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justforbooks · 5 days

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Christina Hendricks

The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

“It’s funny you say that, because originally, when I read the pilot script, I thought: ‘I love this, but I can’t imagine this being more than one episode,’” says Hendricks. “It felt like it finished itself.” She is unsentimental about it. Hendricks wasn’t looking for a new show – “I was happy doing films, taking my time” – but went into it with her eyes open. It is a network drama, for NBC – it is shown on Netflix in the UK – so producers are always aware that “it’s going into every house in the US on a Thursday or a Sunday and a family is watching it. They’re much more careful about numbers and advertisers and people being offended or not getting it. A cable show is much more: ‘We trust this creator – they’re a visionary.’”

It has a conventional tone – however dark the material, it is handled very lightly. Yet you can’t help but notice some hard-boiled social commentary from the off – if it weren’t for the bracingly callous US health system, the generation of wage-stagnation casualties and the patriarchy, none of the characters would have gone anywhere near a supermarket heist. More than Breaking Bad, it reminds me of Roseanne and the golden age of US mainstream comedy, when you could be poor on TV without that being a breach of good taste.

The 48-year-old has been a household name for almost 15 years, thanks to Mad Men. She was born in Tennessee, where her mother was a psychologist and her father worked for the Forest Service, and educated in Oregon and then Idaho. She didn’t have time for formal acting training; by the time she was 18, her modelling career had taken off. Later, when she had a manager, she took acting lessons: “I did that for almost a year and a half and put auditions on ice. Then I was watching a film – I don’t even remember what film it was or who was in it – and I thought: ‘I’m ready. I can do this.’” She has the most insistent work ethic; as she describes her life’s trajectory, she notes diligently the jobs she had while she was at high school, at a hair salon and a menswear shop.

In 2007, she appeared as Joan Holloway in Mad Men. She played the role for the next eight years, her character growing around the depth she brought to it, until by season seven she was almost the central part. In the early 2010s, Hendricks was talked about constantly, although she says the original focal points of obsession were the male characters: “Men started dressing like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. Suits came back in, skinny ties came back in. It took three to four seasons and then all of a sudden people wanted us [the female stars] on magazines. We were like: ‘This is strange – we’ve been doing this for a while.’”

Hendricks, along with January Jones, who played Betty Draper, came to represent so much. There was a great deal of rumination on their physicality, Jones as elegant as an afghan hound, Hendricks like the pin-up painted on the side of a bomber. What did it mean, people asked, that in the middle of the 20th century there were multiple ideals of the female form, whereas in the 21st century there was only one? How did that complicate the perception of gender equality as a steady march towards the light? Thousands of column inches went on that question – but, from the actor’s perspective, it was an annoying distraction. “There certainly was a time when we were very critically acclaimed, and getting a lot of attention for our very good work and our very hard work, and everyone just wanted to ask me about my bra again. There are only two sentences to say about a bra,” she says.

The signal impression the show left was of an ensemble at the peak of its creativity: actors, writers and the creator, Matthew Weiner, working in almost telepathic unison. It won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four times in a row, but the more notable year was 2012, when it was nominated for 17 Emmys (and didn’t win any of them). The take-home was: everyone involved with this is absolutely brilliant.

That harmonious picture was blurred two years after the show ended, when one of the former writers, Kater Gordon, accused Weiner of sexual harassment. Marti Noxon, a consulting producer on Mad Men, concurred that Weiner had created a toxic environment and said that he was an “‘emotional terrorist’ who will badger, seduce and even tantrum in an attempt to get his needs met”.

Hendricks takes this head on, in a considered, straightforward manner. “My relationship with Matt was in no way toxic,” she says. “I don’t discount anyone’s experience if I wasn’t there to see it, but that wasn’t my experience. Was he a perfectionist, was he tough, did he expect a lot? Yes. And he would say that in a second. We were hard on each other.”

It is impossible, from this distance, to adjudicate on Weiner’s character, but Hendricks’s response reveals something of hers. The easiest response in this situation, and the one 90% of actors give, is: “No comment.” Hendricks is always collected, never evasive, doesn’t gabble. She reminds me powerfully of Joan Holloway – and I am sorry to say it, because she insists throughout: “I’m an actress. I am completely not Joan. Not in any way. I wish I was more like Joan.”

I wonder if, while we were all fixating on Joan’s bras and whether or not, in the asinine words of Lynne Featherstone, the UK’s equalities minister in 2010, she represented a “curvy role model”, the audience was responding to Joan’s deeper life lesson – that self-possession is 9/10ths of the law.

What Hendricks emphatically doesn’t do is minimise the existence of sexism and sexual harassment in the industry: “Boy, do you think anyone in the entertainment industry comes out unscathed and not objectified? I don’t know one musician or one model or one actor who has escaped that. I have had moments – not on Mad Men; on other things – where people have tried to take advantage of me, use my body in a way I wasn’t comfortable with, persuade me or coerce me or professionally shame me: ‘If you took your work seriously, you would do this …’

“Maybe it was my modelling background, but I knew to immediately get on the phone and go: ‘Uh oh, trouble,’” she says. “That’s where it’s very much a job. We need to talk to the producers and handle this professionally.”

Yet, at the same time, she is defensive of her industry. “It gets a lot of attention because people know who we are. I’m sure there’s a casting couch at the bank down the street, I’m sure the same thing happens in management consultancy, but people don’t know who the management consultants are.”

Modelling always sounds like a harsh environment – predatory photographers vying with stringent agents to give everyone a complex about their thighs and stop them eating carbs. But that is not how Hendricks describes it at all. Her career sounds like one out of an 80s Judy annual: innocent and hearty, good for pin money and travel opportunities. “I think I was lucky – I didn’t start when I was 14. When I was about 18 or 19, I went to Japan for the first time, I went to Italy. We’d be lots of girls, sharing a house, and I sort of became the den mother. I’d make everyone egg salad sandwiches and Greek salads, going into this mother hen role.”

That is what they say about being taken hostage: if you want to survive, choose someone to look after. “Oh,” she says, coolly. “I wouldn’t consider being a model as being a hostage.”

She was only ever medium-successful, she insists – an “unusual and quirky” hire, rather than the slam-dunk face of everything. About as far as it went was that she never had to get another job to supplement her income. Probably the most famous image of that era in which she was involved was the poster for American Beauty. Two models were in the frame, so they took a photo of the stomach and the hands of each. In the end, they used Hendricks’s hand on the other model’s stomach. It sounds like a clunky metaphor, but it is true.

During this period, she moved to London with a friend, for the hell of it, living in a flat on Gloucester Road, “surviving on cider and hummus”. It is a glimpse of the oddball she says she was growing up, the outsider as whom she is rarely cast. This has been the story of her CV. “Early on in my career, I would get auditions and I would call my manager and say: ‘I would never cast me in this – she’s a cheerleader, she’s a bimbo. Can I audition for the other one, the weird doctor?’ And they’d be like: ‘No, they saw your picture.’ And I started realising that people didn’t see the weird, goofy me that I saw.”

She made the jump from modelling to acting via adverts, with what looks like fairytale ease. In fact, it was “a lot of pounding the pavement and showing up for auditions and getting rejected – and learning, as a young woman, to not take that personally”. By the late 90s, she was the face of ultimate female confidence, the woman who drinks Johnnie Walker and doesn’t need a chauffeur (these are two ads, not one for drink-driving). “I always thought of modelling as freeze-frame acting. It felt like a scene, and I still consider it that way. There are so many technical things that I think people don’t notice. They see you playing dress-up.”

From the commercials, she learned “how to hit a mark, how to memorise a line”, but acting wasn’t novel. She had been doing community theatre since the age of 10, and grew up expecting an alternative life, supplementing an art-house existence any which way. She never amplifies her creative urges. She is much happier talking about professionalism and graft, but that is strategic more than anything else. “I am incredibly emotional and I take things very personally. But I’ve learned to be a little bit of a politician and a little bit of a producer along the way. As a female actor, the easy go-to is: ‘She was emotional, she was hysterical.’ It can be a million other people’s fault, but it’s easy to point your finger at an emotional artist. So, I realised: if I’m going to be taken seriously, I need to have professional perspective and I can cry about it to my friends later.”

Yet she cares deeply about creativity, as is clear when she talks about Mad Men. “It may eclipse anything I ever did. And, if it does, it was a good one and I’m proud of it,” she says. “I got to bring who I was as a woman. I think I learned some of how to be a woman from Joan. No one would give a shit about me if it wasn’t for that show. I’d still be doing good work, but no one would have found me. If that’s the best thing I ever do, it was pretty good.”

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takeyourcyanide · 12 days

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Prey

Possible TWs: Unreality, brief mention of suicide

AO3

Fandom: Soul Eater

Character(s): Franken Stein, Spirit Albarn, Marie Mjolnir, mentions of Azusa Yumi, Mira Naigus, and Sid Barrett

Word count: 3 315

Tags: hurt/no comfort, delirium, unreality, delusions, psychosis, confusion, dreams and nightmares, dreams vs reality, schizophrenia, madness, men crying

Summary: Stein struggles to tell dreams from reality, he struggles with the likes of paranoia and confusion, etc.

Note(s): Pushing through the static to write is like pushing through an avalanche sometimes, but it’s one of the few things I enjoy, so I do so anyway. I wanted to depict the confusion (among other things) that comes along with the static (at least for me), so I hope this comes across properly.

Anguished is he, of whom is reduced to limp and helpless prey for not only the world to seemingly feast upon, but for himself to feast fervently and rabidly upon.

<…….>

Stein had always been viewed as some sort of malevolent force; a predator.

Whether there’s any genuine truth to that statement or not, such a viewpoint spread, be it due to stigma and misconceptions, or a partial truth. Perhaps both.

Unbeknownst to the apparent entirety of everyone else was that his motives were only partially sadistic. He has ripped everything imaginable limb from limb, for the sake of ultimately satiating his scientific curiosity, as well as satiating his sadistic urges.

That same sadism extended towards himself, so it seemed, which left him to often question whether or not he was, too, a bit of a masochist.

<…….>

Stein’s computer screen blared before his eyes as though he were knocking upon the gates of heaven, though it felt much more like he had been dragged down into the deepest pit of hell; an abyss designed specifically for him.

He gazed into the array of pixels, a debilitating and delirium-inducing fog conquering him, as he felt whatever cognition had remained slipping through his lithe, pale, and trembling fingers.

It was one of the few thoughts that had ever managed to bring tears to his hollow eyes. His intellect was a treasured, a prized aspect of him; it was almost all he ever had - at least that’s what it seemed like in retrospect, as his previously excellent memory blurred and gasped for air like the ground from underneath the rubble of a massive and fallen building.

It was as though he had been a simultaneously third and first-party observing as his brain deteriorated, decomposing before his very eyes. He had been watching and psychoanalyzing as it all crashed down since utero. And from the moment he could conceptualize the neurobiological differences he was born with, he knew that, though he had refused to accept it, he had no chance at ever living.

When you begin early, you finish early.

The text of the paper on the screen appeared to morph, shifting and becoming completely different words after Stein was repeatedly forced to do multiple double-takes.

Franken sighed in mild frustration, deep and troubled as the biology normally so easy for him to comprehend became utterly indiscernible, incomprehensible, and a messy jumble of word salad. He massaged the bridge of his nose, as well as the skin in between his eyebrows in a circular motion, trying his best to remember how to breathe.

He moved his eyes to the lower right of the monitor, the clock in the corner reading ‘07:38.’

Stein’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, as he stood abruptly from his chair, shoving it away. He was almost forty minutes late to work.

He knew his ability to perceive time had been absolutely annihilated, but it never became any easier, nor did it become any less disorienting, ultimately leaving him to rub at his temples, shaking his head with a confused and feverish grimace.

He audibly groaned, lost within the hazy and murky forest with no way out.

At least he was already dressed.

<…….>

Stein trudged through the DWMA’s doors, hair unkempt and under-eyes appearing as though charcoal had been smeared upon them.

“Stein?” Spirit sounded rather confused as Stein marched into the Death Room expectantly and barely prepared to work. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean? I work here,” the meister’s eyebrows were furrowed, as he was stuck within a continuous and hellish state of befuddlement.

He snuck glances around the room, Lord Death and Marie staring at him with an expression of pity and concern, causing Stein to sneer.

“Don’t you remember? We’re letting you off for a little while. You should be at your lab right now,” the weapon stated, too, sounding terribly worried. Franken wished they’d simply stop pretending. It was clear they were only judging him, whispering vile things about him, mocking him when he wasn’t there to witness it.

“Oh… That wasn’t a dream?” Stein huffed, flabbergasted and unwillingly under the microscopic lenses that were their telling, needy, and greedy eyes, as even the overly bossy and critical Azusa was present in the room, along with the likes of Sid and Naigus.

Not only had it all seemed like one big dream, including the present, but it felt as though it had happened years ago - as though it were distant.

“No, Stein…. It was yesterday.”

Yesterday? What even happened yesterday?

He once again turned his head from side to side, a slow and searching motion.

He covered his face with his freezing hands, fingers spread just enough that he could see their distorting and foreign faces from in between each of them.

“Why don’t we get you home?” Spirit offered, a kind and caring gesture that was rendered nothing but conspicuous and threatening in the forest, amongst the thick and strident static.

“No.. No…. I can make it by myself,” he shakily mumbled, hands still gripping the flesh of what is supposedly his face.

“Are you sure? You don’t look well,” Death Scythe raised an eyebrow in suspicion, eyeing his former partner up and down.

And the truth was, he really didn’t. He no longer simply appeared as though he were a moving corpse anymore, he genuinely looked as though he had been mangled by some creature only days prior; his insomnia was more obvious than it had ever been, not to mention how slouched he was and how stiff his every movement was. It was as if Stein was relearning how to properly walk.

“Have I not managed to every other time?”

‘But you look like the thin, frail, and worn out thread you’ve been hardly hanging onto all your life has finally torn,’ Spirit thought to himself, exhibiting every last bit of self-control not to voice his opinion aloud.

“It’s okay to rely on people sometimes. We’re here for you. Let me take you home,” he said instead.

Stein fervently demurred against his suggestion, the very prospect of being lead back to his laboratory seemed to raise the volume of the radio.

“No. Let me go alone,” he almost pouted, his face twitching all over, as he was genuinely unsure what facial expression he should be making, and how he could even facially express what he was experiencing at all; flickering back and forth between every face, none suiting what he wanted to convey, or really, wasn’t certain he wanted to convey.

“I’m not going to let you just go alone in the state you’re in,” Stein clenched his atypically tight chest, sharp aches echoing throughout his sternum.

Spirit moved closer to the twitchy meister, not missing how Stein seemed to flinch farther away.

“Come on, Franken. Just let me walk you home, at the very least,” as the scythe peered downwards at the hand soothing over his chest, an almost sorrowful and tender glint appeared in his eyes, the volume further rising, the scientist’s ears surely leaking blood by now.

“Fine,” there was no point in continuing to stubbornly refuse the weapon’s proposal. Even if he left by his lonesome, the weapon would surely be knocking on his steel doors come nightfall.

A small smile made its way on Spirit’s face, as he replied gently with, “Well, all right, then.”

<…….>

The incessant, persistent, all-encompassing noise rose to unprecedented levels as he walked side by side with Mr. Suit and Tie, refusing to even so much as peek at his skinsuit.

Agitation spread throughout his body like cancer, overtaking his motor skills, leaving him squirmy, irritable, impatient, and robotic; only further exacerbated by the snickering and obnoxiously refulgent sun.

It left him childishly desiring to fall to the ground and throw a tantrum, to kick and to scream cacophonously, to sob and hiccup, and cross his arms over his ever-tightening chest, as he bit into the plush skin of his bottom lip as a distraction.

The static combined with the luminous summer day, combined with not being in control of his own decisions due to certain people believing him to be “unstable” was simply all too much; overstimulating.

Everything was too furiously hot and yet too frigid simultaneously; too loud and too quiet. All of that, not even including how his day clothes were brushing against his skin, feeling too small and too big, itchy and too smooth at the same time. It was as though the turtleneck, one of the few articles of clothing he didn’t refuse to wear, was suddenly strangling him; even his coat was now too heavy upon his shoulders, too clunky. It was all much too clunky.

And then Spirit pushed the creaky doors open.

Stein’s hands immediately flew up to cover his ears for the brief moment the sound reverberated, pathetic tears welling up in his eyes as he burned holes in his shoes.

He dug his teeth even further into his lip, wincing at the shooting pain that action garnered.

“Stein? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you coming inside?” Albarn softly and confusedly questioned, standing halfway inside of the laboratory. “Why are you staring at the floor?”

Stein’s hands were still cupped over his ears, moving upwards and yanking on his hair, his expression petulant as Spirit was finally able to get a semi-decent look at him.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that, why are you crying?” A tiny sob fell out from the normally resilient and unnervingly apathetic meister’s mouth, Spirit’s eyes widening, his arms rising aimlessly as he scrambled for anyway to comfort the male.

Stein rolled his inner cheek between his teeth, eagerly hoping to muffle his blubbering as he knew Spirit and everyone else who happened to hear about his little moment of weakness would take advantage of him in some way.

But that particular train of though only seemed to make him cry harder, the ball swirling in his chest tightening to the point of explosion; similarly to a taut rubber band tying around his heart, compressing and compressing until the organ itself exploded into an internally bloody mess.

The hands previously pulling at his hair once again fell to his chest, gripping and grappling, as Stein forgot how to properly inhale and exhale, his breaths unsteady, but not to the point of hyperventilation.

A certain fear he wasn’t sure he had ever felt rose within him, beating against the confines of his muscles, skeleton, his flesh to escape.

“Come on, why don’t we get inside? Wouldn’t that make you feel better?” Spirit placed a perturbed hand on Stein’s shuddering shoulder, of whom leaped backwards. “I’m sorry, I won’t touch you again.”

The corners of the scientist’s mouth twitched wildly, almost as though it were attempting a smile, tears still freely running down his rosy cheeks.

He smacked a hand over his mouth, folding in on himself, practically convulsing as uncontrollable and unfitting giggles escaped his mouth vigorously, nearly choking attempting to cease his own unwanted laughter.

The foreboding expression mixed with, danced with the cracking grin, as he glanced over at Spirit, a horrified and vulnerable look in his eyes.

The disquietude contorting Spirit’s countenance had seemingly been, though certainly not entirely, assuaged by something, as he returned to his former position partially inside of the lab.

“Can you make it in here on your own, or do you need help?” His voice was hushed, but rather sweet in a way Franken had never heard from the man before.

He put one foot in front of the other whilst laughing uproariously, Albarn pursing his lips as the manic giggles filled his ears like a disconcerting and scratched record.

