#club shadow rewrite

[witch-ix]

The Dragon Flame, the Shadow Flame and the Water Stars

The Great Dragon was the source of life, light and creation. When it created the galaxy of the magic dimension, its own opposite came to existence – the Phoenix of the Shadow Flame, embodiment of death, darkness and destruction.

It thought the beauty life holds is outweighed by its torments and life was a mistake, because it is suffering. That’s why it wanted to destroy life and order, until all is one again. To achieve that, it would let everyone suffer, in hopes they get its point.

So, the Great Dragon fought with the Shadow Phoenix and was ultimately able to imprison it in the undergrounds of Magix, just underneath the planets biggest lake. Inside that lake resided a Leviathan, which got chosen as the guard of the Shadow Phoenix and gifted with magic, which could destroy both the magic of the Phoenix and the Dragon.

Giving up this part of its magic, the Great Dragon was exhausted and chose the same planet to rest on, split its magic into nine parts and scattered them across the globe.

Centuries passed, until it felt the end of its life nearing and it decided to give what was left of its magic to the first Fairy, who it had become good friends with. The Fairy turned into the first Keeper of the Dragon Flame.

At the same time, and with the Great Dragon doing his last breath, the Shadow Phoenix burned up, only leaving behind its powers.

Only a few weeks passed and the first three Witches entered the prison of the Shadow Phoenix, discovering the three pieces of the Shadow Flames. Each of them took one piece and connected with its powers.

With their new powers the three Witches went to fight the Fairy, wanting to take the Dragon Flame away from their younger sister. They defeated her, imprisoning her spirit inside the Golden Kingdom, which she had created with the magic of the Dragon Flame. They also put a curse onto the kingdom turning it into a place untouched by time.

However, the Fairies girlfriend, another Fairy, asked the Leviathan of the lake to help and stop the three Witches, who had achieved immortality. So, the Leviathan gave up its magic, creating five Water Stars and turning itself into the Ice Serpent.

With the Water Stars the Fairy went up against the Witches. She was able to take the flames from them and remove their spirits from their immortal bodies, imprisoning them in the deepest trench of Omega – Oblivion, guarded by the Serpent.

She put the Dragon Flame into the Magical Core of Domino and the three pieces of the Shadow Flame back into the former prison of the Shadow Phoenix. Locking the power away with the Magic of the Water Stars. Giving those to the Golden Kingdom, so her girlfriends spirit would keep them safe.

She herself kept studying the magic of her homeland, eventually unlocking the grater power within it’s Magical Core and turning into the Nymph of Magical Essence. Ultimately, she found a way to join her girlfriend inside the Golden Kingdom, where they formed the Council of Elders – a group of five magic users, who had each achieved something new and great. Each one of them was tasked with the responsibility of keeping one Water Star save from those with malicious intentions.

#au-ix #the grat dragon #the shadow phoenix #the leviathan #winx arcadia #winx ancestral witches #winx omnia #winx club rewrite #winx club au #winx club

[daydreamsia]

I just realized - the villains in the show are showing up in a really weird order (only speaking of seasons 1-3 and Secret of the Lost Kingdom).

In my mind it would make more sense if season 2 was for Valtor - maybe he comes out of hinding after 16 years when he heard the Power of the Dragon Flame is back. He has been sent by his creators (the Ancestral Witches) to gather power in order to free them from their imprisionment and bring the Shadow Phoenix back to former power.

He would also be the one turning Bloom into Dark Bloom in order to get a hold of her powers.

Of course he would have gotten Icy and Stormy out of Light Rock Monetary (Darcy refused, wanted to stay and he respected that). He would have given them a piece of the Shadow Flame in order to boost their powers and created the Gloom. (In my mind the Ancestral Witches created him with a spark of the Dragon Flame and a spark of the Shadow Flames).

Everyrhing else would play out similar to season 2. Valtor would just be the one in Darkars Place. And i guess the Pixies wouldn't play as big of a part in the beginning.

Season 3 would then be about the Ancestral Witches and Icy who is the only one of the Trix left, since Stormy stayed in Omega whilest Icy followed the calling of Belladonna and chose to fight on their side. And she gets really mad. In the prozess of gaining enaugh Power she's tapping into Dark Magic and gains Disenchantment (through killing someone).

The Winx Girls would still earn Enchantix and I guess Icy would have to do the main things Valtor does in the show - giving others (mainly Cassandra and Diaspro) what they want in order to help the ancestral Witches get out of their prison.

The Winx (minus Bloom, because her Enchantix is incomplete) get the Water Stars (also Bloom has to stay away from them because they could destroy her power). The Witches get out of their imprisionment. Dark Bloom has a little comeback to because the incomplete Enchantix makes everything weird.

In the end Icy would be defeated in a final fight á la Agni Kai and the Spirits of the Ancestral Witches would get set to rest for good. But! they were able to Reawaken the Shadow Phoenix.

So he would be the last villain for the Winx in my Version of Secret of the Lost Kingdom.

I know this is far from beeing a full-fledged plan - it's just a late night thought i had. It would make so much more sense to me like that because Darkar is the literal Darkness. He should be the big end boss.

I will think more about this and might use it for my AU.

#just late night thoughts #winx club rewrite #winx trix #winx valtor #winx ancestral witches #winx darkar #winx shadow phoenix #au-ix idea

[snarky-art]

Made some minor adjustments to Darkar for my winx club thingy, including elongating his arms to make it more believable from a physiology standpoint for him to transition to walking on all fours if he wanted to (because I think the concept of him flying into a rage and scuttling towards someone at high speeds like that would be horrifying), making his neck longer, and adding some sinew to him.

Wanted to try and push some of the body horror elements more.

Decided to do some quick practices drawing him in different positions too. I need to work on this kind of anatomy more.

And behold! An official height at long last.

#winx club #winx #lord darkar #darkar #the shadow phoenix #shadow phoenix #winx rewrite #winx club rewrite #winx club redesign #winx redesign #winx club reboot #winx reboot #winx club redo #winx redo #the fall of domino #body horrow cw #body horror #tw blood

[vicontheinternet]

Another missed opportunity of a storyline. I get that bloom is the show's main character and we have to focus on but it would’ve been nice to see one of the other girls have a chance to shine in their own centered storyline. In my fanfic when ever I get around to doing it every girl will have their own centered season think of it being like skam that neither here nor there now let’s get back to the program as scheduled. As I was saying it was a missed opportunity to not have have Stella be the center of season 2. I forgot which version it was but darker needed light to access realix not the dragon flame. It was made obvious that Stella was the one for the job when the girl went to cloud tower. They all had to do that spell. The orb for Stella was completely luminous but for bloom it was pitch back which griffin said even senior had trouble doing that. Also someone had a headcanon that stella doesn't have a shadow so I thought it would be cool if to symbolize lord darkar slowly gaining control of her she slowly starts to have a shadow. it would've made so much more sense but that's just my thoughts.

#i think I’ve said this before #this post is all over the place #just thinking abt it stella tired of being labeled as the lacker princess who just uses daddy’s money to get her way #coming up on third year at alfea but still a sophomore she starts to take her studies more seriously to prove everyone and herself wrong #i also think that it’s be cool that the shadow would become sentient and have a mind of its own kinda like peter pan’s shadow on ouat #winx club #winx club stella #winx stella #stella of solaria #winx bloom #winx club bloom #bloom peters #winx club rewrite idea #winx club headcanons #winx headcanons #headcanon

[darkpoisonouslove]

Hod did Darkar fits in your Story? If I get it right Valtor is with his dark dragon flame the contrast to Marions/ Blooms light dragon. But didn't Darkar said himself that he is the counterpart to the big dragon/ that his powers are the contrast to those of the light dragon flame?

Darkar, or rather the Shadow Fire, is very much the opposing force of the Dragon Fire. Valtor's power is the same as Marion and Bloom's as in it is the Dragon Fire. But Valtor's Dragon Fire is a corrupted version of the power Marion and Bloom have because the Ancestral Witches added darkness to it. That's what I mean when I say he's their opposite. The difference is that Valtor shares the same source of power so only the, let's say, alignment of that power is opposite. Meanwhile, Darkar has a different source of power that is opposite to the Dragon Fire. I haven't changed that from the show.

