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#anyone but him he screams as the boulders fall and separate the them
fluffypotatey · 3 years
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You know what, coming back to this edit, I think the reason why we can notice how this single phrase (anyone but him) changes meaning is due to where the emphasis is.
Anyone but him, Merlin says to Kilgharrah, pleading for his destiny to be bound to someone else. To anyone else. Not him. Arthur is spoiled and rude and he’s the son of Uther. Anyone else but this one.
And we can also see that is the same reaction Arthur has when Merlin becomes his manservant. Anyone else but him, father. He’s disrespectful and snarky and has no idea how the hierarchy works. He would rather have any other peasant but this one.
We get to the Diamond of the Day, and so many years have passed. The emphasis has changed. Merlin no longer begs for anyone to take Arthur’s place in their shared destiny. He no longer wishes for the Once and Future King to be anyone because there can’t be anyone like him.
Anyone but him, Merlin cries to the dragon. He is lost and alone. The body is cold and he feels empty. Inside, Merlin knows Arthur is no longer with him, but his heart still cries out. Not him. Merlin would do anything to have Arthur come back. He would wait a 1,000 years to see him again. Because anyone isn’t him. He is everything. And so Merlin cries out again: anyone but him.
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artnigth · 3 years
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Migraines Part 2
i made it!! Part 3 tomorrow BABY!! (probably) 
MIGRAINES PART 2: Raz was walking all the way back to the Questionable Area, more specifically his family’s camp in the campgrounds. It had been a long day, he agreed to cover Gisu’s afternoon shift since she apparently had an “appointment” or something. Norma and Lizzie kept pestering him to see if Gisu actually had a date of sorts, but he knew as much as they did on that topic so that fun little conversation went nowhere. He was finally able to go home and take a nap, he was ten after all (and very tired). “RAZPUTIN!” A scream coming from above breaking his line of thought. Raising his gaze, Raz saw just as Ford Cruller flew to the spot in front of him. The senior Psyconaut might have been very old, but after Raz had fixed his mind it seemed that the senior was back in his prime. “Your brother needs help.”- the tone of Cruller's voice was concerned but not surprised, neither was Raz. “What are you talking about?” “Your brother is lost in the forest and- “QUEEPIE GOT LOST IN THE FORGETFUL FOREST?!” “Your other brother Razputin. Dion, was it? He got lost in the forest and is having a Psychic overload.”- Ford’s tone was calm but a little tired. “Dion? Having a Psychic overload? No offense agent Cruller but Dion isn’t a Psychic. But I do believe he could have gotten lost in the forgetful forest. Let’s go tell my family to go and search for him.” Both of the Psychonauts ran all the way to the Aquato camp, encountering Agustus at the entrance. “Dad! Dion got lost on the Forgetful Forest, we need to go look for him!”- Raz was tired, his tone was halfhearted and kind of over the whole situation. Agustus’ eyes were wide, he stepped back a little at the sight of Ford Cruller. Ford stayed back for Agustus’ sake, he was clearly not over what had happened and Ford couldn’t blame him at all. “How did Dion get lost in the woods?”- Agustus decided to ignore Ford’s presence focusing on his middle son and the dilemma that had been put into focus. “So that’s where that boy is… His friend came here a couple of hours ago and both her, Frazie and your mother have been looking for him since.”- Agustus sounded tense, but neither of the Psychonauts minded. “Friend? Dion has friends?”- Raz was a little surprised but not too much. “Yeah, that was Frazie’s reaction as well. Let me call them, I’m pretty sure they’re gonna be happy to finally find out where he is.” . “HE WHAT?!”- Donatella did NOT sound happy about finding out where her oldest son had been all this time, scaring her children and husband even if just a little. Frazie, Donatella, Raz, Agustus, and Ford were now standing at the entrance of the Forgetful Forest, with Dion’s “friend” not being there yet. “UNBELIEVABLE. I THOUGHT WE HAD TAUGHT THAT BOY BETTER THAN TO GO INTO THE WOODS ALONE! IF YOU FOUND HIM WHY DIDN’T YOU DRAG HIM BACK, FORD?!”- Donatella kept rambling for a while her temper getting worse with each word. “That’s what I’m trying to explain, Dion seems to be having some sort of Psychic overload. His abilities being so overwhelming to his mind that he can’t control what he does. I had similar experiences when I was a young Psychic, everything was to much to deal with.”- Ford was still standing at a distance from the family, his voice calm but still concerned. “FRAZIE!! DID YOU FIND HIM?!”- a voice was heard from high into the sky. A figure suddenly falling from the sky on a skateboard and landing between Ford and the Aquatos. It was Gisu on top of her skateboard, who stepped off to be at the same level as everyone else. “Gisu?! Aren’t you supposed to be at an appointment??”- Razputin sounded ofended and blindsided. “Appoinment? I never said that.”- Gisu was clearly confused on that topic. “Adam said you had an appointment and that he needed someone to cover your shift, were you here all the time?” “Yeah… I just told Adam I was leaving early, I never said anything about an appointment.” “But… But… You know what, nevermind.”- Raz sounded defeated, Norma and Lizzie were right, and he hated to admit it. And a possible date with his brother out of all people, ugh. “So… did you found Dion, it’s been hours…” “Agent Ford did, Dion’s apparently having a psychic overload in the forest. So we are going to start a search party into the forest.”- Frazie’s tone was her typical sarcastic annoyance but concern was still heard as a shadow in her voice. “Ok, I’ll go high to try and spot him from above.”- Gisu sounded a little desperate to find Dion clearly concerned. But she was still her determined and confident self. She stepped on her skateboard and suddenly she was gone, flying into the sky. The rest of the Aquatos, and Ford separated into the forest to look for Dion. Raz and Ford went north, meanwhile, Donatella and Agustus went east, Frazie stayed back to look after the kids and just in case Dion found a way back to the camp. . . . . .
Gisu was hovering above the Forgetful Forest scanning the area below as well as she could. She was looking for that dorky acrobat that she had gotten to know for the past two months, wondering how could he had managed to hide this type of issue long enough to have such a breakdown. Throwing agent Ford from the middle of the woods all the way to the campgrounds wasn’t a small action, levitating someone that far was impressive for someone who has repressed their powers for as long as Dion has. Her thoughts were interrupted when she got close to losing her balance and falling. A force trying to push her away from an exact spot in the forest, a small clear in the forest where there was a boulder. Trees were being pushed so hard away from that spot that some were being uprooted from the ground. Carefully Gisu did her best to go as close as she could in her skateboard, eventually she had to descend to the ground since she couldn’t move forward anymore. Gisu moved forward slowly, every step felt like if she was pushing a boulder that was getting heavier and heavier with each step. By the time Gisu had gotten to the boundaries of the clear, she had to hold on to a tree or else she would have been thrown away. Looking at the boulder she could see a familiar figure sitting in front of it, with his knees covering his face and his hair being an unrecognizable mess. There was Dion, shaking and sobbing in front of that boulder. Gisu was stunned. What happened to him?! Is he okay?! “Dion?!”- Gisu’s voice echoed through clear, her tone concerned. “GO AWAY!”- Dion’s voice roared into Gisu’s ears, almost deafening the girl. “You need to calm down, you’re destroying the forest!” “GISU YOU NEED TO LEAVE, I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU!”- misery emanated from the boy, in all of his seventeen years of life nothing like this had happened to him. He was terrified of himself and very much lost in his own despair. Gisu stabbed the ground with her skateboard, propelling herself forward and using said skateboard as a cane in order to get the closest she could to him.  Using her own telepathy she tried her best to counter the force of Dion’s own psychic energy. The closer she got, the stronger Dion’s energy became, it was crazy and she didn’t know how to handle it. “GISU LEAVE!” She kept walking onward taking no mind of Dion’s words, just a few more steps and she would reach him, but it felt as if he were miles away. “GISU, STOP!” Her strength wavered, all of his force suddenly focused on her alone. His mind was tormented by screams, guilt invaded his body. HE had thrown Ford Cruller into the sky. HE levitated an old man and threw him to oblivion. HE had killed Ford Cruller, all because of… because… “DION PLEASE LET ME HELP! I’VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN A MILLION TIMES BEFORE. YOU JUST NEED TO CALM DOWN AND BREATH!”- Her cries resonated through the clear, her skateboard started to crack under pressure, she needed to act as fast as she could. She increased the energy she was putting into protecting herself and she kept moving forward. Dion felt hopeless, he needed to get Gisu away or he would hurt her like he hurt Ford. “GISU, PLEASE I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU TOO!” The whispers in his mind were long gone, replaced by screams of fury, guilt and fear. This time he knew all those voices were just him. HE was tormenting himself for what he had done, screaming into his mind until he broke and finally exploded. HE thought it was fair, he deserved to end like this. Not just for what he did to Ford but for how he treated Raz, how he annoyed Gisu with his stupid questions about psychics, how he treated the people around him, how he was bound to explode and no one, not even himself, could stop it from happening. But at least he would make sure to not take anyone down with him. Suddenly a soft sensation was felt on his shoulders, like a thin blanket. Dion looked up from his knees and there she was. Gisu holding on to her skateboard, her knuckles white from the effort. Her hair waving as if a storm was hitting her directly on her face. A soft smirk planted on her face. Her scarf missing from her shoulders and gently placed on his. Tears began to run down from his eyes, all the way to his chin. The pressure stopped, the screams wavered turning back into whispers and the world finally stopped spinning. Gisu took his hands and gently lifted them both to stand. Her hands were rough and cold from all of her mechanical projects with Otto, but for Dion they felt like a safe place, something he hadn’t felt from anyone ever since he was a child. “Let’s go back to the campgrounds your family is looking for you and it's getting dark.”- her voice was soft, a hint of relief on her tone. Dion nodded. They started walking out of the clear and reentering the forest. They had a long way back and Gisu knew it was better to hold her breath since the Aquato family were definitely going to have a rough night. END OF PART 2.
PART 1:
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pastelwitchling · 3 years
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Journey to the Past
read on ao3
This was meant to be part of my one-shot collection, it turned out to be too long, and now it’s a separate fic. If you enjoy reading even a little bit, please comment and share/reblog, it always makes the world of a difference ❤
Michael woke to find he’d fallen asleep at Alex’s bedside. Before anything, he sat up, checked to see if Alex’s eyes hadn’t fluttered, if he wasn’t finally waking from his coma, but his hand remained perfectly still in Michael’s, the heart monitor echoed steadily into the otherwise empty room and echoing off Max’s bedroom walls.
They would’ve taken him to the hospital, but since the attack that did this to him had been by his father’s rogue Project Shepherd agents, they couldn’t risk leaving him in a room that any enemy could access. At least here, Isobel and Michael could set up forcefields around the grounds. At least here, Max could strike anybody that came too close with lightning and they could blame it on the weather. At least here, Michael could cling to Alex and no one would bother him about it.
Michael wasn’t Alex’s boyfriend, he knew. Alex’s actual boyfriend – or his ex, that is, as of two weeks ago – was back in New York, unaware that the man he’d fallen so deeply and treacherously in love with had fallen victim to his father’s pissed off and ridiculously loyal minions.
Michael followed the bruises on Alex’s jaw and cheeks with his eyes, the cut on his lower lip, visible under the thick respirator. There was a stitched up gash in his forehead, and his knuckles on his right hand were scraped and bloody from the fight he’d given the attackers. He’d fended most of them off, before Michael had arrived to blow the rest of them into the walls and knock them out, but not before one of them had managed a stray shot in and got Alex in the stomach.
Max had done his best to heal him, but the bullets had been laced with yellow pollen. Jesse Manes’ last attempt to kill his youngest son, apparently, had followed him out the grave.
Michael shut his eyes against the thought, and instinctively gripped Alex’s hand tighter. He didn’t want to think about Project Shepherd and what they’d intended. They’d failed, and that was all that mattered. His grip turned painful on Alex’s hand. They’d failed.
A knock came at the door, but Michael did not look away from Alex’s face. He heard Max’s voice from the end of the room ask, “How’re you holding up?”
“Why isn’t he awake yet?” Michael demanded. “You said he’d be awake by now.”
“No,” Max sighed, and closed the door behind him. “I said Kyle hoped he’d be awake by now.”
“It’s been two days.”
“We’re doing everything we can –”
“Well, it’s not enough!” Michael snapped, and the room collapsed back into silence.
“He’ll wake up,” Max promised him. “He will. Just give him some time.”
“I need him,” Michael whispered.
“I know –”
“No,” he growled. “I need him.” He rubbed his face roughly with one hand. “Where’s Is?”
“Outside,” he said. “Why?” When Michael didn’t answer, Max’s shoulders slumped and his frown deepened. “Michael, no.”
“I know we said there were risks –”
“Risks?” he scoffed. “I already told you it’s too dangerous to go digging through Alex’s head! Isobel told you it’s dangerous!”
Michael stood. “Valenti said his brain waves are normal, he’s just asleep. If I can find the part of him that doesn’t want to wake up, then – then I get him back.”
“Or you guys screw something up,” Max argued, “and change something that can’t be changed back.”
Michael clenched his jaw. “He won’t wake up, not like this, and I can’t just sit here and wait.”
“Michael,” Max tried, purposely calming his voice in that way when he knew Michael was seconds away from blowing up and wanted to ease him back down. “Listen to me. I know you’re worried about him, but if you go into his mind, you could make things worse.”
Michael swallowed. Max was right, he knew Max was right. But he remembered Kyle’s voice when he’d hoped Alex would wake up soon. He had been too quiet, his eyes downcast like he was praying and didn’t want the others to know it was that bad.
He had no idea that when it came to Alex, Michael paid attention. Only when it came to Alex.
“If I do nothing,” he said, “Alex stays asleep.” His fingers curled to fists at his sides at the thought. He looked back at Alex, the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed softly. His unmoving fingers and closed eyes.
Michael sniffed, and decided, “If Alex doesn’t wake up by tomorrow morning, I’m going in to wake him up myself.”
 They waited until the next morning, then noon. Michael had been ready to start at dawn, but Kyle had seemed anxious, and Max argued for “Just a couple more hours, Michael, he’s the doctor here!”
Michael had argued that Alex didn’t need a human doctor, and Kyle had argued that Alex was human, so who else was going to treat him?
Michael forgot that sometimes; that Alex wasn’t actually an alien like him, that he didn’t have any superpowers like the others did. He’d just always seemed so strong and intelligent that it slipped Michael’s mind. But Alex was human, and more fragile than Michael allowed himself to believe. He’d been too careless, too willing to ask for Alex’s help fixing this or fixing that without ever considering what he might’ve been doing to him. What it might cost.
Maybe that was why Michael was so eager to go into Alex’s mind already and wake him up. It was time for him to save Alex for a change.
“Just for the record,” Isobel said, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“You deal with brains all the time,” Michael argued.
“Not like Kyle,” she insisted. “And not memories. It’s like . . . time travelling! If you touch something in the past, you could change the future forever!” She swallowed. “And Alex is . . . he’s too important.”
She didn’t need to say the words for Michael to know what she was thinking. He’s too important to you, she seemed to be telling Michael. If I hurt him, it’ll break you, and I could never forgive myself for that.
Michael took her hand. “You’re gonna do great,” he said resolutely. “If anyone can do this, you can.”
Her brows pinched, unconvinced, but Michael didn’t have any more time for doubt or hesitation. Alex hadn’t woken up in too long, and his nerves were fraying with every passing second.
“Do it,” he said.
Isobel glanced hesitantly at Kyle. Kyle looked to Alex, as if weighing the damage that they could do, but even he must’ve known that Alex being asleep for this long was abnormal, because he looked to Isobel and nodded, clearly unhappy about it.
“Be careful,” Max warned. “For your sakes, and his.”
Isobel’s hand on Michael’s tightened, and she shut her eyes. Michael kept his gaze on Alex for as long as he could. Then he felt a sudden chill shoot throughout his entire body from his hand, and he inhaled sharply. One second he was looking at Alex’s sleeping figure, and the next, the world around him turned to smoke, and he found himself standing in the desert on a bright, sunny day.
He was still holding Isobel’s hand, but nothing looked familiar. There was just desert and gray-steel buildings built high with tall glass windows, clustered like boulders in the sea.
In the distance, he could see uniformed soldiers, marching in formation. Men and women training, sergeants barking orders, laughter from friends somewhere hidden. Where were they?
“What the hell?” he muttered, looking around. He didn’t recognize the area at all.
Isobel shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Where’s Alex?”
Michael turned and found they were inches from a doorway that opened to a large, steel room. There was a raised platform at the very opposite end, and several soldiers fighting, sparring, exercising – but Michael couldn’t see any of them.
Isobel gasped. “Michael,” she pointed. “Isn’t that Alex?”
Michael had already spotted him. He was on the platform, fighting another young man. But even before Isobel and Michael approached him, Michael knew this was a much younger Alex. He looked barely eighteen, his hair having lost its spike and was cut short, he was throwing punches and kicks in a way that seemed very unnatural for the man who hardly had to raise a finger to induce fear. And he was losing. Badly.
“I don’t think anybody can see us,” Isobel murmured, looking around at the other soldiers as they passed. “Or hear us.”
Michael’s eyes were on Alex. His heart was hammering, beating painfully against his ribs with every beating Alex took, every time his body fell to the floor. His opponent delivered a roundhouse kick that had Alex on his face again, and Michael snapped. He held a hand up to blast the other fighter back, but his powers wouldn’t work.
“Are you crazy?!” Isobel hissed, slapping his arm. “You can’t change anything, remember?”
“Literally,” Michael spat, hoping Alex’s opponent could feel his glares. “My telekinesis isn’t working.”
Isobel looked around before her eyes focused on another soldier who was doing pushups. Her brows furrowed for barely half a second, then she winced and put a hand to her temple.
Michael tugged on her hand. “Are you okay?”
“It’s taking all of my power for us to just be here,” she sighed. “My other powers won’t work either.” She frowned. “What’s he doing?”
Michael followed her gaze, and saw that Alex, beaten and bloody, was slowly pushing himself to his feet with trembling arms.
“His face is covered in blood,” Isobel shook her head. “He needs to stay down!”
Michael guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Alex so resolved to stay on his feet. His hair was plastered to his temples with blood and sweat, his breaths were quick and short, like his chest ached, but his shoulders were straight and his eyes were filled with a fiery anger. Alex was looking at his opponent like he was every other person who’d ever beat him down and ordered him to stay there. He was screaming, without any words at all, that he wouldn’t.
It didn’t seem to matter to the opponent as he threw hit after hit, hurting Alex again and again, making Michael flinch and burn with rage every time.
When the fight was over, the other soldiers jeering and eager to start their own training match next, Alex’s opponent crouched down beside him and whispered, loud enough for Michael and Isobel to hear, as though they were in Alex’s place themselves –
“Nobody cares who your daddy and brothers are, Manes,” the opponent sneered with disgust. “Your kind will never survive here.”
Michael clenched his jaw. He felt Alex’s anger, his frustration, his grief. He’d often wondered what happened to Alex after he’d enlisted, how a soldier trained and what that did to them, whether it was hurting Alex the same way.
No one offered Alex a hand, no one knew what to make of this lesser Manes. Michael wanted to kill them all for hurting him, for pushing him down. Alex, on the other hand, seemed to see things differently.
With all the charge of that emo kid from high school, Alex groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He spat the blood in his mouth out, and wiped his forearm against his nose. His eyes were dry, his expression unreadable, but that same anger stayed.
More than a few soldiers looked surprised and even impressed, but Alex, already walking away, didn’t notice.
The scene changed.
Before Michael could blink, they were outside again. A cursory look around told them they were behind the building this time, where rocks and stray blades of grass grew out. Alex was sitting against the wall, his knees pulled up to his chest. In the distance, soldiers marched on, but nobody seemed to see Alex as he cried.
He hadn’t wanted anyone to see him.
Michael glanced at Isobel, and saw her eyes were wide and sympathetic. Alex wiped the tears away faster than they could fall. He sniffled, and pulled a picture out of his pocket, hiding it between his eyes and knees, a secret for no one else.
“I’m sorry,” Alex sniffled again, and wiped his cheek on his shoulder. “I’m trying not to. I’m getting better at it. Not that I think you’d be disappointed that I cried, I just . . . don’t want to cry in front of anybody else. Never again.”
Michael and Isobel each went to a different side of Alex to see whose picture he was talking to, all the while Michael trying not to scrunch up with the uncomfortable thought that Alex had taken enough comfort in someone else that he would sneak a photo of them into base, even back then.
When he saw the picture, he froze. Isobel breathed, “Oh my god . . .,” and Michael had to kneel down next to Alex. It was a picture of them – him and Alex – similar to the picture he had in his airstream. Except this one was taken at a different angle, and they were smiling at each other, taken in the exact moment Alex had noticed Michael watching him play guitar, and the two had laughed, giddy at being so close together and knowing what they knew about their feelings for one another.
Michael tried to breathe, but a lump lodged itself in his throat. Alex had kept a picture of them with him when he’d first gone to the base, and he pulled it out whenever he needed strength and comfort. All this time, he’d thought Alex hadn’t thought twice about him . . .
“I’m scared, Guerin,” Alex confessed to the picture, his grip on the edges tightening. “I don’t – I don’t know what to do. I’m not strong enough to be here. I don’t want to be here.” His lower lip trembled. “But that’s why you started to pull away, right? I was too weak to protect you . . .”
“No,” Michael breathed, shaking his head. “No, please, don’t say that, please.”
“That’s why Alex enlisted?” Isobel said. “Because his dad hit you?”
“It was after Rosa,” Michael croaked, eyes on Alex. “Everything changed, and I . . . I could never tell him what happened. But he – he thought . . . I didn’t know he thought . . .”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Alex cried, hiding his face with one hand. “I’m trying not to cry, I swear I’m trying. I just miss you so much, Guerin. You’re the only person that’s ever felt like home to me, and now I’m here, and I’m more lost than ever.” He exhaled shakily. “All I wanted was a goodbye. I keep thinking about the way I left. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Isobel’s own eyes were glassy. “Michael?”
“I didn’t want to,” he whispered in response to her silent question. “I didn’t want to say goodbye. It felt like I would never see him again if I did.” He clenched his jaw. He tried to press his forehead to Alex’s temple, to inhale his scent, but he couldn’t feel Alex at all. He could only watch him suffer.
“The last thing I ever said to him before he left was –” he scowled at the bile in his throat “—that I’d be better off if he left. I was just angry, and – and hurt!” he tried. “I didn’t mean it!”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly, pulling her eyes off Alex. “It’s in the past, Michael. That’s what all of this stuff is. Memories. You know Alex now, you know what he thinks of you. He loves you.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s not what hurts, Is.”
“Then what does?”
“It’s that he loved me this much even back then.”
“Private Manes,” a voice sounded, and Alex gasped just quickly enough for Michael to catch it before he was on his feet, straight as a board.
Michael looked up and found none other than Sergeant Ramos, Alex’s mysterious leader who’d come to Roswell a mere few weeks ago. The man Alex had looked up to and smiled around and trusted. The man who seemed more Alex’s father than Jesse Manes had ever been.
Sergeant Ramos, looking about twelve years younger, raised a brow at Alex’s right hand which was subtly pushing the photo back into its hiding place in his pocket.
He tilted his head at Alex. “You’re the new kid, right? Jesse’s youngest. Alec?”
“Alex Manes, sir,” Alex said loudly, coherently. Like a soldier.
“Alex,” he nodded. “You miss your friend, Alex?”
Alex faltered. “Sir?”
“Your friend,” he nudged his chin at Alex’s pocket. “In the picture.” His eyes were meaningful when he said, “You must’ve been very close.”
Alex swallowed. It was no use trying to hide the panic in his eyes. He’d just come back from his father’s house, he was too used to being afraid. He hadn’t spent a decade learning to hide that fear.
“Is he the reason you’re here?”
Alex raised his chin. “I’m here to be stronger, sir!”
Ramos smiled, like he knew something Alex didn’t. “You seemed plenty strong to me up on that platform, Private.”
Alex frowned. “I was . . . losing, sir.”
“No,” he shook his head. “No, you were getting back up. No matter what he hit you with.”
Alex clenched his jaw. “I don’t like bullies, sir.”
“Did a bully hurt your friend there?” he asked. “Is that why you’re here?”
Alex said nothing, and Michael could see the questions in the furrow of his brow. What would happen to him if a sergeant discovered he was gay? Would he report him to Jesse?
Ramos sighed and looked around. “If you don’t know why you’re here,” he said, “you won’t last long, I can guarantee you that. You know where you are?”
Alex blinked, confused. “The – the US Air Force Base?”
“Are you asking me?”
He straightened. “The US Air Force Base, sir!”
“You ever been in a plane?” he asked. “Ever seen what we see up there?”
Alex hesitated, then shook his head. He quickly caught himself and said, “No, sir!”
Ramos hummed, then patted Alex’s shoulder once, hard enough to make Alex stumble. “All right, follow me! I’m about to show you the few good things about being out in this godforsaken desert.”
Alex followed as he was supposed to, though doubt never left his face. He seemed convinced that there was nothing good about being out here.
Michael and Isobel exchanged a glance before they quickly followed. Michael stayed close to Alex and reached for his hand several times, until they passed right through each other and Alex hardly seemed aware of him.
They went into a hangar with several smaller planes inside, and Alex tensed just for a moment at the sight of them all before he realized Ramos was leading him to a little aircraft at the far right of the room.
“Stay with me, Guerin,” Alex suddenly whispered, his eyes wide and betraying some fear. Michael looked to him, surprised, but realized that Alex was just talking to himself. His hand covered his pocket where his picture of him and Michael was, and with a deep, shaking sigh, he followed Ramos to the plane.
When Alex got close enough, Ramos tossed him a helmet. “Hop in, kid!”
Alex swallowed. He looked like he wanted to stutter an excuse not to, but he gripped his pocket tightly and nodded once, putting on the helmet.
“Oh my god,” Isobel said with a smirk tugging at her lips as realization dawned. “You’re like his good luck charm.”
Michael swallowed, though he definitely didn’t want to smile. When did it stop? When did Alex realize that he wasn’t good luck at all? When had he stopped needing him?
Before Michael and Isobel could say anything else, they both ended up in the backseat of the little aircraft, Ramos and Alex in the front, the plane on a wide stretch of road. Michael didn’t know if this aircraft had initially fit two people in the back, but it was like the memory warped and changed for them to be able to follow.