The record shrieking, bellowing from the speakers of the old radio had risen in volume to the point of no return. And all Stein could do in the face of the growing and clamoring shadows was weep and cackle. He was now to be laid out for the entirety of the desert to know and scrutinize.

And though he never once cared about a singular person’s opinion of him, the viewpoints of the flowing river rushing with what may as well be a liquidized form of the status quo would always sway the viewpoint’s of others, effectively sweeping the already swept rug right out from underneath him.

“Do you wanna sit on the couch? Or.. I think it would be a good idea if you tried to get a nap,” Stein’s visage was blank in emotion, only a few tears left to roll, his mouth closed shut despite the tittering attempting to flow out like a stream of water. It admittedly appeared rather… interesting to anyone who wasn’t the meister, as his figure shook with what could be mistaken as mirth, while no other aspect of him followed suit.

Stein shrugged his shoulders in response, standing awkwardly as though he was a guest in his own house.

“Come on,” he waved the meister over. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

He apprehensively objected the notion, standing still, the laughter slowly but surely dying down.

“Why not?” The ginger prodded as if he truly believed he would be given a verbal elucidation. “…… Okay, why don’t we just sit down, then?”

Stein obeyed, moving to plop down onto the sofa, a falling sensation holding his body hostage. He felt himself being pulled down as if he had dived off of a building; a random suicidal whim, an impulse. He wasn’t exactly a stranger to those.

<…….>

Stein’s eyes shot open as he caught his breath, his face oddly moist and his body drenched with sweat.

He was breathing fast and hard, his heart pumping, banging against his sore chest; something of which seldom happened.

He lifted his quivering fingers, dabbing them onto his cheeks, as if to take a sample.

Upon observation, upon even licking the salty liquid from off of his fingers for the sole sake of clarity, it was safe to determine that he was crying.

Stein squinted his eyes, scanning the room, his vision blurred undoubtedly from the tears, though it was possible he also needed the aid his glasses offered him.

He patted around his bed and his nightstand in search of the aforementioned glasses, only to find that he had fallen asleep with his frames on his face, lenses covered in the same wetness covering his fingers.

He cleaned the lenses with his shirt, jittery and with an aching stomach and head.

‘Was that a dream? No… That just happened yesterday, didn’t it? Or was it a week ago? How much of that did and did not happen? When…? No,’ the endless misty haze of confusion seemed to torture him endlessly as he placed his glasses beside him.

He needed a shower. And the very thought of standing in the mirrored room paralyzed him; the same room with the camera-filled vents. Though all of his rooms had that… They were most likely selling the videos they’d take of his most vulnerable and private moments to strangers… His body was to be passed around and enjoyed, wasn’t it?

He bit at his fingers, even unconsciously suckling on them at the volume rose impossibly and impressively more so.

But he had work to accomplish, not even just at the academy - or did they actually temporarily suspend him from his duties? Was that just the dream?

Stein threw the covers from off of his body. Evidently he’d need to wash the sheets as well, given how soaked they were.

Exhausting nightmares were all he had anymore.

<…….>

The warm water trickled down Stein’s neck, falling smoothly from his collarbone, and down to his thoracic and abdominal cavities, making rounds around his thighs, and pooling under his feet.

He stood there, immobilized by nothing at all for a moment. It was almost as if, though not quite, he was not allowed to move, to control his own extremities.

He pondered for a moment those ghastly and ghostly beings which followed him into the bathroom, never allowing him even a fraction of time to himself, and how, while he often wished for them to disappear, he hadn’t a single clue as to what he’d do without them.

The static sung hell-born lullabies to him, words of the shadows culminating inside of his skull like echoes of the distant past, or of an imminent and inevitable future; a reminder that the present would never be his to own. Even his own thoughts were not to ever belong to him.

He was within its domain, born seated upon its throne, for it was, too, his, as he was ‘it’ and ‘it’ was him - simultaneously, still, existing as almost separate entities; the predator and the prey, except in this particular falsified, quasi-play, the predator’s prey just so happened to be the predator itself.

Stein managed to twitch his middle finger.. Then his ring, then his pointer, his pinky, and his thumb.

He relearned how to contract his muscles, how to outstretch his arms, as he began to move.

He’d rub shampoo and conditioner in his hair, scratching the shampoo into his scalp, and observing as it seeped through his follicles and into his body just as the noise had.

His heart did not pump the same blood as everyone else’s. That much was apparent. And he could not force it to. Was he to give in to the forest? Did he have a choice in the matter?

<…….>

Stein trudged once more throughout the cobblestone streets, seeking answers.

He pushed the academy doors open, a few curious glances coming his way as students and staff alike whispered amongst one another. He didn’t always mind such attention, as a matter of fact, he often found it rather amusing. At times, he could even find himself being partial to it. But in times such as this, times when it fed the avalanche raining down in his mind, he wished everyone would simply forget he ever existed. He wished passionately that he were the invisible observer he often forgot that he wasn’t.

“Spirit,” Stein called out into the Death Room, even more bewildered glances given to him.

“Stein?” The scythe sounded so surprised to see the man, he had to wonder why.

“Have I been suspended already?” He asked the question as though it were the most urgent and important of questions.

“Stein… You were let off over a week ago. Don’t you remember?”

Those words resounded within Stein, echoing and bouncing off the walls as the world around him spun, crumbling down as the very fabric of reality tore apart.

“It was a week?” Stein choked out, his eyes bulging out from their sockets, his ears ringing inharmoniously.

He whipped his head around the whole room, covering his face just as he had in the dream, moving his hands to the sides of his head, as he stood with both of his legs in his reality and a mere fingertip in their reality.

What?

“What day is it again?”

“It’s the twenty-sixth of July,” Marie helpfully answered, sounding awfully concerned. “It’s a Thursday.”

Stein ripped his hands away from his head, pulling them back down and peering at them. Was he even real? Were they real? Were they demons wearing the skin of his friends? What was going on? Where was he, truly? Who was he?

And most importantly,

how did he last this long in the first place?

It had become overwhelmingly apparent over the years that he was the strongest person he knew.

But being the strongest never guarantees you’ll survive on the battlefield. No matter who you are, you’re more likely to die a gruesome and empty death than not. A death in which you are left to rot. And that had also become abundantly clear to Stein.

He knew it. He had always known it.

He wasn’t going to make it to thirty.

<——————>

An incredibly fitting song:

#soul eater #franken stein #stein #stein soul eater #dr stein #takeyourcyanide #hurt/no comfort #Spotify #soul eater fanfic #soul eater fanfiction #schizospec #schizophrenia #psychosis #possible psychosis

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wlykjh · 4 months

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music to my ears

♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ.

masterlist

finally after 2 years and 10 months this series is coming to an end HAHA hope you guys enjoyed reading!

summary: there has always been a strong rivalry between the apollo and ares cabins at camp half-blood, so how will the two opposing sides compose themselves when the son of apollo and the daughter of ares fall in love? (not proofread)

date: 12/29/23

series: txt demigod series (located in masterlist)

scenario themes: percy jackson! au, forbidden love

idol: hueningkai of txt

concept: fluff, tiny amount of angst

warnings: swearing

word count: 3.9k

you've only ever felt betrayal twice in your life.

the first time was when your parents revealed to you that your dad wasn't exactly your father. essentially, that he wasn't your biological parent and the reason they hid it from you was because your father was actually the greek God of war.

the second time was when your half-sister ruined your relationship to fuel a petty cabin war at your summer camp.

the second requires us to go into a bit more detail.

it was your third year at camp half-blood and by now, you knew your way around the place fairly well. you knew the best seat in the mess hall, the best hiding places in the forest, the best spots to throw parties, and more. you also knew that there was only one rule you had to follow as a member of the ares cabin: stay away from the children of apollo.

it's not like apollo and ares themselves didn't get along, but some feud a while ago between both cabin's counselors spread like wildfire throughout the camp, and now the two groups can't stand one another.

you didn't mind since the feud began long before you came to camp half-blood. you didn't need to break off any existing friendships and you can't really miss what you never had.

that was until you met kai huening.

it was a searing, sunny day in the middle of july. you had just finished training with your half-siblings and decided to take a shortcut to the cabins from the training grounds by passing the amphitheater.

you never really had an ear for music, as long as a song was catchy you'd listen to it. you couldn't grasp the idea of a couple instruments moving someone to the point of tears. at least you didn't think you could until you heard the most beautiful piano piece being played in the center stage of the amphitheater.

you recalled hearing about a talent show of some sort being organized by the end of the month but you didn't really pay it much mind. inching closer towards the curtains set up behind the stage.

it seemed like a practice of some sort, with a group of kids sitting around watching the boy play. then he began singing what sounded like a modern rendition of an older song you vaguely remember (just think of fairy of shampoo haha).

his voice combined with the delicate notes he was playing on the piano mesmerized you. it all came so naturally to him, almost as if he was born with music running through his veins.

he played for another minute or so until he switched to another song equally enchanting as the last. you must have stood there for half an hour listening to this mystery man serenade an audience of about ten campers before you snapped back to reality as he began packing up.

straightening yourself up, you shoved your head back behind the curtain, taking a moment to compose yourself for the walk back to the cabins. once you finally started to walk away you heard an extremely familiar voice call out, "excuse me!"

shit. he probably saw me staring and thinks i'm a complete psycho.

bracing yourself, you turned around with a tight-lipped smile on your face. "yes?" you responded. "i noticed you halfway through my practice and was wondering if you had any feedback for me? the talent show's in a couple weeks and i'm starting to get really nervous." the stranger confessed.

"oh, um, honestly no. I'm not exactly a music expert but you were great." you hesitated. the boy smiled widely, extending a hand to you, "i'm kai. and you are?"

"y/n." you smiled in return.

kai stayed beside you for the remainder of your brief walk to the cabins, cracking small jokes and complimenting you along the way. you didn't know why but you felt oddly drawn to him. he was so kind, gentle, and patient.

"so which cabin are you headed to?" he asked once the two of you neared the field. right as you were about to answer, someone interjected calling out kai's name.

you recognize the interferer as a resident of the athena cabin: kang taehyun. he seemed to be close to kai, casually wrapping his arm around the shoulders of the taller boy and carrying him off. kai made sure to shoot an apologetic look coupled with a wave over his shoulder which you happily returned.

you couldn't stop smiling by the time you got back to your bed. kai. you knew nothing else about him, not his last name, not his godly parent, nothing. and yet you were giggling to yourself at the thought of seeing him again.

so much so that your half-sister ryujin had to make sure you hadn't gone insane. "what's gotten into you?" she questioned, plopping onto the corner of your twin bed. "I met a guy" you confessed like a giddy schoolgirl. sure it was a bit embarrassing to admit, but you can't help how you feel.

ryujin simply laughed, shoving you over to make more room for herself on the bed, "what's his name and cabin?"

sheepishly, you turned to face her before confessing that you only knew his first name. you could tell from the change in her expression she was judging you, heavily.

throwing a pillow at her to avoid the shame you felt, you swiftly added, "it's not like I'm in love with him. he's just... cute."

"sure, y/n. because you smile to yourself thinking about every 'cute' guy at camp" she mocked. you were debating whether or not to throw another pillow at her before she started again, "you know, i've been told that I'm a pretty good wingwoman."

if 'pretty good' meant 'terrifyingly bad', ryujin would be absolutely correct. despite her fascination with matchmaking, she had the opposite of the midas touch when it came to relationships. almost every couple she's ever set up has ended in a messy breakup.

you knew this, but you also knew you're fairly awkward and new to romance. maybe ryujin could help as long as she didn't interfere too much. perhaps the ryujin curse was simply a reoccurring coincidence. "okay fine." you mumbled, unsure.

you saw a glint in her eyes and knew you were probably going to deeply regret this.

the next day, ryujin woke you up extra early to get breakfast. her reasoning? you needed to be properly fueled for a day full of 'man-hunting'. as you made your way to find a table to sit at, you noticed kai and taehyun sitting with another person in the corner of your eye. taehyun seemed to be too busy bickering with the third person not so subtle ref to the taehyun fic while kai was more engrossed with writing something in a journal.

before you could react, ryujin was shoving you in their direction, convincing you to sit with them. you tried refusing but she was extremely stubborn, a trait she seems to have inherited from your father.

by the time you arrived at the table, taehyun and his acquaintance looked up at the two of you puzzled. meanwhile, kai greeted you with another one of his signature bright smiles.

"kai! what a coincidence! y/n has been talking about you all morning. mind if we sit? i'm ryujin, by the way." the short-haired girl chirps, blissfully unaware of how embarrassed you are beside her.

kai doesn't seem to mind, though. simply smiling harder and motioning to the spot next to him, which you gladly take. the rest of the breakfast went by awkwardly considering the only two people who really cared to converse with one another were you and kai, but neither of you minded.

once everyone finished eating, he lightly tapped your shoulder to get your attention. "have you ever played the piano?" he inquired. you simply shook your head in response.

he looked around the table before coughing and standing up, "y/n promised me she would help me prepare for the talent show, so I think we should head out," he announced before shooting you a look.

eager, you stood up and nodded in agreement before running off with him away from the others.

once the two of you were finally out of sight, ryujin turned to taehyun. "so... tell me every and anything you know about this kai guy." she declared. rolling his eyes, the boy simply shrugged and retorted, "what do you want to know?"

"just give me the basics. is he a big 3 kid? does he have, like, superpowers? is he a player? or a virgin? and don't lie." ryujin rambled.

taehyun sighed before answering "he's a good guy. a real loverboy, and his only 'superpower' is being crazy good at composing music, which if you ask me is pretty lame. and he's not a big 3 kid, his dad is apollo."

ryujin froze. she must've misheard him. apollo? it can't be. she just set up her half-sibling with a child of APOLLO. if any of their siblings found out they'd both be dead.

"taehyun... does kai know who y/n's godly parent is?" she stammered, to which the other demigod shook his head in response. "well, it's ares." she croaked dramatically.

"so?" he responded. both ryujin and the long-forgotten camper beside him gasped. "so? the ares and apollo cabins can never mix." the stranger declared. ryujin nodded vigorously, which led to taehyun sighing once again.

"cabin feuds are immature, and i never thought you of all people would engage in them." he said, eyeing the demigod next to him, "besides, if y/n's godly parent is ares then that means so is ryujin's, so how are you 'mixing' with her right now?"

immediately, the camper shot ryujin a disgusted look and got up. "i'll see you later, taehyun." they added bitterly before speedwalking away. rolling her eyes, ryujin got up as well, leaving a baffled taehyun alone at the table. as she left the dining hall, ryujin began a desperate search for you to break the bad news.

in the meanwhile, kai had brought you back to the amphitheater, inviting you to learn how to play piano. you were pretty clumsy at first, but he walked you through it patiently.

once you were finally getting the hang of the basics, he decided he wanted to teach you one of his songs. "do you mind?" the brunette prompted as he reached for your hands.

"not at all." you breathed. he kept his fingers over yours as he guided your hands along the keys of the piano. the action felt so intimate and yet so innocent.

you couldn't help but blush at the contact, wondering if he was just as affected by it as you were. looking up, you saw that he was no longer staring at the keys but at you.

he stopped playing but his hands remained on top of yours as he inched closer. you could practically feel his breath on your face. your heart rate began to accelerate as you closed the distance between the two of you, your lips slightly grazing his.

the moment was ruined however by a crazed ryujin bursting from behind the curtains of the amphitheater, shocking the both of you and causing you to hit a loud, sour note on the piano.

"y/n. we need to talk." your half-sister squeaked, avoiding meeting kai's gaze. "can't it wait?" you huffed, visibly annoyed. "no." she deadpanned.

excusing yourself, you ripped your hands away from kai's and stood up, immediately feeling cold and desperate to run back into his embrace.

pulling ryujin aside, you stared at her unimpressed until she began talking. "y/n I don't know how to tell you this, but... he's-that guy--kai is... he's one of apollo's." she stammered, clearly exasperated.

usually, you'd be a bit taken back, but you honestly couldn't bring yourself to care. why should a petty cabin war keep you from someone you like? "this changes nothing, ryu. you're being dramatic." you grumbled.

her expression went from sympathetic to irritated within milliseconds, "y/n! what are you gonna do if the rest of the camp finds out? we don't associate with them." she sneered.

"you sound insane. he's a sweet guy and it's not like we chose our parents." you retorted. "fine. go and tell him and see how he reacts." she challenged.

you simply scoffed before turning and walking back to kai. he wouldn't care... right? you considered telling him, but with seeing how happy he looked, you couldn't bring yourself to do it.

"i, um... have to go!" you muttered, collecting your gatherings quickly, leaving behind a confused kai. as you passed ryujin on your way out she followed you, scolding "see? you couldn't even bring yourself to tell him because you know how he'll react-"

you stopped in your tracks and whipped your head around, "ryujin. you will not tell anyone about this. understand?" you warned. it's unlike you to threaten anyone, especially your own siblings but you were exceptionally angry in this situation: a petty cabin war getting in the way of your first potential romance.

ryujin simply nodded, "but you know you'll have to tell him eventually." she added, solemnly. you nodded wordlessly, accepting your fate. he'd either flip out on you or be totally cool with it but then all his siblings would flip out on him. it was a lose-lose situation and you felt hopeless.

for the next two weeks, you made a conscious effort to hide your growing relationship with kai. from constantly insisting that the two of you hung out somewhere hidden like the strawberry fields to making up excuse after excuse as to why he couldn't walk you to your cabin.

you kept your secret for nearly half a month until the day he asked you to officially be his girlfriend. you tried to enjoy the moment but your head was filled with doubt. would he still want to date you if he knew who your father was?

not only that, but you felt guilt piling up inside of you for hiding something so seemingly important from him. before you knew it, you were tearing up.

worried, he immediately rushed to console you. "if you're not ready that's perfectly fine-" he sputtered, panicking. "it's not that," you began as tears dropped onto your cheeks, "i've been keeping something from you, kai, and I'm so sorry,"

"whatever it is, I'm sure it's fine." he replied comfortingly. you shook your head, "the reason i never let you walk me to my cabin is because... because it's-"

"the ares cabin?" he guessed coolly. your jaw dropped, how did he know? he simply laughed, "I thought so after the fourth time you made me duck when another ares camper was walking by. y/n, I honestly don't care, I like you, and I want to be with you. so... will you be my girlfriend?"

overwhelmed, you practically jumped on him, the tear stains on your face now dry. "of course." you sighed, "but... won't we have to keep it a secret?" you added, worried.

"i hope not, because i was planning on dedicating my songs to you tomorrow at the talent show," he admitted sheepishly. you nearly pounced onto him again until you remembered that nearly the entire camp would be there, including your half-siblings.

