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oriigami · 4 years

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we’re running against the wind

[Part two of my One Piece Wing AU, this time focusing on the Strawhats and their histories. Read it on AO3 here!] [Part One]

“I can’t fly,” Kuina told him, one warm and dusky night, sitting on the porch step and staring down at the grass. Arms wrapped around bony knees, bruised and grass-stained. “Did you know that?”

Zoro blinked, and sat down beside her, baffled for a moment. “What do you mean? Cause your wings haven’t grown out yet?”

She sighed, heavy and tired, and stretched one wing out at her side. It was simple, plain black, small for her age. “You know what a rail is?”

“A rail?”

“It’s a kind of bird. The kind I am. They live on the ground,” Kuina said, staring down at the grass between her scuffed shoes. “They don’t fly. They’re no good for it. Their wings are too small. Even if they try, they can never get too far off the ground.”

She shot him a sideways look, and halfheartedly tugged on one of his feathers. His wings were still growing, but already much larger than hers, big and brown, almost gold in the sunlight. Eagle wings. Wings meant to soar.

“You’re lucky, Zoro,” she said, looking up at him with a terribly sad half-smile on her face that he never, ever wanted to see again. “Someday, you’re going to fly.”

Zoro woke up with her voice still ringing in her head.

Consciousness hit him with an unpleasant jolt, and he had half a second to process the dusty courtyard- not Shimotsuki dojo- before a half-dozen different varieties of discomfort hit him all at once.

The hunger pains were practically screaming in the back of his mind, and he was parched from dehydration. He was half-numb from the ropes digging into his skin, cutting off blood circulation. He shifted, trying to prop himself up as best he could, and grit his teeth against the sharp, stabbing pain of blood starting to flow again.

As soon as he moved, his wings pulsed with pain, and he had to bite back a yell. They’d been lashed roughly to the pole at his back at an uncomfortable angle that had started as barely tolerable and progressed, over the course of the days, to maddening. The dusty ground all around him was scattered with fallen dusty gold feathers, both those that had been pulled loose by the ropes and those that had shed on their own as starvation had taken its toll.

It was fine, though. What was a few feathers lost? It wasn’t like he was going to die here. It wasn’t like he could.

He had a promise to keep, after all.

Arlong never clipped Nami’s wings. They were too useful for quick getaways. To him, they were just some of the features that made her such a valuable tool, such a clever, profitable little thief. So, no, he never damaged her wings.

But he loved to remind her that he could.

If she disobeyed, if she tried to run away- well, fishmen were so strong, and wings were so fragile. She learned to bear the fear, though she always kept her wings folded close and tight to her back whenever she walked through Arlong Park. If there was one thing she could be grateful for, at least, it was that he never thought to threaten to hurt Nojiko’s wings instead.

She could still hear the crunch of Bellemere’s wingbones when Arlong had stomped on them.

Fishmen didn’t have wings. It made sense- what sure would undersea creatures have for them? But she couldn’t help but suspect, every now and then, that Arlong was envious. He could rule their towns and beat them into the ground and proclaim himself and his brethren superior over humans in every way- but he would never, ever fly. That was something Nami would always hold over him.

Nami’s wings were simple at first glance- black, with splotches of bright white at the shoulders and tips- but under the sunlight, the black glittered, turning to dark iridescent bluish-green. They looked nothing like Bellemere’s wide, long-feathered osprey wings had.

“Would you cut it out?” she snapped, one wing stretching out to swat Luffy’s curious hands away from the straw hat resting in her lap.

She’d known him for more than a day now, but she still couldn’t really make up her mind on her temporary captain. He was annoying, but good-hearted, but stupid, but honest- and she’d never seen wings like his either. They were bright red and featherless, looking more bat than bird. Overall, he was a frustrating enigma, for how open he was.

Not that it mattered, really. She’d be parting ways with them soon enough.

“Are you done yet?” he asked insistently, leaning around her shoulder to peer at the mostly-repaired hat cradled in her hands. The wide, ugly knife cuts Buggy had left in the golden straw were mostly hidden now, though you could still see the scars if you knew to look- the replacement straw she’d had to use in places was brighter and cleaner than the worn, aged material of the rest of the hat.

She wondered idly just how old this stupid hat was. There were other repairs worked into the straw here and there, some more recent and some much older, hand-stitched with varying levels of neatness and expertise.

“Nearly,” she said, not for the first time. “Be patient.”

The sun caught on the mended straw, and all of a sudden she remembered a question she’d wanted to ask. “Hey, Luffy,” she said before his attention could drift. “What’s with this feather?”

She’d noticed it when they’d first met, and wondered at it. It was tucked into the red ribbon that ran around the hat, and when she’d taken the hat to repair it and gotten a closer look, she’d noticed that it was carefully stitched into place. It was striped black and sapphire blue, with a tiny splash of white at the tip.

“Oh!” Luffy said. “That’s Sabo’s!”

Nami blinked. “Sabo?” she repeated.

“My brother!” Luffy said.

Zoro blinked one eye open from where he’d been napping on one of the little boat’s benches, lifting his head. “You’ve got a brother?” he asked.

“There’s more of you?” Nami said at the same time.

Luffy snickered. “I’ve got two big brothers!” he explained. “They both set out to sea before me, though. Sabo first, and then Ace second. Sabo had bluejay wings. Yours kinda remind me of them, Nami!”

Had, Nami thought, and thought of Nojiko- solid blue wings, tipped with black. Thought about the osprey feather tucked away in the very back of her dresser in Cocoyashi. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Luffy said. “They’re really pretty! And glittery and blue, like the ocean!”

“Oh,” Nami said. “...Thanks.”

...So maybe she liked her temporary captain, just a little. It wouldn’t change anything, in the end.

Usopp lied about his wings. He kept them tucked close to his back, and whenever someone asked, he’d come up with a new species, something big and intimidating. Hawk, eagle, falcon- something flashy, impressive, worthy of a brave warrior of the sea.

Of course, none of those were true. (Nothing he said ever was.) Everyone in the village knew it, too- they’d known him since he was a kid, after all. The truth he never wanted to admit was that his wings were unremarkable, just like him. Plain black, medium size, with a thick stripe of white running through the middle of each. He only ever opened them when he was with his friends, or with Kaya.

The first time she’d seen his wings was when he threw his arms open too wide when telling a story, caught up in the fantasy inside his head, and unbalanced himself from his perch on the tree outside her window. They’d snapped open on instinct to break his fall and let him catch himself midair, and he’d flapped back up to her window to see her beaming.

“Look,” she’d said, and stretched her own wings open- big beautiful crane wings, wide and white but with a thick band of black on the inside of each. Just the opposite of his. “We match!”

Over time, Kaya’s sickness had taken its toll on her wings, just as on the rest of her. She was always shedding drifts of feathers, leaving her wings looking scrawny and patchy. They were beautiful nonetheless, though, wide and graceful, the surviving feathers bright white.

“Someday,” he told her, “We’ll go flying, once you’re better and your feathers grow back. And I’ll show you the island where everything is made out of candy, and the trees talk to you!”

She laughed into her hands, wings curling around her. “Do they?”

“They do!” Usopp confirmed, nodding emphatically. “And they sing, too. But only for kind-hearted girls with white wings. So if we went there, they’d sing for you for sure!”

She smiled, big and warm and honest. “That sounds lovely, Usopp!”

Usopp grinned back.

A couple days later, the pirates came.

And it was sudden and violent and terrifying, and Klahadore’s massive black vulture wings seemed to block out the sky, and Usopp was sure a dozen times over that he was going to die, but-

But he didn’t.

By the time it was all over and it was time to set sail, Kaya’s wings were already looking healthier.

“Kid,” the old man had said, the first day on the rock, voice gruff and thick from coughing up seawater. “You still alive?”

Sanji didn’t say anything, pulling skinny knees to his chest and glaring over the top of them at the old man’s back. The old man had a long piece of driftwood balanced over his knees, and was methodically shredding his shirt into long strips. One of his wings was awkwardly bent in a way that made Sanji cringe to look at. The pain must have been terrible, but the old man’s voice didn’t even shake.

“C’mere. I need your help with something.”

Sanji didn’t move. “What?” he asked, and almost winced at the croak of his own voice.

“Can’t reach my wing. Busted it against the rocks, and if I don’t set it now it won’t heal right.”

“So?” Sanji muttered sullenly. “What do I care?”

“You stupid, brat?” the old man asked tiredly, and didn’t even give Sanji time to bristle before he continued, “Your wings ain’t big enough to reach land yet, but you’re little enough to carry. If my wing heals right, I can get us both off this rock. Hopefully before we starve to death.”

“...How do I know you won’t leave me?” Sanji had asked suspiciously.

The old man looked at him askance over his shoulder, holding himself stiffly so as not to jar his injured wing. “Shit, kid, I might be a pirate, but I’m not a monster. You think I’d just ditch a little kid to die?”

Sani blinked. Oh.

(It had made Judge so, so angry, that Sanji was the only one of his brothers with wings. It was an embarrassment, an infuriation, that the failure could fly unassisted when the perfect sons could not. It was why he’d been locked away, in a cell where he could never see the sky, where there was no hope at all of flight.)

He inched his way across the craggy stone to the old man, lips pressed tight. He took the stick of driftwood and makeshift bandages and quietly set to work, following the old man’s terse instructions. He wasn’t used to being on this end of it. Normally it was Reiju bandaging his injuries, setting his sprains and broken bones.

(“You deserve to fly,” she’d said through desperate tears as she shoved him towards the ship, grey-and-violet wings pulled close to her back. “Go!”)

One he had the last clumsy knot tied, the old man gave him some of the food- so little- and they split to wait. For the old man’s broken bones to heal, or for a ship to come. Whichever came first.

And they’d waited, and waited, and waited.

After the third week, Sanji had started to lose feathers. After the makeshift shelter he’d managed to scrounge together fell apart, his wings provided the only protection from the elements. He huddled behind their shade as the weeks crawled by, agonizingly slowly.

Fallen black and white feathers littered the stone around him by the time desperation drove him to curl shaking fingers around a knife, and drag himself to the other side of the island, and discover the terrible truth. The knife clattered to the stone, and Sanji collapsed along with it.

It was twenty more days before the old man was well enough to fly. Sanji was half-unconscious with delirium by then, and all he knew of the flight was hunger, and wind, and endless, endless blue. The ocean below, and the cloudless sky above, and nothing at all between.

It never did quite leave his mind.

“Have you ever heard,” he said, leaning against the railing and turning to look at the idiot in the straw hat, “of the All Blue?”

Chopper had never had wings.

It was just another reason he knew he’d never fit in. No matter how human he could make himself look, he would never have wings, and that would always give him away.

He did know how to treat them, though. Of course he did. A great doctor needed to know those sorts of things. Doctorine had taught him- about wing breaks and sprains, the sort of injuries that could be crippling and the ones where the patient might fly again, her own grey parrot wings flaring dramatically whenever she made a point.

At the moment, Doctorine was leaning over the unconscious bodies of their three newest patients- the blonde man with the back injury, the girl with the fever, and the black-haired boy.

“Let’s see here,” she hummed. “Secretarybird, common magpie, and- hm.”

Chopper blinked up at her, intrigued by her sudden silence. Her expression was hard to read. “Doctorine? Is it about that boy’s wings? I saw they were different, and he hasn’t got feathers, is that normal for humans? Is he sick?”

“Not normal,” she agreed absently. “But not unprecedented, either.” She chuckled. “It’s been some time since I last met a D.”

“A… huh?”

Doctorine waved it off. “Oh, nothing. Get him to a warm room and then prep Mr. Secretarybird there for surgery, will you? I need to find the antibiotics for Miss Magpie, she’s the most urgent of the three.”

“Ah- yes, Doctorine!” Chopper agreed, and bounced into action, and questions about feathers and wings and Ds were quickly forgotten.

Franky didn’t have wings.

He had had, at one point, though he’d never really cared much about them either way. After all, Tom-san hadn’t had wings, and neither had Kokoro. And it wasn’t like they were any use for shipbuilding, and he didn’t have many places to fly to, anyways.

Iceberg had taught him how to fly, even though he’d always insisted he didn’t need Iceberg to teach him anything. But it had been useful for getting up to high places that needed construction, or making a quick getaway after breaking something, and- yeah, okay, he could admit it. It was fun. Flying had been fun.

And then there had been the sea train. And wings were so very fragile.

By the time he hauled himself aboard the scrap ship with broken hands, he already knew he wouldn’t fly ever again. His wings were wrecked beyond any dream of repair, skin shredded and bones shattered into fragments. Even if he had the ability to create prosthetics lightweight and detailed enough to replace them- which, not to sell himself short, he probably could, given time and materials that he didn’t have- he never would have been able to attach them to the nerves properly, not at that angle.

No, better just to amputate, and cauterize, and focus on the things he did need: his hands, his eyes, his organs.

And he’d gone on, and it had been fine, and most of the time he barely missed flying at all.

“Look,” he said, as the Agua Laguna raged outside and the dumb pirate kid refused to listen to reason. “Listen to me, bro. I’m serious. You listening?”

The kid didn’t answer, but he did pause in hammering away at his dead ship for a moment, which Franky decided to take as a yes.

“Your ship’s crippled,” Franky said bluntly. “She can’t sail anymore. It’s like- okay, you saw my wings are gone, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Taking that ship to sea,” Franky said, “would be like pushing me off a cliff. There was a time I could’ve survived that just fine, but now it’d smash me to pieces. Your ship’s lost her wings. And no matter what, you can’t fix that.”

The kid stared at him, biting his lip so hard it looked like it might bleed, something cracking in his eyes, black and white wings curling protectively around his shoulders. Franky felt for him, he really did- he knew better than most what it felt like to fight something you couldn’t possibly win to try and save something you loved- but truth was truth, even when it hurt.

He was just starting to hope he might have finally gotten through when the door crashed open and suddenly, they all had bigger problems to worry about.

Robin’s wings were nondescript. It was useful, in its way, when it came to living in hiding. From the slanderous stories told about her and the people of Ohara, people expected crow, raven, rook- something dark and threatening. Or even featherless demon wings, much like those of her new captain.

Instead, her wings were simple, uniform dark grey with tawny orange-brown patches spreading from the shoulders. Robin wings.

Her mother’s had looked much the same, she remembered. It was one of the only details that had stuck in her head about Nico Olvia, as the long years had worn away at the few memories of her mother she had. Most of her mother’s face was a blur, now, but she still remembered a few things: white hair, sad eyes, wings of a mourning dove.