“We’re tied to Alex,” Isobel told him. Despite the roar of the engine, they heard each other, and the other two passengers, perfectly. “We’ll keep getting tugged along with him.”
Alex gripped the edge of his seat tightly as the plane took off into the air. Michael could hear his gasp, his eyes wanting to close but unwilling to do it in front of his sergeant. They rose high to the clouds, Alex’s knuckles white. Michael wanted more than anything to reach for him, to hold and comfort him, but this Alex was on his own. He’d never had Michael there as Michael had had Max and Isobel. It was just him, alone, with nothing but a picture to comfort him.
“Better hold onto somethin’,” Ramos laughed and pulled up high above the clouds.
What they saw knocked the breath out of their lungs. High above a bed of white, the sun shined brightly, turning the sky around it to gold and pink and purple and blue. It looked like the color of their spaceship surrounding them.
The sunlight hit Alex’s wide eyes, and Michael watched him breathing quickly, emotions turning from fear to shock to grief to wonder to amazement to grief and shock again. He could’ve done anything in that moment. He could’ve cried, could’ve screamed. Instead he smiled, a surprised burst of laughter escaping his lips.
He held up his hands and yelled, “WOOOOOOO!” and Ramous laughed harder. Isobel couldn’t help but laugh along, and Michael couldn’t look away from Alex. The bright sunlight had turned his tear-filled eyes to crystal green, and if Ramos noticed his crying, he didn’t say anything. Alex just laughed and ran his hands through his hair, marveling at the sight before him, as if he’d never expected that such a beautiful treasure could be right over his head this whole time.
After they’d come back down, Ramos handed Alex his half of a ham and cheese sandwich. “Every year,” he told him, “I look at new recruits, try to decide if there are any worth keeping an eye out for. This year, that’s you.”
Alex blinked. “Why me?”
“Because a soldier who can start a battle is a dime a dozen,” he said simply. “I need the kind of person who can win them. I think I can make you captain in record’s time.” He raised a brow, and finished his sandwich in one bite. “Would that be something you would want?”
Alex’s eyes widened. “That would outrank my dad – er – Sergeant Manes.”
“Yes,” Sergeant Ramos said slowly, as though he’d just figured out the bully’s name. “It would. He would have to answer to you.”
Alex’s cheeks were red, but his expression fierce and hopeful. “You can really make me captain, sir?”
“If it’s what you want,” he said. “If it’s the kind of person you want to be. But you ‘aint gonna get it getting beaten down the way you do.”
“I’m – I’m trying –”
“Trying is for excuses,” he said. “‘Round here, you do. If you want to outrank your old man, there’s only one way to do it, Manes. I can train you, but the work’s gotta come from you. What do you think?” He tilted his head. “How far are you willing to go to be the stronger one?”
The look on Alex’s face said it all. He would become whatever he had to, do whatever needed doing. He had enemies, and he wanted them to burn.
The picture changed. It was like walking through a film, memories too blurred and passing now for Michael and Isobel to cling to.
“What’s going on?” Michael asked Isobel, and she shook her head.
“Alex doesn’t clearly remember any of this stuff,” she said, “so we can’t see it any better than he can.”
They saw Alex get older, training harder, running faster, shooting better than anybody else around him. They saw him rise in ranks quickly, uniformed men pinning medals to his chest, congratulating him. Alex laughing with a team of his own, men with muscles larger than Michael’s head, following him like he was their hero.
The memory then stopped, and Michael and Isobel found themselves in a hospital hallway.
Isobel shivered and clung to Michael’s arm. “What is this?” she asked. “Where are we?”
Michael looked around, and pointed at a familiar man pacing along the wall, his thumb pressed to his lower lip.
“Gregory?” Isobel blinked. “What’s he doing here?”
A doctor stepped out, and Gregory was on him in an instant. “How is he?” he demanded at once.
The doctor sighed. It sounded sad. Gregory’s face fell, anguish overtaking his expression. “We did all we could,” he said, “but we couldn’t save the leg.”
Isobel gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “No,” she breathed. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to see this.”
Michael couldn’t hear anything else she said. He was watching Alex who was sitting up in bed, staring numbly at the ceiling. Michael went inside and stood at Alex’s bedside. He did not look at the sheets and what they revealed.
“Private,” he whispered, leaning in as close as he could without touching Alex. “Can you hear me?”
Alex said nothing. He didn’t look down or move. The circles around his eyes were dark. He slowly reached over to the tray beside his bed where a few of his belongings sat in an opened plastic bag, and took something out. It was a picture, his picture of him and Michael, tattered around the edges and stained with specs of blood on the back. He hugged it against his chest as a tear wordlessly rolled down his cheek, though he remained expressionless.
“Alex,” Gregory came in. He looked over Alex’s missing right leg, and swallowed thickly. “Hey,” he brushed his hair back from his face. Alex was either half-asleep or still filled with anesthetic. “Hey, can you hear me?”
Michael knew Alex could, that he remembered this moment perfectly, or he and Isobel would never have been able to see it.
Alex’s lips tugged up in half a sad smile, his brows furrowed as another tear fell down the bridge of his nose. “He’ll think I’m broken now. He’s so beautiful, he’d . . . he’d never love me like this.”
Michael stepped back, feeling like he’d been shot. Alex had kept the picture. Alex had thought Michael wouldn’t love him without his leg. Even now, after all these years, he’d kept the photo of them together. Even now, Michael was still his comfort.
The scene changed.
“I’m getting dizzy,” Isobel groaned. “Where are we now? It looks like Alex’s house, doesn’t it?”
It did. It was night, and they were right in Alex’s driveway, the trees lit with fairy lights, and there sat Michael, or a previous version of Michael, on the bed of his truck.
Michael’s heart fell into his stomach. “No,” he breathed. He remembered this.
“Whoa,” Isobel looked between Michael and Memory Michael. “It’s like Inception.”
“No, please, no,” Michael whispered as Alex pulled up. He stepped out and saw Michael shaking his head.
“What?” he asked in that cute way Michael had never admitted to.
“Pick another memory,” Michael told Isobel. “Any other memory!”
“I can’t control where we go!” Isobel said. “Why? What happens here, Michael?”
Michael pressed the bottoms of his palms into his eyes as Alex’s plea to help him find out more about his mom sounds in his ears. Then Michael’s own cruel words, “I like Maria, okay?”
Isobel’s hand tightened on Michael’s. “Oh.”
Michael was about to say something, though he didn’t know what, when the image before them blurred. It didn’t go away, it just faded to darkness.
“What’s happening?” Michael asked Isobel.
Isobel’s brows were furrowed. “It’s Alex,” she said. “He – he stopped paying attention.”
Michael swallowed thickly as the colors ran around him. Then he and Isobel were in Alex’s living room as Alex came in. It was right after Michael had left his house.
Alex sat down on the couch, staring off into the distance. He pulled off his cap, and his arm fell limp to his side. Slowly, Alex let his head fall back against the wall, and he stared at the ceiling, the same numb expression on his face as when he’d woken up to losing his leg. Any pretense of being fine or indifferent to Michael’s confession was gone.
Alex sniffled, then straightened. His eyes were dry. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out that same picture of him and Michael. He stared at it for a long time, but he didn’t say anything.
“He kept it,” Isobel breathed. “All this time, he’s loved you so much.”
“I didn’t –” Michael croaked, shaking his head. “I didn’t know.”
He’d thought Alex didn’t care who he was with. Then he thought to the way Alex’s eyes had fallen time and time again; in his driveway, his backyard, outside Michael’s airstream over and over and over again. Never surprised, just afraid that his suspicions had been right. That he was too broken for Michael to love anymore.
Alex lied down with a deep sigh that sounded frighteningly like resignation, his hand with the picture hanging off the couch. Slowly, his jaw clenched, Alex let the picture flutter out of his fingers and to the floor. He turned over to his other side and closed his eyes. He didn’t pick the picture up again.
“Alex . . .” Michael whispered, but before he could try reaching for Alex, the picture changed again, and he and Isobel were standing next to Alex in front of a short building. Kids played outside and elders swept their front porch.
Isobel leaned her weight against Michael. He put an arm around her waist. “Whoa, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, “yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. I don’t think I can keep this up much longer, Michael. We have to find the broken part here, fast.”
Michael looked Alex over. “I think we’re getting there. Wasn’t this what he was wearing the day he was ambushed?”
Isobel straightened, eyes narrowed. She gasped. “Kyle told me Alex had gone to visit his mom that morning! He called on his way to the bunker, and –”
“That’s where they got him,” Michael growled, his hands turned to fists at the thought. “We’re close.”
As if hearing the urgency in their voices, a woman opened the door to greet Alex. She had Alex’s dark eyes, dark hair, and kind smile.
“My baby,” Alex’s mother pulled him in for a hug. Alex hugged her back just as tightly.
“Hey, mom,” he said. He sounded exhausted.
His mother quickly noticed and her smile faltered. She cupped his cheek. “Okay, baby, come in. Come on. I’ll make you some tea.”
That was how they found themselves minutes later, seated in a small but comfy living room with plush floral couches, Michael and Isobel on each side of Alex as he and his mother nursed hot cups of tea.
“What’s going on?” Alex’s mother said. “Why do you look like that?”
Alex scoffed halfheartedly, “Are you saying I look bad?”
She brushed his hair back from his eyes. “My son is the handsomest in the world.” She brought her hand to his chin and lifted his head. “So why is he so upset?”
“I’m not upset, mom,” he said, smiling weakly. “I’m just . . . so tired.” His smile fell away and he pinched the bridge of his nose. He took a sip of his tea and set the mug down. He rubbed his hands together. “When you called last night, I told you everything was fine. I lied, mom.”
She nodded, like this didn’t surprise her in the slightest. “I know.” She tilted her head, and softly asked, “Is it your breakup? I thought you were okay with that.”
“I was,” Alex shook his head, eyes shut. “I – I am, but I . . .” He sighed and pulled something out of his pocket. He huffed a miserable chuckle. “I tried to burn it. I couldn’t.”
She took the picture from him, and Isobel gasped softly. It was the same one Alex had had of him and Michael for all of these years. He’d never gotten rid of it. Michael had never stopped being a comfort to him. Until, apparently, now.
Realization dawned on Alex’s mother’s face. “This boy. What was his name again?”
Alex rubbed his face. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters anymore. Forrest and I broke up, and he still won’t tell me anything.”
She frowned. “I thought you said you loved each other?”
Alex nodded. “I used to believe that.” He sighed shakily. “Not anymore.” He chuckled sadly, and covered his face with his hands. “I’m so tired, mom. I’m so tired of – of excuses and being afraid and – and being brave just to find out that it makes no difference. It’s not enough. I’m not enough.”
“Alex,” Alex’s mother looked horrified at her son’s words. “Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to,” Alex confessed in a whisper. “He showed me. He told Maria he loved her.”
Isobel’s eyes were wide. “Michael, you what?” she demanded. “Why would you lie like that?”
“I was scared,” he said, his eyes on Alex. “I wanted to hold onto something easy.”
But he didn’t know this was what he’d been doing to Alex. That he was hurting him this badly, all to date someone he’d never actually wanted to date. Michael looked at the dark circles around Alex’s eyes, his hollow cheeks, his tousled hair, and wondered how long it had been since Alex had eaten or slept.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Alex said. “I’d always hoped that . . . that we’d end up together. But it’s not something he wants anymore. If he ever wanted it at all.” His eyes shut tight. “I can’t keep clinging to bread crumbs, mom, I don’t want to.”
His mom looked concerned, but she took Alex’s hands in both of hers and said steadily, “Alex, what’re you trying to say? You can tell me.”
Alex exhaled shakily, and lifted his gaze to his mother’s. “Mom, I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve thought about it since he and Maria first started . . .” he clenched his jaw and looked away, like just the thought of Michael and Maria together pained him. Finally, he said, “I’m leaving Roswell.”
“No,” Michael breathed.
“And I’m not coming back this time.”
“NO!” Michael stood. “Alex, you can’t leave!”
“Michael,” Isobel tried. “He can’t hear you.”
“Alex can’t leave me,” he shook his head. “He can’t.”
“I can’t see him anymore,” Alex said. “I can’t pretend he still loves me. It hurts too much.”
Despite Isobel’s protests, Michael leaned over Alex and grabbed his arms. He kept going through him.
“Alex, look at me!” he demanded. “I’m right here, look at me!”
Alex flinched just as Michael’s hands collided with his arms, grabbing onto him. He could feel Alex, and Alex could feel him.
Alex looked startled, his mother’s voice was gone. Everyone’s voices were gone but Michael’s, Isobel’s, and Alex’s. The world around them was turning to black as Alex searched the air in front of him, as if looking for the source of the sound.
“He can hear me,” Michael muttered, eyes wide. “He can – he can hear me!”
Alex’s eyes fell onto Michael’s, and his brows furrowed. “Guerin?”
“This is it,” Isobel stood. “This is the faulty memory! The part where Alex’s brain is screwed up and is keeping him asleep!”
“Isobel?” Alex blinked. He tried to stand with Michael clinging to him. Michael was afraid that if he let go of this memory, Alex would disappear from him for good. “What’re you guys doing here, what is all this?”
They were standing in darkness. Nothingness upon nothingness.
“You were attacked,” Isobel told him, “by Project Shepherd agents.”
“You’ve been in a coma for three days,” Michael said. “We couldn’t get you to wake up, we had to come into your mind, try to wake you from here.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Alex shook his head. “Attacked? Coma? None of this makes any sense!”
“Remember!” Michael demanded. “Remember! This is just a memory, the real you knows what happened! Remember, Alex!”
Alex looked shocked, doubtful, disbelieving. Then something in his expression slotted together. “I was – I was at the bunker . . . the door was open . . . it all happened so fast.” He blinked, and gasped. “A gunshot. Someone – someone shot me.” He frantically patted down his stomach, looking for the wound, but he wouldn’t find it in a memory. He looked back to Isobel, then Michael. “You’re telling the truth.”
“You have to fight it, Alex,” Isobel urged. She leaned forward on her knees and huffed, like just breathing was getting tiresome for her. “You have to want to wake up.”
“Want to wake up?”
“Yeah,” Michael cupped his jaw. “Come on, baby. Wake up for me,” he breathed. “I miss you, please wake up for me.”
Alex searched his face, then said, “No.”
Michael faltered. “N-No?”
“No,” Alex tried pulling his arms out of Michael’s grasp, but Michael held on. “Guerin, I don’t want to.”
“What do you mean you don’t want to? Alex, this is your life we’re talking about –”
“My life?” he laughed. It sounded so sad. “What life, Guerin? The one where the man I love won’t say two nice words to me? The one where my friends don’t think twice about what their decisions might do to me? Where my own brother tried to kill me because I got in his way?”
Alex shook his head. “No, Guerin. No. I’ve been tired for a long time, and I want to rest now.”
Michael gripped his arms harder. “You think I don’t know the real you?” he demanded. “You think I don’t know that you’ve had hope for us even when I didn’t? You think I don’t know that no matter what you say, you’ll believe in us whether you want to or not? We’re cosmic, Alex, this won’t kill us, and you know it won’t. If you don’t wake up, I’ll just come after you again, you know I will.”
Isobel stared, shocked. “Michael . . .”
His grip on Alex turned painfully tight. “I’ve never trusted anything, Alex. I’m not like you, I can’t see the good even when everything just feels bad. But I trust you. If you don’t wake up, I’ll die.” He shrugged, a sad smile tugging at his lips as a tear rolled down his cheek. “And you won’t let me. I believe that.”
His grip loosened.
“What’re you doing?” Alex said, though he seemed to already know the answer.
“I’m trusting you to come back to me,” Michael said, his whole body trembling. “Because you always do.”
“Michael,” Isobel warned, “if you let him go now, we might lose him for good.”
Michael smirked, and a tear fell down Alex’s face. “I’m not letting you go,” Michael told Alex. “I can’t.”
“Guerin,” Alex tried, but Michael was already straightening, bracing himself.
“You’ll come back,” he said, sure of this more than anything else.
Without another word, he let go of Alex, and a sudden wind hit his face. Then he blinked, and he was back in Max’s bedroom. He and Isobel both broke apart and fell to the ground.
“Oh my god,” Kyle gasped somewhere in the distance and helped Isobel up while Max came to Michael’s side.
“You guys have been frozen for hours!” he said, pulling Michael to his feet. “What happened?”
“Michael had Alex,” Isobel said, and looked to her brother. “Why?” she demanded. “Michael, after what he told us –”
“What?” Kyle said, looking between them. “Told you what?”
Michael lumbered out of Max’s hold and took his place at Alex’s bedside again, taking his hand in his. “Come on, Alex,” he begged in a whisper. “Come on. Come back to me.”
“He said . . . he said . . .”
“It doesn’t matter!” Michael snapped, and Isobel fell silent. “He’ll wake up. He will. Come on, baby,” he murmured into Alex’s hand. “Come on.”
The minutes ticked by in silence, like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did.
“Michael,” Isobel said quietly. “He’s not going to wake up.”
“Yes, he will,” Michael said at once, his grip on Alex’s hand bruising. “He will.”
“Just give him a minute,” he heard Kyle say. He must’ve been clinging to that hope just as desperately as Michael was.
“Come on,” he pleaded. “Come on, Alex. Stay with me.”
A moment. Two. Michael’s eyes burned, and his hands started to tremble. Then he felt it; he felt Alex’s fingers move in his.
He gasped, and waited. Alex moved again.
Kyle pointed at one of the monitors. “Brain activity’s increasing!” he all but yelled. “Alex?”
They looked to Alex, waiting, waiting, waiting. Then Alex’s eyes fluttered open, and a sob escaped Michael’s lips before he pressed them to Alex’s fingers, kissing each one. Kyle gently pulled off the respirator, and he and Michael both helped a confused Alex sit up.
Alex’s brows were furrowed as he took in the room. When he spoke, his voice was dry and hoarse. “I had the weirdest dream.”
Isobel collapsed into tearful giggles, and Max, relieved, patted Alex’s shoulder twice. Kyle ruffled his hair, and Michael moved to sit next to him, hugging him tightly and keeping him close.
“Don’t ever do that to us again, Manes,” Kyle warned him with a trembling smile.
“Do what?” Alex asked. “I don’t remember anything – ow!” He lifted up his short sleeve to reveal red nail marks. Michael’s nail marks from when he’d been gripping him a little too tightly, terrified of losing him.
Alex met Michael’s gaze with furrowed brows, realization quickly dawning. Michael pressed their foreheads together and took a second to breathe Alex in before he closed the distance between them, taking Alex’s lips in his own.
He tilted his head, deepening the kiss, and then Alex broke away, panting, though they kept their foreheads together.
“Get off him,” Kyle slapped Michael’s shoulder. “He still needs a minute to breathe.”
“No,” Michael said simply, resting his head on Alex’s shoulder and nuzzling his neck, feeling as much of him as he could.
“Oh!” Isobel started. “Alex, what ever happened to that photograph?”
Michael tensed.
“What photograph?” Max asked.
“Alex,” she said, “had this picture of him and Michael when they were seventeen. We saw it in all of his memories.”
“Isobel,” Michael warned through grit teeth. He expected the same out of Alex, to see him embarrassed or shy, but Alex simply blinked like he’d forgotten about the picture.
“That?” he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small photograph.
Michael hugged his waist with one hand and took the photo with the other. “I have one just like this.”
Alex laughed. “Yeah?”
“I’ll show it to you,” he promised into his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Alex sighed. “I think it might be time for a new one.” He smiled at Michael like he adored him. No, more than adored him. The thought made Michael’s heart flutter and made him cling tighter.
Michael kissed Alex’s neck, then his shoulder. “Good. ‘Cause I have a few ideas.”
“Um,” Isobel said testily as Max and Kyle looked away with red faces. “Y’all know we’re still here, right?”
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mtgc858 · 3 years
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Ok I made a au based on Paul's video's (Shed 17 & Project G-1) were everyone was cured from being biofused and are now humans with the scars from there engine form,This contains spoilers for Paulvids videos and this has extra things that doesn't appear in the videos 👌
Thomas
has stitches all over his body from him being the first to be cured and the fact that he was turned human...ish in project G-1,His one eye is red from him loseing control and attacking Keith and he has basically two personailtys now,His normal personailtys he had when he was a actual human and his savage anger side he showed near the end of that video,Also Thomas has a huge scar on his back from his biofused form in Shed 17 and his scream when in his savage side will be high and load like in shed 17•
Edward & James (there together cause there engines forms were burned together)
They both have burn marks all over there body's from how they were destroyed in here biofused form,James has more scars on his face(Cause his face did melt some in the video) while Edward has some scars on his throat from his whistle broke in shed 17(that people thought he died from),James personality changed some from his normal personality to a more serious,grumpy medium headed one cause he is extremely upset of the fact that him and Edward were basically lied to and we're used for testing•
Henry
He has scars on his back and sides from his crash in shed 17 and has scar marks all over his neck and his lower face from when he was scrapped in shed 17,He is very agressive when someone mentions Sir Topham Hat and can accidentally hurt others around him,Henry personality changed a lot cause he is no longer a shy, soft kind guy but now he is a rough,mean, agressive and a emotionally wreck•
Gordon
Gordon took a long time to be cured due to his body being used to make Project G-1,He has scars around his stomach from his biofused form being crushed from the inside,blurry vision from his eyes getting destroyed and a massive scar on his side from getting hurt by the boulder in his Project G-1 form,He acts similar to normal Gordan but has emotionally break downs and has trouble seeing from his blurry vision•
Marvis
She has burn marks around her mouth from her engine burning in shed 17 and sometimes need eye drops for her eyes,She didn't change much and didn't know what happened to the others cause her biofused body burned up first•
Percy
Percy has scars around his neck and needs to wear a cast around it so his neck doesn't fall to the side,His vision is slightly blurry from his eyes rolling back and when his neck is turned his speech gets muffled.
Percy still is a sweetheart and is very young compare to the other biofused engines (that are now humans again) and hasn't changed much•
Spencer
Like Marvis he has burn marks around his mouth and face from his body being set on fire in project G-1,He didn't change much and still has a small rivalry with Gordon and Scottman man but not as much as in the show•
Duck(Chris is his name in the videos) and Oliver
Duck and Oliver still have mechanical parts to them like wires and robotic arms and scars on there body from fighting in Project G-1,Oliver is nearly blind and needs glasses or contacts desperately due to his vision almost being gone
Duck(Or Chris) feels horrible for hurting his best friend and cry's over it when alone,Oliver forgives Duck,tries to comfort him when he cry's and tells him over and over again that he forgives him and isn't mad•
Harold
He has scars on his back from his wings and is so scared of falling again he started getting a phobia of heights,He did get some burn marks on his body from exploding in shed 17, Honestly he didn't change much•
Donald & Douglas
Nobody knows what happened to Donald..Not even Douglas and Donald covers himself in bandages to cover his scars so we really don't know what happened to him,Meanwhile Douglas skin is very soft and his mouth can extend longer than usual,Douglas's lips also can get stuck together but he can open his mouth full easily,Donald is often quiet and doesn't like showing his scars to anyone cause he doesn't want them to worry and ask him what happened.
Douglas has to eat softer food due to his mouth(He can eat hard food but it takes time) and Donald can only eat in private cause he has to take off the his bandage in order to eat•
Annie and Clarabel
They share the same burn marks from there biofused forms and the fact that one of them is a clone of the other(They lost there connection when they were cured),They act the same as before but they do have flinch when one of them gets hurt thinking that they are still connected.
Diesel(Kevin)
He has some scars around his chest and neck from his sacrifice in Project G-1 and gets some panic attack when stressed,He is very salty when it comes to Sir Topham Hat and is very agressive but he got his wife to calm him down (He is married to Annie in Project G-1 if you didn't know),He is get protective over every cured or being cured biofused and is willing to hurt himself protecting everyone•
Smuger
Smuger can stand upright without losing balance cause of him never moving from one space for years and has a massive scar on his stomach from Project G-1,Smuger is quiet and Is to nervous to ask for help and feels like he is responsible for everybody's pain when he isn't,He also has serious panic attack's randomly when reminded of what happened to him and became very claustrophobic from being trapped in one area for so long•
Cranky
He was one of the most hardest one to obtain the most dna to cure him,He has burn scars allover him from his fall in Project G-1 also having scars around his arm representing his crain breaking also in Project G-1,He has some panic attack's and feels guilty for Smugers Injury's and wants to say sorry but is afraid of bringing Smuger a panic attack(He is the only biofused who knows about Smuger and how he got his scars and panic attacks)•
G-1
G-1 was used to cure everyone and was given a life of it's own afterwards,They act like a bit cat or a big dog(They also have some human intelligence) and are very gentile when you are gentile to them,When experimenting on them they used dolphin training tricks to test there human like behavior side and when they used two pieces of paper with a picture of a gender it picked female so they use She/Her/They pronouns and are able to reproduce offspring without a mate(since they are like a animal and not a human..Idk what I'm doing with this thing XD)•
Diesel 10
Diesel 10 is still in his biofused form and is going around sodor keeping anyone that is trying to take or kill the others out and is willing to attack them if they are not careful,His eyes turn black with red pupils when angered and is very agressive when it comes to protecting anyone but he does have a soft side and is willing to show it when he wants to•
Sir toppem hat
One of the main antagonist of this au and plays a important part of this au I can't spoil just yet cause I might make a comic of this au
Keth
He is the only normal human being that was cured after being killed by Thomas and is now a half Human half cured,He has scars around his lower half and has to have a crutch now,Even after that he still cares for Thomas and the other engines and enjoys visiting them and helping them with there problems,He really hates sir toppem hat but feels like he needs to hold back on his anger cause he doesn't want to end up as some like him,He is also a father figure to Raven,Cassy and Evan(Mostly Raven) and is willing to keep them safe from harm and danger•
(Some Oc's)
Raven(My oc)
She is the main person in this au and the one who gave the idea to cure the engines than to kill them off,She was a young girl who loved seeing the engines but was trapped on Sodor when she was left behind by her neglectful caretaker (she was a orphan who never meet her parents and was raised in a orphanage) and was found by Keth and was taken cared for,Years later when she turned 16 she helped with the cure and was reunited with Keth.
Cassy
She was one of the Biofused engines that didn't get destroyed and doesn't have any physical scars on her,She helped with the cure and was willing to have them use some of her body for the cure,She reunited with her twin brother and loves takeing care of the other engines when in need•
Evan
Evan was used and experimented on with how the engines can't stand sugar and another if he could stand falling from a high drop,The first experiment was putting sugar in is fire box which cause him to keep throwing up randomly for a hour and the second experiment he was pushed off a high rock surface and was badly broken and exploded shortly after.