#winx club #winx valtor #winx darkar #dragon fire #shadow fire #wc rewrite #ask #anon

[vixen-academia]

Free MIT online courses that sound interesting

Arts & Literature

Introduction to World Music

Reading Fiction

Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare

Introduction to Photography

Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity

Studies in Poetry - Briths Poetry and the Sciences of the Mind

Studies in Literary History: Modernism: From Nietzsche to Fellini

Screen Women: Body Narratives in Popular American Film

Studies in Poetry: "What's the Use of Beauty"

Queer Cinema and Visual Culture

Monteverdi to Mozart: 1600 - 1800

Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography

Advanced Topics in Hispanic Literature and Film: The Films of Luis Buñel

Major Authors: Rewriting Genesis: "Paradise Lost" and Twentieth-Century Fantasy

Arthurian Literature and Celtic Colonization

Contemporary Literature: Britsh Novel Now

Studies in Poetry: 20th Century Irish Poetry: The Shadow of W. B. Yeats

Writing About Literature: Writing About Love

Introduction to European and Latin American Fiction: Great Books On The Page and On The Screen

Popular Culture and Narrative: Use and Abuse of the Fairy Tale

Victorian Literature and Culture

Reading Poetry

English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Society in the Age of Shakespeare

Introduction to Fiction

International Woman's Voice

Major Authors: Oscar Wilde and the "90's"

Prizewinners: Nobelistas

American Authors: American Women Authors

Shakespeare, Film and Media

Japanese Literature and Cinema

Woman's Novels: A Weekly Book Club

Classics of Chinese Literature

Major English Novels

Topics in South Asia Literature and Culture

Introduction to Literary Theory

History & Social Studies

American Classics

The Middle East in the 20th Century

Africa and the Politics of Knowledge

The Rise of Modern Science

European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Century

Philosophy of Love

Human Rights: At Home and Abroad

The Nature of Creativity

Introduction to Comparative Politics

Riots, Rebellions, Revolutions

Introduction to the History of Technology

Ancient Philosophy

Youth Political Participation

#studyblr #study resources #dark academia #light academia #chaotic academia #romantic academia #adhd academia #studyblr brazil #literature #art academia #mit #free courses #study #collegeblr #studyblr college

[bunchofdoodlesinspace]

ALRIGHT. So. Idk how many people (who are not my friends/mutuals and get to hear me rant about this show every other week) are aware, but I'm slightly obsessed with Winx Club. And I've talked off and on about these Winx redesigns I'm slowly chipping away at, and how doing them has sorta led me to rewriting the show itself, since I've redone a lot of the lore around the transformations (esp the later ones).

But because I'm a full-time university student majoring in character design with an interest in Not seriously injuring my wrist/hand, it's taking me. a while to make them (as of writing this, I have rough designs for all the main 6 girls up to Enchantix. 2 of them have finished designs which I shall be posting soon :D), so in the meantime I thought it'd be kinda fun to throw down some of the overall AU headcanons I have about the world and how it works. SO. with that I present:

Cup's Winx Rewrite AU Headcanons:

-What is known as the Magic Dimension/Universe in the show, in my version, is more like the term for a collective of various worlds, united through a variety of portals and links to the distant planet, Magix, which serves as an intergalactic capital. -Part of the reason that Magix exists in the way it does (both as the capital for the universe, as well as being where all three main magic schools in the show (Alfea, Cloud Tower, and Red Fountain) are located) is in part as a means to prevent another disaster like that which occurred at the hands of the Shadow Phoenix and the Ancestral Witches, which ultimately ended in the complete destruction of the planet, Domino. -The school's themselves both function as academic places of learning as well as training grounds for new guardians to learn how to protect themselves. Each school offers a different magical path for its students: Alfea, the path of Fairy Magic. Cloud Tower, the path of Witchcraft, and Red Fountain, the path of Wizardry (those who learn it being called "Specialists"). While it's uncommon, it is possible for students to switch paths if they find they aren't gelling with the one they started with. Everyone has the potential for any kind of magic, but that doesn't mean every kind of magic works for every person. -Oh, also, there's no gender specifications for any school. Fairies, witches, and specialists of any and every identity under the sun(s) exist in this world. -Fairies, witches, and specialists are not the Only magical beings to exist in the dimension. The planet Andros, notably, is home to not only many land-dwelling beings, but also to mermaids, who live in the Infinite Ocean, a realm that connects to all other oceans in the Magic Universe via numerous underwater gates. -Earth is, or rather, was part of the Magic Universe, for a very long time. This was up until the tragedy that befell the planet's magical creatures at the hands of the Wizards of the Black Circle. This led to its link being cut off from the rest of the other magical realms, and leaving its human society to develop in a world where magic remained a mystery. -This does not mean magic on Earth died. It continued to exist in the fringes, where it was safest for it to be allowed to develop. The bulk of it was/is maintained in Tir Na Nog, the Kingdom of the Earth Fairies, due to its extreme difficulty to locate by mundane means. -Another celestial object that was one connected to this network was one of Solaria's moons: Lumenia. Solaria claims to have lost contact with them eons ago, and refuses to make attempts to reopen the connection. -Since all of this IS rooted in a redesign project, I feel like I should note that there are a multitude of forms of varying power levels open for fairies to utilize. However, only 3 forms are actually taught at Alfea: Winx, Charmix, and Enchantix, Winx being the base form every fairy has the ability to use once they figure out how to tap into their powers. -Enchantix is one of the most powerful forms to exist. Once it is acquired, it serves to be the new base form over Winx. Gaining it also opens the doors for the fairy to acquire practically any other form to exist, most of which serve more to help in certain situations (eg.: Sirenix = Underwater needs). I'll go in-depth about the lore of each form once I've finished their designs. :)

I feel like. that covers most of my bases for now. I have. so many more thoughts sitting in my brain, if anyone is curious about anything please feel free to ask. I'm basically making myself stop for now bc I do have some homework I need to work on tonight JKHFJK

#winx club #winx #winx headcanons #winx redesign #winx rewrite #cupcake rambles #genuinely I could talk about my ideas for this and my thoughts on the show for DAYS #alas. I have responsibilities.

[midnightstar-90]

Fanfic Suggestions

This is a masterlist of all the fanfics that I have read and give a "10/10 Would Read Again" Rating. I love these writer's works, and I believe they deserve the recognition. They inspire me and my writing, and I am truly thankful for that.

I am incorporating both Tumblr and Wattpad Fanfics. If it has a user, it's a Tumblr writing, and no user is a Wattpad writing.

Hope y'all enjoy ❤️

🔥- 18+/Mature | ☔- Sad

Scream

Lovers Lane (C.M.M) 🔥

@msgorillagripcoochie's About You Fic (C.M.M)

@n-slayaaaaa's Calls I Can't Make Fic 1 2 3 (E.L) | (C.M.M) 🔥

DC Comics

Knight Wolf and Little Robin (J.T)

Lost Cause (J.T)

Control (C.K)

@tinkerbelle05's Maybe We'll Get Through This (J.R)

@asonofpeter's Where You Go Masterlist (J.R)🔥

@oneshots-heaven's The Motel Room Masterlist (D.G)

Vampire Diaries | Originals | Legacies

The Original Daughter (E.M)

Cursed Witch (K.M) 🔥

Damon's Daughter (D.S)

Avatar

@avatarkv

@cryinginthemoonpool's A Forgotten Birthday ☔ (Sully Family)

Harry Potter

Infinity (F.W) 🔥

Evermore (S.S) 🔥

Endgame (S.S) 🔥

Stranger Things

Ho Hey (E.M)

Julie & The Phantoms

Somethin Stupid (R.P)

Boy Meets World

Capsize (S.H)

Oscar Issac + Characters

@melodygatesauthor (O.I)

@sweetly-yours-and-mine (O.I)

@bastardmandennis's Pretty When You Cry (J.L) 🔥

@ivystoryweaver's With You Masterlist (Moon Knight System)

@mooooonnnzz's Miguel O'hara & Daughter Action 1, 2, 3, 4 (M.O)

Moondust (Moon Knight System)

@m00nsbaby's Why Won't You Love Me? (Moon Knight System)☔

@lockleysfav's Haze (M.O)🔥

@januaryembrs's Last Knight In SOHO Masterlist (Moon Knight System)🔥

@bastardmandennis's Even If It's A False God (M.S)🔥

@ohmystaxk's Goodbye, My Dear Stranger Masterlist (Moon Knight System)🔥

@alwritey-aphrodite's I'll Be Back Again To Stay Masterlist (S.G)🔥

Marvel

Pistol (H.B)

Freaks | Runaways | Heroes | Humans (P.M)

@anonymousewrites's Portal To My Heart Masterlist (L.L)

Shadow & Bone

Stain of Red (The Darkling)

@midnightlilium's Reborn Masterlist (The Darkling) 🔥☔ * Not as explicit as other content on this app*

@kasagia's I'll Be Back For You Fic 1 2 (The Darkling) | (K.B)

@moonlightgrisha's Moon Summoner Masterlist (The Darkling)

Actors

@yawneneteyam's All Things Connected Masterlist (J.F)

@babybluebex's Bad Idea, Right? (J.Q) 🔥

IT

@anxiouslymalicious's Losers Club Plus One Masterlist (R.T)

New Girl

A Summer's Day (N.M) 🔥

Bridgerton

@bosbas's Love In Bloom Masterlist (B.B)

@nikkisheep's To Be Alone With You series (A.B) 🔥 1 2 3

@bellatrixscurls's Arranged Marriage (A.B) 🔥

@bellatrixscurls's Exquisite Weather Today, No? (A.B) 🔥1

@fayes-fics's A Beneficial Arrangement (A.B) 🔥

@marwritesgood's Illicit Affairs (A.B) 🔥

@dreamwritesimagines's Enamored Masterlist (A.B)