As Spandam dragged her down the Bridge of Hesitation, hands and powers bound, she flapped her wings frantically as hard as she could, even as the chains around her shoulders to weigh her down and stop her flying broke feathers and gouged at skin with every movement. She didn’t even need lift, just to push herself backwards a meter, a foot, an inch-

If she could buy even a minute, even a second-

Spandam spat an ugly word at her as he was jerked backwards, stumbling for a moment and nearly face-planting onto the bridge before he managed to find his balance. He snarled, grabbed her by the shoulder and hurled her to the ground, driving the air from her lungs with a painful gasp.

He stomped down hard between her shoulder blades, pinning her down.

“You know,” he said, sounding almost gleeful, “the Tenryuubito cut off the wings of their slaves. To be sure they’ll never escape. Maybe I’ll recommend that, as part of your judgement. Or…”

He moved his shoe from the center of her back to press lightly down on one of the delicate wing-joints in her right wing, and her breath caught.

“Or maybe I’ll just do it myself,” he said. “What do you think, Nico Robin?”

Nico Olvia, with white hair and sad eyes and mourning-dove wings that had been bloodied, perforated by rifle-shots, ruined to stop her from flying away-

They’d aimed for the wings, first. They’d wanted to be sure that not a single scholar could escape. Not one was left uncrippled by the time the marines evacuated the burning wreck of Ohara.

(Except Robin.)

“It’s not like you’ll be flying ever again, where you’re going,” Spandam continued, starting to press down, and Robin closed her eyes and grit her teeth against the pain and the rising plea for mercy alike. She refused to beg. Her mother had fought to the end, and so would she.

Then there was a blaze of light, and a crash, and a fireball caught Spandam perfectly in the head, and Robin was saved.

(Though, perhaps, if she was honest with herself, she’d been saved a very long time ago.)

When Brook had been alive, his wings had been soft, plain uniform brown.

Nightingale, Yorki had laughed, one late night when they were sorting through a wing glossary one of the crewmen had picked up on the latest island, trying to place everyone’s wings. Oi, Brook, no wonder you’ve got the best singing voice on the ship.

Brook had warbled out a few notes in response, as horrifically flat and off-pitch as he could physically manage, and Yorki had nearly cracked a rib laughing.

But wings rotted away just like all other flesh, and by the time Brook crawled his way back to the world of the living, they were nothing but bones and a drift of soft brown feathers, shed on the rotting planks. He tucked a few of the feathers away in an inside pocket of his coat, just in case they helped Laboon to recognize him, someday.

Catching the remnants of his wings in the corners of his eyes (ah, but he didn’t have those anymore-), grasping and skeletal, always caught him off guard, almost worse than catching sight of his reflection. The bare, bright white stood in such contrast to the soft brown he was so used to seeing that he thought he would never truly get used to it. He couldn’t imagine anyone else would, either.

And then-

“Your wings are awesome, Brook!” Luffy said, bright and enthusiastic and entirely sincere, sprawled on his back on the piano. His wings were splayed out beneath him- featherless and red, entirely unlike any Brook had never seen before. “They’re so cool!”

For a moment, Brook couldn’t find words. (How unsuiting, for a songsmith.) And then he said, “Why, thank you, Luffy-san. I should tell you, though… I’m afraid they’re not good for much. I can no longer fly.”

Luffy blinked, and then said, “So? I can’t, neither.”

“...You can’t?”

Luffy snickered, grinning. “Nah! My wings only sorta work. Something ‘bout my devil fruit and my bones or something. I don’t really get it. But it doesn’t matter! I mean, I can just rocket to places. And you too, right? You can run on water! That’s so cool!”

Brook looked at Luffy’s beaming grin for a long moment, and couldn’t stop the urge to smile back, even though he had no lips with which to do so.

And then he said, “May I join your crew?”

Luffy laughed like the best song Brook had ever heard. “Sure!”

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lo-55 · 3 years

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Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 14

Moon on the Water

The first thing Sōsuke Aizen has memory of is hunger. A dull ache in his stomach that grows to pain the longer it goes unsated.

(He will learn, decades later, that only those with high reiryoku are able to feel hunger)

He doesn’t remember, he’s never known, if he was born in Soul Society or if he’d merely died young. He doesn’t recall if he had parents at some point, or if he’d been a hollow once. It doesn’t matter, for he doubts very much that he will ever know the answer to these things. There are some things that are simply impossible to find the answers to.

All he knows for certain is the hunger that he had become aware of.

Then the dust on his skin. Grit in his eyes. Dead grass beneath his hands.

The trees that stand as witness to his beginning are bare of greenery. They are nothing more than skeletons and dead wood, pressed in close and strangling each others roots.

There are no other humans around, only empty clothes laying on the earth around him.

He doesn’t know his name. He doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening.

Hunger gets his legs up under him.

Hunger drives him, stumbling and new, into the dull light.

It’s barely a town where he spends the next two decades. It’s all adult men and women covered in bruises or scars that grip knives with white knuckles. He is the only child among them, and he keeps that title with bloodied fists and teeth.

His ribs hurt and his stomach aches fiercely. Food is in scarce supply, whether people feel the same hunger as he does or not. What little there is is jealously guarded, and nothing is taken without a price paid for it. Gold and silver are worth nothing here. Only steel and bone make a difference.

There is something inside of him that tells him he could be stronger.

It’s a whisper in the night, a breeze on a pond in his dreams.

Grow, says the moon in the water. Grow stronger. Grow smarter. Grow.

It’s something in the way he walks. To tall, too confident.

The men find him when the moon is gone from the sky and can’t float on the water any longer.

“You think you’re better than us, just because you’ve got a little bit of reitsu?” he reeks of sake and years gone unwashed. He’s flanked by three others, all of them red faced and unstable.

That doesn’t stop the hits from hurting.

“You’re no better than we are!”

“You’re just a brat no one wanted, that’s why you’re here.”

“Where’d your whore mother leave you anyway huh? In the woods? Fucking bush runt.”

When he lifts his head to spit on one of them he’s slammed down again so hard he sees stars. Blood roars in his ears and pours down his face with the tears and snot. His lips split. He screams.

It’s over.

When he looks up there’s only clothes on the ground, and he learns how to keep his head bowed and mild. Even still, people start avoiding him. Fear leads to isolation.

* *

He is only just an adolescent when people begin to vanish. They leave blood stains on the ground and screams in the night. There have been other children in the years. None of them last long. Even the ones that he tries to protect can’t take as many hits as he can, or go as long without. The latest dies not a month after he meets them. Adults have stopped speaking to him entirely. He is too smart, to vicious, to strong.

It takes four months for the shinigami to arrive.

One woman faints at the sight of them, the pressure of their souls so intense she can’t take it. He scoffs quietly. He is just as strong, and they don’t drop to their knees for him.

He watches them with solemn eyes. They wander like sparrows, with no direction and hardly any drive. Merely being in their village is a chore for these people, never mind the dead.

They are only people in the outer districts, he hears them whisper. Unmanageable and unwashed. They don’t even have shoes.

Sosuke bites his lip so hard it bleeds. That is not enough for him. He will no be contented to this life and fade away or be torn apart by monsters, those with and those without masks.

He walks up to one shinigami and points him to the hunting ground. The place by the river, where everyone must go eventually. That’s where they will find the monster that they barely bothered to look for.

Someone calls him clever. Someone else notes his energy levels.

None of them look back when they leave again.

He looks at the stick and stone huts that make up his village for a long time before he follows their foot prints. He is worth more than dirt and dead grass and bloody teeth. Regardless of what they tell him. He will find people who recognize that he is a person, that he deserves to be seen, that he deserves to eat and wash and live.

* * *

The first time he sets sight on the seireitei the only thing that over rides his anger is his hunger.

He wants it. He wants that place. He wants his place in its wall and all that it entails. Shoes, soap, food.

He wants all of it. And he hates these people for hoarding it. He’d worked his way through the rukongai, and he’d made his way to the first districts with calloused hands and a mild smile. He’d seen people throw food away. He’d seen them discard perfectly good clothes and tools simply because they were old.

All of this waste, and yet he’d gone hungry for so long. For what reason?

He’d learned to read in return for months of hard labor, and he’d gotten himself accepted into the academy on work alone.

By then he was still young for the academy, but not the youngest. He had learned to be mild and polite. He’d learned to hide the blood in his teeth and wear his sleeves long enough to hide calloused palms and scarred knuckles.

He’d even started to wear glasses, to give the impression that he was smarter than people thought. And he was. Smarter. Smart enough and savvy enough that he lost his accent and polished his edges so swiftly that anyone who didn’t know before hand where he’d come from never would. Kido came to him as easy as breathing. All of his classes did. It just made sense, like fitting together pieces of puzzles. History and law, mathematics and management.

Poetry especially became a passion of his. It was elegant and beautiful, it opened a window to the soul of the writer.

The stroke of the brush and the stroke of the sword was the same. Once made it could never be undone. There the true intentions were laid bare to the world.

He chose a poetic name for himself. One that was just as unassuming at his smile and his eyes.

Sosuke Aizen. ‘Clever’ and ‘mediator’, and ‘love’ and ‘peace’. Something that he was and something that he wasn’t. Truth and lies.

He had barely graduated when the moon finally spoke to him a name on the water.

Kyoka Suigetsu.

“ You have grown, my Sosuke.”

She is lovely and insubstantial. She ripples at the edges and her long white hair flows like water around them. Her blue eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, and her kimono swims with black and white koi.

She is like him, everything seemingly dripped in finery and hiding the callouses beneath. She is as beautiful as the truth is ugly. Sosuke loves her, suddenly and fiercely. He always has. She is the changing moon that has always watched over him.

She is alone in that.

Even in the academy, surrounded by others, he realizes quickly that he is cut from a different cloth.

He is smarter, stronger, he adapts faster. It leaves him standing above students, a pedestal they cannot reach, but below shinigami who are even weaker than he by the simple merrit of he has not yet graduated.

He asks one of those shinigami one day, when they are visiting to scout new recruits for their squads, why no one has ever tried to make things better for the outer districts.

(why no one ever tried to make it better for him)

They laughed at him, and the notion that anyone would care for mere rukongai trash. Someone all the way from Akaiha was worth less than the dirt on the shoes of someone like a Kuchiki. One person from Junrinan was worth more than eighty people from the eightieth districts. Why bother with people like that?

If they really hated it there so much they should have worked harder to get out.

If their lives were so terrible they should just hurry up and die and move on.

Another answer comes, years later. It’s given to him by Shinji Hirako, his new captain, but the words aren’t really aimed at him. They stand on a balcony above the graduation class after him. He’s a fourth seat, fresh himself, and prepared to claw his way higher with grace and smiles.

The difference between the people below them is stark. The rukon seeds, the nobility, and the mercantile. It’s in the slope of shoulders, the set of jaws, and the dark eyes. Even their uniforms bear the marks of their origins. Some are new, even in the last days of class. Others are threadbare, grown out of and patched messily in places.

“It’s the same every year,” Hirako says to Rose. The two blonds are shoulder to shoulder, flanked by their underlings. Hirako has no lieutenant, so his entourage is larger.

“A shame,” Rose’s usual smile is faded into a pensive frown.

“Don’t look like that. There’s nothing you can do and you know it. They keep the rukon full so when the Soul King needs to lighten the weight no one with any power does anything about it. That’s how it’s always been.”

“I know that.” Rose’s frown deepens. “That doesn’t mean I like it.”

“No. None of us do.”

Sosuke thinks of cruel smiles and sabotages. Finery hides the sickest hearts. He’s not sure that Hirako is right. Plenty of people like the system just fine. All the ones with power do. The nobility does nothing because it keeps them safe and it keeps them living in luxury. They like living above the common riff raff.

Sosuke starts looking more into history. There have been attempts at change in the past. Rebellions and insurgencies, all crushed. Each time things got worse for the citizens of the Rukongai. More resources were taken, trade was restricted, business taxes increased until the squalor of the outer districts encroached until it reached all the way to the fifty first. The nobles owned the Central 46, who all Shinigami would obey without question. They cut down citizens they should have protected.

After that it stopped. Fear held them in place. They were no more than sheep.

Sosuke would not be a sheep. He refused.

* * * *

Isolation was a deadly thing.

To be alone, even when surrounded by other people, was the worst sort of torture. He may not have shown it, but he struggled to resign himself to the world as it was. Why should he? He had been born strong. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but the empty clothes around where he woke up were people crushed by his mere presence. He had learned, quickly, to hide himself inside his own skin.

No one saw him. No one saw what he saw. A king that never knew his subjects, a ruling class that revelled in the suffering of those beneath them. There was a king with no face, no name, no influence. No king at all.

The throne in the sky was empty and Sousuke still knew the hunger. It still clawed at his chest and stomach.

Hirako was suspicious of him. He’d never done anything to warrant it, but the captain watched him like he was waiting for an explosion.

He was the last of his graduating class to be sent to the human world. The senkaimon was acting strangely, and they were going to put it off a few more months, but the head captain insisted, over Hirako’s protests. He said Sosuke needed to get his feet wet.

So he went.

He stepped out of the gate and onto a beach, where western troops marched in the dying red light.

This was not right. It wasn’t right at all.

Where were the thick wooden walls and tiled roofs of Kyoto? Surely it couldn't have changed so much since the last paintings were brought back from the human world! There really must have been something wrong with the Senkaimon. It dropped him somewhere he was certainly not meant to be.

There was something weird here too. The air was dense, like the atmosphere had suddenly compressed without room to expand. And the soldiers. Most of them weren’t just in identical uniforms. Some of them had the same face!

They were all alive, that much he could tell, and none of them paid any mind to him.

He touched the hilt of his zanpakutou, a curl of worry and a thrill of excitement coursing through him before he brushed them underneath reasoning and logic.

Is it an illusion?

He knows she is the best when it comes to such things. No one else could compare, and once he has someone snared there’s nothing else. The game is over and he has won.

She thrums under his fingers a small denial.

No. It’s real. Everything is real, but everything is also...

Wrong. He can feel it. There’s something very, very wrong in the air. A thickness, a blanket over the land. The edges of the horizon somehow seem more like a cage than an invitation to find where they lead. As if they lead nowhere.

What is this?!

Sosuke forces himself to calm down. He’s never understood people who let their anger cloud their judgement, or fear decide their actions. Nothing good ever comes of that.

He needs information.

He tries, first, to open the senkaimon again, but to no avail. He stabs the air at least five times before he gives up on that option. Panic thrums under his skin. He sets it aside yet.

An investigation begins.

He follows troops and listens to orders. People are fighting, a war between americans and the clan Connacht.

Soldiers for it march to a prison, where a high profile captive it being held under a general. Seeking information he follows after.

Inside, he finds a tragedy and a miracle all in one.

* * * *

A human who can see him. A man who travels through time in a desperate attempt to save the world he lives in. A boy who has no power on his own but can empower into other people.