"as sweet as that sounds kai... I don't think that's a good idea. how will people react?" you hated how much you sounded like ryujin at that moment, but you couldn't help but worry.

"if you don't want me to, I won't, otherwise i really don't care." he shrugged. it pained you to do so but you asked him not to, as you were still nervous about the reaction from the campers.

you knew you would have to reveal your relationship eventually as you didn't want to keep kai in hiding, but you just didn't know when the right timing would be.

but who needs timing when they have a nosy half-sister who's hiding behind a statue listening to your whole conversation?

ryujin wanted what was best for you, and she knew that this relationship would only hurt you. so she decided to hatch a plan that would prevent it from going any further.

while you were out with kai she assembled all the other ares cabin residents to discuss how to break the two of you up. your hidden relationship came as a shock to all your siblings, with most of them spewing profanities at apollo and his son upon finding out.

they ultimately decided that they would just have to sabotage his performance and find a way to put it on you. kai adores music, so why not target the thing he loves the most? the plan was cruel, but they firmly believed it was what you needed to see the reality of your situation.

when you finally found yourself back at the cabin, you could tell your siblings were acting off. however, you couldn't care less after the day you had with kai. blissfully unaware, you collapsed onto your bed, excited for the upcoming talent show and seeing your boyfriend perform.

if only you knew.

you woke up the next morning to a completely empty cabin. despite being confused initially, you brushed it off and got ready to find a seat at the talent show.

finally seated, you spotted kai standing off to the side of the stage, sending him a small wave. unbeknownst to you, your half-brother saw, scoffing and praying for the plan to work.

after an hour of the program running smoothly, you saw a large piano being rolled to the center of the stage, with kai following. excitedly, you waited to hear his set as he sat down to his instrument and adjusted his microphone.

however, once he began playing the piano the once beautiful notes came out odd-sounding and unprepared. it was evident that the piano had been tampered with, and even more evident that kai was completely shocked.

a silence loomed over the crowd until a certain section began bursting into laughter, that section being cabin #5, aka ares cabin.

you felt betrayed as you looked at your siblings giggling at kai's embarrassment, and even more so when ryujin simply smiled at you, whispering, "it's for the best."

disgusted, you looked to kai. who looked absolutely furious and wouldn't meet your eye. flickering your eyes over to the apollo cabin section, you felt their gazes hitting you and your siblings like daggers.

kai stormed off towards camp and you quickly got up and ran after him. finally catching up to him, you panted "kai wait! I had no idea, I'm so sorry."

he didn't even bother turning around before responding, "maybe they're right. it would never work out between us." he explained coldly. you felt your heart shatter as you watched him walk away.

that night, you refused to speak to any of your siblings, especially ryujin. they initially confronted you, then apologized, then begged for you to at least look their way.

you didn't care if you were being unreasonable, you were enraged. how could ryujin betray you like that? how could they all disregard your feelings? you felt hurt more than anything else.

you could barely sleep that night, only thinking of how upset kai must be. he trusted you, and all you did was prove that the ares cabin really is his biggest enemy. he'd never take you back.

you didn't have it in you to get up the next day. alternating between pretending to sleep and ignoring your siblings, you stayed in bed until 3 pm. you felt like shit and you couldn't be bothered to face anyone in the camp. that was until you heard a commotion outside the cabin door.

peeking through the blinds for your first glimpse of daylight, you saw one of your half-brothers and another camper getting into a heated argument, watching as your other siblings got into confrontations of their own with people you've never seen before.

that's when you realized that the people they were arguing with were the children of apollo.

you ran outside, not caring that you were in your pajamas with horrible morning breath and bed hair. all you cared about was where kai was in all this mess.

you spotted him trying to break up a fight between ryujin and the camper you saw before sitting with taehyun and kai.

"kai! what's going on?" you yelled over all the noise. you watched his face soften for a moment when he saw you just to turn into a scowl, "i'm not sure." he responded distantly.

you attempted to calm down ryujin as kai did the same with his sibling until you heard a loud smack.

it was complete silence as the campers tried to comprehend what just happened. after about thirty seconds of stillness, the campers began going back to fighting, except this time with much more violence. it didn't take long before mr. d and chiron showed up frantically trying to break up the students.

once the dust had settled, the two adults sat the restless demigods down and scolded them for what felt like an eternity. "what started this all? I know you've had some... issues for a while now but why today?" the centaur finally asked.

kai quickly glanced at you, which you only noticed because you had been staring at him for the entirety of the time you were getting reprimanded.

to everyone's surprise, ryujin spoke up first, "i found out that one of my siblings and someone from the apollo cabin were... seeing each other."

gasps erupted among the apollo kids as kai hung his head low. "i told my siblings and we decided to ruin the talent show for them. it was purely out of pettiness and hatred for people i've never even spoken to. i now realize how immature it was and I'm deeply sorry." she looked at you during the last portion of her speech.

you wanted to forgive her, after all she's your sister. but she's also the reason kai still won't acknowledge you.

the next thing you know, campers one by one admitted the ways they had wronged the other side and apologized, sincerely. like that one scene from mean girls.

you felt like you had something to get off your chest as well, and you couldn't keep it in anymore, "i was the one 'seeing' someone from the apollo cabin," you started.

another round of gasps.

"and that's not what I want to apologize for. i handled it horribly. trying to keep it a secret from everyone, including my own siblings and closest friends. I shouldn't have hid it. I'm truly so, so sorry." you professed.

you saw the corner of kai's lips slightly go up, and that's all you needed to feel content. mr. d wrapped the mini-therapy session up and the demigods on both sides swore to end this feud once and for all.

you decided to forgive ryujin and your siblings but you would be lying if you said you were over it all, especially because you couldn't even bring yourself to initiate a conversation with kai.

luckily for you, he approached you first. "i accept your apology... and i'm sorry for being so rude earlier," he faltered.

you were about to respond when he began speaking again, "I'm not sure how we got into this mess but, i want a do-over. do you think we could do that?" he asked with his signature smile. how could you say no?

"yes." you beamed, extending a hand. "i'm y/n, daughter of ares. and you are?"

"kai." he replied, "son of apollo."

"okay, kai, son of apollo. will you go out with me?" you asked, half-jokingly.

"i would love that."

#txt #txt fluff #txt imagines #txt scenarios #kpop scenario #txt reactions #hueningkai #hueningkai x reader #hueningkai scenarios #Percy jackson #pjo

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we-were-beautiful · 11 months

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The Fox and The Hounds pt. 4

A/N: As I live and breath I have finally finished up chapter 4. Sorry that it took so long to get it done. I love these two awkward dog parents. Up next will be my newest Poly!Feysand fic and then the next portion of love and shadows. There is some mention of violence in this one. I will also accept people who want to beta read this for me to help me find silly mistakes that I know I miss. Also all of the photos in the moodboard came from pintertest

Summary: Its autumn court tradition to give your mate a fox kit before your ceremony. after years of knowing the Vanserra’s a mating bond snaps between the Autumn Heir and a well known smoke hound breeder

Warning: Mentions of violence and Beron being the father of the year

WC: 2.6k

We had winnowed to a cabin deep in the forest of Autumn. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but the beautiful home in front of us was not it. When I had been told of this trip Eris had mentioned that it was his personal hunting cabin not elaborating further than that. Maybe I had been expecting the single room open floor concept cabins that my brothers had for hunting, but this fairy tale cottage nestled in the trees is anything but. The two story cabin is made of stone and dark wood and a porch wraps the whole way around the home. The barking of dogs draws my attention away from the home. All around the small clearing our hounds run freely with one another. I let out a small sigh of relief. We had shared concerns that the hounds wouldn’t get along with each other; however, it seems like they were unfounded. It is endearing to watch them run and play with one another; to watch Ramiel be reunited with one of her pups. Paprika wiggles in my arms to put her down. I gently put her on the forest floor still keeping a tight hold on her leash. I didn’t quite trust that she wouldn't just sprint off into the woods

“This is my private home.” Eris’ voice pulls my attention back to him. “ I spend my free time here when my presence is not required at the forest house.”

“It is beautiful, Eris.” and it's the truth, this is the kinda place that mothers tell their babes about when reading bedtime stories. A cottage like this is where a princess would live before being swept away by her prince charming. Eris holds out his arm for me to take. I gently thread my arm through his as he leads me up the walkway.

“So will this be our main residence after the wedding?” After our mating ceremony. It seemed like a safe question to ask, in all honesty I would rather be here than trapped in the massive forest house and bound to court decorum. The jewels and finery were lovely, but I would much rather be comfortable in working clothes surrounded by my hounds

“Yes, I try to keep out of the forest house as much as possible. I’m there when Father demands it but I want to keep my private life private.” His voice did not waiver. It was no secret that Beron was cruel; he kept a tight hold on the court and an even tighter one on his family. I had unfortunately witnessed this on several occasions when my family had been summoned to the forest house. One memory had burned into my mind and it was hard to forget it. The high lord had pitted his second born against the youngest, and I think the only thing that stopped them from killing each other had been their mother desperately begging her husband to make them stop. We had only been children at the time. I remember watching in horror, clinging to my own mothers skirts. Eris had stood beside his fathers throne, the vision of the perfect heir. He had been the one to rip the second oldest off of the youngest, but only on his fathers command.

“I would never subject you to more of that place than absolutely necessary.” His voice pulls me out of my memories. The tension had become so thick between the two of us the silence deafening and uncomfortable.

“Are there kennels for the hounds?” I asked desperate to break this uncomfortable feeling.

“I am looking into having some constructed, but honestly I tend to just keep them in the house.” He seemed almost sheepish with his answer, red tinting his cheeks “But with 20 it may not be the most manageable.”

“I only ask because I imagine that feeding time is going to be tricky. Not to mention night time routines” I respond unconsciously, taking a step closer to the fiery haired male. “ I honestly would rather keep them in the house, but…” I trailed off. Most families kept their hounds in kennels overnight. They let the beautiful creatures roam the house during the day but come nightfall they put them into kennels. I honestly felt safer having one or two of my hounds in the house with me at night but it wasn't normal.

“It is whatever you wish my mate. If you want kennels built I will have some built; if you are fine with the dogs having free range of the house that is what we will do. This is to be your home and I would have you comfortable. If there is something that needs to be changed, then I will seek to remedy whatever it is.” He seems so much softer now that it is just the two of us. I have seen him be so cruel in our lives, but here and now when it's just the two of us he's a different person.

“I would rather keep them in the house.” I pause “I feel safer when they are close, and if you get called away I would rather them be here with me.” to keep me safe they were the unspoken words. My hounds could be vicious when threatened, but Eris’ were on a whole different level. I had been grateful when he introduced me to his hounds that they had taken to me. It had been tense at first but by the time I was to leave the forest house I always had one or two of them trailing after me. The thought of having all of them when inevitably I am alone here put my mind at ease.

“Then in the house they will stay.” I swear that I could see just a hint of a smile forming on his lips as we entered the home. The inside was surprisingly homey, it was a stark contrast to the cold formality of the Forest house. The main living room had two large comfortable looking sofas facing each other; a large overstuffed armchair in a worn brown leather sat facing the massive stone fireplace. Massive windows lined one wall giving a breathtaking view of the forest behind it, another wall hosted massive bookshelves filled with books. The coffee table between the two couches was a rustic affair carved of an old massive oak. Dog beds were scattered around the room along with various toys. For this being Eris’ private retreat it looks very well lived in. The whole space was very masculine, but I had a feeling that I could bring my own touch to the place and it would be perfect. I take a seat on one of the couches gathering paprika in lap unclipping her leash as she settles in for cuddles.

“After the ceremony I figured that you could go through and make any changes to the place that you wish. Or we could travel to town tomorrow?” as he takes a seat on the sofa across from me.

“I wouldn’t mind going to town. It is very homey here, but we might need to make some adjustments to make it our place.” compromise is what makes a marriage work. We have to work together and make decisions as a team.

It settled into an awkward silence between the two of us. Neither one of us really knew what to say. It really hit home that this was our first time alone with no chaperones. No strict parents, no nosy brothers, no courtiers in our business. I feel like I couldn’t move under his gaze; I knew Eris’ reputation. He had been nothing but polite and respectful while we were in public and surrounded by people. That could all change now that we are in private. A loud crack of thunder broke the silence and I jumped in my seat.

“We should probably bring in the hounds.” I break the silence and an uneasy laugh escapes me as I turn my eyes to the windows storm clouds rolling in.

Eris stands up from his chair moving to the double doors, he opens both doors and lets out a long whistle. Within seconds all of the hounds come running into the house; suddenly the house becomes alive with noise with the jingle of tags and the clicks of nails on the hardwood and barking. It is a laughable situation as all 18 trip over one another as they run into the living room. I feel the cushion next to me dip as one of the 18 dogs hops up next to me; I grimace as I feel a wet tongue lick at my face, I run a hand down the hounds back relishing in the warmth radiating off of its silky fur.

“The pride of the Autumn court, vicious killers, the lot of you, tracking down your enemies with lethal accuracy and ripping them to shreds. And yet you act like puppies.” I laugh as the dog attempts to sit in my lap on top of poor Paprika. The fox kit scurries out of my lap with an indignant yip as the fully grown smoke hound attempts to fit on my lap.

“Ichabod! Down.” Eris snaps at the dog who had crawled into my lap. Ichabod on the other hand showed absolutely no signs of moving. I laugh and wrap my arms around the hound.

“He’s fine Eris.” I rest my chin on Ichabod, giving him scratches “He’s just a big baby”

“Yes, a big baby whom I have seen rip a male to shreds.” Eris sigs before taking a seat on the opposing couch again shooing away one of the hounds that decided he needed the whole couch. Paprika perks up at the sight of Eris sitting down darting over to take up a seat in his lap since hers was so rudely stolen. He laughs long fingers gently scratching at her soft ears.

“I’m just glad that your dogs get along with mine and they seem to like me. I would hate to imagine what would have happened if we couldn’t integrate them.” to say that the smoke hounds were territorial was putting it mildly. It wasn’t uncommon for smoke hounds to attack unfamiliar hounds, I had heard horror stories around the court of what could happen when trying to integrate two kennels. It was why Eris and I had taken major precautions after the bond had snapped. We would introduce one or two dogs at a time supervised and on leads at all times. We had finally got to the point last week where we let all of them out together at the forest house.

“I would rather not think about that. While I have no doubt in your skills as a breeder, that you could breed a wonderful replacement. I would hate to lose any of our hounds. Yours for their sheer pedigree alone and mine…” he pauses for a second “I raised all of mine, trained them. They work so well together. I can’t fathom what I would do If I lost one”

Eris loved his hounds just like I love mine. We had bonded over it years ago but to hear him say it was enlightening. It was deeper than I knew before and it warmed me to my core the amount of love this male has for his hounds. I smile at the scene in front of me as Eris is surrounded by three hounds begging for attention as Paprika gets in his face demanding that he pay attention to her. I let out a laugh which caused him to look up at me. Cinnamon eyes met mine. I feel a slight tug on the bond from his end, my eyes widen as a smile grows on his face. The two of us had not really explored the bond since it snapped, there were a few times that I could feel some intense emotion from his end while we were separated and a few times where he had used it to check in on me when we were forced to attend public events. But a solid pull like this neither of us had been brave enough to try.

“I guess I should give you a tour of the house, not just sit around playing with the hounds.” Eris moved to stand up gently placing Paprika on the floor.

“A tour would be nice” I nudged Ichabod off my lap. He jumps down to the floor quickly running off to play with another one of the hounds. Eris had moved to stand in front of me offering his hand. I take it and stand. I had never noticed before how warm his hands are; it was almost as if fire he wielded was coursing through his veins. He moved my hand to rest in the crook of his arm as he led me through the house.

I found myself enjoying this time with him, watching him show off his home…or rather our home. For the most part the cottage was not decorated, a clear sign that a single male had resided here. One room stuck out to me on the tour; Eris kept an office here. Papers were scattered all over the large oak desk that dominated the room.

“I apologize for the mess in here.” He seemed almost sheepish. “ I wanted to make sure that I had all of my work done before I came to get you so that I could focus on getting to know you and not work.”

It warmed me to hear that he had wanted to make sure that he was able to spend this weekend getting to know me rather than finishing up work. I knew first hand what it was like, my father depending on the workload from the forest house would sometimes end up sequestered in his office for days on end.

“Thank you, I know this whole engagement has been rather hectic. So for you to make the time to get to know me means a lot.” I gently squeezed his arm.

“We need all the time we can get because in two weeks we will be bound together.” he solemnly responds “I’d rather know you and at the bare minimum be your friend. We can learn to love each other later.”

He leads me away from the office showing the many guest rooms. They are spartanly decorated with just a bed and nightstand. “You can change these rooms however you please. I had no true need for them and didn’t feel that it was necessary to decorate.

I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at that. It had been such a male answer, something that I had heard before when Mother and I had visited the Illyrian camps years ago. Seems like males will have similar responses to decorating no matter what court. He stops in front of two closed doors.

“This will be your room during your stay here.” He opens the door to reveal a cozy looking room. The room is dominated by a large bed centered on the right wall, covered in a deep maroon duvet and cream colored accent pillows. The chest of drawers and night stands were carved out of a rich walnut. Dog beds were scattered across the floor. Some one had put the time in to decorating this room “My mother decorated it for you. If you don't like it we can change it.”

“No, no. It is perfect Eris.” I am quick to cut him off “I love it”

“Mother will be glad to hear that. My room is across the hall.” he points to the closed door. He runs a hand through his hair. “I will leave you to get settled. The servants should have dinner ready in a few hours so I will let you rest.”

I nod and take a step into my room “Thank you Eris.” what I am thanking him for I don’t know after I close the door I lean against it letting my head fall back. This is going to be an awkward weekend.

#eris x reader #eris vanserra x reader #eris vanserra #acotar x reader #acotar #acomaf #acosf #acofs #acowar #autumn court #the fox and the hounds

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frodo-with-glasses · 1 year

Text

More Reading Thoughts: The Grey Havens

Oh wow, another chapter review, haven’t seen one of those in ten thousand years

I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready aaaaahhh

this has been such an incredible year and a half; i don’t want this book to end

but the sooner i finish, the sooner i can start over again!! so let’s go

Fatty Bolger!! 😭 We missed you, friend!

Man how am I gonna draw him skinny and still recognizable?? Guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it

LOBELIA!

Man I remember being so annoyed that she received a welcome like this when I was a kid, but now that I’m older, the display of mercy is overwhelmingly touching

She’s leaning on Frodo’s arm!! FRODO’S! He brought her out himself! And they all cheer for her courage and tenacity!

AND SHE LEFT HER MONEY FOR CHARITY

Y’know what? You’re all right after all, Lobelia. You’re all right.