After he was cured he was given scars around his back and side and some patches of burn marks on his body and he hates sugar now cause of that one experiment,He takes care of the other engines and is good friends with James,Edward,Gordan and Percy.
Now some small facts about my au
The cured biofused have the scars of when they were engines and how they were destroyed or killed and they have memory's of when it happened and most of them either try to forget it or ignore it and keep moving on
There heights are a little taller than normal humans and they have louder screams and whistles
Sodor has been fixed and is a sanctuary for the cured engines and is home for some humans that are helping them/takeing care of them
The humans that were killed by Project G-1 or another engine were also cured and have there own medical bay separate from the cured biofused
The stuff to make biofused engine are still there but noone knows we're it is like somebody or something took it
The cured biofused are almost impossible to kill and have massive healing cells from the cure
They are much stronger than normal humans cause of here biofused body's but can control it so they don't hurt others
Oof that is alot and took awhile,I hope you like the au and I plan on making a askblog for this au called Ask the Bio-Cured au
:)
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ffxiv-angora · 2 years
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Day 30: Abstracted
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The final prompt ;__; It's a long boi too
Small TW: This takes place during the battle at Carteneau so there's violence, death, etc etc.
Tagging @caspianking since I stole Eli for this one lol
The sky was on fire. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Nothing she’d even imagined to be possible. Dalamud was falling. The very ground shook underfoot with every explosion and as soldiers charged forward into the chaos. It was loud. Too loud. The mix of cannon fire, magic, and screams was overwhelming. Angora could do nothing but stand with her feet firmly planted to the ground with her ears pinned flat against her head and her tail wrapped around one leg.
Someone gives her hand a squeeze, causing her to finally pull her eyes from the carnage happening in front of her. She blinks, looking up to the viera next to her. Eli. Her first and only friend. He gave her one of those goofy, crooked smiles of his just like always. But even that smile couldn’t hide the fear that was clear in his eyes that mirrored her own.
“Don’t worry, Kitty cat!” he shouted, lifting his gunblade to rest it on his shoulder. “Just remember the plan! We’ll be okay!”
That gods forsaken nickname earns him a sour look, but Angora nods and gives his hand a squeeze in return. That’s right. They’d made a plan between themselves and a few other trusted squadmates. Moons worth of secrets and hiding evidence. A plan to finally escape the clutches of the Garlean army to freedom. That freedom happened to be Eorzea seeing as the battle happened to take place in Carteneau, but anywhere not under Garlean rule would have been sufficient. All they had to do was stick together and move towards the edge of the battlefield. Then just...run like their lives depended on it when there was an opening. Because it did. If they were caught, they’d likely be executed immediately.
Angora’s grip on her bow tightened when she looked back to the battle. Their group wasn’t even fully aware of what the reason for this war was. It’s not like they were in any position to question it. All they knew was they were told that the Eorzeans, like themselves, were savages who needed to be crushed and held under Garlean rule. Something about primals and the Twelve? Was the falling moon their fault or the Empire’s? The only difference between the Eorzean “savages” and the squadron was the fact that they’d already been crushed. Captured and trapped. Forced to obey in hopes of living to see the next day. In Angora’s case, it’s simply all she’d known.
“Move it! Stop your stalling and get in there!”
Angora’s grip on Eli’s hand slips when she gets a firm boot the center of her back from the Legionarius who’d come up behind them. She stumbles forward, using her bow to catch herself before she could end up face first in the dirt. It took all she had not to shoot a glare over her shoulder. Thankfully, she’d had a lifetime worth of practice. Eli was quick to move to her side and address their superior for her.
“Of course, sir! We were just going.”
“You better be. Do not let me catch you hesitating again. For the Empire!”
Angora and Eli both gave him a “For the Empire!” full of forced enthusiasm that seemed to be convincing enough seeing as the Legionarius moved on. It’s only once he’s out of sight that Eli gives Angora a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and angles his head towards the battlefield. Angora nods, pulling an arrow from her quiver as they move forward.
Things become a blur and muted. Eli charges ahead to clear a path through the opposing side while Angora watches his back and picks off stragglers from a distance. He keeps the front safe while she keeps an eye on the rear. The rest of their squadron stayed in the middle. It wasn’t their first battle together but it was certainly the largest. Their moves are robotic and merciless. No care for the lives they were taking. If they didn’t strike first, it would be their bodies in the mud instead of the Eorzeans. They were doing fairly well...until they weren’t.
Their plan was still on track. They’d all managed to work their way towards the edge of the battle without rising too much suspicion. But the longer they fought, the harder it got to stay together. They were tiring as well. More attacks were getting past Eli as the Eorzeans pushed forward. An arrow here, a slash there. Had they been paying attention, maybe they would have noticed the group coming from the side. Maybe the plan would have worked.
Out of seemingly nowhere, a band of Eorzeans pushed in from both sides of the group. Angora was the first to spot it, but she was too late. Too far away for even Eli’s ears to hear her. There were too many explosions. Too much cannonfire and screaming. Angora’s scream was one of them. All she could do was watch in horror as their squadron was picked down and torn apart. Eli and Angora were split off in separate directions and Angora scrambled back just in time to get out of range of a flare that goes off in the center, knocking her to the ground.
“Eli!!” Angora screams, squinting to try and see through the flames as the spell fades. He had to be okay. He had to be. She narrowly dodges a swipe from a sword and wastes no time in shoving an arrow into the attacker’s throat. He looked as scared as she was. His face is forgotten the moment she shoves his body away. Angora fumbles to get to her feet, desperately scooping up her bow and whatever arrows she could find at her feet. It’s then when she sees that not only is the sky still on fire, now that very same fire was raining down onto the battlefield.
Meteors.
Why was this happening?! Wait- did the moon have cracks in it? For just a moment...the fighting stops.
It’s then that what looks to be a giant glowing pillar of some kind falls from Dalamud and collides into the Star, sending shockwaves of rock and dirt across a majority of Carteneau. Bodies and machines alike are also sent flying. Yet again it becomes so loud. It’s too much. It’s too overwhelming. One sound still manages to cut through, though. Angora’s ears turn toward the sound of a gunblade firing before she sees it. What she sees is a battered Eli way too far from her frantically fighting his way through a crowd of Eorzeans.
“Nonono...E-Eli! Don’t worry!” Angora shouts, climbing her way over destroyed magitek. “I’m on my wa-” She freezes. Eli had spotted her and their eyes met. The look he gave her made Angora’s heart sink into the pit of her stomach. Time slows. It was the same smile he always had...but full of so much sadness. He shoved a soldier to the ground before pointing to the mountain range behind her. He was...saying something. His mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the battle happening around them.
“W-What?? I can’t-”
“Go! Get out of here! This is your chance!”
Angora’s breath catches in her throat. Eli’s voice just barely made it to her. Surely he hadn’t just suggested that she leave him behind. She couldn’t. Not him. Were those tears running down her face?
Angora hardly gets a chance to process it before a poorly aimed fire spell causes a blast nearby that sends her flying from off the magitek and back to the ground. Her ears are ringing and she can hardly see past the spots in her vision. Her first and only friend’s voice echoes in her mind.
“Go!”
She...she had to. There was no choice. He was right. This was the first and only chance at freedom that she would get. Twenty cycles of torment could finally be over.
“Damn it! Damn it all!”
Angora rolls onto her side, digging her fingers into the mud while forcing herself to stand. She does not look back. If she did, she wouldn’t leave. Her bow is quickly pulled over her shoulder before she takes off as fast as her legs could carry her. Eorzeans and Garleans alike are ignored as she bobs and weaves her way through the chaos. A blade catches her across the back, but she doesn’t stop. She only stumbles a few steps before blindly pushing forward.
I’m sorry, Eli. I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me.
“Angora?”
Run. Run. Run. She was so close to the mountains. Beyond there was a forest where she could hide. She’d be safe. She had to be. If not for her own sake, then for the sake of Eli’s sacrifice.
“Hey, Angora~?”
Her lungs burn but she refuses to stop. Not until she is able to desperately dig her fingers into the stone and clamber her way over some of the large boulders at the base of the mountain. She spins around just in time to see one of those awful meteors coming right for her. The air becomes impossibly hot. It’s too late. It’s coming. It hurts-
“Angora!”
Angora startles, blinking a few times before looking up from her desk to squint at Eli. He was alive. It was by some miracle that they both were.
“Hellooo? Anyone home?” The viera leans forward to lightly knock on the top of Angora’s head right between the ears. Angora just tsks and swats his hand away.
“Oh hush, Rabbit.”
“Come onnnn! I’m hungry and you’ve been working all day! Let's go!” He about gets a book thrown at that smug face of his when he starts to shake her desk.
“Fine, fine. But you are paying this time.”
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kyber-queen · 3 years
Text
Like Real People Do (Rex x Reader) Pt. 3
Summary: Jedi!reader and Rex fall in love but are separated by the war. They meet again two years later, weeks before the Siege of Mandalore. In this chapter, Rex and Reader are prepping for a mission on an outer rim planet. Some fluff, slight angst, Rex gets to use a lightsaber because I say so. Italics signify a flashback in this fic. 
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2.7k
Warnings: Mentions of children/family planning ??, insecure Rex, k*sses, mentions of blasters n violence against droids, mentions of alcohol
Author’s Note: I’m not gonna lie this is probably my favorite chapter yet. It’s a little longer, but I think it’s worth it :) Likes and reblogs are very much appreciated!!
Previous | Next
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After your less than satisfying encounter in the maintenance closet, you had made an early retirement to your quarters to sulk. You slept, but your dreams were ridden with visions of a certain bleach-blond captain. You awoke the next morning ill-rested and heartsick.
You showed up late to your first tactical meeting with the upper ranks of the 501st in a disgruntled mess of dark undereyes and wrinkled robes. If Rex noticed your sleep-deprived state, he made no mention of it. You had positioned yourself strategically in the back of the room, precisely so if you peeked between the admirals, you could clearly see Rex discussing troop formations with General Skywalker. His structured brow was furrowed, and you noted the way he gestured at the maps as he made his point. He was so much more confident now, so much more self-assured than that often-anxious shiny you remembered from training drills two years ago. Maybe that was why he gave you the cold shoulder yesterday—had he outgrown you? Two years was a long time, especially during a war. Did he find someone new? Your heart burned at the thought. You hadn’t even tried to move on—at times, at your lowest points, you considered it, but you never gave up on him. You had broken your code for him. You had broken it every day since you met him, and yet here he was, the picture of cordial indifference. You were attached, deeply and painfully. Did he still care about you?
“Commander, I can hear your gears turning—any input?” Skywalker looked at you expectantly.
You eased your tired features into a placating smile. “Looks good to me, General,”.
“Perfect. Rex, you’ll go with the commander. I want you two waiting just outside the village. The Separatists should arrive within around two hours of landing. Comm me when you see the Separatist forces coming, and you guys cut down as many of the first wave as possible. I’ll circle around with the rest of the 501st and we’ll finish off the rest from behind. All clear?”
You nod in assent as Rex answers with a decisive, “Yes, sir,”.
***
Rex was going to have to have a conversation with his general after this. Your very first mission with the 501st, and Skywalker had paired you with Rex on a glorified stakeout of all things. Rex was pissed. He had decided as soon as he found out you would be consulting with the 501st that he would keep his distance. He knew it wasn’t your fault that you hadn’t seen each other in years—war makes love near impossible. He was more upset with himself for falling for a Jedi. It was against the law for either of you to have an attachment to each other. Rex had fallen in love, and it was a stupid, shitty idea. He had spent the better part of two years trying to bury his memories of you, and just as he was beginning to succeed, here you were creeping back into his mind. Just the sight of you threw him back to two years ago—back when he was really, truly happy. Rex was built for war, nothing more. The problem with you was that being with you made him think otherwise. When you were together, you would always talk about ‘after the war’. Rex knew that as a clone, there really wouldn’t be an after. You, with your altruism and soft smiles and gentle touches were everything Rex didn’t need.
Rex walked to the pod that would take the pair of you to the Separatist-threatened planet. You were already seated. You thumbed the grip of your lightsaber, and Rex recognized the gesture—it was a habit whenever you were nervous. His eyes were locked on you, debating whether or not he should say something despite his earlier promise to not get involved. You broke the silence for him.
“I can feel you staring, Rex. Talk to me,”.
You could always tell what he was thinking. As your friendship first blossomed, it unnerved him, but as your paths intertwined more and more he found it a comfort to have you understand him so well without him even saying a word. Rex met your eyes, and his stomach clenched. You were still so beautiful. He looked away
“Just thinking about the campaign, sir,”.
Your heart ached. Every bone in your body was screaming, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,” and yet he called you sir. He addressed you as a superior, another link in the chain of command. He really had moved on, hadn’t he? You bit your lip, the sharp pain of your teeth against the tender skin attempting to draw your attention away from your torturous thoughts. You had a mission to complete. You peeked out the porthole, and you saw the terrain approaching far faster than normal.
You landed with a crash. You were jostled from your seat, your head smacking the metal wall painfully. As the ringing in your skull crescendoed, you took stock of your darkened surroundings through your blurred vision. The lighting in the pod must have been damaged during your landing. You ignited your lightsaber, illuminating Rex with its soft glow. He stood up and rolled his shoulder experimentally, his nose scrunching in pain.
Your brows furrowed, “Are you alright?’
“I’m fine,” He grunted. He felt his way along the walls. “Exit’s been jammed shut, though,”
You searched his eyes in the dim lighting, another pang of longing reverberating through your chest. You dismissed the sensation and plunged your lightsaber into the wall of the pod, freeing yourselves. You emerged from the battered pod, your head pounding as your eyes adjusted. It was bright, with the triad suns beating down on you relentlessly. You checked your positioning system—you had landed a mere 15-minute walk from your stakeout site. You watched as Rex eased himself out of the pod. He groaned, his hand cradling his right arm. You handed him his positioning chip, and the two of you set off towards the village outskirts.
You noticed his hand lingered on his right shoulder, and he would grimace from time to time when it jostled. You reached your hand out to his plastoid-covered shoulder. “Rex, let me—”
“I’m fine,”.
His tone was sharp and dangerous, affecting you like a slap to the face. You sucked in a breath, and walked the rest of the path in silence. The planet was beautiful—you were surrounded on all sides by strange golden grasses that swayed with the breeze. Its beauty did nothing to distract you from the man by your side.
You arrived at the meeting point and immediately settled yourself against the large boulder meant as your cover. Rex sat across from you, leaning against a smaller rock. He tilted his head back, closing his eyes for a moment and swallowing thickly. You traced the sharp line of his jaw with your eyes, following down to the thick cords of muscle in his neck. You contemplated another attempt at offering him some bacta spray, but considering his earlier response, decided against it. When did Skywalker say the Separatists would arrive? Two hours?
You spent around an hour in silence. You meditated, as General Secura had taught you. Time moved thickly around you, your aura burning bright as it cut through the hours and seconds. With your deep focus came little flashes of memories.
You saw Rex, smiling. His golden skin was warm against the soft sheets. His thumb traced the apple of your cheek. You grinned.
“What do you want to do, Rex? After this is all over?”
He paused, his hand resting heavy on your jaw. “I don’t know, cyare. Guess I never really thought about it,”. His eyes flicked over your gentle smile and bright eyes. “I’d wanna be with you, though,” he whispered. You’re everything he could ever want. He’d never loved anything so much, and he knew he’d never love anyone else the way he loved you. What the hell did he do to deserve you? “What about you?”
“My parents—I barely remember them now—had a house on Naboo. We could live there, just us. No war, no fighting. It’s so beautiful there, Rex. The grass is long and tall—as a child, I’d play outside for hours just soaking up the sunlight. It’s a good place for raising children,”. Your face heated as you said the last part.
“Raising children, eh?” Rex tilted your chin, and you lifted your gaze to his eyes. You nodded slowly. “With me?” His eyes shone in the morning sunlight, his brow furrowed.
“Yes, Rex. Who else?” Rex’s expression eased, and you pressed your lips to each of his cheeks, followed by a gentle kiss to the tip of his nose. Rex sighed contentedly. He had no clue why you were with a shiny like him—he was one of a million genetically and physically identical men. He was sure that eventually you’d realize just how much better you could do than a clone, but until that day he’d savor every precious moment with you.
“You’re gonna be a great parent, one day, cyar’ika,”.
“You will, too, Rex,”.
You jolted out of your trance. It was just your luck that Rex had infiltrated the one escape you had from your relentless thoughts of him. You opened your eyes to find him studying your face. He averted his gaze quickly.
“Rex,” you called.
He fiddled with the straps of his armor.
“Rex,”.
He dropped his hands to his sides with a harsh sigh. “Would you just stop it?”
You were stunned. “Rex, I—”
“I spent two fucking years trying to forget I ever loved you. I was nothing, I was nobody, and you were this—this ideal being. I had no fucking clue why you gave me the time of day, but I let myself fall for you anyway. When we left for our tours, I broke. You were the first real thing, the first good thing I ever had, and you were gone. I was sure I was gonna die over there—and you wouldn’t have even known if I had. It was so much easier to believe that you had moved on, that you were through with me. Now you’re here and you’re alive and I—” his voice broke, “I don’t know what to do,”. He met your gaze, and his eyes glistened. His voice was barely a whisper, “You were always the rational one. Please tell me what to do,”.
Your wide eyes watered. You turned your head to the golden fields and let out a tiny sob. What the hell do you answer to that? Just as you opened your mouth to speak, you spotted what seemed to be a thousand metal heads just over a rolling hill. The separatists. You hastily wiped your eyes and took a deep breath. This would have to wait.
“The Separatists are here,” your voice wavered more than you would have liked. “I’ll comm the General,”. You sniffed, rubbing your eyes again. Get it together, you thought. You were a Jedi Master, for gods’ sake. Ever since returning to Coruscant, you’d been an emotional trainwreck. You were starting to see why the council discouraged attachments.
You allowed Rex a moment to collect himself, turning to face the oncoming droids as the two of you prepared in silence. The metallic clang of their footsteps grew louder and louder. Rex slipped his helmet back on over his head and unholstered his blasters.
“It’s your call, Commander. When d’ya wanna go?”
You looked back over your shoulder at him, and you were instantly thrown back to the hours of training exercises you had completed together. You grinned.
“Think you can take down the battle tank over there?” You motioned to the gargantuan hunk of steel situated right in the middle of a sea of battle droids.
The competitive edge you had so dearly missed was back in Rex’s voice.
“You know I never miss,”.
“Race you there,”. And with that, you were off. The two of you flew down the hill, cutting down the droids as if they were made of straw. You swung, decapitating a droid and ducking as Rex put a blaster hole through the one taking aim at you from behind. You worked well together, always did. The rest of the 501st seemed to be making easy work of the droids from behind.
“Rex, blaster!”
Rex tossed one of his blasters into the air, and you force-pulled it into your grasp in an instant. You fired off three quick shots at one of the tanks, damaging the traction treads. Rex looked over at the tank, and recognized the maneuver you had initiated in an instant. He took off for the tank, and called your name once he was just yards from its base.
“Saber!”
You switched off your saber and hurled it in Rex’s direction. He had barreled past at least ten lines of troops, snatching your lightsaber from the air before igniting it and plunging it into the battle tank’s generator while simultaneously firing off a few rapid shots at the droids. The droids’ main attention, as planned, was on you, and you were beginning to feel the heat. You force-pulled your lightsaber, still ignited, from Rex’s grasp and into a line of battle droids before its heavy weight met your palm again.
“Blaster!”
You tossed Rex his blaster, and he caught it with ease. With your lightsaber in hand, you began cutting a path to Rex, who had holed up against the decommissioned tank.
“Need to get me one of those,” Rex motioned to your lightsaber with a grin.
You shook your head with a laugh, deflecting a blaster shot as Rex took aim at the next line of droids.
It was your fault. You got distracted. Something about the focus in Rex’s masked stare as he picked off the droids one-by-one pulled your attention away just long enough for one of the droids to press the cool metal of its blaster against your neck. Before you could react, Rex fired two quick shots into its head.
“Told you, cyare, I never miss,”.
You missed this. The nicknames, the banter, working together like this. It felt good. It felt like coming home. You snuck one last glance at Rex before sprinting out from your cover to cut down the next row of droids.
Rex was fucked. Did you realize he called you cyare? It just slipped out—something about being here with you, fighting next to you—it brought him back to two years ago. He shook his head, firing at a droid that had pointed its blaster at you. He was done with pretending he didn’t care. He still had no idea what to do, or where this would go, but he could figure that out later.
You finished off the last droid, looking back at Rex with an easy smile before waving to General Skywalker. Rex jogged over to you, pulling you back behind the tank and away from the prying eyes of the rest of the 501st.
“Rex, wha—”
He ripped off his helmet, letting it fall to the ground as he pulled you into a kiss. His hand fell to the small of your back, and you practically collapsed into him. His lips were hungry against yours—he was all tongue and teeth and desperation. He needed this. You needed this. You raked your nails through his close-cropped hair, drawing a little groan from deep in his chest. His hands were everywhere—your hair, your neck, your waist—
“Rex, where are you? Are you injured?”
For the second time today, Rex was going to kill his general. He pulled away from you reluctantly, his hand lingering on your waist. You take his hand, and press your lips to his palm.
“We should go,”. Rex nods. “Meet me in my quarters tonight—you still like firewhiskey?”
“Rex—are you over here?”
You meet Rex’s eyes, and he smiles. A real smile. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“See you tonight,”.
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Like Real People Do Taglist: @pinkiemme @callme-eds @dinpoe 
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longitud-de-onda · 4 years
Text
on a universal constant, falling off the bottom of the earth
pairing; javier peña x female reader summary; you and javier were best friends but life pulled you in separate directions. javi’s now just returned from colombia and you both find yourselves driving out to a spot in the desert in the middle of the night rating; t warnings; a subtle brand of depression, an existential crisis, some stuff that might be triggering if you’re suicidal or have a deep fear of death, so much angst you’ll probably want to sue me word count; 6.0k universal constant masterlist
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July meant hot night air, so you leave your house and start up the truck, taking your time to wind through the streets. You don’t stop when you reach the edge of town, starting down the country road. There are no streetlights, just the great expanse of dirt and rock that rises into towering formations on either side. There’s no one else on the road. You’re too far away from anywhere anyone would want to be. 
The clear night sky out in the country has always been your favorite sight. The shades of deep purple and blue dotted with millions of stars have always fascinated you. When you were a kid you would climb up to your roof, spend hours lying up there questioning how far away every star was. You would wonder how big the universe was. Sometimes, you would imagine your house hanging off the bottom of Earth, an upwards gravitational pull the only thing keeping you from falling forever down into the dark.
You’re much older now. You had drifted in and out of your home, off to college for some time. Coming back.
You tried not to think about space like that anymore. 
In the distance, you can see the white light of a gas station approaching slowly. By the time the sign saying it’s a mile out arrives you’re already slowing down. You pull into the harsh glow, parking the truck and jumping down onto the asphalt. The hot dry air hits you hard. It’s not the invasive, sticky, painful heat. It’s soft and a light breeze caresses your bare arms to remind you that it could be much worse.
You enter the convenience store, struck by the realization of exactly where you are. 
It’s like you’re on autopilot as you walk to the back of the store, straight to the refrigerators, pulling out a six-pack of the off-brand soda you used to drink as a teen. It has been longer than you can even remember since you last tasted the sweet liquid, and you wondered if it would still taste the same. 
You grabbed a bag of jerky and a pack of M&Ms on your way to the register. 
The guy working wears the same teal vest the guys did all those years ago. The same acne riddled face of a teenager asks if you want a bag, the same careless voice. Almost like nothing has changed in twenty years except the music playing over the speakers. Who the hell would sign up to work all the way out here?
You suppose you’d have applied had you been ten years younger and unemployed.
You’re back on the road, driving away from the light, further into the emptiness of the desert. It’s easy to let your mind wander. Why couldn’t you fall asleep? Why did you leave the safety of your home? What was calling you to drive in this direction? 
It’s not a conscious decision that causes you to pull off the road, begin driving on a dirt path that hardly exists anymore, more like muscle memory. No longer does the familiar route have the worn-out path, free of shrubs, and you wince every time you have to run over another plant. 
The headlights cast long shadows across the prickly bushes. Sticks and small rocks are illuminated like devilish hands grabbing at the tires. Plumes of dust rising behind you restrict any view out your review mirror. A small animal, possibly a fox but you’re not entirely sure, darts across the trail along the point where the light fades into the black again, the motion causing you to slam the brakes. 
You start up once more, your truck bumping across the desert, out towards the hill that rises up in front of you. 
What’s drawing you back here, you’re not sure. A sick sense of nostalgia? Or a state of mind you haven’t allowed yourself to acknowledge since you were a teen?
Even though it’s been years since you returned from college, you haven’t come back here since one August night after senior year.
You stop the vehicle at the base of the hill. A few deep breaths center you. You stuff the food into your pockets, grab your purse off the passenger seat, along with the cans of soda. They’ve grown slick with condensation and while you can do nothing to stop the goosebumps that crop up on your skin, as soon as you exit the truck and reenter the summer heat, the cold feels good. You lower the cans to touch your thigh, allowing yourself to close your eyes and take in the sensation of cold aluminum brushing up against you. 
Slamming the door closed and locking the truck, you begin to hike up the hill, stopping only when you reach a large flat outcropping of rock. 
You walk out onto the boulder, sinking into a sitting position on the smooth stone. 
When you were a teen, you and Javier would come out here
Every time Javi’s mom would come back down from her near-permanent high, once a month or so to show up for some baseball game or to take him out for dinner, she and Chucho would start screaming at each other the whole night. Javi would throw a stone up at your window and you’d slip out onto the roof, jumping down to the ground and you’d drive out, pocketing handfuls of pebbles on the hike up to your rock. You’d take turns throwing them as far as you could. Each time screaming out the name of someone or something that had hurt you. 
The one day where Javi beat up Niles Breckinridge ‘cause he kept asking you out and you kept saying no and he decided to corner you in the girl’s locker room. How Javi found out what he was doing you had no idea, but Niles was on the floor, nose bleeding, and Javi’s knuckles were bruised when he grabbed your hand and you ran out to your car, the two of you laughing and crying as you hit the highway, skipping class to drive out to the middle of nowhere. 