He’s an interest ( amazing ) human.

At first glance he’s just a moody teenager. All scowls and harsh edges. Sosuke gets to watch them soften around his people. Mash, a girl of tremendous resilience and knowledge. Cu Cullain, a magician who is two people at once, gentle and fierce in equal turns. Medusa is a vicious contender, with sharp teeth and serpents in her hair. The only smiles she has are reserved for pretty girls, and Ichigo himself.

It’s not his intention, but Sosuke starts to get attached.

It’s not his intention, but Sosuke starts to trust them.

Ichigo feels like his first and final chance. He sees the same injustices, he encourages Sosuke’s anger.

He tells him to change the world.

For the first time in his life Sosuke blossoms. He doesn’t need to hold himself back, or pretend to be anything other than what he is. Ichigo sees through his facade anyways. Ichigo keeps up with the twisting paths and whip quick leaps Sosuke’s mind makes. He’s a match for him. Never has Sosuke felt anything like what he felt when Ichigo placed his hand on his shoulder and shoved his very soul inside his skin.

Fire and moonlight, an ocean of power rushing into Sosuke’s swollen lake of reiryoku.

For the first time in his life Sosuke begs. When Ichigo tells him that he’ll forget him, forget them, he tells him secrets. He lets him touch Kyoka Suigetsu and offers him only truth. He will never be able to hide from Ichigo again, and he will give up every mask and tempered smile he has if it means Ichigo will restore him to how he is in America.

Free.

The empty throne in the sky doesn’t exist anymore. There are only stars and the sun.

It’s a war. Bloody and desperate. Every hollow in hueco mundo has brought themselves to the feast, or to run from the end of their home.

It’s still precious to him. Ichigo’s roughness manages to sand away his edges and hard corners, in the best ways.

It can’t stay. He clings to Ichigo when the battles are over and the light starts to shimmer around him. If he could he would follow him all the way to Chaldeas, no matter the consequences. If he could.

He can’t.

He loses everything, and he can’t even mourn it.

* * * * *

He stepped out of the gate and onto a beach, where western troops marched in the dying red light.

Onto a beach-

Onto a-

Into carefully planned out streets lined with high wooden walls and roofs tiled in blue. Souls wander, forlorn and clinking with the chains of fate. Somewhere off to the east there’s a hollow hunting for dinner. The living are just as down trod as the dead, trudging through their daily toil.

Sosuke stumbles forwards. He blinks several times. He had just been reaching for something, hadn’t he? He’d been trying to hold something in his hands…

Something in his hands.

He looks down at his clenched fist. There is something cool and powerful held in his hand.

The one constant in Sosuke Aizen's life is hunger.

* * * * * *

#sosuke aizen #Ichigo Kurosaki #bleach fanfiction #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru

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insomniac-dot-ink · 4 years

Text

Banshees of Autumn

Genre: light horror

Words: 1.7 words

Summary: A young girl lives with banshees arriving every year to her city and roaming the streets.

Every year during the week before and after the fall equinox mama and papa dressed me and my sister up as boys. They do the same in the Nelson house and the McCormick house and Lacy Green’s house despite the fact she hates pants and paints her nails pink every day. For two weeks or so little girls disappear from the streets of the city.

They stow away my long red curls under a cap and shove mucky brown boots on my feet that don’t even fit and wrap me up in a large leather jacket- even when it’s too hot out for leather. I don’t mind dressing up as a boy so much though, it’s a perfectly fine game.

We run around and climb the fences our skirts usually snag on and tuck away apples in our pockets when the merchants aren’t looking and deepen our voices and pretend to shave our faces. It was all a fun little ritual.

It was the nights that were the worst.

Chilly phlegmatic nights where no one went out and my father lifted me up on his lap and read stories until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore the owls hooted deep in the late hours. They were always somber tales too, ones of farmers waking to find their fields covered in black birds and wicked poison berries. Tales of princesses with ice in their hearts and voices that put their entire kingdom to sleep with nothing but nightmares for company. It was of bears that talked rabbits into their waiting maws and brambles that shredded your feet if you didn’t dance.

Sometimes I was thrilled by the tales with their troubled heroes and tragic ends. Other times I asked that we read something else, anything else, and clenched my hands in my boys pants.

Father insisted that these were the stories for fall.

Then, sometimes, in the heart of the night with the stories funneling through my veins and worlds tipping from a knife point into the darkness of the season I would hear it. The brisk and blood-stilling sound that tremmored and heaved in through me in the way of an ocean.

The noise split the air and my father immediately plugged my ears and exchanged a look with my mother who would go to the door and bolt it tightly shut. My older sister- also dressed as a boy, blew out the candles, plugged her ears herself, and we waited.

And waited.

And then my father would take his hands away and resume some grisly story of mermaids devouring the soldiers of a flooded castles. Every year we hid from the thing that screamed in the streets.

Of course, I forgot. It was the autumn equinox when I was eight years old and I forgot.

“He blesses me,” I plucked a petal off the head of a flower. “He blesses me not.” I plucked a second petal off and rolled over in the grassy field. My knees were already stained green, but it didn’t matter since these weren’t my clothes. “He blesses me…” I was almost done with this plain white daisy and it’s bold yellow head. “He blesses me not!”

I had a test coming up in the next few days and I had been praying non-stop for days to the God Theos of knowledge and understanding. The letters on the page always bled together for me and played pranks where they switched spots and pretended to be each other.

Some God out there had to be able to set things right so I could make sense of the page. “He blesses me!” I tore the final petal off the flower and squealed. “I will pass this test!”

I sat up with a flourish and kissed the daisy head before slipping it into my pocket.

I had chosen a sloping tired hill to hide away on, it was a green pasture with a red farmer’s house in the distance and a dense forest above me and the city below me. Buildings billowed smoke from chimney’s nearby and sheep bah-ed in the distance with warm breath. I had been avoiding going home all day there because of another test I failed.

I turned however, and there was something on the hill. It stopped every thought in my head about school or marks or my family waiting by the fireplace to give me a tongue-lashing.

There was something on the hill.

She seemed to roll in with the mist: a damp cloud that descended all around as the evening sun stuttered past the tree tops and set my teeth on edge. Her willowy outline swept across the icy grass and out of the light fog, a chill slithered through my flesh at the sight.

She wore a perfectly powder-white gown with a shredded filthy hem that hung just past her knees in muddy strips. Her feet were bare and bone pale with ragged toe nails that scraped across the ground as she walked.

She swayed in some unseen wind when she moved and her long dark hair lay lifeless and unkempt down her shoulders. Her face was just as mute and dull with gallows cheeks and deep bruises under her gaze. Her frigid eyes looked at something just beyond me and her mouth was a limp hole on her face with slightly-parted cracked lips.

I scrambled backward as she approached and tried not to make sudden movements. It was never good to try and run when the dead walked the earth.

I brought my cap down low on my brow and edged backward toward the warm chimney smoke and safety of the houses. Nevertheless, I blinked once and then she was kneeling down before me in a boneless stoop.

We regarded each other in dead silence and my eyes itched as I refused to blink again.

She put out one slim hand and it hovered just before my face. “Are you a child?” Her voice was slick and as cold as the frozen earth, but there was also something real and heavy about it. A kind of weight to it that you could hold in your hands. I nodded quietly. “I am.” I responded softly as it was rude to ignore a question. “Are you dead?” “I am.” She responded without inflection. “What are you doing out at night?” I glanced up at the darkening sky and she moved slightly closer. I shivered, “I didn’t mean to.” “I see.” She continued and I looked her up and down as I decided where to kick so I could try to make a run for it. “They say you shouldn’t go out at night.” She said evenly, “Not you at least, not you, not you, not you.” She sang the last part in a way that made my skin crawl and the hairs on my neck stand on end.

“I know…” I responded in a small voice.

“That’s the rub though.” She drew in a deep, ugly breath that rattled in her chest nastily, “Do they lock you up? “What?” “Do they place you in binds and tell you to hold your tongue and wait your turn?” I shook my head, “I don’t know what you mean.” “Do they, child? Do they crack their mouths across you skin and call you beautiful even as you do nothing for them and them nothing for you. Do they cast your freedom aside for their own satisfaction?” “No.” I said quickly and tensed to bolt to my feet. “I don’t think so.” “They will.” And then the hand was lightning fast and clamped around my shoulders. “A human girl all the same.” Her hand was hard as cement and just as cold; her nails dug in with needle-point precision. I whimpered softly. I didn’t know where I went wrong. How had she seen through my clothes? But perhaps it had never been about that.

“Oi,” A rusty older voice called near the farm house. “What’s going on over there?”

The banshee twisted around in place and her mouth spread open wide as a gaping, horrible hole in her face.

“AHHHHHHH!” The scream was worse than anything I could have ever imagined: otherworldly. Terrible. High-pitched and curdling your blood like bad milk left in the sun.

But the worst part was the feeling that curled and crawled and erupted from it. It burrowed into my guts and threatened to swallow me whole in it’s fear and it’s horror and it’s raving, empty stink.

It lied and it swore and tore away at everything I was. My eyes were streaming and I barely noticed as she hauled me off the ground and started sprinting toward the woods with me in her arms.

“AAAAAAHHHH!” The Banshee shrieked and I had no thoughts left in my skull to kick or claw at her and stop her from stealing me away.

“Not this year, you bitch!” A woman yelled above the echoing horrible wordless cry and then a single boom shifted the night air and the bullet crackled just to the left of me. And we fell. Down, down, down, both me and the banshee crumpled onto the icy grass in a heap.

I managed to crawl out from under her feather-light body, wipe up the blood dripping from my ears, and scramble to the side.

“Come to me, girl.” A farmer was running just behind me with his arms out and I turned to flee as black tar blood spilled across the grass behind me in a widening bloom.

The farmer scooped me up before anything else and the last thing I saw was a white pale body rising from the earth again. I flinched as she looked over her shoulder, opened her mouth impossibly wide into a starry black hole, and screeched again with a world-bending roar as she retreated into the woods.

Sometimes I still think about her- about what she was and what could have happened if the farmer’s wife hadn’t shot her through the center.

But most years I simply curl up in a ball on the floor of my parents house and cover my ears with both hands for hours and hours on end until the banshees of fall stopped roaming the dark, cold earth searching for girls to spirit away and make their own.

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

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#flash fiction #urban fantasy #writing #banshees #light horror #original story #my work

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Choice ― V.ii. I Have a Rendezvous with Death

PAIRING: OC x OC x OC (Valdas x Isseya x Cynbel) RATING: Mature (reader discretion advised)

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Choice ⥽

Before there were Clans and Councils, before the fate of the world rested in certain hands, before the rise and fall of a Shadow King ― there was the Trinity. Three souls intertwined in the early hands of the universe who came to define the concept of eternity together. Because that was how they began and how they hoped to end; together. For over 2,000 years Valdas, Cynbel, and Isseya have walked through histories both mortal and supernatural. But in the early years of the 20th century something happened―something terrible. Their story has a beginning, and this is the end.

Bound by Choice and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Choice is the only book in the series not based on an existing Choices story. It is set in the Bloodbound universe and features many canon characters.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Choice/series tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

"Trust me now more than you have ever trusted me in all our lives and all our years." But... he vowed. He vowed.

[READ IT ON AO3]

“Which one of them gave me up?” I knew I shouldn’t have used that ugly name again.

His eyes sweep through the wreckage of the trench. The wall supports are starting to cave in. Another shell might just bury them both.

Serafine doesn’t answer.

Fine. “I’d be happy to continue this on higher ground.”

“Non, here will do.”

“What is it with you and tunnels beneath the earth?”

Even through the smoke he can see the way she curls her upper lip in disgust. He swears that even as the dark plumes grow darker still he can see her spit at him from afar.

Not much has changed about Serafine Dupont in the centuries since he saw her last. Her hair woven tight back then crowns her soot-stained forehead now; stray curls peek their way around her temples, her cheeks. Admittedly Cynbel prefers her in this close-cut uniform, even more in that it doesn’t bear enemy colors.

Her admirers might choose to keep la belle de Paris pristine in their memories; donned masque with laughter and seduction on her tongue. But he is no admirer and sees her now as he did then; wreathed in flame and staged upon a scene of needless death.

Needless… The thought burrows and takes root as a pounding in his temples. New to him but that made it no less true. Even as he catches the distant final beats of a heart losing too much blood he thinks it… needless.

They had died, fine. But had they needed to? To suit his amusement, perhaps. As the war had suited his amusement up until tonight.

Behind Cynbel the sandbags yield. Earth and debris sliding full to brimming and he has to step closer to her, to the relative safety of a load-bearing door frame.

“You are an arrogant fool to take your eyes off of me.”

It brings him back to her with a humorless laugh. “I’ve been called a fool for many reasons. Better reasons that that one, anyway.”

“It is the kindest of words I can think for you,” he definitely doesn’t imagine how she spits this time, “le tueur.”

At least accuse him for a murder he’s responsible for. It’s bloody London all over again, isn’t it. Cynbel claws at the patch on his uniform sleeve, colors just barely recognizable through the dirt.

“Bear the colors, Dupont. Why would I kill my own soldiers?”

“Ha! That is rich coming from you.”

It’s out of pride that he keeps his hands firmly at his sides; endures the ringing in his ears agitated by her shrill remarks. His head is healed, the two lower ribs snapped back into place by now. But his eardrums take their sweet fucking time don’t they?

Cynbel blinks through colorless sparks behind his eyes and names them embers. Across the aisle Serafine raises her chin defiant. Not spit this time — it’s pure venom that flies from her tongue in words.

“Or were their lives not a sacrifice you deemed worth making?”

Then Serafine twitches her hand and pulls his world out from under his feet. The silence of a land cleared for war replaced by the hollow barely-there echoes of the city. The smell of burning no longer all around but faint and hidden below. The moon is the same one that hung in both skies but there are no shells here, these cobbled streets have seen no falling angels of war, so she bathes them full and bright in her light.

Serafine still looks like Serafine. A quick glance, the drag of his nails over military-issued cloth; Cynbel still looks like Cynbel too.

But Belgium is three hundred years away and all the slumbering souls in Paris know not of the war that rages beneath their feet. It’s the opposite of a miracle; beautiful but aberrant. And in all his years the Golden Son has never seen or experienced the like.

“What — how did we…?”

“Over the years I thought of many ways to play this out,” the vampiress says instead, “whether here or in the burning husk of the former grand hall. Then I wondered if somewhere else would be more fitting. You certainly gave me a variety of choices over the decades; les Trois Amants gouging the world wherever they went, all the catastrophe you left in your wake. I wanted this to serve as a reflection for you. The theatre had to be carefully chosen. It had to mean something.

