was no response to the jest. She hadn’t expected one. Settling into her task, the wash cloth stroked over Elsa’s face and neck. “You keep losing weight, and that ice dress you’re so fond of is going to slip right off.”

How long can someone go without food? Refusing to dwell on the thought, she forced a chipper tone. “Anna’s coming to see you this morning. She’s so eager to see you, it was all Olaf and I could do to keep her in bed last night.”

Anna’s scream had shattered the quiet night, rousing Gerda from a light sleep at Elsa’s bedside. Stumbling from the chair, she had managed to reach Anna’s room before a crowd could gather. Olaf and Alma were already at Anna’s side, trying in vain to calm her.

Gerda had seen the girl through enough nightmares to know it would take more than words to quiet her. Ordering the guards to keep everyone away, she had sent Alma to sit with Elsa, before settling on the bed, drawing a weeping Anna into her arms. It had been a long night of assurances, hugs and lullabies, before Anna finally succumbed to sleep.

One can’t sleep, and the other won’t wake up. You’ve a cruel sense of humor, All Father. There was little worth in cursing long dead Gods. Her attention turned to the living.

“She’s worried about you.” Fingertips traced over Elsa’s cheek. My sweet Elsa. “We’re all worried about you.” Her hand brushed over soft, blond tassels.“Perhaps later, I can brush out your hair and fix your braid. Would you like that?”

The blanket rose and fell.

“Of course, you would.” So would I.

She startled as the chamber door eased open. The weight of her fears lightened as Kai stepped in, closing the door behind him. Her relief was brief. Specks of blood covered his shirt and vest. Setting the rag aside, she hurried to meet him, wiping her hands dry against her skirt. “Husband, you’re hurt.”

“No.” He caught the hand reaching for his face. “It’s not my blood.”

“Who’s is it?”

“Tollak’s.”

“I see.” Gerda sighed, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve. “I take it, he didn’t tell you anything about the disk.”

“He claims not to know anything about it, and even if he did, I doubt he would share it with us.”

She dabbed the handkerchief on her tongue before wiping at the dried flakes of dark red peppering Kai’s cheek. Careful of the bruise below his eye. Another reminder of that murderous prince’s attempt to take her family. “How did his blood end up on your face?”

Kai’s eyes cut to Elsa’s still form. “He made some rather, disgusting, remarks about Anna’s possible heritage.”

“Anna?” Gerda’s back stiffened, an eyebrow arching high. “Why would he question Anna’s heritage?”

Kai pulled at his jacket with a sharp snap.

Oh, he’s furious. She bit back a chuckle, not wishing to ruffle him further.

“He suggested, Anna and I, favored, each other.”

“Favored? You mean, he thinks you and Iduna…?”

“Yes!” He jerked the jacket lapels, straining the seams. “that was the gist of his slander.”

Gerda snorted, covering her mouth with a hand to hide a smirk. “I hope you broke his jaw.”

“Actually, it was his nose.” Flexing his hand, a hint of a smile played over his lips. “It was rather satisfying.”

“Good.” She placed a quick kiss on his cheek, rubbing a thumb over the spot.

The door latch clicked open. They stepped apart at the sound.

How the scurry maid’s tongues would wag if we were caught in an embrace, in the Queen’s chambers no less. Gerda brushed at imagined wrinkles in her skirt.

“Gerda?”

“Yes, Alma?”

“Queen Elsa, has visitors.” She stepped in holding the door open, allowing Kristoff to push in the chair.

Olaf followed them. Alma closed the door behind him.

“Anna!” My little Anna. Relieved to see the girl out of bed, Gerda crossed the room in several quick strides, wrapping her in a gentle hug. “How are you feeling, dear?”

“I’m okay.” Anna leaned into the embrace, lingering a moment. “Has she woken yet?”

Gerda held her a little tighter. “No. Not yet.”

Anna pulled back, her attention shifted to the bed.

Unwilling to completely break away, Gerda held to Anna’s shoulder. She felt muscles tense beneath her hand as Anna reached for the chair’s wheels.

“I want to get closer.” Unable to reach the wheels, Anna settled on the tiller, knuckles whitened as she squeezed it.

