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junisfics · 3 years

Text

Blurred Lines* — Armin Arlert

Request:

Can I request a first time with Armin? Like it’s his first time with the reader

Summary: After a particularly emotionally draining mission, Reader tells Armin she can’t wait any longer

Warnings: Fluff, Smut / Nsfw 18 + (Loss of Virginity, Unprotected Sex), Graphic Depictions of Violence, Brief Descriptions of Illness

Word Count: 3.3k

Notes: yes i hc armin as having a big ole dick on him... have u seen the energy he radiates?

Your legs are pulled up against you with knees resting against his chest. He holds you between his legs and you both sit messily on his bed.

Armin's hands were careful as they comforted you, his palms that glide over the planes of your back and sending shivers down your spine. You cried quietly into his neck with an arm draped around his shoulder, the other resting gently at the base of his neck.

He whispers solace nothings into your hair;

"It's not your fault."

"It's okay, y/n."

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

It was a child. Torn mercilessly in half in their own kitchen. Blood and insides strewn everywhere from the sheer brutality and force that they were ripped apart. It was only their upper half, blood pouring from their mouth and a blank look in their eyes. They're neck had obviously broke from the fall, the contortion of the limb dramatic, head jerked violently to the side.

You threw up in a garden, stomach emptying itself over a bundle of fruits. Armin had held your ponytail back as your tears mixed in with the vomit that dribbled down your chin. You'd hiccupped over and over as you cleared your throat. The image burned into your eyelids.

He pulls your face into his hands, shifting you to face him as you sit cross legged between his legs. His eyes are gentle and kind, brimmed with their own tears that threaten to spill over. His hands are warm, comforting and tender, thumb brushing over your cheekbones.

"Shh, it's okay."

He can't stop your crying or the incoherent words that spill from your lips as your tired eyes look into his. It pains his heart and soul, choking back tears of his own.

"Armin - they - their intestines - " You hiccup with every cry, head bobbing in his hands. You fist his shirt in your hands, crying to him as if he wasn't there himself.

"y/n, you need to calm down." He soothes, using a hand to flatten the hair atop your head and tucking it behind your ear.

"I - Armin - it - it was a child."

He didn't know what to do. His heart aches in his chest. He wanted to take your pain away.

You didn't understand why this singular event had such a traumatic effect on you. You'd seen plenty of dismembered bodies before. Something about the way their eyes were empty and lifeless struck a nerve inside you.

He pulls your face to his and presses his lips to yours. You hiccup once then twice into his mouth but takes them in, only pressing you harder against him.

It's the only thing he's sure will calm you down and shut you up. He drinks in your sobs, salty tears slipping past his lips and onto his tongue. His kiss drowns you as you kiss him back passively,

His lips are gentle, moving smoothly and carefully against yours, sending warmth throughout your once panicked body. Just like that you're grounded, brought back to Earth and brought back to him.

You need more.

You lean into him, getting up to your knees and standing on them so his head tilts upwards for his lips to stay pressed to yours. You take your legs and bring them to the outsides of his and he follows suit and brings his legs closer so if you would sit you’d straddle his thighs.

His comforting hands fall from your face to your waist with an uncertain undertone.

Does he let you continue?

Obviously, rather indecent thoughts have crossed his mind more then once during this occasion but his guilt stricken conscience has prevented him from pushing you any further; that... and well... the fact that neither of you have done anything past feeling each other up as well as the clear fact that you’re in a negative headspace.

His thoughts go out the door as you crawl further up his body, pressing down on his chest so he lays flat on the bed, head coming down on the pillow. You sit down onto his lap and are unexpectedly ( to you at least ) greeted by his semi hard erection that’s beneath you.

You walk dangerously close to the unspoken line you have both set; the line of experience and inexperience, of comfort and uncertainty... desperation and satisfaction.

Your chest is flush against his as you kiss at his used lips before making your way down his chin and jaw. Your fingernails scratching at his toned chest. His mouth drops open and eyes fluttering back closed as your lips kiss and bite at the fragile skin just below his jawline, hands gripping at your hips a little to tightly to feint composure.

“y/n, I don’t - I don’t think this is the best idea -” He opens his eyes. He struggles restraint.

He wants nothing more then to kiss and hold and feel you, to have his hands travel over every inch of your bare skin and tangled in your hair. He wants to kiss you until neither of you can breathe right so you pant desperately into his mouth and cling to him like a lifeline.

You sit up, just enough so you can look into his deep blue eyes and take in the flustered expression on his face.

“I want to, I need you. Armin, please, give me this. I’m ready.” You plead, his face back in your hands and noses bumping together as you beg for him.

His breath gets caught in his throat as he desperately tries to maintain composure. He wants to give himself to you, place himself directly in your hands and have you take everything you could ever need from him, but he has no idea if you’re in the right place to make the same decision for yourself.

“I want to forget, just make me forget.” You mumble against his lips.

With that, he hands himself over and the line between desperation and satisfaction is blurred like ink on wet paper.

In answer he sits up, slightly bumping his forehead to yours before grabbing the neck of his shirt and pulling it roughly over his head. You waste no time in doing the same crossing your arms around your torso and grabbing opposite sides of the hem of your shirt and pulling upwards.

His cock twitches beneath you as his eyes land on the foreign skin of your stomach and chest. He’s filled with complete and utter need.

His hands seem to have minds of their own as they grab at the exposed skin of your ribs, gliding over the goosebump ridden flesh, eyes drinking in the milky canvas before him. Once he realizes his actions he pulls back, eyes returning to yours and hands once back at your clothed hips.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask if that was okay-”

You shut him up the same he did to you, pressing your lips back against his.

“No, please... touch me.” You whisper, raking your fingers through his tousled hair, “It’s okay”

As much as you appreciate his consideration, you lack the patience.

He does as you wish. Hands return to untraveled panes of flesh that send whimpers up your throat and heat flooding south to where you need him the most. Every inch of your bodies tremble with arousal and inexperience but you wouldn’t dare stop.

You drag your hips experimentally across his, feeling his now completely stiff length glide against you in torturous pleasure. You let out the first real moan he’s heard from you into his mouth and his pants grow uncomfortably tight.

His chest is warm against yours, still clothed nipples dragging across the toned muscle. You knew Armin would have at least some muscle on his lanky body thanks to the strenuous training the Survey Corps had provided, but never would you have expected to be feeling the extent of toned ridges of his muscle beneath your fingertips.

You take one of his wrists in your grasp and pull him so he rolls on top of you, his waist between your thighs and forearms coming to brace himself beside your head.

“Take these off.” You mutter, grabbing at the sides of your pants and yanking them, lifting your hips in the process to both pull the waistband over your backside and get closer to him.

Your undergarments, his pants, his boxers. Three layers between you.

His mind goes blank, listening to your words and aimlessly pulling the clothing down your legs and tossing it beside the bed. He does the same while he’s standing, stripping himself of his pants and revealing the painful tent in his boxers.

Undergarments. Two layers.

He returns to you, left knee between your legs, cock brushing up against your thigh thanks to the slight bend in your knees.

It’s not as scary as you’d thought. You’re going completely off instinct, trusting your gut and going with the flow. He brings comfort to your nervous body with his own, sturdy and strong.

Cautiously, his mouth attaches to your neck, licking and nipping against the skin before him and unintentionally leaving deep purple marks in his wake. Multiple mouth shaped bruises are left down your neck and chest without thought, then leading to the tops of your breasts.

He doesn’t know what to do. This is where he has no clue what he’s doing anymore.

You use your abdominal muscles to sit up just enough to reach behind you and unclasp your bra.

He panics.

“Armin, look at me.”

He does.

“I don’t know what to do next either.” You admit, a soft smile upturning your lips, “All I know is that I need you right now.”

“God, me too, I need you so bad, so fucking bad.” His voice is raspy, grained with lust.

Your stomach twists at his use of an expletive. Seeing him like this. Seeing him unfiltered and unhinged awakens a deeper part of you that sends your heart up your throat.

You. He needs you. Not anyone else on this godforsaken planet. He wants you.

He kisses you again, and with his left wrist back in your hand you guide it down your tense stomach and to the waistband of your panties. When you can feel him moving on his own accord you release your grip. His fingertips are cold as they dip beneath the waist band and tickle the skin below your navel, sending your back arching up against his forearm.

“I’ve never- you’re gonna need to guide me.” He drops his forehead against your own.

“Um - so there’s this -”

“I - um - know my anatomy, y/n, just tell me what you like.” The corners of his lips threaten to upturn in a smile.

Something about him wanting to make you feel good sends excitement coursing through your veins.

Just tell him what you like, y/n.

You go blank.

What do you like?

You’re brain goes a mile a minute trying to search for when you’ve experienced the most pleasure. Scanning over memories of you tucked under the covers, hand between your thighs and eyes shut tight as you imagined his hand instead of yours. The pads of your fingers circling your clit teasingly light to where your own hips were bucking up against you and begging for more.

Yeah, you liked that.

“Be gentle,” You say quietly, “Tease me.”

He does what he’s told.

Hand slipping lower on your body until his middle finger can search gently for your clit, and once it does so it presses down with a featherlike touch. It’s different. It’s oh so different having his fingers touch you compared to yours. It feels immensely better, senses heightened by thousands. And when his fingers press in tender circles you feel like you could explode.

“A - Armin -” You whimper for him, his eyes that were once trained to your center meet yours, blown with lust.

“Is that - that okay?” He asks, seemingly out of breath.

“Fuck - yeah.” Your voice flies a pitch upwards in response and just as you had predicted your hips stutter up against his hand, wanting more.

He was in complete and utter awe. Was this truly his doing? Was this because of him? The way your body reacted to his touch was exhilarating and had him on edge.

With another wave of pleasure your hand flies to his wrist, not to stop him, no, but to brace yourself. Nothing in your entire life could have prepared you for the way he was making you feel.

His fingers retreat, “Shit - sorry - did I do something wrong?”

He’s completely out of breath, chest dragging against you as he pants. He has to control himself or he’s not going to last. Just feeling your body twitch and grind against him is enough to tip him over and if he didn’t compose himself soon he wasn’t going to get the chance of being inside you.

“N - no, more, give me more.” You beg, digging your nails into his forearm and feeling the muscle flex under your grasp as his hand obliges.

He swallows a groan at the feeling of your slick coating his fingertips. You were so ready for him

“D - Did I do this?” His tone isn’t teasing, it’s completely genuine with surprise and incredulity.

His dick throbs painfully in his boxers as you whimper out a little ‘mhm’ in response to his question, your bottom lip pulled between your teeth.

Slowly, but not annoyingly so, he pushes his middle finger inside you with ease and something between a moan and a gasp leaves your lips at the sensation. When he’s buried himself to the knuckle he takes your mouth in his to distract him from the feeling of you clenching around his finger.

“I - I want another," You say against his lips.

He removes his finger slowly to relish the way the wet of your walls drag across his digit. He replaces the one finger with two, middle and ring finger entering you effortlessly.

Then languidly, he pumps his fingers in and out of your heat, kissing your neck with an open mouth. Your back arching against his warm body and legs trembling. When his fingers curl slightly to hit that perfect spot inside you, your mouth falls open in an inaudible sob and right hand slapping the bed and gripping the sheets.

His own jaw slacks in reaction and a string of curses follow under his breath and he feels himself pathetically teetering the edge of release as he grinds desperately against your thigh for some kind of relieving friction.

With a few more strokes of his fingers against your slick walls you’ve climbed your high and threatening to spill over his digits. It was all too much to fast.

“Stop - wait -” You whine and his fingers withdraw only moments after you speak.

“Are you okay?” He says in a breathy whisper.

“I want,” You pause to think, picking the words over in your head to try and express your need, “I want to cum on your cock,”

His brain short circuits, mind going completely blank. He could feel his heart ramming against his ribcage. He’s brought back to life by your pleading voice.

“Please,” One of your gentle hands come to rest on his neck, pulling him impossibly closer.

He nods, not even able to force words out of his mouth, then gets to his knees embarrassingly fast to pull the remainder of your clothes off your bodies.

Seeing you in this state of vulnerability and exposure had his tender heart swelling in his chest. Even covered in scars and bruises you’re the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen... and so sure that he will ever see. You’re perfect. You’re lovely eyes filled with lust and admiration as you look up to him, arms crossing over your torso as you grow slightly uncomfortable with the time he takes to stare at you.

“You’re - you’re so beautiful.” He says, leaning back over you to press comforting kisses across the planes of your chest and neck before returning once more to your lips.

As his hips slide between your legs his cock brushes up against you, skin on skin. Zero layers. He shudders at the feeling, the arm beside your head that braces him up shakes under pressure.

“Is this okay?” He looks in your eyes to search for even the tiniest glimpse of doubt behind them... and he finds none.

“Yes, please.”

Glancing between your bodies that are slick with sweat and arousal he takes himself in his hand, pumping his fist over himself a few times before pressing the head at your entrance.

“It’s-s gonna hurt... a little,” He can’t even focus. You’re so wet, so warm against him. He needs to feel you. For someone who’s never struggled with patience before he’s sure as hell struggling now.

“It’s okay, please, I promise”

He pushes painfully slow into you. His mouth on yours, hair tickling your face.

He was right. It hurts... but it hurts so fucking good. His length stretches you open and filling you so immensely full. The pain is manageable, you were so ready for him.

And now you’re so tight for him. Your slick heat swallows him, pulling him to the hilt and sending the head of his cock against your cervix. You cry out, hands clawing at the hard muscles in his back as he gives you a moment for adjustment.

Once you’re comfortable you grind your hips slowly against his and savoring the changes in pressure as he shifts within you.

“You can move,” You say, locking your ankles at the base of his spine.

His forehead falls to your collarbone to groan against your skin, “J - Just give me a second.”

If he’d move, he would have most definitely came inside you... and he tries his best to stop the mere thought of it from flooding his head.

Afters a few heartbeats of rest he pulls back, sliding his cock out of you before thrusting back in a little faster then before.

You can feel every inch of him stretching you open, every ridge and vein that lines his pretty dick drags across your walls. Moans spill shamelessly from your lips and onto his, his tongue now licking at your open mouth and high on the taste of you.

All of a sudden the weight of him inside you begins to feel really fucking good. His pace increasing, pulling his length all the way out before slapping his hips back against yours.

"I'm not going to last, I'm sorry -" He says, slipping his right hand over your cheek and into your hair and looking into your eyes.

"Me neither - Armin I -" Your head tilts up the sky and he kisses your jaw before speaking to you.

"Look at me, please." He whispers.

You do, you gaze back into his kind eyes as you succumb to him, putting yourself in his palms as you feed off of each other to climb your orgasms. When he hits that spot inside you with his head you spill over, gushing around him.

He follows suit, burying himself as deep as he can go and emptying himself of everything he has inside you.

You milk him dry.

Your chests heave against eachother as he presses a bruising kiss to your swollen lips.

The lines were walked over, crossed, blurred, obliterated... and it was okay.

#armin arlert smut #armin arlert x reader #aot smut #junis requests

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gellavonhamster · 3 years

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in the bleak midwinter*: an asoue/atwq peaky blinders au concept

...also known as the idea that’s been living in my brain for what must be a couple of years now; I have reconciled myself with the fact that I will never write this fic because I simply do not have enough patience to think it out and write it down in the way that would give it justice, so here’s a plot bunny or something.

This is basically the Sugar Bowl Generation of VFD (still young, before kids and all) meets All The Wrong Questions (some of the events + some of the kid characters of ATWQ as adults) meets season one of Peaky Blinders, but I guess it could be read and understood without the knowledge of the latter simply as an organized crime AU.

It’s the beginning of the interwar period, and VFD is a gang. Which, yes, would require a certain amount of OOC of the characters, though I imagine their intimidation tactics would still avoid too much bloodshed. They deal with bookmaking, contraband, and sometimes art forgery because even this version of VFD has to have something sophisticated about it. There’s a number of places, such as bars and clubs, that pay them for protection, and there’s also a number of places they own, such as the Hotel Denouement with the Denouement brothers in charge and the nightclub ran by Ramona Browning**, alias the Duchess (her father was some kind of aristocracy, see, too aristocratic to ever truly acknowledge her). They use their influence to become the informal rulers of their part of the City. They claim to strive for power to make the City a better place, and these are not just words - they do donate money to schools and libraries, for example - but it’s not like they don’t enjoy being in power, and their rule is still based on crime, those who threaten it being eliminated swiftly.

The Snickets are the Shelby family of this AU, of course. Lemony is Tommy - the mastermind, already a legend of sorts despite being the youngest, plagued by the horrors of war - but still hoping for the best, strange as it seems, because he’s still Lemony. Jacques is Arthur, the fighter suffering from PTSD. Kit is Ada, but she’s also Aunt Polly - she’s the one who ran the business while the boys were in the army.

Now, season one introduced Grace Burgess as an undercover police informant spying on the Peaky Blinders.

Enter Ellington Feint.

Ellington’s father, the only family she has left, has been kidnapped by a gang called the Inhumane Society, and she’d do anything and everything to save him. So she agrees to infiltrate VFD, their rival gang, to find out the whereabouts of a shipment of weapons that was meant for the Society but was accidentally stolen by VFD. Apart from machine guns and shells, the shipment includes some “statue of a sea beast”, and no one cares to provide more explanations to Ellington about it, but apparently it is the most important part of that cargo. So Ellington takes on the position of a barmaid in The Black Cat Bar, one of the places that pay VFD for protection and the one frequented by its key members, and starts listening and watching.

Ellington needs to get close to the Snickets, because if anyone knows where the weapons are, it’s them. Steward Mitchum, the corrupt cop on the Society’s payroll whom she is to meet from time to time at the Natural History Museum (which she used to attend with her father) to pass on the information, suggests she should seduce one of the Snicket brothers. The problem is, Ellington has a chance to learn very soon that Jacques doesn’t know much about the stolen cargo, and Lemony is too taken with his girlfriend, the music hall singer Beatrice Baudelaire, to even look at any other woman. There’s no getting between them, even though it seems Beatrice also has something going on with VFD’s bookkeeper Bertrand Markson, and Lemony seems aware of it.