I love the implication that hobbits will not accept a mayor who is not RotundTM 🤣

Ahhhhh okay so THAT’S where I got my childhood definition of “horny”

I’m sure in this case it means “like horn (the material), hard and rough”, which is an excellent descriptor, and it’s a shame I will never be able to use it in my own writing

THEY FOUND THE HIDDEN FOOD AND HAD IT FOR YULE! HECK YES!

Aww, I love you, Gaffer

“It was a purely Bywater joke to refer to it as Sharkey’s End” PFFFFFFT 🤣🤣

The four hobbits being known as the Travellers is so sweet

Frodo: “Ah yes, your box of dirt, the box of dirt from Galadriel, the box of dirt given specifically to you by Galadriel, Galadriel’s dirt”

I love that Frodo knows every single grain of this stuff is magical

I love even more that Sam is antsy and can hardly keep himself from running around and checking if the dirt is doing anything LOL

MALLORN TREE IN THE PARTY FIELD

I’M GONNA FRICKIN’ CRYYYYY

Year 1420 haha blaze it

“All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many…” Tolkien knows how baby booms work

“And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass” BAHAHAHA 🤣

Ohhhhh oh Frodo, oh bby

Sam was away 😭 And Farmer Cotton was the one who found Frodo in his bed in pain 😭😭 o w

Okay but Frodo just automatically assuming like “of COURSE we’re gonna be roomies” is just *chef’s kiss*

IMAGINE. FRODO WAS PERFECTLY PREPARED TO LIVE WITH JUST SAM WITH HIM IN BAG END. JUST THE TWO OF THEM. IMAGINE

I love these boys so heckin’ much

Frodo: So we’re roomies, yeah? Sam: Er, I…well I’d love to, but…but Rosie. Frodo: MORE ROOMIES 8-D

Tolkien: “And they loved Frodo dearly, and no one in the Shire was better cared for” Me: Thanks, Tolkien 🥹😭💚

Merry and Pippin walking around like the local legends they are

Sam doesn’t even know how well respected he is in the Shire 🥺

Noooo Weathertop

ELANOOOOOOR

“Taking after Rose more than me, luckily” And this solidifies my headcanon that Rosie is drop-dead gorgeous

Frodo hiding his illness from Sam hurts, man. You can feel him trying to stay cheerful. Ow, ow, ow.

“‘You can’t go far or for a long time now, of course,’ he said a little wistfully.” I AM GOING TO EAT THE CARPET

ALL HE WANTS IS TO BE WITH HIS SAM

BUT HE WANTS SAM TO BE HAPPY AND ENJOY HIS FAMILY EVEN MORE

HE LOVES SAM ENOUGH TO LET HIM GO

I’M GONNA BREAK SOMETHING

“The Downfall of: The Lord of the Rings” Rollllll credits! *ding*

Oh. Ohhhh. The Elvish song meeting Frodo and Sam as they sit on their ponies in the forest in late evening. I’m gonna cry.

Bilbo: Well, I’m older than the Old Took now! Bucket list completed. Time to go!

“But I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.” Same, Sam…same. 😭😭 (that’s what the Magnolia AU is for)

How. How does Frodo predict the names of Sam’s kids. “And perhaps more I cannot see”—how can he see in the first place?? How does he know? He’s getting Elvish, Frodo is. Very, very elvish.

Just. Frodo’s whole speech. I don’t have anything to say, I’m just soaking it in, and I feel so joyful and so sad all at once. It’s so tender and intimate and yet so distant. Tolkien, you’re so cruel, I love you.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I JUST TURNED THE PAGE

AND THE RIGHT SIDE PAGE IS HALF-BLANK

I’M NOT READY I’M NOT READY I’M NOT READY

Okay okay be calm, it’s okay, just keep going

MERRY AND PIPPINNNNNNN

THEY CAMEEEEEE

And they’re ending the story the same way they joined it because Frodo is trying to leave and they said “NOT WITHOUT US” I’M GONNA GNAW HOLES IN THE COUCH AND BAWL LIKE A BABY

KISSES!! FOR EVERYONE!!!

WHITE SHORES AND A FAR GREEN COUNTRY UNDER A SWIFT SUNRISE

S H U T U P DON’T TOUCH ME

The three of them riding back home in silence but taking comfort in each other

I joke about these things making me cry but I actually, literally, have mist in my eyes right now holy cow

It’s so melancholy and comforting and it hurts and yet it makes you feel so happy and whole

The story is coming to an end, and there’s so much you want to say, but you can’t find words for any of it, and yet the silence says everything and more

(And Merry and Pippin don’t start singing until they take their leave of Sam, almost as if they were being considerate of his feelings first, but as they go and you hear their voices in the distance you get the sense that everything is going to be okay)

“Well, I’m back.”

…

The end.

#frodo baggins #samwise gamgee #fatty bolger #lobelia sackville-baggins #meriadoc brandybuck #merry #peregrin took #pippin #rosie cotton #bilbo baggins #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #assorted thoughts #somebody hold me i’m ✨emotional✨

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purgeturbia · 7 months

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i've been working on something for... quite a while. i'm not ready to share the whole thing yet (read: it's not even close to being finished), but this part of it, while mostly unedited, can stand pretty well on its own, so have a little bit of smitten obi-wan. as a treat.

*eta bc i forgot the first time: ~2k, canon-typical mentions of death but nothing graphic, mostly fluff

the rest of the work is not like this.

XXXVII. START WARS AND BURN CITIES

When he and Cody and the 212th had liberated planets from the Separatists — although he muses, now, that they had not done much liberating at all, if the end result was the desolate fear-space the galaxy has become — there had often been more time spent cleaning up the aftermath of their battles than there had been actually fighting. The machine of war was not a tidy one, and Obi-Wan hated to leave innocent people in a worse state than he had found them.

Often, during these pseudo-recovery times, he was excluded from the physical labor. Cody tended to push Obi-Wan off into the command tent to fill out the hundreds of forms that came with successful completion of a campaign, saying, “There are thousands of vod’e, sir, and only one of you,” but Obi-Wan saw it for what it really was — a chance (an order) to rest “for once in your kriffing life, General.”

Obi-Wan, after the first few campaigns, never argued. Crash would be on his ass for trying to help with cleanup anyway, and he did so despise being hauled to the medbay.

Though his stack of requisition forms and reports to write and casualty lists was always far larger than he cared to admit, Obi-Wan was, despite his field ban, never one to sit idle in command after a battle. He would, instead, crank out as much flimsiwork as he could before his body began to ache with the stillness of it all, and then he would mingle with the troops. The shinies, especially, were emboldened by his presence among them. They were so young, even the veteran troopers, and anything he could do to ease the pain of a life defined by war was an obligation, even if it was just a kind word here or there.

He was never content with the mental state of his men. Even after a decisive victory, or a battle with minimal casualties, or a skirmish with none at all, there was a sharp edge to their presences in the Force. Their hands shook ever so slightly and their smiles were never quite genuine and their eyes were constantly moving, observing, calculating.

The war lived inside all of them, himself included. The thing was, though, that Obi-Wan had had those few glorious years, before Qui-Gon and Bandomeer and Melida/Daan and the rest of his life that had come crashing down around him and never stopped, where there was no war in his bones.

His troops had been born with the war in them, and that was a pain he could not take away.

Even so, he would move through the camp like a fish through water, dropping hands to pauldrons and calling greetings across the expanse of tents. He would bring rations and fill canteens, and linger around medical looking for tasks until Crash told him to stop lurking and go bother somebody who would appreciate it. He’d always wiggled his eyebrows afterward, though, and told Obi-Wan very dramatically where Cody had gotten off to, so it was easy to see that he was never truly upset. Obi-Wan, in return, would blush about sixteen shades of red and very pointedly stalk off in the opposite direction of wherever Cody happened to be.

It was on one such occasion, on a forested planet Obi-Wan can no longer remember the name of, that he had turned away from Crash (and, he’d thought, Cody), only to stumble upon his commander preparing to direct half of Phantom Company through the process of removing a fallen tree that had crushed a house and blocked most of the packed-dirt road stretching through one of the little settlements they’d come planetside to defend. Obi-Wan could have moved the tree himself in a matter of seconds, but. Cody had told him to stay out of the cleanup, and one of his least favorite things in a time with many unpleasantries was upsetting Cody.

So he’d lingered on the outskirts, observing. Phantom acted, of course, as a well-oiled machine, and though fierce pride for his men bubbled up in his chest, Obi-Wan allowed himself a moment of indulgence. He leaned against a still-standing tree just behind the houses across the way from the crushed one, and watched Cody work. He was a study in professionalism, in genius, even when faced with a task so simple as moving debris. Cody burned with a focused intensity that matched the sunburst on his armor as he paced around the tree, and they had spent long enough nights hunched together over sims and holotables that Obi-Wan could easily guess the questions being mentally asked and answered in quick succession: how heavy is the trunk? How many troops do I need to lift it? If we apply more leverage here, will the house be more damaged or less?

It struck Obi-Wan then that he had not had time for fanciful things like poetry since the war’s beginning — but then again, maybe he didn’t need it. Maybe it had been right in front of him all along.

It was in the midst of this realization that he was pulled out of his thoughts by a presence at his elbow. When he turned, it wasn’t a clone, as he’d been expecting, but one of the locals; a wizened old woman leaning on a painstakingly carved wooden cane. She was not looking at Obi-Wan, but at the troopers as they worked. She was looking at Cody.

She had spoken before Obi-Wan could. “Strange, isn’t it.”

He waited a beat, and then another. She was silent beside him. “That would depend on what it is, I suppose,” he said eventually.

She laughed, though it was more of a huff than anything. The indulgent sort of laugh that comes from a person who knows a joke has been made but who doesn’t really feel like laughing. “All of this. The war, the clones. The Jedi, leading them. You’re not meant for this, are you.”

It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t answer it. “You know,” he murmured, “you’re the first person … outside of all this, to notice that.”

She laughed again. It was no more sincere than the first time. “Am I really on the outside, Master Jedi?” she asked. “Are any of us?”

Obi-Wan knew she was right, so he merely inclined his head. Cody was positioning Phantom around the tree. It looked like his plan was to heave it up and over the houses and the road using applied leverage from the base, and dismantle it for lumber once its position was no longer an immediate problem. It was a good plan, very practical, very Cody, and Obi-Wan couldn’t quite keep a small smile from creeping across his face.

He startled when the woman spoke again. “Is it worth it, then?”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed and he hummed, confused. To protect the innocent, of course the war was worth it. He wasn’t meant for it, none of the Jedi were, but he would fight it a thousand times over to save those who could not save themselves. Why would she ask him that? Why else would he be here?

He felt eyes on him, then, and turned to see the woman finally looking at him and not at his troops. Something in her face reminded him of Yoda, like she had lived a dozen of his lifetimes and known more than he could ever hope to learn. “Is it worth it,” she repeated, and continued, “for him.”

All of the breath left Obi-Wan’s body in a rush. He suddenly felt exposed, uncovered, though he was sure of his safety in the saber hung at his belt and his trusted men not forty meters away. Little gods. Two words was all it took to undo the great Negotiator. But he supposed nobody had ever come so close to his soul with two words before. He was, for the first time in a very, very long time, unsure of what to say.

“I —” he started, and stopped just as quickly, because he’d been about to defend himself, but there was no need to defend in a battle that was already over. He settled on, finally, “He is … very dear to me.”

“You would not have met him without this war.” Something in her voice was sharp, and he knew the words he spoke next would determine whether he passed a test she didn’t even know she was setting. “He would not even exist.”

He chose his response carefully. “No. But sometimes I think — perhaps it would have been a gift, for them, to never have lived at all.” He took a deep breath, steadying. “They have never known anything but war. They were bred for it, raised on it, and now they breathe it and eat it and it haunts their dreams. As much as the idea of it pains me, a galaxy without him in it, he would not exist without his brothers, and they would not exist without the war in their bones.” He turned back, toward Cody, who was helping lift the base of the tree, readying to swing it out away from the road. “How can that be worth it? The misery of millions for the happiness of one?”

The tree was suddenly standing again, propelled into the sky by Cody’s careful placement of force and the sheer brute strength of battle-hardened troopers. It wheeled above them for a moment, rotating, before crashing into the ground and sending up a cheer from the men. Obi-Wan was caught momentarily in the sunbeams of Cody’s victory smile, radiant, glorious, beautiful even from a distance.

“You love him,” said the woman.

To hear the words out loud tore at something in him. He would never be able to say them himself, but he’d stopped denying the truth of them long ago. “Yes,” he said simply. “He deserves more than this, better than this. I would never wish this existence upon him, and in another life I would never claim this war to be worth it just so I might have the honor of —” the word loving stuck viscerally in his throat and he swallowed around it, “of knowing him again.”

Obi-Wan folded his arms tightly, wishing he had thought to bring his robes with him then, if only for something to do with his hands. Cody, having finished delegating the deconstruction of the tree, had spotted the odd pair and was heading over, bright with his success.

The woman, looking at Cody and then back at Obi-Wan, huffed that strange not-laugh again. “If you win this war, Master Jedi, will it have been worth it?”

With Cody striding toward him, Obi-Wan was stuck between the sensations of a heart full to bursting with the pain of a love he could never truly have and the gut-punch realization that maybe, someday, he could. He barely managed to gasp out an “Oh, I —” before Cody was upon them, saying, “General, sir, I thought I told you to stay at camp,” but his smile betrayed him, and Obi-Wan found himself grinning back, breathless, and for a brief moment there was no war and no winning and no losing; there was only them, together, and the galaxy was theirs for the taking.

Now, the surface of Tatooine is dark and chilled. Wind whistles around the hut on the edge of the Dune Sea — a sandstorm will hit in the next few days, and in the morning they’ll need to start preparing. The memory of that woman comes back to him, unbidden, and he clings tighter to Cody, wrapped in his arms on Obi-Wan’s lumpy old bed. He thinks of Anakin, as much as it hurts to, and of the thousands of fallen Jedi, and of every clone forced to take the life of innocents, their bodies their own but not their minds. The war lost him everything, everyone, and everywhere he’s ever loved. But little gods. Cody is alive. He’s here, and safe, and they’re together again, his sunshine returned to him. Obi-Wan hates himself for it (hate leads to the dark — please, stop, please), but the worst parts of his soul are screaming it: maybe for this, this small salvation in the ruins, everything had been worth it after all.

#star wars #codywan #cody x obi wan #my writing #i made a whole ass spreadsheet for the gar including ocs for this fic #crash is my 212th medic. i love him #and phantom company is real TO ME. my baby children <3 #this fic is gonna be so fucking long when its done #please let me know what you think! don't be a dick but otherwise tell me things :)

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honeybeewhereartthee · 5 months

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ORACLE that brought us together.

you don't really think that when you wake up, you realize--

1.) You were not dreaming about the event yesterday.

2.) Your nowhere near the place you were yesterday.

3.) Your cloths have change to something else..

it reminded you of the Feature outfit of Hiiro Amagi for one thing. And the other is, someone is waiting for you outside the door.

"are you awake?" you heard someone you don't know ask from the door as you were making a noise of flipping your things to find your phone and checking if you lost some organs from a weird organ trafficking thing cause it's just safety first. Through your all good except for the three things mention above.

"No I'm asleep." You sarcastically says, the person behind the door seems to pause at your sarcasm as you open the sliding door on the left side of the room, you saw the garden and beautiful landscape. It seems your in some traditional house of some tribe or something. It's pretty big and many things to see from where you are. It looks familiar.

You went out to the garden on barefoot when you saw something, just as you went out of site. The servant from the other side of the other door saw the young monarch walking toward them.

"My young lord. The young lady is awake." They bow at the presence of the leader of the tribe. Rinne nodded his head and open the door after a knock you did not reply on. "Hey, I know your awake--..." Rinne saw the garden door is open and your nowhere to be found.

"Geez. Well I have to look for her or she will find herself in Brazil." Especially with that very complicated no sense of direction of yours. That's why he made sure someone is waiting for you to guide you to where you wanna go but you just have to sneak around and get lost.

"Did she try to escape again?" An elderly man who looks is akin to Rinne ask with a low chuckle. "Who knows. I just have to look for her." Rinne laughs at his old man as he went to get some slippers or foot wear to bring along with him, since his pretty sure you went out without one. But before he could leave to the forest, his old man called out to him.

"Rinne, you have talk about how our tribe works so far from modern society works. And wish to change it." The old monarch starts. His first born son looks at him with face that shows no sign of emotion to be readed by him.

"You have use the oracle and your destined bride as a reason to get out of the villages. Yet tell me, my son. Do you only bring them back to meds your boredom--"

"old man, are you asking me if I like her or not?" Rinne sigh as he realize what his father is aiming at.

"... Well do you?"

"No." Rinne turns his back on his father. "Like is understatement." He chuckle as he run into the forest looking for you. His father watch his son left and cannot help but sigh in relief before he went his merry way.

...

It took him a while to spot you as you were up in the tree and dropped your bracelet— that his tribe women put on you for your status as well the outfit that fits for you as his bride, yesterday night—on his head. "Hey now that's not nice of you." He look up to you who's focusing on something. He looks at the tree and saw something written in it as he climb up besides you. When his up the big branch your siting on. He saw your playing on your phone.

"Event?" Siting besides you, he put the bracelet back to your right hand.

"Hmm." You nodded your head as you finish one gameplay. You look up to Rinne in a silent for a moment. "I guess it's really destiny." You remember seeing trails of shinny and pretty red and blue rocks that you follow to the tree and saw four rocks of Red, blue, (eye color) and (hair color) inside one of the hole of this tree and a handwriting that's look like some kid wrote it, years ago.

[ starting Point and the End point of (nickname) and RinRin]

in some blurry memories, you found yourself in a set of memories of you writing it with someone. You were daze at that moment as you realize something. You sigh as you realize a cutie childhood friend of yours turn into a very seggsy and nasty guy who bullies you, yet also the person you like.

"Did you remember?" He gets an idea what's have happened and chuckle hopelessly. He did told you about that but you refuse to believe him.

"Sorry." You laugh. "I like little rin Rin cause his so cute and silly." Looking straight into his eyes, you wonder how you gain courage to say something like this.

My good friend from long time ago. It's nice to meet you again." You smiled at Rinne. Your happy to meet him again. It's sad and self disappointing to your part to not notice it was him.

Rinne stared at you and suddenly reach out to held your cheeks. You were confuse for a moment but soon become flabbergasted and embarrassed red mess as he pulled you closer and give you a kiss in the cheek, close to your lips.

"W-waa... What!" You felt blood went to your head as he hugged you to not let you see his equally embarrassed face. He cannot believe he did something intimate and shameless like that! But his body just mode on his own!