“But I do not care about that any longer. I do not care if your brazen act of massacre on this night meant nothing to you when it was finished. It matters to me and that, Cynbel, is more than enough.”

Slow and sure he begins to understand.

“This is a memory of that night. Yours or mine?”

“Neither. It is the memory of Paris herself.”

The years haven’t been kind to Serafine’s sanity; that much is clear. But the risk is worth it when Cynbel looks at his back with the fleeting hope that Valdas and Isseya would be standing there now as they had been that night. He remembered them, she did too.

Paris, however, did not.

“It’s a feat of remarkable power and psychic skill.” He’ll give her that because to say otherwise simply isn’t correct. “Are we still in the trenches — physically, I mean. Ah well, burning flesh has never been my favorite part of war so I should thank you for making that go away at the least.

“I’d be obliged if you showed me the trick of it. There are quite a number of memories I wouldn’t mind bringing back for a little while…” Cynbel’s voice trails off with his thoughts but the damage is done. Bewilderment, outrage, vengeance twist through Serafine inside and out. And all in concert with the ringing in his ears as it grows, and grows, and grows.

“I know it was you who fired the gun.”

It grabs his attention and that’s all she wants. Because she waits until she has it to show him a second of her (apparently many) skills. Another twitch; not even. A shadow of a gesture.

BANG.

So loud and hollow and real that Cynbel feels muscle memory recoil from the pistol weight. It sends him staggering off balance, leaves him struggling to find himself firmly planted again but still in this psychic Paris.

That memory could be no one else’s; of that Cynbel’s certain. He laughs and laughs at it but with the pain growing in his temples he can’t quite tell if it’s from amusement or growing uncertainty.

The elder vampire shakes it off and steels himself with clenched teeth. His fangs ache sheathed in his gums. “Not like I covered my tracks that deeply — not to the right eye.”

“The supernatural eye.”

“The humans were content,” he flashes her a cheeky wink, “and I was in for a good spanking.”

“Are you really so blind to the enormity of your actions?!”

“Are you really here to scold me?”

What was hiding behind shadows of movements comes into the light with a war cry. Her voice shatters in her throat and with a wide gesture she throws Cynbel through the air. Pushes him prone with unseen forces against the nearest building wall. The stone should yield under the weight of him but Paris does not remember a crumbling wall, so there isn’t one.

He collides with a sharp jerk of his neck. Feels pain lance through him white-hot and growing hotter even when the force vanishes as quickly as it came and sends him crumpling to the alley flagstones.

Fucking psychics. It feels like their travels through China all over again.

And that answers a great number of questions. Many on the topic of pain.

Cynbel struggles—actually struggles, first time in… in he doesn’t know how long—he pull himself up and put his spine back in the position it’s meant to be in. Serafine watches with seething satisfaction and her laugh drips mockery thick as blood.

She approaches him slowly. Each step purposeful; an announcement. And with her advance every. single. time he feels it — hears that ringing like a hammer forging with his skull at the anvil.

“You, like the rabid hound of hell that you are, plunged the world into this war. This isn’t a religious campaign or a mere battle of territories, Cynbel. This is nations, continents! There are millions dead and more yet to come before it ends and you dare to ask me if I am here to—to scold you?! As if you are some child incapable of grasping consequences?!”

When she’s close enough Cynbel takes his turn and spits on her muddy boots.

“Well pardon me, since that’s what it looks like.”

“You are a monster!”

Serafine psychic grip is far less dainty then she; he learns this the hard way. Can feel something pop out of place as her invisible power wrenches him from his knees and a head above her. The spread of her fingers shaking in wrath, in righteous justice spreading his limbs very near free of the rest of him.

Whatever she’s doing — some part of the memory, her psychic fury made physical, everything is too needled at the edges for Cynbel to know — it hurts. Pain like he hasn’t felt in millennia. The boar that gouged his side when he was a child. The first of his Made-God’s kisses that devoured his throat.

He isn’t healing. Or not like he should. And he will continue to suffer so long as Serafine wishes it.

No, not wishes. She demands it. And here on the battlefield of her own choosing his body can do nothing but yield.

Through her power she binds him at the throat; head held high and unable to look away from her bared fangs, her hellish eyes. “You are a monster,” she repeats, “and worse — you know it. You have always known it. Haven’t you?”

He doesn’t even try to answer; doesn’t think he could if he wanted to and his defiance tightens her hold. “I said haven’t you!”

“Yes —” Cynbel’s blood tastes burned at the back of his throat and leaves him choking on it, “— I am a monster. Yes — I know it. I know the war was my doing. I know there are millions dead for it. The millions before them, too, were my doing.”

But Serafine doesn’t care about them. He’s near certain she doesn’t even care about any of the bodies piled higher than mountains behind Cynbel, behind his beloveds. She only cares about them.

His lips peel back to fangs red with his own blood. “Just like I know every dead vampire under your feet was my doing too. I always have. But you seem to be laboring under a delusion that says otherwise.”

“I assure you I see everything very clearly.”

“Do you now…? Because what I see is the scared young hostess; the pathetic waif that would rather flee in cowardice than take up arms. How many of my dead could have been saved had you stayed to fight?”

Serafine backhands him. A physical touch. One that stings physically and fades like all wounds should. And he prefers it that way — all psychic blows lack the passion and heat of the fight. Of the kill.

And no one has ever claimed him lacking in passion.

“I thought as much.”

“You cannot twist blame onto me. I mourn your dead; even the ones I do not know. I must.”

“And why the fuck is that?”

“I see the threat you pose!”

“Let me free and I’ll show you how much of a threat I can be.”

“Not you — not you alone. But you — your blasphemous Trinity.”

The surprise of it stuns him. It lasts just long enough for the vampiress’ own passion to make her falter. Just a little — a little is more than enough.

He finds the place where her psychic bonds are weakest. Cynbel wrenches his leg free of them with a primal growl and finds the crunch when his boot collides with her face undeniably satisfying. Serafine staggers back, howls at the pain and all of those little psychic bonds quickly unravel at the seams without her to keep them woven.

Paris melts around them. Buildings, the cathedral in the distance, even the moon melting like candles until they are left back in what remains of the trenches — smells, sounds and all.

In the distance thunder — not thunder, thunder holds strength but he can hear only power — more shells, then. The enemy are determined to claim the land in victory and they spread their fingers out wide to do it. Like Serafine had.

Serafine who groans on her knees and rushes to stand. Blood and dirt caked to her chin and neck while her hair comes down in curls around her face. It brings a wildness to the sight of her.

It brings him to finally see the murderous intent in her eyes. It’s been there the whole time. But Cynbel let himself ignore it; he had to. The war has made him weary but he’s still him. Still Cynbel, the Golden Son, firstborn of Valdemaras — he is the wars raged across the world throughout time.

He is weary but not enough to die. And Valdas promised to take him home.

Serafine was as little of a threat then as she is now. Or that’s what he’s allowed himself to believe.

“You three will be the death of us all.”

Pop — he rolls his shoulder bone back in place. “Cut the dramatics.”

“I see it. Kamilah sees it too. And Gaius would — if the destruction in your wake interfered with his plans again.”

Again, she says it like she was there, the arrogance… “You’re trying my patience.”

“Be it human or vampire you three have proven endlessly the havoc you will wreak in one another’s name.”

“What the fuck else do you expect?!” It was a lie — he has no patience for her to try. Cynbel pins her to the door frame holding on for dear life and they aren’t in a memory, not anymore. The wood creaks in warning.

“No one understands. No one can — no one has the capacity not even fucking Kamilah Sayeed.” He laughs; weak, lamenting. “I gave up trying long ago because of this — you. Those like you.”

Her sneer is pitiless. “We are the ones who have suffered; the ones who have lost and grieved because of your obsessive, destructive love!”

He’s cut out tongues and torn hearts in two for lesser insults. Which he’ll choose for her will be entirely dependent on time.

“Wrong! You are the ones who see us in pieces, fragments. You come into our lives and judge us in your entirety but you—you and all others like you are so. very. temporary. You don’t deserve the right to judge us but you take it anyway. Where you see your beloved Paris we see the land that was crushed to build it. Where you see what you call obsession we… we…”

If Cynbel had continued the shell that makes impact a hundred paces ahead would have drowned him out. But he’s trying at a fruitless pursuit the Trinity has been struggling against for two thousand years. Trying to put words where they are none that tell the story fully, none that can fill the vastness of their hearts and instead leave them with scraps.

“We have seen—done—lost so much. We are our constant. And nothing I could say could ever give you enough to feel it for yourself. Not if we had hours. Not if we had days, years. And I’m… I’m sorry for that. I could never live without it.”

Let her judge us, he thinks. She already has and she will continue to for as long as I keep her alive. And she is not the first nor will she be the last.

He wants to let it go. For Valdas waiting for him in whatever remains of the nearby town. For Isseya waiting for them both to return to her. He wants to let it go.

But that won’t save them. Serafine Dupont is unique — she’s gotten closer than anyone ever has before. But what of the Serafine that follows her; the faceless figure who follows in her footsteps? Or the one after that? Maybe not now, maybe not in a hundred years… maybe not even for another two thousand. But one day… that’s all it will take.

He won’t be enough to save them.

The next shell lands close enough they both flinch. Misses the vampires and the crumbling trenches only enough for chunks of Belgian soil to rain down overhead. Serafine tries to fight him off to no avail. He will always be older — he will always be stronger.

Cynbel blinks back tears from stinging eyes. Dirt and ash and smoke and the dead all around them.

He isn’t quite sure her tears are quite the same.

“You would let the rest of the world grieve…” he catches every vibration, every hesitation with his hand on her throat, “… so you never have to?”

“For them… yes.”

He knows from the moment the word leaves his lips that, to Serafine at least, he’s made the wrong choice. But he tried; he did. He tried to help her—make her understand.

Because loving them was never a choice.

Her attack comes unexpected. Because he loves them, because he misses them, though more likely because not every psychic blow is dealt outside the mind.

She drills a hot poker through his popped eardrums and skewers his head upon it. She makes the ringing in his ears louder and louder and endlessly tolling with every church bell he’s ever heard. She transmutes every nerve and thought into brittle glass, shatters them, and puts them back together at jagged angles that bleed him dry.

Serafine is too focused to hear the high-pitched whistle; the song the last shell sings through the air.

It doesn’t miss.

read: I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger

#bloodbound #playchoices fanfiction #bloodbound fanfiction #choices bb #choices bloodbound #serafine dupont #fic: oblivion bound #oblv: bound by choice #oblv: new chapter #oc: cynbel #; my fics

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40ozalctears · 4 years

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the sweetest kindest little ringing remind or ashtin or spooked rabbit keeper sweetest, spiteful my vices ahh!her luv damn. why!