Kristoff eased her to the side of the bed.

Olaf circled to the far side of the bed. Remaining silent as his gaze shifted between the sisters.

“Elsa?” Not waiting for a response, Anna began climbing off the chair.

“Anna! Wait!” Kristoff caught one arm.

Gerda caught the other. “Careful, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

Kai pulled the chair out of the way, so they could support her.

“Let us help you, dear.” Gerda slipped an arm around her back, taking most of her weight. With each step, Anna trembled in her grasp. Weak as a kitten. Gerda’s grip tightened as she lowered her to the edge of the bed. “Careful now. She has stitches along her right side.

“Okay.” Anna shifted, pulling herself across the bed, till she was hovering over Elsa.

Unable to do more, Gerda drew back a step, giving her some space.

Kristoff stepped back with her.

She stole a glance at the young man. The hard set of his jaw offset the concern in his eyes. His gaze followed Anna’s every move. The boy does have a strong fondness for her. She could do worse. She had done worse, he was rotting in the castle dungeon.

“Elsa? Hey, sleepy head, time to wake up.” There was a hint of fear beneath the jest. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Anna managed a shaky smile. “Come on, Elsie,” She reached for Elsa’s shoulder giving it a gentle shake. “only one royal gets to sleep till noon, and that’s my job.” She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to keep the smile in place.

Gerda flinched at the sound.

Frown lines furrowed Anna’s brow. They deepened as she traced the bruises covering Elsa’s skin. She laid a hand along Elsa’s throat, fitting her fingers into the marks left by Hans’s attempt to strangle her. The hand lifted, trembling, it clutched into a fist. Eyes closed Anna’s head bowed.

Gerda knew the girl well enough to know, she was plotting the Prince’s painful demise. He was going to regret touching her sister.

Releasing a sigh, Anna stroked a hand over Elsa’s hair. “Is she sweating?” Looking from her damp palm, she turned to Gerda. “Elsa doesn’t sweat.”

“I know, dear.” There was no need to hide the truth from her, the time for keeping secrets had long passed. “She’s been running a fever.”

“A fever?” Anna whispered. “For how long?”

“It started the night of the battle.”

“Is it from her wound?” Her hand hovered over Elsa’s side. Fingers curled without touching her.

“No.” The answer slipped Gerda’s lips before she could deny her own concerns. “Dr. Engen believes her wound is healing properly.”

The assurance did nothing to ease the creases in Anna’s brow. “Elsa?” Leaning in closer, her voice dropped to a gentle whisper. “Come on, Elsie.” Her lower lip began to tremble. “Wake up. Please.”

There was no reply. Only the steady rise and fall of the blanket.

Tears burned Gerda’s eyes as Anna touched her forehead to Elsa’s.

Hands folded tight against the front of her skirt, she resisted to urge to gather Anna into her arms. When Anna was ready for comfort, she would be there to offer it.

Drawing a deep breath, Anna sat up. “What does Doctor Engen say about her condition?”

“The fever hasn’t risen to dangerous levels.” Gerda said. “Overall, he believes she has not suffered any premeditate damage from her wounds.”

“Why wouldn’t she wake up?” Pushing herself up with trembling arms, Anna managed to sat up.

“He thinks it has something to do with the disk.” Gerda answered.

Anna’s hands twisted into the blanket. “Do we know where Hans got it?”

Gerda caught a flicker of something dark cross her face.

“No, ma’am,” Kai drew a step closer. “His wounds are rather severe. The last few days, he’s been in and out of consciousness. The Admiral tried to question him this morning without any success. We were able to interrogate Tollak.”

Gerda noted the way his hands flexed as he spoke Tollak’s name. He’s still angry.

“But he offered no useful information.”

“Tell the Admiral, to do what he must to get answers out of Hans.” Anna’s lips curled into a snarl. “He will tell us what he knows.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kai bowed, stealing a glance at Gerda.

Gerda’s eyes narrowed, she’d seen Anna upset before, but there was something different about her anger, no, not anger. Rage. It vibrated off of her. A chill ran down Gerda’s spine.