"Yes or yes?" He back away for a moment as he look you serious in the eyes.

"Huh? Why is it all yes?" You wonder if his joking or not. What kind of choices is that.

"Ok, you said yes." He laugh as he stood up and scoops you up. Not caring that you two are up in the tree. Before you know it, he jump down. Earning a surprise scream from you.

"Hey!" You held tight on him as start to run toward his village. "Little MC said if we meet again and you liked me. It mean well continue the wedding." He says a she look at you for a moment as he speed to the trees. You look at him surprised and question, you don't remember if you said that! But what if his right? His better in remembering things than you do. So his probably right.

"But you don't even say it back..." You cover your face. "I love you, so let's get married~ so I can kiss you in the lips my wife." Rinne went passes by the village folks who greats you two and went to the priest place who happens to talk to his father.

"Old man, bless us already. So I can mark my territory." He demanded to his father. "Young kids those days." The elder laughs before you know it, a grand yet simple traditional wedding have happened. It happened so fast you only realize it's real when Rinne beams when he held you close as you two finally official.

Soft lips against yours, it felt right at the moment. As you two. You felt your cheeks burn brightly as he look at you with gentle gaze. Linking his hands with yours. I'm his eyes and in your eyes. Only the image of each other is reflecting in clear image.

"Don't you think it's stupid?" You ask him. "Hmm?" He seems interested with your question as you two depart from the village to go back to city after that break. Holding each other's hands as you two walking through forest.

"An oracle. Or words of the old people who dont know any better. Would you really go it cause they told you so?" You mean how it started with that so called oracle. It was the most stupid thing you heard in your life and it still is.

"It doesn't matter. I know it's too old school. But it brought you to me~ now you can't escape cause we're fated!" He spins you around as he evilly laugh before braking into a full genuine laughter's of happiness.

"Its stupid. But it's useful in its own way." Putting you down as he linked his hands with you again. He saw not far from ahead three of his unit waiting for him with a car rented out to pick the two of them up.

"But because of it. I meet you, I gain freedom and meet many friends... And be me." You look at him in surprise before you were taken back as he start to run toward the three.

"Yoo, Niki catch this." Rinne gives the dishes neatly packed for a souvenir for the foodie Niki and some sweets to Kohaku and coffee beans/tea from his village to Himeru as he went to the driver seat with you in the shotgun seat.

"Anyway, let's go back to the city!"

"Ok!" Everyone cheers before long you all drive to the city and chatted about what happened in the pass week. Congrats is told and teasing moment is shared. The story began and it ended with a silly child who's lost yet found her way to a place and set freedom to a boy who want to experience what's behind the things that was taught and force upon him before he is even born.

End.

#ensemble stars #ensemble stars x reader #enstar x reader #enstar #ensemble stars rinne x reader #ensemble stars rinne amagi #rinne x reader #amagi rinne #rinne amagi x reader #enstars rinne #amagi rinne x reader

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connan-l · 3 months

Text

Colorful

Fandom: Natsume's Book of Friends Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationship: Morinaga Souko/Natsume Reiko Summary: So many colors suited the forest girl that Souko couldn't assign a single one to her. Words: 7,123 Link: AO3 | Fanfiction.net

Notes: Believe it or not, I actually started writing this in 2018, and for some reason was never able to complete it lol. But I got so excited with the announcement of season 7 that I decided it was a good time to finish this, before we get to see those chapters get adapted.

Find out Reiko and Souko’s story still makes me cry even 5 years later, and I can’t wait to bawl about them once they’re animated!

* * *

People were always surprised when Souko told them she didn’t like the color blue.

It wasn’t like she hated it, but she just wasn’t very fond of it.

She liked green, yellow, purple, red — vivacious pigments that felt alive, cheery; hues that a child would love to use to paint one of his drawings.

Blue was just sad.

The watery tint of the deep sea, the cold tint of winter.

Souko loved assigning colors to people. She saw her father as a vibrant red, and her mother — from the little she remembered of her — as a soft purple. Her uncle was golden, her aunt orange, her grandmother green.

So although she didn’t hate it, a part of her always felt disappointed ‘blue’ was the color people associated with her the most — simply because it was what she’d been named after.

Sometimes, Souko thought it was a funny twist of fate, for her to bear the name of a color she only connected to sadness; a warped prediction of what her life would look like after she fell ill.

No one who met her after she got sick would believe it, but she actually used to be a very energetic child. Back then, she could spend the entire day running around and climbing to trees and playing all sorts of games outside with other kids, giving her father a hundred of panic attacks.

All of that crumbled away when her heart started to malfunction two years ago, and suddenly her whole body began to fall apart without her control.

It had been gradual. Slow and excruciating.

She barely noticed the first signs; the shaking in her hands, her frequent headaches, her legs incapable of walking or running for very long. One day on her way to school, she passed out — and just like that, she spent the following year practically unable to get out of bed.

Her life then withered away.

She couldn’t do any of the things she liked anymore, couldn’t go to school anymore, couldn’t see anyone but her family.

She stopped running and playing outside, and she stopped gardening, and she stopped cooking.

She didn’t really had any friends, as the shy girl she’d always been, but she’d still managed to have some decent relationships with some kids at school, at least.

Now she didn’t even had that anymore.

She withered, drowning away in a bottomless cerulean sea, and for a long, long time, nothing seemed to really matter anymore.

During those endless days, there was only two things she could do: read, which she took the habit of doing since then, and stare at her window. Her bedroom was in front of their garden, so she had a direct sight on the many colorful flowers her mother had planted there long ago, and that Souko had continued to take care of since then. But most of the times, it wasn’t the rainbow of flowers she would stare at, but the blue of the sky — getting lost in its infinity, her heart heavy with anguish and anger at her own life.

Dad had told her, once, that the reason why they named her ‘Souko’ was because she’d been born during a day with a completely clear blue sky. No clouds, no shade of gray, no sun; only blue and blue and blue, as far as the eye could see.

But as Souko kept staring at that same sky, the only thing she could think about was how profoundly empty that blue looked.

* * *

With the help of medications and reeducation, she slowly started to get better — but the doctors were unequivocal on the fact that she would never be able to move like she used to.

She had to limit her gestures, her outings, her breathing; she couldn’t run anymore, or barely so. She was getting better, but she still felt like she was imprisoned within her own body; a bird unable to get out of a cage of its own making.

But the worst wasn’t really any of this. It all weighted heavily on her, of course; but she could bear that. She didn’t really have a choice. The burden her illness had taken on her family, however, was another thing entirely.

The Morinaga household was constituted of only Souko and her father since her mother’s death when she was little, but her uncle and aunt lived nearby and were practically part of their home since as long as she could remember. Dad was very close to his brother, and so her uncle was almost like a third parent to Souko, always having been deeply involved in her life.

Thus her illness had repercussions not only on her father, but on her uncle, her aunt and the whole family. Everyone was always so tense whenever they came to see her, obvious tight smiles and stiff shoulders as they looked at her; and through the months she’d heard hundreds of arguments between her father and grandmother, between the two brothers, between most of her relatives, all about the same topics. What to do with her condition, with her treatment’s cost, with everything else.

Even Dad stopped looking at her like he used to, and instead a pained expression spread across his face every time his eyes met hers. She felt more like a poor little wounded animal he pitied than like his daughter.

That was the hardest part. The idea that not only her body was getting torn apart, but her family did as well — and that it was all her fault.

She couldn’t stand it. It made her want to run away.

Find a place far away; cut from all of her problems, where she wouldn’t have to worry about anything, and where she wouldn’t worry anyone.

A place to be all alone.

And then one night after dinner, Dad approached her with an awkward smile and addressed her in a gentle, careful voice:

"The other day the doctor made me an offer... I thought about it and it could be a good opportunity. He said that… to help with your convalescence, we could move to the countryside.”

At first, Souko wasn’t sure what to think of it.

Truthfully, she didn’t want to move.

She knew nothing at all about the small town where her dad wanted to go, and going there would mean losing all of the landmarks she’d known her whole life. It meant leaving their house where she grew up. Uncle and Auntie. Mom’s grave from a few meters away in the cemetery. Her school.

Souko might not have had any friends here, she still didn’t want to lose the relationships she had with the people of her hometown — and she didn’t want to have to make the effort to form new bonds with strangers.

The very idea made her stomach twist with anxiety. But she couldn’t turn Dad down; not when she knew he also probably didn’t want to move either, and that he only proposed that for her sake.

So against all of her better instincts, Souko agreed.

* * *

She couldn’t manage to assign any color to the forest girl.

No matter how hard she tried to, none of the choices — none of the different tints and shades and hues — seemed to fit her.

Or, rather, all of them fitted her.

The girl — her match companion, the teenager she’d met hidden within the deepest parts of the woods, like a rare, delicate diamond — was the most beautiful and fascinating person Souko had ever seen; ephemeral like a ghost, flippant like a cat and fluttering like a butterfly.

Her long silver hair seemed to change color with the sunlight; turning white or golden or purple contingent on the sky’s whims.

Souko blurted that out, once, without thinking much about it beforehand; and then regretted it right away, because of how childish it sounded.

The girl just laughed.

“Purple?” She repeated, and Souko felt herself blush. “Really?”

“B-Because, look… Your hair is so light, so it take on the dusk’s color. And when dusk turns orange, or pink, then your hair also…”

“Is that so.”

The girl looked over at the horizon, which was indeed starting to take on a mauve tint. For a moment, her companion seemed contemplative; then finally, she turned towards her again and grinned.

“Well, what do you think? Is purple my color?”

Souko felt the scarlet of her cheeks deepens even more, but she was able to muster the courage to actually reply truthfully: “I think every color is your color. You look pretty in everything.”

And that was true, too.

Souko could imagine her in red, pink, purple, orange, black and white — and that girl, her mysterious nameless acquaintance of the forest, would be just as wonderful and breathtaking as ever.

She would look beautiful and full of life even in blue.

Souko had never seen a person like that before, so radiant and mesmerizing that her eyes couldn’t stop staring at her, that her mind couldn’t help but think of her almost all the time.

For a very brief moment, the girl looked slightly taken aback; but she quickly seemed to get over it and simply smiled back at her.

The girl was always smiling.

It was a little disconcerting, sometimes — and it wasn’t that Souko didn’t like seeing her smile, but she just wished that smile looked actually genuine.

Once I’ll win, she swore to herself.

Once I’ll win, I’ll make her give me her name. I’ll make her become my friend — and then I’ll be able to make her smile for real.

* * *

“Oh, the candy’s blue.”

“Isn’t it pretty?”

“Yeah. Like the blue of Souko.”

Her voice resounded in her mind even long after the two of them parted way.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the manner she’d said her name. Softly, fleetingly, lost in the wind, like no one but the girl herself had been supposed to hear it.

The blue of Souko.

Souko had never been fond of her name. She’d never really liked the color blue.

And now, after all she’d been through, the only thing it managed to evoke to her was the emptiness of the sky as she looked through her room’s window stuck in her bed.

That was all the blue of Souko was to her.

But when the girl spoke it… When she said her name so softly, so longingly, Souko couldn’t help but love it.

The girl was a little like a fairy, Souko thought; an otherworldly being who seemed to be able to transform every bad aspects of her life into something magical.

Her name sounded beautiful when she said it. That town in the countryside seemed so fun now that she started spending time with her. Her new home, her tense family, her unfamiliar school and classmates — everything seemed bearable now that she had that girl by her side.

Even the color blue would surely feel warm and vivacious, if her secret companion started wearing some of it.

Before meeting the forest girl, Souko had simply not been able to feel at home anywhere in that town.

It wasn’t like people here weren’t welcoming — at the contrary, everyone was quite nice to her, but Souko still hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling that she simply didn’t belong. She’d always been a timid girl, but suddenly moving here while cutting all ties to her old life, added to the months she’d spent completely isolated from the world because of her illness, made her feel like she’d lost all of her social skills. She could barely handle normal conversations with the other kids, or with the townsfolk — always feeling like people were staring at her, judging her, monitoring her every moves. And even when she was alone, she couldn’t stand to be at her house either, in that unfamiliar place.

That was why coming in the middle of that forest, away from any form of life, away from her family and other people, was the only time that had finally made her feel a little comfortable — and that despite the fact this place had a strange ominous aura and sometimes gave her headaches.

And then she met the girl. The time she spent by her side, chatting idly and having silly matches and laughing together about nothing made her the happiest and most free she’d felt in months. Not since she fell ill.

The girl wasn’t always nice; she could be quite prickly and cold, and it wasn’t like Souko didn’t think that girl was... strange. Truthfully, she could be a little unsettling, or even scary sometimes. Occasionnally, she would just say weird things out of nowhere, or stared past Souko’s shoulder as if she was seeing someone behind her, or dragged her away from a place as if she was trying to run from something.

Something Souko couldn’t see.

(And, sometimes, Souko almost had the impression there really was something else with them, and that it wasn’t just the two of them in the middle of these woods.)

But even so, despite all of this, Souko still didn’t think she could, or wanted to, stop seeing the girl.

At least, she treated Souko like a normal person. She never walked on eggshells around her, even after she’d learned she was sick. And even with all her prickliness, Souko could tell that she had a kind heart, buried behind her sharp gaze and barbed comments. She wouldn’t have let Souko stay by her side otherwise.

The girl and those meetings were so odd, so detached from everything in her life — that sometimes Souko almost felt like she was hallucinating them. Like she was doing some forbidden rituals with a witch, and not just playing childish games.

There was only ever the two of them in that forest, after all — no one else here to confirm the real from the surreal.

Her rendez-vous with the forest girl was the most exciting part of her day, and she spent the whole time thinking about what new games they would play next.

Wishing that today would finally be the day she win — would be the day she finally earn her name.

Earn the right to be her friend.

“Are you going out again?”

Her father stopped her just as she was about to leave the house, and Souko startled. “Ah, yes…”

A worried look crossed his face. “Souko… I’m glad you seem to be so happy, lately — really, but… You need to be more careful. Your body is still…”

“I know,” Souko said, maybe a little more forcefully than she intended. Of course she knew her body was still frail. It was her body, after all — she understood the consequences of its weakened state better than anyone. “I’m careful, Dad, I promise. You don’t need to worry.”

But of course, that was probably a meaningless thing to say. Her father would always worry regardless of what she said.

“…Is that a friend that you see like that every day?” He asked. “I know you said you’ve been getting along better with your classmates lately…”

Souko opened her mouth, then hesitated a little.

She still hadn’t said anything to her father about the forest girl. She hadn’t said anything about her to anyone, period.

She wasn’t really sure why.

She’d told Dad about the classmates she’d started to talk to — they weren’t really friends yet, but they were nice, and Souko would like to become closer.

That, too, was thanks to the forest girl, in a way. It wasn’t like she had encouraged to talk to others or anything, but being able to have normal conversations with someone her age after having been isolated for so long had managed to cheer Souko up and make her feel braver.

The girl always looked so strong and confident, after all; solid as a rock, standing tall among the trees. Souko always felt like nothing could ever hurt or reach her.

So she’d thought that if she wanted to be worthy of befriending the forest girl, then she should try to befriend the more approachable kids at her school first.

But her classmates were different from the girl, and so Souko felt that she couldn’t simply tell Dad about her like she would with a normal classmate. Maybe she wanted to become friends with her for real before telling him — or maybe… maybe she just wanted to keep her as a secret. For now.

Something only Souko knew about.

Her father had still noticed the changes, though, and he looked simultaneously happy and worried about them. He’d already been very concerned from the start, when Souko went back to school, and then about the fact he could tell his daughter had clearly struggled to fit in at their new place. And now he clearly wasn’t happy about her escapades after school; didn’t like her going outside to play around in the forest. Souko sympathized with his feelings, knew that he was only worried for her; but it had been the best she’d felt in such a long time, and she wasn’t about to let that go.

Dad said nothing for a moment, then narrowed his eyes at Souko — and only when she noticed his suspicious look did she realizes that she was blushing.

“…Is that person you’re seeing a boy?”

“Wha— N-No! I-It’s not like that… we’re just…”

Her father laughed a little, and waved his hand. “Sorry, that’s none of my business. But you don’t need to be embarrassed about it, you know. It’s normal, at your age.”

“I-It’s really not like that…”

And it’s not a boy.

But Dad didn’t seem he would believe her no matter what she could say, so Souko felt it would be pointless to argue further. Instead, she went to her rendez-vous spot with the forest girl, and as usual they played together, Souko lost, and then they talked for a while. At some point, the girl took her hand and dragged her somewhere else. Her hand was rugged, and her skin sturdy — but it felt warm.

Souko wished she could keep holding her hand forever.

Maybe Dad isn’t entirely wrong, she thought then, looking at the girl’s pretty long hair flowing in the wind, her heart skipping a beat at the sight.

If she were a boy, maybe I would fall in love with her.

It would be so easy to fall for her. She was so beautiful and strong and fun. Souko was certain most boys at her school must be crushing on her.

(She’d inadvertently said this, one day, and to her utter surprise the girl bursts out laughing ; so hard she had to hold her stomach, and Souko had never seen her laugh so loudly and for so long before.

“No way!” She’d exclaimed after calming down. “Boys don’t like me, at all.”

“H-Huh?” Souko let out. She didn’t think she would lie about this, but she heavily doubted that was true. Maybe no one ever confessed to her, but there was just no way not a single person had at least some feelings for someone as charming as her.

The girl grinned, her green eyes boring straight into Souko’s. “I scare them. Well, to be honest, I don’t really like boys either.”

Souko didn’t know why, but at these words her cheeks flushed and she felt a small warmth of hope bloom in her chest.)

Late in the evening, when Souko came home, the first thing she did was going out in the garden, just as twilight was starting to set.

The place was still barren. Back at their old home, they used to have a garden with a lot of colorful flowers — hibiscus, daisies, orchids, tulips, marigolds… Her mother’s flowers, that Souko loved to take care of; the first thing she would see upon waking up, a rainbow of delicate, shiny petals. In their new house, a lot of things were different, but Dad had made a point to get her a bedroom where she could see the garden too, just because he knew how much Souko had liked it before.

She finally wanted to start feeling at home here, too. So maybe she could start by planting some flowers. Dad would probably like that as well — he’d loved their flowers too.

One day — after she’ll finally be able to learn the forest girl’s name and become her friend, Souko will invite her to her home and introduce her father to her.

Show her her flower garden.

But in the meantime, the forest girl would stay her little secret — something that was hers and hers only.

* * *

One of Souko’s new favorite things was when she was able to surprise the girl.

She always thought a lot about the types of games she could propose to her — even asked her uncle and dad to give her some new ideas. And every day, it felt like the girl was surprised to still find her here in the forest with a new challenge. Almost like she expected her to suddenly stop coming any time now.