The cause of harm is the greed and not the farm that you arm your weakest prodigal son, in the wake of a maybe fatal frigid Hellscape frozen over the hold over Queen majesty - when all they want is the monarch taxes back - like do u rly think the easy dirty easy money like stealing, type super funny, honey its sweeter than the milk and soft as the spin the scar tissue hard. Trust me, the watching who hold hate close to the knowledge of the madgods jewelry is stinking of lunacy, from the quiet kind boy behind the monarch stark cast of Godlike endless hatred rage - take it from the prophesied leader of spirits who know prophesy fulfilled when he listens to to the whistling of ancestor spirits. Shh. Pawned so many rings that belonged to wrong ruler and song girl bringer of here. I am crystal clear that I am the Belle the Gaelic attempt to keep it super sly and secret. Keep the sharp teeth wolf boys feel. You use the hints and kinks in the story is so old to known to young unsung but done as done prophesy is - stuck in a state archdruidic sickening states of being wasted on the loss my rightful throne and every hidden secret locked in the labyringth in Gothic leviathan cathedral bearing my Gaelic, as the eventually overthrown Roman blew in the gail winds of fading traditon, until no one listened - French, drenched in gas so the most certain ancients know that the young stuck between wolf with teeth perfectly shining, glistening like misshappen young Bellovaci younger holy boys who were just always in a feral state as this, to purr and meow and give the serpent hiss in the name of making your place certain beneath more primal - I relinquish the dirt that just sits in the sink, until I relinquish link to like the hoops in the ear that would claime me the the arch-druid so sickly addicted to every little drink that is as ichor of death, to be anything but self assured in the word of the lycan simply lurking. Stuck between sprint, torn denim, more wolf than man, more Perfectly evil than pleasantly Godly like the most ready to know the foam that forms when see see her have their beloved dark black long hair sheared like wheat and chaff before the wind - like the sick should fall to the bloodied slice of the sickle - for less obvious matters, let the frigid whisper of winter being fickle, just enought to tickle the just to depravity. As such, the little who felt the eyes of boy who circled the edge of town as if he could not exist if not considerign the sting of monarch moth never more than a state eternal failing - the bread of a war machine God called Heaven, and stole my lost profit lost cost of certain life - being stuck in the state of eternal decay, which I studied and loved until I travelled under and dug, and built a man made moat just so you and your favorite things that makes you a sweet thing, and I would let your eye widen as the Sun dies again, for how many nights we d did not fight against sleep, as if it was impossible to not see the glow of the her slow in the bright of the certain doom and the looming harvest of farthest mens beliefs- understanding them from the wise who came far from the East, and so when I fed on what I studied to be the understanding of the love of another that was as fulfilling as shared cute snack that feels like return of the hero, but no great war - just what she stored I locked in impossible chance of ever being forgotten in the permafrost frigid acceptance that my ribs form a page that is nothing short of permafrost accounting for the Godliness of Loss - so for all the simple beauty and the cutie doe with the fawn eyes who I saw forever in a way, sleepîng on a hateful yawn, and as soon as she wakes, blinks, yawns, I steal her from the fate of never escaping the state of eternal maze - by which I named my first son already the Scarecrow Prince who will only know keeping away crows, and those who know the harbingers of death, if you trust the call of keeping death then you invite again the flow of euphoric state of moon blasting through, like it baptizes you new under the last name you gave as you noticed her lose the tame, like a newly free thing who was only knew cage - I suppose many act as they should as if they ever only knew rage - for all labyrinth trap and reasons of setting traps for the unwanted seasons, so in the sickest of seeping Spring I know one ring keeps me sharpening teeth, and assured that the meek not sheep for the weak of the word, but the deared dark-eyed soul that I saw tending to to contraption that was asked to keep us in safety, and just as the sweetest of sickly sweet thing that makes all lycan boy, between and here and there was a maiden, one of iron, one which was so tired, that it tired me, even in my infinite gift of plan to hatch the love of my own twisted roots of oak until I am choked by the end of my joke that is just make the sweet doe eyed in the man made moat I spit this as quick as a slit I would made, but it would take little more me to riddle a liittlle harmless threat, with the debt of what is owed to the protector of Queen of all that I have seen more goes than majesty, tragedy that it had to be you, and I saw her look away, but I think she was keen of a certain sense to know I was such a penniless who could spend endless words for you learn that it takes as such, that you get as much as you give, and even to keep her breath steady - you not take your never ending, butterfly wing, malfunctioning thats most fear but she hears vibrated like like quiet of the hum and summer nights - and so for me take the claws, fix both red stained glass eyes, wide as severed - ways to explain that it painful to say that given what I have scribbled in the hieromanic of trance, and I cannot sing and and dance like I do not having to call for the Fall of Man, just every plan of man, no matter well maid, always led themselves, naked shivering, exactly to the step of my trap, which I simply set to wet my taste that in my heart the start of the most bright exploding morning flail - the believe that mourning any distance bright candle simply doused by the petty candle lick, quick-witted way the light of your life might just decide one day, in its trickery, sickening mastery of things more man than a boy who finds join the acceptance as wolf more always in between, hurting and dirty for never truly becoming, but since in absolutely delightful beauty quiet she floats on the wooden boat, Singing in tongues what might be the meaning of death in ending of sum - in that if speaking trying to make sense of the sounds is beyond the bond of human to the satisfaction with simple humanity, not having grasped the the roots and found how to shoot start out of the sky on a night so loud from the crowd of surrounding pounding drums, of those fat-bellied fascists, who heard word you of your solitary goddess too honest to ever say she just believes without being knowing as so many, too-knowing will claim until they slain the in the name of the lie - I remember the Ilai, Eli, of course...a a lie, I have thought the less real lamb that stood as she stands, as he landed on the peak of Golgotha, the Aramaic was perhaps soft on the dying son confused by the plan of the Eternal, that when the nails jailed themself to a cage of childish rage, in his purity, in his fury, the absolute terrifying baring of teeth, from a thing more than a man who we only know as the Italian son of a man who weaponized the need, of knowing the idea of the Son, asking the father for a taste of Honey, as burned to death due to fault lines in the times conflict, the Son would consider, despite the nights in wild, where I was the child and babe possessed, nearly the Lord of Death - given mastery over connection to Father, God, the peak of throne - just as the wildest time I ever came close to perhaps becoming too full in my how MUCH my teeth bled as I felt them become blades, that only most alone lycanthrope knows that in a statone of alone, given nothing but instinct, and the nonsense worthless broken porcelain that looked so wrong in it raped poor, sad fatal estate, as the rate increased and the feast my own consuming of stars in the sky forgetting the name of the Hatred of the idea of my meek littlle priestess - seeped in my need of simply believing in Queen, should the Kind pawn and not think for a again, at least inn a state of knowing it staying put in insanity, instead of grasping at the fact, so beautfiul but tear-filled years and years of waiting, Hating the need for blood spilled - sip on sour cloud break int raped time I believe I must drink the blood to avoid the or, some prophesy that is as misplaced as a poisoned chalice, or even living in a palace, as I lived in what i make an intricate safet confusing little maze of a cluttered and dimly lit clean as can home fit for as modest and as the innocent stern deity who submisses to no dismmissing of her strength in the way the drenches the weak in the their defeat - became as haunting, piercingly loud, as if thhe crowd of the rage of a forget tradition of boys lost in the most deep of Belgic, someone some-where look like the Sun King withought the messes of lost den dwellers wishing for one gem laden gauntlet of a boy so Shining finally given the palace where he stood like the final piece to the puzzle, but any failed watch maker who understands the importance of the love and acceptance of failure - to sit in silence as loud as the sound the once-dead no piercengly quiet -only tickicking the old heiroom , alone in the darkest little steel box of lock between myself and what seemed to be the reason i even kept any thing dirty, having a penchant for ugly, as it is easier to hug, with unwarranted terrible pain, that if I should given a shame all the was of the certainly nervous and tall nothing but simple boy, who kept strange so deranged and misunderstood, the closest I ever became to command I then claimed over how we become the beast we studied, the most, so le loup garou je troube q c maps mal nous tous les jeune honnes, donner in the grace of the silliest stiill alive-ancients, I remember waking to up the nothing but fear, clearly awake, before I considered that the stuck between stations of dashing and springting with tongue out more in between than ever, and severed from reality like nape of the rapist of health, who deserved exactly how painful it is to attempt to take the breason of breath of a deathly sweet little thing, that I had no quarrel, with so many inner-wars possessing my core, this came as 2 and 2 would naturally come to one who lives for another but must act out of of absolute focus on the swarm of locust, of channeling the hate the state of still convinced of weak willed humanity always grasping back to the need to such greedy with our grasping little human disease name our most useless scraping of kness, simply to not exist as mist with a debt to death, that will never be paid until in your maiden, somehow still, as sweet and, as opened like the intricate lock, who only ever talked so soft, though never stern as if to teach those who do not know how made the young boys go when laid bare to the fair skin little thing, and the presence of something listening, lurking and working on the moat, so he has a place to return, that I earn the trust, as my mane because the the River Styx by which the depth of how trim ourself fur and how soft we pur, keeps a little thing like, what seemed at first to be weak little sheep, who watched as i watched, weeks on weeks. i think think of the God Army who drew blade in the name of those who came most like there before - brought about the strength in the week after week, until walked tilted in the way of a wolf, though alone, mostly likely believed a sort or auditory glitch cast by the shadows and tossed at me like a joke of a bone, simply to give me the idea of home, that I would her here still quietly, but so softly as sweetly - something I wanted to ask but was terrified to even utter to to no one for nothing in silence, she awoke the new sense of 6 all together as one, and for all the boy so scared of the swinging like moon in the sky, when i was convinceded of something tied to things not allowed to those who do not have the raising of dead, all i think id like to just try to return from..if not the grave than the furthest forgotten part of the den, where this story and meaning began as it ends - just a way to say i know exactly why you know what i knew, and i hope against hope i do not lose sight of the memory of you - because although forever boy -with vices and plain as a night with just white rice and help help of her so harmless little smirk and a wink, that made the pendulum brain that swung like i as hells bells were insane - as in not quite normal, as normal we love - it all seemed so normal until we were visited by boys, who saw the goddess of seasons in this simple quiet absolutely shierking riot of so many ways she would love, to tell you all the the words she knows you think of them too much and so when, just when become so accepting of the power your hatred of having to wait - to just wait until the gates by which you always would return her staring, although as if, withouut casting you a spell of smile, you stop and and look at pacific clearly piercing blue - that for all of her tears that welled up as after 20 nights in defiance of any sort of defeat - as is if being apart,though as he deep how the frozen hold outside the jail of you eternally lost, but kept in sigh chest - where i see the mathers failig and erring to say, I know you began as seeming to sculpted from diamond, though second, the wolf second sum, more loud and addicted to pride than the smaller though, equally capable man, who just because he can run on all fours as his foretold type apocalypse fate, was as interesting fate fatal as the final pale horse her death - and I do not remember exactly when I began to notice, the boat floathing alone, or when my bright as sprayed over faint barely dim stupid quiet was not chrome or calling me home, by my allowing for all - the absolute Belgic Prophecy joke, that began simply as stupid, but in presence of the spooked little rodent type queen - switched names - without asking why, I suppose that in the attempty of knowing how we know how, and by no means do i say this this with hope ,to achieve the same cheating way of reaching such perfect connection life, than finding your reason to not be Hateful of God when god has been failing idea, of the might of the male, that the simple fact at the bottom of all - is that the Fall of Man is silly little becoming the return, of when I think i will deserve to stop trying be either incredibly far, either evil little devil grasping at the need being weak and pink like,a pig, or in the face of death - the forgetting of breath, i do believe i must rememer the name, the message more than sent in house how many ways, as studied as any believer in science, by wise as the misunderstood men in the dresses from east - so in the incredibl terrible rage, terrifying reminder, she is just theperfect little strength of the flood of all time, for the perfect cute thought little whimsical nonsense word spoken in tongues, simply because she said so manu in barely audible cute litttle whisper lispy magical lilt - i do not think i am of the acceptance of born to die,just as in the dying light of the night Moon gave the light on things in tht nearly blackened painting canopy brush - each as deep as the piercing I made - that was not necessary, but perhaps as if if to stay, i will remain close to the hope digging and searching all the rocks and the mud, until I return to just where I was, until I stand to reason that was a man without her seeming reason for me to defend my hatred of each season, but the love the way they all die so quickly as if they know exactly when I am becoming physically ill by not a shift in understanding of her. i think it was ashtin - like the dust dust to eternal rusting of my loss of self into choked back fears until years of years of studying the defense against against anything bent againt I would feel the power of endless power in the little bit of lovely blood, that once again reminded where I began that bit of a dream, that seems a bit too dramatic of anything more than panicking dream. But my word, the rodent she named Oliver, soft and attaching to words like they are herds she saves with a simple different way slaying their understanding on plain until the unheard know her death when her breath is missed is harshest in the breach iof the rift in the stone dark endless wall how her breath clears the fog, and sends the echoes back home in whisper just a little lisp, little kiss on my lips, a sly wink with an entirely unexpected opening of entrance to entire too much to look without being to have your jaw slacked wide - as if the little unexpected so quick little joke, make slit the unknown threat and simple bet her slight bit of doubt in my weakness, i suppose she might have had - and although i do not low i crept as the wind often does, to bring about clouds when the blue is too much of lie for sky to accept - the debt of your once hated seething refusal of death, allowed again to renew simply by the news of the dreams of the queen who was, ash- ashtin. spooked rabbits are just needing one, as so ti goes...the cutest little feets. keeping me in state of accepting my defeat and knowing the tirump of eternal here and there insanity that had me consuming a star, one by one until the undoing on sun was brought about queen without the way of making thos who crossed the way with evil kept in its sway, had my pulsing blood, as fucked as the hellish dark of black matter noahs boat couldnt hold - despite being ebnt by the old joke - the grace of god - how one man leading the other keeping the Fall as evil menacing as it kept gluttonous fiendish fucking tearing apart all the planes as if to grow greater in danger to the consatnt and terrifying state of new danger of a maybe hades boy who ddi too much grasping at pinkish shell to let myslf be reduced the feral final story, horror to some but silly little clever story, that had me eating guts and close to none,a dn then I might the final sum, and we only spoked in like poetic guessing, and, and riddle spun in the funniest little nonsense tongus and you could lose all sense and sight of self - i think i saw a glimpse of her tasteful, when I cried so long into them moat, that if she left for how I protected her and her little, then just as I took gathered all then found all colorful shades of Easter hues, I thought how she would look up look from some written words - that I know she I loved had never heard - and every time she looked from from the blue, i learned something from the eyes in the books and words i never knew - just to put me where I need to be, to clear pulsing pride from bloodshot, sclera slit like tip of ice - just as if to say - wolf - what was it! Doggy! DOG BOY! To catch up to me in my stupid race, and give me exactly the bitter taste of how much she knew in calm and little lil just barely out the pink ishupon which quit the pyre lit - as when I took at the happy easter colors, and I CURSED her named, and named her killer of every color - now that moat is turning black, and the sky shows all the suns so much at once, that at the zenith of the apex boy - little predator muttering all nice sweet letters, because in the frantic end of choice - you not much of choice in - when you you your eyes and count to ten youll wake up up not stuck in questions asked, so many times that the night is just the final break day, where eternal empress who claims her seat - only kept around by the spare and rotten, which the boy who always knew, that he hated any end, but not than he seethed at the types of you, who always approached the little lamb, with no regard for how she lead the herds, or which she spent the pitch black birds, with little lick of lips and tonguepoked as if to say, I dont to scary you - its just the way I bite! To make you wonder, and faint and make you beg for me to say that I am not dead, in the native tongue of keeping me tracked by not enough breath to explain - stupid lungs cannot keep up with brain! and so just as I felt the clear the moat around the little steel trap cottage,which in intense dreary clarity pain, I remember how shed always up though the softest sweet soft cooked rye break eyes, which I would break with woodlant carcass, dead, but this type sweetness reminder of her would keep the memory so fucked a blur, that when I needed the guidance of the hiding empress, Ash- Ashtin. I remember her important on the fidget little wind up nature - of the small ones but must be scare, and when i was so close to something more - I do not care for the letters and their and tried young symbols, I forget how just, a more recently learned cast in iron, attempt self to make the pariah undertood - by way of building the knee sout of rotten would - I do not think or remember or cared cared - to ever do more than simply stare -or imply what youd so quick succinct, without the fear or drink at the brink too many silly drinks to death, I remember how the static how she just threw all havoc in side my head, and I do not think how it was crackling snow on snow, unlike other other little question that I knew to do, was I given the absolutely never allowed chance - for the lady priestess who herself who so clean of pride - that she took the form of something so weak in stature - but if was was real ash or rabbit, spooky rodent or wahtevr oh no dew! im so close to new water on the grass - she would say something something equal smart - and in this i knew i shaped my heart in form which i recall our elbows linked, and in this, the sotry clinked, like chainmail just so perfectly made, that when i closed my eyes ans the ring of pearl blue simply slain - by knowing that the death of pain,would be cutting the story short, just who had long forgotten why he kept me weight alone - under earth and across the darkest emerald thicket where in the almost dark drk of calm cool breeze - it almost seemed that something she jagged knife told me so many times in a way defeated, there are so many you times you rhyme your want with rotten meat - each time so produ to drop your pittace at my feet - id notice things id though she keep to herselp, like ifif she heard a sound that sort of clicked, she used all her little rabbit nervous, and look at the place that sound had surfaced, shed dart her eye look up and down, i swear to god the became possesed ttha little - as if this tiny little secret might have been some unknown weakness of myself, and sense ofsilly self alone, or how she hated to admit - as if she only felt my tense and nonsense wit, and how id spit and drool some nonsense shit, when perk and smack my mouth,and when shed calm and look all normal, shed twist her eyes so deeply wide and locked the a perfect socket into mine, like the human little shaky princess off the greenest ever dark shadow shade - that robot intensity was if her closest thing to shame, as if she knew when returned the secret little glen, she hated when i knew she cared - as if she knew the stupid end, and hated the love and silly nickname as though she did not think the the first name fit, and we spoked and we went on and in the game of just the longest song, which always began with us just screeching cute littl sounds, until, shed begin with A, as if to see how w eboth felt to do, with eah little letter we knew so well,and I remember an ANNOYINGLY loud, and I liked to do things just know with how id b so glad to know want cares, for me to be sory of follow hey very little cutey challenge, so i held her given named above her head - as if to bring her to my secret little home - and anoint with strangest deepest love warming feeling - until corner her with feelings -until were both so dumb kid squealing, I corner her with her given name , as she was the one cutie types, no matter silly im am, ur the dumber piece of stinky dumb dog pudding slung so poorly, like its barely even taut at all - that the only time we were said such cute little things, that rhyme together, are so dreamy perfect, as im not sure if we even rhymed at all, but in night as our giggles turned to cackling tearfilled calls, we would end just other begins, just as simple sum as dipped in depth as deepest why crying over the dimming sun is oh nopers! as shed often say. id hear here do her beauty cutie thing where shed say, the type pitter patter nopey nopers, until l my hopes are all in where I hope she keeps the darkenest wait, so quickly lit with razor wit, that right before i sleep for the firostin so long again - she finally has me brawling crying out for the light of lights to not go out, that a final word shared just before accept hoh nopers dannnnnngit! Dange gangly nooonopers! as she just liked to she how silly she could sound, but when wanted to bring just edge of life, and making the queen the jewel of the dirtdog simple, the priestess of the brightest secret light, who ended each and every night, with final thing if to jsut a silly tired thing, and I rememebr one really faded in to greatest chipped old fade- in the love of the little fidgety way, that on the dirst in central little metal room - enthused by how it felt like such a lovely tomb while drifted in and out of sleep, everytime id come back to awake, shed be staring directly in eye my eye, or even wake me up with her fucking Hey! Fuck you! type ofpicking at my skin blackhead whitehead or little red think she could pick, as if me not knowing thats shes afraid that i dont know,,that even though the little snarky rude type silly teacher preacher joker stoker of the loving flame - she thinks mentioning lame is stupid all bark mr neutered bad dog! lil piece of crap. n then, feigning sincerity in sweetest way possible her eyes roop and he strts talkin all sorry andloopy , and says super very slow, i know for a fact shes spitting on my eyes oh my loird this absolutely silly evilly queen of jokes, fuck stoked the fire so i know my f;ace, and im just as i tryin to mutter - wh..are you..spraying your nasty stupid spit on my f-f-face.I know exactly how but why id even why this stupid little chunky chimp do do anything just on a silly whim - to prove chance, that although a very loud annoying little yappy annoying dog, and based on this i would and must always let her win. even when shed really make me start to cry because i thought about how she would either disappear or either disappear of or be gonetoo long 2 diappear - or just be ok withou withou the fear- gone too long and just because intilledwith fear until she calls me stupid just all day long, sometimes sall ur silly things get to me way deeper than they ever should - just because i feel my knees creaking like crutches with twoodworm and the rotten wood - but when the sweetest little knows im a bit too sh turns from stupid annoying silly thing, worth all the waunt gather in the form of my simple fear of the obvious big unspoke thing if we were either prepared or knowing that the beauiful haunting song, of hows omething would be lost, if we simply lived all boring quiet, because in teh certainy of her going i umumumum. I dinnot say YOu are..STOOpidn, i sad you....are souping! souping out! and i stop and i realize exactly why I go....oh...yeah? and i start laughing... and gasping and hey ashtin. for all the metaphor. what do i have to do do for spooked rabbit self to pitter pitter patter. I suppose I know what’s been the matter