So Ellington decides to approach Kit instead. Kit, who seems so lonely - Ellington doesn’t know the details, but there was some serious falling-out between her and her ex-boyfriend, who has since left the City (and won’t appear in this story. Olaf is the problem for the hypothetical season two of this imaginary show). Ellington doesn’t plan on anything other than a very close friendship - yet, the closer they become, the more she understands that she is attracted to Kit.

(There certainly is a variant of the “I warn you, I’ll break your heart” - “Already broken” scene in which Ellington sings to Kit)

Anyway. Things progress, and they fall in love. Well, Kit seems to have fallen in love, and Ellington keeps trying to persuade herself that she hasn’t, because Kit has to remain nothing but a task for her.

The location of the stolen weapons, however, still remains a mystery, even though Ellington once hears Kit and Lemony discuss it. Whatever the statue is, Lemony seems to believe it has great powers, and Kit seems to believe it’s nothing but folklore. Lemony tells her of the stories of a mysterious sea animal (or spirit, or whatever it may be) he heard from other soldiers during the war, about what Widdershins heard during his time in the navy. Kit tells him that everyone is a believer in a foxhole, and that she loves W like her own kin but he’s a bragging idiot. There was nothing on the sea other than enemy ships.

Elllington’s mission is complicated by Lemony clearly not trusting her. He tells her it’s because his sister has been hurt before, but she suspects it’s more than that. He even admits that he had his people make enquiries in Paltryville, the town she claims to have come from, and found out that no Ellington Feint ever lived there. When he suggests her secrecy is due to a child born out of marriage, she is eager to confirm that. (Cue him asking her if she’s read Les Misérables - yeah, even this version of VFD would be literature nerds, how can it be otherwise - because this whole situation reminds him of Fantine, and her lying that she hasn’t and thinking that she’s more of a Javert at the barricade, really).

Then there’s a masquerade party at the Duchess’s club, and Kit takes Ellington there as her date. (Which is okay, because if there’s any place in the City where a woman dancing with another woman or a man dancing with another man would not be looked at askance, it’s the Duchess’s club. If I was actually writing a fic, there would definitely be a scene in which Ellington observes Beatrice asking Bertrand to dance with her and Bertrand trying to decline by telling her that, since he didn’t have time to procure a mask, he shouldn’t be on the dancefloor at all, and then Lemony approaches him with a spare mask in hand and encourages him to dance with Beatrice and puts the mask on Bertrand himself and it somehow looks so intimate as if he’s undressing him and Ellington’s like “Oh, so it’s like that with them. This is probably of no use to me but still, good to know”).

When Kit disappears at some point, Ellington follows her quietly and eavesdrops on her conversation with one of the Denouements. He tells her that his brother is all right and sends his regards. Later at the party, however, Ellington sees two Denouements. Why would one of them send the other’s regards to Kit if they’re all in the same room? A couple of drinks with the already tipsy Olivia (officially a fortune-teller, but who knows what purposes VFD really uses her salon for?), and Ellington learns that there used to be three Denouements, actually. But the third brother, Dewey, had a conflict with one of rival gangs which nearly resulted in a war, had not Lemony agreed to dispose of Dewey. To stop that gang from going against VFD, he killed Dewey with his own hands.

Except he didn’t, Ellington thinks. Lemony must have staged Dewey’s execution, and now he’s out there very much alive. Perhaps this knowledge will come in handy.

Meanwhile, the Inhumane Society, who have other beef with VFD apart from the stolen weapons, are getting impatient. There’s a gun-fight which results in Ike Anwhistle dying and his grieving widow, Josephine, telling Lemony it is all his fault and leaving the city. (I know I said this is based on s1 only, but they’re the John and Esme Shelby of this story). And Bertrand is severely wounded. VFD needs another bookkeeper while he’s recovering, and Kit, who knows from The Black Cat’s owner Dashiell Qwerty that Ellington has also been keeping the books of the bar lately and doing it well, offers this position to her. This gives Ellington an opportunity to learn more about the asserts and resources of VFD - and a chance to discover some interesting notes scribbled next to the name of Dewey Denouement. Dewey Denouement, who is only officially dead, but still has a grave at the cemetery.

Ellington tells Stew she has an idea where the weapons and/or the statue might be hidden.

When she meets some of the members of the Inhumane Society to take them to the tomb, she is surprised to see Hangfire himself among them. She’s only seen him in passing before, this mysterious man with his face covered in bandages. They say he’s been horribly disfigured during the war. They also say he came back mad. When they’ve done some digging and unearthed, instead of a coffin, several crates of guns - and opened one of them to find a small statue of what seems like a very scary seahorse - Mitchum and Flammarion are suddenly shot down, and Lemony Snicket steps from behind a gravestone.

He’s been following them.

Of course he didn’t believe that all Miss Feint is hiding is an illegitimate child, Lemony tells them as he’s holding Hangfire at gunpoint. He’s been doing research. In fact, the man whose grave they’ve unearthed is presently in a unique position allowing him to make research away from the City. He’s found out that Ellington Feint is the daughter of a renowned naturalist Armstrong Feint, who’s recently gone missing. And then they managed to discover something more.

This is when Hangfire grabs a gun and points it at Lemony, and Lemony aims at Ellington instead, which for some reason stops Hangfire from shooting.

This is also when it turns out that Lemony has also been followed, and Kit Snicket steps from behind another gravestone, pointing a gun at her brother. He keeps aiming at Ellington, wearily telling Kit she isn’t really going to shoot him.

Kit tells him that unless he drops the gun, he’ll find out.

(When Ellington tries to speak to Kit, she just tells her to shut up. And it hurts, because Kit has stopped being just a mission a long time ago. And now she knows that Ellington’s been lying to her from the start. And she may not want Ellington to die, but she would also hardly ever forgive her. And that would be fair).

And then Hangfire tries to shoot Kit, and Ellington screams, and Kit manages to spring back, and Lemony fires at the man who tried to kill his sister, and suddenly Hangfire is bleeding out on the ground and calling out to Ellington in her father’s voice.

That is what they’ve also found out about Hangfire, Lemony tells her as she’s kneeling beside the body, unable to bring herself to uncover his face. He sounds genuinely surprised; he thought she knew.

Kit makes him let Ellington go and tells her she doesn’t want to see her ever again. And Ellington leaves. She takes a train to some seaside town she’s never heard of before and leaves. Her job is ended. Her father is dead. Her love affair that never should have happened is in the past. She still doesn’t know why her father lied to her when he could have just asked and she would’ve done anything, why he kept up this double life, what was the significance of the statue and what it might become in the hands of someone like Lemony Snicket. She is too tired and sick of it all to try to find out.

She manages to build a life in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. She works in a coffee shop and sings there in the evenings. She never sings the song she sang to Kit again. She marries a man she doesn’t have any truly strong feelings for.

Then, a year or so later, there’s a phone call, and the voice of the woman she loved and betrayed tells her she still can’t stop thinking of her.

*This phrase used by the Peaky Blinders upon the death of one of them is replaced by “The world is quiet here”. Obviously.

**My Last Duchess, referenced in ASOUE in connection with R, is written by Robert Browning.

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mizunetzu · 4 years

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PART 3 OF ITS YOUR FAULT PLS !!!! I LOVE IT EKDBJSHD

Well since y’all asked so nicely-

——————

Kuroo x reader - it’s your fault (pt. 3) (final)

⚠️warnings - angst

Pronouns - male, he/him

part 1 can be found here!

part 2 can be found here!

——————

Sports sucks. That’s what Kuroo knew about (y/n), yet he still egged him on to play volleyball with him. He had a choice to say no, which was what younger him was hoping for, yet he still did it in hope of gaining his affection.

All his life he thought he was annoying. All his life he’d been in the mindset of how annoying he was, and how blissful it would’ve been for him to just disappear off the face of the earth.

So when (y/n) suddenly stopped showing up to practice, Kuroo didn’t expect himself to get worried.

He was starting to miss all the clingy touches, or the ‘good morning, Kuroo-kun!’ every single morning practice. He didn’t realize how quiet the walk was to his classes, or to and from home, when (y/n) wasn’t there to fill the noise on random things he found cool or how his day was. He didn’t know how expensive the drink (y/n) religiously bought him from the vending machine was, even though he bought him the drink with a smile plastered on his face like it was nothing.

“Oh, (y/n)? He quit the team.”

Kuroo dropped the volleyball he was holding. He’d gone up to coach nekomata to ask where (y/n) was, and why he wasn’t showing up to practice. But he was regretting asking in the first place. Nekomata gave him a sympathetic look.

Kuroo picked up his volleyball, gave him the best smile he could afford, and walked away. Why was he so devastated? Why did his heart feel like it sunk into his stomach? Why was his chest hurting like that? He should’ve been glad that (y/n) was finally gone.

So why does his heart hurt so much?

————

Kuroo figured he’d stop by his apartment to see what was going on. It’s been weeks, yet he couldn’t find him anywhere in his classrooms, and he nor Kenma could reach him on his phone.

When he walked up the stairs, looking for the ever familiar door to his apartment, he was nervous. For once in his life when going to talk to the boy, he was nervous. It wasn’t a good feeling, he never felt nervous to talk to him before.

When he noticed the door slightly ajar, he clutched the apology basket of sweets in his hand tighter. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to apologize for, though. Maybe for yelling at him, or maybe for something else.

“...hello? (Y-y/n)?” When he opened the door, he was met face to face with construction workers, and a blank apartment. Kuroos heart stopped beating. A man, who Kuroo believes was the apartment owner, looked at Kuroo, to his schools jacket, and down to his basket saying “I’m sorry (y/n) :(“

“Oh? Are you here for that (h/c)-haired kid?” Kuroo nodded vigorously.

“Sorry bud. He moved out a few days ago.” Kuroo couldn’t hide the devastated frown from tugging at his lips. He mumbled a small “sorry” and spedwalked out of the building.

He spammed (y/n’s) phone, probably texting more than he ever did his whole life combined, with “where are you’s” and “hey look I’m sorry, okay? Please answer me’s”

None of them were even read.

Kenma didn’t react well to knowing one of his best friends moved away so suddenly. Unlike Kuroo, (y/n) was good friends with him, practically attached to the hip. When Kuroo told him he couldn’t find (y/n) at his apartment, Kenma clutched his ds harder and glared at the screen like it was it’s fault for making him disappear.

But as much as Kenma blamed the ds, they both knew it was Kuroos fault.

———

Kuroo strived to be a better person. He came to terms with his feelings for (y/n), and how he could never repeat his mistake again.

He grew to love (y/n), and he messed it up so bad.

He’d be sure to never lead anyone on again, minus when he’d lead his team to victory as their new captain. He’d try and hold less grudges, tell someone when he doesn’t like them, as to let them down easy instead of blowing up in their face, and even bought his team snacks and filled up their water bottles during practice.

Kuroo walked around the unknown streets of miyagi, scanning his eyes for a mop of bleached hair. He knew Kenma got distracted on his phone, but this was excessive, even for him.

Eventually, his eyes landed on two bright figures. Kenmas usual bright blond hair, and a tuft of orange next to him.

“Kenma!”

Kenmas head whipped up, and he shut off his phone, but then a flash of (h/c) came into his peripherals. He looked a little further down and locked eyes with someone who made his throat close up.

(Y/n).

He looked older. Not in the way that he looks physically older, but he carried himself with a somewhat mature, grown stance that made Kuroo so a double take. His hair was slightly longer and he was wearing a black team jacket instead of the red Nekoma jacket he used to wear. Shocked (e/c) colored eyes morphed into an expression of pure resentment, making Kuroos shocked happiness short lived. Kenma walked up next to him, about to ask what happened when Kuroo turned his head away, walking with his head down.

Kenma waved bye to Hinata, when his eyes landed on (y/n). He was talking to a silver headed guy, with a distasteful frown directed at Kuroo. He didn’t say anything though, just ducked his head and walked beside his captain.

———

(Y/n) kept his eyes fixed on the ground, as Nekoma and Karasuno stood in a line, facing eachother. Kenma was practically standing in front of him, shocked to the core, but also averting his gaze. Not just because (y/n), but Hinata next to the boy was staring at him with his mouth agape.

Eventually everyone filed into the gym, Hinata stopping Kenma to talk, while taketora eyed him menacingly. (Y/n) side-eyed the little interaction with an unwanted jealousy. He wanted to talk to Kenma, he WAS his childhood and best friend. But it soon dissipated when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

That jealousy turned into hatred.

“Can we talk, (y/n)?”

(Y/n) slapped Kuroos hand away and stepped past him, pushing him back slightly with his shoulder.

“Don’t call me that. You have no right. It’s

(L/n).”

Kuroo watched as (y/n) stepped into the gym, his lips pressed into a fine line.

—————

(Y/n) sat on a bench in the corner with an obviously closed off aura, watching as people set up the net or the players from both schools talked to eachother. He walked as Kuroo shook hands with Daichi, not noticing the mop of bleached hair sit himself next to him. (Y/n) flinched when he felt something brush his shoulder.

He whipped his head around to find Kenma, sitting right next to him, but looking straight in front of him. He said nothing, and fiddled with his fingers. Guess he didn’t change, even after a new school year.

(Y/n) relaxed a bit and went back to stalking his team and old teammates with a somewhat less intimidating aura. They sat in heavy silence for what seemed like forever, until (y/n) coughed into his Karasuno jacket.

“S-so how you been Ke-“

“So you’re just not gonna tell me why you left?”

Kenma was looking straight at (y/n), with his normal, neutral gaze. It looked like his normal face, but (y/n) knew how hurt he was. He understood, though. He would be hurt too if his best friend moved without saying goodbye.

“I’m...I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

More silence consumed them. Sounds of sneakers squeaking and the rustle of the net being hung up seemed to vanish under the cloud of quiet sheltering them. Kenma stood up.

“I’m not mad. But I know why you left. And I’m not saying it’s a stupid reason, but you should talk to him.”

Kenma walked away without another word, leaving (y/n) to trail his eyes over to his old teammate, now captain. The frown that summoned up on his face came naturally, despite taking Kenmas words to heart.

He also stood up, brushing himself off and turning his cheery attitude back on. Why play a game with a frown when you’re about to destroy your old team?

—————

(Y/n) wasn’t mad he lost. He was actually quite satisfied with ticking off some of his old teammates by receiving spikes or feints no one saw coming. He sort of felt like an inside man. A spy even. It wasn’t enough to secure a win, but (y/n) never really cared for that.

Everyone was bidding their new friends goodbye, or just idly standing by. He promised Kenma to unblock his number, but only if they never talked about Kuroo again. (Y/n) knew he was being petty, but if it meant never talking to that piece of shit again, so be it-

“Stop ignoring me.”

Speak of the fucking devil. (Y/n) didn’t turn around, choosing to clutch the edge of his black jacket instead.

“Then stop trying to fix a friendship that never existed, Kuroo.”

“Oi!” Kuroo grabbed onto (y/n’s) shoulder harshly, pulling him back and making him stumble a little. (Y/n) pried and clawed at Kuroos iron hard grip. As much as he hated to admit it, he missed Kuroos touch, a lot.

“Can we please have a civilized fucking conversation? I’m fuckin begging you here!”

“Stop fucking cursing and let go of me you fuckass scheming bitch!”

(Y/n) swung at Kuroos head, but avertedly missed. He wasn’t sure if he missed on purpose, or if Kuroo ducked. Kuroo grabbed onto (y/n’s) waist, earning a choked squeak, and hauled him over his shoulder. Kuroo looked for a secluded area, ignoring the fists digging repeatedly into his back and the confused stares he got passing by his team and (y/n’s) teammates.

Kuroo practically threw (y/n) off his back, him stumbling down and hitting the back of a wall a bit harshly, and trapped him between his body and the wall. Both of his hands were on either side of (y/n’s) head, and his legs were long enough to trap him in if he tried to escape.

(Y/n) shrunk back into the wall ever so slightly, but kept the scowl present on his face. Kuroo pursed his lips and sighed.

“(Y/n)-“

“Let me go. I don’t wanna tal-“

“GODDAMNIT (Y/N) IM BUSTING MY BALLS HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IM SORRY!” Kuroo slammed his hands against the wall again, earning a surprised flinch from the smaller boy. “FUCKING LISTEN TO ME! PLEASE!”

Kuroos eyes softened a bit when he finally met eyes with (y/n’s) petrified form, cowering against the wall with his arms tucked in shakily. (Y/n) was quick to push past Kuroo though, diving past him and turning around, free from the wall.

“You see-this is what I fucking hate about you! You act so slick and perfect to the point where you lead people on to think they mean something important to you! I wanted to be a writer, Kuroo! I gave that up to spend my time bouncing a fucking volleyball around with you, and what did I get?! Nothing! I only did it for your stupid friendship, yet I didn’t even get that!”

(Y/n) practically had steam rolling out up his ears, and his words dripped with pure hatred with each retort. Kuroo opened his mouth to speak, but (y/n) beat him to it.

“So if you really want to apologize, give me back the blood sweat and tears I wasted on this stupid volleyball shit!”

(Y/n) punched at Kuroos chest with trembling hands. He kept punching and hitting Kuroo until Kuroo gently grabbed his wrists and pulled him into a hug. Kuroo felt him balling his fists into his back, trying to push him away, but he knew he was stronger. (Y/n’s) mouth was muffled by the cloth of Kuroos shirt, yet he still kicked and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“LET ME GO! I WANT MY CHILDHOOD BACK! I WANT ALL THE YEARS I COULD’VE BEEN WRITING OR LITERALLY BE DOING SOMETHING I ACTUALLY FUCKING LIKE BACK! ITS YOUR FAULT! ITS YOUR FAULT THAT MY ARMS HURT EVERYDAY! ITS YOUR FAULT I GAVE UP ON WRITING! ITS YOUR FAULT! I HATE YOU! I HATE VOLLEYBALL! I FUCKING HATE YOU! I hate you! I-I hate...I....”

Yelling turned into incoherent sobs as (y/n’s) punches died out into love taps. Kuroo said nothing, rubbing circles onto (y/n’s) back, who finally gave up and weakly wrapped his arms around Kuroos waist. He stained Kuroo with his salty tears, choking out half assed “let me go”s in between hics and sobs like a broken record.