The Second Born Bridgerton & The Second Born Bridgerton's Wife (B.B)

@homeofthepeculiar's I Know You So Well Masterlist (B.B)🔥

Criminal Minds

@dr-spencer-reids-queen's Criminal Minds Series Rewrite Masterlist (S.R)

@fortheloveofwonderland's Me & You & Everyone We Know - Masterlist (S.R)🔥

Jensen Ackles + Characters

@zepskies's Take Me Home Masterlist (B.A)

@zepskies's Masterlist (Jensen + Characters)

@luci-in-trenchcoats's Home Sweet Not Home (J.A)

@lamentationsofalonelypotato's You Call It Madness But I Call It Love Masterlist (S.B)

@anundyingfidelity's Blood, Sweat, & Tears (B.B/S.B)🔥

@syrma-sensei's Hush Hush Behind The Shield (S.B)🔥

@anundyingfidelity's I'm A Ruin 1, 2, 3 (S.B)🔥

@wayward-dreamer's Pillow Talk (S.B)🔥

@princessmisery666's Please Don't Leave (J.A)

The Rookie

@xxchumanixx's Rookie Masterlist (T.B/J.N)

@chiefdirector's Rookie Masterlist (T.B/Chenford)

@fluentmoviequoter's Rookie Masterlist (T.B)

Percy Jackson Series

@woodlandwrites's Mind Over Matter (L.C)

#fanfic #x reader #x oc #fanfiction #masterlist #request #requested #suggestion #fanfic suggestions #chad meeks martin #ethan landry x reader #jason todd imagine #clark kent x reader #elijah mikaelson #klaus mikaelson #damon salvatore #fred weasley #sebastian sallow x reader #eddie munson #julie and the phantoms #shawn hunter #hobie brown x reader #peter maximoff #mark spector #miguel o'hara #shadow and bone #jamie flatters

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

Rewrite for Masters Of All Time.

What's worse than a bad episode? A bad episode that had the POTENTIAL to be truly amazing. The concept of Danny time-traveling to the past and messing with Vlad's portal incident only to make the timeline even worse than it currently is so he *needs* to fix it back to normal.

[Certain changes and explanations why I made those changes will be put in brackets like these.]

Borrowing @schnuffel-danny's Jack wrote letters to Vlad hc for this loose plot rewrite. Finally got spurred into writing this when I saw @picturejasper20's post about it.

Starting at the beginning, let's cut out Vlad going to the Fentons for help and make the trigger for Danny relying on time travel being that he is fading in and out of the time-space-continuum and he goes to Clockwork to figure out why. Clockwork in turn, gives him a medallion to stabilize him and informs him that someone stole stuff from him and is changing the past, thus effecting the present. Danny jumps to the conclusion that it's Vlad and volunteers to go after him, Clockwork can't read minds so he doesn't know that Danny thinks Vlad did it and okays it, sending him to the year he saw the 'dubious creature' flee to.

[This change both lets us dive right into the time-travel shenanigans thus giving us slightly more time to see more timelines. It also makes Danny look less stupid because in this case, jumping to the conclusion that time-travel is the answer makes much more sense. There's multiple solutions to trying to cure a virus that don't involve time travel, but you can't fix 'somebody's messing with the past' *without* time travel.]

After he lands in Wisconsin University, 198X, Danny's even more sure that it's Vlad messing with the past, but despite that, he doesn't find him anywhere while he zooms around the university hunting him down. He *does* find or rather, crashes into College!Vlad. Who is surprisingly chill with the existence of ghosts being real and doesn't seem phased by Danny phasing through him. Danny apologizes, C!Vlad accepts it, telling Danny not to worry, it's not like anything happened. Both move on their way without thinking about the interaction while C!Vlad mutters something about 'Undead Fenton Family reunion'. [Scene is there for foreshadowing.]

Danny spends all day looking for Present!Vlad up until he finds a flyer for the 'Ghost club' where they plan to show off the proto-portal. Figuring that P!Vlad is going to sabotage it somehow, he stakes out the area the portal's being built waiting for P!Vlad to show up and he doesn't.

Instead, College!Jack insists C!Vlad handle the remote while he inspects the portal's structural integrity. C!Vlad agrees, but has doubts that the portal will really work which he expresses to C!Jack, who waves it off and sticks his head inches away from the portal frame as he's 'inspecting' and Danny's waiting until C!Jack's done so Vlad can peer into it so things can happen as they're supposed to.

But he doesn't.

College!Maddie inspects the calculations and tells the two that they are wrong, C!Vlad sneezed and turned the remote on by accident, cursing as the portal turns on. Thus, the proto-portal incident occurs with Vlad and Jack's positions swapped. And Danny learns his dad left out that the accident was far more horrific than he described.

[The horrors occur off-screen, but we're shown shadows, see Danny's reactions, hear C!Jack's agonized screams along with C!Vlad and C!Maddie's horrified screams, and see Danny run out of the room to throw up in the nearest trash can. I made this change for three reasons. 1. Reveal that Jack's retelling of the 'good ol' days' has a few lies ingrained in the sugar coating, the biggest of which being the severity of the accident 2. Reveal to the audience that Vlad actually has a really high Fenton-nonsense tolerance level and that while he holds grudges like a cup holds water, he doesn't hold unwarranted grudges. 3. I just want to add a little body horror concepts in the show about a half-dead kid who fights ghosts, sue me.]

From there, Danny follows the three and sees how things must've played out from the original timeline, but with Jack and Vlad swapped; Maddie and Vlad keep trying to visit Jack, but hospital security keep turning him away, they also attempt to send him letters and gifts but those are also rejected, but neither are giving up... [Scene added to show the audience Jack and Vlad were friends back then and that Jack didn't just drop Vlad like a bad habit after he was hospitalized]

Feeling defeated as he didn't prevent the timeline from changing but not sure what to do, Danny kinda waits on the hospital roof until Clockwork pushes a button on his staff that brings the kid back to the present.

Clockwork is confused, Danny's also confused, but surprisingly, the timeline is as things should be on the surface... Just to double check, Danny heads in hoping for the best, like maybe things were pretty rough for his dad at first, but *surely* his face healed up and he and mom got together soon afterwards right? Maybe this change is a good thing and he can learn how to be a halfa from his own dad, right?

Wrong. Instead, Jack Fenton lives alone in Amity Park with a robotic version of Jasmine and a cat named Jack Junior. There's a lot less Fenton inventions in Fentonworks and a lot more ghosts strapped to dissection tables, many, if not all of them, are not moving.

[Robot added and cat's name changed because as silly as he is, Jack *is* an inventor in his own right and making a robot daughter does seem like something he'd do if he was REALLY lonely, as well as would parallel Vlad's future creation of Danielle. Ghosts on dissection tables added to add some tension as whether or not Danny is in danger, this Jack is definitely dangerous.]

Instead of the bootleg Vlad Plasmius costume, Jack's ghost form does have the pointy ears, red eyes, bluish skin, and fangs that Vlad's strain of halfa-ism has, but he wears the same orange jumpsuit (as only his face was caught in the portal, not his entire body) and an added purple cloak/hood combo.

Danny is at first intimidated by this large hooded figure surrounded by dead ghosts and they have a short fight, then in battle, the latter notices the medallion on the former and flips the hood off, excitedly asking Danny about it, being just as chipper and ramble-y as he remembers his dad, even as a very scary ghost. Relieved, Danny explains what he knows the best he can and asks 'Jack Frighton' [ghostly surname being a poor mesh of 'Fright' and 'Fenton'] about what happened in the past.

Jack's own recollection of how things played out is a bittersweet story about how back then, someone warned him that his best friend would go through something terrible if he looked through that proto-ghost portal and he took the fall for him, only for said best friend to never visit him in the hospital and Jack, heartbroken by his supposed friends' lack of care for his life (which Danny knows isn't true), moves away to Amity Park for a fresh start.

"..Did you forgive them?"

"I did, the distance and time made it easier to and now I've got the best job in the world, the coolest powers to do it with, and an assistant who's like a daughter to me. Although given that apparently in your timeline I have a REAL daughter and a son I guess that might be where the feeling comes from..."

"Do you ever want to see them again? Vlad and Maddie, I mean."

"*laughs* not when I'm half-ghost and they're professional ghost hunters! I'm happy for them, but I can be happy for them at a safe distance, we send each other letters, cards, and research materials all the time now!"

"...Aren't you a ghost-hunter too?"

"Nope."

"But what about all the-?"

"Oh? These guys? I work as a ghost-mortician. I also ghost-fish, but that's just a hobby. I've tried, but I'm not cut out to be an actual hunter, 'got a really lousy aim, but you don't need an accurate aim with a fishing rod to catch something!"

"Ghost-fishing? So you do have a ghost portal? Can I use it to get back to Clockwork?"