“Kristoff,” Anna spun toward him, tittering a moment before catching her balance. “We should take her to your family. They may have answers.”

Silence filled the room.

“What?” Anna’s gaze hardened as she looked to each of them. “What aren’t you telling me?” No one would meet her gaze. “Answer me!” Her hands fisted into the bedding.

Kristoff eased to her side. “Grand Pabbie’s already seen the disk.” He held her gaze. “He said, there was nothing he could do.”

Anna faltered but a moment, her shoulders squared, a hardness settled on her features. “Nothing he could do, or nothing he would do?” Her fists twisted deeper into the bedding.

Kristoff’s back stiffened. “You know he would help, if he could.”

Grunting she turned back to Elsa. The weight of his hand came to rest on her back. She refused to meet his gaze.

“Grand Pabbie thinks the disk may have damaged her magic.”

“Damaged her magic?” Her gaze shifted from Elsa to Olaf, who stood silently by the opposite side of the bed. Muscles tensed along her jaw, a faint shine filled her eyes as she turned to the mountain man. “What does that mean?”

Kristoff took her hand, it disappeared within his. “He said, Elsa’s magic needs time to heal.” Rubbing a thumb over the back of her hand, the usually soothing gesture had little effect.

“But she’s going to be alright, isn’t she?”

The plea stabbed at Gerda’s heart.

“I don’t know, Anna.” He didn’t look away from her pleading eyes. “Grand Pabbie said, the disk has powerful magic. We have to hope Elsa’s magic is strong enough to fight the effects of it.”

“Fight the effects?” Her lower lip began to quiver, she reached for Elsa’s arm with her free hand.

“Anna, there’s more.” Kristoff gave her hand a gentle squeeze, drawing her attention back to him. “He said, if her magic can’t heal itself.” His eyes began to glisten, there was a hitch in his voice. “She could die.”

“…no…” Her breath caught. Color slipped from her cheeks.

Gerda knew the look all too well. She’d seen it the night she told Anna her parents would not be returning.

“No.” Tears yielded to defiance. “Elsa’s not going to die.” Her fingers tightened around Elsa’s arm.

“Hey,” Kristoff leaned in, catching her gaze. “We’ll do everything we can to help her. For now, the best thing you can do is sit with her, talk to her, let her know you’re here.”

“Okay.” Anna nodded, her shoulders slumped lower.

One so young, shouldn’t have to shoulder such burdens, Gerda longed to ease her fears.

“Good.” He stood, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll be close by, if you need me.”

“Wait, what?” She caught his hand in both of hers. “Where are you going?”

“I was going to let you have some time with Elsa.”

“Stay.” Her grip tightened. “Please.”

“Okay.” He pulled up her hands, placing a kiss upon them. “I’ll stay.”

“Thank you.” Anna struggled to change her position.

“Easy, don’t hurt yourself.” Kristoff flinched as she pulled on his arm for leverage.

Gerda caught the flash of pain cross his face. “Let me help you, dear.” Gerda lifted Anna’s legs, gently placing them on the bed.

“Here, Master Kristoff, sit.” Kai moved a chair to the side of the bed.

“Thanks.” Kristoff settled into the chair, fatigue drew him deeper into it.

“Thank you, Gerda.” Anna stretched out, facing Elsa. She stroked a knuckle down a pale cheek.

“Try to get some rest.” Taking a blanket from the foot of the bed, Gerda covered her with it.

Humming a reply, Anna reached out to drape an arm over Elsa’s stomach. Before Gerda could warn against it, Anna paused, reaching for an arm instead.

Years of longing for touch and now she’s the one holding back. Gerda’s chest tightened.

Anna pressed her forehead against Elsa’s shoulder.

Tucking the blanket in around her, Gerda stroked a hand over soft, copper hair. Oh, my sweet girls. She turned away, giving Kristoff’s shoulder a reassuring pat as she passed him.

“Anna?” Olaf peeked over the edge of the bed at her. “Would it hurt, Elsa, if I climbed on the bed?”

“No, of course not. Come on.” She worked a hand free from the blanket, motioning to him.