They stood like that in comfortable silence, Kuroo combing fingers through (y/n’s) hair while the smaller boys sobs turned into occasional sniffles. Kuroo rocked gently from side to side, attempting to calm him down until he was ready to talk.

“I just wanted to be your friend, stupid Kuroo...” his words were barely understandable through the cracks and sniffles of his voice-also being muffled by Kuroos chest-but the taller boy heard every word as clear as day. He rested his chin on top of (y/n’s) head, looking off to the side.

“Sorry. If it means anything, I was stupid enough to hold a childhood grudge against you. You did nothing wrong. I just...i was dumb and disliked you because I thought you were lazy and annoying even though you were anything but that and...yeah. Sorry.”

Kuroo pulled away from the hug, the cold air hitting (y/n) like a truck. He silently whined at the loss of contact, wiping away stray tears with his team jacket. Kuroo awkwardly held his hands behind his back, his tongue suddenly feeling too big to fit comfortably in his mouth.

“...I’m sorry too.”

(Y/n) averted his gaze, his eyes half lidded and puffy from crying. Kuroo looked at (y/n) with a blank expression.

“Why?”

“For um...being annoying or something. And like...bitching a lot. I’m sorr-.”

Kuroo grabbed hold of (y/n’s) shoulders and shook him violently. “Don’t apologize! You don’t have anything to be sorry for! It’s my fault! Let me take the blame!”

“God shut up you’re gonna make me cry again.”

“...sorry.”

Kuroo looked like a kicked puppy, which made (y/n) burst into a fit of laughter. Kuroos ears perked up as he was graced with the sight of (y/n) wiping happy tears off his face and clutching his stomach. It was a beautiful sight, so beautiful that it made Kuroos chest tighten.

Chuckles died out into snickers as (y/n) huffed and leaned against the wall.

“So-what are we? Friends?”

Kuroo hesitantly nodded, watching (y/n’s) face intently for any sign of protest. When (y/n) broke out into a smile, Kuroo felt like he was on cloud nine. Like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders after so long. He felt like he was flying.

“We should probably head back. I gotta go back to my schoo-“

“Yeah. Yeah that’s probably..smart...”

It was kind of bittersweet knowing you had to say goodbye to someone you just got your hands back on, but after (y/n) unblocked his number right infront of him before enveloping him in a hug, he supposed it was alright.

“Bye~! call me~” (y/n) mouthed out, stepping onto the bus. People started asking him if he was crying, or what that meltdown was about, but he just shrugged and put some earbuds in with a reserved smile.

Sports sucks. That’s the mindset (y/n) has, and probably will have forever.

But not when I’m with you.

——————

Epilogue:

“(Y/n)!” Kuroo ran up behind the boy and picked him up, twirling him around before setting him down. Tsukishima visibly gagged while Yamaguchi snickered behind him, stepping off the bus and preparing for the training camp.

“Yo! What’s up! God I missed you and your stupid hair.”

“I missed you too~”

...

“So...are we-“

“Yeah, that’s what we said on video chat right? I mean-if you meant it and all.”

“I DID!” Kuroo picked his new boyfriend up, this time placing a chaste kiss on the bridge of his nose.

“And god I love you so much.”

——————

And that’s it!! I hope you enjoyed this series!! Also thank you for 100 followers!! I’m so thankful!!

#hq x male reader #hq fics #haikyuu kuroo tetsuro #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo x male reader #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsuro imagine #kuroo testuro #kuroo tetsuro x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x male reader #hq kuroo #kuroo x y/n #kuroo x you #kuroo angst

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anistarrose · 4 years

Text

Missteps and Miscommunication (GF One-Shot)

Summary: Ford loses consciousness in the fight in the basement, and Stan knows exactly one thing: the being cheerfully offering to reconcile with him is not his brother.

Word Count: 2400

Warnings: Bill possession and some injuries (nothing graphic)

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/22059016

A Secret Santa gift for @usuallyherdragon! Despite the title, it’s actually fulfilling the request of hurt/comfort with a happy ending!

***

“You want me to get rid of this book? Fine! I'll get rid of it right now!”

“No! You don’t understand —”

Stan’s not even sure how it happens, but one moment Ford’s lunging for the journal like a starving wild animal, and the next, he has the book in his hands again but he’s lurching backwards as his legs collapse underneath him. His head hits a pipe half-buried in the ground, but he doesn’t even flinch from the pain. He just goes limp.

“FORD!” Is this my fault? Did I let go of the journal? Did I hurt him? “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay, I’m so fucking sorry —”

Ford’s body twitches, and a faint smile spreads across his face.

“No need to apologize!” he responds without opening his eyes. “We both got a little carried away — just like old times, eh?”

Stan’s heart pounds in his chest. All of his instincts are telling him to bolt.

“Uh… are you s-sure you’re okay?” he asks through chattering teeth. He buries his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, but they don’t feel any warmer.

“Of course! What’s a little head injury to me, Stanford Pines? I’ve got plenty of brain cells to spare!” His eyes still closed, Ford gets to his feet and turns around to face away from Stan. More quietly, he adds:

“If anything, I should be apologizing to you, my dear brother. I let my impulsiveness get the better of me and pushed you away, but really, I wouldn’t want to change the world with anyone else at my side.”

That brazen lie is all it takes to confirm Stan’s suspicions. This thing in front of him in the trenchcoat and glasses isn’t Ford, not anymore.

“Hitting my head gave me an epiphany,” Not-Ford prattles on, gesturing towards the portal. “I was so afraid of what my research could do if it was released into the world, and people with less noble intentions than I got their hands on it — but with your street smarts backing me up, I know we could change the world for the better! What do you say, Stanley?”

“I say you better turn around and face me right now,” Stan growls. “Open your goddamn eyes and turn around and look at me.”

Not-Ford’s limbs jerk unnaturally as he whirls around, blinking catlike yellow eyes as he shoots Stan a toothy grin.

“You caught on after all!” he exclaims. “Now we’ll get to have some real fun!”

Not-Ford feints to the left and Stan falls for it, raising his fists to block a punch that never comes as Not-Ford scampers towards the control panel instead.

“Get out of his body, you — you demon!” Stan shouts, giving chase.

“I’m just borrowing it!” Not-Ford whines. “He said I could!”

“Liar!” Stan makes a grab for the hem of Ford’s trenchcoat, but Not-Ford narrowly dodges out of the way, twisting one last key into the control panel as he darts across the basement.

“Careful, Stanley!” the demon jeers. “You wouldn’t want to hurt your brother! You might even push him into another dimension at this rate, if you’re not careful!”

He wants to turn the portal on, Stan realizes. And I can use that. I just have to find a way to make sure he can’t hurt Ford —

He twists the key back into its initial position and watches the light above it go out, then pulls the key out of the panel and waves it above his head. “Hey, body snatcher! Look what I’ve got!”

“What?! Put that back!”

“Try and catch me with it, sucker!”

Stan makes a break for the elevator room, and Not-Ford gives chase only to trip and fall on his face. Stan flinches, but takes a deep breath and throws open the door anyway, scouring the room for rope, electrical cords, anything that he could use to restrain Ford’s body while looking for a way to get rid of the demon.

His eyes come to rest on a mannequin stuffed in the corner to his left. It has a rope tied around its waist, and he kneels down to untangle the knots —

“Look what I found!” a too-cheery voice sings behind him, followed by the sound of a door being kicked open and a flame hissing to life.

Stan whirls around to find the demon wielding a blowtorch, its blue glow reflecting in Ford’s glasses and almost hiding those horrible slit-pupiled eyes.

“Let me strike a deal with you, Stanley! You help me turn the portal on, I’ll give you your brother back, and I’ll let the both of you live when I conquer this dimension! Heck, I’ll even give each of you your own continent to rule! I sure won’t need ‘em all when I’ve got the whole galaxy under my command!”

Back against the wall and staring down a grinning demon and a searing butane flame, Stan knows he’s cornered. But with a rope in one hand and a key in the other, he still has one last desperate idea.

“Well?” the demon asks. “Deal or no deal?”

“Go long!” Stan hurls the key over Not-Ford’s head and the demon dives backwards, dropping the blowtorch as he outstretches his arms —

Then the back of his shoulder slams into a red-hot sigil etched into the side of the desk, and his body spasms for several terrifying seconds before dual beams of yellow light fly out of his eyes and Ford slumps to the ground, unconscious.

***

The first thing Ford processes after waking up is the rope chafing around his wrists, restraining him as he attempts to bolt to his feet.

“Well, look who’s finally awake.”

“Go to hell, Bill!” Ford spits. “Why are you still —”

He blinks. “Stanley?”

“Oh, are you you again? I wasn’t sure.” Stan steps forward and puts a hand on Ford’s shoulder, stopping the chair Ford’s tied to from toppling over before leaning in close to take a look at Ford’s eyes. Then Stan nods, apparently satisfied.

“You know, actually telling me that you get possessed by a fucking demon when you’re unconscious would’ve been really helpful an hour ago.”

Ford allows himself one tiny sigh of relief. It’s good — better than Ford could’ve hoped for, really — that Stan has picked up on the nature of Ford’s predicament, but that doesn’t mean all is well. Far from it.

“Bill didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Nah, he was waving around a blowtorch for a minute or two, but I don’t think he really knew how to use the thing.” Noting what must’ve been a truly horrified expression on Ford’s face, Stan frowns. “Why do you care anyways?”

“Because — because you’re my brother?!” Ford splutters.

Stan looks away, and Ford can just sense that another argument is imminent, though he can’t imagine why. (Other than how he’d told Stan to get out of his house earlier, and how he’d certainly never given Stan any reasons over the past decade to believe that he did care, and… alright, he can imagine quite a few explanations why.)

“Look, Stanley, there are — there are a million more productive things we can, and should, be discussing right now. Did Bill do anything to the portal? If he did, I need you to untie me right this minute so I can get downstairs and make sure it doesn’t get activated —”

“He flipped a couple switches, but the thing didn’t look too active to me,” Stan answers quietly. “After I got you — er, your body — tied up, I went and switched back the settings to what I remembered them looking like when we first came downstairs. Half your damn diary was illegible, but one of the pages I could read helped with that.”

“Then — then I don’t know how you did it, but you probably just averted a universal apocalypse.” Ford takes a deep breath. “I really should still go down to double-check the portal’s status in the basement, but… I owe you an apology. I —”

“You really don’t,” Stan mumbles.

Ford tries several times to say something before finally managing: “Are you really still that determined to disagree with me about everything?!”

Stan slumps into the kitchen’s other chair, still not making eye contact. “You haven’t got the full story, Ford. How does your shoulder feel? Not great, I’m guessing.”

Ford grimaces. His shoulder admittedly feels horrible — he’d ignored it at first only because random injuries are a given whenever Bill is involved. “What happened?”

“It was an accident, I swear. I was just — just trying to distract the demon so he didn’t blowtorch my ass, but he backed up into this brand you had on the side of your desk, and —”

“A brand? You mean the protective sigil?!”

“You think I know what a protective sigil looks like? It had a circle, a diamond, some arrows —”

“And you said Bill backed into it on his own? You didn’t push him onto it?!”

“Yeah, but what difference does it make? It was still my fault —”

Ford tries and fails to hold in a delirious, sleep-deprived laugh. “Oh my god, Stan…”

Stan cringes. “Oh, just get it over with already! Tell me you never want to see my face again —”

“Are you kidding?” Ford asks. “Why would I say that after you just accomplished what I thought was impossible?!”

Stan’s jaw drops. “You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you.”

“Quite the opposite! My mind is safer than it’s ever been —” Ford pauses. “Although you wouldn’t have any way of knowing that, would you? I’m sorry. I should explain.”

“Yeah.” Stan buries his head in his hands. “You really should.”

“Let me start… near the beginning. I made a deal with a demon, which was incredibly foolhardy of me, even though he initially appeared to be more of a muse than a demon at the time, and… that deal allowed him to take over my body whenever I fell asleep.”

Ford waits for the mocking, the contempt, the ‘serves you right,’ but it never comes.

“Tough break,” is all Stan mutters, in a voice that doesn’t seem judgemental as much as it does numb.

“His ultimate goal was to use that portal, which he tricked me into creating, to open a rift to the dimension his physical form resides in,” Ford slowly goes on. “Such a rift would allow him to enter our world, and then do with it as he pleased. He’d be nigh-omnipotent here — hence my desperation to get rid of the journals that explained how to activate the portal. And that was why I called you here — but that was a mistake.”

Stan flinches, and Ford quickly adds: “I don’t mean asking for your help was a mistake! I mean it was a mistake to try and send you away — except it was that argument that led to Bill getting exorcised, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so — I don’t know. Maybe it was the right choice, but made for all the wrong reasons —”

“Exorcised?” Stan echoes. “That’s what the sigil did to Bill?”

“Exactly. Bill’s locked out of my body until the scars disappear… which might not ever happen, for all I know.” Momentarily forgetting he’s still tied up, Ford tries to rub his shoulder.

“Except I couldn’t just brand myself with it while I was awake,” he explains. “Bill had to come in contact with it of his own free will while possessing my body, or it wouldn’t work. At first, I’d planned to turn the house into a minefield of protective sigils in hope that Bill would stumble onto one of them, but it took so long to properly enchant the one on the desk that I gave up before preparing any others, and passed it off as a lost cause.”

“Holy shit.” Stan rubs his head. “…Well, guess you’ll want me to untie you now, huh.”

“That would be ideal, yes.”

Stan fumbles with the knots for a few moments of awkward silence before simply pulling out a pocketknife and cutting through the ropes. As Ford stretches his arms, Stan asks: “What are you going to do now?”

“Double-check the portal settings. Disassemble a few key components so they’re still repairable, but we can be sure we won’t have any more close calls. Then… god, I think I might actually be able to sleep after that. I can hardly believe it.”

“…Ford?” Stan asks, so quietly that Ford might not have heard it at all were the house not so silent otherwise.

“Yes?”

“Can I spend the night here? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way of your work saving the world and all that, but… it’s still snowing like crazy outside, and I don’t know how far the Stanmobile can make it —”

“You can stay as long as you need to,” Ford says, and instantly regrets it. Not because he doesn’t want Stanley to stay, but because need implies that the stay will only last a few nights at most. And as much as he’s tried to deny it for years, Ford is lonely.

“Okay. I’m gonna go grab some stuff from my car —”

“Actually, scratch that,” Ford interrupts, and Stan freezes like a deer in the headlights.

“What I meant to say was… you can stay as long as you like. And for all I know, that still may not be very long, because I haven’t been the best brother or even paid my goddamn heating bills, but… well, I’d like to catch up with you, if that’s — gah!”

The hug catches Ford off guard, leaving him gasping for breath

“I’d like that too, Sixer,” Stan whispers.

Ford hugs him back, and Stan finally manages a laugh. “Even if we have to tell stories while sitting around a goddamn bonfire so we don’t freeze to death. Seriously, why did you stop paying your heating bills?”

“It seemed like a good way to keep myself awake at the time…” Ford murmurs in the moments before drifting back to sleep right then and there, leaning on his brother’s shoulder in the middle of an empty kitchen.

#gravity falls #stanley pines #stanford pines #bill cipher #rosalia writes fic

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5lazarus · 3 years

Text

Winter in Amaranthine, Ch. 4: Oghren

Summary: The Wardens' companions decide to leave, and Warden-Commander Arana Mahariel cannot find a reason good enough to tell them no. Meanwhile, letters between the Warden and Leliana get lost in translation, and Arana makes it worse. Chapter 4, Oghren: Oghren sobers the Warden up.

Read on AO3 here. On Tumblr, read here for Justice & Anders, here for Velanna & Sigrun, and here for Nathaniel Howe.

She stays in her office all night drinking. Arana sits at her desk and sips slowly at her tumbler, enjoying the warp of the fire in the high-priced Serault glass. She is perhaps the only Dalish elf to ever have the privilege to drink from glassware normally preserved for the Divine and Her Holiness’ followers. They had been sent to the Divine as a bribe from the notoriously eccentric Marquis de Serault and waylaid by Leliana. Remembering that, Arana’s hand tightens around the glass and she contemplates smashing it, as she has smashed most of the relationships in her life. But she is the Warden-Commander of Ferelden and the Arlessa of Amaranthine, and it looks bad enough that she is drunk--she does not want to imagine what the servants would say, if they had to clean up glass worth several years of their salary. Instead of breaking it, she tops up her glass. She wakes up to the cool seabreeze whistling outside of her open office window, gulls crying out for bread. Blearily she pulls her head off her desk, cheek sticking slightly to the surface. Her head is heavy but the hangover has not begun to ring through her yet. Arana wrinkles her nose: coffee in a silver pot, embossed with the Warden crest, steams before her, with an equally beautiful silver cup. “Drink up,” Oghren says. “You’re gonna need it.”