"Well Danny, I'd say 'yes', but I sent it over to Mads and V-man for reference on their own portal a month ago... ...I'll show the way to their address."

One Specter Speeder flight to Vlad and Maddie's Wisconsin house later, Jack and Danny switch to human forms and Jack knocks on the door, getting no response.

Jack knocks again and calls out for them, still no response.

Danny just phases through the front door and Jack follows, both of them notice that the house is in a state of disrepair; broken furniture everywhere, puddles of ectoplasm on the ground, and strange claw marks on the walls.

As the two quietly make their way through the house, (well, Danny quietly goes through the house, Jack calls out for his old friends every two minutes), Danny notices framed pictures, inventions, and other odd items symbolizing Vlad and Maddie's relationship through the years on the walls and left broken on the ground. Through these items he sees their wedding, their honeymoon, their anniversary dates, the devices they built together, their ghost-hunting trips, their... the pictures of the "children" they apparently made together with mad science. [Clone kids foreshadowing Kindred Spirits, but they look closer to the skeleton and Frankenstein clones as opposed to anything like Dani.]

While Danny's holding up one of the letters, he hears ectobeams going off and Jack flies into the room, panicking as he's yelling at Danny to run for his life, saying that they messed with something they never should have messed with. That they bit off more than they could chew. Danny is just about to question Jack before he hears the inhuman groan and sees the ectoplasm-oozing figure of what is supposed to be Vlad Masters.

[We will not see a dairy king!Vlad future in this rewrite for multiple reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that despite being a different timeline, DK!Vlad is a copy-paste of Main Timeline!Vlad despite it making literally no sense and just downgrading Vlad's character by saying 'he's just an asshole, don't pity him'. However I understand as a writer that Danny needs to not have moral dilemmas about undoing the Vlad X Maddie timeline especially since I gave them kids even if they are weird-clone kids that might not even be sapient, so enjoy ecto-zombies and the looming implication that said kids are also zombies.]

The ecto-Zombie Maddie shrieks as her husband's pinned down and lunges at Jack, who puts up a shield blocking her barrage but also giving Zombie!Vlad time to get up...

As he's holding them off despite being distraught, Danny finds the portal and looks back at Jack just as he can't hold them off any longer, promising him that he will fix the timeline, Jack wishes him luck while Danny jumps through the portal to head back to Clockwork.

Once there, Danny explains that he learned from Jack what happened and what he needs to do to prevent this timeline that's on the brink of a zombie apocalypse from happening: He needs to stop Vlad from convincing College!Jack from sticking his head in the portal.

Clockwork attempts to clarify that Vlad isn't the one who changed the past, but Danny's already going through the Time-thing and while Clockwork *could* just bring him back to the present, he decides to stay and watch what he does to let Danny's rash decision not to listen be its own punishment.

This time when he's in the past, he shows up in C!Vlad and C!Jack's bedroom in the morning and basically sticks to the two of them like glue, claiming that he's one of their relatives and being really vague about it so Vlad thinks he's Jack's distant cousin and Jack thinks he's Vlad's distant cousin.

He drags himself along on two different classes with C!Jack and C!Vlad, a really boring study session with them accompanied with C!Maddie, a lunch at a diner where Danny has to remind himself that yes, this is really Vlad because the one and only time he's seen this laid-back, (stoner but its hinted at with the munchies, not shown), actually kinda cool guy get Present!Vlad levels of mad, the only time he sees him get into a full on fight with someone, is when another student from the college tries to steal C!Jack's lunch.

C!Vlad gets his ass absolutely handed to him because he's a twig in an oversized jacket, but he still gets C!Jack's lunch back because he bit the other guy at least five times.

While Danny's playing bodyguard, he uses ectobeams to successfully scare off what he thinks was Skulker in a bedsheet as the figure was far too large to be Vlad, even in his Plasmius form.

Aside from his presence being known, things in the college go on as Danny assumes they're supposed to, and at the point he sees C!Vlad looking into the rim of the proto-portal, Danny thinks that he's fixed the timeline and heads out of the room before the accident happens as he does NOT want to see it again.

Clockwork sends him to the new present and Danny walks home sweet home only to be greeted by the realization that no, he didn't fix the timeline as the sign on the building reads "Walkerworks".

Today he learns that his mom's maiden name is "Walker".

Danny lets out an exasperated sigh and flies out to Wisconsin to figure out how Vlad messed up the timeline from the man himself before borrowing mom's portal for a bit.

As he gets there, he finds the the beefy Packers' Quarterback: Vlad Masters, who lives with his best friend, the ghost-studying scientist Jack Fenton.

Danny pulls Vlad aside and says that while he understands the Packers thing, why the heck would he'd change the timeline to this when he was obsessed with marrying his mom is he just trying to spite him or just erase him from existance? And Quarterback!Vlad has no idea what he's talking about.

While he buys that Danny's from a different timeline when Danny shows Vlad that he's a halfa, the two are having trouble getting on the same page due to the fact that Vlad has no idea about the timeline Danny's talking about and Danny's getting frustrated up until Vlad brings up the incident and he finally understands what changed in the timeline when Vlad tells him about the aftermath of the portal accident.

"The ghost powers themselves are great, I don't think I'd accomplish any of this if I didn't have them, but the process of mastering them was absolutely terrible, if my best friend Jack didn't visit me in the hospital all the time and encourage me as much as he did, I don't know what I would've done."

"Visited you?"

"Yes! Practically every single day, he also brought gifts and letters, apparently, he wanted to send them, but thought they'd get lost in the mail, so instead he brought them in person..."

Now that he knows what's changed, Danny goes back in time once again to the first day Vlad's at the hospital and waits for either Present Vlad or the past Version of his dad to show up, feeling guilty about ruining Jack and Vlad's happy life together, but also really wanting to, you know, exist.

As night falls and he sees someone his dad's size squeeze through one of the windows, Danny tackles him, throws off the figure's sheet, and takes off his hood/goggles for good measure, revealing that it's not Skulker, not Present!Vlad, not College!Jack, but Present!Jack.

Danny's shocked and demands an explanation from him, also warning him that he ruined the timeline twice and that he's not going to let him do it a third time.

Jack explains that this all started when he added some extra line on his Fenton Ghost-Fisher and while testing it out, he caught a time travel-remote. After figuring out what it was and what it did, he thoughtlessly used it to attempt to fix his broken relationship with his former best friend.

"But it seemed like every time I finally fixed something, I'd turn around for something else to break. I lost him and Mads in one timeline, at first I tried not to mind, but then they even lost themselves, in another, I had him, but lost her, Jazz and Danny..."

Jack hands Danny the remote back with a sigh.

"I'm sorry Phantom. I never wanted to mess anything up or hurt anyone. I really love my family and don't want to lose them. I do want my kids to exist and I swear I'm not trying to run away from them or anything like that. But if I can't save Vlad, if I can't be there for him, how can he ever forgive me for what I've done to him?"

"When you were put in the same situation he was in, you forgave him. You were trying to reconnect with him and Maddie when they were a thing... So why can't he forgive you?"

"It's not as simple as that, kiddo. I saw what could've happened and chose to sacrifice myself, he didn't even get to see the choices."

Danny rolled his eyes.

Sure, he himself 'didn't see the choices' when he was caught in his own portal incident, but he never held a grudge against Sam over it. In Danny's point of view in this moment, the difference between Jack and Vlad is that in the exact same situation, Jack would choose to be a hero where Vlad would choose to be a villain. And to him, that was the reason why his parents worked as a couple while when Vlad was with his mom, things ended terribly.

But he said nothing to his father who had been through enough today. He just sat by him in the hospital hallway waiting for Clockwork to zap them back.

___

And that's the end of the rewrite, comments, opinions, questions, criticisms, and suggestions on how to change this to make it better welcome. I know that it's not a *perfect* piece of work but I hope that it was one less infuriating than the actual Masters Of All Time episode.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #vlad plasmius #vlad masters #dp clockwork #jack fenton #maddie fenton #masters of all time #maddie x vlad #vlad x jack

[flicklikesstuff]

Hi everyone!! (First post jitters-)

So just to clear things first, I honestly….did not like how the final product of Wish came out. But looking at what ideas could’ve been, it really sparked some creative juices that I just want to express.

But if you liked the movie, then that’s valid too. And if you’re not a fan of Wish criticism and rewrites, feel free to just keep scrolling. I do NOT want to start arguments. I will be tagging my posts as ‘wish rewrite, wish criticism,’ etc. so you guys can filter it on your own. Anyways-

Character Brainstorms (thus far):

The plot of my rewrite isn’t exactly set in stone yet but the journey’s still fun nonetheless. Not sure what to name/title the whole thing yet though but I’ll get there.

Also, most of my brainstorms and a bunch of other rewriters share a discord server. It’s where I share my sudden creative bursts that I don’t feel quite comfortable sharing in this blog publicly. Sorry. So if you want to ramble about stuff with me and a bunch of others, this is where I’ll be.