When your parents started screaming about your grades you had shown up at Javi’s doorstep, crying, and he led you to the passenger seat of his car. You drove in silence until just past the gas station, and up on this boulder, over canned beer and Starbursts, everything came spilling out: the way Mr. Wallace wouldn’t give you any grade higher than a C unless you wore that low cut top to school once a week, how Mr. Chapman wouldn’t explain why you got an F on every single essay even when you asked him how you could improve your grade, how Mrs. Hayes didn’t like you because you were the only kid in Spanish class who didn’t grow up speaking the language, so your accent was terrible, how Ms. Gordon would let you rewrite any essay you wanted but never offer any advice on how to improve things, how Mr. Phillips didn’t care that you could do more push-ups than at the beginning of the year, only that you still could do the least in the class. And as your tears hit the flat stone overlooking the desert, you stared up at the sky and Javi lay next to you. You laid like that for hours that day, not touching, just side by side, existing in each others’ presence. 
The time you found Javi crying at the park, having been dumped by Morgan Powell, and even though you hadn’t spoken in weeks cause he didn’t want to spend any time with you anymore, he didn’t complain when you held his hand, walked with him to your truck, and found yourselves out in the middle of nowhere. He climbed down the hill to grab a blanket from the car and only for those three minutes he was gone did you let yourself cry. 
The night before Javi left for Texas A&M you spent the entire night out here, watching the sunrise before you climbed back down to the car, and you fell asleep on the drive home. That was your last chance to tell Javi that somewhere along the line you had fallen in love, and you never had the guts to say it. He was gone by the end of the day. 
It wasn’t fair, but you were leaving too, thousands of miles away. One of the only kids to leave the state. You had managed to turn your grades around and were headed up to New York to attend Vassar the next week, and you didn’t come home for summer break that year or the next. The third summer you got a job at the pool. You saw Javi a couple times, as you sat upon your lifeguard’s chair and he brought a different girl every week, hands flying all over their bikini-clad bodies. After the PDA got a little less family-friendly, they’d disappear. Halfway through the summer, he brought along Lorraine Crawford, your middle school best friend who ditched you as soon as you entered high school, and she kept coming back, week after week. 
Javi never noticed you sitting up there watching his every move like a hawk. You had drifted far from his life, and you weren’t sure if you really knew him anymore. 
You came back home after you graduated, got a job in the town center, bought a house, didn’t have to speak to your parents again after they moved away. You became a regular at the diner down the block, and you stopped by the coffee shop on Main Street every morning before work. Some of the people you knew from high school would invite you out to the bar every weekend. You’d go. 
Javi became a police officer. Some nights you’d see him on the other side of the bar. You weren’t friends anymore and you weren’t really sure when you stopped. Probably long before that last night on the rock. 
One day a fancy letter showed up in your mail. Nice paper, frilly letters. A wedding invitation. It came with a handwritten note, not from Javier, but Lorraine. You almost RSVP’d with a no. 
The church was beautiful and happy, and more than a few people there from high school surprised you with friendly words. You were contemplating going to the reception as you waited for the procession. You weren’t close to Lorraine or Javier. Not anymore. Free food didn’t seem worth inserting yourself somewhere you didn’t belong. 
A half-hour after the ceremony was set to begin someone announced that Javier hadn’t shown up. The wedding wouldn’t be happening. As you walked out of the building you could hear Lorraine crying. A month later the word around town was that Javier had moved to Colombia. 
You look out into the dark desert. The smell of sage is potent in the heat, and a lone pair of headlights appear in the distance. You watch the car as it speeds along before the red taillights of the other side of the vehicle disappear into the opposite horizon. 
You pop open a can of soda. 
It’s a mechanical sound that contrasts the soft whisper of the wind and the snakes, a few birds in the distance, and the low hum of insects. 
It’s never quiet out here but this background noise is the only thing that has ever truly calmed you. 
The taste of soda brings back more memories you thought had been lost. The early days on the playground with Javi, two six-year-olds climbing to the top of the structure as your parents both call out for you to get down. When you were eleven the two of you ran a lemonade stand for the whole summer, saving up to buy yourselves bikes. 
It wasn’t until Javi turned sixteen and instead of wandering the streets to avoid your families, he could drive you out of town, floating between convenience stores and rest stops for hours. It wasn’t long before you discovered this spot up here.
This rock became your spot. A sanctuary.
What drew you here after all those years, you weren’t sure. You rip open the pack of jerky, letting the tangy scent fill the air. 
Why didn’t you ever come back? The hot desert air is like a healing bath, seeping into your body as you gaze at the stars. After Javi left you had dated guys, spent evenings with friends, and lived your life. But you sit here now wondering what has happened with all the time. Had you been really living? Or just wandering through a haze? 
The truth was, you knew why you never came back. 
These memories were too painful to have sorted through any earlier. A whole life, wasted, as you fell away from the one person you loved as a teenager and never truly climbed back up from. 
Another pair of headlights appear in the distance, cutting a line across the brush. The car slows straight ahead of you and pulls off the road, heading towards where you sit. You glance down at your truck below. There isn’t enough time to get down there and into your car before whoever it is reaches you. Your hand slips into your purse, grasping around the canister of pepper spray. 
If you’re lucky, they aren’t headed up to your rock. 
The car pulls up and stops alongside your truck. You jump at the sound of the door slamming and peer down. 
You’d recognize that leather jacket anywhere, even in the penumbra of the headlights of his car before they flick off. You didn’t know he was back.
Another sip of soda. Waiting. The sound of rocks sliding down the hill. A couple crunches of dirt under shoes. Plastic against stone as you pick up the bag of jerky. Metal against stone when you set down your can. Deep, slow breaths. Dark leather boots next to your leg, tapping against the rock. A low groan. Javi sitting next to you. 
You keep staring off at the horizon, your chest rising and falling. The last time you were actually really with Javi you were 18. His car parked in front of your house. 8:30am. He jostled your shoulder, pulling you up from your slumped position against the window as you slept. You got out, the blanket still wrapped around you and he hugged you on your front lawn. He whispered goodbye to you, and you were too tired to say anything back. 
All the other times your paths had crossed it had been in silence and at a distance. Years and years of nothing. You had everything to say to him but you weren’t sure if any of it was worth saying. The man sitting beside you used to be an extension of yourself. Now he’s a stranger.
You pull a cold can out of the plastic rings, extending it towards Javi.
“Soda?”
“Thanks.” He grabs the can, his fingers brushing against yours. Enough to feel how rough they were.
You had imagined his voice would be the same as the lanky teen he was back then. It hadn’t even crossed your mind that it would be this much lower, deeper, hoarser. Hesitant. 
A hiss then the pop comes. Your gaze shifts over to watch his hands. They’re so big around the small can and he lifts it up to his lips to take a sip. Finally, after all this time, you get to give Javi a good look. The years have treated him well. The Colombian sun leaving a deep bronze tone, his face a far cry from the clean-shaven boy he once was. You had seen him after college, after he grew out the mustache and his hair darkened, face filling out into an even more handsome one. But in the time since then, a few lines have been left in his forehead and around his eyes. Still doesn’t make him any less beautiful.
“Haven’t had one these in ages,” he says. 
You look away, not responding. What could you say? What was there to talk about? Could one night up here possibly cover even a portion of what had happened?
Then in a terrifying moment, your brain puts something forward that shakes you to your core. 
Did he even want to talk to you anymore? Or had you grown so far apart that there was nothing left?
Javi sets down his can and shrugs off his jacket, throwing it to the side. You can feel him staring at you, but can’t bring yourself to break your gaze at the sky. You lean back, lying on the cool stone. All you can think of is how the distance between you and Javier feels further than you and those stars.
“You know, sometimes during stakeouts, looking over Bogotá? I would pretend we were up here. Staring out over the desert like we did when we were kids. I’d wonder if you were lookin’ up at the same stars I was.” His voice cracks momentarily and he lets out a shaky breath. “I’d always think about how you’d talk about falling off the bottom of the earth.”
You press your eyes closed, blocking out the deep expanse of the universe. The speed at which you were zooming back to Javi was too goddamn fast. How can he say that? How can he think about you when he hardly gave you the time of day after you both left home for the first time. When he wasn’t even the one to invite you to his own wedding.
“Do you come up here often?” he says.
You still haven’t said more than a word since he got up here. You’re not sure if the honest answer is the one he wants. You say it anyway.
“No. Last time was with you.” You try to hide the fact that tears are streaming down your face but he wasn’t fooled by that when you were kids, he wasn’t going to be fooled now. It’s easier to let the tears show through in your voice than hide them as you say, “Did you bring Lorraine up here?”
He’s quiet and you hear the burbling hunting call of a quail. Then a soft rustling as he lays back onto the stone too. 
“Why would I do that?” he asks. 
You have the guts now to tilt your head over and give him that questioning look. 
“Why wouldn’t you? You seemed to love her. Back before, you know...”
Once again he’s quiet. The sky seems to have lost any of the reddish tinges, leaving only the deepest ocean blue. You wish it was the ocean. Maybe if it was it wouldn’t make you think so much. You could just stare and stare and empty your mind. 
A breeze blows by and you shiver, cold for the first time this whole night.
“Yeah, well. Didn’t seem right, you know? This is our spot,” he says. 
You push yourself back up, staring back down at him.
“Our spot?” you ask. “Javi, is there even an ‘us’ anymore?” 
You place your elbows on top of your crossed legs and rest your forehead on your hands. You were always too quick to get worked up. Too fast to think through the things you said. Javi had extended an olive branch and you may have snapped it in half.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” you whisper. 
“No, I’m sorry. We drifted, I don’t know.” He sits back up beside you. “You never sent a letter and I didn’t either. That first summer back you weren’t there. After the second I thought you didn’t want to see me. Stopped looking, I guess. That’s on me.”
“I was back the third summer, you know?” you say, “I was a lifeguard at the pool. Watched you come in with Lorraine week after week.”
“You were?”
“Yeah.” You don’t say how you watched him with all the other girls too. 
“After I graduated, thought I might come back. Say hello. I heard Vassar already graduated, so if you were back, you’d be there. Your parents’ place was empty.”
“They moved out. I bought a house closer to town.” You picked up your soda again and took a sip.
“I saw you at the bars a couple times.”
“So did I. You never said hi.”
“You didn’t either,” he says. 
You pull out the bag of M&Ms from your pocket. Javi laughs. It sounds clear in the middle of the night. The only competition for airwaves is the quails. You fiddle with the edge of the plastic before it glides open, and you dump a few of the chocolates into your palm.
“Of course you were hiding those.” You can hear the smile in Javi’s voice.
You hold out the bag to him and he extends a palm, allowing you to pour some into his hand. 
Looking down at your own collection, you push the candies into colored categories as best you can in the desaturated night light. 
“You know, I was at your wedding. Lorraine sent me the invitation. Said you didn’t add me to the guest list but she thought you’d want me there anyway. I was sitting there in the pews as the time ticked and nothing happened. And you know what? I wasn’t getting worried about you not showing up. That never crossed my mind.” You take a breath. “I was sitting there debating whether or not I should go to the reception. Make the two of you speak to someone you both had fallen out of touch with. It didn’t seem fair.” 
“You were there?” he sounds distant, voice shaking a bit and you glance over to see his gaze glazed over, fixated on some spot in the desert.
“Yeah. Lorraine was really torn apart after that. We went out for drinks a week later. She asked me what the hell was wrong with you. I didn’t have an answer,” you say. “We made up. She was an asshole in high school, but so were so many others. I forgave her. When she got married to Randy, I was one of her bridesmaids.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t invite you,” he says. You think he’s going to say more. Give an explanation. Nothing comes.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Not invite you? Or leave Lorraine?” he asks. 
“I don’t know. Both, I guess?”
He exhales. You’re putting him on the spot, you know that. But that’s what this hill is for. It’s where you say the tough stuff. You let each other cry. It’s the place where you let yourselves feel without voicing half of it because the other knows exactly what you’re going through. 
It still wasn’t comfortable enough to let you say the toughest thing of all.  
And worse, right now, you have no idea what’s running through Javi’s mind. 
“I couldn’t bring her into all of it,” he starts. “I had been in the DEA for a year by then. Knew the tough shit I’d have to do. If I was going to go up any higher, I was scared I’d be putting her in danger. And part of it was that I was just an asshole. Guess I still am.”
You pour out a few more M&Ms into your palm. The red ones go near your fingers, next yellow, then green, blue, and brown. All the way down to the heel of your hand. You eat the red ones first. One by one. 
“You’re not. You might have been to Lorraine, but you’re not. You care, Javi.” You look over and he’s still focusing on some little spot in the distance. 
“I am though. You don’t know what I’ve done. Down in Colombia. I—I did things you wouldn’t have liked.” He stopped to put an M&M in his mouth. A few minutes passed as he chewed the remaining candy in his palm, one by one. Then washed them down with the soda. “I killed people. And my decisions left even more dead. I did so many bad things.”
“Why?” You swallow.
“You used to not ask that.”
He was right. You used to say things. No explanations needed. You both had grown. “I don’t feel like I can read you as well as I used to.”
Javi sets down his can on the rock. The soft clink seems to echo across the sweeping land. You wouldn’t be surprised if the guy at the gas station heard it.
“I had to do a lot of the things,” he whispers. “Did a lot of the other things to forget the things I had to do.”
You look over him as he closes his eyes. You think you see a tear fall down the side facing away from you, but he tilts his head away.
“I’m sorry,” you say. You didn’t use to say that either.
“Wasn’t your fault.”
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that. Alone. You know?”
Javi deserved people in his life. He had gone through so much shit as a kid; to have to go through even more as an adult, it wasn’t fair.
“You mean Lorraine?” Your heart aches when you hear the way Javi says her name. It’s different from the way he says yours. Different emotions. You suppose that’s what his voice sounds like when he says the name of someone he loves.
You don’t fucking mean Lorraine though. You’re tiptoeing around it, but you mean you. 
“No, I just mean anyone. You might not have wanted to bring her into all of it but maybe you needed to have brought someone. So you didn’t feel so alone.”
If it was anyone else sitting next to him, they wouldn’t notice the way his hand shakes, the empty can making no noise, but it’s not anyone else. Maybe Lorraine would have noticed too.
You wish Javi had reached out to you, all those years ago when he thought you didn’t care. Maybe you could have gotten to be part of his life, even if you weren’t in the front row, you could still be in the theater. Not sitting in the parking lot, crying in your car. At least that’s what these past twenty years or so have felt like.
Underneath all the stars he looks so small. You both do. You want to hug him. Or something. You can’t even bring yourself to nudge his foot with yours. 
“Never said I felt alone,” he says.
“You didn’t have to.”
You feel the tears in the corners of your eyes and you try to blink them dry. It doesn’t work. You love Javi so much that if he really wanted to be with Lorraine, you were going to be there and make sure he was happy. But in the end, that wasn’t what he wanted.
It’s weird how having someone suddenly back in your life can make it feel like everything is right again. Like your entire existence has felt so pointless because he wasn’t part of it. You never believed in soulmates, but you thought that maybe someone was right when they decided that you’re bonded to someone in life. That their presence would make you whole again. They were just wrong in believing the other person would always love you back.
“I didn’t invite you because I didn’t know if you cared anymore. I felt we were too far apart that I wouldn’t matter,” he says. “I was scared you didn’t care anymore.”
“We could not speak for 50 years and I’d still want to be at your wedding, Javi. You’ve always mattered.” That was it, wasn’t it? Javi was always what mattered.
When your life felt like everything was falling apart as it always seems to when you’re a teen, he was always there to catch you. And you caught him too. Time and time again. And then your lives parted ways and you started falling with no net. Javi mattered.
“Why’d you come out here?” he asks.
“What?”
“Why’d you come all the way out here when you haven’t been back since we were 18?”
“Did you ever come back? Until today?” Even without Lorraine, you assume he might have. But maybe he’s like you. It hurt too much to come out here. Almost like you couldn’t without Javi. Not until tonight. And well, the universe seems to have had other plans.
“No,” he says. Simple.
“I couldn’t sleep. It was too hot and I was too alone. My house felt too small. Had to get out. I didn’t even realize where I was going until I reached the gas station.” You pull out another can from the pack and flip up the tab.
If you’re being honest with yourself, it tastes terrible. Like a Coke gone wrong. But it also tastes like nights up here with Javi. You don’t think a single time you came up you didn’t at least share a can. You used to each have an emergency case in the trunks of your cars. Even when you came up to drink beer and dance and tell each other about the things going on, there was always a can of soda. 
“Guess I had a feeling. I needed to get out,” you continue.” Tonight was just the night where I finally let myself need this. Didn’t even know you were back.”
“Only got back a few hours ago.”
No. A few hours ago? He woke up yesterday in Colombia and was now sitting here at 3am on a rock hanging over the desert with you?
“What?” you ask. “And this is the first place you went?”
“I dropped off my things with my dad.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Then yeah. First place I guess.”
He comes back and the first place he goes is here? What does that even mean?
He’s facing you now and you grin and raise your eyebrows. “Why?”
“Guess I had a feeling,” he mocks back. 
“Why up here. Why this first?” You’re not voicing the real question. Why is the first thing something that means you?
He reaches over, grabbing the bag of jerky and pulling out a piece. He puts it in his mouth and rips off a chunk. You know what he’s like when he doesn’t want to answer a question he knows the response to.
You stare back out and watch a car cross the desert. Then another. You lie back down, staring up at the stars again. And Javi still says nothing. 
“Maybe there’s a parallel universe out there where everything’s the same but we can both end up here but on different nights and not find each other.”
He doesn’t say anything but you can see him tilting up his head.
“Or maybe this rock is just a universal constant. Like in every version of Earth, one of us can’t spend a night here without the other. It just isn’t allowed.”
Your favorite thing about the night sky is how out here on a clear night, you can see the milky way, a saturated strip of stars belting across the dome. The fact that it’s so damn big has always scared you. You say as much to Javi.
“I’ve always been scared that we’re so small. That we mean nothing. If best friends can go from being everything to being strangers who avoid each other and don’t notice when the other is watching and the only people that care are the two friends themselves, who’s to say anyone cares about us? Maybe we’re all alone. A little rock flying around a bigger burning rock that somehow bubbled up intelligent life, an intergalactic anomaly... A little sphere that doesn’t care that my life feels pointless, and my life feels pointless because of that.”
“Your life isn’t pointless.”
“Then what is it? Because ever since college I don’t know what I’ve been doing. Stuck in my hometown, in love with all the people who don’t love me back.” It’s the first time for the night you know Javi can’t see you crying. Your voice is stable enough to hide it, and he’s sitting up, looking away from you. “And I guess it’s all fine cause I’m going to exist in this little millisecond on a cosmic scale and no one gives two shits if I live or die.”
“I do.”
“Do you, Javi? Because it didn’t seem like you were ever really looking. I could have disappeared and it would have been all the same.”
He’s quiet again and you think that it’s because on some level he knows you’re right.
“There was another reason I left Lorraine at the altar,” he says. You’re not sure if he’s answered more than one of your damn questions the whole night, only saying things that crop up new ones.
“That girl is amazing. She didn’t deserve to be someone’s second choice.”
“Second choice?” you ask. 
“Yeah,” his voice shakes and you sit up again, realizing that he’s crying.
You reach out to touch his shoulder. “Javi—”
He turns away from you. Then he’s leaning on his far arm, pushing himself up. You grasp at his wrist, hoping he’ll stay. Just long enough to finish this. He pulls out of your grip. And he still hasn’t explained himself.
“Javi,” you breathe out. “Stay? Just tonight. You never have to see me again after this. Please?”
That gets him to stop. “What if I want to see you again?”
You turn around looking up at him. The starlight shines against the longitudinal lines on his cheeks. He looks so much like the kid you grew up with.
You stand up, grabbing his jacket off the ground and handing it to him. You can’t make the same mistake you did when you were 18.
“You don’t have to stay, Javi. I’m sorry. You can go. It doesn’t matter what you meant by second choice. I don’t want to push you. I just, that last night? When we were kids? It was my last chance to tell you something and I didn’t have the guts to say it. And by the time I saw you again, it’d been a few years and you were bringing all the other girls to the pool and I was too scared to even say hello.”
He’s holding the jacket limply in his arms. You’re sure you’ve never looked at Javi in the eyes like this ever before. All those nights and you’ve never looked into his eyes and shared the vulnerability that you do now and seen the same expression staring back at you.
“I love you.” It was so much easier than you had ever imagined. The scary thing was actually not saying the words, but staring into Javi as his face shifted.
It began with shock then awe then admiration, all familiar expressions that you had seen a thousand times before. Then it morphed into something you didn’t know as he dropped the jacket and put a hand in yours, spinning you out so you stood side by side instead of face to face, and led you to the edge of the rock. He let go for a moment and when his hand returned there was a stone in it, which he closed your fingers around.
“Having to wait until now to be with the person I love,” he whispers. You’re confused until he’s winding up and throwing something. His own rock.
Oh.
You look down at the rock in your hand.
“Not telling people you love them before you almost lose them,” you say. Your rock flies even farther.
You’re smiling and you look up at Javi. He’s grinning at you and his arms pull you in, wrapping you up and you return the embrace, pulling him close.
“I love you too.”
You nod against his shoulder and pull away, wanting to really look at him.
And in Javi’s eyes, you can see the reflection of thousands of stars, shining bright and big and far away, all contained within the beautiful dark you’ve looked into for what feels like your entire life, and you can now call it home. 
-o-o-o-o-
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alolowrites · 4 years
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After All These Years
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Summary: After being apart for six years, you wonder if you are ready to see Toshinori again. 
Tag: @centerhabit (Tagging you as promised! Sorry for the long wait!)
Author’s Note: It is finally here! After four months (I think?), I finally finished writing the sequel for The Point of No Return. For anyone who is new, I highly recommend you read that story first! Apologies for taking a long time getting this story out; I was playing around with a new formatting style. 
Once again, I appreciate the incredible response The Point of No Return received from everyone! I’m still touched by all the comments, likes, reblogs, etc it got!! Thank you once again!!
Without further ado, please enjoy the story!
Word Count: 2.3K+
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Six years.
It’s been six long years since you’ve returned home.
Stepping off the plane, you bow at the flight attendant and follow the crowd through the gray tunnel. You find your luggage with ease and quietly walk away. Various shops appear, each selling items travelers needed last minute; one man rushes inside to buy a neck pillow while a woman debates between two beverages.
There’s one store that catches your eye with its colorful display. Hero merchandise spews out the door as pop music plays to lure interested customers into the shop. A familiar color scheme stands out from the rest, tugging your heartstrings a bit too harshly; the imaginary marionettist enjoys seeing you suffer.
“I AM HERE!”
You jump from your spot. The famous phrase repeats and you look below to see a little girl squeezing the All Might plushie toy with glee. She skips away, the toy dangling in her hand and All Might’s comical smile mocking you until it disappears into the crowd. Not even thirty minutes in Japan and already you are regretting your decision.
No, no. You can do this.
You had more than enough time to heal from the pain. At least that’s what you tell yourself to soothe the nerves squirming around. You push them aside. As much as you enjoyed your stay in America, you missed Japan; it is your real home. No matter how far you travel from the island, a part of you stays behind.
And it’s that part of you which holds you back from ultimately moving on. A shuffling noise grabs your attention. An employee proudly adjusts a life-size cardboard cutout of All Might outside the store, and a few tourists stop to admire him. Despite not being real, you feel his eyes stare deep into your soul; your fingers twitch and your skin suddenly becomes itchy. Sighing, you drag your feet down the hall to find the exit.
You need a drink.
Glass cups clink over the loud noise bursting inside the restaurant. Laughter erupts at the table after you shared a hilarious story during your time in the States. The mood is lively and relaxing as you savor the rich sake flavor exploding in your mouth like fireworks. Oh, how you missed these fun outings with your friends. Seconds later, a waiter passes by with actual fireworks fizzling on a delicious looking plate. It must be someone’s birthday today.
Your eyes follow the plate and blink. Peeking out from a distance are strands of blonde hair. They are like a batch of wild yellow wheatgrass flowing in the meadow. Someone’s large frame is blocking the view. Another waiter brings more appetizers to your table, but you ignore the food begging for your attention. Nothing matters except for the hair currently teasing you from afar. It can’t be him…right?
You stop breathing when the boulder moves, and you're disappointed. It's just a random stranger laughing into a guy's shoulder. You slump back against the booth. The sake is clouding your mind and making you see things. Maybe you need some fresh air; it is getting kind of stuffy in this dimly lit sauna.
Just as you stand, the whole restaurant rattles. You grip the table as the lights sway and flicker uncontrollably. Confused murmurs buzz in the air until the building shakes again with greater force. Dust puffs out from the ceiling, and tiny cracks spread through the walls. Everyone rushes outside, the streets filled with headless chickens panicking like no tomorrow. You grab onto your friend’s hand for dear life to avoid getting separated.
The vibrant district spirals into chaos as the screams deafen your loud heartbeat. You have no idea where the crowd is going nor what is happening. You are a fish who got caught in a net trap with no way to escape. Suddenly the madness stops, and a live shot appears on the large TV above you. Glowing on the screen is a bloody All Might fighting against the incarnation of evil itself. As the battle rages on, you stumble forward when you see him.
Toshinori Yagi. The man behind the All Might mask.
You watch in horror as Toshinori—in his real, but weak form—persisted on with the fight. Grown men wail in pure agony that their throats turn red. A woman desperately bites her fingers that she almost chews them off. The tension in the air is so palpable that it suffocates you. Clutching your shirt, you hopelessly witness the bloodshed battle getting progressively worse until a miracle happens.  
Toshinori rises from the ashes to deliver the final blow. It rocks the entire ground and makes everyone lose their footing; even the TV screen flickers, but doesn’t lose the picture. When the black smoke clears, you see Toshinori is alive with a victorious fist in the air.
He won.
That’s the last thing you remember before passing out in your friend’s arms.
A rainstorm hurls through the city.
The water droplets lightly tap on your black umbrella, the noise surprisingly soothing to your ears that you almost fall into a small trance. A bright light illuminates half of your face, exposing the conflict swirling through your eyes. One car rushes down the street, and you go back to avoid the tsunami wave coming from the sidewalk.
Once the coast is clear, you walk forward but stop when you reach the sidewalk’s edge. You can’t go beyond this point. You’re afraid you’ll drown, not from mini sea emerging on the road, but from your guilt that is deeper than an oceanic trench.  