She fixes him with a red-eyed stare. Did she cry last night? She should have, if she didn’t. “Food?” she asks. They have done this before, the two of them, after they killed Branka, after Alistair left, and then Leliana. Oghren grunts. “Enough to tide you over,” he says. “Servant’ll be bringing it up, not me.” Ashara snorts. “Distinctions of rank must be preserved,” she says drily. “You want a cup? I imagine you brought your own.” A servant knocks on the door and brings in a hefty rasher of bacon, thickly-sliced, and three eggs fried in the grease, along with a shot glass of a mysterious green liquid. Ashara raises an eyebrow at Oghren. “Pickle juice,” Oghren grunts. “Works every time. Now get eating, we have to get to the city by noon.” “You don’t give me orders, Warden,” Ashara says, and laughs when Oghren rolls his eyes. “Fine. Enjoy your hangover. I’ll take the bacon.” Oghren feints towards the food, and Ashara waves him off. She eats, feeling her flesh gradually restore around her bones, and takes that shot of pickle juice. It is all surprisingly good. “No hair of the dog?” she says. “That’s a road you don’t want to go down,” Oghren says. “Trust me. Been trying to walk back up it for three months.” He grins at her. “Three months sober today. Sister Nightingale sent me a pretty little amulet to wear. Silver. Supposed to ward off poison.” He laughs. “‘Nuff poison I’ve thrown into myself. And out.” “You’ve been corresponding,” Arana says flatly. She sips her coffee. Leliana has been corresponding personally with Oghren, but has not bothered to send her a letter in months. She is furious--how can she find Oghren more pleasant to talk to than her? Did her letter anger her that much? She could have at least written her back, rather than turning her quill towards other people--to Oghren, of all people. Arana tolerates Oghren, and sometimes she even likes him--she has grown to respect him, after he joined the Wardens and apologized to Felsi, and she knows sobriety is not easy. Still, out of everyone left at Vigil’s Keep, one would think she rates higher than that fool. But Leliana has always liked a good redemption story, especially if she can prompt it. Arana scowls again. Oghren snorts at the look on her face. “Aye,” hen said. “And that’s why I’m taking you on a walk.” “Is this an intervention? I’m not a drunk, Oghren. Not like you--were.” “Andraste’s tits,” he says. “You’re not a drunk like me, no, and you haven’t puked away all your opportunities and shat on all your loved ones--” “You shat on Felsi?” Arana interrupts. Arana occasionally finds Oghren’s stories reassuring: it is always nice to know that someone has fucked up more than she ever can. Oghren pauses. “No!” He considers it. “Maybe. Her doorstep, more like it.” “And she answers your letters.” Arana leans back in her chairs and downs her coffee. Leliana doesn’t answer her letters, and Arana has never even drooled on her, let alone shat on her doorstep. “Sweet Sylaise, that woman has the patience of a Keeper.” Oghren snorts. “She doesn’t answer my letters, but she certainly cashes the notes I send her. You good? You drank your coffee? You gonna eat that? Let’s go.” They leave the keep quietly. The keep is bustling as usual, with the trainers and the recruits and the cooks and the cleaners running about. Arana catches sight of Ser Pounce watching from a young tree she planted, that passes as a Vhenadahl, and she stops a second. Ser Pounce cocks his head at her and mews. He looks very well-fed. “He hasn’t been hunting the Blighted rats, has she?” she asks anxiously. “I do not want Anders to hear we poisoned his cat.” Oghren says, “Ser Pounce took out a hurlock alpha. Think he’s immune to the Blight at this point, Commander.” Ser Pounce lets out a meow, and disappears into the leaves. Arana hopes he has not been pissing on the tree. They move off the main road to avoid listeners, and because Arana deeply craves the woods, the feel of the living earth under her soles, and the whisper of the lost that press against the almost sheer Veil, trying to get their stories heard. They trudge along in silence for the first hour. Oghren hums to himself. He is not a particularly good singer, Arana well knows, but she enjoys having company. They meander, and Arana loses herself in the cool gray copse that acts as a natural barrier between Vigil’s Keep and anyone avoiding the King’s Road. When they are far from Vigil’s Keep but still an hour from Amaranthine City, Oghren finally speaks up. “You been getting a lot of mail lately.” “Yes,” Arana says. “I have certainly been filing my dispatches.” Oghren looks at her sideways. “Dispatches,” Oghren says. “From ol’ King Alistair, from that warden from Clan Lavellan, maybe even one or two from Tabris. But nothing from Surana, or Brosca, or Zevran, or Leliana even. Except that one, right? From the batch that came in before Anders left.” “Are you reading my mail?” Arana says, annoyed. Her hand reaches for her sword handle. “Fen’Harel take you, dwarf, those letters contain sensitive information, and you are enough of a drunk--” Oghren raises both hands. “Three months sober,” he emphasizes. “Since Anders left. Ser. Though I guess I’ll always be a drunk, I’ll be a dry drunk for sure. And no--I file your mail. Quartermaster told me to make myself useful, and it keeps me from going to the tavern for lunch.” Arana deflates. She crosses her arms instead, and looks up at the bald trees reaching for the gray sky. It does not snow in Amaranthine, even in winter. She hopes it does not rain. Oghren continues, “Struck me as weird, it did. That you’d only get official business, but Tabris was writing Velanna and Nathaniel, Leliana was checking in with me every two weeks, Alistair even sent me some cheese. ‘Twas moldy to be sure, but I think he did that on purpose.” “Some Orlesian cheeses are supposed to be moldy,” Arana says, amused despite herself. “Leliana told me.” Oghren shot her a look. “Didn’t it strike you as weird that Leliana was writing me but not you? And I didn’t want to intrude on whatever your lover’s spat was, I know how you get.” Arana opened her mouth to protest, but Oghren barreled on, “So I did some investigating. And guess what I found out? The courier who takes letters from the crossroads, and sends them up the coast? Well, her husband’s got an Orlesian last name, and his cousin works in the Divine’s scriptorium.” His moustache twitches as he beams up at her triumphantly. “The Divine’s been stealing your mail, lass. She’s trying to fuck you and Leliana up.” He spreads his arms out, as if he is expecting applause. “You took me out here to tell me this?” Arana says incredulously. “You couldn’t have told me this in front of my fire?” As she says that, she feels a cold drop hit her forehead. She wipes it away, crestfallen. It begins to rain. She glares down at him. Oghren says cheerfully, “Better get to Amaranthine quick. Time to sprint!” They reach the city gates, mudsplattered, soaked, and sour. Arana bitches the whole way back onto the King’s Road and through the gates. It is the most she has spoken since Velanna left, and her throat gets sore. “And now!” she exclaims, as Oghren shepherds her towards a relatively nice inn near the alienage, “now my throat hurts! I will get a cold, and I will be bedridden, and someone else will need to find a polite way to tell the Chantry they have no right to censor us for recruiting whomever wanted to flee Kinloch Hold, while simultaneously keeping them from scrutinizing too heavily whatever Blighted nugshit Weisshaupt is up to--you know Morrigan has been sighted in Serault, bearing a writ from the Divine? And somehow it’s my fault.” She has not spoken this much, or so openly, since Surana last visited, and though she knows it is perhaps unwise to confide this all in Oghren of all people, she cannot stop the torrent of words. “And, and, I need to apologize to my clan, and--” In the corner of the steaming inn, a woman sits, tuning a lute. Arana stops dead. Leliana looks up and smiles. “My love,” she says. “My heart.”

#leliana/mahariel #female mahariel #oghren #oghren & mahariel #leliana #warden #dao #dragon age #awakening #fanfic #dragon age fanfic #winter in amaranthine

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kpurereactions · 7 years

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Hi 👋🏻 I have two things to say: 1) I love your blog so much! Your writing has inspired me to start writing again, not anything like reactions or bts related but just in general, so thank you so much for that 💖 2) are requests open? If so can I ask for when you have collapsed due to malnutrition/dehydration, as you're trying to lose weight? If they're closed sorry to bother you, and I hope you're well :) Thank you in advance xx

Jin:

Seeing you loose all your body strength and fall limp would make him cry in instant panic. He’d get you to the hospital, sit by your side, ignoring every call or text that would be sent his way to ask where he was and why he wasn’t responding. When the doctor told him you feinted from malnutrition he’d tear up again, blaming himself for not noticing sooner.

Yoongi:

Getting a call saying you had collapsed at work sent him into a panic. He’d stand up in the middle of the meeting, telling the boys that you were in the hospital and when they all nodded, telling him to go and saying that they’d come later he’d rush to you. When the doctor told him that you were malnourished it just didnt seem to make sense to him. You were always bringing him food and always eating with him. But when the doctor said that your eating wasn’t the problem, it was you keeping the food down, Yoongi broke down. He wasn’t one to show his emotions that way but every time you had disappeared after a meal came rushing back into his mind. He’d blame himself completely and after he was able to take you back home he would keep such a close eye on you that it might have felt suffocating, but you knew it was only to help you.

Namjoon:

He would take a double take before rushing over to you. He’d ask your cheeks lightly while calling your name to see if you responded and when you didnt he’d call the ambulance right away. He’d try his hardest to remain calm but after being told why you had feinted he couldn’t help but raise his voice at you when you finally woke up. He’d guilt you into getting more healthy, which made you feel terrible about yourself but it still made you eat more.

Hoseok:

He would be beside himself as he waited for you to wake up, finding comfort in the other members that had also come to be by yourself at the hospital. When he had found you he thought you were just napping, but the way you were slumped over just didnt seem comfortable enough. When the doctor told him why you had feinted he could do nothing but put his head in his hands as the other boys tried to comfort him. When you woke up it was like all the light in his life had returned and he quietly begged for you to stop it, that there was no need of you to starve yourself.

Jimin:

He never would have thought that you would also have a problem like he did, though, now that he sat there in the hospital waiting room he realized what starving yourself could do. He’d feel like it was his fault. That is own actions had caused you to feel the same, and as you woke up and he rushed to his side he made a promise to you that he would put his own and your health before anything else so something like this never happened to you again.

Taehyung:

He would be furious with himself that he didnt notice sooner that you weren’t taking care of himself. He always raved about how much he loved you and how if anyone asked him anything about you he’d be able to tell them the answer straight away. So not knowing that you were dealing with something like this made his heart break, because it meant that you were doing it alone. He waited by you day and night and as the hospital got ready to discharge you Taehyung made you a promise that he would never let you suffer by yourself ever again, as long as you promised to tell him when things got rough.

Jungkook:

Seeing you laying there unconscious scared him. Seeing you laying there now hooked up to machines in a cold hospital room terrified him. Yes he knew that he loved you, but he never realized how much you actually meant to him until then. He’d find himself making silent promises to you that everything in his power he will do just to make you happy and healthy again, and when you finally woke up, you could see that he meant it. That at that moment in time he started loving you more than anything else.

#bts #bts reactions #jin #yoongi #namjoon #hoseok #jimin #taehyung #jungkook

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djinmer4 · 6 years

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AU^4 (Evil Verse)

This also was part of an idea I had. In the 9997 universe, when Belasco realizes that he was (is) Kurt Wagner, Kurt’s personality comes out on top and he tries to redeem himself. What if it had gone the other way around? So this is an AU of the Belasco!verse that @mikeellee and I are writing, which is an AU of Earth X, which is an AU of canon 616 universe.

I was going to have the big reveal to Kitty at the end, but this was getting long and I’ve got work tomorrow. So that’ll be in the next part.

Belasco was contemplating the most recent news from the material plane went he felt the telltale change in pressure from a teleport. Irritated, he cast his senses out, seeking who would dare trespass in his domain. To his surprise, he didn’t feel any sort of magic power at all, not even the slippery feeling from a shielded magic user. Not one of the other Lords of Limbo challenging him then, nor a sorcerer from the material plane. Had some lost innocent wandered in by accident again? Those were always fun. Sometimes he even let them go, after a very long time.

Rising to his feet, he began to search his halls. To his surprise, there was no evidence of the intruder. No random bystander knocking about the corridors, no damage to any of the furnishings. A quick trip revealed nothing amiss in the library or the treasury, the two most obvious targets. Yet there was something, a fragrance in the air or a sense of being watched that warned him that the intruder is still here. “I know you’re here,” he announced to what appeared to be thin air. “Come out, child, and I’ll make this easy on you.”

Only silence. This was starting to get fun. First he banished all the lower demons present in his estate. While he wasn’t too concerned about them being killed, either by the intruder or by his own hand, he didn’t want this person using them to escape. “Are you still there?” The feeling of being watched sharpened.

After another quick round in person, he started sectioning off the different parts of his castle. Then he vanished them, dissolving them back into the Chaos that made up Limbo, until nothing but the main parts, such as the throne room, were left. Still nothing, but now he was starting to get a sense of what direction the person was in.

Now how were they keeping away from him? Were they there, merely invisible? Several quick slashes with his axe disproved that, even if they had avoided being hit, they would not have avoided the shock wave. Were they in the air or the shadows? Changing the air to a sulfurous mix only caused a brief sensation of retreat, flooding the area with light brought no change at all. Had the person switched into another dimension? The Ruler of Limbo caused the very substance of the world to waver, but nothing popped out.

There was only one remaining possibility he could think of . . . but she had died decades ago. It was at that moment he felt someone grab his ankle and he started to sink into the stone floor. Then the floor solidified, shattering muscle and bone. Before he could recover, he felt something slide through his back, slipping through the ribs into his heart.

“I-I did it!” It really was her! He’d have recognized that voice anywhere! But she had been stone; how had King Britain brought her back to life? For a second, the joy in her voice made him contemplate letting her bask in her victory, letting her think she’d won for once. But no, this was an opportunity too good to be missed.

It was the work of seconds to reform himself. “Nice try,” he laughed. “But within this place I am immune from death.”

Kitty Pryde (the same outfit, the same face, the same eyes, the same soul, oh how long has it been since he had seen her) simply gritted her teeth and adjusted her grip on her sword. “We’ll see about that.” Then she charged to attack.

Three swift blows that he deflected, falling back to give himself more room to swing. Then a strike to the left slipped past his guard, cutting a shallow wound on his bicep. He teleported behind her striking her in the back (flat side only) before she could turn around, but she simply phased to let the axe pass through her. Then she was back on the attack again.

This time he managed to lock her sword with his blade. A quick shove knocked her off her feet and she was left sprawling on the floor. Belasco raised his axe to knock her out, but by the time he had struck, Kitty had phased again. But this time, she had her arm raised, and her sword, intangible, had gone straight through his weapon and into his trachea. She gave a brief smirk to the Demon Lord then rolled away. Once she was free of the axe, she let go of the sword, which abruptly materialized while still embedded in his throat. Severed arteries spurted blood into the air, and several vertebrae shattered.

But healing took no longer than it did the first time. “Stop this foolishness girl. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“Third time’s the charm.” He had to give her credit. Most people, even experienced swordsmen would have been tired by now. Shadowcat was ready to keep going, although he noticed that the smile on her face had been replaced with a frown. One more time, that was all she had left in her he suspected.

More thrusts, less swinging this time. Less defense as well, simply letting his blows phase through her rather than blocking or dodging. She feinted left twice, then before he could raise his weapon into position, she drove her sword forward and up- straight into his right eye.

Alright, that actually hurt, he thought as he felt the point of her blade grind against the back of his skull. Enough was enough. This time when he reformed, he didn’t give her the chance to go on the offensive again. One swift blow broke her arm and knocked her sword away from her. Rather than surrender though, she reached for a device on her waist; the ruler of Limbo recognized it as a portal maker. “You can’t leave yet!” A quick reversal, then the gadget was smashed into pieces and the X-Man was pressing her smarting arm into her chest. Now she looked worried. She started to phase into the floor, but he pulled her up with his tail, suppressing her ability.

She started to kick out at him, trying to get away. Ignoring the blows, he concentrated, then conjured a necklace from the substance of Limbo. It sat high on her throat, like a choker or a torc (or a slave collar). More importantly, it was set with several crystals that would prevent her from using her ability. Only when he was certain that she couldn’t get away he let her go.

She stayed on the ground for a moment, probably trying to phase through the floor. “What have you done?” she asked.

He went and picked up the sword she had been using. Glowing blue blade with cross supports, black grip with a skull on the pommel. “The Soul Sword! Well, now I am impressed.” He turned back to his would-be assassin. “An artificial portal maker to get you in and out, the one weapon that everyone knows can harm me, wielded by a master swordswoman who has the ability to travel through the any wall or lock. This was very well thought out.” Belasco briefly considered severing the link between woman and sword then dismissed it. Instead he encased the sword in more crystal. That should stop Kitty from being able to use it, but keeping the link would prevent anyone else from claiming it as well.

He extended his hand to the young girl on the ground. She recoiled back, as if retreating from a venomous snake. Undeterred, he simply scooped her up cradling her in his one arm as if she were a doll. “Shh, it’s alright,” the villain said. “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me - you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”

She hit out at him, disregarding her broken arm. He ignored everything she threw at him. Finally, exhausted, she fell limp and let him carry her. It wasn’t over though. He was sure she was planning her next escape attempt.

Let her plot away. He had never thought he would ever see her again. Now that he had her back, he wasn’t going to let her go for the world.

#Belasco #Kitty Pryde #Shadowcat #X-men #not really Belasco!Kurt #just belasco with Kurt's memories

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sarahwroteathing · 7 years

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Bedside Manner

Request: Anonymous: “A request for your celebration. Clint 74. 26”

74. “Where does it hurt? Yes.”

26. “Can you… can you just hold my hand, please?”

You felt… hazy. Warm and heavy. Nothing felt real; nothing felt quite right. It took you a minute before you could gather the focus and the will power to open your eyes, and when you did the world that was your little hospital room seemed even less real than you did. There was a steady beeping from an EKG, though, and that gave you something to focus on. Once your sluggish mind finally found something to anchor it to your present situation, it was kind enough to remind you of the backstory in a series of quick bursts.

Weakness: stab wound in left thigh, favoring right leg, imbalanced. One strong kick to right knee would bring him down. Follow up kick to the head to incapacitate. Next problem.

Weakness: Panic and fear causing uncoordinated movements, impaired judgement. Feint right, strike left. Down for the count. Next problem.

But your next problem wasn’t nearly as simple as you heard your name being called from somewhere behind you and turned to find the source. Clint was balancing atop a pile of rubble, bow drawn and arrow nocked, aiming steadily at something behind you. Whirling around quickly to follow his line of sight, you had just enough time to register the massive brute of a man barreling towards you before he rammed full force into your shoulder, his pace and course never once faltering almost as if he hadn’t even seen you. You were thrown flat onto your back, head knocking hard against the pavement and sending lights dancing before your eyes. With a pained groan you rolled to push yourself unsteadily to your feet, stomach at once lurching and tightening at the sight of the enemy agent still racing towards Clint.

“What are you doing? Take the shot!” you yelled, and though Clint’s eyes flickered back and forth between you and the man rushing towards him, he made no indication he had understood you. The only response you got was a sharp look and the tiniest shake of his head when you moved to run towards him.

Your breath was coming quicker now as you tried desperately to understand the archer’s plan, searching around for a dropped gun or another member of the team who could get to Clint quicker than you could. Letting out a huff of frustration you looked back to your friend in time to see him finally take his shot. The arrow flew straight and true, lodging dead center in the opposing agent’s chest before detonating. You could only watch, frozen by shock even as you screamed out in horror, as both men were engulfed in a flash of angry fire.