So if you want to join in with the creativity, go ahead! (Bashing and bullying are not tolerated)

And finally, shoutout to @annymation and @gracebethartacc for their respective amazing Wish rewrites!! I’ve been building my own in the shadows for a bit cuz anxiety, but it’s really inspiring to see all yours! Tysm for sharing them!

Maybe, just maybe I’ll share mine similar to you both if motivation loss and anxiety don’t get the best of me. 😅😅

But we’ll see what the future holds~

#disney wish #wish rewrite #asha x star #wish criticism #wish au #wish 2023 #Asha redesign #starboy #King Magnifico redesign #wish asha #wish ​star #king magnifico

[bookishdream]

Stitches

inej ghafa x fem!reader Summary: Reader comes back wounded and Inej is there to help her stitch the wound Word Count: 1,1k A/N: This is a rewrite to this request. Enjoy!

Y/n was holding her side, hissing through her teeth every so often. She hadn’t ever seen such a well guarded house that would bring so much trouble to get into. She sighed feeling the blood seeping through the material of the black tunic. Her hair was sticking to the nape of her neck and she was shivering. It was so damn cold. 

When she finally arrived at the Crow Club, her heart was racing and she could feel the repercussions of blood-loss. Her head was spinning, her clothes were sticking to her sweaty skin and her palm that was pressing the wound was shaking. 

She went straight into her room, disregarding her tunic on the way to the bathroom. The bedroom was spinning and y/n bumped into the threshold. 

“You stupid girl,” she hissed at herself reflecting in the mirror. She opened the cabinet under the sink and took out the gauze and ointment. She hoped she wouldn’t be needing stitches. Having cleaned her bloodied hands, y/n soaked the gauze with the antiseptic and pressed hard to the wound. Tears pooled in her eyes and she bit down on her lip, so as not to scream. She inhaled through her nose, feeling the stinging of the wound. When it eventually stopped, y/n took a bandage and wrapped it around her waist, tightening it. She could already notice the blood stains blossoming on the top of the material. Heavy sigh came out of her mouth followed by shivers coming down her spine. 

When y/n left the adjoint room and sat on her bed she felt a cold breeze coming out of the opened window of her bedroom. She frowned, trying to remember whether she had left the window open, but then she felt rather than see the Wraith herself lurking in the shadows. 

“Saints, what has happened to you?” Inej whispered, her voice heavy with concern. Y/n rolled her eyes and lifted her head so as to see where the Suli was standing. “You look pale.”

“It’s the weather,” she remarked, trying to mask her pain.

“Do not joke about that, y/n,” the Wraith said, coming closer to her bed. “Saints,” she sighed. 

“It’s not as bad as it looks,”

“Yes? Because it looks like you need stitches and like you’re a step from meeting your dead family,” her voice rose, her palms trying to untangle the bandage. Y/n hissed, feeling the uncomfortable stinging of the wound. “Not as bad as it looks, huh?” Inej threw her words at the other girl, rolling her eyes. 

“Inej,” y/n started, but when Inej pressed her cold as ice fingers to her waist, she was at a loss for words. She looked up and noticed that the Suli was already looking at her. Inej was beautiful, her brown skin glowing in the street lights and her brown eyes wide and full of concern. “Please tell me I don’t need stitches. I don’t care if it’s a lie,”

“I am not even sorry to inform you that you, in fact, need at least two,” she replied, standing up to take the needed supplies. 

“You are a menace when you’re holding a needle,” y/n commented, a hint of humor in her voice. 

“I can always call for Jesper, he will stitch your arm to your hip,” Inej laughed, finally letting herself relax.

“I guess I am stuck with you, then,” y/n smirked, looking the Suli up and down. She laughed when Inej frowned at her. 

“Careful, in a second I will be dangerously close to you with a sharp object,” 

“I cannot wait, love,” y/n said, laying down on her comforter trying not to bleed on it. 

Eventually, Inej came to her bedside and she burned the tip of the needle and then passed the tread through it. Y/n strived to brace herself for the unpleasant feeling, but the moment Inej poked her waist, she hissed through her teeth.

“You poor thing, I thought it didn’t hurt as much,” Inej teased. 

“You little,” y/n couldn’t finish the insult, because Inej was finishing the first stitch. 

A little more than fifteen minutes later, y/n could sit up on her bed and admire Inej’s precise work. The stitches looked clean and neat, no blood was seeping from the wound and only a little bruising was left around the wound. 

“Nice work, Wraith,” y/n complemented and observed as Inej put the supplies back to its previous place. The Suli then walked closer to the other girl and stood in front of her. 

“You could’ve died,” the brown-skinned girl said, crossing her arms on her chest. 

“I think we all know that I have nine lives,” 

“I suppose the number dropped tonight,” 

“That leaves eight now, still a good number,” 

“Can you be serious for once?” Inej threw her arms in surrender, “You’re so stubborn, you never ask for a back-up and it’s another night this week that you come back injured. Do you even care if you survive the night?!”

“Inej,” y/n started, feeling how her mouth went dry. “Of course I care,”

“I feel like I am the only one caring here,” Suli said, sitting down besides y/n. She wrapped her two small hands over y/n palm and squeezed hard. “Promise me you’ll stop being so stubborn.”

Y/n smirked, sitting closer to Inej. “Do you care about me?”

“Of course I do, y/n. Kaz needed to give me another job so that I wouldn’t have gone after you,” 

“Hm,’ that was all y/n said, letting her palm free and pressing it to Inej’s cheek. Inej’s face was flushed and, opposite to her hands, warm. “You’re gorgeous when you’re worrying about me,”

“Y/n”, the Suli started, but was promptly interrupted by another girl’s cold lips on her own. The kiss was soft, delicate and subtle. If Inej wasn’t so aware of y/n’s presence all the time, she would’ve missed it. Inej deepened the kiss, tasting her boundaries. She had never felt the feeling in her stomach, the immediate blush that started on her face and transferred down her neck. The loss of breath when y/n placed her cold palms on her waist, cautiously so that she wouldn’t scare Inej off. 

“I promise I will be more careful,” y/n whispered when their lips stopped moving. However, she was still so close to Inej that with every word, their mouths were brushing each other. 

“I’m glad,” the Suli remarked, delicately pulling y/n down on her bed. “Now you need to rest,”

“Yes, my love,” 

#inej ghafa x femreader #inej ghafa x reader #soc inej #six of crows one shot #six of crows #crooked kingdom #grishasworld #grishaverse #inej #inej supremacy #inej x reader #inej ghafa

[pack-coven-thing]

was going through the mystreet tag and saw your post about dante becoming a shadow knight and 👀 👀 👀 im intrigued

YES AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT IT

Okay, so for a little bit of context, me and @romeave-wives-club's rewrite has MCD and MYS in the universe, just ~1000 years apart. There's a lot of fate, reincarnation, ancient antagonists (Micheal & Shad) and blah blah mumbo jumbo

The highschool/phoenix drop high Shadow Knights are actually the cause of Shad & Micheal coming back, a few dumb edgy teenagers messing with magic far beyond their understanding because they wanted cool glowing tattoos. It takes a while to actually become a problem, but I think it's just a glorious fact to constantly bring up.

That is relevant because, in the equivalent of S6, the high school knights end up under Shad's control and puppeted by them. This is because they were Shadow Knights in their past life/lives, and they still have that thread of connection to him because of it.

It's a lot of lore bear with me, I'm trying to make sure this is comprehensible to anyone who doesn't know the rewrite as well as me and Cam do

Anyways. In MCD, Dante blames himself for Gene's death, he outed Gene's affair with the lord's daughter in fear of what would happen should he be caught lying. Gene used to blame him too, but y'know, he can't blame someone he doesn't remember.

So, as everything's going down in S6- as Dante's on the battlefield, helping distract and fight the enemies, he sees his brother. He recognizes him, and he gets closer.

Of course Dante knows he could get killed, of course he does, but if he can snap Gene out of it- it'll be worth it, right? Well, he does manage to break Shad's hold over Gene. But he dies in the process, bleeding out in his brother's arms.

It's a reverse, a parallel. Dante watched- caused Gene to die in their past life, it only makes sense for Gene to do the same in this one.

And you'd think that would be where the story ends. But it isn't, because Shad just lost a powerful warrior and can't seem to get a grip on him again.

But Shad deals in souls and death, and anyone has the potential to be a knight if he deems it.

So Dante's the new puppet, the new knight with dark armor and eyes like lava. And after things settle? When everything's said and done and everyone's back home?

Dante, in yet another life, is haunted by red eyes. Just this time they're his own.