The hospital’s bright lights glare back at you. Toshinori is in one of those rooms recovering from the severe wounds he received days ago. As much as you want to visit him, see him in person, hold him in your arms…you just can’t. Not when you feel so guilty for leaving him six years ago in roughly the same state—a damaged hero.
You grip the umbrella’s handle. Someone calls your name.
Whipping around, you relax at the sight of a tan overcoat standing a few feet behind. The man walks over and dips his chin to greet you. “Welcome back. It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Detective Tsukauchi.” Your lips curve into a faint smile. “How’s work treating you? Still hectic as ever?”
“Crime never sleeps,” he jokes, and you two chuckle. The rain furiously falls all around you, drowning out the brief happiness you felt. Tsukauchi gazes at the hospital. “You should visit him. I’m sure he’ll appreciate seeing you again.”
“I can’t. Not after what I did to Toshinori six years ago.” Your chest tightens as you fight back the tears. “There’s no way he’ll forgive me after I broke his heart.”
A hand squeezes your shoulder. Watery eyes stare up to meet Tsukauchi’s reassuring smile, the warmth shielding you from the cold rain pouring down. He murmurs, “Something tells me he will.”
You stare back at the hospital; a light turns off, and you wonder if that is Toshinori's room. Tsukauchi’s words echo through your head like a soft chant. You shuffle forward and stick one boot out on the street; it hovers above the fast stream running toward the drain. With a deep sigh, you pull the foot back and hang your head low.
You couldn’t do it.
Toshinori adjusts his arm sling until he’s comfortable.
Despite being sickly frail, he feels the bed mattress sink under the weight of his heavy thoughts. He hasn’t been the same since the Kamino incident. The power of One for All no longer flows through his veins, making him feel like an empty vessel. Toshinori was the Symbol of Peace—the strongest hero in the world. Now he is a retired hero after defeating All for One, for good this time. Yet Toshinori wonders if this is all just a dream. The sharp pain shooting down his arm convinces him otherwise.
It will take time for Toshinori to get used to his new life.
A soft knock interrupts his thoughts. Toshinori glances at the door with furrowed eyes; he’s not expecting any visitors today. The doctor medically cleared him this morning.  
“Come in,” Toshinori answers, fixing his arm sling. The person enters, and he glances up only to do a double-take; his blue eyes land on you, mouth agape in astonishment. Sitting straight on the bed, he chokes out your name and asks, “Is it really you?”
“Hi, Toshi,” you weakly smile, putting aside the wet umbrella as you calmly approach him. “It is me. Do you mind if I sit here?”
He numbly shakes his head as you take a seat on the chair. The dam bursts, and all his memories of you swarm at him like a massive tidal wave. Toshinori endures the brutal force even if he nearly drowns on the spot. He blinks and notices something off about you. You’re smiling, but your eyes tell a different story. They are empty and full of despair as if you are in mourning; it worries Toshinori very much.  
An awkward silence falls between you two. Your finger anxiously scratches the chair’s armrest while Toshinori’s feet shuffle on the floor. Every ounce of your self-confidence goes down the drain the longer you stay quiet. Guess that pep-talk you did outside moments ago had a time limit. You bite the bullet by breaking the silence.
“How are you feeling?”
“To be honest with you, broken.” There’s a brief pause before he profoundly sighs, “And also a bit lost.”  
“I know what you mean.” Toshinori’s ear twitches at your whisper and snaps his head up. You squirm under his intense gaze. Your eyes roam to the gauzes tightly wrapped around his injuries he received from the fight; it gives you a deja vu moment. You clench the armrest, the guilt eating you alive. “I’m sorry…”
The hero frowns. “Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything—”
“Yes, I did! I left you, Toshi!” He hears the pure anguish tainting your voice as watery eyes come into view. With quivering lips, you croak, “When you proposed to me, I accepted it knowing fully well the sacrifices you must make for the greater good. Yet, I got scared after you decided to go down the path that might result in your death and just…abandoned you. You trusted me, loved me, and I left you.”
A tear rolls down your cheek, which breaks Toshinori’s heart.
“I thought I made the right choice by staying far away,” you whimper, hands curling into fists on your lap. “But the longer I did, the more it hurts me knowing your inevitable fate was getting closer.”
Toshinori unconsciously scoots closer to you, ignoring the pain shooting from his sensitive wounds; they don’t matter to him right now. He opens his mouth to speak, but stops. Out of nowhere, you shoot up from the chair and stand in front of the retired hero.  
“I was in Kamino the night you fought All for One, probably nearby too. When I saw you, the real you, on TV and at death's doorstep, I-I just thought about the day at the hospital six years ago. During that moment, I realized one important thing…”
Your body trembles as you unleash everything with a swift but powerful confession that leaves him speechless.
“I still love you, Toshinori. I always have, and I always will. If you had died on that night before I had the chance to say this—”
You choke as your throat goes dry…
…and then break down, crying into your hands.
The intense feelings you kept buried deep inside your heart finally manifest into the light. No one knew you carried this agony for so long. Toshinori grunts as he stands up from the bed and carefully comforts you with his good arm. He holds you close, not caring if your tears bleed through his white shirt and wet his bandages.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into your ear. “I’m sorry for making you feel this way. It was never your fault; if anything, it was mine. I’ve made many mistakes throughout my life. However, my biggest mistake was losing you.”
He steps back to graze your damped cheek gently. His fingertips twitch as they remember the softness of your skin. You close your eyes and enjoy his feathery touches.  
“I should have fought harder for you, for us, all those years ago.” Toshinori bores his majestic blue eyes into yours. They are alive and filled with deep admiration for you. “Despite what happened, just know that I love you, and I never stopped loving you. Not once.”
Your heart skips a beat while his throbs like a steady bass drum. He reaches inside his pocket, and you gasp when you see the engagement ring shining against the light. It’s the same one you left behind all those years ago.
“Although my time on Earth may be dwindling, I hope to cherish every last second I have with you. It’s still your choice, but…” Toshinori clears his throat and grasps your left hand. Determination swirls inside his eyes while asking, “Will you accept this ring and marry me?”
“Yes.”
You squeeze his hand as elation surges throughout your body. Toshinori slips the ring on your finger, the cold metal snugging around your skin. Oh, how you missed the feeling of it after six long years. Without hesitation, he captures your lips for a sweet but passionate kiss; the pain washes away and you are giddy.
Pulling away to rub your eyes, you pout, “I probably look like a mess.”
“Nonsense, you look beautiful.”
“Always the charmer,” you playfully tease, sniffling a little. A ray of sunlight shines through the windows, basking the whole room in a warm, golden glow. With soft eyes, you caress his cheek and smile. “Now how about we get out of here and take a nice stroll through the park, for old times’ sake?”
“I would love that.”
It’s as if nothing has changed between you two after all these years.
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As always, thank you for reading!
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Yamata-no-Orochi (Part 3) Betrayal
*kicks the legs out from under the table, one by one*
You’d been stuck for hours. It was extremely late but you couldn’t sleep. Caesar and Chu Zihang drove in circles before finally parking in an alley to wait. At first, it was all emergency vehicles -- Police, Fire, and EMS -- then there were many reporter trucks with satellites mushrooming from their roofs.
After that, the streets got very quiet and occasionally you spotted dark sedans driving far below the speed limit, like sharks on the hunt. Hydra was looking for Mingfei and Erii.
You lay in the back seat to keep hidden. You were still in your silver Cheongsam and heels. You stared holes in the back of the driver's seat and listened to the radio. Seventy six people were dead. Only a single person was injured. They were painting it as some wild street race gone wrong. People were describing fiery debris. Bodies, some of them in various degrees of dismemberment, were strewn all over the street. It would take days to recreate the scene. One of the things the reporters quickly picked up on was the lack of wounded. How could a car accident be so catastrophically fatal?
But the noise of the radio faded away in your mind. Instead you were remembering when you first saw Z. It wasn’t in real life. You first saw him in your dreams. When you were hurt or frightened by the nursery staff, Z would appear and ask you what you would like to happen to those people. If they stuck you with needles you would say, “I wish they would be stuck by a million needles.” And then watch as they were stuck, screaming and crying in pain, just like you were.
Or if you were beaten by the nurses, something horrible and perverse would happen to them in your dreams. Like one round nurse would swell up so big and red you could see her veins through her transparent skin and wherever you popped her she would bleed.
When you first saw Z in real life, it was the special day when you graduated from the preschool section to the adolescent section and started to use your soul skills in experiments. He stood tall and proud, his bright red-gold eyes gleaming at you. He smiled at you, a warm smile like he was the king and he could have picked anyone in the world but he picked you. That smile was a gift that beckoned you to run towards him. You thought it was a dream. But he opened his arms and hugged you.
In the back of the car, tears fell at the memory. You’d never been hugged before. Ever. A warmth spread from his arms and his body and filled you. It made you bright. It opened your mind and heart and let him in completely, without reservations. After that he was your best friend. Between him, you and Renata, you felt privileged, you learned quickly how to navigate your dangerous world and soon you were the oldest and most successful hybrids there. You were sure to go to the capital.
It was only at Anton’s death that Z showed you the truth, but he didn’t help you survive Black Swan overtly. You still had to watch your friends die. You assumed Z died too. He never reappeared in your dreams again until you nearly died in Chizuru and then you were so happy to see him again. But your relationship changed into something far more intimate. You didn’t know if you were ready for something like that. But he certainly did.
At least he never lied. He never explicitly said he loved you. He didn’t even say you could love him either. He said you didn’t know any better. Of course you didn’t. He’d groomed you since you were a child.
Remembering that made it hurt all the worse. A great shadow has fallen over your past. Now you had no happy moments to reflect on with Z. Everything was full of crevasses that hid questions and doubts. Like the boulders that would forever separate Izanami and Izanagi from each other in the underworld, you and Z were now irreconcilable.
“I haven’t seen a patrol in the past 15 minutes. Think we’re clear?” Chu Zihang asked.
“How the hell should I know? We take a risk if we wait 15 minutes or an hour.” Caesar responded. “You okay back there MC?”
You look up at him, his blue eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. “I’m pissed.” you growl.
“I bet you are.”
There was more to be said but now was not the right time.
You end up making it a room across from the hotel where Erii was staying. Lu Mingfei was waiting for you there.
Mingfei cracked open the door and then let you in.
“Take off your clothes!” Caesar said coldly.
His voice was so sharp and harsh that Lu Mingfei immediately did so, removing his shirt.
When Mingfei unbuckled his belt, Caesar snapped. “Keep your pants on… turn around.”
“Oh, you were so serious I thought I had to take off all my clothes.” Lu Mingfei said.
Chu Zihang and Caesar curiously admired the dense lines of scars on Lu Mingfei’s back. They were so numerous that you could not find a single unmarked spot on him. It was like he had endured a beating of a thousand strokes or had rolled over a bed of knives. Even Caesar and Chu Zihang were stunned speechless.
“Are you done looking? I’m kinda cold.” Mingfei peeked over and startled at the sight of you. “Ah! You didn’t tell me MC was here!”
“She doesn’t care, stop wiggling!” Caesar hummed. “Incredible self-healing ability. A trauma of this magnitude would take at least 3 weeks to heal even at a top-notch medical center. But only eight hours have passed since you were attacked. You should have bled to death on the spot.”
“That’s because the wound began to heal itself the moment he was injured. The blood vessels stopped bleeding on their own, so the blood was locked in the body. The cells filled in the wound by a high rate of division. Even the ruptured tendons were repaired.” Chu Zihang said. “This self-healing ability surprasses that of Chisei Gen and MC.”
Could this be why the principal rated him as S-rank?” Caesar mused. “If he always had this ability, wouldn’t he make the perfect meat shield? If we have another gunfight with someone, we can send him in front of us to Main Tank the damage while we lay down suppressive fire!”
“The so-called lack-of-childhood must have been an act, then? Boss, you’re so familiar with the term ‘main tank’. What do you play? Warcraft or Warhammer? Anyways, shut up about that, we’ve got a bigger problem!”
“We already know, even if you didn’t come to us, we came to you. Every news channel is broadcasting what happened last night.” Caesar grabbed the remote from the chair and turned on the TV.
You already knew the story, so you don’t bother watching it again. Something else was bothering you. Caesar said she was 21, and was staying at a love hotel, but he also said she was wrapped around his finger. Didn’t Caesar say that he was hoping for Erii to fall in love with Mingfei? The whole idea suddenly made your skin crawl!
“Caesar. Is it alright if I go to the bathroom?”
“Huh?” Caesar looked up from the TV. “Yeah sure whatever.”
You walk inside and shut the door and get as far away from the door as you can and lean against the wall. You cross your arms, your nails biting into your biceps. You understood that Erii was potentially dangerous and that was evident today. But all you could think of was Z’s gentle hug, his indulging in your punishment fantasies, the play time and the jokes. It was all fun until it wasn’t. You recall the souvenir Mingfei got from her after she rescued him, a little duck bath toy. You’d tteased him for playing with it. Mingfei said he would never bathe with a duck.
He wasn’t that much of a kid.
Fire like a kiln blazed in your stomach. This was the person Mingfei had wrapped around his little finger? As Caesar had so blithely put it? You flush the toilet and pretend to wash your hands and open the door.
The boys were already moving on, talking about something else.
Caesar was standing next to Mingfei and handing him a card. “Meet at Pier 7 in Tokyo Harbor. The address is written on this.”
“What if she loses control while on the ship?” Lu Mingfei looked frightened.
Caesar handed him a box of medication encased in a glass vial to Lu Mingfei: “Isoproterenol, a strong anesthetic. Give her this medication. It will reduce her vital signs to a minimum and she will sleep until she gets to China. Give her some glucose half way through the trip.”
“But she’s very weak now!” Lu Mingfei raised his voice. “Injecting a very weak person with a strong anesthetic and only living on glucose for seven days? What if she dies?”
Caesar patted his shoulder: “We don't want her to die either, but this is the most feasible way to deal with it right now. She is a deadly weapon that could get out of control at any moment. And we can neither continue to hold this dangerous weapon nor return her to the Hydra, so the only way to do that is to send her out of Japan. It would take a bit of a risk, but it would get her out of Tokyo, the center of controversy. She’s the strangest hybrid we know of, perhaps related to the awakening of the White King. And with her gone, it would be the equivalent of a dangerous element being removed.”
Wait a minute. This didn’t sound like Caesar. The way Caesar was talking about her to Mingfei was not the way he talked about her to you. The way he talked to you was that she was a beautiful girl and that hoped Lu Mingfei and the Uesugi Clan Chief would get together!
Mingfei seemed convinced by this however.
Chu Zihang spoke up. “Caesar and I have discussed this before we came. And this is the only way. Find an excuse to take her out and bring her to the dock tomorrow at exactly four in the morning. She trusts you and should agree to board the ship with you.”
Chu Zihang’s words were like a bomb going off. “Uh… excuse me!” You say.
“What is it?” Caesar asked, his voice slightly dismissive.
“Why don’t you just tell her the truth?” Your face was awash in indignant confusion.
“What? Are you kidding?” Mingfei squeaked.
“No, I’m not kidding! Caesar just said,  ‘make up an excuse’. You’re going to lie to her!” You lower your voice to a whisper but point sharply at the hotel across the street. “Do you think she’s stupid?! When she finds out that you’re lying, she will go absolutely nuts!”
“MC.” Caesar took a breath. “MC… I know how you feel but now is really not the time.”
“No, you’re being cruel. Mingfei, you should know better!” You snarl. “You are her only friend, her only one! You are under an obligation to be upfront with her or else you’re no better than Herzog! You should know better. All of you should know better!”
“Hey…” Caesar growled, his eyes darkening. “This is completely different. Don’t compare me to that asshole.”
“What if she loses it? You don’t know if she can handle that sort of information. She’s extremely mentally unstable!” Mingfei whimpered.
“There is nothing more destabilizing than being betrayed by the people you trust.” You stare at  Caesar accusingly. “After all this time, after all you know about me. You turn around and pull this?” You take a shaking breath. “She is a child.”
The room descended into an uneasy silence and no one moved or spoke. The only sound was the continuous rain on the window and the rumble of distant thunder.
“That’s your plan? Tell her the truth. Are you going to take responsibility for her going on a rampage after she hears that she’s dying? Not everyone is that strong, MC.” Caesar was completely expressionless. He only got this way when he was upset.
You take a breath and let it out. You start to speak and nothing comes. You shake your head, struggling. “The man who told me I was dying was the man who loved me.” 
You turn away and leave the room to regain control of yourself.
A few moments later, Chu Zihang exited with a box of tissues but he quickly saw it wasn’t needed. You were just staring blankly at the wall in the hall. 
“Caesar has decided to let you go. He wants you to stay with Mingfei tonight and go with them to the docks tomorrow. Take the ship to China with them.”
“What’s stopping me from telling her the truth on the way there?”
“Mingfei will drug both of you.” Chu Zihang said.
You turn to look at him and then immediately turn away, your heart sinking. “He views me the same way. So much for the ‘I'm not Godzilla’ speech huh?”
“Things aren’t always black and white. A lot has happened. You’re in obvious danger from something we don’t understand. You may not realize it but your mental state is not the same as when you arrived.” Chu Zihang’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “Your mind is going too.”
You just shake your head. “All I hear are excuses. Excuses for him to be a hypocrite.”
Chu Zihang sighed, and you see for a moment how tired he was.. “You don’t have any say in the matter. The decision is unanimous, not only between me and him, but also Lu Mingfei.” 
You drop your arms from your chest, limply.
He looked down at you, his eyes cold. “If you defy the orders, I won’t hold back. From your training you should understand what I mean.”
The door opened and Caesar walked out. “Alright, let’s go Chu.” He paused next to you, his eyes cloudy. “I care about you. I really do. But there’s too much you just don’t understand. We’ll talk about getting you back to Japan once this is all over.”
You look up at him and shake your head. “The key to my survival is in Tokyo. If I leave, you won’t see me again..
He reaches out to hug you and you let him. You take a deep breath of the smell of his shirt which still smelled of those fine Cubans. It might be the last time. He really did believe what he was doing was the right thing even though it directly contradicted what he said before. 
“Don’t say goodbye. I’ll see you later.” Caesar said. “Keep an eye out on the two love birds.”
He walked away and didn’t bother looking back.
You return to the room with Lu Mingfei and sigh. “What a mess.”
He laughed but there was no humor in it.. “Yeah no kidding.” He was holding a modified pistol in his hand, one of Caesar’s Desert Eagles!
“What… are you doing with that?” You shiver violently. 
“If she gets out of control, I will have to shoot her. The bullet inside is specially made to be completely lethal. Even to dragons.” He mumbled. His eyes were dark pools and you couldn’t read the emotion in them. “If, for some reason that doesn’t work, you’re to finish her off.”
“Will you use that against me too?”
After a long silence he continued. “Turns out we actually are going to be at war this whole time. Me and Erii were never going to happen. You and I were never going to happen. I tend towards being a human. You and Erii tend towards the dragon side. If we go to battle, we have to use all our resources against each other and fight tooth and nail. It doesn’t matter if you sit together on a Ferris wheel or… talk all night on the phone or… run through the streets in the rain.”
He lifts his head to you. “If that day comes, we just have to grab our weapons and fight.”
He looks back down at the gun. “You were raised to fight. It’s what you know. But Erii… she doesn’t know anything.”
Outside the window it was pouring rain.
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cruelfvkingsummer · 4 years
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Ivar x Reader: In Every Sunrise (One Shot)
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Plot: The one where in a lifetime of war, Ivar can now have peace.
Pairing: Ivar x Reader
Warning: ANGST, fluff at the end, death, a little murder cause ... Ivar
Stay Safe, Stay Home Writing Challenge (@waiting4inspiration​): 
“If you asked me to stay I would’ve.”
“I dreamed about you last night.”
Drayunn knew better than to accompany his aging father any farther than this, the simple archway formed from fallen boulders and huge rocks were the landmark – the line that has never been crossed by anybody but Ivar for the past decades. His eldest brothers and even Ivar’s favored daughter or his sweet wife have tried and failed and not succeeded in convincing Ivar to give them a peek of what he considered his sacred ground. Ivar’s most loyal men were stationed by the boulder with the order to kill if anyone trespasses, no matter who they might be.
The queen told his son that was where his father prays to his gods and finds his peace amidst his usually brutal and bloodstained life. It would seem time has taught her to not question this part of her husband’s life no matter how much it might drive someone insane.
“Father –“
“You may go now,” Ivar waved off his son with gentle pats on his cheeks. Drayunn couldn’t help but stare at his rough and ragged hands – full of scars and marks of his difficult but eventful travels. “I’ll be back before the moon is up.”
“Father, your legs –“
Ivar stopped his son with a short glare – a small peak of the terrifying man he once was when he was still Ivar the Boneless and not King Ivar. His age might have made him weak and his body may be failing him but there was something inside him – the monster lying dormant – that still manages to strike fear in everyone’s soul.
Ivar straightened himself using his metal crutch and cleared his throat, he looked back up at the small pathway covered by the mist – his eyes going soft. “Go now, Drayunn.”
Drayunn could do nothing but stare as the early morning fog swallowed his father whole as he ascended the hill. Somehow, this time, it feels like goodbye.
-
Ivar smiled at the familiar dirt path, pulling wildflowers from their stem with his free hands until about two dozens of colorful flowers were bunched up in his hand. It takes him longer now, his legs screaming in agony at every step on the very jagged hill but still he persevered.
He made a promise and this time he will not break it.
He sighed in relief when he saw the tree and the rocks piled to form a small pyramid below it to mark the place, the small vines and flowers that grew and wrapped itself around the stones made it sturdy enough to face the current of the wind. He sat in the ground and supported his back with one of the protruding roots, carefully placing the flowers in front of the pyramid, almost like an offering to a goddess.
His goddess.
“I’ve arrived, my love,” he whispered.
He laid a soft hand at the top of the stones, closing his eyes as he tried to imagine your body sleeping peacefully below him.
You, the greatest love of his life, and his own personal Valhalla in this hell of an earth he was placed on.
If his mind was quiet enough he could still hear your echoing laughter, your soft and soothing humming as you cooked him his dinner in your humble little cabin that Ivar had personally designed to fit your bidding. He could still hear you calling out his name, with no tittle but full of love and adoration, that now does nothing but make his heart ache.
He loved you.
(Still and will always love you.)
The gods knew how much he loved you.
The fact that he raided and purged a kingdom just so he can dig your body out of the commoner’s grave the blind Christians placed you in was enough to show that not even the gods’ prophecies and promises of all the power and glory in the world had made him forget about you.
Nobody was allowed to survive in that rotten castle. Everyone has to suffer for their arrogance and mistreatment of his very own forgotten Freya.
You were a good woman – definitely better than what he deserved.
But he was young and hungry for glory – glory that was promised to him as the favored child of the gods. He had a prophecy to fulfill and a whole world to take over. He racked his brain for months, remaining sleepless and almost as mad as his brothers always sees him to be thinking of way he can both have you and his promised destiny.
In the end, you chose for him. Leaving him tearful and heartbroken by the docks as you kissed his lips one more time as goodbye.
You sobbed, as he used one hand to cradle your cheeks. “Don’t make this harder than it already is, Ivar,”
“(Y/N) …”
“No, please,” you turned your face and kissed his palm. “I have to go. You know I have to.”
For the first time in your life he couldn’t stop the tears in his eyes.  He sniffed and pulled your forehead to his, the physical pain of the thought of not having you by his side more painful than all of his bones breaking all at once.
“Forgive me, my love,” he whispered, tears now falling down both your faces. “You married a weak man.”
He pulled you for one last kiss only to be broken by the screams of a Viking for everyone to go on board. You placed a hand in between the two of you hoping some distance will make the separation easier.
It didn’t, both of you felt like your souls were being ripped apart.
“In another life,” you whispered. “Where we live in a kinder world with no great prophecies and destiny to fulfill … I’ll be waiting for you again.”
Ivar laughed shakily, taking the hand on his chest and kissing it deeply one more time. “I promise, my love. I’ll find you; I’ll rip the world apart looking for you.”
You took a deep breath and slowly walked backward, a sad smile on your face.
“In another life, my love.”
When he had established his own stronghold he had sent out spies in all countries he knew off to look for you. You were not an easy woman to find but he found you. You had never married again, opting instead to take care of the orphans in a remote village.
He always had ears and eyes on you, and sometimes, when winters were rough he made sure to leave enough high-quality furs and meat by the orphanage’s door.
Thankfully, you were none the wiser for if you had known you were sure to disappear again from his grasps, afraid of angering the gods and having them take out their anger on your love who was always on blood-stained wars.
However, he failed you once again when he was called for the final war. It was the greatest battle of his life. The one that cemented his name to history forever.
And as always, it came with a price.
Every victory always had a price.
Due to the size of the army he had to fight off, Ivar had no choice but to utilize everybody in his army, even the spies he had placed to look after you. In the three years that the war rampaged on you have gotten sick by the second winter and breathed your last long before summer could arrive.
People thought the war had finally broken whatever soul the king had left in him but he knew – he knew it had died with you.
He requested permission from the king to bring your body back to his kingdom as discretely as possible but the young and arrogant king called it a heresy to disturb a rotting body of some commoner and held the agreement off thinking he could use it as something to dangle above the great King Ivar’s head as leverage.
So Ivar cut off all his limbs and burned his castle to the ground.
You had always told him how if you had died before him then you want to be buried under the ground where he can visit you whenever he pleases – to give him some sense of peace and companionship even with your absence. And he used to laugh, thinking how he would never allow that to happen and that the two of you were destined to take your last breathes together.
He was wrong.
You were right.
You always were.
So he took your humble wooden coffin and had his chosen thralls bury it in this highest hilltop he could find in his kingdom, promising to visit you at least once a month. He had every single thrall who knew of what was truly in the hill banished with enough gold to last them two lifetimes with a promise that if he ever saw their shadow in his kingdom he would have them and their entire family tree murdered.
And thus, the sacred ground of the great King Ivar was born.
His personal Valhalla where his Freya lays resting, waiting for him.
“I dreamed about you last night,” he whispered. He could almost see the coy look you always pull on your face whenever you try not to be flattered by his compliments, making him smile. “We were in the lake behind our home and you were trying to braid my hair. However your sneaky gentle hands lulled me to sleep and when I woke … I was back to reality.”
He started coughing, it was almost winter and the cold had not been kind to his weakened body. He knew his time was near and this could be the last time he could visit you in Midgard. “How many times must I lose you, hmm?”