How silly, Souko thought. There’s no way I’ll ever stop coming to see you, even if I wanted to.

But even so, she’d never seen the girl as shocked as when she decided to show up one day with lunch boxes in her hands.

“What’s this?” She asked in a bewildered tone, her pale green eyes pinned on Souko like a cat’s.

“Lunch.”

“I can see that,” the girl snapped back sharply, but by now Souko was used to her curtness. She could be a little mean sometimes in her way of speaking, but Souko had come to learn it wasn’t necessarily because she was annoyed. “I was asking why you brought this here— and why you brought two of these.”

Souko flushed a little, but still didn’t let go of the girl’s eyes.

“Well, I… I was just thinking, that you often seems hungry when we meet, and also, how you’re very thin, and so— I just thought that maybe you should just eat a little more. There’s meat in there, and…”

The girl narrowed her eyes at her. “Who do you think you are? My mom?”

Souko blushed even further, and looked away. That did seems a little silly and pretentious to bring that girl a lunch out of the blue, when she put it into words like that. But she couldn’t help it, and— truthfully, Souko had started to get quite worried about her.

It was often that the girl’s belly would suddenly start gurgling in the middle of one their matches, and Souko had noticed how she seemed much lighter than a girl her age should be (absolutely not because Souko was staring her at a little too much, of course; that had nothing to do with this). She’d once asked her if she was eating enough — and then the girl had snorted, rolling her eyes. But she hadn’t replied. So Souko thought, that she could…

But maybe it had been rude of her to do. Just as she was about to apologize though, the girl suddenly grabbed her lunch box and chopsticks, and Souko barely had the time to turns her head towards her that she saw her open the box and starts digging in.

“What?” The girl shot back, catching her staring. “You did say it was for me, right?”

Souko smiled, and nodded enthusiastically. “Y-Yes, of course!”

And so she quietly watched her eat away the whole meal with a smile she couldn’t quite manage to hide. She didn’t even left a single crumb — which on the one hand, Souko was happy about, but on the other it definitely had her more concerned, because that seemed to confirm the fact she truly didn’t get enough to eat at her house.

Souko could never brings herself to ask, but she has the distinct feeling that things were… not great at home, for the girl.

To start with, it was strange for a teenager to hang out in a forest so far away like this. The girl always seemed to be all alone, too; and she was spending so much time here… it didn’t seem like she had any other friends. Much like Souko. But much more worrisome was the fact that she was often hurt. Souko frequently caught glimpse of scratches, bandages, and bruises covering her body. Some of them might be because of her playing around in the woods — and Souko had absolutely seen her doing a lot of reckless things that would get her injured — but…

Others must have been made by someone, Souko was pretty sure.

She tried to ask her a couple of times about her family, but the girl always brushed her asides and changed the topic when she did. Even Souko talked to her sometimes about her father and her uncle and her family, but the girl would never say anything back about herself. She clearly didn’t want to talk about her life at home. So Souko respected that — even if she didn’t like it.

She didn’t want to jump to conclusion about things she couldn’t possibly know either, but… she still worried.

“H-How was it?” Souko decided to ask, trying to stop thinking about such morose things.

“Hm? Oh, good. It was really good.”

Souko beamed. “Really?”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“Hehe, that’s true. Thank you! I’m so glad you like it.”

The girl actually stared at her and lifted an eyebrow at her words. “‘Thank you”?”

“Ah… I’m the one who made that.”

She had woken up earlier this morning specifically to prepare it, following her mother’s old recipe. Dad had been so surprised to see her in the kitchen — it had been the first time she cooked anything since she got sick. Until now, he’d been the one taking care of most of the cooking — or sometimes it was her aunt, when she was home.

Souko had forgotten how much fun cooking actually was.

She used to do it quite frequently back then, but then stopped after she got sick, just like most of her hobbies — and even now that she was recovering, she hadn't gone back to them. Even though now she could easily try them again without endangering her health. Gardening was the same, too. She wondered if she’d have as much fun gardening, if she did it again now.

It’d be nice if I could do those things with her, too, she had thought this morning while cutting off vegetables. The only things she did with the girl was playing games and talking, but she was sure they’d have fun doing other type of activities together as well. I wonder if she loves cooking and gardening…

The idea made her so happy that she had decided to creates the prettiest lunch box for the girl — as colorful as her old flower garden used to be — putting shades of red and green and pink all over, carving orange carrots in little flowers, putting the yellow egg yolk in the form of a sunflower.

Each color so vivid and lovely, each of them suiting the forest girl.

The memories of this morning made Souko smile, and she was only brought back to the present moment thanks to a strong wind blowing through her short dark hair. She turned her head towards the girl, about to apologize for her absentmindedness, but then stopped.

To her surprise, the girl actually seemed really taken aback, eyes wide and mouth agape. Was she truly that shocked by the fact Souko could cook?

(Or was it because she’d cooked for her, specifically?)

“O-Oh,” the girl stuttered — and for a bewildering, fascinating moment, Souko saw her cheeks reddens slightly.

Is she… blushing?

The moment disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and Souko almost thought she’d made it up, a conjured illusion of her mind. But the scarlet on her otherwise white cheeks, and her embarrassed expression, was engraved inside Souko's heart, and she couldn’t help the wide grin that then spreads on her lips.

Of course, scarlet was just as pretty as any other colors on the girl’s face.

She looked just like a flower herself, in all her silver and green and white and red.

Souko wished she was brave enough to kiss her just then.

Instead, she quietly promised to do everything in her power to see that expression on her face once again.

* * *

She couldn’t even remember how she managed to get home, that evening.

Her head wouldn’t stop pounding, so much that she was unable to think. Her body was so heavy that every step felt like torture. Her heart seemed like a dead weight inside her chest; a burden pulling her down and down.

She felt just like that day she’d collapsed for the first time, two years ago; the day that marked the start of the end of her normal life. The only lucid thing she could register was her voice, echoing inside her skull again and again and again.

“Reiko. My name is Reiko Natsume.”

“Go away.”

“You look pale. It’s starting to rain, so you should go home.”

“You should go home.”

Souko knew she should never have gone home the moment she turned around. She knew she should have stayed; that she should have kept talking to her — her forest girl, her ghost of an acquaintance; the lovely, strange, colorful person she fell in love with.

But her voice had been so cold, when she told her to go away.

Her eyes were blank and sharp at the same time, so different from the way she usually looked at her, and Souko couldn’t stand to see that.

And she just hadn’t… she had never even expected that she could be…

It made sense, if she really thought about it; what other teenage girl would spend all her time alone in the forest, but the rumored weird delinquent from the neighboring town?

But Souko had never thought of her like that until now; both seemed so unrelated in her mind, and she felt so shocked she hadn’t been able to properly process it.

And now her duel partner had already vanished, like a mirage of the woods, like she’d never existed at all.

Souko had taken her name, and then nothing of the girl was left.

Now she was all alone in the rain, and the blue of the sky had faded away, replaced with nothing but a foggy, looming gray.

Souko’s steps vacillated, and her head still hammering, she fell on the ground.

She’d finally won, after training for so long — she finally knew her name — and yet she still wasn’t… still couldn’t be her friend.

She needed to go back, she needed to apologize, she needed to talk to her—

But the sound of the rain and the coldness of Reiko Natsume’s voice were the only thing she could hear before her consciousness slipped away.

* * *

The following days were spent in a blur.

Souko barely even registered her father’s voice or her uncle’s hands or the doctor’s visits. She felt like she was in another dimension, far away from this house, this town, this country.

She felt like she was still stuck in that forest, alone with Reiko, the rest of the world non-existent.

In her dreams, Reiko was here, by her side; pretty in all colors of the rainbow, and she smiled, and laughed, and talked. They played games together, they cooked, they gardened.

In her dreams, Souko apologized. She told her she hadn’t meant to leave, she told her she didn’t care about the rumors about her. She told her that to Souko, she wasn’t a violent scary girl, but a fun, and beautiful, and kind person.

She told her she loved her.

In her dreams, Souko was brave enough to finally kiss her.

But then she opened her eyes, and she was all alone in her bed, and there was only the blue of the sky from her bedroom’s window.

One night, she had a different dream, though.

She felt like she heard someone crying, and then Reiko was there, blue petals falling over her hair and uniform.

As she woke up, Souko couldn’t remember what the dream had been about.

* * *

It took her three whole days before she was able to stand again.

Dad and Uncle were relieved, but Souko couldn’t share any of their enthusiasm. She still felt sick, but insisted nevertheless to go back to school. She couldn’t really bring herself to talk to anyone there though, even as her classmates fussed about her health; her mind focused on only one single person — and as soon as the day ended, she ran towards the forest, towards their usual rendez-vous spot.

(She knew she shouldn’t run, she was still coughing, she still felt so weak — but she couldn’t help it.

She had to see Reiko again, as quickly as possible.)

“Reiko?” She exclaimed upon arriving, but there was no one else.

There's no one yet, Souko reminded herself, trying to stay positive. I’m still early. She could come later.

“Reiko!”

She repeated her name for a while — and couldn’t help but think that if only the circumstances were different, she would feel so proud over it.

To have finally been able to learn her name, to be able to call it out like that.

But that didn’t matter much if no one was there to respond to it. To call Souko back.

I don’t even know how it’s written, she thought.

She tried to think of all the combinations of characters to write ‘Reiko’ that could fit her the most, but just like with colors, she couldn’t decide upon a single one. All of them could suit her.

She would have to ask her about it, next time she saw her.

At least she felt pretty certain on how to spell ‘Natsume.’

All-seeing eyes of the summer, the season of ghosts and spirits.

Souko sat at their usual place.

She waited.

She kept staring left and right, attentive to every sound; trying to catch the slightest glimpse of a silver thread.

But by the time dusk came, there was still no one.

She was still all alone.

* * *

Souko stopped talking to her classmates.

A few days after her last encounter with Reiko, she’d asked the girl from her class who’d first told her about the violent high schooler from next town if she knew anything else — but she’d ended up getting into an argument with her. Her classmates had always been very nice up until now, but as soon as she started asking about Reiko Natsume, they completely changed tune and started spewing all those terrible things about her — that she was a violent delinquent, that she was crazy, that she hurt people.

Souko couldn’t help but defend her. Her classmates had never even met Reiko — what did they know about her? But everyone refused to listen to her. They almost all had a specific creepy or terrible anecdote about Reiko Natsume; she hit my cousin, she talked to trees, she burned down a shop — I tell you, that Natsume girl is bad news! C’mon, Morinaga, why do you even want to associate with someone like that? — and so Souko stopped talking to them.

She didn’t mind. She had no intention to keep hanging around such judgmental people who spoke badly of someone purely because of some rumors they’d heard.

She herself felt so ashamed, to have simply believed those hearsay and repeated them thoughtlessly. She had believed she was doing the right thing by warning Reiko about a potentially dangerous person, because she cared about her and didn’t want anything to happen to her — but she couldn’t even imagine how Reiko must have felt hearing this. How badly Souko must have hurt her. And then, when she’d learned her name, Souko had just run away…

She wouldn’t be surprised if Reiko never wanted to see her again.

But even so, she couldn’t just leave things like that. She had to apologize, at least — she had to tell her that she… she didn’t think any of that, about her.

So she tried to ask around about Reiko, tried to find out if anyone knew where she could live, what school she went to — but whenever she did, she only received vague, uncertain answers. Reiko Natsume was a weird orphan who kept being passed around among families like an unwanted stray, so it was hard to keep track of where she was.

Nobody wanted her, and nobody tried to know anything about her.

She's just a poor crazy girl, was the kindest thing one could hear on her behalf.

The more Souko learned about Reiko Natsume, the less it made sense.

This weird, insane, violent girl was nothing at all like the girl she’d gotten to know. Her Reiko could be a little cold, and a little too blunt, but she was nice, and fun, and amazing. It was like two entirely different people sharing the same name. Souko couldn’t even begin to comprehend how anyone would say such awful things about her.

In the end, she wasn’t able to find anything more about her, and so she had no other choice but to go back to the forest, and wait. Which she did, day after day, even against her family’s protests, even when it rained, even when her health kept deteriorating.

She continued waiting alone.

But sometimes, just sometimes, she felt like she could feel another presence.

Like a ghost sitting by her side, waiting with her, sharing in her lost love and her sadness.

Souko thought back to the legends she’d heard about the forest from her classmates; the strange things Reiko would do sometimes — the stares behind her shoulder, dragging her away forcefully just because a branch had snapped, the way she’d gotten startled during their last match, as if she had been distracted by something…

Maybe Souko wasn’t so alone, after all.

Maybe there truly was someone else by her side, someone she couldn’t see.

Maybe if Reiko had seemed so radiant and vibrant, that was because she actually was able to see another world: a world full of new colors, invisible to others.

Souko found comfort at the idea; that she truly had a companion to share her feelings — her pain — with, even if only a little.

* * *

It was during a day with a completely clear blue sky when she had that dream again.

Souko had stopped being able to go to school a while ago, and thus at the same time she stopped being able to go to the forest as well — the first one she didn’t care about anymore, but the second was more troubling.

She didn’t really think Reiko would come back by now — but she still kept coming there, just in case, like a last prayer.

She wondered if her companion she couldn’t see would feel lonely now that she wouldn’t be there anymore. She wondered if they would miss her.

Where could Reiko be now? Was she still sleeping in a forest, talking to creatures only she could sees?

Was she still all alone?

Souko wished wherever she was, it was far, far away from all those people who spoke and treated her so badly. She wished she was able to find a friend, someone who would love her for the person she truly was and would stand by her side no matter what — even if that person couldn’t be Souko.

Her father was in the living room now, sleeping. He had spent the whole night crying, no matter how much Souko had tried to comfort him.

She wished she could find the right words for him — tell him that she was fine, that her life had still been full of wonders and happiness despite all the suffering, that he’d been a wonderful father — but they both knew there was nothing she could do that would soothe his pain. She wished she could apologize to him, for leaving him all alone just like Mom did, but she didn’t even have the energy to do so anymore. The rest of the family — her uncle and aunt and grandmother — should arrive tonight, and Souko hoped they’ll be able to do a better job than her at comforting him.

She looked up from her bed, at the window in front of her.

The large sky spread wide before her, and it was so deep and blue, and Souko wondered if this was how it looked the day she was born — the day her parents decided to name her after the saddest of all colors.

Although Souko had stopped finding blue as sad as she used to. Now when she thought of blue, she thought of the way Reiko used to say her name so gently, of the blue candy in her palm, of the blue flowers she saw in a dream that she couldn’t remember.

The blue of Souko.

From here, she could also see the barren garden — in the end, she hadn’t been able to plant anything there. She closed her eyes, slowly, and tried to picture the colorful flowers she would’ve liked to put there, the ones she wished she could’ve shown to Reiko.

As her mind drifted away, she heard someone crying.

A gentle voice, from a gentle presence.

Souko smiled, because she knew that presence; it was the same person — the same creature — that had kept her company all this time, while she was waiting for a girl she loved that would never come.

Like with her father, she wished she could comfort them, but nothing came to her mind.

However, as she kept straying farther and farther away from reality, a sight suddenly opened up to her eyes.

She’s in a meadow.

A flower field with blue, blue, blue petals everywhere — fluttering, dancing, as far as the eye can see.

And here, in the middle of the blue flowers, all alone, is her forest girl.

Tears wells up in Souko’s eyes, but she smiles, big and wide — and do the one thing she wishes she could’ve done months ago: she calls out her name.

“Reiko.”

The girl she loves turns around, and as her green eyes melt upon recognition, she has the most beautiful and genuine smile Souko has ever seen.

All the colors of the sky, of the forest and of the meadow gets reflected in her long silver hair, and blue has never looked so joyful.

* * *

Note: The first time I read those chapters, I didn’t even realize that Soranome implied Souko died at the end until someone pointed it out, and I can’t stop thinking about how terribly sad it is. I suppose one could argue maybe Souko just moved at the end and that’s why she stopped coming, but it doesn’t seem likely with the way Soranome phrased it. At least with Reiko, there’s a chance she was loved and happy for a while with the grandfather and then with her daughter afterwards, even if she still ended up losing them at the end. But Souko never got that chance. I only take comfort with the idea she had a loving family who took care of her. (And yes, if anyone’s wondering, I decided she was raised by a single father as a parallel to Tanuma.) But it’s also terrible there seems to be some implications that if Reiko had stayed then Souko wouldn’t have died, given it seemed to be the youkai of the forest that amplified her illness (much like how Tanuma has gotten healthier since meeting Natsume).

I went back and forth about the idea of Souko cutting ties with her classmates in the aftermath of her losing Reiko, because that also felt a little mean to her, but I honestly think she wouldn’t have tolerated anyone speaking badly of Reiko and would feel guilty for listening to the rumors.

I want to try writing something else less sad about them, but truthfully I really love the tragedy of their story haha. Still, maybe I’ll give them a silly little happy ending one day.

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bagheerita · 2 months

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Writing Patterns (Tag Game)

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

Thanks for the tag @chaniis-atlantis!! ❤

(I recently posted a bunch of my old fics to AO3, so doing this strictly by post date includes exactly 2 fics I've written in the last 14 years. So this is last 10 new fics posted to AO3, go:)

Wraithspeaker (SGA) First Scientist of the Tertiary hive sworn to the Commander-known-by-his-years-remembered-at-the-long-Siege-marked-by-the-Queen-in-recognition-for-his-prowess-in-repelling-the-Enemy-and-again-by-the-Queen-born-in-fire-and-marked-again-and-bound-to-the-human-John-Sheppard, stands at the interface in his workspace, checking that his underlings have finished entering the data from the tests run in the previous cycle.

Even Bad Wolves Can Be Good (Teen Wolf) Peter paces the room he's been confined to and has to admit that things aren't looking great at the moment.

(our heart’s a mess) But It's Our Only Defense, To Brave the Wilderness (SGA) Teyla and Ronon don't stop him as John walks past them out of the conference room.

What Can I Say, This House Is Falling Apart (SGA) The Phoenix settles into orbit above Atlantis and Captain Hicks reports, "Still no response to our hails."

Customary (SGA) “I believe among your people it is customary to shake hands?” The Wraith grins.

Jade (SGA) Jade has never known anything but the hive.

Since We've No Place to Go (SGA) PS4-987 is a nice enough planet when they first arrive.

Mushroom Hunting (SGA) The forest on M8A-C26 was cool, the air heavy with the scent of recent rain, and fallen leaves rustled under their boots as they walked away from the Stargate.

Where I Fit in the Picture (Holiday) Ned Seton was relatively sober as the clock chimed 3:00 but was not planning to stay that way.

Sunlight (SGA) The sun was a comfort on her skin as Teyla lay back in her chair, relaxing for the first time in what felt like ages, soaking in the warmth.