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mentalmimosa · 5 years

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people like us (part III)

part i: [https://mentalmimosa.tumblr.com/post/183311261625/people-like-us]

part ii: [https://mentalmimosa.tumblr.com/post/183338051675/people-like-us-part-ii]

He can’t quite believe ears. Solo?

Illya. Voice quiet now. Dangerous. Shall I slip my ID under the door? Or perhaps you’d prefer fingerprints. Or a recitation of my height, weight, and blood type? Or--

He opens the door before the or and Napoleon is right there, dripping, the hook of an umbrella slung from one arm and a sodden bag tucked under the other. His summer suit is a mess and his collar is akimbo. Illya has never seen his hair looks so flat. His eyes are coals and his mouth is clinging awful to a smile and somehow, he is still beautiful.

You look terrible, Illya makes his mouth say.

Napoleon’s lips twitch, hint of real grin. Me? This is what every drowned rat is wearing this season. He taps a foot on the threshold. Can I come in or is this some kind of cruel tease? You warm and dry and me not.

Illya moves from the door and makes room. Grumbles when Napoleon sloshes all over the nicely clean floor. Should have put down newspaper first.

Napoleon just laughs, like air zipping from a balloon, and shoves the bag at him. Here. Put this in the kitchen. Leave me here for a moment to drip dry, hmm?

What is it? Illya says, but he is already going. Feels like the bag is dissolving inside of his hands.

That, Napoleon calls, is dinner. Or it should be. Illya hears the sodden slap of cloth on floor, a muted sound of disgust. Put the steaks in the fridge, please. They’ve been abused enough already tonight.

Is steak in the bag, two of them. A bottle of wine. A couple of sturdy looking potatoes. Illya sets the wine and the potatoes on the counter, puts the steaks in the icebox. Frowns. These things, Cowboy’s presence, they make no sense. A few minutes past and he was thinking fond things about Solo, even missing the sound of his voice, and now the man is here, just few feet away, and Illya finds he can’t square how he was feeling to the fact of Napoleon here, in the flesh.

And flesh he is, or very nearly, when Illya ducks out of tiny kitchen to see bare chest and bare arms and pile of soaked clothes by the door.

You need a towel, he says. It comes out gruff and Napoleon glances up. There is snow of red on his face.

So I do, he says.

Here. Come to bathroom.

He leads and Napoleon follows across carpet; drip, drip, drip.

Towel, Illya says, pointing. Another in closet there, if you need.

Napoleon ducks under his arm and treads on the tile, ugly squash sound of his shoes. Thank you.

And you need clothes.

Well, I--

Illya clicks his tongue to teeth. Does not shiver. After all, he’s not the one who is wet. Have things, a few. Will set them outside.

Napoleon looks at him. A real, tiny smile. Won’t do any good to argue with you, will it?

No. He lets himself smile back. Never does.

Well, then. Thank you.

*****

By time that Napoleon comes into kitchen, there is butter in a pan with potatoes and Illya's knife is halfway through an onion.

What in god’s name are you doing?

Cooking. What it looks like?

I was going to bake those. Napoleon is at his elbow, peering into the pan. Brush the skins with oil--assuming you had any, you heathen--and let them heat merrily away.

Their arms brush, short sleeves leaving skin against skin. Illya shrugs. You were busy. I was hungry. So I cook.

So I see. He can feel Napoleon’s eyes on his face. He keeps his on the knife. What would you have me do, then?

Open bottle. Have wine. Stay out of my way.

Damned hard to do. What, did you ask for the smallest kitchen known to man, or did they surprise you?

They ask if kitchen was big deal. I say only, need to eat, so I cook. That’s enough.

Yes, well, you should speak to Waverly. Such a miniature space devoted to the enjoyment of food, Peril, is practically cruel.

Tch, Illya says. He can’t stop smile. Stop talk and pour wine.

Napoleon chuckles. Fine. But I’m cooking the steak.

They eat in the living room at a small table, the one Illya uses for chess. Outside, the storm has softened, grown quieter, though still, there is rain. They talk about nothing. They talk about cooking. About Gaby’s new paramour: a sailor, Napoleon says, a boy younger than her.

You watch, Napoleon says around a mouthful of wine, our girl’s gonna make him a man.

The sweatpants Illya gave him are too big; too broad in the waist and long in the leg. But he has them rolled up somehow, cuffed, and at first glance, they look tailormade. The undershirt, though, almost fits. Is too long, yes, but across the shoulders and chest, nicely tight. The dark hair that peeps out from beneath it, caught in the v of its neck, is especially distracting. Even with a full belly and red wine on his lips, it is a fight for Illya not to stare.

Will be good for him, Illya says, reaching again for the bottle. But she will set high standard. He will always be disappointed in person he makes his wife.

Napoleon laughs. Are you saying she’ll spoil him for all other women?

Yes. Illya thought this was obvious. Of course she will. And if he is smart, this Navy, he will be grateful for it.

This makes Napoleon only laugh harder. Oh, Illya, he says when he can talk again, not everyone regards her with the kind of courtly love that you do.

Courtly--what? You make no sense, Cowboy.

Not everyone she sleeps with adores her, my friend. Not the way that you do. You’ve put her up on a kind of a pedestal, which is rather fascinating, frankly, given that you must know how she hates that.

Illya hides face in his glass. She is good person.

Do you think so? Napoleon leans back. Hmm. I don’t think of her as especially good or bad. Gaby is just herself, through and through, and in my experience, that’s a rare thing. That kind of confidence, that ability to not give a fuck, it’s what makes her so goddamn good at her job. That’s what I think.

Hmph.

She is fond of you, Peril. Voice is softer now, less porcupine quill. I’m sorry things didn’t work out.

Illya frowns. What things?

You and she, you know. Napoleon’s hand is a bird in the air. Your little flirty flirty kiss thing, hmm? I’m sorry it didn’t go anywhere.

That was long time ago. Wasn’t it? Felt like ages. Figured out quick she did not need protecting.

Hmmm, Napoleon says, in a way that tells Illya he’s said too much, that maybe too much has he drunk. Was that what it was?

None of your business.

A shrug. Maybe not. But interesting history nonetheless.

Illya swallows. Feels like nails. Why are they talking about this?

Why are we talking about this?

I don’t know. Just following the tides of conversation. Napoleon makes a show of looking down at the table, of tapping his fingers to the bottle. If you prefer, we can talk about this red.

Why are you here, Solo? The words come out before he can stop them. Why you come out in a storm to pound on my door?

I didn’t pound, Napoleon says. I knocked loudly.

Illya leans across the table, even more adamant. Why?

A beat of silence, a far-away crackle of lightning.

Maybe I missed you.

I doubt it.

Napoleon sets his teeth. Does not give an itch. Fine. Maybe I needed to see you, as utterly ridiculous as that sounds.

Is ridiculous. Illya’s heart is pounding. He wants to punch it back. You are lying. Playing some sort of game. You are bored, probably.

Maybe. But not in the way that you think.

How then?

I’ve had too much time to think the past few days. There’s been far too much quiet. And the usual tricks, the everyday slights of hand, they didn’t do shit to keep my head on straight. He stops, his eyes drifting towards the phone. Snap straight back. Tonight, I was on the edge of doing something stupid, of making a terrible fucking mistake.

The air around them has pulled tight, like bear trap, the teeth of the night biting into Illya’s flesh. Solo’s face is drawn, too, pale now, made more so by mouth stained by wine.

I wanted to do this thing so badly, Illya, and if I’d given it, it would have been a disaster. You don’t know. You can’t know. And I tried other ways to blot it out before I came over here, believe me. I picked up a girl. I sucked off a guy, I-- He turns his face to the storm, to the wet lights of the city. Well. Other things.

These did not help.

No, they did not. His fingers dig into the table, the ring on his small finger winking. Quite the opposite, really. And so I started to walk: no direction, no plan, a shockingly weak-ribbed umbrella. Hardly my finest hour. I walked through the heat and the people and the stench and then, my friend, oh and then, I thought of you.

Here his eyes drifted to Illya, a dark, open wave. It was hard to breath under it.

I thought, Napoleon went on, that I’d pick up food and come to you and say something about missing your company, being professionally bullied. Makes noises about Waverly and Gaby, maybe. Spend the evening not alone but with you, talking shop.

And this would keep you from the bad thing?

Yes. Solo’s fingertips brush his hand. I thought that it would.

Oh.

But then it started pouring like the goddamn Ark was coming and I ended up a drowned goose on your doorstep, didn’t I?

Yes.

Napoleon’s face twists. And what do you do, you stupid, beautiful bastard? You let me in. You gave me your clothes to wear, for god’s sake.

Beautiful. The only word part of his mind hears is beautiful. No. Napoleon is beautiful. Not him.

Why is that bad?

You weren’t supposed to be nice to me. You were supposed to argue with me. Tell me what a fool I am, incompetent, an idiot. Mock me for seeking you out. His eyes turn up and suddenly they are blue, sky blue, like spring again, not summer, and Illya cannot draw a breath. But you couldn’t even do that right, could you?

Napoleon--

His nails find Illya’s wrist and dig, make tunnels that go right to his heart. I mean, don’t get me wrong, tonight is serving its purpose; you are fantastically distracting. But believe me when I say that I didn’t intend for this to happen. Not like this.

Not like--?

I want you to take me to bed. There is no guile there, no fooling. Only something raw, something stripped to the bone. Want, yes, desire that pours off of him, but another thing, too. More like pain. I want you to hold me down and have me and let me have you until neither of us has anything left. Can you do that? Will you?

He says yes with his words, with the turn of his hand. He says yes when he pulls Napoleon to his feet and pushes him into the bedroom, holds him firm on the sheets. He says yes when their mouths meet at last, when Napoleon arches beneath him, when together, they groan.

He says yes in a hundred ways, more, before he makes Napoleon come from his fingers, from the hot, eager suck of his mouth. He lets the slick drip from his lips and onto his fingers and shoves them in again, stark and deep, and the sound Napoleon makes shatters something inside him, stained glass giving way, his fragile hold on good sense.

Yes, Napoleon says, his turn now, the word a full, hungry chorus. That’s right, Illya. Come on. Fuck me.

It is dark where they are, curtains drawn against the night, and he wants to see everything, wants to see Napoleon’s body swallow him. Wants to watch his cock sink in slow and slide out and find home again. But he can’t see that now; there are too many shadows. And he can’t let Napoleon go long enough to look for the light.

Napoleon writhes under him, clawing and scratching, grunting with each shove of his cock. He is pinching Illya’s nipples and biting at his throat and stroking himself again, his dick thick and big between them. Every noise that comes out of him is profane.

Harder, he says, his heels thudding against Illya’s back. God, do it harder, Illya. Do it harder and you’ll make me come.

There is a snarl in Illya’s throat, a half-swallowed scream, and Napoleon drags it out of him with the huffs of his breath, the vise of his body, the sweet sour taste of his mouth that won’t stay still as their bodies collide, that tries to, that can’t.

Illya slams in fast, he can’t help it, and Napoleon groans, words flooding out in a gasp. Big boy, aren’t you? he chokes. So big, jesus. Such a pretty dick. Doing such good things for me.

You talk too much.

Yeah? You seem to like it.

Sweat on his skin, his palms slipping on cotton. Shut up.

Napoleon preens. His fist between them moves faster. Mmmm. Make me.

There is a moment of haze, of hot fury, and then Napoleon’s not touching him anymore, he can’t; Illya has his wrists pinned, his mouth tucked against the red column of Solo’s throat, and then it is inevitable, crashing, perfect that he is coming inside of Napoleon’s body, way down in the deep, a rush of heat that goes on and on until he can’t breathe, until he is gasping, until Napoleon is whimpering and kissing him and spurting between them, great, eager jerks that fill the air with the smell of sex and desire and the simplest sort of need.