---

Hopefully that makes sense! Took the opportunity to simply dump some lore ykyk

#did i mention MCD!Gene's final death was in Dante's arms? #aphmau #aphverse #minecraft diaries #mystreet #aphblr #mcd #aphmau mcd #aphmau mystreet #aphmau rewrite #dante asra #aphmau dante #dante aphmau #dante mys #mys dante #gene asra #gene aphmau #mcd gene #mys gene #aphmau gene

[snarky-art]

Lord Darkar, aka The Shadow Phoenix

He would take claim as the organizer and leader responsible for The Fall of Domino (even though he wasn’t actually as in charge as he thought he was of the other factions that came together for the attack)

My version of him in my rewrite (for now anyway, I’m still not totally happy with his look but I’m exhausted and decided this was ok for the time being)

I’ll post some lore on him in my thing later when it isn’t finals week and I have things organized in a more coherent way

Also I don’t actually know how tall he is apparently because I couldn’t find a height chart that went over 10 feet in my whole 5 seconds of scouring lol

I only know how tall he is in relation to Daphne (and even then I might change that later but shhhh) so enjoy my makeshift size comparison sheet instead

#winx club #winx #lord darkar #the shadow phoenix #winx club reboot #winx reboot #winx club rewrite #rewrite #winx club redesign #winx redesign #winx club redo #winx redo #the fall of domino

[jadegretz]

Deadly Duchess: Poison's Reign of Charm by Jade Gretz

Neon lights dripped down Poison's crimson dress like synthetic tears, mirroring the bloodlust simmering in her heart. The fight club thrummed with anticipation, her whip cracking a rhythmic counterpoint to the pulse of bass. Tonight's opponent wasn't just another nameless face. Tonight, she hunted Vega, the Matador with the sardonic smile, seeking retribution for a past stained crimson.

The fight unfolded like a ballet of violence. Vega's capoeira danced around Poison's whip strikes, his movements fluid and mocking. Yet, her rage lent her precision, each lash cutting closer, fueled by the memory of her beloved Roxy, betrayed and left on the cold slab of Mad Gear's lab.

But victory never tasted sweet for Poison. As Vega lay crumpled, defeated, a dark tendril within her whispered, "Not enough." His pain wasn't enough to quench the inferno of her grief. The whispers, insidious and alluring, spoke of a power beyond any she'd known, a darkness that promised ultimate vengeance.

Intrigued, she ventured into the heart of Mad Gear's abandoned headquarters, where the whispers coalesced into a flickering form - Shadow Man, a twisted echo of M. Bison's power fueled by years of forgotten experiments. He offered her power in exchange for unleashing him upon the world, a symphony of destruction to drown her sorrow.

The darkness was tempting, but fear battled with anger within her. She'd witnessed firsthand the horrors unleashed by Bison, and a sliver of her human heart recoiled. Yet, the shadow whispered of justice, of punishing those who hurt her, of rewriting the past with the cold logic of oblivion.

Days bled into weeks as Poison danced on the precipice. She trained, honing her skills, testing the limits of Shadow Man's dark influence. Her agility and whip mastery reached terrifying new heights, but so did her cruelty. The fights became exhibitions of sadistic precision, fueled by the whispers growing stronger with each kill.

She returned to the fight club, her eyes devoid of their usual mischief, replaced by a chilling emptiness. Her opponent, a young punk fueled by mis …(see the rest of the story at deviantart.com/jadegretzAI). For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)

#ai #aiart #digitalart #jadegretz #fantasyart #fanart #beautifulgirl #aiartwork #aiartcommunity #poison #streetfighter #capcom #arcade #videogameart

[wonderlandleighleigh]

Rewrite #4

(I watched ep 3. I liked it better)

Lenny sticks to the shadows of the Button Club as he watches Midge struggle to get a joke in while her ex-in-laws heckle the shit out of her.

He shouldn’t be laughing so fucking hard, but the level of insanity on display is too much for him, and he finds himself covering his mouth as he holds back being loud about it. 

Midge spots him and briefly, she looks outraged at his amusement.

He waits for her after it’s all over, but she doesn’t show up, and so he snags the owner he knows isn’t Midge’s ex and asks after her whereabouts, and when the man says she slipped out the back, Lenny follows out of the club unnoticed. it’s dark enough that no one really recognizes him, which is nice.

He finds her waiting for him outside, looking a little rattled, and not from the botched set.

“Hey...”

“Sorry,” Midge blurts out. “I’m sorry, Shirley cornered me in the bathroom about Joel’s- I don’t know what Mei is now. Ex-fiancee I guess? And it was- I told her Mei was in China.”

“China?” Lenny inquires, confused.

“It was a better answer than ‘Mei aborted your son’s child illegally and then moved to Chicago to be a doctor without him.’“

Lenny lets out a breath and offers her his hand, which she takes readily. “That sounds really fucking stressful.”

They start to walk and Midge nods. “It was really fucking stressful. More stressful than trying to tell jokes and being heckled by your ex-husband’s parents.”

He lets out a soft chuckle.

“it was funny.”

“It was so funny.”

“Lenny!”

“You could take that shit on the road,” he tells her. “It was pure, unadulterated insanity. And completely original.”

Midge finally breaks and laughs. “Ugh. What a stressful-...everything this week. I still can’t believe I yelled at Gordon Ford.”

“Ah, he earned it,” Lenny shrugs. “He fucked up that joke. It was a prefect serviceable joke.”

“It was a perfectly serviceable joke!” Midge agrees firmly. “Thank you!”

Lenny grins and leans in, kissing her temple. “How about I buy you a coffee. Maybe a little pie.”

She sighs and walks closer to him. “That sounds great.”

#tmmm #tmmm spoilers #fic #au #midge x lenny

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Birdsong: Ribs

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone (TV) Summary: Wylan is kicking himself in the ass for being as late as he was. He knew that his partners had to be worried, it was almost three hours after he sat that he would be home, after all. It seems as thought the world is determined to make him even later than ever when he hears something in the parking lot near his work. Warnings: Physical assault, mentions of canon-typical grooming/child abuse, and blood Word Count: 10,501 Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Wylan Van Eck/Jesper Fahey/Matthias Helvar/Inej Ghafa/Kaz Brekker

Archive link!

A/N: At the time of writing this, I had not read the books so a lot of the plot was still pulled from the show. I've now finished the book but I don't want to rewrite the whole series so I'm editing some things as I go. If you notice inconsistencies from here on out that's why! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Wylan winced as the door to his lab shut harder than he had meant it to. He had gotten so wrapped up in the work that he had been doing, finally hitting the breakthrough that he had been searching for, that he hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten. He tried to make sure that he was home no later than six so that he could eat with his partners before Kaz had to go oversee the opening of the Crow Club. Inej often had a call time around seven as well, so it killed two birds with one stone to be home before they left. That way he knew that he had at least one in person interaction with them each day, since they were usually asleep when he woke.

He had broken the rule that he had made with himself by working over what his normal limit was. He didn’t break the rule often, maybe once or twice a year. A lot of the time when he was working in the lab, he was running the same experiment over and over again, which was so monotonous that he would often skip out on a test or two that he could have run that day in favor of doing it the next day instead. It was worse when he was writing his reports, since he had to speak slowly to his speech-to-text program so that he could get it written up faster than it would take him to try and type everything. Spellcheck was a godsend, but reading and writing were so much harder for him than they were for everyone else that he worked with.

Today he had been so wrapped up in the new breakthrough that they had made, that he had totally forgotten to keep track of the time. He had been mumbling down ideas into the notepad app on his phone the entire day so that none of the ideas would escape him. By the time that he had looked up again, ripped from his thoughts as he realized that he was famished, all of his coworkers were gone and the building had been darkened.

Wylan had finished cleaning up the lab and then locked the building as quickly as he felt he could while still being responsible so that he could go home. He hurried towards the parking lot that he had found a spot in that morning after running a little bit behind. That was the annoying thing about working so close to the university campus when school was in session, it resulted in him having to walk two blocks just to get to his car so that he could go home because all the other spots were taken. Still, it meant that they got a lot of student interns so they didn’t have to spend the extra money they were already strapped for, instead just giving them credit for their classes and real world experience.

He tugged his headphones out of his bag and then connected them to his phone as he picked the audiobook that he had been listening to that week. He and Jesper had a mini book club that they participated in, though it was turning into a playful argument about which audiobook producer was the best. Despite the fact that Jesper listened to more podcasts and music than he did audiobooks, he still had very strong opinions about it. Jesper was able to read physical copies even if it was only in short bursts, but Wylan preferred to keep reading as much as he could even with his learning disability, so he tended to plow through the books that they were allegedly reading together. 

The soothing voice of the narrator washed over him as he stuck his hands into his pockets and walked down the street towards his car. He was trying to focus on what was being read to him instead of the plan that he was coming up with for the end of the study. He knew that if they made a big breakthrough and patented or sold something, then they’d be able to continue the work that they had been doing in the lab more than they ever expected to. Wylan didn’t look at science as a way of making money necessarily, he would still experiment by himself even if he wasn’t being paid to do it, but this way he could continue to work with the team that he had grown very attached to.

After about only three minutes and half a block, he decided that trying to pay attention to an audiobook just wasn’t going to happen because he was too invested in what he had been working on. Jesper and Matthias were both going to be very pouty when he got home and all he could talk about was work despite being late. At least Kaz would understand, but he’d be at work until midnight at the earliest.