He climbed up, careful not to bounce around. After a moment, he settled opposite Anna, placing a hand on Elsa’s arm.

Both settled into comfortable positions.

Gerda returned to her chair.

“I’ll go change the Princess’s bedding.” Alma headed for the door without waiting for an answer.

The weight of a gentle hand settled on Gerda’s shoulder, she looked up into Kai’s concerned face. Her brow creased with a slight tilt of her head.

“Why don’t you go get some rest. Princess Anna and Master Kristoff will keep watch.”

“No.” Shaking her head, Gerda reached for the sewing. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve been up half the night. You need to rest.”

“I need to be here. I’ll rest later.”

“Gerda…”

“Enough!” The sharp word coupled with a hard look, caused Kia to draw back the hand, folding both behind his back.

She hated when he took that stance with her, it was the same one he used when dealing with people who refused to take no for an answer. They never won such battles.

“Wife…” There was just a hint of annoyance in the word.

She bit back a snipping remark.

“Gerda.”

The couple looked to Anna, who had raised to one elbow. “Go get some sleep. We’ll be fine.”

Looking between the young woman and Kai, Gerda’s stone facade began to crumble. “Your Highness, Anna, I…” Her voice cracked, she ignored the tear tittering in one eye. “I want to stay. Please.”

Anna’s gaze softened. “Elsa would never forgive me if I let you make yourself sick. Go, get some rest. I promise, the moment she wakes I’ll send for you.”

“I…I can’t leave you alone with Master Kristoff, ma’am. What would people say?”

“We’re not alone, Elsa’s here.” Anna declared matter-of-factly.

“Your Highness, I don’t think…” The door opened cutting Gerda off.

Margit balanced a tray with a teapot, cups and snacks piled hight. “Cook set up some tea and snacks for the Princess.”

“Here, let me help you with that.” Kai took the teetering tray from her. He placed it on the chaise.

“Thank you. Do you need anything else?” Margit looked to Gerda.

“No.” Gerda said. “You may leave.”

“Wait.” Anna tried to sit up. Grunting she eased be to her elbow. “Margit can sit with us.”

Panic began to gnaw at Gerda. “Your Highness, I don’t…”

“That’s an excellent idea.” Kai clapped his hands together. “Margit can stay here, and if anyone needs anything they can ask Alma.”

Gerda had a strong urge to slap the smile from his face.

Kai held out a hand to her.

Every fiber of her being screamed to stay. Accepting the offered hand, she rose, ignoring the protest of tired muscles.

“We’ll be in our quarters if you need us.” Kai place a hand at the small of Gerda’s back.

“Thank you, Kai. I want both of you to take the rest of the day off. Get some rest. Consider it a royal command.” She leveled her best regal Elsa glare at the couple.

Hiding a grin, Kai dipped his head. “Yes, ma’am. As you command.” He guided Gerda to the door.

“Wait.” Gerda tried to pull away. “I just need to…”

“Gerda! Go!” Anna pointed to the door. “Now. Please.”

“Fine, but, you’ll call me if anything changes?”

“I promise, you’ll be the first to know.” Anna placed a hand over her heart with the pledge.

“Very well.” She allowed Kai to lead her into the hallway. Once the door latched, she glared at him. “You should have fought to stay.”

“My love,” If he was bothered by her anger it didn’t show. “you have been running almost non-stop for days. You need to rest. They will need you healthy and strong for the days ahead.”

She started to protest, it died on her lips. He was right. She did need to be ready for the coming days. With a heavy sigh, she leaned into him.

His arm slipped around her pulling her closer.

She wrapped an arm around his waist, allowing her head to rest against a welcoming shoulder. “I’ll lay down, but I doubt I’ll sleep.”

“Well, it’s worth a try.” He began rubbing little circles along the small of her back.

The muscles in her back began to relax. “It’s a waste…of time…” She covered a yawn with her free hand, missing Kai’s lopsided grin.

“No doubt, but it’ll make Anna happy.”

“Hum.” She caught the faint teasing in his tone, but chose to ignore it.

They huddled close, making their way down the hall.

#Daughters of Arendelle #Elsa #Anna #Kristoff

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