Patterns? (lol why did I decide to do this after I posted Wraithspeaker??🤣 I was throwing some conceptual stuff at the wall, because I feel like the whole way that Wraith understand the concept of "names" is so much bigger than the way that us spoken-language-people do. anyway) Um, patterns... I dunno. I usually write in present tense, but sometimes in past tense (which is not fun when I change my mind halfway through a fic 🤣😭). I do like to start the fic right away, no long prologues or information at the beginning, because when I read I tend to drop books that don't hook me in right away with something interesting so that reflects in what I write. Reading through these I do feel like I tend to establish location right away, too.

This was really interesting thanks for the opportunity!!

#tag game #my writing

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ashes-writing · 2 years

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sweet emotion pt two | stranger things ; e.munson

A/N ; So I posted the first part to this yesterday and honestly, I wasn't too sure if I'd even be able to come up with a second part. But I did and so, here we are. So apparently, not only does this Henderson!fem reader have a whole lotta sass / artsy and witchy stoner vibes but also, she apparently does not like large crowds that much and she's showing a lil bit of a softer side here. Also, pretty sure if I were to write this one in the future as an adult (with her man Eds) she'd be involved in animal rescue or something.

Pairing ; Eddie Munson x Henderson!fem reader ( who yikes, sorry.. does read like an OC bc a very detailed personality and such. I tried hard not to but with this one and the one for Steve with a henderson!fem reader, the details just kept coming, oops rip. so if that breaks immersion for anyone, I am so so so so so sorry. I'm still learning how to do reader / y/n type stuff.)

Timeline / Other Stuff to Note ; part I can be found by clicking. As I stated previously, there is no Upside Down / unholy events that happen to deal with in this. It's just another lil normal slice of life thing. So if you like those -and you like the idea of our metal god living and thriving, maybe you'll like this. I am lowkey tempted to have little brother Dustin and his buddies try to play matchmaker or something at some point.

Tag List ; @musichealsscars @allelitesmut @aries-arcade @hcloangcls and a courtesy tag to @rampagewriting - feel free to ignore if you're not up to it bb, it's fine. if you'd like to be added to my taglists for anything including Stranger Things, please let me know or add yourself -> here. Also, I want to tag @rollingwiccan bc their comment made my entire night and I thank them so much.

Warnings ; mentions of anxiety (large crowds / people in general), heavy sexual tension. Lots of little 'hidden gestures' and mutual pining angst, brief hints of a bad previous relationship -Henderson!Fem reader previously dated a huge jackass named Troy. Study session turned impromptu guitar lesson -be warned i was really vague with all musical related terminology bc I am.. not a musician.

Other Stuff ; tag list doc || my rules - fandoms and some characters I write for || requests are open (pls.. pls... send me things) but they're limited to headcanon asks + filth/fluff alphabet letters. I beg of you -> send me things.

I do not consent to my work being reposted elsewhere or copied/reworked/rewritten and reposted here or elsewhere. You don't own this, I do. So like... don't steal my shit.

The sign leading into Forest Hills trailer park is hanging askew, the chain that formerly held up the left side abandoned hope probably well before you were born. You try to remember which trailer Eddie said he lived in as you drive slow down the only road in or out and then you finally spot Eddie’s van parked haphazardly in front of one so you stop and pull in across the lawn from it.

An older man is standing in the doorway as you finish jamming out to Led Zeppelin and kill the engine to your car. You get out after you grab your books and notebooks. As you’re approaching the door, Wayne chuckles to himself.

“You lost?” he calls out.

“Nope. Eddie lives here, right?” you ask the question as you shuffle your scuffed combat boots against the dry lawn and pop a noisy blue bubble with your gum. Right off the bat, Wayne is not sure what to think about you. You’re a girl Eddie talks about non-stop lately and normally, that worries him because the kid tends to get real caught up in the idea of a person and then they pull his father’s stunt and disappear when the kid needs ‘em most. Then there’s the other ones who treat his nephew real bad and whisper and stare or go out of their way to avoid getting near him in a crowd. Wayne’s always been protective, Eddie isn’t just his nephew. Eddie is the only good thing in his life. Eddie might as well be his own damn son and the way people treat him always makes Wayne stay on guard.

“You the kid with the snake?” Wayne asks with a quiet laugh. You curtsy and smile. “And three cats, a lizard and as of last night, a baby bird with a broken wing.” you add, making Eddie’s uncle laugh. You, on the other hand, you are beyond nervous because you feel like you’re being sized up. Scrutinized.

But then, to be fair, you can’t blame his uncle for being protective. People either treat Eddie like shit or they all shrink away in fear and whisper behind his back. Or start dumb rumors.

“Dustin.. That Henderson boy.. Is he your little brother? Always see you puttering around in that death trap out there with him and those two other boys, that little girl…” Wayne asks. You smile and nod. “Mhm. He’s in Eddie’s Hellfire thing.”

Wayne feels a little less ill at ease. He asked about Dustin because he always sees you around town with the group of boys and the little red-head across the road.

He steps out of the doorway and you take a deep breath. Maybe you passed the little test you feel like you’ve just been given. “Eddie!” you yell out over the guitar from behind the closed door at the end of the trailer.

Wayne chuckles to himself because you’ve already taken off your combat boots and he’s seen the mismatched socks you’re wearing. Not only that, you’re looking around. He saw you stop by the picture of his nephew in middle school, smile a little when you picked it up and put it back down.

You remember the leftovers your mom sent with you and sit them down on the flimsy dining table as you turn back to the older man. “It’s uh.. Chili.” you smile at him and twist hair around your finger. You’re at least halfway sure that he’s on the fence about you and normally, that wouldn’t bother you but this is Eddie’s uncle. He’s important to Eddie, therefore, you want him to like you.

Without giving away the fact that you -an actual chaos demon according to most, have kind of been in love with his nephew for so long that it’s probably not funny and it might seem a little… weird if that ever came to light.

“Should be good later. Gonna get cold tonight.” Wayne muses. He yells his nephew’s name but Eddie keeps on playing. You’ve wandered back over to that photo of his nephew in middle school again and you’re holding it, staring at the frame. Shuffling your mismatched socks on the floor. He starts to get the sense that you’re a little awkward. And he starts to see where his nephew insists that your whole ‘tough’ act is a front.

He’s still undecided about you, but he warms just a little more. Maybe you’re a good kid and you’re not like the others in town who keep a wide berth while whispering, staring and pointing behind his nephew’s back.

“Is that his room?” you nod to the closed door and Wayne chuckles, nodding. “Mhm.”

“I got it, sir.” you’re grinning way too much and this is when Wayne comes to the conclusion that you enjoy the fact that you’re a little chaos magnet.

Or that’s what Eddie refers to you as. And some of the stories he’s told Wayne about you, well.. Wayne Munson doesn’t entirely disagree. His favorite was probably the one where you filled a pail with glitter, rigged it over a classroom door and when the one kid who was always messing with Eddie the most walked in, you pulled a rope and covered the kid in sparkly pink and purple glitter. Eddie also told him about you keeping a packet of the stuff and randomly blowing it at people throughout the day.

You’re creeping towards the closed door. When you’re standing in front of it, you have to take a deep breath. You throw open the door to Eddie’s bedroom and you promptly lose all coherent thought because Eddie is sitting in a chair with his guitar in his lap, no shirt on and his hair caught up in a familiar black elastic.

Your black hair elastic. The one you thought you lost at some point earlier in the day.

You were going to just yell something random but you can’t stop staring.

Eddie looks up while you’re preoccupied and he sits down the guitar in it’s resting place and stands. “My uncle didn’t like… Interrogate you or anything, right?”

“Mhm.” you quickly add with a soft laugh, “But it’s okay.”

Eddie swears under his breath. Not only for the fact that his uncle interrogated you like he does every new person Eddie brings back to the trailer but he was hoping you’d change before you came by but you didn’t and now he knows he’ll be totally fucked for focus and coherent thought because you’re wearing the little black dress with a white turtleneck beneath it. And the damned stockings that stop at your thigh that he stared way too long at earlier when you were sitting on the table in the cafeteria so you could talk to Astrid, because she was sitting in Gareth’s lap.

“You sure?” Eddie asks.

“You act like I’m made of glass, Munson. I’m razors, remember? Razors and barbed wire.” you laugh softly. And as you say it, Eddie thinks to himself that you might act like you’re tough but he’s definitely figuring out that you’re not really.

“Yeah, I keep forgetting.” Eddie blinks because he was doing it again, staring at the shape of your lips. To be fair, the way you’re always biting the bottom one is a distraction. A huge one.

The tension is creeping back in and it’s heavier. So much heavier. You step up to him because you were going to sit your books and notebooks down on the nightstand but Eddie took a step forward. You gulp and you definitely do your best to keep your eyes down because if you don’t, you’re going to stare. And it will be awkward. Your eyes catch on the tattoo on his arm and you giggle, raising his arm. “You didn’t wash off the marker.” you smile up at him.

That smile is something he’ll do anything to see again. That smile is the whole reason he’s started to just let you trace around the bats tattooed on his arm when you’re bored or nervous. He can usually tell you’re more nervous around larger crowds because earlier, you were talked into sitting in on a Hellfire meeting by Dustin and you were sitting between Dustin and Eddie at the table before it started and the more people who filed into the classroom, the closer you’d get to him and the more you’d drag your finger over the bats.

So he definitely knows by now you are not nearly half as tough as you make yourself out to be.

And it’s like a fucking drug to him, honestly. The more little glimpses of your softer side that come out, the more he tries to fight whatever is happening. But lately, he hasn’t been doing so great at fighting it off.

And everyone notices. And he has been getting some serious hell for it.

Like earlier when Freak -one of the guys in his band and Hellfire, noticed you sitting on the tabletop, between Dustin and Eddie and he saw you glancing around the room, quick to look away and down, twisting Eddie’s rings on his fingers. Freak teased the hell out of him after the meet up ended because Eddie actually forgot what he was going to say at one point and the asshole found it hilarious to point out later.

His direct quote was something like “Nobody else gets to do half the shit she does, Munson. Is she your girl?”

It was a question Eddie hadn’t answered. But when the idiot said something seconds later about asking you to come over and watch movies, Eddie had pretty much taken it upon himself to tell the guy to try it and see what happened.

Your laugh prompts him to focus, stop slipping into his usual daze. You’re sprawled across his mattress, your notebook and the textbook open in front of you. Curses flow from your lips fluidly like a second language and Eddie sits there, watching you as you make a face of sheer annoyance at the text open in front of you.

“How the hell am I supposed t’ help you with this shit if I can’t even figure it out? Jesus christ.” you grumble as you sit up and slam the textbook shut while pouting.

Wayne peeks into the room. “Off to work.” he dangles the keys to the van. “Behave, Eddo.”

“Always.” Eddie laughs.

Wayne gazes at you a second or two and it’s enough that he catches you just staring at his nephew while Eddie isn’t looking and this puts the older man just a little more at ease.

“Nice meetin ya, kid.” he finally says to you before closing the door.

“Fuck word problems.” you grumble not even three seconds later. “Look, if I see one more word problem I’m going to lose my mind.. I.. Can we take a break for a few minutes?” you ask quietly. “Just til I can figure out what I’m missing.”

Eddie chuckles. “Yeah.”

It’s started to rain and the sound of rain hitting the metal roof is relaxing. When the silence is too heavy, you can’t take it anymore, so you attempt to start a conversation.

“Gareth is in for it this weekend.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Astrid’s going to invite him over while her mom’s out of town. You know where this is going.” you laugh softly. “I’m just glad she’s happy, man.”

“I’d say the same about Gare but he’s actually pretty fucking obnoxious lately.” Eddie laughs when he says it and you pretend to pout. “Sir, I happen to think it’s adorable for them.”

“Meh..”

You stick out your tongue and Eddie chuckles quietly.

He reaches out and picks up his guitar, starting to play for a little bit. It’s giving him something to do with his hands and if he’s focused on the guitar and music, he’s not staring at you like a complete idiot.

Only now, you’re the one staring like a complete idiot. Utterly fucked for focus. When he glances over at you at one point, it’s all you can do to pretend to be real absorbed on the blank paper in the open notebook in front of you. You can feel him watching you.

“You stare at my hands a lot.”

His statement has you choking on air and you cough. He puts down the guitar and leans across, hitting you between the shoulders. Laughing as he locks eyes with you, giving you a concerned look. “Are you alright?” he asks quietly, the laughter dying away.

You stick out your tongue. “I do not stare at your hands a lot..” you drag your hand through your hair. You’re lying and you know it. And Eddie’s aware of your little fixation. He just called you out on it. You shrug without saying anything for a second or two. “Your rings.”

“Yeah. I uh… noticed earlier in the lunchroom when everybody piled in at the end of lunch you were kind of playing with them.” Eddie rubs his chin thoughtfully. “You’re not a real big crowd person, hm?”

“I hate anywhere super crowded, holy shit. It’s like I can’t–” you trail off, laughing at yourself. “Nothing. It’s dumb and if you tell anybody that, I’ll put you on your ass, Munson.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I’ve noticed it for a while now. You fidget a lot when you have to speak in class or you’re in a crowd and you don’t have something t’ focus on. Kinda why I don’t say anything whenever you play with them lately.”

What he doesn’t say is that he also doesn’t stop you because he likes it because the softness of your hand is kind of soothing to him too. And more than a time or two, he’s been in a heated discussion with Mike or Erica or Freak or Gare and he’ll catch sight of you and take a deep breath and it’s like he’s fine.

“What about my rings though?” he asks, chuckling. Trying to keep the conversation lighter in the hopes that maybe you’ll open up a little more. Dustin advised that you were nothing if not guarded. An on-again and off-again asshole named Troy was mentioned, and if he did half the things Dustin told him about, Eddie hoped that this time the off was off for good.

Or that he could get his hands on the guy somehow, yeah… That’d be one fight he’d be willing to have.

Dustin said you used to be different. Happier. But then your parents got divorced and your dad stopped having anything to do with the three of you and then you got mixed up with the jerk Troy and now it’s like you’ve got a wall up or something.

You shrug. “I like ‘em?” you go quiet.

Every part of you is beyond tempted to blurt out the truth in all it’s bizarre glory. That you like his hands because they’re sturdy and warm, bigger than yours and a little rough. And the contrast whenever he accidentally touches you is kind of soothing.

But you’re not trying to make the awkwardness any worse than it is.

Eddie nods. “Thanks?” he chuckles and goes quiet. “Have you ever played guitar?” he asks, not sure where he’s going with it and almost instantly, he wants to kick himself because if he does what he’s tempted to do, it’s going to drive him crazy, being that close to you.

You shake your head. “Nope. Always wanted to try but I’m horrible at music.”

“C’mere.” he pats his lap and your brow raises. “You don’t… you don’t have to teach me.”

“We’ll call it a trade, alright? You’re tutoring me, so I can teach you guitar.”

You swallow down a massive lump in your throat and slip off of his bed, making the short step over to the chair. To make it a little less awkward, Eddie widens the gap between his legs and lets you sit down and get settled and then he puts the guitar in front of you and leans against your back a little, his arms around you. His hands over yours as he explains the different chords and finger positions to you, the warmth of his breath tickling at the shell of your ear. The scent of him dominating the space around you and you’re breathing in deep before you can stop yourself because it’s just that calming.

“Okay, show me again.” you laugh out when you mistakenly pluck the wrong chord.

“It’s this one.” Eddie wraps his hand around yours and guides it up the neck of the guitar a little higher. You get it right and glance back at him and he’s grinning.

You smile a little too. Giggle quietly.

“We need to get back to it.” you hate saying it so much. Eddie nods, clearing his throat. Pouting a little while you’re not looking because he honestly doesn’t want you to move. But he knows that you did agree to tutor him and to do that, he needs to focus.

The two of you settle across his mattress, him sprawled one direction and you the other, with the books open in front of you. You finally figure out the correct way to go about solving the word problem and you’re bouncing and laughing and he can’t help but smile. You help him through it really quick and then you move on to the next one and as you’re attempting to work through it, all he can do is stare. Watch the way your tongue juts out when you’re focused. Or the way you like to chew the end of your pencil.

Or the way your legs are up in the air, crossed at the knee behind you and he can see the mismatched socks that you’d worn with your boots and those distracting fucking thigh highs earlier. You look up at one point and push the notebook so he can see it. “Okay, if I have this figured out right, you have to divide and then subtract. But I could be wrong.” you point out what you did and watch as he does it on his own paper.

The math book is closed and you roll over onto his back. “Finally. Now we can get to the easier stuff.” you let out a relieved groan and he laughs. You remember that you wrote down what was going to be on a history quiz he’d have the next day and you sit up, rifling around through the organized chaos you call a notebook until you find the notes you made to give to him and you hold out the paper. “Learn that. You have a quiz tomorrow. We had it today so when I got to Art I wrote it all down real quick.” you’re rambling and it’s cute and he can’t help but laugh quietly as he takes it to read it.

You’re staring, watching as doe eyes scan the paper and the way his tongue drags the outline of his lips. You’re staring way, way too hard. When he looks up, you look down. Focus on the sketch you have going of a skull with a snake crawling in through the mouth with it’s head coming out of the nose. You’ve just started to put roses all around it, cute little dainty ones and a few sunflowers and daisies when Eddie clears his throat and rubs his forehead.

“We need another break.”

“Mhm. If you work too hard you’re not gonna retain anything I’m trying to help you learn.” you answer before going quiet. You sit down your pencil and Eddie reaches out, taking the notebook. Looking at the sketch.

He grins as he hands it back to you. “You’re good.”

You laugh and shake your head, twisting a strand of hair around your finger as you do it. “Not really.”

“No, this is really good.”

You give him a little smile and shrug. “Not as good as your bats. Or the design you drew for the t-shirts.”

“Oh you liked that?” he chuckles. Stunned a little because he had no idea anybody knew he was the one who’d designed the shirts.

“OH!” you laugh. “You gotta see this one.” you dig around until you find what you were helping Astrid work on earlier in art, she wanted to make adverts for the next gig. Eddie took the paper when you held it out and he chuckled. You laugh quietly. “Astrid, she uh.. She’s really going all in on this band girlfriend thing. She wanted to make adverts to pass out before the next show.”

“She did, huh?”

“Mhm. To quote her, I’m the only person she thought could come up with a dark and badass design. She wants to surprise Gare and get that put on a shirt too.”

Eddie snickered quietly. “Pretty sure he’ll just rip it off her.”

“Oh god, yeah. But it’s the thought, right? She wants to do it all soft pink when she gets the shirt made. I told her red. She refuses to listen.” you mock a gag at the mention of the color pink. Eddie snickers again and drags his fingers through his hair.