“Easy there, kid. They gave you the fun drugs.” Clint’s voice cut you off as you struggled to sit up in your bed.

Your head snapped to the side, freezing in your efforts to slip off the bed as your eyes flitted over his form, managing to panic even while heavily medicated, though the emotion did lose some of its characteristic sharpness.

“Clinton Francis Barton, just what the hell is your problem?” you demanded, making up for the slight slur in your words with the fire in your glare.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful bedside manner? Really, you should consider changing careers.”

“You BLEW YOURSELF UP!” you shrieked.

“Another thing to check off the bucket list.” Clint wasn’t even looking at you anymore, staring at the ceiling and sporting an easy smile.

“Of all the stupid, bird-brained stunts to pull –”

“Mom, is that you?”

Your frustration overrode your concern for him in that moment, and you snatched the plastic cup from your bedside table to throw at him. Clint let out a huff, catching it easily before chucking it back at you.

“Rude!” you yelled indignantly when the cup bounced off your nose. “Don’t throw shit at injured people!”

“You started it!”

“It didn’t actually hit you, so it doesn’t count!”

“Don’t blame me for your bad aim!”

“Oh, you want to talk about my bad aim? Would you like that to be before or after we discuss your poor life choices?”

“My poor life choices saved your ungrateful ass!”

“I didn’t ask you to save my ungrateful ass! My ungrateful ass could have handled itself!”

“Fine, well maybe next time I won’t bother!”

“Fine!”

You sat in stony silence for several moments before you heard a quiet rattle and disappointed sigh from Clint’s side of the room.

“Did they give you any water? Because all I’ve got is ice chips.”

You glanced at the pitcher on your bedside table but made no move to check its contents.

“I’m sure there’s a reason they gave you ice chips instead of water. Probably thought you’d drown yourself or something since you don’t seem to have any grasp on basic survival skills. Like not blowing yourself up.”

“Would you like me to call a nurse in here for a surgical consult? I’m sure they could do something about that stick up your ass.”

“How are you not murdered every hour? Oh, it must be because we can all count on you to get yourself killed.”

“Would you just give me some damn water?”

“Oh, you want water? I’ll give you water!”

In one smooth motion, you snagged the pitcher from your table, twisted the lid off, and flung its contents over Clint’s bed-ridden form. You smiled triumphantly at him for a moment before you saw his eyes narrow and just barely had time to hide your face behind your hands as he began pelting you with ice cubes.

“Ow, hey!” you called out, feeling around for the button to call the nurse with one hand while still shielding your face with the other. “We need help in here! Mr. Barton appears to have wet his bed!”

Your shouting drew the desired attention soon enough, and Clint was shifted to the bedside chair while they changed his sheets. Guilt began to creep up on you when you saw pain flash across his face every time he moved. When Clint caught you staring sadly at him, he winked, shaking his head slightly as if to dismiss your concern. Once he was once again situated and the nurses had departed, you looked to him cautiously.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

You snorted, and he echoed your laughter with soft chuckles until you trailed off.

“What happened out there Clint? Why did you wait so long to take that shot?”

“I was down to my last arrow, kid. I knew you couldn’t take that bastard down yourself, and no one else was close enough to help you. All I had was one explosive arrow… By the time I saw him he was too close to you. You would’ve gotten caught in that blast. So I waited for him to be clear of you.”

“But…”

“It was down to you or me, kid. I’m not apologizing for my decision.”

You stared at him in shock for a minute, chewing absently at your bottom lip before slipping off the edge of your bed and shuffling to his side on shaky legs. Clint reached an arm out to you in case you needed something to hold on to for balance, and you clutched it gratefully. With a sigh you settled into the chair at his bedside, leaning to rest your head on your arms on the edge of his bed.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“For what? You didn’t do anything. Except make the hot nurses think I can’t control my bladder.”

“Oh, shut up. They knew it was water.”

“Seriously, kid. What was that apology for?”

You shrugged one shoulder, lifting your head from your arms when Clint nudged your chin up.

“I almost got you killed, dummy,” you sighed with exasperation.

“Uh, no. If memory serves, I blew my own ass up.”

“To keep me from getting hurt.”

Clint sighed tiredly, looking over your somber face with a slight shake of his head.

“Can you… Can you just hold my hand, please?” he asked, and though your brows shot up in surprise you complied immediately, taking his hand gently in yours. “Any chance I can get you to smile? It wasn’t your fault, alright? Come on. One smile and then we’re even.”

“You’re getting soft, Clint,” you said with a fond laugh, and he smiled back at you, eyes already closing.

“Yeah, well… Don’t go telling everybody. It’d break my heart to lose my badass status.”

#clint barton x reader #clint barton fic #clint barton fanfiction #clint barton fluff #clint barton imagine

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pitviperofdoom · 7 years

Text

BNHA: Yesterday Upon The Stair, 21/?

Title: Yesterday Upon The Stair

Summary: Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it’s not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it.

But truthfully, the “weird” part is the only part that’s accurate. He’s determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he’s not actually quirkless. Even before meeting All-Might and taking on the power of One For All, Izuku isn’t quirkless.

Not that anyone would believe it if he told them.

(Sixth Sense AU)

AO3

Izuku is becoming increasingly familiar with the taste of Gran Torino’s hardwood floors, and he’s not entirely sure how he feels about that.

He would have said mortified, because that was how it felt the first time a tiny old man sent him somersaulting straight into the floor, but it’s happened often enough now that he’s almost numb to it. He certainly doesn’t have to wonder why All-Might was so scared of this guy anymore.

Every trick that Ms. Shimura has shown him thus far, every feint and maneuver that’s gotten him through his previous fights, even the few tricks Todoroki has had the chance to show him, are next to useless against Gran Torino. He even tried a few cheap shots out of desperation, and… well. He’s not in a hurry to make that mistake again.

At least Rei doesn’t look so offended anymore whenever he hits the floor. She’s far too busy laughing at him, the traitor.

“You’re a scrappy little thing, that’s for sure,” Gran Torino remarks at one point, charitably giving Izuku a chance to catch his breath. “But scrappy won’t get you far if you won’t even use your damn quirk.”

“It’s not that simple,” Izuku says, gritting his teeth in frustration. “If I use it, I either break myself or you or both of us, and—” He’s flat on his face again before he can finish the thought.

Recovery Girl’s warnings are fresh in his mind as he focuses his power. He concentrates, remembering how he’d brought it out against Todoroki in the cavalry battle. It hurts, but his arm stays unbroken, and for a moment it looks like he’s finally going to land a proper hit.

Thud.

And there’s the floor again. There’s a lovely dent in the ceiling, though.

“Damn it, boy, if you were any more rigid, I’d paint you neon and use you for a Welcome sign!” Gran Torino tells him.

“Almost had it,” Izuku mutters, trying to hide the fact that the wind has been knocked out of him.

“Don’t flatter yourself, boy.” Gran Torino doesn’t move to let him up. “You’re problem’s plain as day to me. Maybe it is to you too, by now—you’ve stuck All-Might on a pedestal so high you need five stepladders just to reach it. And you’ve stuck your own quirk up there with him, haven’t you?” He leans closer. “You’ve shackled yourself, boy. And until you shake ‘em off, there’s only so much I can do.”

Gran Torino leaves him to chew over his failures (and clean up the mess they’ve made of his living room) and Izuku thinks.

Silently and aloud, he thinks. He’s new to hero training, to having this kind of quirk. But if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s thinking.

And slowly, as the aches fade and Rei lets him bounce ideas off of her, things slowly start to fall into place. He scribbles notes, cudgels his brain back and forth, changes the angle of his thoughts several times. That night, he finds a secluded alley to put his tangled thoughts into practice. He isn't worried; there isn't much crime in this area, and he's always had pretty good night vision. With Rei keeping watch for trouble, he flings himself against the walls, wrestling with the power inside him. It leaves him exhausted and battered the following day—more than usual—and still he has nothing to show for it.

“It ain’t your fault,” Torino tells him, which isn’t really a compliment at all—at best it’s a very charitable comment—but Izuku will take what he can get. “That power always came naturally to All-Might. I’d say that’s why his way of training ain’t working for you.” He barks out a laugh. “His body was all he had going for him. Didn’t stop me from making him spew, back in the day.”

Izuku winces in retroactive sympathy. He hums thoughtfully. “Um… Mr. Torino? Yesterday… I know you were sort of messing with me at the beginning, but you didn’t answer my question.” He hesitates. “Is that his name? Toshinori?”

The old hero considers him for a moment, then shrugs. “Ah, hell. You’ve been workin’ hard, I guess I can give you this one. Yeah. That’s his given name—Toshinori. And you didn’t hear that from—heh. What am I talking about. What do I care if he knows I told ya? I’d like to see him complain!”

They’re interrupted then by a package at the door.

In the end, it takes a microwave and an extremely mundane metaphor for everything to click.

Like a switch, really, if he’s going to be thinking in boring analogies from here on out. His upper limit is still only five percent of his power, but that five percent means a whole lot more if it’s spread evenly to every inch of his body.

How could he have been so dense? This whole time he’s been limiting himself, and limiting his new quirk—only for special occasions, only for certain parts of his body, only as an absolute last resort. But this—this feels right. This feels…

“Can you move like that?” Torino asks him, as One For All courses through him from head to toe.

“Good question,” Izuku grits out through clenched teeth. Too rigid, he thinks, and relaxes his jaw. He feels a cold poke from Rei’s finger on his arm, and carefully turns his head to look at her. “I think so. Maybe.”

Even over the hum of power and the pulse pounding in his ears, Izuku can hear Torino’s knuckles crack. “Would you like me to test that?”

He feels another smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He wonders how he must look, with his teeth bared and lightning in his veins. “Please do.”

Torino quirks a grin back at him. “If you can maintain that, and still move with One For All coursing through you, that’ll be a pretty big step. So I’ll tell you what, kid.” He takes out a stopwatch. “You said you had questions, didn’t ya? Hold that for three minutes, and I’ll answer one. Anything your little heart desires.” The grin widens. “Land a clean hit on me, and I’ll answer all of ‘em.”

---

The kid grazes him. Grazes him. Torino dodges like he means it, and he still feels the brat’s knuckles skim against his face. It’s not a clean hit, but it’s something, and that means two things. One, Toshinori’s judgment is maybe a little better than he thought. Two, there may be hope for this kid yet.

They sit down to a breakfast of microwaved taiyaki. Even without looking up, Torino can feel those busy little eyes fixed on him. He sighs.

“Welp. I’m a man of my word. So.” He meets the kid’s eyes. “Pick a question, and ask away.”

Those eyes search his face again, watchful and wary, like their owner isn’t sure whether to believe him. How cagey has Toshinori been with this kid, if a simple offer to answer a question gets a look like that? “Is there anything you won’t talk about?” he asks. “I don’t want to waste a question on an answer you won’t give me.”

“I’ve got thick skin, kid,” Torino says dryly. “I said anything your little heart desires, and I meant it. Hurry up and ask.”

It seems to take a moment for the kid to decide to believe him. Finally, face carefully blank, he asks.

“Who is Shimura Nana?”

The taiyaki crumbles into three pieces in his hand.

What. No—no, that’s impossible. Toshinori never even told this kid his name, so how the hell—?

“You hear that name from All-Might?” Torino asks.

“Well,” the kid says. “He… I…” His hands slowly clench into fists in his lap. “Let’s just say—I don’t think that name was something he meant for me to hear.” He bites his lip. “I don’t know anything about her. I just know she’s important.”

Torino heaves a sigh. Toshinori slipped up, from the sound of it. Spoke her name and the kid overheard. Though Torino has to wonder why Toshinori mentioned her, and to whom. Eh, he was always a mumbler, just like the kid he picked. Might be the death of them someday, if they don’t get a handle on it.

Well. He’s a man of his word.

“She was a good friend of mine,” he says. He has to pause, there. It’s been years. Decades. It doesn’t hurt any less. “A damn good friend. We fought together, back in the day. Couldn’t tell you how many times she saved my life and I saved—” His voice catches. “We had each other’s backs, is what I’m getting at.”

“So she was a hero,” the kid murmurs.

“Huh. You really don’t know anything.” There’s no trace of deception on the kid’s face. “She wasn’t just a hero, kid. She wielded One For All before All-Might did.”

For a moment, he’s half convinced the kid is about to launch himself across the table. “She—what?” He’s gone dead white.

“Yup.”

“But she—I—” He clamps his mouth shut for a few moments, staring down at the table in front of him. His eyes are shining a little too much for it to be anything but tears. “You said she was your friend.”

“I did.”

“…She died, didn’t she.”

“…She did.”

“How—”

“Eat,” Torino says shortly. “Four minutes and you get another question.”

The kid frowns, looks ready to argue with him, but then his eyes soften. It’s all Torino can do not to snap at him for looking like that—like Torino’s somebody who needs his sympathy. “Yes sir.”

This kid has a long couple of days ahead of him.

---

“How did she die?”

“Killed in the line of duty. Not every hero gets to live long enough to look like me.”

---

“Do you know any details about… about how she died?”

“…If you want to ask me if I was there, then just say it.”

“…”

“I wasn’t. …No one was.”

---

“When did she die?”

“Decades ago. Can’t remember the exact year. Only time I ever drank in my life was to forget it.”

---

“Were she and All-Might close?”

It’s the following day when the kid finally gets to this question. Torino takes a little while longer to answer this one. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe they might’ve been.”

“What do you mean?” Even looking away, he can feel those wide eyes boring into him, like this kid’s trying to read the answer off his brain cells before Torino has the chance to say it out loud. “Did something… happen between them?”

“No. Nothing happened. That was the whole problem.” Torino meets his stare. “There was never a chance. Kid, did he tell you how he used to know me?”

“He said you were his homeroom teacher, his first year at UA.”

“I sure as hell was,” Torino tells him. “And there’s a reason I was the one training him back then.”

He already knows the kid’s a sharp one. He can see the exact instant that the answer hits home, without any help from him. “You mean…”

Torino heaves a sigh. He’s been doing that a lot in the past couple of days. “I think he was a little younger than you are now, when she died,” he says. “She’d gotten him started, passed the torch, and… well. She dragged a promise out of me, that I’d train him if anything happened to her. Practically made me swear in blood. Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t know she was on her way out.”

The next training bout between them seems extra-vicious, extra-desperate. It seems the kid doesn’t like those answers. By this point Torino is sick of questions and sick of waling on this kid, and sharply aware that he’ll pick up bad habits if he only trains against one person using the same battle tactics.

“I think that’s it for practical training,” he says, as the boy staggers up and wipes his nose. “Any more, and both of us’ll start getting predictable.”

“I think I can keep going, but all right,” the boy says. “So what now, then?”

“What now? It’s time to do what you came here for. On-the-job training, remember?” Torino pushes down the old creeping thoughts and feelings, things that he tried to make himself forget years ago. He shows his teeth in another grin. “Get dressed, kid. We’re gonna do some villain clean-up.”

The boy carefully rolls a crick out of his shoulders. “So soon?” he asks.

“Whaddaya mean, soon?” Torino snorts. “Work experience was the whole point of this from the beginning, remember? You just needed a few days to play catch-up.”

“Right.”

“Hope you’re able to stay awake.”

“Huh?” The boy blinks owlishly at him, and the dark circles under his eyes stand out like bruises.

Torino sighs. “Never mind. Gear up, I’m calling us a cab.”

The kid joins him outside shortly, dressed for work and still looking like he hasn’t slept in weeks. Torino’s starting to wonder if he actively cultivates that look on purpose to throw people off. It hasn’t seemed to slow him down much during combat training. And if Torino weren’t as observant as he is, he would make the mistake of thinking the kid looks too tired to be paying attention. One look at his eyes, especially the way they never waver long from looking at Torino, tells him that thinking like that is the wrong way to go.

It’s… certainly not useless, if the kid’s doing it on purpose. A villain could make that mistake easily, and pay for it. If there’s one thing Torino knows, it’s the value of being underestimated.

“So where are we going?” his pupil asks.

“Heading back to the main Tokyo metropolitan area,” Torino replies. “Because—well. Can you think of why?”

The kid’s eyes narrow in thought. “Well… it’s more urban. More people there than here. It’s the kind of place I used to go to look for hero battles.”

Torino shoots him a glance. “Skirmish chaser, are ya? Why am I not surprised.” He had this kid pegged as a fanboy, but this confirms it.

“I didn’t… have a quirk, before One For All,” the boy replies quietly as the two of them get in the cab. “I figured my best bet for, um, being a hero without one, was figuring out strategies.”

Torino grunts in acknowledgment, chewing over this new bit of information. Toshinori passed the torch to another quirkless kid—also not surprising. “Well, you’re right, more or less. Higher population density means higher crime rate. In places like Shibuya, that means you have skirmishes happening every day of the week.”

“We’re going to Shibuya?”

“Yep.”

“By bullet train?” the boy asks. “For Shinjuku from Koufu, right?”

“That’s the one,” Torino answers. “Why do you ask? Worried about it getting dark?”

“ Not really, I have pretty good night vision.” The boy shrugs. “We’ll be passing through Hosu, that’s all. One of my friends is there.”

“Well, that’s all fine and good, but you just focus on where you are, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Torino regards him for a moment more, but says nothing until they’re getting out of the cab at the train station. “So. Any more questions?”

This gets a startled blink out of his tagalong, before a more thoughtful look crosses his face. “No,” he says at length. “Not for you, anyway.”

Sounds like Toshinori has a proper grilling to look forward to. “I see,” he says. “Makes me wonder why you bothered asking me all of this, instead of the man himself.” He shot a glance toward the kid. “He dodge your questions, or what?”

“Sort of,” the boy says, with a shallow little sigh. “I guess… I get the feeling there’re things he’s not ready to talk about.”

“Some of these ‘things’ are decades old, boy,” Torino told him. “An excuse like ‘not ready’ can only carry you so far.”

“I don’t want to press him,” he says. “I can relate.”

“So you press me instead?”

“I’m sure you could’ve shut me up if you really wanted to.”

Torino leads the way to the appropriate train, shaking his head. Hell, Toshinori. What on earth have you brought me?