Truly he couldn’t wait to see you again. All these dreams he had of you does nothing but give him a few seconds of absolute bliss before it will be ripped from him by the next morning.
”You know,” he paused, leaning back on the tree, his hands mindlessly pulling on the grass by his legs which ached more and more as it got exposed to the cold. He opted to ignore it. “If you asked me to stay I would’ve.”
He would’ve said damn the gods and damn his destiny. He would’ve gotten on the boat himself and left his crown and dreams of glory on the shores of Kattegat.
But he knows that you knew that. And that is why you had to make the choice yourself before you could become his ruin. Such a selfless and stubborn woman he had, only thinking of him that even her body refused to rot until she was back on his lands.
He was just about to close his eyes to rest a little when he felt a presence behind him. He unsheathed his dagger ready to murder the trespasses only to see a familiar stranger.
A stranger he once saw when his father, the great Ragnar Lothbrok, was murdered.
“Lord Odin,” he called at the hulking figure he always took form in, preparing to bow to his god only for him to wave off his efforts making him sit back down, eyes looking wearily at the god before him.
Odin nodded at him and walked until he was beside the old king.
Ivar seemed confused what Odin’s goal was and the purpose of his visit only to feel his whole body weaken almost instantly. He looked up Odin before slowly looking back at the rising sun – already accepting his fate. “Is it my time?”
Odin nodded, looking down almost lovingly at his faithful descendant.
“Do you wish for more time?” the great Odin asked the great king, for this favored one he can pull some strings but Ivar managed to surprise him one last time when he shook his head.
“I want her beside me in Valhalla,” he knew the stories. He knew great kings would be given one last wish before they die. Whatever they wanted, may it be their legacy to never be forgotten, for their sons to be greater than them, or to even wish ill on the blood of their enemies.
But Ivar’s mind has been made up. “I want her beside me or I am not entering.”
Odin chuckled, still such a stubborn child in his age. “That was already a given, my child.”
Ivar nodded, finally at peace knowing you were waiting for him. “Then I’m ready.”
Odin sighed, sitting next to him so they can see eye to eye.
“You haven’t used your wish,” Odin started. “Do you not want anything?”
Ivar thought about it. His sons were great men now, most are kings in their own rights and even his only daughter was married to a great King on the East. His wife was still beautiful and could easily marry another who can truly love her and appreciate her for the great woman that she is. He truly has nothing to ask for except one thing.
The thing that had been nagging on his brain for years and years and years.
“Then,” he looked at Odin. “May I ask you a question?”
Odin seemed to expect it but nodded nonetheless.
Ivar hesitated but he willed himself.
“If I had …” he sighed deeply, thinking of a different reality than the one he was living in. “If I had gone on the boat … would I have been happy?”
Odin seemed to hesitate knowing exactly what he meant. He looked away at Ivar and looked at the sun as Ivar was. “There was no glory to be found in that life. You would have never found contentment.”
“That’s not my question,” Ivar shook his head, now his eyes not straying from Odin. “Would I have been happy?”
Odin’s jaw clenched before he finally looked at Ivar, something akin to an apology written in his eye.
“Truly,” he affirmed pity in his eyes as he looked at his favorite child and the beautiful future he had stolen from him in exchange for the world. “You would’ve been happier than gods would’ve allowed.”
Ivar seemed taken aback, breathing out a shaky sigh, before he leaned back to the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes. Frustrated and angry but also so very tired. He no longer wants to be angry. And he is tired of fighting the world and all the gods for his fate.
He will be seeing you soon and that is enough.
After a life of war he craves for peace now – peace for his broken soul and torn heart.
“I’m tired,” He whispered knowing his god would hear as he always does.
“I know,” Odin answered. “You can rest now, child.”
Odin placed a gentle hand on Ivar’s eyes just as his body finally failed him and he breathed his last. He summoned the remaining bones and dusts of Ivar’s one true love out of the earth and made a pendant out of it for Ivar to wear and take with him on his final resting place.
A small apology for tearing the two lovers apart in life but now at the very least in death they can be together again.
Odin raised his arms and out came seven ravens to inform all Ivarssons that their father has now, finally, found true peace.
-
Ivar heard chirping of the birds but it was the scent of some bread cooking that truly woke him up, it smelled familiar. It smelt like home. When he opened his eyes the golden ceiling of his castle did not greet him, instead in its place were plain hardwood ceilings with Viking carvings that was only present in his old home back in Kattegat.
“Ivar!” he heard a distant familiar scream of his name making his heart almost stop. He was in such a hurry he failed to see he was back on his young body until he accidentally stood up on both his feet.
His two uncharacteristically strong legs holding him up making his jaw drop, and the round mirror he bought off a trader showing him in his prime.
But before he could dwell on it he heard your voice again. “Ivar!”
Behind the house, by the lake.
He slammed his hands on the wooden door and ran and ran and ran laughing as he did, as he finally felt the soft grass and wet soil on his feet and not the constant pain who accompanied him his whole life.
And when he reached where the lake should be he sees you.
You.
It’s finally you.
Just as beautiful as you were when he last saw you.
You were wearing a humble hand-weaved dress but Ivar could swear you looked more beautiful than all of the woman he had seen in his long life.
You were running towards him, laughing and waving and he realized that this was it.
He was home.
He caught you in his arms just as you jumped, twirling you around as your familiar scent hit his senses making him tear up between your laughter.
“My love,” you whispered in his ears making him hug you even tighter. He knows somewhere in this version of paradise his father and brothers are waiting for him to join them at their table totell them his stories of battle and glory but for now they can wait.
He wanted to stay here for a little longer.
He had dreamt of this and nothing but this forever. Every pain and heartache in his mortal life had been worth all this.
When he pulled back, he almost gasped from finally having you so close. The hue in your eyes almost blindingly beautiful. He had been so scared he would forget you as he grew older but he could recognize these eyes everywhere.
“My Ivar,” you leaned in, your soft lashes touching fluttering on his cheeks as you finally kissed him. A kiss so familiar despite the years of absence.
“(Y/N),” he whispered in between the kisses, a final tear of happiness falling from his eye.
His heart has finally healed.
“Welcome home, my love.”
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nataliedanovelist · 3 years
Text
GF - How A Star Is Born. ch.VI
A Hercules AU, founded by @evaroze, whom this fic is a gift for. I hope y’all like it!
ch.V - ch.VII
AO3 link
~~~~~~~~~~
The little sailboat gently glided along the river that would eventually pool into the sea. There, just as the river touched the vast salty body of water, there was a harbor that began the huge troublesome town of Thebes.
“Wow,” Dipper awed as he tied up the boat. “Is that all one town?”
“One town, a million troubles.” Stan quipped as he walked along the dock and his student hurried to catch up. “The Big Olive herself: Thebes. They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
“Cool!” Dipper said as they entered the city. Never before had the farmboy seen so many temples and buildings clumped together, so many people in one place, so many speeding carts and horses and stray cats and the occasional mice that kept the cats fat and happy.
“Stick with me, kid,” Stan warned as they stopped with a group of people waiting to cross the street. “This place is dangerous.”
The horse-pulled carts came to a stop and some guy turned a red-hand vase so it showed a green walking man. They began to cross, but one cart sped by them and Stan had to dive on top of Dipper to push them both out of the way in time.
“Watch where you’re doing!”
“HEY I’M WALKING HERE!” Stan screamed back and made a rude gesture and he got up from Dipper, somehow miraculously getting a slight hint of a Latin accent. “See what I mean? Knuckleheads, all of them.”
“Then you should feel right at home.” Dipper sneered playfully, earning him a firm punch on the shoulder as they walked on.
A few minutes into town, after passing a shady conman that Stan saw right-through, a cute lady at a corner asking if anyone was wanting a good time, and a naked guy singing about accepting yourself, loving yourself, while waving around a dead chicken, the two men walked up to a fountain, taking notice of a group of people talking woefully.
“It was horrible.” A whiny troll-looking guy said as he rinsed his cap into the fountain, trying to get the soot off his clothes. “I lost everything in the fire. All of my beautiful vases and stone tablets.”
“Now were the fires before or after the earthquakes?” A big red-haired guy asked.
“They were after the fires.” A red-haired girl a few years older than Dipper answered with. “But before the flood.”
“Not to mention the crime-rate.” A skinny guy with a small mustache added in. “Seems every time I turn around, there’s some new monster running havoc!”
“1220 has got to be the worst year I’ve ever heard of.” The red-haired woman said as she kicked a rock harshly and crossed her arms over her chest. “Can’t we just move to Sparta, Dad?”
The entire time the locals were complaining, Stan was elbowing Dipper encouragingly and gesturing for him to go ahead. Dipper cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me.” When all the eyes were on him, he felt a little nervous, but he went ahead. “It seems to me that what you need is a hero.” He said confidently and puffed his chest out with his hands on his hips.
The crowd did not look impressed. “Yeah,” The big guy snorted. “And who are you?”
“Um, I’m Dipper.” The young man said, trying to keep his confidence up, but was failing. “But I happen to be a hero, and…”
The four laughed at him and Stan narrowed his eyes as the townsfolk had their doubts if this young man could possibly help them.
“Have you ever saved a town before?” The small troll-like man asked.
“Uh… n-no, not yet…”
“Or reversed a natural disaster?” The big guy asked.
“Uh… n-n-no, but…”
“Ugh,” The red-haired woman groaned. “He’s just another chariot chaser.”
“Don’t you knuckleheads get it!” Stan yelled, placing a hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “This kid’s the genuine article!”
The little ugly man narrowed his eyes and adjusted his thick glasses to get a good look at the old man. “Hey… isn’t that the fallen god that trained Achelles?”
Stan’s whole face turned red and he began to shake with anger. “Watch it, pal.” He growled like an angry dog.
“Stan…”
“Hey, you’re right, Toby.” The big guy said and laughed harshly. “Oh boy! I needed this! Some amateur hero trained by the worst god of existence!”
Stan let go of Dipper and began cracking his knuckles. “You wanna go, buddy, c’mon…”
“Stan, Stan!” Dipper had to use his god-like strength to hold his teacher back as it looked like he was going to pounce on the big guy who looked like he could rip a tree out from the ground if he wanted to. “He’s not worth it, let’s just go.”
Stan, still growing, allowed Dipper to lead him to a large set of stairs while the four walked away. Soon Stan swatted Dipper’s hands off of him and they sat to try to think.
Dipper, meanwhile, was thinking about what that guy had said. A fallen god? That may very well have only been a cheap insult for the Trainer of Heroes, but Dipper had first-hand experience in the matter. Gods can fall. Was it possible that someone who had practically raised him and trained him to be a hero so he could be a god again knew exactly what it felt like to be someone you’re not?
“Stan, wh-what those guys were saying…”
“Listen, kid,” Stan said tiredly and held his head. “You’re gonna hear some really bad stuff about me in this town, and some of it is true, but I need you to trust that everything I’ve ever done has been so that family sticks together, okay? I’m gonna get you to your twin, okay? I’m gonna help you become a true hero if it’s the last thing I do, okay? All I ask is that you trust me. Please.” And he looked up at the teenager heavily.
Dipper swallowed as he saw a million and one emotions in his eyes. After everything this guy has done for him and planned to do for him, Dipper decided that trusting him was the least he could do, so the younger of the two nodded, but their moment was interrupted by a cry for help.
“Help! Help, please! Help!”
“Pacifica?” Dipper muttered as he saw a lush amount of blonde hair try to make its way through the crowd. “Pacifica!” He stood and hurried to her as her eyes lit up at the sight of him and hurried.
“Wonderboy… Dipper, thank goodness! Outside of town, by the sea, this little boy was playing and there was a horrible rockslide! He’s trapped!”
“Quick, show me where he’s at!”
Pacifica grabbed Dipper’s hand, making his whole face turn red, and she led the way through town back towards the sea, north of the harbor and just below a mountain that led to Thebes’ Temple of the Gods. Stan quickly followed behind them and a few townsfolk decided to keep an eye for entertainment purposes mostly.
On the damp sand there was a rocky wall side from where the tide often comes in and forms a wall, separating the town from the ocean. Dipper could hear a boy’s cries coming from behind a rock and he hurried across the beach, leaving Pacifica, Stan, and the townsfolk on the sidewalk.
“Help! I can’t breathe!” The boy coughed and desperately pleaded, “Somebody call I-X-I-I!”
Dipper stood by the big boulder and said calmly, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna get you out.”
“Hurry, please!”
Dipper looked up at the giant boulder and took in a deep breath. This rock was huge, one of the biggest things he had ever had to lift, but if he could accidentally destroy half of his hometown, he can lift a boulder. Right?
He grabbed on from the bottom and struggled for a moment, but with gritted, deep breaths, and sheer determination (Stan’s calls of encouragement also helped tremendously), Dipper was able to slowly lift the boulder up from the tiny cave in which the white haired boy was trapped behind.
The boy ran out quickly and Dipper asked in a strained voice, “Y-You okay?”
“Yeah… J-Jeepers, mister.” The boy awed. “You’re really strong!”
Dipper smiled and said after he threw the boulder into the ocean, “Just try to be a little more careful, okay?”
“I sure will!” The boy replied as he ran off into the town.
Stan cheered and hollered, only stopping when he was coughing and he bent over a little to cough sharply into his fist. The townsfolk gave a small applause for him, only a little impressed, as the boy climbed up the side of the mountain and went into the mouth of a large cave, where he was met with Bill in his throne, sipping on live worms, and Pacifica, who sat with her legs dangling over the edge.
“Jeepers? Mister?” Pacifica sneered.
“I was going for innocence.” Gideon said as she changed back into his older self and sat next to Pacifica to watch the show.
“You both did good.” Bill said coldly. “I was really moved by your performances. Great opening act.”
Meanwhile, Stan was at Dipper’s side and patted him hardly on the back. “Great job, kid! They even applauded! Sorta, but still!”
Dipper heard something and turned to look out at the dark and dreary sea. Bubbles. “I-I don’t think that’s applause, Stan.”
Stan looked out at the ocean and saw a shadow form under the bubbles, and soon they were shocked to find a big green head emerge from the water with sharp teeth and small eyes, followed by a long neck and a fat body, the monster roaring like a horrible siren.
“St-Stan! What the heck is that!?” Dipper asked his mentor.
“The Gobblewonker!” Stan yelled as he pointed at the monster. He pulled out Dipper’s sword from his scabbard, put it in his hand, and ran back to the screaming crowd for safety.
“Let’s get ready to rumble!” Gideon cheered and Bill snapped his fingers to make a ringing bell appeared.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ford and Mabel were sitting on the front steps of their temple, having tea, as the young muse happily chatted and the aged god happily listened, but they were interrupted by Fiddleford’s wind-breaking running as he hurried up to his dearest friends and was short of breath.
“St-St-Stanford! It’s Mason! He’s battlin’ the Gobblewonker on the beach o’Thebes!”
Ford choked on his tea and had to spit it out. “WHAT?!”
Mabel punched the air. “Alright! He can take down that big dummy! I wanna see him do it!” And the young muse got up and started to run out of Olympus.
“Wait!” Ford called as he and his best friend ran after her. “Mabel, wait!”
~~~~~~~~~~
Dipper slowly watched as the Gobblewonker’s neck positioned itself for attack, like an angry snake. This was no different than those garden snakes at the orphanage, right? The monster attempted to strike, but Dipper dodged swiftly on the beach. Again, and another dodge. Again, another dodge.
“That’s it,” Stan coached. “That’s it, kid, dance around, look for an opening.”
The Gobblewonker struck again, digging it’s sharp teeth into the sand, and Dipper was almost hit, but managed to spit out some sand and stand strong, unfortunately realizing a second too late that his sword was no longer in his hand, but lying behind him. Now having to multitask running the opposite direction and dodging a monster, as if this battle wasn’t difficult enough.
To distract it and buy some time, Dipper used his super strength and threw a huge rock at the Gobblewonker, who crushed it in his jaws while Dipper retrieved his weapon. He stood proud and ready to strike, but in one instant the monster engulfed the hero in it’s mouth and held its head up high to swallow Dipper like he was a pill.
Pacifica held her throat and cringed as the Gobblewonker licked his chops, but soon it was wincing, like it was in pain, and a gruesome scene of Dipper cutting the monster’s neck from the inside appeared before the audience and the Gobblewonker’s head and half its neck flew into the ocean, leaving red in the water and on his body.
“YES! THAT’S MY BOY, THAT’S MY BOY!” Stan cheered as the Gobblewonker’s body fell onto the beach with a loud splash and the dizzy hero fell to his knees. Stan was right by Dipper’s side and helped him up, lightly tapping his face. “Good job, kid, good job. C’mon, let’s getcha cleaned up.” And the old man helped his student get on his feet and shake away his dizziness from the acid that had been in the neck.
Up in the cave, Bill was turning red and shaking. Pacifica smiled, ready to see Gideon be burned to a crisp, but the young man was still, miraculously, perfectly calm.
“Gideon, your plan…”
“Bill, Bill buddy, relax.” Gideon rested his hands behind his neck as rain started to trickle down on the mortal world. “It’s only half time.”
The Gobblewonker’s body twitched behind the two men. They both turned and were very disturbed to find it standing up on its own and suddenly three heads emerged from the opened neck, ready to attack the hero again.
“HOLY HERA!” Stan yelled and ran aside to give the hero his chance.
Dipper backed away until his back was against the rocks, smiling. “Ha! You’re trapped in water, huh?”
The three-headed-Gobblewonker must have understood the young man and decided to prove him wrong, because the sea monsters climbed up out of the water and onto the same to better attack the human.
“Oh, jeez.” Dipper groaned before letting instincts take over and he chopped an incoming head off to dodge and get out of being cornered against the rocky wall.
Dipper allowed his adrenaline to take over and soon he was swinging at anything that came towards him. This, of course, was a bad idea and soon Dipper stood with his back to the sea at a thirty-headed-Gobblewonker, bigger and meaner and more powerful than ever before.
“WILL YOU FORGET THE HEAD-SLICING THING?!” Stan yelled from the sidelines.
Dipper swallowed as a clawed-flipper scooped him up and pinned him against the mountain side, all thirty heads getting closer and closer and ready to rip him apart limb from limb.
“C’mon, kid!” Stan cheered. “Use that big head of yours! C’mon!”
Dipper did some quick thinking, looking up at the mountain, and without a second to lose, he pounded his combined fists against the mountain on his left side, causing an avalanche. One by one the heads were crushed and more red stained the rainy beach, leaving only a fisted-up claw in the clear, unnoticed by the audience.
“NO!” Stan screamed and hurried to the rockpile. “C’mon, c’mon kid, stay with me. Stay with me!” The old man fell to his knees and started to move rocks out of the way, trying to find his student. “No, no, no! Please!”
Meanwhile, Gideon and Bill were smiling twisted smiles. “Hm, nice job, kiddo.” Bill said to Gideon. “You’ve redeemed yourself.”
“Told you it would work.” Gideon said calmly.
Pacifica looked down at the old man trying to get the young hero back with sad blue eyes.
“I… I can’t…” Stan panted under his breath. “I can’t lose…” But then he heard something that made him stop digging.
The fist was wiggling, finally noticed. The townsfolk were worried it was the Gobblewonker, still alive, and Stan stood ready to die trying to kill the monster that took his kid away, but everyone who was watching was beyond surprised to find Dipper priding the monster’s dead fingers off of him and standing tiredly with his clothes in rags.
Cheer erupted, everyone deaf to the yells of anger from Bill and the yells of pain from Gideon, or the dark cloud that appeared by the small cave as the three vanished.
The townsfolk yelled and celebrated and ran down to Dipper and Stan, but Stan was the first to congratulate the new hero, holding him in his arms and giving him noogies and yelling to the top of his lungs. “YOU DID IT, KID! YOU WON BY A LANDSLIDE! HAHA!”
And there, up in the dark rainy clouds, Fiddleford danced with Mabel cheerfully for Dipper’s first victory, leaving Ford standing there, mouth open, speechless with pride. “I… I can’t believe it… my boy… he…”
“I told you!” Mabel cheered and punched her uncle on the shoulder. “I was right, you were wrong! Looks like somebody has to sing the Ford Was Wrong Song!”
Ford chuckled and smiled down proudly at his nephew, who was now being carried away by the other humans. To congratulate him, Ford threw down joyous lightning bolts to dance among the jubilant rain.
Dipper caught the lightning striking the ocean and he smiled to himself, daring to believe that his family might be proud of him.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the Underworld, Gideon was on his hands and knees, weak from pain and whimpering. This was the fifth time he was being punished, and Bill wasn’t done. The young white-haired man looked up at his boss and pleaded. “Bill, I…”
With a snap of the triangle’s fingers, Gideon’s tongue burst into flame and the teenager cried out and clawed at his mouth. Bill glared maliciously as he snapped his fingers again and Gideon’s whole body was suffocated in flames. Again.
Soon a sad pile of burning flesh was at Bill’s feet slowly healing again. “First you couldn’t even turn both twins into mortals. Then the one left mortal you let live. And now he lives and kills off one of my most powerful allies for taking this dimension!” Bill snapped his fingers again, burning Gideon alive again, sentencing him to pain that would kill a mortal.
Halfway through healing again, Gideon whimpered through tears, “I can still kill him. He’s still mortal. He got lucky.”
“You better.” Bill said coldly. “You’ve got one year to kill Pinetree, and every time you fail, I’ll kill you again until either he’s dead or you wish you could stay dead.” And the triangle left his minion alone to cry on the floor and think of how he was going to kill the man destined to defeat Bill.
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Not me saying I wasn’t going to post any of my writing and then immediately going back on my word, no sir!! I’m actually really REALLY proud of this tho, so... up it goes. His Dark Materials AU for my OCs!
[For those that don’t know, in the HDM world everybody has something called a dæmon, which is the physical manifestation of their soul in the form of an animal.]
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Dusk bruised the sky, ugly purple-black with smoke and the oncoming night. No stars dared to tread above this city. Even the moon hid her face.
Below, the streets were populated only by shadows. It was easy to mistake them for one, hunched as they were on the stairs in a dark suit and with their face hidden behind an even darker sheet of hair. Only the ember at the tip of their cigarette separated them from the night.
Footsteps descended down the stairs behind them. Their owner had his hands tucked into his pockets, refusing to touch the brass rails mottled with grime. A staccato of claws clicked between each step.
“You’re late,” the living shadow said, the memory of a thousand other cigarettes burnt into their throat.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to come at all.”
A ribbon of smoke curled from their lips. “Don’t give me that shit,” they said, disgusted. “You always do. You always will. We both know it.”
“You’re in good spirits tonight,” he responded mildly. His name was Dante, and he regretfully knew the shadow too well to be offended. He hated them less than they deserved. His dæmon stood by his side in the form of a large black dog, the feeble anbaric light of the streetposts settling on her fur and gleaming in her calm eyes.
The shadow had no dæmon to be found.
They merely grunted and rose to their feet. They flicked their cigarette away; it carved a red arch through the air before it winked out on the pavement. They started walking.
Dante exchanged a glance that spoke volumes with his dæmon. But they followed, because he did know. They both did.
The shadow’s name was June, and Dante was their only friend (though, that may be too strong a word.) The reasons for this were immediately obvious, not limited to the miasma of cigarette smoke that seemed woven into their clothes, nor their frankly ugly tongue. Their voice was complicated, interesting, but their face was ordinary; long, with stark bones beneath dark golden-brown skin, an interesting nose and eyes the colour of charcoal. They were also abysmally short, the crown of their head barely reaching Dante’s shoulder. He didn’t mention that.
They barely had to flash their card at the bouncer before he swung the door open for them, his lizard dæmon curled nervously along his forearm. June strode through without a backwards glance. Dante gave him a nod.
It was dim inside the den. The air ought to have been stained red for the stench of copper, sweat and alcohol that clung to every breath; Dante thought he could feel the effects of a pint just from inhaling. The walls were panelled with dark wood, packed to bursting with people. Barely people – raucous grins, jostling, laughing, screaming like fiends in human skins. Even their dæmons seemed inebriated, staggering between their legs with tongues lolling against chins. Nevertheless, all parted for June and their silent, bulky shadow.
June didn’t spare them a single glance. They had bred this intimidation, this mystery, fed it with the tender care of a mother and watched its first steps with pride.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” they had told Dante. “You’re unknowable now. Their fear and uncertainty will make you great.”
That suited him just fine. He never was a man of many words.
Darodrey stayed pinned to his side like a moth to a board. The angle of her ears still read as calm, but she had begun to pant in the crushing heat of the den. He rested a soothing hand on her head. He could feel her anticipation crackling beside his own. They never felt quite so alive than when they were in these ratholes.
He drew back the shabby curtain that sectioned off the preparation quarter, allowed June to step in first. He pulled it to behind him, hands immediately dropping to unbutton his short coat. It fell to the floor, revealing an expanse of scarred olive skin and the lines of thick muscles. He opened the tin set to the side on the bench.
“Nova,” June told him, low. “Dumb as a barrel of shit, but he hits like one too.”
“His dæmon?” It was Drey who asked, as Dante slid a guard over his teeth. The shock of his dæmon speaking to them had been worn away by familiarity long ago.
“A mountain lion.”
Drey noted, “Also stupid.”
Dante pulled a white roll from the tin and began to unwind it around his knuckles. “Only Nova?”
“Mitchellson could be taken as well, if you’re fit after the first.”
“I’ll take him.” Dante flexed his fingers experimentally. “A bear, right?”
“Black,” June confirmed.
Maybe I’ve finally found a challenge, Drey murmured to him and him alone.
Dante secured the final bandage. “What do we get for both?”
“Enough.” June tilted their head, their hair falling against the blade they called a jaw. “As long as you don’t fuck this up.”
“I won’t.” He couldn’t.
They’re depending on us.
They, they, they. The two men currently warming his bed with their dreams, wound together in a lover’s knot. Maybe they did depend on him, but not in a way that led into an underground fighting den. That would break them to know.
A roar went up from behind the curtain, more ferocious than any bear. Darodrey’s fur rose along her spine, lips pulling back in fierce delight. Dante rolled his shoulders, knocked his knuckles together till they ached.
“Get out there,” June said, and then their hand closed claw-like over his wrist. “Do not disappoint me, Diệu.”
With the adrenaline biting in his pulse, he didn’t even deign to answer that. Instead, he merely gave them a measured look and pushed through the curtain. Darodrey’s tail whipped out on his heels.