Wylan let out a little put-upon sigh. It was hard to navigate adult relationships, even if the freedom of adulthood was more than worth it. Sometimes he longed for the simplicity that had come with being a teenager, but he was always quick to remind himself how much happier he was now. Even if he had his partners back then, the abuse that his father had put him through would have made him miserable despite the support of the five wonderful people he had met.

Instead, he hummed the song that had been pestering the back of his mind as he walked. Ever since they had actually started going steady with her, Jesper and Matthias had been playing the music from the band that their new girlfriend was in. The artists were very talented and Wylan had to admit that her voice was soothing, but it was still annoying that they were so good at becoming earworms when he was trying to have other thoughts.

He paused when he got to the edge of the parking lot to the bar that was on the other side of the block to his lab building. The area was mostly deserted now that students weren’t using it to get as close to campus as they could, but a few cars were still parked there. It was one of the least popular bars in town (and Wylan wasn’t biased because the Crow Club was becoming busier every day, he assured himself), so there were only about a half dozen vehicles. 

What really caught his attention was the scene that was unfolding. There was a man wearing a red and white varsity-style jacket with the last name ‘Kaminsky’ stitched into the back and a pair of blue jeans with a thick brown belt. He was advancing on a woman while shouting at her, “You think that you’re tough shit because you stole Alina away from Aleksander but you’re nothing but a fucking whore!”

“Ivan, you’re drunk, you need to go home,” the woman replied.

Wylan took a step forward so that he could get a better look at her. She had coiled brown hair that was loose around her face and shoulders, which only served to bring out the pronounced jawline and cheekbones of her face. Her lips were soft and pouty, but that was mostly because of the peach colored lipgloss that she was wearing. She had accented eyeliner in pink under the black and rosy cheeks to match the eyeshadow. She was wearing a blue mini skirt that was tucking into a loose black bodice that had sheer puffy sleeves. 

Objectively, she was very pretty. Wylan knew that women who were stereotypically attractive tended to get accosted by drunk men a lot, especially since he had begun his queerplatonic relationship with Inej. She had taught him a lot about women that he had never been able to pick up from his step-mother because of their distance. His own mother had disappeared when he was too young to learn about the kinds of things Inej had taught him and come back into his life after he had gotten together with the aforementioned acrobat.

Still, they seemed to know each other so Wylan hung back to let things play their course. He didn’t want to interrupt something and then get shouted at for it, especially when he was already feeling emotionally frayed from working too much that day. He desperately wanted to go home so that he could cuddle with his partners and eat dinner while watching bad TV, but this was important. It was possible that the situation would turn violent and she would need help, but he didn’t want to assume right away.

“You don’t get to talk to me like you know me!” the man screamed. He smashed the beer bottle that had been hanging loosely from his hand down onto the car behind her, which caused a few shards of glass to cut through her freckled skin. Beads of red blood blossomed on the skin and began to dribble down her cheek. She was pinned up against the car, the only other option for her was to move towards the wall which would result in her being trapped from all sides.

Wylan got out his phone and pointed it towards the fight. He had gotten used to doing that a lot when he was a teenager, but he was glad that something had come from that miserable time in his life. Hopefully if things escalated it could actually help the woman.

The woman had finally regained her voice after the sharp cry of panic that she had let out, “Ivan, you know that I don’t control what Alina does! I have nothing to do with the breakup, I just rejoined the band when she said she wanted to start playing again.”

That only provoked the man further instead of de-escalating it like she had no doubt hoped for. “You are the only person that was still allowed to be in contact with her from the old band. I know that you continued the music too. You really think that I’m stupid enough to believe that lie you made up for everyone else?”

“I expect you to be a rational fucking human, but apparently I set my standards too high!” she shouted back at him. “You really think that I single handedly tried to tear down The Fold?” she snarled.

Wylan could hear the fear in her voice as she did so. He took a step forward, preparing to help her if things got more serious, his phone still recording. He could feel her anxiety in his own veins, heart thrumming, lungs gasping for more air, mind racing. 

“I think that you’re a traitorous bitch that would do anything to try and ruin the career of a man you hate,” the other man replied. He kept advancing on her, caging her in with his body more and more. He was svelte, thinner than she was, but he was also a couple of inches taller than her. It was made worse based on the fact that she was cowering back against the car that he had pinned her on.

Wylan envied the confidence that took over her features as she pushed up her chest and stood at her full height despite that mostly closing the space between them. She had a fierce look burning in her eyes, one that Wylan would have never been able to summon up if he had been standing in front of his father during one of their fights. Her mouth twisted into a truly feral smirk as she said, “I had nothing to do with the falling of The Fold. I think that you should talk to your precious Darkling about why he tried to sink all of his money into shit lawsuits to get back the girl that he groomed when she finally dumped his ass and took him for all he was worth. Maybe he should have thought before he decided that he didn’t need a prenup.”

That made Ivan snap. 

He had swung his arm back and then brought it forward before Wylan even had the time to process what he was doing. The sickening crack that sounded as his fist collided with the woman’s jaw made him cringe. He shoved his phone in his pocket so that the camera was peaking out over the fabric and still recording their conversation as he rushed over. He may have been several inches shorter than the attacker, but two bodies were better than one so there was a good chance that he would actually be of some use when it came to helping her. 

“Leave her alone!”

“Stay out of this,” Ivan replied. 

The woman was bent over slightly, slumped against the car. She was supporting herself with one of her hands so that she wouldn’t fall over and holding her cheek with the other. One side was still dripping blood down her forehead so that it streaked the rest of her face and the other side was no doubt going to be blooming with a dark bruise based on the sound alone.

“You know, I don’t think that I will,” Wylan replied. He reached down into his bag for the pepper spray that he brought with him everywhere he went. He was a little less paranoid about people randomly attacking him when he was out on the street than Kaz, but the couple weeks that he had spent homeless had made it so that he never went anywhere without a way to protect himself. Just remembering the fights escalating to the point where he had decided the open streets were safer for him made him furious that the woman was being attacked out in the open like that.

Coming over to help had the effect that he wanted, which was both a good and a bad thing. Ivan had seemingly forgotten about the woman and had turned fully to Wylan, but there was more hate and rage burning in his drunken eyes than before. “This has nothing to do with you,” he snarled, spewing flecks of spit out towards Wylan.

“This has something to do with me because you’re attacking someone less than a block from the place where I work! I may not know who you are or why you’ve decided to be an absolute ass, but it’d be wrong of me to just walk away. That’s the right thing for you to do, though,” he said confidently. He uncapped the pepper spray in his bag and then wrapped his fingers around the small bottle. It would take him less than a second to bring it out, aim, and then incapacitate the man, as long as alcohol was the only thing in his system. He had seen pepper spray being used on another one of the homeless youth from his camp, and because the other had been on PCP it had been basically useless.

“He’s right, Ivan. What would Fedyor think about you doing this? I know that your husband still works for that scum but we were once friends. I don’t think that he’d be very happy about you wailing on me,” the woman said as she righted herself.

“Keep my husband’s name out of your mouth, wench,” he snarled as he turned back around. Apparently mentioning whoever she had was the wrong move, as he wrapped his hand into her dark locks and threw her down to the ground.

Wylan had moved in an instant, before he even knew what his legs were doing. He brought the pepper spray out of his bag as he moved, aiming and spraying just as he had been playing over and over again in his mind. The red liquid dusted through the air until it was covering the eyes and face of the attacker, burning into his skin.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he screamed as he fell down to his knees and began to claw at his eyes. It would do nothing to remove the irritant from where it was sticking, but it was the only thing he could think of in his addled state to get rid of the feeling.

Wylan quickly stepped around him and then offered his hand out to the woman. She had bounced hard against the asphalt of the parking lot but was already beginning to right herself, one hand once again cupping the side of her face. “Do you think that you can stand?” he asked as he offered his hand out to her.

She nodded weakly as she took it and used it to haul herself to her feet. She whimpered as she took a step, her ankle doubling because of the break in her heel. She bent down and removed both of her shoes, looping her fingers around the back so that she could carry them. Wylan took her hand in his again and then began to pull her down the street so that Ivan couldn’t get up and follow them if he somehow overcame the burning that of the pepper spray. It was unlikely that would ever happen because of the potentness of the irritant, but Wylan had learned that sticking around to make sure the monster had been taken down resulted in getting hurt.

They ran over the street, crossing against the red light because there were no other cars on the road. She held onto him like if she let go then she’d drift back to the place of pain and fear that she had been in before, something that he was intimately familiar with.

Wylan was by no means unfit, but he didn’t work out as much as his partners did. He and Kaz tried to do at least a little bit of physical activity, Wylan so that his body didn’t go stiff with how long he spent over a desk and Kaz to help self-regulate his chronic pain issues. Matthias worked out because he enjoyed it, Inej did it because it was part of her job, and Jesper somehow managed to stay fit because of the singing and acting that he threw himself at every chance he got. 