As it turns out, the answer to that is “a typical teenager.” The second they’re seated on the train, out comes the smartphone. Torino’s eyes roll heavenward. Kids these days and their texting and memes.

He does look worried about something, frowning down at that bright little screen. Won’t do—Torino needs this brat focused if he hopes to teach him anything useful.

Before Torino has the chance to scold him for getting distracted, the kid’s spine goes ramrod-straight, and he looks around, wide-eyed and startled like he’s heard something. His mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but the train slams into an emergency stop before he has the chance, sending the kid face-first into the seat in front of him. Torino would normally be thoroughly amused by this, but the half-conscious pro hero that comes crashing through the train not three seconds later puts a bit of a damper on things.

---

There’s a hole in the train.

Izuku can feel the evening breeze wafting into the damaged car. Torino gives him an order, and Izuku forgets it the moment he hears it. Not that it matters—the old hero doesn’t stick around long enough to enforce it anyway.

“Rei,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Find Iida. Now.”

Her dark hair billows in a breeze of her own making, and she vanishes from his side without a sound. Izuku braces himself at the gaping hole in the train, pays no mind to the hapless employee shouting at him, and launches himself out into empty space.

---

There are quite a few things that Iida Tensei regrets.

He regrets not kissing his mother goodbye, that last day. He’d been in a hurry, with the Hero Killer on his mind, and he hadn’t thought he’d need to.

He regrets walking into that alley alone, with no backup and no one knowing he was there.

He regrets not fighting harder.

He regrets giving up, letting himself slip away on the cold, dirty ground with a slashed spine and blood in his eyes, before he could give his mother that kiss or tell Tenya to inherit his name.

And now, he regrets letting Midoriya Izuku walk away in the train station, instead of dragging him back to Tenya and saying Something is wrong, I don’t know what, please help me fix this.

He’d misread his little brother. He’d misread everything—willfully so, even. Maybe he knew, deep down, what was going through Tenya’s head. Maybe he knew exactly what was happening, and he’d been simply unwilling to accept that Tenya would really do something like that.

He’s just in it for the general experience. No one’s better for that than Manual.

He misses you. He’s upset and hurting. He’s finally taking Mom’s advice and Midoriya’s advice and taking the time he needs to heal.

But it’s not until the hero Manual turns to Tenya and says, “This is kind of awkward to ask, but… you’re after the Hero Killer, aren’t you?” that Tensei realizes just how badly he’s screwed up, how absurdly he’s fooled himself.

He’s an idiot. They’re in Hosu. Tenya picked one of the most boring options for training. He’s not taking it easy—since when has Tenya ever taken anything easy in his life?

What the hell else would he be doing here?!

Tensei has only a few minutes to panic and wonder before everything promptly goes to hell. There are creatures everywhere—those staring empty things, Noumu—villains are attacking, Hosu is in chaos, and Tenya slips away in the confusion.

“Don’t.” He trails after his little brother, pleading with him as if that’s going to make a difference. “Tenya, please go back. Don’t go looking for him. Don’t make that mistake.”

His words fall on deaf ears.

The dead are what give it away, in the end. Men like Stain are never as alone as they think they are, not with their victims always following, always watching. The other seventeen don’t have little brothers to watch over, so they follow their killer, waiting for the day that he can finally see them and hear them. Tensei hears them before Tenya reaches the alley. He hears their shouts, their warnings, their desperate urging and cursing. Stain must have found another victim.

If Tensei doesn’t do something, he’s about to find another.

“Tenya, stop this.” He stands in his little brother’s path, for all the good that will do. “I don’t want this. You know I don’t want this—”

Tenya walks through him as if he isn’t even there.

Tensei doesn’t recognize the hero that Stain is poised to kill. It’s selfish, but he barely sees them—he barely sees the seventeen pale figures that surround Stain and watch and wait. His little brother’s voice is ringing raw against the close walls of the alley, and Tensei’s desperate hands pass through him like mist.

“Please!” His voice is useless, almost drowned out by Tenya’s challenge. “Tenya, please! Don’t do this! You can’t fight him—just run!”

Stain shrugs his little brother off, knocking back his furious attacks with open contempt. His blades hum through the air, and Tensei hasn’t had a pulse for over a week but he can feel his heart in his throat.

“I know you,” one of the dead heroes whispers. “You’re Ingenium, right? We were wondering when you were gonna show up. Thought you’d maybe moved on.” Sad, blank eyes turn back to his struggling brother. “Guess you had somebody else to look out for, huh?”

Tenya loses his helmet in the scuffle, and the other ghosts wince at his young face.

“Poor kid.”

“Not long now.”

One of the dead heroes nudges her neighbor. “Hey, you’re good with kids, aren’t you? Think you can calm him down when he joins us?”

“I’ll try. They never train you for this.”

“He’s still alive!” Tensei snaps. Terror makes his temper short. “Don’t just write him off—he isn’t dead yet!”

The first hero that spoke to him looks at him with a face filled with sympathy. “How much of a chance do you think he stands?”

“One cut, and it’s over.”

Tensei’s eyes burn with tears.

Tenya is speaking again. “I got some advice from a friend,” he says. “He told me to do something useful. Something helpful. Something that matters to someone.” His hands curl into fists. “I can’t think of anything that matters more than this.”

“Damn it, no!” Tensei shouts. “That wasn’t what he meant, and you know it!”

“But you aren’t doing this to be useful, now, are you?” Stain drawls. His voice sends chills like crawling insects up Tensei’s back. “Otherwise you would have saved him already, don’t you think?” He nods toward the injured hero, whose murder Tenya interrupted.

“I’m here for my brother,” Tenya snarls. “Do you remember him, Hero Killer? You murdered him just a week ago.” Tensei has never seen his brother shake with rage before. “They said you ran off like a coward, and left him to die.”

“Thought you looked familiar.” Stain’s tongue flicks to one side. “Yeah, I remember him. It was nothing personal, you know. I wasn’t even trying to kill him.”

Tensei goes still.

“I meant to leave him alive. To fuel rumors. I figured he had backup coming anyway—imagine my surprise when no one came.” Tensei trembles, and he remembers sticky blood and cold brick and creeping darkness in his head. “Must’ve come after me on his own—another fake hero hoarding all the glory for himself. People like that always get what they deserve, in the end. I’m just here to help it along.”

“Shut up!” Tenya’s shout ricochets off the walls like a bullet.

“Tenya, don’t listen to him!” Tensei voice cracks, raw with desperation. “He’s baiting you—don’t fall for it! Just run away! Just this once! You have to live!”

But Tenya can’t hear him. Tensei wonders if Tenya would care even if he could.

“The hero Ingenium.” His little brother speaks the name in a snarl. Stain’s eyes narrow in amusement. “That was the name of the hero you killed. And it’s the name of the hero who’s going to take you down.”

Until this point, Tensei has been frozen in horror, feet rooted to the spot. But the sound of that name—of his name, now Tenya’s—changes that. He wants to stay—he can’t leave Tenya, not like this. But staying… staying means doing nothing. Staying means waiting for his little brother to die, watching it happen, letting it happen—

And he can’t. God help him, he can’t.

But if he leaves—if Tenya dies, and he’s not there—

One of the dead heroes sees his struggle, sees the way he looks desperately toward the streets beyond this alley. “Got somewhere to be, Ingenium?”

“I—I can’t leave him.” Not here, not with that monster. “He’s my little brother—he’ll die—”

“He’ll die if you stay, too.” The hero who tells him this speaks in a rasp, his throat laid open. “Not like you can do anything for him now.”

And that’s what does it, for Tensei. That’s what gives him the strength—or weakness—to turn away from Stain, turn his back on Tenya, and move.

It barely occurs to him that there may be no point to all this. It barely even enters into his mind that Midoriya’s assignment was nowhere near Hosu, and this could all be for nothing, and Tenya could die all alone while he’s gone.

Because there’s a chance. As long as Midoriya Izuku exists, there is a chance that he can get the message to someone and maybe, just maybe, he won’t have to regret letting his baby brother die all alone in an alley like he did.

The streets of Hosu are a battleground, battered by heroes’ quirks and torn apart by disfigured monsters. Evening darkens overhead, lit by city lights and spreading fires. Heedless, Tensei flies through it. Not long ago, he would have joined the fighting, thrown himself into protecting civilians and beating back the creatures that threaten them. But he is not a hero anymore—just a dead man who has nothing left to fear but seeing his family follow him too soon.

The living scream, the dead wail, and Tensei pitches his voice above the rest, calling the name of his brother’s friend. Maybe someone will hear. Maybe the dead will hear, and pass the message along—find Midoriya Izuku—find the only person in the world who can hear us—

A scream rends the air.

At least, “scream” is the best word Tensei can guess for it. Most human throats could never make a sound like that, quirk or no quirk. Tensei turns toward it, wavering, and finds himself looking at a black hole writhing in the middle of the street.

No one, dead or alive, will go near it—only those twisted creatures, Noumu, don’t seem to mind. The blackness thrashes, ever shifting like a living, angry thing.

Villain, Tensei thinks. Or Noumu. Some terrifying, destructive quirk, sending fear like driven nails into even Tensei’s dead heart.

Except he’s wrong. In the next instant the darkness shifts, and Tensei sees the very heart of it. He sees a pale face, and a child’s white nightdress.

Not living. Not angry. Dead, surrounded by Noumu and very, very frightened.

Tensei is frightened, too. The creatures are frightening, Stain is frightening, and Rei herself is frightening. But even if his heart no longer beats, even if his title of hero ended the moment his life did, there are some things that simply will not die. And deep in Tensei’s heart the desire remains, ever-burning and strong.

When faced with a lost, frightened child, Iida Tensei will never walk away.

Deafened by her screaming, Tensei plunges into the darkness and finds the little girl at its heart. He gathers her in his arms and carries her away, even as she twists and struggles and claws at him.

“It’s all right! It’s all right. It’s just me. Tensei, remember? You know me. You were teaching me how to sign.” He spells her name with his hands, and she stills in his arms. “I need your help, Rei. Where is Midoriya?” She squirms again until she’s free of him and facing him. Desperate hope fills him at the sight of her. He can feel himself fraying at the edges, torn apart by fear and worry and guilt, and he fights to keep himself together. “Is he close? Rei, please—please take me to him. It’s Tenya. He’s in danger—he’ll die—”

She makes no sound, but grabs his hand and yanks.

What else can he do now, but follow?

---

Izuku has next to nothing to go on. Iida hasn’t answered his messages since they last parted ways at the train station, two days ago. All he knows is that Iida is somewhere in this ward, and Stain’s victims always show up in alleys.

Well that’s useful, isn’t it. How many alleys could one city possibly have?

The ghosts won’t answer him. They’re too busy watching the carnage, or running from it out of some leftover sense of self-preservation that they don’t need anymore. At this point his only hope is Rei, and maybe, if he can find him—

“Midoriya!”

Or, Izuku thinks with a leaping heart, Tensei will find him.

His relief dies as quickly as it comes, when Tensei’s scream reaches him again. Iida’s brother catches up to him as he ducks into yet another empty alley, and when Izuku turns to greet him, he finds icy fingers clawing at him, driving him back against the wall. Rei is with him, her black eyes wild.

Tensei… doesn’t look like Tensei anymore. He looks like what Izuku imagines the hero Ingenium looked like, on the day he died. The armor is there—not sleek and polished chrome like it ought to be, but dented, grimy, and torn open. Everyone in Tokyo knows that distinctive helmet—few have ever seen it like this, caved in as if with a blade or an axe, smeared with blood around the slits nearest the mouth.

The sound of Ingenium’s breath rattles harshly in Izuku’s ears. It’s only through years of practice listening to voices like this that he can even understand the words.

“Save him.”

The brick wall is cold against his back. His blood feels colder. “Iida?”

“Stain—in an alley—he’s alone!” The helmet falls away, and Tensei’s ruined face chokes on blood as the ghost pleads with him. “I left him alone—he’ll kill him—help me!”

“Show me where,” Izuku chokes out.

Fear is an old friend, but he has never known terror like this. With One For All coursing through him, he chases Tensei through the ravaged streets, ignoring heroes and villains alike. He may as well be deaf and blind, trailing after his friend’s dead brother as he drowns in fear and runs.

The Hero Killer killed Tensei, and now he has Iida, and how much time has been lost? How long has Tensei been looking for him? How long would it take for Ingenium’s murderer to kill Iida?

Stain left him in an alley to die, like he was trash. Tensei died all alone, waiting and waiting for someone to help, but nobody came.

How long has Iida been waiting?

I’m coming, Izuku thinks as his eyes sting and his lungs burn. It’s not going to be like that, because I’m coming. I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming Iida hold on just stay alive hold on keep breathing don’t die don’t die don’t die!

He’s slow. Damn it, he’s so slow!

He chases Tensei’s back, and his terror makes him see Iida’s back instead—pale, washed out, bloody and spectral, blank white eyes, just one more dead face among thousands—

I won’t let it happen. I’m coming.

“There!”

They reach the alley, and Izuku sees the hunched figure of Stain standing poised over over a crumpled motionless body on the ground. His world goes red.

When it comes back, he stands on his own two feet, one fist smarting, and realizes two things as he faces the Hero Killer.

The first is that the alley is crowded.

Tensei and Rei are beside him or behind him, out of his line of vision, but of course the Hero Killer would be surrounded by ghosts. Izuku counts seventeen in all. Some of them are faces he recognizes from news reports, others are unknown to him. Some of them wear the wounds they died with, others do not. The one thing they have in common is death, at the hands of the sole living man who stands before him.

And Izuku’s eyes well up to the brim with tears, because the second thing he realizes is that Iida is not among them.

He’s almost afraid to look over his shoulder, but this is a fear that he is used to. Trembling, he forces his head to turn so that he can look down at the figure lying on the ground.

Iida stares back at him, wide-eyed and motionless and very much alive.

His eyes spill over.

No, not yet. He’s still in danger.

You’re both in danger now.

“Midoriya,” Iida’s voice is hoarse, as if he’s been yelling—has he been calling for help? “You—how?”

Izuku faces forward again, and finds the Hero Killer watching him through narrowed eyes. Izuku meets his gaze in the dim light from a far-off street lamp, and he could swear he sees a look of surprise flash across Stain's face, but it's brief enough that it could just be his imagination. “It’s okay, Iida,” he hears himself say. It’s not true in the slightest, but Izuku is no stranger to lying. “I won’t let him kill you.”

“Midoriya,” Iida growls, and Izuku has never heard his friend sound like that. “You need to get out of here, now!”

Stain cocks his head, almost birdlike in his curiosity. “Huh. You must be the friend he mentioned.”

“You must be the Hero Killer,” Izuku says, trying to match the Hero Killer’s frigid composure.

“The one who told him… what was it?” Stain’s tone is light and thoughtful. “Be useful? Do something that matters? That’s what he told me, before he attacked.”

Izuku feels cold. “W-what?”

“Go!” Iida shouts at him. “Don’t get involved! This is my fight!”

But Izuku does not. He doubts he could even if he wanted to, because now he can’t stop shaking.

It ought to be fear that makes him shake, but it isn’t. Fear is for keeping him out of danger, and since he’s already in danger, it’s useless to him. So instead, it hardens and twists up inside him until it feels less like fear and more like anger. He takes in a breath that hisses through grinding teeth.

“Can you move, Iida?” he asks. “We can make it back out to the main street if we’re quick.”

It takes his friend a moment to answer. “No. It must be his quirk—Midoriya, just go.”

“He cuts you, Midoriya,” Tensei whispers. “Whatever happens, don’t let his blades touch you.”

“Wait, he can see us?” one of the dead heroes murmurs.

“Get out of here, kid!” another shouts to him. “Get help!”

“I can’t,” Izuku says out loud.

“Yes you can!” Iida yells. “I told you, this has nothing to do with you!”

Tension grips his shoulders, running from his clenched teeth to his clenched hands.

“If you’re going to talk,” he grits out, at Iida or at the dead heroes crowding the alley. “Then tell me something I can use.”

“It’s not just cutting!” another hero pipes up. “He swallows the blood! That’s how he gets you!”

“I don’t want you rescuing me!” Iida yells. “This is my fight! Do you understand me? He killed my brother!”

And it happens again—the anger wells up and turns his thoughts black. It makes him cruel. “If you don’t want me rescuing you,” he says, in a quiet voice that chills even him. “Then you can come over and stop me whenever you feel like it.”

Iida goes quiet. Stain laughs out loud. The blade in the murderer’s hands twitches as if it has life and eagerness of its own. “You see what I have to deal with,” he says. “I have a duty to kill these men.” Izuku blinks, looks further into the alley, and sees another hero sitting slumped—wounded but alive—against the wall. Stain steps forward, tongue flicking out as if tasting the air. “If you wish to stand in my way, then so be it. The weak shall be culled either way. So what will it be?”

Izuku curses himself silently. He should have found a pro to come with him, instead of rushing in blindly like a fool. Even if it was hard to explain, he could have come up with some excuse or lie. Too little too late, now.

Buy time, he thinks. Buy time, and call for help. He slips his phone out of its pouch, behind his back. He knows that screen like the back of his hand.

“Stop it!” Iida shouts at him again, and the ugly anger roils and twists within him, threatening to throw him off. “Run away, Midoriya! I told you, this has nothing to do with you!”

“Hey Iida,” he says, with a level of calm that he does not feel. “If you’re still looking for ways to be helpful, you can stop talking any time.”

“Midoriya—!”

His head whips around, eyes scalding with unshed tears. He can almost see the words die in his friend’s throat as he spits out his anger like venom. “I said shut the fuck up, Iida.”

A low chuckle reaches his ears, and he turns his burning eyes back to Stain. “Very well, then. I won’t say no to another sacrifice.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Izuku replies, and his voice is calm but cold. The cajoling and affability that he used with Shigaraki will be useless here; this is no man-child that will bend an ear to flattery. This is a murderer with an agenda. “You’ve got no good reason to kill anyone in this alley.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Stain answers coldly. “I don’t expect a kid like you to understand what I have to do. This world is rotten with false heroes that are only in it for the paycheck, or the spotlight, and yet the people treat them as idols. It’s time they learned what true heroes ought to look like.”