June watched after him for a moment. Their expression was unreadable, their fingers hovering over the red kerchief folded in their breast pocket. Then their jaw set, and they followed him out.
Dumb as a barrel of shit seemed to be the perfect way to describe Nova. His angelic name didn’t look like it belonged to the brutish man with a vividly new scar wound across his bald head. His eyes were, by all means, bright blue, but even they looked dull in his face.
To his credit, he wasn’t prancing or hopping like he was on hot coals, like some of the other peacocks Dante had fought. He simply leaned against the metal links behind him, taking in his competition from under furrowed brows.
Dante ran his eyes up him, down him as if in a mere cursory glance. His fingers were still purple with fresh bruises, darker on his left hand than his right. The muscles in his arms were massively developed. He was also very actively trying to convince Dante he held his weight on his right side. He was concentrating on it harder than he was concentrating on breathing.
Meanwhile, Drey was summarizing her opponent. She found her wanting – the same dull eyes, patchy pelt and a tediously swaying tail.
“Don’t be arrogant,” he told her.
“Vrox is right. You confuse arrogance with confidance too much.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”
“Utter modesty never got anyone anywhere, Dante.” She stretched out one hind leg and then the other, unbothered.  “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think we were the best.”
Dante hesitated. Something troubled curled like lead in his stomach.
“Pay attention,” she warned.
Their opponent and his dæmon had leaned to their feet. The crowd was stirring around them, a great wave of excitement, raw in the way only betting could achieve. Dante knew three quarters of those bets were on him, and he knew that would chafe at his opponent’s pride. Sure enough, he saw something close to hate flicker in Nova’s deep-set eyes.
The referee pushed between the two men, a smile fake and white as a skull’s wide on his lips. He dove enthusiastically into his usual spiel, but Dante tuned him out. He could recite it in his sleep already. He watched the lion dæmon’s claws unfurl from their sheathes, ticking lightly against the floor. Her eyes were locked on Darodrey. On her throat.
Good luck with that, bitch, Drey growled.
The bell sounded early, ringing clear above the crowd’s uproar. A look of frightened consternation darted across the referee’s face, but he did the sensible thing and tossed aside his dignity to sprint out of the way of the two fighters. Not a second too late, either: Nova came at Dante like a boulder in an avalanche.
Nova jabbed with his right hand, but expectedly the blow was weak enough for Dante to smash it aside with his forearm and return one of his own. It snapped Nova’s head back, snapped something else as well. Blood splattered down his chin, his nose a pulpy mess. His dæmon hissed in pain.
There was definitely hate in those eyes now.
Dante flicked some of the blood of his hand as Nova came at him again. A grimace crossed his face as Drey fastened her teeth deep enough in his dæmon’s foreleg to scrape bone, but his next punch whistled toward Dante’s face. Dante had to duck to the side to avoid it. It clipped his ear instead of knocking out his teeth, and Dante didn’t bother straightening, just slammed his fist into his stomach.
The angle was wrong, but Nova folded anyway, and Dante jerked his knee up. It caught his chin was a satisfying clatter of teeth. Nova fell backward, and cried out – not for himself, though.
Darodrey had his dæmon’s neck between her jaws and was shaking her violently, back and forth, back and forth as if she were trying to rip clean through to her spine. The lion twisted under her, loose skin bunching, and ripped at her face with jagged claws. Darodrey fell back reluctantly with red dripping from her mouth, snarling like thunder.
Claws, teeth, fists, two fights tangled into one. The noise was atrocious. Curses smudged into growls, roars, the sound of flesh ripping, skin and bone colliding.
Nova kicked Dante’s knee, forced him to down or risk a break. An arm found its hold around his neck. The demented cheers of the crowd dulled as if Dante had submerged his head underwater. Blood pounded thickly in his ears.
No time for fear, no hesitation. He grabbed Nova’s wrist in an iron grip and began to inexorably pry it away from his throat. Nova grunted from the strain – from surprise – his weight wavering on Dante’s back. The moment he could draw in a breath, he gathered himself and threw. Nova slammed into the ground, every scrap of air rushing painfully out of his lungs. His dæmon yowled. Dante was only half surprised when he rolled to his feet and came at him again immediately.
A sloppy mistake. To stay on the ground would mean the end of him, but to swing so quickly, so desperately, with his weight falling now onto his left side–
Dante left an opening. Waited.
And there was the left hand, twice as fast as the right, angled to catch him on the chin and knock him senseless.
Dante caught the punch by the wrist. He saw the panic flash in Nova’s eyes and waited just one moment more to let it set in, let him feel it. Then he twisted his arm under his own and drove downward with brutal efficiency. The bone shattered, and Nova screamed.
It was a ragged noise, an animal noise, the same that his dæmon gave as she writhed on the floor. Drey took advantage of the distraction by sinking her teeth in her shoulder and flinging her against the metal barrier.
Dante let the momentum carry Nova forward. The other man crashed to the floor, clutching at his arm. Dante noted distantly that he could see a shard of bone poking through the ripped skin at his elbow. Distant, far-away, nothing. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t a man. He was the roaring in his ears, the blur behind his eyes, the molten heat coursing through his veins. He was the mechanical action of kneeling over him, caging him in his knees, and smashing a punch into Nova’s cheekbone, feeling it give. Then his jaw, the imprint of the teeth within against his knuckles. Blackening an eye, splitting a lip to ruin. One punch ran into many. Raining until Nova resembled something out of a nightmare.
“Enough, enough or you’ll forfeit, I swear you’ll forfeit–”
He paused. There was a frantic, quiet voice in his ear. The referee had been trying to hold his arm back, but he hadn’t felt any resistance as he destroyed Nova’s face. Nova, whose body was a wreck. Nova, who he held between his knees.
In his mind, Jesse smiled up at him. His hands smoothed down his stomach, his thighs. Curious and trusting.
Nova groaned, blood bubbling from his lips.
Abruptly, Dante was sure he was going to be sick.
He staggered to his feet and lurched through the open cage door, shoving through the crowd. He would leave smudges of dark, dark crimson on their clothes wherever he touched them, he knew, but they couldn’t seem to get enough of it: hands showered down on him, patting, smacking, gripping, pushing and tugging. He could hear Darodrey snarling, only white noise that buzzed in his ears.
He burst through the back door into the reeking alleyway beyond. He stumbled against the wall, nails drawing bloody streaks down the uneven bricks. He stood there, and he shuddered.
But he wasn’t sick. He was nothing at all.
Darodrey whined and pressed her nose into his palm, licked at his trembling fingers, trying to clean off the blood. He could still feel the gore caught between her teeth. The torn flesh of a soul – such a terrible thing.
Diệu, Diệu, Diệu, she whispered.
The nothing coalesced slowly, becoming simply the bricks rough against his forehead. Out here in the cool and the smoke, the clouds had made good on their promise: a thin veil of rain misted the streets, gathered and trickled down between Dante’s shoulder blades. It should have steamed where it touched his skin, but it didn’t, because nothing here was pure. It tasted like soot in the back of his throat.
The door crashed open behind him. The violence echoed in his ears.
“They need you back,” June said, sharp as broken glass.
Dante didn’t reply.
“I said get back in there, Dante.”
Darodrey said, “No.”
“What.” The accent of the city made their voice flat and vicious. They turned their gaze to the dæmon.
The one without a soul, she thought.
“He hates this,” Darodrey said. She looked back at Dante, her eyes fathoms deep, gleaming starlike. “We hate this.”
“Liar!” June snapped. Drey laid back her ears. “You can be sweet with your boys as much as you like, you can pretend to be a husband and a friend, but this is you. This is what you were made to do, and you enjoy it.” A snarl twisted their voice.
Dante stood still for a terribly long time. An eternity, hanging in the faint drizzle, printed in stinging flesh. Jesse would call it a postcard moment. He knew it would never leave him, even when it was nothing more than a memory.
June let their words sink in in silence, their nails biting red crescents into their own palms.
Then Dante pushed off from the wall and it was a horribly efficient, broken motion. He straightened, wiped the beading rain from his face with one bloodstained hand. He didn’t look at June, nor Darodrey, but as he turned back to the den she moved with him, closer than his shadow. The roar and the heat thundered through the door to welcome them both.
June was left standing in the alley alone.
“This will ruin them,” Thyne said. It shifted where it hid tucked behind their breast pocket, wings fluttering in the place of their heartbeat.
They said nothing.
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glapplebloom · 3 years
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Check the reading order to see how the other sides go as well as Credits.
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Luigi continues to try to explain that he wants to buy his freedom, but despite his best efforts Muffet can not understand him. This frustrates Muffet. “Stop trying to stall for time! If you don't have the money, you don't stay here! Now throw him over the edge!” Luigi screams as the Spiders pick him up. They begin to move the green plumber towards the edge when a tongue grabs the Green Stache's ankles. It pulls him off the Spiders and next to the owner of it: Yoshi. With Luigi on his side, Yoshi eats the webbing holding him and prepares to munch the Spiders. Muffet sees this and says, “So your pet saved you. Since pets are allowed here...”
Muffet snaps her finger, causing the Spiders to group all together. They become a bigger pile despite the numbers of spiders not increasing. When they looked to quadruple the size of the pile, they all begin to separate. But as they do, the Spiders reveal that they were covering something. That something was Muffet's Giant Pet she used to feed stingy customers. The creature screams as its soon to be meals. Yoshi and Luigi looks on in shock at the sudden new opponent. Instead of going to fight it, the Dinosaur put the Plumber on his back and began to run away. Muffet's pet follows.
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Dedede swings his mighty hammer towards his opponent. Wonder Woman blocks it, not even moving a budge. “Hey! You're supposed to go far!” Dedede activates the Rockets in his Hammer. “This should fix that issue!” Now at its top speed, the King of Dreamland swings again. Still, the Amazon Warrior blocks it without moving an inch. “Man, what's your workout routine? I got a taste of what it was like being buff and I've been working on...” Before he could finish, Wonder Woman punched him in the face.
The Flashing of Hit Sparks ended as a symbol made of energy is in front of Akuma. As it dissipates, Apple Bloom begins to fall towards the planet. Between the two of them, they experienced a lot of pain in their lives, more than even the shields can handle. If she was a lesser Lantern, she would be down for the count. But she still had enough will to activate her rings and begin the healing process. Before she hits the ground, Apple Bloom spins herself around and lands on her hooves! She looks at her two rings and finds their charge almost depleted. She has to end this fast.
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Akuma looks down seeing all this. Despite the Raging Demon being his best move when it comes to damage output, it never seems to defeat anyone. While his Shoton Style seems more powerful, it is just a flashier yet weaker version of the true Ansatsuken style. When he sees Apple Bloom fully focused on him, the Red Hedgehog charges down at full speeds. He tries to delivers a punch to the face but was blocked by the Lantern's shield. She reacted by using the other ring to create a fist to go for a swing herself but the Warrior blocked it.
Wanting to create an opening, he uses a technique he learned from watching other warriors fight: Geese Howard's Reppuken. The Energy attack from below caught Apple Bloom off guard and launched her into the air. This allowed the Hedgehog to follow it up with a Dragon Punch. But before it could connect, the Lantern flew out of reach of the blow. In that same motion, she used her rings to grab two large stone boulders to pick them up. And before he could react, she slams the two boulders together with Akuma in between. She pulls them apart and sees the Warrior is still flying. Apple Bloom smashes them again.
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mrsalwayswrite · 4 years
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Sunlight (Bucky Barnes x OFC)
I wrote this for @geekandbooknerd​ birthday challenge! Yay! I know its a bit early but happy birthday! 
My prompt was “If there is anything, there is us. You and me. No one else.”- Jennifer L. Armentrout, Onyx. 
It kind of turned into a Avengers/X-Men crossover. So some mentions of X-Men characters but mostly about Bucky & OFC. 
Warnings: slight angst, brief mention of torture, all the fluff! 
Words: 3400
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"WHERE IS SHE?!" Bucky stormed up to his best friend, leaving terrified SHIELD agents in his wake. He did not care about the scene he was making in the hallway of the Avengers Compound. His fear and fury overrode his concern to stay calm.
 "She ran off. Soon as we touched down, I tri…."
 Bucky turned on his heels, ready to sprint. He had to find her. He could listen to excuses and rational later. His mind and body drove him towards only one thing- to seek her out and offer comfort...until a hand clasped his shoulder, keeping him still. 
 "I'm sorry, Buck. We thought...I thought…" Steve sighed, running a hand through his hair. He still wore his dirty uniform, not even having had a chance to clean up from the mission yet. "Things didn't go as planned. She did well. She...she was a help to have on the mission. Please let her know that."
 The brunet could only nod, every cell in his being screaming at him to go find his girl. Soon as Steve removed his hand, Bucky took off. 
 People practically leapt out of his way...which was smart on their account. He was not above running people over right now. He was used to his friends teasing him about his murder strut- their term, not his- about how it made people either run in fear of their lives or hyperventilate with lust. He tried to not think about it too much. Although it did have its uses on occasion. 
 Bursting out the nearest outside door, he ran using all his super soldier speed. He knew where she would be. More than one time she had called it a safe place, especially when it was sunny out. The buildings for the Avengers Compound flew by him. He vaguely thought he heard someone call his name but it did not matter. He had to get to his girl. 
 The first hints of autumn could be seen in the trees surrounding the Compound. Most were still green but swatches of color peeked through with their yellows and oranges. The underbrush made each step he took in his combat boots sound like a herd of elephants walked by but now he did not have to focus on moving silently. He wore tactical pants and a black t-shirt, having been working on extra security measures for the Avengers building when Steve called him. Immediately he dropped the StarkPad and ran, ignoring those he had been working with. 
 He passed the giant elm tree that always seemed otherworldly to him...then he could see her. He always wondered what made this spot special. There was nothing unique about it in the forest surrounding the Compound...except for a giant ass boulder. Deciduous trees surrounded the spot, creating an almost nature-made barricade around the small open area with the boulder in the middle. Sunlight shown directly on it, uninterrupted by branches or leaves. It almost looked like the eye of a hurricane, and maybe that was why she always came to this spot. It was peaceful. 
 And there she sat looking like a fairy from a children's story, minus the wings. Her Nordic blonde hair danced about her in the slight breeze, the long stands almost hypnotic in their movements. Her face was turned upward, facing the afternoon sun, like a flower seeking its warmth. Her slender arms were wrapped around her legs, her alabaster skin on full display with her bare feet, black leggings and navy tank top. She must have ditched the outer part of her uniform and ran, not even bothering to go back to her room to change first. 
 Standing just on the edge of the tree line, he could only stare, taken back by her beauty once again. He wished he was artistic like Steve to paint or sketch her. That he could somehow show her how gorgeous she was to him, to erase all those self-doubts she harbored still. Instead he strove to remind her every day in whatever way he could. 
 "Leyna!" He called out, having moved out of the trees into the open area surrounding the boulder. 
 She turned her head briefly to meet his eyes then turned her face back upward, soaking in the sunlight. 
 That quick look had been enough for him to see the dried tear streaks on her cheeks. He clambered up the rock, continuously amazed at how she was able to navigate the damn thing when she was so small. He was almost a foot taller than her and the stupid rock was tricky for him between the lack of handholds, lichen and moss that covered it. It was at least twice as tall as him, and three times as wide in some strange skinny oval shape. It vaguely reminded him of the kind of stones that were good for skipping rocks on top of water, but on a giant scale. 
 Once up, he walked towards where she sat in the middle, feeling the heat of the sun hitting him anew. Without a word, he sat behind her, placing himself so her back was to his chest, his legs outstretched and his flesh arm wrapped around her waist. Silently she leaned back into him, still facing the sun, eyes closed. He laid his cheek against the top of her head, his metal arm outstretched to stabilize them. 
 The only sounds were those of the birds singing around them, the occasional shout coming from the direction of the Compound and their own breathing. It was peaceful. Something both of them craved instinctively. 
 He waited for her, knowing this was more than just a quiet place to be. There was her place to "recharge", as she liked to call it, both physically and mentally. After several minutes, a faint golden shimmer surrounded her hands. Slowly she held out one of her hands and moved her fingers as if in a dance. 
 Watching her use her powers was one of his favorite things to do. She tried to explain it to him once, how her powers worked. Something how she could manipulate light photons and atoms to change their structure to become whatever she wished, either a solid creation or an illusion. It was about three PhD degrees above his head but he got the gist. He smiled remembering when she first met Bruce Banner and how the man almost wet himself, he was so excited to run experiments and lab tests on her and her powers. Bucky had never seen the man so thrilled. Then the time she met Loki and he learned she could do illusions also. He had jumped at the chance of a competition between them that left the Compound in a strange golden, greenish haze for two days because of the amount of magic used and atoms/photons messed with for the insane amount of illusions created. 
 Using both hands, she twirled and manipulated them in front of her, using the direct sunlight to create something. Sunlight was her life source. Yes, she needed to eat and drink like anyone else but she always joked she was like a solar-powered being. Without sunlight her powers faded to nothing and she would wither away. 
 His eyes remained glued to her hands as she worked, curious as to what she was making now. With a final flourish, a long dagger lay across her palms, dwarfing her hands. The handle was the deepest black while the blade itself had a slight curve and shone a brilliant silver in the sunlight. It had a slight etching on the silver that looked like artistic flames running along the outside. 
 "That one might be my new favorite." He nuzzled her neck, thoroughly enjoying the way she squirmed and giggled. He loved when she made him shiny, sharp things. 
 "Maybe I'll make you a matching set."
 He took the dagger from her, eyeing it hungrily before slipping it into his boot. Good thing the training room was open at all hours. He planned on experimenting with it later. 
 They sat in silence for a few more minutes before she spoke, drawing lazy circles on his arm still around her waist. 
 "Steve call you?"
 "He was worried." He kissed her hair lightly. "Wanna talk about it?"
 He could feel her hesitation then the story was whispered into the wind, her voice shaky. "There was a cell...I got separated from the others...Some...um, a few HYDRA soldiers managed to taze me, get me down...they covered my eyes...and got a chain on my wrist…" She took a deep breath, he squeezed her, knowing how hard this was for her. "Steve found me at that point, he took them out and helped me get away."
 "Oh baby, I'm so sorry." It was only after she mentioned her wrist, he peeked over her shoulder to see her right wrist that looked raw and red. Seeing her injury, he clenched his metal fist. Fury rolled through him like a steam train, anger at both HYDRA for trying to take her from him and himself for not being there to protect her. He pulled her closer to him with both arms, needing the reassurance she was still here, with him. 
 "I don't think I can do this anymore, Bucky." She suddenly choked out, tears falling afresh. "I don't...I can't go through that again. I'm not strong enough."
 "Leyna…we all have our triggers that remind us of our pasts. No one blames you."
 "I put the mission in danger."
 "Steve said you did well and that you were a help."
 She shook her head. "I don't think I can keep doing this."
 They sat in silence. He understood what was going through her mind. Hell, he dealt with it himself on a regular basis. The question of how much of one's past could still haunt their future. 
 Leyna had been found by the X-Men when they took down a cult who were kidnapping mutants. She had been chained to a wall in complete darkness, refused any source of sunlight or artificial light for months on end until she either gave them the information they wanted or she died. The X-Men had brought her back to the mutant school where she stayed to recover, since when they found her, she was barely conscious. When Charles examined her mind, he discovered she was not a mutant but an enhanced like Wanda Maximoff, though where she got her powers was unknown. Just over two years after being rescued and residing at the mutant school, Charles thought sending her to the Avengers would be the best for her and to begin creating a working relationship between the Avengers and the X-Men. Leyna was to be a sort of liaison between the two groups constantly saving the world. 
 It had been a year since she joined the Avengers and everyone acknowledged how quickly she fit it. Almost like she had been a missing puzzle piece that they had not realized was missing. 
 "Do...do you think they'll send me back? To Charles? He sent me here to help but…" Her voice dropped off, fear and uncertainty evident. 
 "I am sure the Professor would understand. And there are more ways than one to help. You don't have to be out in the field to be useful. I know I prefer when you don't go on missions. Sam had to sit on me this time so I wouldn't stow away on the ship and come with you."
 She giggled, her head resting on his shoulder. "I feel the same way when you leave for a mission. Wanda and I used to get drunk but after the...electrical incident, we're not allowed to anymore."
 He chuckled, "so that's what happened, huh? You guys said you tried to combine your powers or something."
 "Remember, we were drunk and apparently decided we wanted to have a dance party. So, I tried to create a disco ball and stroke lights while she was trying to do something with the music...but it all backfired."
 He openly laughed at that. "Doll, the two of you managed to blow out all the electricity in the Compound and even put FRIDAY offline for a bit. Tony was furious. Hell, I heard Wanda's room had to be completely renovated because of the power surge that went through it. Thankfully it had reinforced, special walls or whatever Tony calls them."
 "Why do you think she's been sleeping in Vision's room?"
 "That was...what, three months ago? And it's still not fixed?"
 She shrugged. "She doesn't feel rushed to return to her own room. "
 They lapsed back into silence, his arms still around her. Her face was still upturned, soaking in the afternoon sun. He watched her profile, in awe that someone as pure, selfless and fun would ever look at him twice. As he stared, he could see her lips pursing slightly while her brow furrowed. It broke his heart that she still struggled with such self-doubt. 
 "Leyna, turn around." At her hesitation, he ran his lips softly over the corner of her jaw. "Please."
 Slowly, she did. Turning around to straddle his waist, she wrapped her arms around his neck while his own hands gripped her hips to hold her. 
 "Look at me."
 It was only after his quiet command that she finally lifted her gaze from his chest. Her violet eyes always enthralled him, calling to some deep primitive part that wanted to bask in her light for the rest of his life. 
 "We're not gonna kick you out if you come off the field. Hell, you are one of our best at recon and observation. If that's all you want to do, the others will understand. Natasha will probably buy you a bottle of that Russian vodka that she loves cause she won't be the only one sent on those kinds of missions anymore. And even if that is too much, you have a great mind for tactics and seeing things others don't. You would be a benefit for working in the control room while we're on a mission. You'd have our backs still and could keep an eye out for things we might miss."
 "Charles sent me to help…" She hedged but he was having none of that. He gripped her chin, holding her gaze, hoping she would believe him and stay. Not just for the Avengers...but for him. 
 "And you would be. You've always been a huge help… Or would you prefer to go back to the School? Is that what you would prefer? I'm sure Logan would prefer that. He still hasn't forgiven me for having you be my girl."
 "He hasn't tried to kill you though."
 "What do you call what happened last time he came to check on you?" He demanded, eyeing her smirk. "Just a misunderstanding?"
 She laughed, massaging the back of his neck. "He only destroyed the couch. It could have been far worse."
 "Yeah, and I had been sitting on that couch! His claws were inches from my head!" 
 "Mmm...good thing you have such great reflexes." She leaned forward and pressed a teasing kiss to his lips. 
 His hands tightened on her hips. "Babydoll, you do that again and I'll show you what other great reflexes I have."
 "Outside?"
 "What? Ain't nobody around?"
 She swatted his chest, laughing before laying her head on his shoulder. "And if I just wanted to be with you? Not do anything...just be here with you?"
 "If there is anything, there is us. You and me. No one else." He lifted her chin to gaze into her eyes, the sunlight making them glow. "We can do whatever we want. Go wherever we want. Just us."
 "Mmm...and Steve." She hummed, tracing a finger lazily on his chest. 
 "What?"
 "You and me...and Steve. There is no way Steve would let us go off alone. He would miss his best friend too much and is too stubborn to let you go. He'd leave the Avengers first. Then Sam would be all offended and come along too since he and Steve are also best friends and I think secretly you and Sam are best friends but neither wants to acknowledge it. Natasha would hunt us down next. You know Peter would send us more of those little videos but they would be all sad and puppy eyes since wherever we are, I'm sure his Aunt May would not let him come. Plus, he's like the little brother I've always wanted… If Natasha finds us, Clint will show up eventually. Then Scott would too since Steve is with us. I swear I've never seen a bigger fangirl than Scott. Tony would crash at some point because well, it's Tony…"
 He cut her off, chuckling because however much he wanted to deny it. It was true. "Ok ok, I get the picture. Christ. I think we need some new friends."
 "Like Logan?"
 "I still can't believe you dated the Wolverine. I feel I should question your taste in men."
 "Hey! It was short lived and we both realized we were better as friends. Sides, if we're worried about my taste in men, what does that say about you?" She teased, a smile on her lips. 
 "You go for the tall, dark and handsome." 
 "That applies to Logan too...mmm...maybe I just prefer old guys?"
 "Alright, that's it!" He stood up, throwing her over his shoulder. "I come out here to take care of my best girl and what do I get...insults!" Carefully he jumped down to the ground, making sure not to jostle her too much with the impact. He started back towards the Compound, trying to control the smile on his face while listening to Leyna laughing over his shoulder. "See if I share my ice cream with you tonight."
 "Bucky…" she whined, wiggling against him, "that's mean."
 "Old guys...you've been spending too much time with Sam. Really need to get some new friends." He muttered mostly to himself. 
 "Put me down, Bucky."
 He set her on a nearby stump so she was actually eye level to him. Carefully he ran a hand through her blonde hair, loving that she let him play with it. "You know I meant it, what I said earlier."
 "I know, love." She cupped his face and pressed a kiss to his lips. 
 He eagerly kissed her back, diving into her affections without hesitation. He loved the way she fit in his arms, the way her lips glided against his, how his heart threatened to explode with joy with just the mere thought of her. Although they had not yet said those three little words to one another, he knew it was true for him. She was perfect for him, and although she had her quirks that annoyed him and her own haunted past that gave her nightmares, he would not change anything about her.
 Finally, they broke apart, both breathing a little more heavily and dopey smiles on both their faces. He would love to stay here with her, just the two of them and kiss her senseless or until he removed any self-doubt she still struggled with. The Avengers' part of his mind reminded him that she had run out to the forest before the debrief which would be a headache in itself if they did not return soon. He sighed, lamenting that this moment had to end. "Come on, doll. Let's get you back. Steve will want to check in with you."
 "Ok…"
 He stepped away for her to jump down but she did not move. 
 "Doll…" That grin on her face spelled trouble, he just knew it. 
 "I'm tired...can you give me a piggyback ride?"
 He raised an eyebrow at her. 
 She smiled sweetly, hands clasped in front of her and swaying slightly. Between the delicate features, small stature and purple eyes, she really did look like a damn fairy. 
 "Fine…"
 She squealed as she climbed onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck. Just as he thought about protesting loudly, she smacked a loud kiss on his cheek then giggled. Who was he kidding, he would do anything for her. 