“She uh… She invited me to come with her to the Hideout.” you go quiet after you say it. “I told her I’d go.”

“Really?” Eddie’s smiling, a smile entirely too big and he knows it shouldn’t excite him this much because he’s trying like hell to just be okay with being your friend -or at least the guy you talk to and hang around with because said guy happens to be best friends with your little brother, he’s too afraid to push his luck.

He doesn’t want to make things weird or mess up what he hopes will be at least friendship.

And the things he feels are so deep. Intense. They’re a little terrifying for him, truth be told.

“Y’know it’s crowded most of the time.. Right?”

“Yeah. I figure I can just like… Hang out with her and maybe I won’t notice.” you answer quietly. What you’re not telling him is that you want to be there. You want to see him light up with joy doing one of the things he loves because seeing him happy makes you happy.

Because it’s both scary and sappy as hell.

And you’re not good at handling either thing, but it can be argued lately that you’re trying a little bit on the sap and sweetness front.

Trying is the active word.

“I’ll be there. If it gets too much you can come to the back until we go on or something.”

You nod and give him another smile. “Yeah. I’ll… I’ll do that if it gets weird.” you stammer quietly. You catch sight of the time and you gape. “Oh shit.” you laugh a little. “I should probably get going.”

“C’mon. I’ll walk out with ya. Make sure your tire isn’t going flat again before you go.” he stands and you make your way into the living room. You stop to pull on your boots, using him to prop against and stay steady as you do so. As you step out and the night air hits you, you shiver a little and he laughs. “Told you you should’ve brought a jacket.”

“Ha ha ha, Munson.” you step a little closer. He’s taller and he blocks the wind reasonably well. Not to mention, you couldn’t stop yourself if you tried. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” you smile as you open the door to your car and he leans against it, gazing down at you. “Don’t drive like you’ve got a thousand lives to spare, alright?”

“Yeah yeah, okay, fiiiine.” you laugh as you pull the door closed.

Eddie watches as you drive away, waiting outside until the taillights are gone from view. Then he sits on the step, lights the last cigarette of the day and takes several long and deep breaths. Because he’s starting to realize that Dustin Henderson is right. If he keeps fighting it much longer, it’s going to drive him crazy. And if he has to be perfectly honest with himself, he’s not entirely sure he wants to fight it anymore.

But every time he thinks he’s ready to stop fighting it, he’ll try to find some way to clue you in or bring it up and he comes up blank. Or he talks himself right out of it.

#eddie munson #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x henderson!fem reader imagine #eddie munson x henderson!fem reader fanfiction

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henry-fox-biggest-stan · 5 months

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This is badly written and doesn’t make any sense but I found it on my notes app. I wrote it yesterday in the middle of the night, fighting to stay awake because my body was tired but my head full of thoughts. I didn’t finish it but here you go:

The thing about Nico is than he’s up in flames and he’s also the one holding the match, his hands grasp his sword with all his strength everyday, knuckles becoming white from the force, while his hand can’t stop shaking, they can’t stop shaking, yet his aim is clean, perfected, like he did it a hundred times before, perhaps he did, perhaps he always did, perhaps he was born with his fist closed around, around what? around tragedy? around knowledge? Maria knew, she read him Dante’s inferno to him each night, preparing him, warning him, and nico always knew, perhaps he didn’t know he knew, but he knew, he was born with his fists closed, sword in hand, something had always waited for him, he didn’t know what, but he knew it was coming, he saw it on the way all the others kids in school had fathers and he only saw his a few times, he knew it on the way to America, leaving Italy behind, he knew it on the absence of memories, and he knew it on the casino’s bright lights, he knew it in the whispers and the mumbles and the ground beneath his feet the same way you knew a storm was coming.

Nico’s hands are never empty either his sword or the hades figure or his mythomagic cards or his sister’s hand or both of the hands closed in front of his chest, shielding, hiding, was he ashamed? defensive? or were his hands empty, the warmth of his sister’s hands gone, and he needed something to do with them?

He was always holding the sword, always the protector the knight the fighter, the last thing he held left him, hurt him, now he only wields something he can defense himself with, something than attacks, rather than caress. Does Nico have scars? freckles? birthmarks? which one of them is worse? the scars, the reminders, his battles, or the freckles, the pain, his sister, or the birthmarks, the memories, his mother. Which ones does he hide under clothing, which ones does he like more, which ones brings him the most sorrow, which ones were more painful to get? he had been willing to carve his own tomb after Bianca died, a soul for a soul, he saw her everywhere, in her his jacket, in his ring, in artemis’ cabin, in the forest in each and every single dream. All his memories were erased, he only had the ones with her, she was all around he couldn’t scape he couldn’t recall a world without her how could he live now in one? how could he remember how to be when she was the one guiding him in all the steps, who can grow me a new sister, who can see him like she did, would anyone ever, it was getting colder, the first winter snow falling, he was away from camp, the gods knew where but they wouldn’t tell him, he was alone, and hungry, and alone, and cold, and alone, and scared, and alone, the space next to him was empty, and he was alone. What would he do with his hands now? His sister’s hands were gone, on the ground, far away, his cards, the ones he always held, left at camp, childhood gone, and now? His hands were empty, they were never empty before, the only thing he had a ring, and eventually, a sword. Would a sword make up for his loses, would it make up for the warmth of his sister’s hand, or the joy of his childhood cards? Perhaps not, but it had to, it had to.

He doesn’t know how to read in English well, and everywhere he walks is full of strange signs and confusing roads and noise than it’s just too much,

He is a boy, I’m a world of monsters who want to kill him, but would he fight back? Would he run? Does he have anywhere to run to? Anything to fight for? Anywhere to return? He doesn’t, perhaps never will, would he fight back, he didn’t know, should he? Would he fight back, would you fight back, Does he even know how to fight back, if you were him would you know how to, would you do it

He is Antigone, forever cursed to be, his hands are stained from his sister’s blood, except they aren’t, but he sees the blood each day, she’s dead because of you, they tell him, because you were such a bad brother she left you and she was so good she grabbed you a gift which cost her life. He sees the red on his palms, dripping down his wrists, hiding under the sleeve of his jacket, her jacket, the one too big on him, the one that feels like home, except does it? Does it feel like home? Which home does it feel like? Is it a slaughterhouse? His sister was dead and his mother was dead and all his family was dead and his father was all he had left, but his father was a god and everyone else was in his family slaughtered. Was his jacket a memory or a cross, a reminder he was next, or the comforting smell of Bianca’s perfume, still lingering, but more faint each day? Was he the killer or the one that got away? Was it his fault or was he lucky? Lucky? Was he lucky, did he really got away, is it not still with him, still there, is he not still inside the slaughterhouse? Is he being slaughtered, does he want to be? Is it better to die or survive, to leave and remember? Or simply end there, his blood on the ground, except now he’s carrying their blood to, it’s his fault, Bianca died because of him, his mom died because of him, because Zeus wanted to kill him,

#nico di angelo #pjo #tsats #solangelo #hoo

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thevoiceinyourheadx · 1 year

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@wheresarizona you tag me? In a...thing? An actual non taglist thing? 🥹🥹 You absolutely made my day! ❤️

Honestly I am waaaay too excited about this 😂 but I feel like a real member of the community now! 🥹

1. are you named after anyone?

Kinda? I was almost named after a medieval queen, because my mum is a huge history nerd, but apparently my nan vetoed it. (Kinda glad she did, because there were at least 6 other girls with that name in my year) So I ended up with a less common version. And my middle names (I have too many...) are all after family members

2. when was the last time you cried?

I mean, I came pretty close when I was tagged to do this (because I have no friends 😅).

But the last time I cried was yesterday (because I have no friends 😭 let's just say the covid years have not been kind to me)

3. do you have kids?

I have a fur baby! But no human children

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

Me? Never!

5. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

I'd say it's probably people's facial expression, or their eyes

6. what’s your eye colour?

I have two tone eyes - blue with a green ring inside! I'm very fond of my eyes

7. scary movies or happy endings?

I am a baby, so happy endings all the way. My anxiety way too high for scary movies and life already sucks, so let's see some Happily Ever Afters, thank you!

8. any special talents?

Figuring out the twist in movies 🤣 Part of the reason I love Glass Onion so much is that I DIDN'T figure out the big twist before it was revealed

9. where were you born?

I’m tempted to put the actual name of the suburb I was born, because it's hilarious, but it’s also very specific...So let’s just go with I was born in Sydney, Australia - and you can look up funny Australian place names if you want to know why I love them so much!

10: what are your hobbies?

Reading, embroidery, reading, watching history videos, reading, writing stories I never finish...

11. have you any pets?

My kitty, Charlie, who I will talk your ears off about if given the chance. He was a rescue baby who I bottle fed and he now follows me around like a puppy.

12: what sports do you play/have you played?

According to my high school transcript, volleyball 😂 (we didn’t have a volleyball team?) I DID play field hockey, however, and my team was responsible for two new rules having to be implemented in one season 😅

13: how tall are you?

Uh...163cm, I think? I honestly can’t remember the last time I measured myself

14. favourite subject in school?

Science! Especially when it involved chemicals. My teacher once told the class to NEVER put magnesium in an open flame...guess what I did two minutes later? 😅 13-year-old me could NOT be left unsupervised.

15. dream job?

Does crazy cat lady count? Honestly, at this stage I don’t have a dream job - I just want to chill in a cottage in a forest with my 17 various pets, reading and doing crafts

So I'm not going to tag anyone because my anxiety makes me think I'm annoying everyone 🙃 and I'm just going to post this before I overthink it anymore 😂

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halloweennut · 1 year

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The Erlking and the Golden Hero

(ah shit, here we go again. angst time)

Once upon a time, a man played with things he thought he understood. Once upon a time, the darkness swallowed him whole, and he wandered his former home and the forests, a dark shade only known as the Erlking.

Once upon a time, a boy was born, and he was destined to destroy the darkness. Once upon a time, he was destined to destroy the Erlking.

But things are never as neat as they are in fairytales.

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

The Robot had been silent for days following the events of the Nightmare. Mara had taken days to fully recover, physically in the least, but the rest of the team was still sorting out what had fully gone on. Chiro for his part...seeing his mother in agony and almost die, finding out his parentage was almost too much. It was hard to pull him from his mind and his bedroom when he wasn't needed, even with plying from Jinmay and the others. All he could really do was fiddle with circuits or try to - a dozen little projects and circuit boards were spread out on his desk, none finished. Something would come up, so flaw or block that usually he enjoyed fixing or working around. But his mind would stall out and he would just grab for the next thing. If Chiro recognized the pattern, he made no show of it or tried to stop it. Antauri wished he had more answers, a solution to help Chiro. But for his part and everyone's, they would always have Chiro's back, even if it meant giving him space. He also knew that there was a line between needing space and shutting the world out when he had a moment and that it was a deep precipice to be pulled from.

"Nothing is working, not even Jinmay can snap him from this. He won't talk to us," Sprx said, leaning against a cabinet in the medbay. Mara had been pulled from one last stint in a bacta-tank and would have been free once her vitals were cleared. "Hell, even Antauri doesn't know what to do right now and it's freaking me out."

Mara sighed. "I should have just healed the old-fashioned way."

"At least I could monitor your heart rate and brain waves from here," Gibson said. "After that attack and your power surge, I would rather make sure neither your heart nor brain failed."

"Please, it'll take more to kill me," she laughed in a weak attempt to play everything off. "Listen, am I clear?"

"Yes, but-"

But just like the first time she had come out of medbay, Mara left quickly without giving Gibson a moment to continue. Sprx laughed, but whatever quip died on his tongue when he saw a familiar frown on the blue monkey's face. "Gibson? What's wrong?"

"Mara needs to be careful, especially now. One more attack like that, psychically, from the Skeleton King may be the last one until she's fully healed. And more than likely, once her connection to the Power Primate is wholly restored," Gibson said, pinching his brow. "I'll need to confer with Antauri on that bit. He's more well-versed in it, no matter how much I study everything on the scientific level."

"Can you believe...basically anything about what we know now? About the Alchemist, the Skeleton King, Mara, any of it? It's....," Sprx grasped at the word. Gibson nodded.

"If I hadn't double-checked Chiro's DNA myself, I wouldn't have believed it. But Mara's memories were her's, and I am glad we took nearly all of the Alchemist's personal belongings from the Lab - it gave me plenty of genetic material to work with," Gibson replied. "If I could figure out a way to use that DNA to break down the Skeleton King at a molecular level-"

"The Skeleton King and Chiro have to duke everything out by themselves," Sprx sighed. "Even if we wanted to help, it's still gonna come down to it. I hate that stupid prophecy."

"Prophecy or not," Gibson said, "We will be there, even if we can't fight alongside Chiro."

Mara could remember reading about the prophecy during her time on Verron. It had been part of the standard curriculum all neophytes had to read, even if she was doing it out of boredom, and to a certain degree to be around a certain scientist. But never once did she think her child would be a key player in it - she hadn't expected to even have children at that time. But lo and behold, her son was the foretold chosen hero. It wasn't something she could protect him from. But she could at least try and protect him from the throes of his mind at a darker point.

She knocked on the door to his room a few times until she heard him give clearance to enter, as though he was too caught in his own head. Mara entered, finding her son where she knew he would be - at his desk, tinkering. She clicked her tongue against her teeth and walked closer, seeing the scattered parts of dozen things. Without saying anything, she placed a plate of cut fruit next to him before hopping up to sit on some empty desk space. "I got your favorites."

Chiro looked over at the plate and saw the smattering of starfruit and apples shining up at him. "Oh...thanks, mom."

"Of course, star sweeper," she replied, picking up two random pieces of whatever had been tinkered with. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah- yeah I'm fine. Did Gibson clear you? Do you need more time-," Chiro started. Mara stopped him by gently poking him between his eyebrows.

"You're upset and frustrated. You always crinkle your brow when you are," she said simply. "And you fiddle with spare parts. Ever since you were little."

Chiro rubbed the spot she had poked, but Mara pulled his hand away. "You know - you get that from your dad. It used to drive me crazy because he wouldn't just say what was bothering him."

"It looked perfect, though," Chiro said quietly.

"He...he only showed the best parts. That made it hurt more, honestly, the sweets over the sorrows. But we argued, we fought, I threw a few books at him...," Mara listed. "It wasn't perfect, at all. But it was ours."

"I'm not sure I want to know how similar he and I are...," Chiro murmured sourly. "Not right now."

"I know, baby," she replied. "But you're always you. Hero or not, you're Chiro."

Mara tugged him close into a hug. "Prophecy or not, you're my son."

Chiro relaxed at that, leaning onto her shoulder. "Thanks, mom."

"Of course, star sweeper," Mara held him close for another moment before letting him pull away. "You know, I think a lot of these can fit together. What would it do if we jigsawed these doodads?"

"I'm not entirely sure, but I have a power source that would possibly work with them," he replied, looking over the odds and ends before back at her. "Want to help?"

"I can think of nothing better," she smiled. "Let's see what you've made, eh?"

She took two of the pieces and managed to lock them in place with a small screw. Chiro hummed at that, finishing another end. "Here- this will fit with those I think."

"Perfect," Mara nodded. As they worked in silence, Mara watched her son, every furrow of his brow or turned sour line of his mouth. "What else is bothering you? I know the dad thing is...well, a lot."

"Yeah...it is," he replied slowly.

"And you're worried about being like him, in the bad and good ways," she continued. Another little metal bar locked into place. Chiro nodded. "Understandable. I doubt I would want to be like my parents, and I didn't know them at all."

"Well, they either died and left you with people who didn't care or were the people who didn't care," Chiro said. He removed the screw - the head was stripped from being over-tightened. Mara handed him another. "They were just gone."

"In any case, that ship sailed 37 years ago," she shrugged, then paused. "You know you wouldn't lose me again, right?"

"Mom, you almost- you could have-," Chiro slammed his fist on the table. "If you died in the dream, you wouldn't have come back. You were seriously injured when he unlocked your memories- your connection to the Power Primate."

"Hey, it's going to take more than that to kill me. I'm a cockroach at this point," Mara tried to joke. She placed a hand over his. "I'm serious Chiro. Nothing is taking me away from Shuggazoom, from you, from our family here. I promise. And even IF something happened, you know what I'd do?"

He looked at her with more exhaustion than she thought possible for a 16-year-old. "You'd fight tooth and nail to get back?"

"Exactly. And I always will. I promise," Mara said, and Chiro knew in an instant that her word was a universal law. If he could have, Chiro would have guessed that the Power Primate had more of a say in her repeated brushes with death and danger, escapes and clever turns than Mara ever knew. It brought some sort of relief to him that he couldn't place. "Here, hand me that thingamajig."

"The sonic screwdriver?"

"Yeah, the thingamajig."

"This is why Otto doesn't like sharing the garage with you."

"Well, tough. We're family, he can deal."

Antauri sat and meditated in his quarters the moment he was free. If he was owed anything, it was answers. Why, despite his unyielding devotion and prayer, had so much been hidden from him? The Alchemist, Mara, everything. Had the Verron Mystics erased their own memories as well, striking her presence and her acolyte status from the record? Had Mandarin known - did he remember the Alchemist, even while he treated them all so horribly and went mad?

No, his memory had been erased with theirs. And he still couldn't remember. Antauri paused - the original one didn't remember. He assumed his clone couldn't either, despite everything. Antauri sighed, listening to the gentle whir of his hardware. It was the closest thing he had to a heartbeat anymore. He tried to imagine how things would have or could have been had things been different if their memories had remained intact. Mandarin would have had his sharp edges in check, meaning no betrayal, no clone - Antauri would have stayed in his own body, perhaps.

No, no, this was inevitable. Becoming the Silver Monkey was the ultimate test for him, his soul, regardless of Skelemandarin. Having their memories would have presented a quandary of regret or living solely to make up for the memory of a dead man. Mara would have found out what happened sooner, they would have awoken sooner. He would still become the Silver Monkey at any point down the line. Everything would be as it would be now, and even then, the past was done.

He felt the connection to the Power Primate pulse - Antauri had some of his answers, unsatisfactory as they were. He felt another pulse, recognizing Mara quickly. Chiro was better, just needed a little more time, he sensed from her. He wanted to scold her for connecting so soon but knew she would have found some excuse. More than likely she was with her son and didn't want to leave his side. If she started going into a trance or deeply meditating he would interfere, just until he knew she'd be fine.

Antauri blinked, and let himself stretch his shoulders like he used to. Otto said it was natural to do so, and stretching would keep his cybernetics and circuits in good repair. He would linger on the past later, wish for a better future and hope for more answers soon. Despite everything, everyone he held dear was safe.

#srmthfg #chiro srmthfg

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