As Stain talks, Izuku takes the time to send his message and palm his phone back into his pocket. “What, like you?” he asks. He looks for Rei, but she’s vanished from the alley.

Another laugh. “No. I’m the necessary evil—I cull the weak and the greedy, until only the worthy remain. Selfless heroes, who follow All-Might’s path. Who aren’t slaves to their own egos. Those are the only heroes worth existing.”

“Yeah, I don’t really care,” Izuku answers.

The alley goes dead-quiet. Iida is silent. Even the ghosts say nothing.

Stain’s eyes bore into him. “What?”

“I don’t actually care about why you’re doing this,” Izuku replies, and suddenly it’s a fight to keep the trembling out of his voice. “It doesn’t really matter to me, because… from what I can parse out, what you’re doing is killing people who save lives, just because you don’t like their reasons for saving lives.”

“Ah… A hero fan, are you?” Stain’s blistering scorn lashes at him. “A bright-eyed up-and-comer who thinks they can do no wrong. So naive.”

“I’m naive?” slips out before Izuku can stop it. His fists ache. “Y-You’re imagining a world where all heroes are perfect and never do anything for their own reasons! How is that not naive?”

“That’s what separates the real heroes from the rest of these pathetic phonies!” Stain snarls. “A proper ‘hero’ doesn’t act for his own benefit.”

“Why not? You do.” Izuku can tell he’s starting to get under Stain’s skin. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. “Take now, for instance. You benefit from doing this because you get to pat yourself on the back without actually doing anything helpful.”

“...What.”

“I said you’re full of shit,” Izuku says, a little louder.

“You little brat!” Stain snarls, but Izuku almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of ghostly laughter echoing in the narrow alley.

“Midoriya, get out of here!” Iida’s voice has turned from angry to pleading.

“Your reasons don’t make any sense to me. Sorry.” His hands curl into fists again, and he meets Stain’s eyes with a heated glare. “You talk like having selfish reasons makes people evil, but saving lives will always be a pure good.” His voice cracks, but he forges ahead. “And anyone can do it. It doesn’t matter who they are, or where they’re from, or what they’ve done, or why they’re doing it. All they have to do is say ‘no.’ All they have to do is say, ‘This is wrong.’” His lips pull back, and it feels more like baring his teeth than smiling. “Anyone. Even thieves and bullies and liars and cowards.” He steps forward again, directly between Iida and the Hero Killer. His eyes are dry. “So this is me, saying ‘no.’ So help me, if you lay another hand on them, I will break it.”

Stain’s eyes widen. The smile on his face shows a few more teeth than before. “Well. You might just be worth keeping alive after all.”

---

My little brother needs help, he needs help, he’s in danger he needs help help help HELP HELP

There’s no one else, only ghosts, only enemies only monsters

black monsters with rolling eyes and they can’t feel I can’t feel I dig deep, deeper, and deeper but there is nothing on the surface and nothing below and they are full of nothing nothing n o t h i n g

Someone! Anyone! He called for help! He called for help, he called EVERYONE for help but

nobody came

nobody answered

please

somebody

anybody

There!

There he is! I’ve found him! I know him! My little brother knows him! He was cold before but now they’re friends and he

He sees it. He sees my little brother’s call for help. He’s stopped.

Yes! Read it! Answer him!

Help him!

He won’t. He doesn’t know. He’s taking too long! My little brother will die if he takes too long! Hurry up!

I reach in. He does not hide behind the cold anymore and I feel it—worry confusion heart pounding why why why what does this mean what is he trying to say—

He’s saying he needs help, stupid! He’s asking for help!

i dig deeper, claw through fog, past the confusion and the what-why-where until—there!

There’s worry and worry means fear, it means there’s danger everywhere, what does this message mean, what if he’s there, what if he’s in trouble what if he needs help what if he gets hurt what if he dies what if what if what if—

I grab his fear before it can get away.

I pull.

---

The message is a perplexing one, to say the very least. It’s practically nothing, just an address not far from where Shouto is now. He stares at his phone, confused—why would Midoriya send this to him? The city is a battleground, so why—?

Is there something here?

Is he asking to meet up?

Is he—

What if—

All at once, his thoughts slam to a halt, and the fog of confusion is ripped to shreds in his mind. Shouto stops in his tracks, nearly dropping his phone as he chokes on perfectly good air and fights against the bile creeping up his throat. Fear is a familiar thing. With a father like Endeavor, it is never far away. But this fear—it’s not the kind that makes him freeze, or that makes him want to turn and run. No, the pulse in his ears is like thunder as his heart sends terror pounding through his veins, chasing every other thought from his head until a single question remains.

What if he’s in trouble?

“Shouto, pay attention!” Terror walls him off from his father’s voice. “Stop looking at your phone and look at me!”

And in the end, he does turn and run, but not to flee. Without another thought, Shouto whips around, points himself in the direction of the address in Midoriya’s message, and flies. His feet pound the pavement, leaving hot asphalt and patches of frost wherever they touch. Fear sends icy claws spidering up and down his spine, far colder than his quirk could ever hope to be.

He doesn’t know what he’s running toward. He only knows that there is danger everywhere, villains and Noumu and rampant destruction, but none of it is more terrifying than the thought of his friend in trouble.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #deku sees dead people #fanfiction #tales from the pit

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sendasalami-blog · 7 years

Text

You’re Up, Then You’re Down

It was no more than he’d been expecting, Costis told himself. Kings were kings, at best inscrutable and at worst terrifying. He himself had fallen from the king’s favor and survived before. But this new pretense, this — endealment — where Costis was neither dismissed from his old post at the king’s side, nor granted the king’s confidence as he’d used to have, did not sit well with him. The last time he’d been in purgatory, he’d at least had a change in station to go with it. This time, everything had changed except his station.

One would have thought a successful espionage mission to the Mede Empire merited some reward, Costis tried not to think to himself. One would have expected an official welcome home, perhaps a promotion or an extra month’s pay. One certainly would not — and this he said out loud, at some volume, to Aris — one would certainly not expect to be shoved back into one’s old routine without so much as a by-your-leave or an iota of information about how the palace had changed in one’s absence.

“One would be an idiot,” Aris said with a pointed look at his friend. “If you — pardon me, one — were successful on that mission, and weren’t known as a spy, do you think the Queen would want to have that information bandied about?”

Costis grudgingly agreed. “But even so, not to be so much as acknowledged doesn’t feel right. I’ll bet Hippias has even cooked up a fake transfer to explain my absence.”

“And isn’t doing your part to save the kingdom enough? Honor before glory, and whatever patron notions you have in your head?”

“Having done my part would help if anyone knew that I’d done it,” Costis said.

The problem, he reflected later, was that it was impossible to explain a transfer without justification, and even harder to explain a transfer from said transfer, except with a wave of the hand and a muttered, “King’s business.” Everyone in the Guard assumed Costis had been off doing more or less what he’d been doing, and Costis accordingly had to fend off dozens of pointed questions about how the weather was in whatever backwater the king claimed he’d been sent to. Costis was out of practice with actual guard work; his form was rusty, as the king noted during morning practices, and he’d almost gotten lost on three separate occasions.

Then there was the matter of the king himself. He’d been perfectly pleasant to Costis upon his official return to duty, but never much more than that. He hadn’t once mentioned the mission Costis had undertaken solely because Attolis had asked him to, let alone thanked him for it. Rather, everything was back to the same limbo Costis had found himself in before the mission; he wasn’t dismissed, but everyone was aware that things were, somehow, different.

Today’s audience with petitioners, for instance. If not perfectly behaved, the king was at least making an effort to be attentive; he didn’t shoot Costis a single sidelong glance, or share a private crack at a particularly outlandish dispute between quarreling neighbors. Costis might not have been in the hall at all, for all the king cared, and he was surprised to find that he didn’t like the feeling.

Even the new king of Sounis seemed to notice a difference, for he cornered Costis one day on the way back from practice. “You’re Attolis’ favorite guard, aren’t you?” he asked, and Costis had no choice but to answer in the affirmative. “Is he always like this?”

“I wouldn’t know, Your Majesty,” Costis replied, a little stymied at the sudden address, and remembering a similar query long ago from his queen. “I’ve only been back at the palace for a few weeks.”

“Whatever’s been bothering him, it’s lasted longer than that,” Sounis mused.

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, Majesty.”

“It seems no one can,” Sounis said with a sigh. “I’ve gone around asking everyone I know who cares about him. Ion’s as at a loss as I am, Lady Heiro only played dumb, my wife thinks he’s just in one of his moods. There’s nothing to do but wait him out, she says, and Gen in a mood isn’t pleasant to wait out.”

Costis took a moment to process anyone calling the king of Attolia Gen. “Well,” he managed, “I wish you luck in your endeavors, but I’m as lost as you are.”

It was only once he’d found an excuse and went on his way that Costis realized Sounis had said nothing about speaking to the Queen.

He mulled over what Sounis might be planning over the next few days, along with what could possibly be bothering Attolis so much, to no effect. He wondered, idly, if Sounis was still running around the palace interviewing random people. Phresine, maybe, or the magus who seemed to follow him everywhere.

The king’s mood didn’t change when Sounis returned to his home country, nor when word arrived from Eddis that wedding plans were proceeding apace. He just smiled, and said nothing, and held Costis at a distance that was beginning to feel insurmountable.

One day, Costis finally decided he’d had enough. He wasn’t a very verbal person; he didn’t know how to ask the king for what he wanted, or even what it was that he wanted, so he fell back on physicality. He could hardly punch Attolis in the face again, but from what he’d heard of his time with Sounis, the way to the king’s heart was still to rough him up a little.

His plan was simple enough. The next day, as he sparred with the king, Costis began to make mistakes. Small ones at first, that could be excused easily enough, and then more and more egregious. The king only smiled and corrected him each time, and Costis began to escalate. He fell for blatant feints. He let his arm go loose on a block. He called to mind the third position in basic exercises, and lowered his point.

Finally the king stopped in disgust. “Gods above, Costis, what’s gotten into you today?” he snapped.

An actual reaction. Costis tried not to grin. “Your heart wasn’t in it, Your Majesty.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“You don’t smile when you beat me anymore, or scowl when I’m at fault. You fight me like you’d fight any random guard picked out of the ranks, and you treat me the same way off the practice field.”

“Have I been that rude to you of late?” Attolis asked, trying to salvage the situation, which only served to irritate Costis further.

“No, Your Majesty”— not ‘my king,’ not now — “you’ve been the spirit of politeness. And that’s the problem, since you aren’t polite. Not remotely. It’s a bad act, and even I can tell it’s an act. So whomever you’re trying to fool in employing it won’t be fooled either.”

Costis could see the king’s eyes flickering toward the other guards, who hadn’t stopped sparring but who were beginning to take notice of yet another odd conversation between Costis and his sovereign. Finally the king said, “Either you go back to practicing or I find somebody else to spar with, but either way we are not having this conversation here.”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Costis said, and attacked him in earnest.

After enough time had passed and Costis had been sufficiently beaten for the day, the king stumbled and almost dropped his sword. Costis rushed over to help him up; he nearly froze when the king started to whisper in his ear.

“After your shift ends tonight— don’t react, you idiot, what’s the point of whispering — go to that pointless little room with the ornate ceiling and wait for me there,” the king said, all in the moment between being grabbed by Costis and straightening up. “Now let go of me,” he added in a voice pitched to carry, “unless you’re looking for a rematch, eh?”

Costis tried as hard as he could to look merely chagrined, rather than perplexed. He supposed they were both default expressions for anyone who spent much time around the king.

He passed an uneventful watch that evening on the walls of the palace. With no half-drunk, wholly ridiculous king capering over them, the battlements were a quiet place, and as peaceful as anywhere in the palace was likely to be. He spent the time wondering what exactly the king’s explanation, or more likely excuse, would be for his recent behavior. Perhaps it was as Aris had thought, and the king didn’t want anyone to think Costis was fresh off a successful spy mission. Maybe someone had finally gotten Attolis’ ear and persuaded him that hanging around with a fool guard was doing no wonders for his public image. Or maybe Costis had finally done something to fall out of the king’s favor, even though he had no idea what that could be.

Finally Costis’ shift ended. He headed to the odd little room Attolis had requested and waited. There was no furniture to sit down on and nothing to look at, so Costis whiled away the time by following the patterns of the carved ceiling.

If he hadn’t been looking at it to begin with, he never would have noticed when something in the ceiling moved. This part of the palace was free from both rats and the omnipresent cats that pursued them, which left only one option. “Attolis?” Costis asked.

There was the sound of a boot scraping on wood from above, as if in confirmation.

“Are you going to talk to me,” Costis asked, “or am I meant to talk to myself while you tap once for yes and twice for no?”

Two taps, because the king was truly an ass, and then: “Forgive me, Costis, it’s been a long month. I grow weary of this artifice.”

Costis, frankly, couldn’t imagine the king ever becoming weary from any artifice or falsehood. On the contrary, they seemed to be his reason for existence some days. “Weary? You?” Costis said, for lack of a better idea.

“I know you’re quite good at acting like it, Costis, but even you can’t be that daft. If I can’t even fool you, I’m off my game, and I can’t afford to be right now.”

“Because?” Costis asked. It was hard to read the king on the best of days, but damn near impossible when all you had to work with was a disembodied voice.

The ruler of all Attolia let out a deep sigh. “I suppose I deserve this. My Queen’s been telling me to stop being so obtuse about this since you got back. Sounis even dropped by to tell me how confused I was making you, and couldn’t I give my poor guard a rest?”

“I don’t follow, Your Majesty,” Costis said.

“The fact of the matter is, I didn’t send you on that mission to the Mede because I needed you to. Or rather,” he added, hurriedly, as if he could sense Costis’ affront at that, “I did need you to go on that mission, but I also needed you out of the palace for a while. I suppose you remember those little incidents that started happening after you proved your loyalty to me?”

‘Little incidents’ like roof tiles nearly falling on Costis’ head, and far too many bar fights with incredibly quarrelsome strangers. “I remember them all too well.”

“Well, we — the Queen, Relius, and I — we needed time to figure out who was behind those incidents, and why. Nobody gets to attack you except me, you know, and I need you in prime condition so that beating you is remotely satisfying. But we didn’t get the chance, because you aren’t actually an idiot, and wrapped that mission up sooner than anyone expected. Which is commendable, by the way, and after this is over I’ll find some award for Teleus to give you. But the point,” the king said, rallying, “is that you got back before we were done investigating, and so your would-be assassins are still lying in wait. Every moment I look like I give a damn about you is more fuel to incite them.”

“So you decided to stop giving a damn,” Costis posited, “and what, figured that an angry guard was better than a dead one?”

“Hopefully not angry for much longer. We’ve almost found the assassins, just give it a week. You’ll be back to your scapegoat status before you know it.”

Costis found this a little hard to believe, and the king must have sensed it, because he continued: “Costis, do you trust me?”

“Your lies are famous in three countries, Your Majesty,” Costis replied. He didn’t — he couldn’t, just now. He couldn’t trust the king to be honest, just to be his inscrutable self.

“Very well. It might even be four now, what with the Mede,” the king said. “If you won’t trust me, do you trust my wife?”

“The Queen? Always.”

“She’s been working just as hard as I have, and she doesn’t have any of my qualms about things like torture. We’ll find the men responsible before you even know it, and your life can get back on track.”

“Yes, My King,” Costis said finally. “I’m looking forward to that. One more thing, though?”

“Yes?” the king asked.

“How on earth did you get in the ceiling?”

A week or two later, as Costis prepared to stand guard at another royal audience, there was a brief pause before the petitioners entered. Costis didn’t understand the silence until he glanced up at the thrones to notice the Queen looking right at him. He felt very small all of a sudden.

She looked at him for another moment and then said, “Costis, isn’t it?”

“Yes, My Queen,” Costis squeaked out.

“I understand that you are recently returned from a mission abroad for the Crown. I give you my congratulations on your success, and I am glad for your safe return home.” She put an especial emphasis on the word ‘safe.’

If that meant what Costis thought it meant… “Thank you, My Queen,” he said, bowing. “As ever, I am at Your Majesties’ service.”

The Queen smiled minutely. “We are glad to hear it.”

Then she turned back to the petitioners, who began to file in, and the audience began. The king was back to his old self, slouching and making asides. He lounged and shifted around, even poking the Queen with an elbow for a moment before she grabbed the offending arm. The audience dragged on. Soon the king would find an excuse to gleefully berate Costis’ hair or armor or general existence, and Costis would let him. Perhaps the king would drag Costis out of bed on a madcap scheme, or just around the corner to find a new secret passage. Wherever the king went, Costis would follow.

#queen's thief #the queen's thief #queen's thief fanfic #costis #eugenides #mine #my writing

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lostandfoundminusthefound · 7 years

Text

Counselling: 2nd Session

“Excuse me?” the voice breaks the washing machine of a thought process, where I had been stuck going around and around getting beaten during the turns, “Are you still with me?”

The solid cushion of the strange chaise longue beneath me pressed against my shoulder blades, my upper body carving into its upholstery. I couldn’t seem to push against the pressure to get in a full breath. With my entire focus on my breathing, my eyes refused to open. The string of thoughts in my head are so knotted I don’t know where to start. I say the only thing I can.

“I don’t know.”

The sound of a chair cushion being compressed and decompressed as a body shifts proceeds the voice, “Look at me.” With those words, the spell lifts and allows my eyelids to do the same. My gaze found the hard stare in a moment. Counselor!Me’s eyes, outlined by those sleek black frames, holds a resolve that I know could never be shaken. The question is straight and the stare does not waiver, “Are you with me?”

My words have every intention of being sharp with sarcasm but my lips blunt their edge with the half-hearted truth, “No, I’m not.” If I didn’t know better, I would have expected a comforting grasp of my hand or soft word of hope. But that isn’t who Counselor!Me is, there aren’t any warmth or emotion in the logic; those cozy hugs are supplied by Hippy!Me. I’m kidding, I do get emotional support from loved ones and friends (I’m not a complete hermit). Counselor!Me is here to coax me through the emotions I don’t want to deal with, nothing more and nothing less.