Don’t let me go, Napoleon whispers when he lifts his hips, draws himself reluctant from that sweet darkness, that heat. Please don’t.

Won’t, Illya says, the word a petal on his tongue. Come here, миленький. I won’t.

Outside, the shadows are damp. Even the lights of the city seem heavy, dripping like trees with sodden leaves. Illya can hear cabs and cars now; the thunder has receded. No more the pound of the rain.

Illya.

He turns his head, kisses the soft dark of Napoleon’s head. Hmm?

I didn’t come looking for this tonight.

You said that already.

Napoleon strokes the bow of his chest. I know, I just--it’s important for you to understand.

He is fragile like this, Illya’s Cowboy. A man made not from steel but from sighs, he seems. The real Solo. This is what Illya thinks.

You wish it had not? he says. Is not hard to say. He knows the answer.

I don’t think that’s what I said. Napoleon’s hand finds his face, tugs it down. Quite the opposite, I assure you. As if you couldn't tell.

Yes? Breathless again. Too easy.

Napoleon nuzzles his chin. Finds the open curve of his mouth. Oh, yes.

****

Napoleon? he says later, his voice hoarse, his spunk spreading all over Napoleon’s belly.

Hmm? Napoleon’s fingers are turning, rubbing Illya’s come into the heat of his skin.

What is the bad thing that brought you here tonight? Will you tell me?

Napoleon’s hands still. Illya hears him swallow. Not now. Perhaps in the morning.

Perhaps, eh? He leans down for that dark head, the king of the shadows, licks into the warm hollow of Napoleon’s mouth.

Is that all right? I don’t like make promises that I can’t keep. Illya nods and kisses him again, kisses him until Napoleon is moving again, making soft, hot sounds that fill Illya’s ears with joy. So much good. Is all right, he murmurs, turning on his side, drawing Napoleon with him, reaching for the place where Napoleon is still open, still wet. Is all right for tonight, darling. You’ll see.

#tmfu #illya/napoleon #falling in love #first time

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sladedick · 6 years

Note

can i please have made a slave for the bingo with robin?

my pleasure anon!!

ao3 | request a bingo square

contains: threats/future/referenced noncon, nonconsensual kissing and groping, sexual references, Robin is Sad™️ and Tortured™️

The chains against limbs conduct the cold too well. Robin’s given up his furious rubbing at his shoulders to chase the chill away, instead curled in a small corner of the cell. The bone deep pain isn’t enough to chase away his worries about his friends - he hasn’t seen Raven since the ‘birth’ of Trigon, doesn’t know what happened to Cyborg and Beast Boy.

He prays that they’re safe, anxiety eating away at him just as surely as the cold. His own fate is more uncertain, more terrifying than he cares to admit to himself

Are they going to drag him out, slit his throat and let his blood spill for another sick sacrifice? Are they going to keep him in here forever, letting him rot away in the darkness?

When the door opens, it’s not Trigon or one of his demonic minions, it’s someone he almost doesn’t recognize. The man stands tall, his obviously expensive suit jarring in the ugly atmosphere of the cell. White hair rests on his shoulders, and his left eye -

It can’t be.

He’s just showing his face now, after all this time? After all the hours and pain and work Robin has put in to trying to find his face, see what’s under his mask?

“Hello, Robin.”

It’s a voice that haunts his nightmares, a timbre he will never forget. Slade simply leans in the doorway, one hand resting in his pocket, regarding the bound boy.

Robin rises instantly, the chains clanking and weighing him down. He stands as tall and proud as he can as he faces his enemy.

“Slade.”

They stare at each other. Slade’s eye is a surprising bright blue as he leisurely takes Robin in. It reminds him of Bruce, focused and dangerous, but it … lacks something Bruce never lost, a vibrancy and an emotion and a humanity. The expression in it is something Robin has never seen before so undisguised, something he can’t quite put his finger on.

It makes him feel exposed and horribly uneasy.

“I’ve waited for this moment for a long time, Robin,” Slade says, stepping forward. Robin tenses, but he’s not in range, not with how thoroughly the chains secure the boy to the wall.

“Where are my friends?” Robin asks, doing his best to ignore the man.

“Dead,” Slade says offhandedly.

Robin flinches.

“Are you here to kill me?” He imbues his voice with as much strength as he can, fighting down his pain.

“No,” Slade muses. “No, I don’t think so. After all …” He steps in, and suddenly he’s close, towering over Robin in perfectly tailored horror. “… it’d be a shame to let that pretty little body of yours go to waste.”

Robin’s stomach drops out from under him as he’s pinned by Slade’s gaze. Fear seems to freeze in his veins, dread and uncertainty and he can’t be - he can’t mean -

Fingers tilt his chin up. Robin’s aware of his own shallow breathing as he stares into a smooth, almost handsome face, marred by only an eyepatch.

The second hangs in the air.

WIthout warning lips are pressing against his, hot and demanding. Robin takes a step back in shock but he’s followed smoothly. A tongue presses past his teeth, stubble scratching his chin. Hands grip his shoulders and back.

Slade tastes of mint and smells of a pine aftershave, and it makes Robin sick to his stomach. He tries to get his hands up to push the man off but his wrists are yanked back by the chains. Seconds of suffocation later Slade pulls back.

A disgustingly satisfied look characterizes his face as he slowly licks his lips. Robin splutters. He finds he’s shaking, from fear or shock or grief he can’t tell.

He now recognizes the look in the man’s eye as lust.

“You-You’re not going to kill me. You’re going to rape me.”

Not a question.

“Yes,” Slade agrees.

“And then?”

“And then I’m going to do it again.” A pause. “I’m never going to let you go, Robin.” A hand reaches out, tracing down Robin’s stained and dirty face, skin on hateful skin. Robin shudders away from it, feeling his breathing become quicker, the fear become more present.

“And you - you would’ve done it before, when-”

Slade shrugs. “Eventually. When you were an apprentice, I had other priorities. But now …” He tilts his head, examining the boy in front of him. “There’s nobody left to fight. All I need is a slave to warm my bed.”

Robin shakes his head, the situation setting in, trying to back up as much as he can but only running into the wall. The chains clink at his nonverbal refusal as he tries to distance himself as much as can from the man in front of him, the man who fully intends every horrible thing he says with such casual satisfaction.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Slade snaps. “I’m doing you a favor. You would be joining your friend in death if it weren’t for me.”

“Maybe I want to,” Robin tells him. He can’t stop his voice from breaking. What else is left for him, without his team? Slade’s sick idea of mercy?

Slade’s fingers land on his chest, pressing him back, pinning him. He should be able to away as his back presses against the wall. Instead, his blood freezes as he stares up at Slade, breathing shallow. Something seems to press on his chest and he can’t make himself move as Slade’s fingers trail warmth down over his abs, palm on his stomach -

“Please, Slade,” Robin whispers.

Strong fingers hook into his belt and he squeezes his eyes shut. He feels warm breath on his face as he’s pressed against the wall, trying against his own body to move his face away. Slade takes advantage, and seconds later teeth bite into the side of his neck, sending shocks down his nerves.

Robin whimpers.

Slade’s hand slips under his belt, hot against his skin, moving towards his back. Robin is forced to twist his head to accommodate Slade’s mouth nipping its way down the ridge of his neck. Slade his twice his size, pinning him hopelessly to the wall, taking and taking. He scent drowns out the one of the scell, his suit smooth against Robin’s exposed skin.

He can’t stifle another small noise as Slade grasps at his ass, hard and bruising, the other hand pressed against the side of his chest, forming what may as well be a cage. Robin feels something dig into his thigh, and he knows if he looks down he will see Slade half hard against him.

Just when Robin is sure he can’t bear a second more the fingers and hands and tongue recede with a snap of fabric. The solemn, hated man regards him, fingers now dancing along his chin.

“Would it be so terrible, Robin?” he asks, almost gently. “I’m not a cruel master.” His fingers tighten almost imperceptibly. “Not unless you give me reason.”

Robin simply stares up at him hopelessly. The chains hang heavy on his neck and shoulders, as inescapable a fate as the man in front of him. Slade’s fingers leave him at last, the man turning to go -

“I’ll be back for you. I just need to … finalize some ownership details first.”

The door slams.

Slade’s scent still lingers despite the relief of the cold. His touch lingers and Robin desperately wants to scour his skin free of it. Despair washes over him painful waves, and yet he knows this likely the only peace he will ever get from Slade for the rest of his life.

As he curls in on his body and cries gasping tears for his friends and himself, he wishes for nothing more than to escape it.

#anonymous #badthingshappenbingo #freak fic #trash pile queries #fic recs #sladin #prompts/requests #prompt: made a slave #fandom: teen titans

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somestorywriter · 6 years

Text

Sweaters and Chocolate

Event: @fruk-net Secret Santa gift exchange Recipient: @a-writing-bear (I hope you like it! ^-^) Prompts: Mistletoe, Hot chocolate, Long time pining, Confession Words: 2,573

Arthur was getting kind of bored. He liked Christmas parties, and Alfred wasn’t a completely terrible host, either, but after four hours of mindless chatting, he couldn’t wait to get away. One more drink, then. Something non-alcoholic, sadly, because he still had to drive home. He headed for the table with bottles of soda and thought about which one to pick.

“May I recommend the hot chocolate?”

Arthur turned around. “Frog.”

“Hello, Arthur. You’ve done an excellent job at avoiding me all evening.” Francis’ mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t. They almost held a kind of… sadness.

“I’ve become an expert at avoiding annoying gits, thanks to you.” Yes, annoying, with that stupid Christmas sweater Francis was wearing. It was an ugly thing—an obnoxious shade of red with a hideous reindeer on it. It should have made Francis look ridiculous, but Arthur found himself unable to look away. It was always like that: the frog always did something which caught Arthur’s attention. It had to be some sort of dark magic.

“Perhaps your skills have gotten rusty, mon cher. Because here I am, with you”—Francis took a step closer—“under the mistletoe.”

“Under the… what?”

He pointed up. Sure enough, there were branches above them, taunting Arthur. “Forget it, frog.”

“Shame. It would’ve made a wonderful Christmas present.”

“Well, only nice people get presents, so keep dreaming.” He turned around to the drinks again. He spotted orange juice and reached for it, but stopped and looked over his shoulder when he realized there wasn’t any savvy comment coming.

Francis was still looking at him, eyes positively sad now.

“Frog?”

Francis picked at the decorations on the table. He pulled out a long cord with a Christmas bell on each end.

“What are you doing?”

He wrapped the cord around Arthur’s neck and tied it into a neat ribbon. “You can’t attend a Christmas party in such plain clothes.”

Arthur felt his face turn red, which he himself couldn’t understand. Francis’ face was close to his, and somehow, it made Arthur want to look up, into those beauti… into those eyes. He looked down instead.

Francis finished his decorating. “There you go.”

“I’m not a Christmas tree, you know.”

“Shame. I’d take you home with me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Again that sad smile.

“What the matter with you today, frog? You’re acting strangely.” Arthur took a step back. He couldn’t read the other person very well right now.

Francis looked around him. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it? This time of year. Even if it’s so dark…”

Arthur eyed the mistletoe. “Don’t you dare guilt me into kissing you.”

“I would never.” He jingled the little bells now hanging around Arthur’s neck. “After all, love isn’t something that you can force on people.” His hand rested on the other’s plain knitted sweater for just a moment too long. “You can only ask them kindly.”

“And I say no.” It came out way sharper than intended.

“So be it. You wanted a drink?”

“Just some orange juice.”

“Non, I must object.” He grabbed Arthur by his shoulders and dragged him along to another table.

“What are you doing?”

“Mon cher, you can’t leave this place tonight without having tasted the hot chocolate.”

Arthur couldn’t identify anything on the table as hot chocolate. Francis grabbed a cup and poured liquid into it from a pot on a warming plate. He held the cup up and theatrically dropped a cube of chocolate in it.

“Stir well and enjoy.”

Arthur took the cup from him with mild suspicion. “You’re being awfully non-annoying tonight. One would almost call you… pleasant.”

“Maybe because I have someone to be pleasant to.”

“Don’t pull my leg, frog. We both know I’m not the only one you’ve flattered with hot drinks tonight.”

Francis raised his eyebrows. “If that’s what you want to believe.”

Arthur took a tentative sip. “Mm.”

“I told you it’s good.”

“Why don’t you have a cup?” He stirred the chocolate around. “This makes it look like you’re trying to poison me.”

“You’ll never trust me, will you?” He held out his hands. “I’ll drink some as well if it eases your worrisome mind.”

Arthur hesitated. He’d only meant it as a joke. But somehow the thought of sharing his drink made his stomach tingle, in a nice way. He handed the cup over and got a sweet smile in return. How did that frog do that? How did he make all his smiles so enticing? Yes, it had to be dark magic. Nothing else could explain their bewitching power.

Francis took a sip and nodded. “This one tastes even better than the one I had.”

“Good,” Arthur said, for lack of an actual response.

“I’ll leave you to enjoy it. Have a nice evening.” He jingled the bells one last time and walked away.

Arthur watched him and that stupid Christmas sweater. How did such an ugly thing fit him so elegantly?

“Yo, how are you holding up?” Alfred pat him on his back so hard, that Arthur nearly dropped his cup. “You seemed to be having a nice chat with Francis.”

“Just look at it,” Arthur hissed. “Look at that sweater.”

“Yeah, I know. He came earlier to help set things up and got coffee all over his shirt. This was the only thing I had in his size. Shame, because he was wearing something really nice. Oh, well…”

“What do you mean, ‘oh, well’?” Arthur clutched his cup tighter. “Look at it! It’s not supposed to look good! How can he still have that annoying charm when wearing such a thing?”

Alfred watched Francis disappear around a corner. “Dude.”

“What?”

“You’re the first person to say such a thing. Everyone else has been laughing at him.”

Blood rushed to Arthur’s face. “I’m just saying what everyone thinks.”

“Sure.” Alfred draped an arm around his shoulder, again with a bit too much force. “Say, could you drive Francis home tonight? He came here with Gilbert, but I’m not letting that guy drive after all those beers.”

Arthur stirred the chocolate around. “Can’t that frog look after himself?”

“He’d do the same for you.”

A moment of silence. “Fine.”

“Awesome!” Alfred gave another hard pat on the shoulder, making Arthur clench his teeth. “I’ll let him know.” He walked away and Arthur was once again alone.

“It’s that sweater’s fault,” he muttered to himself as he finished his drink. That shirt was so ugly, that it somehow made Francis look nicer. That had to be it.

Arthur managed to get another cup of hot chocolate, wandered around a bit, talked with some more nations and then decided that it was time to go home. “Oi, frog.”