 If he had to give a few death glares and mild threats in the future to suppress jokes about the Winter Soldier giving piggyback rides…that was not his fault. 
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kchuarts · 3 years
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Flowers in Blood
A/N: This ones a bit touchy folks. I also wrote Roper a bit comical in a way just because he’s always come off that way to me? Idk it could be because I still think of House when I look at em. (I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the gif featured because idk what it is about wounded men?? They’re 10x hotter but I also feel bad??) 
Summary: A voice from the past emerges. 
Warnings: Violence and mention of death. 
Taglist: @lucywrites02​, @shiningloki​ *(let me know if you want to be tagged!!)* 
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Chapter 13: Bloodroot p. ii 
“Come out, come out wherever you are little girl~” One of Travis’s thugs chimed out, holding his gun out and motioning the other three to follow in short. “Careful, she might have a bit of a bite.” He joked to his comrades. The garden was huge and not only had large rocks for Katie to hide behind, but also some various trees. “Get ready to shoot if she’s up in the trees, but do not kill her or the boss will kill us instead.” The goon said, scanning the area. 
A splashing noise had them all turn around to the area of where the koi pond was. “Zac what the hell was that?” Another crony panicked and looked around frantically, holding his gun close. 
“Come on Andrew, you cannot be serious. She’s a girl without any defenses and no back up, you really think she’s gonna get you? Dumb ass.” Zac shook his head and turned to the other two, Dylan and Jimmy. He nodded in separate directions and grinned, “She can’t hide forever…” He put his gun away and stopped in the middle of the garden, holding his arms out. “Listen sweetie, as much as I enjoy a good game this is gonna get nasty real quick if you don’t cooperate with us.” He spoke loud and clear. 
“Zac, we’ve got about twenty minutes until authorities arrive. I’ve already notified-” Jimmy began to speak before he was interrupted by a sudden dragging noise. The dirty haired man looked around, pushing his glasses up, “Where did Dylan go?” He spoke slowly. 
“See! I was right Zac!! I fucking saw it coming!! We can’t underestimate females one bit!!” Andrew panicked, letting his anxiety get the better of him. 
“That’s fucking right!” Katie came around the corner, holding her knife to Dylan’s throat and using him as a human shield. “You shouldn’t underestimate me. Just because your boss fucked me up doesn’t mean I can’t break free of his control.” She growled, pressing the blade harder against Dylan’s throat. Never before had the brunette ever actually killed another person and she wanted to avoid that at all cost. Death was something that she didn’t do well with, no matter who it was. Her breathing became a little harder as she noticed the others begin to make a formation around her. “TAKE A STEP NEAR ME AND I’LL SLIT HIS THROAT!!” She screeched, eyes wide and full of fear. 
Dylan began to squirm, trying to use his height to his advantage and eventually succeeding. He broke free of Katie’s hold only to have her knife lodged in the back of his neck. “YOU BITCH!!” He screamed, falling to the ground. 
“FUCK WHAT TRAVIS SAYS! KILL THIS LITTLE BITCH!!” Zac pointed to her, pulling out his gun and firing an entire clip at her. Andrew and Jimmy followed in short before Zac pointed to Jimmy. “YOU STAY OUTTA THIS IN CASE SHE MANAGES TO-” He couldn’t finish as a shot was fired and pierced right through his brain, killing him instantly. No one knew where the hell that shot came from and it sent the surviving three in a panic. 
Out of nowhere, Katie tackled Jimmy to the ground as she took him out from his legs. She had taken cover behind the large rock in the knick of time just as Zac had begun to empty his clip. Using her training, she wrapped her arms tightly around Jimmy’s thighs and somersaulted forward; throwing him as hard as she could. Another shot was fired, taking Jimmy out and causing Katie to take cover when yet another gunshot sounded off. 
“KNOCK THIS OFF!! WHOEVER’S SHOOTING AT US, GIMME A MINUTE!!” Dylan roared, ripping Katie’s blade out of his neck and whipping it at her. 
“A-AAGH!!” She fell to the ground, clenching her teeth as Dylan had landed a lucky shot to her right leg. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck- UGH!” A fist slammed across Katie’s face and she was sent flying backwards a bit. Her back skid across the stones in the garden and head hitting a large boulder near the koi pond. More pain seared through her body as Dylan was punching her as hard as he could, knowing that she couldn’t fight back. Suddenly, sharp pain started to prick her in certain places on her body as the knife was ripped from her leg. She began to scream from being stabbed, crying out for help of any sort. The next thing she knew was that her head was forced under the water and being held there. She could feel blood leaking from her body and Dylan’s large hands wrapped tightly around her throat as he held her underwater. This was it- This was the end of her life and it was subsequently by the hands of Travis in the most indirect way. She was too weak to fight back and her vision began to go in and out, inhaling water as she was desperate to breathe. 
CRACK!
The pressure of Dylan’s hands suddenly released, causing Katie to inhale more water as she was too weak to move. She managed to hear a faint thudding noise as Dylan’s body dropped beside her, motionless. With her vision now completely blacking out, Katie mouthed Jonathan’s name to the best of her ability and gave into the drowning darkness. At least her last thoughts were of the man who had stolen her heart. 
“Well, we can’t have that now can we.” A british man’s voice sounded through the garden and he walked towards Katie, staring at her for a moment before hoisting the drowning girl from the pond. “Sorry Pine, I’m afraid I’ll have to kiss your girl to save her. Although, I’m certainly no prince charming; not in the slightest.” Roper chortled to himself, bending down and performing CPR to bring Katie back from a watery death.  
--------
Jonathan slammed his fist across Travis’s face, dodging the other man’s swings as best as he could. Not too long ago, Pine had knocked the gun from Travis and thus ensued an exchange of fists. He panted hard, exhaustion becoming apparent from the amount of energy he exerted fighting Travis. 
“What’s the matter old man? Can’t fight anymore?” Katie’s ex grinned wickedly, panting just as hard. “I’ve got all day!” Travis lifted his leg, swinging it and knocking Jonathan prone. Having the upperhand, Travis marched over to Pine and stomped on his chest. He dug his heel into his ribs and laughed as he heard a satisfying crunching noise accompanied by Jonathan’s scream. “We aren’t so different, you and I.” He grinned, stomping again and breaking another rib. Travis socked Pine across the face over and over as he heard him attempt to speak. “YOU LISTEN TO ME WHEN I’M TALKING!! I don’t give a shit about respecting elders, I’m the alpha around here.”  He gave one last good hit across Jonathan’s face before being satisfied. 
Everything hurt, his body ached from all the straining and exertion he had been forced to use. This was exactly like the time he had “rescued” Dans, Roper's son. “Don’t hurt her.” He muttered. “Please. Don’t hurt.” He choked a little from snot and blood before being grabbed by the front of his shirt and hoisted up. Through beaten eyes, he could hardly see Travis’s sick smirk. He could care less about what was said before, all he could think about was getting to Katie and saving her. 
“Now, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me.” Travis chuckled, examining his fingernails on his other hand. “We’re very much from the same coin, you saw some fucked up shit in war and I saw some fucked up shit growing up. We were forced to make a decision and kill.” He nodded to himself and clicked his tongue. “It’s not gonna be long before you finally snap yourself, Pine. You’ll be driven mad with the thought of her leaving you and will come up with more creative ways to control her. That’s what I had to do, little fox was always trying to run away from her alpha. Cunning thing she is, so sweet and innocent… So fun to break and toy with.” He flicked his dark eyes up, noticing Andrew scurrying back in with a panicked look. Travis frowned and dropped Jonathan, placing his foot down on his head and pushing his weight on him. “What the fuck is it? Where’s Katie?” 
Andrew let out a sob and began to wail incoherently, pointing back and blubbering something about a shooter. “Dylan, Zac, ‘n Jim are allgoneandIhadtogetoutbeforehegotmetoothepolicearecomingand-” a firm slap was branded across his face as Travis had grown tired of his whines. 
“Will you just shut up! Fuck, you’re such a pussy!! Fine. I guess you get a pass, Pine. I can only hope that my Katie is still breathing.” There again was the sick smirk as sirens blared in the background. “I can’t wait for the next time we meet.” Travis waved and grabbed Andrew by the arm, pulling him out of the fray. 
Pine coughed hard, vision blurred from blood and sweat. “Kate… Please…” His voice was stuffy from his broken, bloodied nose. Jonathan closed his tired eyes, shedding tears that stung the cuts on his face. “Kate.” He kept mumbling her name over and over, praying she was safe. A slew of footsteps entered into the lobby but only a foreign language was spoken. Gloved hands began to assess the damage done to Jonathan, muffled Japanese clogging his hearing. 
“Does anyone speak English?” An all too familiar voice caught Jonathan’s attention in the worst way. 
Jonathan turned his head slowly, opening his eyes and taking in a rattly breath from what he was able to make out. “No. Kate.” He cried, seeing Roper walk past him with Katie’s motionless and bleeding body in his arms. “Please, Roper. Please.” He croaked, looking up at his enemy while being treated. 
“Oh dear.” Richard grimaced at Pine. “You look exactly the way I found you back in Spain 2 years ago. Tsk, nasty habit you have.” He handed Katie over to paramedics and nodded at them.  “Too bad I won’t be requiring your services anytime soon as my trust in you is completely gone. Although, I do have some news…” He knelt down, giving Jonathan a pat against his wounded cheek and received a whine from the wounded man. “Oh come off it. You know better than to whine like a little girl, Pine. Fortunately, we have a common enemy.” He paused, looking at Jonathan to see if he was still listening. 
“Kate-” Jonathan coughed, whining again from the pain in his chest. 
Richard frowned at his persistence of the girl. “She’ll be fine, only ten stab wounds and nothing fatal. She did take a bit of a swim though and I had to play Baywatch for just a tick until she drew breath again.” He got up, following the paramedics and watching Pine get loaded onto a stretcher. “Seeing as you don’t want to pay any attention to vital news I have, I will be contacting you later. Oh and by the way, your hospital fees are covered by yours truly. Consider this one last favor from me to you, toodles.” 
-----------------------------
“Did you get him?” Abbadon asked, folding her arms over her chest as Roper walked into the teahouse, taking a seat across from her. 
“Mmm, no. He was busy having a tussle with Pine so I couldn’t get to him.” Richard pulled his cigarette carton out, pulling a stick from it and offering one to Abbadon. 
She waved her hand and shook her head no, “I quit eleven years ago when I found I was pregnant with my son. I promised myself I wouldn’t return to that nasty habit.” Abbadon admitted genuinely. Never in her life did she ever think she’d be working with Richard Roper of all people. Sure, they were cut out from the same cloth in terms of business, as much as she hated to be in it, but she was unaware that he also wanted to bring Daniel down. 
Shrugging, Roper lit his cigarette and took a drag from it. “So,” He turned his head away, blowing smoke in the opposite direction, “What’s with you and wanting Travis dead? I thought you’d want that slimy little bastard taken care of first… Or whatever the hell the bitch over in Korea is named. I heard you two have gotten into cat fights.” He mused to himself and eyed Abbadon, teasing her slightly. 
The auburn haired woman snorted in amusement, “I wouldn’t exactly call them “cat fights” so much as an actual fist fight. I am no angst ridden school girl despite how troubled I am.” She looked up at their waiter and nodded in thanks as the tea was delivered. Carefully, Abbadon took the kettle and poured her scalding hot tea into her cup and set it down. She tested the intensity of the heat with her upper lip before taking a sip. “Ah, excellent.” She spoke to herself, setting down the cup. “Why I want him dead is because he is obsessed with Katelyn. He reminds me much of Ulrich, my bastard of a husband. The things I was told of what he had done to her is too reminiscent of my own situation. Thankfully, Ulrich is not obsessed with me and would rather not have anything to do with me.” She paused for a moment before returning to her original plan of action. “She and Pine are the only hope I have of getting my son back.” She looked at Roper with a rather wistful expression. “Certainly you can understand me, no? You have a child of your own?” She raised her eyebrows, grabbing her tea cup and taking another sip. 
Taking another puff of his cigarette, Roper nodded and sighed. Smoke jetted from his nostrils as he did so, “Yes, I do. I also have a son whom I care about despite what his bitch of a mother thinks.” He spoke of his ex wife bitterly. “Anyways, what you’re getting at is that you commiserate with Pine’s girl? Cute little lass she is.” 
“Yes.” 
“Mhm. Abuse… I have no right to make any commentary on that seeing as I am also one who isn’t the most kind lover.” He cleared his throat, wanting to avoid that subject. “Now, the money if you please.” He held his hand out and took the payment Abbadon handed over. “Never thought I’d get to use my hitman skills ever again. I must say, I had fun with it though I nearly shot Miss O’Connor.” He stopped counting the bills as he noticed Abbadon look at him with rage. “I wasn’t intending to aim for her, I left her be just as you wanted. Poor thing almost inhaled a koi fish.” He placed his cigarette between his lips and resumed counting. “If it weren’t for me she would literally be swimming with the fishes.” 
Abbadon huffed, taking another sip of her tea and leering at the man sitting across from her. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t joke about her like that. I want her to live the life that I could never have, please be more considerate.” She finished her tea and stood, turning to leave. “I wish that our paths wouldn’t cross again, but unfortunately we share a common enemy. Until next we meet, Richard.” 
-----------------------
Sleep would not come to Jonathan that night as he tossed and turned uncomfortably with IVs and a ventilator to help oxygen get into one of his collapsed lungs. “No. No- Katie don’t go.” His voice was hoarse but laced with pain and devastation. Jonathan’s eyes were shut but he was trapped in a nightmare of losing Katie to Travis. “Stop, no don’t hurt her.” He continued to cry, causing the machine monitoring his vitals to beep as his heart rate increased. 
“Mr. Redwood? Are you alright?” A nurse walked in, eyes full of worry as she saw the pained man. Stephanie Nakamura was placed in charge of Jonathan as she was the only one there at the moment, who spoke English fluently. She was of American and Japanese descent but decided to live in Japan to find her roots. “Mr. Redwood?” She called again and began to take measures in case things decided to go wrong. 
Jonathan and Katie had been given new aliases courtesy of Richard Roper. He still wanted them to play the game and carried on with the whole “tree” last name scheme. Jonathan went by “Todd Redwood” and Katie by “Kit Redwood”. Apparently Richard thought it would be funny to also throw in an animal into their names; the fox. 
Gasping, Pine shuddered hard and coughed in pain. His eyes shot open and he looked around in worry, “Where? Where is she?” He asked in a rough voice and looked at Stephanie with panic. “Where’s Katie?” He was not yet aware of the aliases at hand. 
“Katie? I thought your wife’s name was Kit… Hmm maybe Kit is a variant of Katie?” Stephanie thought to herself before catching Pine trying to get up from the corner of her eye. “NO!! Mr. Redwood you mustn’t get up!!” She forced him back down and pressed her call button for help as he just would not stop struggling. “You shouldn’t speak either, your lung is not healed at all!” She looked over her shoulder and saw some nurses enter the room. Speaking in her native tongue, she asked for assistance with Jonathan and had him sedated for the night. “Poor man. He really is worried about his wife…” 
-------------------
For the next two weeks, Jonathan struggled to go see Katie. He learned that while no vital organs were hit, she still had lost a lot of blood. Also, due to her inhaling a ton of water she was being monitored for any further damage. The only times that she would wake up were to scream out for help, her eyes were shut the entire time. Those screams broke Jonathan’s heart as he knew she was reliving the nightmare she went through with Travis, and now this. What made things worse was that she cried out for Cameron to save her and to not leave her. Once Pine was well enough, Stephanie allowed him to sit by Katie’s bedside. Not once did he leave her side and let go of her hand. Here he was now, sitting beside her and holding her hand. “Katie please wake up.” His thumb rubbed her hand, tears stinging his eyes. “Please.” He bowed his head, resting it on the bed. “I can’t lose you.” 
At those words, Katie’s fingers twitched and caused Jonathan to look up. “Jon...nathan.. Jon..” his name came out softly from her lips. She repeated his name brokenly and in a hushed tone, tears of her own sliding down her cheeks. “Thank… You… watching her..” 
Pine’s brow knit together and he scooted closer to her, wondering if she was losing her mind. “What? What do you mean?” 
“You… Protect her.... Cherish..” A soft smile formed on her lips despite her eyes being closed. “Little fox.” 
There was no way. Jonathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing and immediate doubt settled in. He didn’t believe much in the paranormal but what she was saying sounded like Cameron was communicating through her. With some hesitation, Pine swallowed hard and pondered if he should even give the silly idea a chance. “C...C-Cam?” He whispered. 
Katie nodded very faintly, the smile still on her face. “Take care… her heart...  Thank you, my brother.” The brunette suddenly fell limp, the smile fading from her face and monitor flatlining. 
“KATIE NO!! SOMEONE HELP!! NO!! NO!!” Jonathan screamed, standing upright and beginning to sob. “NO DON’T YOU LEAVE ME!! SOMEONE!! HELP-” He stopped as he heard Katie gasp loudly and the machine coming back with her vitals. 
Wide green eyes stared into blue ones and before Katie knew it, she felt Pine’s arms wrap around her and his wet face buried into the crook of her neck.
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thatonebipotato · 4 years
Text
Pills(1)
Story Warnings: Angst, Deceit, Remus, blood, descriptions of pain
Chapter Warnings: Deceit, Remus, detailed descriptions of pain, blood, screaming, uhhh let me know of any more!!
;)
~~~~~
Remus gave a loud yawn, making a show of rubbing his eyes dramatically. A long night in his imagination had made him very tired, and he wanted- no, needed- affection. He wanted comfort, because long nights of getting stressed out sometimes only caused more stress. He frowned, watching Deceit. He was currently making them some breakfast, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want food, he wanted his snake.
“Remus,” said snake said smoothly, “maybe you should go sleep a little longer, what about that, sweetie?” Sweetie. A lovely name that he had been hearing a lot more recently. Not that he was complaining.
“Yeah, but I’d much rather enjoy the view,” he said slyly, glancing downwards before looking back up to meet the other’s gaze.(ha, gays-)
“Remus, you can look later,” he said, sighing. “You need sleep. I’ll put some food for you into the microwave so you can eat later, ok? Go sleep.”
“Hmph, fine!” He got up out of the chair and yawned again, though he tried his best to suppress it. He stumbled his way down the hall, and past the hall that branched off to his room. He didn’t want to be in his shared room, and the room they’d started preparing for him separately wasn’t finished yet. He wanted his imagination instead. Sure, Dee had told him to sleep, but he’d much rather not. Besides, he could take a nap in the imagination or something, so it was fine!
He reached the entrance to the imagination, and began to feel off. Maybe it was because he was worried about being stressed again, maybe it was something else. But there was something… wrong. About his own imagination. The door seemed to be a lot darker, and more broken than it had before. Welp, that’s what happens when you let monsters run loose around the place!
He threw the door open without a second thought and sighed contently, breathing in the sweet smells of his imagination. Despite what most everyone else thought, his side of the imagination wasn’t that dark, or even that bad. At least, not on the surface. There were many flowers with strong fragrances here and there. Most of those fragrances were different kinds of poisons or hallucinogens. Prolonged exposure to them made Remus entirely immune, and even Deceit was mostly immune to all of them. The sky was a dark gradient of purples and oranges, pinks and reds, and some dark blues, the product of an endless sunset. The sad part about the sky was it was covered in storm clouds, most of the time.
There were trees, and a lot of them. They towered over the land, and were very dark, with patterns in their bark and leaves that resembled animal skulls of all kinds, and had sharp edges. And the beasts. Oh, how Remus loved his pets! There were one eyed things with a large mouth and long claws; there were large things with a million arms and eyes that killed its prey with the thought alone; there were furry creatures that looked innocent enough, but could swallow four blue whales whole and still want more; there were slimy things and scaly things, big and small things, things with claws, and wings, and broken, sharp teeth. Ones that howled, and groaned, and yipped, barked, cried, whined, and spoke. He loved his pets!
He wandered up to two trees, the mud made from the previous rain threatening to make him slip. They were very tall, and rigid. He held out his hands, and several ropes appeared in them, and a large cloth sheet. It was a hammock. He began tying one end to one of the trees, and the other to the second tree. He pulled down one side, and leapt up into the hammock. It rocked under his weight, before settling into a lazy roll.
Today, there weren’t any clouds. The trees blocked out most of his view, but he could still see the soft colours. The smell of sickeningly(quite literally) sweet flowers was mixed in with joyous scent of rain. One tiny little fuzzball leapt from the fronds and onto Remus’s tummy. It purred and curled up, producing a sort of tickly sensation. Remus reached out his hand and started gently petting the thing. It was just as soft as it looked. Most people would be sceptical about this puffball, and they should be. While is was furry, and looked like a very tiny monkey, it had the mouth of a snake. It’s jaw could unhinge, and it was venomous. It attacked anyone that wasn’t Remus or Deceit if they showed any sign of danger, or startled it too much.
Her name was Fred.
Fred yawned lazily, turning over onto her back to allow Remus access to her belly, purring louder when his hand found said spot. Remus slowly traced shapes onto her belly, and smiled. Fred had been staying around Remus remus a lot more, and was a sign that she was expecting. In a world made by Remus, what else did you expect? Well, expect more than they were, currently.
Her tail loosely curled around his wrist, and she dozed off into a quiet slumber. Remus would join soon after, but he didn’t want to. He forced himself to stay up until he couldn’t. His eyes felt like they were on fire, and his eyelids weighed down a person being thrown off the dock tied to an anchor. It didn’t help that he had started to itch, a mad burning sensation that crept down his arms and legs, and buried itself into his stomach. For all the pains he’d ever felt, this one was new. Was this supposed to happen? He couldn’t remember.
Just as he was about to drift off, he screamed. The pain immediately flared up, and it hurt. A lot. It felt as though his muscles were being pulled apart one by one, but also at the same time. His joints felt like they were being pressed into burning iron, and the heat never once died down. His skin grew extremely cold, and hurt against the burning of everything else. He kicked and thrashed and screamed and cried, falling off of the hammock and into the mud. He writhed around, and if anyone saw him, they would’ve thought he was having a seizure of some sort.
By this point, Fred was up and about, having been startled so horribly from her nap. She was still on the hammock, and was screeching at Remus with confusion written across her tiny face. The danger was coming from him, but he was also the one in danger. She didn’t know how, she just knew that he was.
Remus curled into a ball, still screaming. He’d managed to control himself from hitting everything around him, but he was still in pain. Why was he in pain? What was happening? Why wouldn’t it stop already? Was it happening to the others? Was this happening to Dee?!
His eyes, which had previously been squeezed close, shot open. Oh God, was this happening to Deceit?! He forced himself onto his hands and knees, even though he was in agony. His attempts to stand kept failing, and he kept falling back onto his knees, so he decided he would just crawl out instead.
The screeching had stopped, Fred was gone. Where she had gone, he didn’t know, but he didn’t want to care right now. He had to check on Dee.
There were suddenly arms under his own. He started hurting more due to pressure being put onto him, but that didn’t matter. Whatever had grabbed him was moving closer to the door. That’s all he needed.
The thing gently placed him back onto the cold, wet ground, and lowered Fred onto him. She had gone to get help! She made sure to jump off of him as soon as possible, and started working on opening the door. Once she got it to click open, she pushed it wide enough for Remus to crawl through, and sat waiting for him to pass through.
He started crying more, having to pick himself back up and out the door, which closed behind him as soon as he was out. He heard sobbing coming from down the hall, and forced himself up, leaning onto the wall. In this moment, he wanted to die more than ever. But he couldn't He had to check on his snake, dammit!
It took a long time, but he finally made it to the last stretch. It was just a crawl from here to get to his hurt Double Dee and make sure he was ok. The second that his own struggles had made a noise in the mostly quiet living space, the sobbing softened.
“R-Remus? Is-is that you?” His voice was broken and quiet.
“Y-” Remus got cut off by a coughing fit, which only made him feel worse, if that was even possible. When he finally stopped, he looked down to see blood on the floor, and some gloved hands by his face, that were also covered in blood. He had to physically restrain himself from screaming when the hands softly cupped his face. He finally looked up, and, though he felt like he was burning at the stake, felt his blood run cold.
Deceit had blood on his chin and staining his clothes. There were tears in his eyes, and he looked white as a sheet. His scales, while normally a vibrant greenish-yellow, looked grey, and his eye was tinged blue. Which was weird, because he wasn’t close to shedding.
“D-Dee Dee, what happened?” he forced out. His own voice was raspy and scratchy from him screaming, and it felt like he was being choked when he spoke, and not in the good way.
“I don’t- I don’t know,” Deceit admitted. His teeth were also stained red. “I think something’s w-wrong, but I just… Remus, everything’s r-really cold.” He looked close to fainting.
“Dee, take- take me to the couch. Now.”
Deceit didn’t question it. He just threw his arms around Remus’s shoulders and supported him as they walked to the couch, slowly. When they got there, and Deceit had set Remus down, Remus knew he would regret what he was doing.
He grabbed Deceit’s hand quickly, and pulled him down onto him with maybe too much force. Yep, he regretted it. The pressure felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a fast paced, rolling boulder. He didn’t say anything as he wrapped his arms around the others chest and held him tightly. Deceit went to protest, but then melted into the touch.
“You’re so warm,” he muttered, burying his face into Remus’s neck.
The second Deceit’s skin touched his, he squeaked.
“Wow, and you’re- you’re really cold!” Deceit was somehow even colder than Remus was. The pain slowly melted away, as it was like an ice pack was pressed into him, but it slowly returned as Deceit heated up. By the time that happened, it was too late to get Dee to move or get him an ice pack or something, because the snek was asleep. He was softly snoring, and looked so peaceful like that, despite the fact that he was bloody and actively causing discomfort.
Remus sighed, and decided the pain was absolutely worth it. He would give his life for Dee, and though he wasn’t dying now, this was the best thing he could do.
Though he was in pain, he forced himself to close his eyes. Soon enough, it started to ease up, and Remus was finally asleep. The breakfast the Deceit had been making was forgotten on the counter, and aside from the snoring from the two Dark Sides, it was silent.
This. This was peaceful. This is how the both wanted it from now on, at least for a little longer.
But that was only the first pill.
~~~~~
:DDDDD
Sorry for any mistakes I made, I didn't really go back and check for any, lol
Taglist: @fatesail @supersoftsupersleep @thesoftestpuffballwegot @chronophobica (two of you guys did show up? I?? Sorry???)
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