“I need you to focus, okay?” I nod without a word. “Now, why are you here today?” The question hangs between us. What little breath I have been able to retain is forced from my lungs as I sigh.

“I am just so much less than I should be.” Counselor!Me is silent waiting for me to continue. The words spark the dry underbrush of my muddled thoughts, catching fire and spreading through the forest of my mind. “I am less than what people deserve, less than my potential. I am less intelligent. I am less considerate. I am less hardworking. I am less pretty. I am less kind. I am less responsible. You name any good quality I could have, and I am less than my potential. Less. Less. Less. LESS!” By the end of my rant I’m screaming the word. My entire body is shaking with the fire inside; the fire that is burning everything I have built up to the ground. My polar opposite sits across from me, composed and cold as ice. I know we only sit in silence for seconds but in that limited time the fire subsides, leaving only the embers smoldering.

“And how long have you had these feelings of inadequacy?” The question catches me off guard, again I had mistakenly half-expected empty words of consolation.

I recover quickly and respond in truth, “Years. The only time I remember feeling not less, but like I had met and even exceeded my potential, was when I was a kid. I didn’t even realize how outstanding I was with my openness and carefree thinking. It was simple, I just was the person I was meant to be. And now…” the strain holds so tight in my voice that the word drops off before I realize I didn’t have more to follow.

“And now you feel like you’ve strayed from the person you were meant to be and in doing so that you have failed yourself and anyone close to you,” Counselor!Me finishes with precision.

“Exactly! And if it was only myself I was failing then I’d probably deal with it, but I fail my friends and family on a daily basis. To the extent that I don’t know why they keep me around.”

With this, Counselor!Me stops writing and leans forward in that sleek black office chair and speaks with a certainty I could never hold, “You believe you are less and that your loved ones deserve more, correct?”

I nod, unsure of where this line of questioning is going.

The speech continues, “And these people that mean so much to you, they aren’t dumb or dense, are they?”

I shake my head.

“They aren’t in a constant state of disappointment or frustration with you, are they?”

Again, I shake my head.

“Do they ever speak to you in pity or condescension?”

The words rise before I know it, “Never, they aren’t those kind of people.”

Counselor!Me continues to lecture me just as an evil villain monologues for the hero trapped before them, “So, in conclusion these people whom you care for are smart, good people who don’t voice any reservations and aren’t known for a charity friendship. Do you think such a person would stand for a friend who failed them so completely as you believe you have?” Before I could answer, another question was posed, “What are the chances that ALL of the people you care about could do such a thing? Maybe one or two, but we both know there are more than two people who care about you in this world. You know these people; you know your family and friends. They aren’t pushovers, they aren’t mindless drones who agree with everything. These people are strong, caring, funny, amazing, beautiful, confident, trustworthy, and loving and they–,” Counselor!Me is cut off as I butt in.

“And they keep me around. Despite my failings. Despite my inadequacies and uncertainties. Despite my inability to interact in a socially acceptable way. They stick around. They call. They text. They make plans and laugh at my horrible jokes and play along when I try stupid games.”

Counselor!Me speaks up as she leans back in the chair, “See, you don’t fail them–,” she begins, but again my voice cuts into hers.

“But I do, they just don’t seem to notice. I guess I’ve exceeded at one thing, my ability to pretend, to put up a false front and feint adequacy. So, while they are these amazing people who deserve the world, I fake being the world they deserve in hopes that one day I might be. I’ve dupped them. Tricked them. Cheated them. I would say I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing but that isn’t even true because I mean them no harm. No, I’m a donkey in sheep’s clothing. An ass who has no right to pretend to be apart of the herd. It’s guilt; that’s what is eating away at me. Guilt in knowing I have the potential to be a good friend, sister, daughter, niece, student, role model, and every other title I have ever held in my life and yet I’m not, no matter how long I pretend to be.”

*****

The silence ticks by and I wait for Counselor!Me to say something logical. Nothing comes.

“I cannot convince you of anything you do not wish to believe,” I startle at the lack of edge to the voice, as if Counselor!Me has resigned to the notion that I am irreparable. Tears pool and I blink them back. “But I know you want to believe because you are here and you are emotionally affected by the prospect of remaining how you are now. However, that isn’t enough. I need you to listen to me and answer my questions with straightforward answers, can you do that?”

“Yes but what if–,” I begin before she cuts me off.

“STRAIGHTFORWARD answers. No if’s, and’s, or but’s.”

“Okay,” I say in defeat.

Counselor!Me uses a clear, steady voice, “No one is perfect. Everyone in the world has faults and shortcomings. Do you believe your friends and family are perfect?”

“No, but–,” I begin before Counselor!Me interrupts.

“No buts.” the words contained a finality that ended the argument before it could start. Counselor!Mr continued, “Do you feel that their imperfections let you down?”

“Of course not.”

“Just as you have seen them for their imperfections, your friends and family have no misconceptions of perfection on your part. And just as with you, that doesn’t mean they are let down by these flaws. You think they perceive you as an all perfect person, as the false front you wear around them, but what if they know you pretend? What if they find you impersonating a perfect person endearing?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Counselor!Me sighs and continues, “I mean, these people who you deem as smart, good, and caring, they aren’t blind. It isn’t the person you are pretending to be that they care about. It is the person who tries to be perfect that they love. You try. You fail. You try again. Who couldn’t care about a person who tries to be everything for everyone?”

“So following your thinking, because I pretend to be better than what I am, fail, and keep pretending, my family and friends care about me?”

“Yes.”

“Then if I ever stop pretending, I fail them?’

“No, that’s not how it works.”

“So if I pretend to be better than I am, I don’t fail them. And if I just am who I am, I still don’t fail them. Then how do I fail them?”

“By doing the exact opposite of what you are doing right now. You CARE. That’s what separates failure and success.”

I sigh in exasperation and retort, “All you have to do is care about people and that makes everything okay?”

Counselor!Me responds with a question, “Do you need anything from your friends and family other than for them to care about you?”

“No, but-.”

“Again, no buts. You try to be everything they need or you are everything they need. It doesn’t matter whether you are or not, it is whether you want to be.”

“So because I care, I am everything they need? How can you be so sure it is enough?”

“Because in caring you promise to keep trying and, in the end, what more could anyone ask for?”

I pause a moment to think. The logic was irrefutable, but something else gnaws at me and I propose it to Counselor!Me, “Then why do I feel like they deserve more?”

The sigh held disappointment, “Maybe you want a way out. A reason to walk away from every relationship you have ever had because ‘they deserve more’.“ She finishes with air quotes.

“I don’t want lose all my relationships though. I just…” I feel the truth condensate behind my eyes. I look away from Councillor!Me in fear that her cold stare will break the storm. The words come out quick, as if they could fly passed Councillor!Me too fast for her to understand, “I am just afraid that if I admit that I am enough then there won’t be anything left to blame when they leave. Nothing but the dislike of me.”

“Better to just tell yourself you aren’t good enough than they have a problem with your personality?”

My gaze drops to my hands, which lack anything to fiddle with. As I stare at every ridge and divot, glimmering shimmers of light begin to appear. Slowly, at first, the edge of my index right finger, middle of my left pinkie, down the line in my palm that began to shine then the shimmer was almost everywhere, blurring my vision. It is a tidal wave, followed quickly by the heavy winds of my breath.

With an attempt at regaining composure, I inhale deeply and exhale slowly as I push the words from the back of my throats where they have been choking the sobs of my cry, “I can be better: stronger, kinder, happier, or more helpful. I can’t change my personality. And if they want to walk away, it’s easier to tell myself that if I met best of my ability they wouldn’t have left than they just don’t like me for who I am.”

A beat of my heart passes, then another. My vision, in which my hands are wringing themselves, dulls into shapeless blurs. I refuse to look Counselor!Me in the eye. I worry I will see the one thing I cannot take in this moment: pity. I know she doesn’t experience such emotions, or really any emotions, but sometimes the irrational choices are second nature.

“I love you,” the sound raises my blurry gaze from hands to Counselor!Me, but instead they catch my mom’s glimmering eyes wet with tears. She stands next to the office chair Counselor!Me is poised in, so composed and together. Yet my mom’s eyes don’t leave mine. The mess of a daughter, who can’t talk about her emotions without breaking down and is constantly letting her down, is the one she told she loves.

“We all do.” My gaze clears as the tears slowly etch their way down my cheeks and scans passed my mom to see my dad, sister, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends. The friends that are present surprise me; I see longtime friends who look at me with tears in their eyes like I’m their lovable idiot and they didn’t want me to ever doubt myself like this, but there are also people I had only known for what felt like a passing moment. The friends I had and lost with little effect on them, or so I thought. These faces contain a gratitude, as if the small time we were friends was one without regret.

The sound of the cushions in the office chair being released from compression drew my attention back to Counselor!Me. Everyone else vanishes without a sound as a hand grasps mine.

“They always will.” And with these words I am weightless. The pressure that restrains me to the couch vanishes and Counselor!Me pulls me easily to my feet.

“What happens if the weight of my inadequacies pull me back down again?” I ask, uneasily.

Counselor!Me surprises me as she wraps her arms around me and says softly in my ear, “I will always be here to remind you that it’s okay not to be perfect, if you try and care then you are already the best version of yourself.”

I give a tiny squeeze and release her, and with that the office fades away. I return to reality to fight another day, remembering all the people standing in that room who care about me despite my failures. I make a silent promise to work a little harder but know that, no matter the outcome, they will always care.

#self help #counseling #long post #inadequacy #loved anyway #all you have to do is care #imperfectlyperfect

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readbookywooks · 7 years

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“You'll get tired,” it continued. “We can wait. We're very good at waiting.” It made a feint to the left, but Esk swung around to face it. “That doesn't matter,” she said. “I'm only dreaming this, and you can't get hurt in dreams.” The Thing paused, and looked at her with its empty eyes. “Have you got a word in your world, I think it's called 'psychosomatic'?” “Never heard of it,” snapped Esk. “It means you can get hurt in your dreams. And what is so interesting is that if you die in your dreams you stay here. That would be niiiiice.” Esk glanced sideways at the distant mountains, sprawled on the chilly horizon like melted mud pies. There were no trees, not even any rocks. Just sand and cold stars and She felt the movement rather than heard it and turned with the pyramid held between her hands like a club. It hit the Simon-thing in mid-leap with a satisfying thump, but as soon as it hit the ground it somersaulted forward and bounced upright with unpleasant ease. But it had heard her gasp and had seen the brief pain in her eyes. It paused. “Ah, that hurt you, Did it not? You don't like to see another one suffer, yes? Not this one, it seems.” It turned and beckoned, and two of the tall Things lurched over to it and gripped it firmly by the arms. Its eyes changed. The darkness faded, and then Simon's own eyes looked out of his face. He stared up at the Things on either side of him and struggled briefly, but one had several pairs of tentacles wrapped around his wrist and the other was holding his arm in the world's largest lobster claw. Then he saw Esk, and his eyes fell to the little glass pyramid. “Run away!” he hissed. “Take it away from here! Don't let them get it!” He grimaced as the claw tightened on his arm. “Is this a trick?” said Esk. “Who are you really?” “Don't you recognise me?” he said wretchedly. “What are you doing in my dream?” “If this is a dream then I'd like to wake up, please,” said Esk. “Listen. You must run away now, do you understand? Don't stand there with your mouth open.” GIVE IT To us, said a cold voice inside Esk's head. Esk looked down at the glass pyramid with its unconcerned little world and stared up at Simon, her mouth an O of puzzlement. “But what is it?” “Look hard at it!” Esk peered through the glass. If she squinted it seemed that the little Disc was granular, as if it was made up of millions of tiny specks. If she looked hard at the specks “It's just numbers!” she said. “The whole world - it's all made up of numbers . . . .” “It's not the world, it's an idea of the world,” said Simon. “I created it for them. They can't get through to us, do you see, but ideas have got a shape here. Ideas are real!” GIVE IT TO US. “But ideas can't hurt anyone!” “I turned things into numbers to understand them, but they just want to control,” Simon said bitterly. “They burrowed into my numbers like -” He screamed. GIVE IT TO US OR WE WILL TAKE HIM TO BITS. Esk looked up at the nearest nightmare face. “How do I know I can trust you?” she said. YOU CAN'T TRUST US. BUT YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. Esk looked at the ring of faces that not even a necrophile could love, faces put together from a fishmonger's midden, faces picked randomly from things that lurked in deep ocean holes and haunted caves, faces that were not human enough to gloat or leer but had all the menace of a suspiciously v-shaped ripple near an incautious bather. She couldn't trust them. But she had no choice. Something else was happening, in a place as far away as the thickness of a shadow. The student wizards had run back to the Great Hall, where Cutangle and Granny Weatherwax were still locked in the magical equivalent of Indian arm wrestling. The flagstones under Granny were halfmelted and cracked and the table behind Cutangle had taken root and already bore a rich crop of acorns. One of the students had earned several awards for bravery by daring to tug at Cutangle's cloak .... And now they were crowded into the narrow room, looking at the two bodies. Cutangle summoned doctors of the body and doctors of the mind, and the room buzzed with magic as they got to work. Granny tapped him on the shoulder. “A word in your ear, young man,” she said. “Hardly young, madam,” sighed Cutangle, “hardly young.” He felt drained. It had been decades since he'd duelled in magic, although it was common enough among students. He had a nasty feeling that Granny would have won eventually. Fighting her was like swatting a fly on your own nose. He couldn't think what had come over him to try it. Granny led him out into the passage and around the corner to a window-seat. She sat down, leaning her broomstick against the wall. Rain drummed heavily on the roofs outside, and a few zigzags of lightning indicated a storm of Ramtop proportions approaching the city. “That was quite an impressive display,” she said: “You nearly won once or twice there.” “Oh,” said Cutangle, brightening up. “Do you really think so?” Granny nodded. Cutangle patted at various bits of his robe until he located a tarry bag of tobacco and a roll of paper. His hands shook as he fumbled a few shreds of second-hand pipeweed into a skinny homemade. He ran the wretched thing across his tongue, and barely moistened it. Then a dim remembrance of propriety welled up in the back of his mind. “Um,” he said, “do you mind if I smoke?” Granny shrugged. Cutangle struck a match on the wall and tried desperately to navigate the flame and the cigarette into approximately the same position. Granny gently took the match from his trembling hand and lit it for him. Cutangle sucked on the tobacco, had a ritual cough and settled back, the glowing end of the rollup the only light in the dim corridor. “They've gone Wandering,” said Granny at last. “I know,” said Cutangle. “Your wizards won't be able to get them back.” “I know that, too.” “They might get something back, though.” “I wish you hadn't said that.” There was a pause while they contemplated what might come back, inhabiting living bodies, acting almost like the original inhabitants. “It's probably my fault -”they said in unison, and stopped in astonishment. “You first, madam,” said Cutangle. “Them cigaretty things,” asked Granny, “are they good for the nerves?” Cutangle opened his mouth to point out very courteously that tobacco was a habit reserved for wizards, but thought better of it. He extended the tobacco pouch towards Granny. She told him about Esk's birth, and the coming of the old wizard, and the staff, and Esk's forays into magic. By the time she had finished she had succeeded in rolling a tight, thin cylinder that burned with a small blue flame and made her eyes water. “I don't know that shaky nerves wouldn't be better,” she wheezed. Cutangle wasn't listening. “This is quite astonishing,” he said. “You say the child didn't suffer in any way?” “Not that I noticed,” said Granny. “The staff seemed - well, on her side, if you know what I mean.” “And where is this staff now?” “She said she threw it in the river . . . .” The old wizard and the elderly witch stared at each other, their faces illuminated by a flare of lightning outside. Cutangle shook his head. “The river's flooding,” he said. “It's a million-to-one chance.” Granny smiled grimly. It was the sort of smile that wolves ran away from. Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully. “Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.” There are storms that are frankly theatrical, all sheet lightning and metallic thunder rolls. There are storms that are tropical and sultry, and incline to hot winds and fireballs. But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land. The grounds of the University stretched right down to the river. By day they were a neat formal pattern of gravel paths and hedges, but in the middle of a wet wild night the hedges seemed to have moved and the paths had simply gone off somewhere to stay dry. A weak wyrdlight shone inefficiently among the dripping leaves. But most of the rain found its way through anyway. “Can you use one of them wizard fireballs?” “Have a heart, madam.” “Are you sure she would have come this way?” “There's a sort of jetty thing down here somewhere, unless I'm lost.” There was the sound of a heavy body blundering wetly into a bush, and then a splash. “I've found the river, anyway.” Granny Weatherwax peered through the soaking darkness. She could hear a roaring and could dimly make out the white crests of floodwater. There was also the distinctive river smell of the Ankh, which suggested that several armies had used it first as a urinal and then as a sepulchre. Cutangle splashed dejectedly towards her. “This is foolishness,” he said, “meaning no offence, madam. But it'll be out to sea on this flood. And I'll die of cold.” “You can't get any wetter than you are now. Anyway, you walk wrong for rain.” “I beg your pardon?” “You go all hunched up, you fight it, that's not the way. You shouldwell, move between the drops.” And, indeed, Granny seemed to be merely damp. “I'll bear that in mind. Come on, madam. It's me for a roaring fire and a glass of something hot and wicked.” Granny sighed. “I don't know. Somehow I expected to see it sticking out of the mud, or something. Not just all this water.” Cutangle patted her gently on the shoulder. “There may be something else we can do -” he began, and was interrupted by a zip of lightning and another roll of thunder. “I said maybe there's something -” he began again. “What was that I saw?” demanded Granny. “What was what?” said Cutangle, bewildered. “Give me some light!” The wizard sighed wetly, and extended a hand. A bolt of golden fire shot out across the foaming water and hissed into oblivion. “There!” said Granny triumphantly. “It's just a boat,” said Cutangle. “The boys use them in the summer -” He waded after Granny's determined figure as fast as he could. “You can't be thinking of taking it out on a night like this,” he said. “It's madness!” Granny slithered along the wet planking of the jetty, which was already nearly under water. “You don't know anything about boats!” Cutangle protested. “I shall have to learn quickly, then,” replied Granny calmly. “But I haven't been in a boat since I was a boy!”

#EqualRites

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