Francis took a break from talking to Gilbert—who, Arthur thought, didn’t look that drunk at all. But perhaps he knew how to hide it well. “Arthur. Alfred told me you were willing to offer me a ride?”

“Somehow, yes.”

Francis walked up to him and reached out a hand. Arthur leaned away, but couldn’t escape the thumb wiping over the corner of his mouth. “You have chocolate here.”

Arthur blinked, mind unfocused. “You could have just told me.”

“This is easier.” Francis smiled and Arthur knew he should look away, he really should. “Shall we go?”

Arthur swallowed and nodded. “Yes. It’s not that short of a ride, after all.”

The car ride was agony.

Arthur mentally squirmed in the heavy silence. Part of him wanted Francis to speak already. Part of him was afraid of what would happen if he did. How that smile would haunt him into the night again. Stupid French smile.

“You seem distracted,” Francis said, staring out of the window. “Please don’t get us killed.”

“Shut up,” Arthur snapped, regretting it immediately. He clutched the steering wheel. “Stop doing that.”

“What?” Francis looked at him.

“This. Playing with my mind.”

“I’m not sure I can follow.”

Arthur let out an exasperated sigh. “Stop frustrating me so. Stop making me so uncomfortable with that stupid smile of yours. Or, worse, those sad puppy eyes.”

Francis sat up at once. “I’m not… I don’t know what—”

“Oh, save it.”

Francis looked back out of the window. “You weren’t supposed to see. I thought I had fooled everyone.”

Arthur stopped the car in front of Francis’ house. Neither of them moved. “Alright, frog. Talk to me.”

Francis looked at him and Arthur felt his stomach tighten—for no reason, of course.

“I’ve been dreaming,” Francis said. “About you.”

Arthur kept his gaze focused ahead of him. “What as? A demon? An evil sorcerer? World’s most terrible cook?”

“A lover.” Francis showed a half-grin. “I dreamed of you as a lover. Amazing, non?”

Arthur didn’t know what to say. He turned off the engine, not wanting to leave it on unnecessarily.

“I dreamed that I woke up next to you,” Francis said. “That’s how it started. I leaned in to kiss you, and then I woke up.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“That’s the thing.” He rested his head in his palm. “It was so nice, such a shame to wake up…”

Arthur still had his hands on the steering wheel. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you asked.”

“I asked you why you’re sad. Are you telling me it’s all because of a dream?”

“Not just one.” Francis leaned a bit closer. “I keep having those dreams. And it doesn’t stop there, either. When I’m reading in a chair, I imagine you hugging me from behind.” He snorted. “You have taken over my thoughts.”

Arthur wiped an invisible stain from his dashboard. “I don’t see how I could form such a great distraction to you.”

Francis rested his hand on Arthur’s arm. “This morning, I dreamed that you told me you loved me. When I woke up, I tried to get right back to sleep again. But I couldn’t return to that moment. Tonight, at the party, you avoided me, and that made it hurt even more.”

“Were you hoping I’d say something kind? That I’d bring your fantasy to life?”

“Yes. Yes, I was foolish enough to hope.” He cupped Arthur’s face. “Can you help me, mon cher? Can you tell me you’ll never love me, and silence my mind for once and for all?”

Arthur looked into his eyes and entirely different words came to his mind, words which had nothing to do with what he was supposed to say. He almost leaned forward, almost wrapped his arms around Francis. “What did you put in that hot chocolate?”

Francis frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You drugged me, didn’t you? Some sort of… love drug or something. You’ve messed up my mind.”

“Mon cher, are you alright? Do you need to come inside for a moment?”

“Yes. No, I mean no!” Arthur flushed bright red. “Stop… stop doing this! You…” He looked around him, searching for words. “I can’t tell you that I’ll never love you because you won’t let me. Even if I want to, you just have to look at me, and… and I can’t think straight anymore! So if you want me to hate you, stop being so bloody gorgeous!”

Oops. He wasn’t supposed to say that.

Francis gaped at him. “Arthur?”

“Come on, laugh at me.”

Francis smiled and oh, it made Arthur melt faster than the chocolate had done. “I have mistletoe hanging above the front door. If anyone asks, you can say you were obeying tradition like the gentleman you are.”

Arthur swallowed thickly. Would that silence his mind? Was giving in the way to go?

“Come on, Arthur. What’s holding you back?”

A strand of hair had fallen onto Francis’ face and Arthur felt like wiping it away. “What if anyone finds out?”

Francis got out of the car and walked around it. He opened Arthur’s door and leaned down. “Forget about diplomatic relations, or reputations, or any of that silly stuff.” He held out his hand. “Choose what feels right to you.”

Arthur looked at the hand, knowing that he couldn’t stop himself from taking it, no matter what was at stake. “No one has to know.”

Francis nodded and Arthur took the hand, stepping out of the car. He closed the door and let Francis lead him across the street to his house. Sure enough, there was mistletoe right in front of the door. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

Francis chuckled and leaned against the door. “I knew it would come in handy.”

Arthur stepped closer. Was he actually doing this? “You’re my enemy.”

“Am I?”

Those eyes, those warm, beautiful eyes. They lured Arthur in until there was barely any space between them anymore. This was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? At least, it felt that way.

“Shall I go first?” Francis asked.

Arthur shook his head. He leaned forward, and then his lips were on Francis’, and the whole world fell into place. His shoulders relaxed and he sighed into the kiss. His hands slid onto Francis’ back, pulling him closer, and he melted into the hands cupping his face.

Francis let out a shuddering sigh. “I love you.” He caressed Arthur’s cheek. “I may be the country of love, but I have never said these words with such conviction. For the longest time, I have loved you.”

Arthur couldn’t find words to say anymore. He just stood there, face bright red and body shaking. The only thing he could still do was pull Francis against him and bury his face in the other’s shoulder.

“Do you want to come inside?” Francis asked. “There’s no mistletoe there, but…”

“I’m fine as long as I get to burn that sweater.”

Francis laughed and Arthur’s heart skipped a beat at the sound. “This is some dark magic you’re using, frog.” He leaned back a little so he could look into those bewitching eyes. “It’s dangerous to be this charming, you know. People have been burned at the stake for it.”

“It’s worth the risk.”

Arthur rolled his eyes and leaned in for another kiss. “Next time, confess to me right away instead of sulking all over the place.”

“Got it.” He jingled the bells around Arthur’s neck again. “Let’s go inside.”

“Do we have to?”

“That hot chocolate you enjoyed so much? I’m the one who brought it along. Which means”—he brought his lips to the other’s ear—“I have more inside.”

“Open the door.”

“Always the gentleman.” Francis unlocked the door. “After you, mon cher.”

In a moment of impulsivity, Arthur pressed a kiss to the other’s cheek. “I think I may love you too,” he whispered.

“Let’s see if I can make you fall for me completely.”

“By all means, try.”

And that’s when Arthur tripped over the threshold.

#a-writing-bear #secret santa #fruk #aph fruk #fruk secret santa

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mysnarkyslytherinsecret · 7 years

Note

HC that once Snape hears that Harry's coming to Hogwarts, he goes into Dumbledore's office to threaten the Sorting Hat: "I swear on Merlin's beard, if you put James Potter's child into my House I will personally rip out every single one of your seams with a pair of dull pliers."

For once, Severus Snape was glad that Albus had given him a password to get into the Headmaster’s office. The old man was nowhere to be seen, and Severus let out a sigh of relief. The Headmaster spent his Sundays at the Hogshead Inn visiting someone “important” so Severus knew that he’d have at least a few hours undisturbed.

He felt bad about doing this while the old man was out, but it couldn’t be helped. He had to take this chance. This year was going to be hard enough as it was, without him having to worry about an extra bit of bullshit.

“Surely you don’t mean to put me on,” The Sorting Hat said from the corner, where it hung on a hook.

“I’m not here to make the phoenix cry, I’ll tell you that,” Severus replied snidely.

Truth be told, he hated magical objects that talked. They had enough of a mind to think they knew better than others, but not enough of a brain to understand their limitations. They were often spelled to sound clever without actually telling people what they needed to know.

And the ones that spoke in riddles were the worst.

“The only advice I have to giveIf you wear the Sorting HatIs that I can only see your mindEven a dunderhead knows that.”

“Ugh, just shut it already!” Severus hissed as he pulled the singing headwear from the hook. “Don’t make me rip you apart thread by thread.”

Looking at the ugly thing with a sneer of disdain, he put the Hat on his head.

“And here I was, thinking you might have been a good Ravenclaw, but that was really quite the opposite of clever,” the Hat replied from on top of his head. “And you’re terrible at threatening people. I can tell that, and I’m not even a person. You should have been a Hufflepuff.”

“Shut up!” Severus yelled, forcing himself to dig his fingers into his legs instead of ripping the hat off of his head. “Now, read my mind. I’m going to show you a very specific image and you are going to look at that and that alone, and then I’m going to tell you what you are going to do.”

“I don’t really think you really ought to be telling me what to do,” The Hat replied indignantly, “I do have the ear of Albus Dumbledore, the strongest wizard in the world, and your boss, if I’m remembering properly.”

“Hmph, that doesn’t scare me,” Severus replied. “If he kills me, it’ll just put me out of my misery.”

The Hat appeared to think on this for a long moment before replying. “I could horrify you instead. After all, the Headmaster does often like prancing around in his office wearing his softest wooly socks-”

“That’s not horrify-ow!”

“Don’t interrupt,” the Hat said, squeezing Severus’ head until he let out a pained grunt. “As I was about to say, he prances around in his socks…and nothing else.”

Severus let out a horrified gasp. “You wouldn’t.”

“I am but a simple Sorting Hat, Without much of a brain, But even I can tell that sight, Might drive a man insane.”

The Sorting Hat let out a high pitched laugh that was partially in Severus’ mind and partially echoed in the Headmaster’s office. Fawkes ruffled his feathers and made a disparaging squawking noise. He obviously wasn’t a fan of the noise either.

“Now you listen here you little-”

“No, Severus Tobias Snape of Spinner’s End. You listen to me,” The Sorting Hat’s whispery voice filled his head and he felt himself falling into his memories. The Hat’s Legilimency plucked him out of his present-day state and shoved him into his tiny six-year-old body as his father chased him angrily through the house with a bottle in one hand. Though Severus knew it wasn’t real, the surge of fear made his heart race and his breathing was labored as he tried to calm himself to no avail. As if turning off a switch, the Hat let him open his eyes to see the Headmaster’s office once more. “You have had a hard life. Not as hard as some, but harder than most. Yet you are clever and resourceful in ways I have not seen in a wizard in many years. I placed you in Slytherin not because you begged me to do so, but because I could see your ambition and your need to achieve greatness. And yet, what have you to show for it? Certainly not the stain on your right forearm or your penchant for scaring first years. Indeed, I already know what you want from me. You’re easier to read when I’m not atop your head. It’s about the boy- the skinny one with glasses who’s nearly as small as you were when you started your first year at Hogwarts.”

Severus winced, remembering.

“So, you won’t put him in Slytherin, then?” Severus asked, his voice still somewhat shaky as he caught his breath.

“I never said that,” the Sorting Hat replied.

“I could rip you apart stitch by stitch,” Severus hissed venomously, his anger returning, “A Slicing Hex would be far too kind for the likes of you.“

“His parents were both Gryffindors, so I expect he’d be Gryffindor as well,” the Hat continued absentmindedly, and Severus could tell that it was distracted. He doubted that it had even heard his threat. Before it could clamp down on his head once more, he pulled it off and tossed it onto the desk with a snarl.

“Hey! No fair!” the Hat pouted. “In any case, you shouldn’t blame me for your stupidity. You put me on, after all.”

Severus said nothing to this. The Hat was right. It had been foolish of him and he hated feeling foolish.

“You know what? You’re right. It is stupid to try and argue with you. Incendio,” he breathed, pointing his wand at the Hat, which promptly caught fire.

“Hey now…hey! Hey! Hot! HOT! Ow! Stop! Stop it!” The Hat began to shriek, hopping slightly about on the desk, but the magic that gave it some semblance of life was not strong enough to gift it with full movement.

Severus sneered down his nose with a grim sort of enjoyment at the suffering of the damned thing. He was so distracted that he didn’t hear the door open behind him.

A blast of freezing cold water hit Severus in the back and gushed over the desk, extinguishing the Sorting Hat and forcing Severus to his knees as he coughed and spluttered horribly.

“Torturing inanimate objects, are we, Severus? That’s low even for you,” Albus Dumbledore tsked as he moved around the desk and sat down in his chair. Severus stood, the top half of him drenched and dripping with water, his expression dark with mortification.

“Ahh, thank you Headmaster,” the Hat said somewhat smugly, as Albus picked it up and cast a spell that cleaned most of the soot off the fabric before levitating it back to the hook on the wall. Then, with a practiced motion, he slid his hand over the burnt spot on his desk and when lifted it from the surface, there was no sign that the wood had been singed at all.

“I only wished to…ensure a certain outcome,” Severus grit out from between his teeth after a long, awkward silence. “I…overreacted.”

“Ah. And have you achieved the desired result?” Dumbledore looked over the tops of his half-moon glasses.

“That remains to be seen,” Severus replied, looking away, shamefaced.

“While I know that Fawkes has a proclivity for pyrotechnics, I should like to remind you that you are not to set anymore magical objects, beings or people on fire,” Albus said, his voice growing stern. “Severus. You know better than this. You cannot let your anger get the best of you so often. It’s not healthy.”

“I never tried to argue that it was,” Severus replied, hating the sullen sound in his voice. “I just don’t want the boy in my House. I know it’s too much to ask not to have him in my classes, but please, I can’t bear the thought of looking at her eyes staring out of the spitting image of James Potter’s face every day! I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

“Very well,” Albus replied, shooting a pointed look at the Sorting Hat, who tipped its cloth forward in a little bow. “We are all in agreement, then.”

“Menace and power are one thing,But we all know who settled the score,I defer to the Headmaster’s Judgment,Harry Potter will be Gryffindor.”

The Hat sang its song and Severus turned, grunting with disgust.

“I shall see you at supper, Severus,” Albus said, summarily dismissing him. “And before you go, I meant it about the fire thing. Keep your temper in check, or I will be forced to take drastic measures.”

“Yes, sir.” Severus turned and marched away, slamming the door behind him.

But that night, he tossed and turned in his bed, his dreams torn between memories of the boy he’d been and thoughts of the boy he would be forced to protect in the years to come.

#severus snape #albus dumbledore #sorting hat #harry potter #mini fanfic #headcanon

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40ozalctears · 4 years

Text

ashed in. mis used - influence. fluid. icarus. lazarus of this seems just maiden of iron grinded my anxious waiting for doc at a FUCKING ABACUS HASN’T iT!????

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