Running down two blocks and into the parking lot where his car was left him gasping for air, along with the woman next to him. Her chest was heaving to bring in air even though she was nowhere as winded as he was. He wondered what she did for a living that let her have that much breath control, but now wasn’t exactly the time to ask.

He winced as he realized what he had done, eyeing her shoes where they were still clenched in the hand that wasn’t holding onto his. He dropped her hand then when he remembered that he hadn’t yet let go and said, “I’m sorry for bringing you all the way here, I should have brought you to your car.”

She waved him off dismissively, “I didn’t drive here and this is far enough that I can’t imagine Ivan being able to follow us.” She paused for a moment as her hand drifted up to where she had hit her head through the thick chocolate curls and Wylan remembered another thing that he technically should have done.

“Would you mind if I checked you out? I may not be a medical doctor but I’m still trained in first aid so I should be able to see if you have a concussion or not,” he explained nervously. He reached into his bag and dug out the keys to his car, unlocking it with a fluid motion. He opened up the hatch to the back and then pulled the emergency wool blanket over the dirt and grim covered edge so that she had somewhere to sit that was relatively clean.

It was a bit of odd paranoia that had followed him well into adulthood, even after he had become the legal owner of a home. He knew that it was unlikely that he would ever break up with his partners and even more unlikely that it would be all of them, or that him no longer being in a relationship with them would result in him being back on the streets, but it was a worry that always hung heavy in the back of his mind. He made sure that any vehicles that he owned had enough space for him to sleep in the back comfortably so that he wasn’t quite as exposed as he had been when he was a teenager.

“Right, you probably should,” she nodded. “I think if I said no my friend Tamar would find out and actually come to kill me.”

She let out another one of her pleasant laughs. It made Wylan feel comfortable and happy, settled back into his body instead of pushed out of his skin by adrenaline and bad memories. This woman reminded him a lot of Inej, though she was soft where Inej was sharp and quick where Inej was slow. While Wylan’s queerplatonic partner was a lot more partial to fixing people that bothered her with a silent yet deadly stare that promised untold pain, the woman next to him was the type to face her problems head-on with all the ferocity that she could muster. She didn’t seem jagged and broken afterwards the same way that Inej did, her confidence letting her head stay high instead of crumbling to dust after.

Wylan wanted to get to know her more, but he could do that after he made sure that she was okay. “I’m going to check your pupils with the flashlight on my phone,” he warned her. She had sat down on top of the blanket in front of him so that he could reach her easily, which he was grateful for. Despite the fact that she had already removed her heels, which had made her a few inches taller, she was nearly a head taller than Wylan when he was standing at his full height. 

She just hummed in acknowledgement, choosing not to nod her head, which was probably for the best. Wylan grabbed his phone from his pocket and stopped the recording that he had completely forgotten about. He then placed his hand on the edge of her eyelid. He shook the device in his other hand twice to activate the flashlight before he brought it up and shone it directly into her eye. The pupil shrank and revealed more of the beautiful green color in her irises.

He repeated the process on the same eye once and got the same response before he did it to the other. When he was sure that her pupils were dilating and constricting as they should have been, he pressed the light button on the back of his trunk so that they could properly see each other. The overhead streetlights had given them enough that he wasn’t worried about hurting her while he checked her out, but it would be easier for them both to maneuver around.

Wylan fidgeted with his first aide kit as he tried to figure out what he was going to do next. Before he even got the chance to start forming a sentence, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Huh?”

He winced. He wasn’t very good at meeting new people. 

She didn’t seem to mind very much, just laughing again. She slid further back into his car so that her knees were hugging the lip of the trunk. “I think it’s only fair that I get to know your name after everything that I put you through,” she explained easily. She was so warm, like freshly baked bread or pancakes directly off of the griddle. She had just been through something so deeply traumatizing and yet the kindness and compassion that she seemed to carry with her came off of her in waves.

“You didn’t put me through anything,” Wylan shook his head. “I could have just kept walking or gone into the bar to get one of the bouncers to help you if I didn’t want to deal with it. I wanted to help. I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of some guy’s anger.”

Worry took over her pretty features for a moment before she winced and placed her hand up on her face where she had been struck. “So does that mean that I get to know your name or are you going to be the handsome stranger that saved me for the rest of my life.”

For some reason, he didn’t feel panicky or strange when she called him handsome the way that he had when other woman had done the same thing. It made him feel bashful and excited the same way that he did when Inej called him that, like she was complimenting him objectively instead of seeing someone that she could possibly romance. It was a different feeling than when his boys complimented him, which made fire run through his veins and excitement flip his stomach. “Wylan,” he supplied after he realized that he hadn’t answered her again.

Her face fell and her eyes widened. For a moment he was worried that she was going to puke or that he had missed a pivotal sign of concussion despite her not acting like she was dizzy or nauseous before. Then she asked, “Hendriks?”

He nodded, “How did you know?”

She sighed and slumped against the side of his car, her head resting against the rubber insulation on the side that wasn’t already swelling with injury. “My name is Nina Zenik. You and I were supposed to meet tomorrow so that Jesper and Matthias could introduce me to you.”

“Oh!” he gasped. Relief washed over him as he realized just how much of a good thing it was that he had interrupted the fight instead of minding his own business. Sticking his nose where it didn’t belong had actually resulted in him getting a lot of good things in life, which is why he had made such a massive habit out of it despite the way it had treated him in childhood. “I thought that you looked a little bit familiar.”

She righted herself, squaring her shoulders dramatically before she stuck her hand out in front of her. Wylan took it and gave her a shake like she had been asking for as she said, “It’s good to meet you.”

“You as well,” he laughed. “Now, do you want me to take you back to your apartment?”

Nina deflated again. Her eyes glanced back towards the parking lot that they had come from. She took a moment before she finally, cautiously answered, “I don’t think that I can go home. Ivan and Fedyor both know where I live and where I keep my spare key. I’ve been trying to find a new place to move it but I haven’t quite figured it out yet so there’s a chance…”

“Do you have a friend that you want to stay with?” he asked instead, not judging her in the slightest for not wanting to go home. Wylan himself had struggled with panic attacks for the first week that he had been living in his family estate after he had inherited it. Matthias and Jesper had spent every waking moment that they weren’t working or spending time with their other partners helping him remodel the house so it felt more like his home and less like his prison. If she felt at all unsafe in her apartment then there was no way that he was going to pressure her to go back, especially since he understood that feeling.

A small blush joined the makeup on her cheeks, which only served to highlight the freckles brushed across her nose and ears. “I would suggest that you bring me to Matthias and Jesper if you hadn’t already told me that you were their partner.”

“I can bring you back to the house,” Wylan immediately replied. Just the idea of doing so already soothed a lot of the anxiety that had been brewing in his gut. He was worried that the second she was out of his sight something horrible was going to happen to her, like it had been before he arrived. It was a lot less creepy to suggest that he take her back to his home when he knew that she was already very familiar and comfortable around two of his partners, so he was grateful that they had learned that fact about each other that early into their interaction.

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to intrude or anything, I know that the five of you live together,” she touched the edge of her mascara where it was still smearing with blood. 

He offered her a shy smile as he reached into the first aid kit that he kept in the back of his car. “Well I actually own the house, so I’m technically the one that gets to decide who does and does not get to go inside of it. Step mother? Proably not. The woman that two of my boyfriends have been going out with that just got hurt? Absolutely.”

She laughed, more of the tension beginning to melt from her. It was clear that she was beginning to come down from the adrenaline rush that the fight had brought her, the exhaustion hanging off of her. Wylan wanted to get some of her wounds cleaned up in the car before they had the actual first aide expert look her over. 

Finally finding what he had been searching for, he handed her a wet wipe and asked, “Do you need to go to the ER or do you feel comfortable coming back to my place?”

“It’s going to sound so silly,” she mumbled as she picked at the edge of the wipe’s packaging.

“I don’t think anything you say when you’re going through shock is going to sound silly,” he assured her. It was a bold move from a very unbold person, but he touched her arm to try and emphasize what he had said with actions.

She leaned easily into the touch as she collected her thoughts. She then said, “All I can think about is seeing Matthias and Jesper. I know we haven’t been together for nearly as long as you have, but they’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long while.”

“Not your band getting back together?” Wylan asked.

She shook her head and then winced. She unwrapped the wet wipe and then tenderly brought it up to her face. Nina was only able to get some of the blood off of her skin, a decent amount of it already congealing and making it monumentally harder to do what she needed to.

Carefully, he pried the item from her hand and then began to patiently rub it over her skin to clear away the blood. She scrunched her nose and took in a sharp inhale when he got closer to the cuts. He couldn’t see any shards of glass so far, but he wasn’t trying to clean out the wounds, but rather make her more comfortable until he could actually tend to them properly.

While he was cleaning she explained, “My band getting back together has been messy, as you saw with my fight with Ivan. I was partially signed to the label owned by a really famous artist and when I started refusing to produce music under the contract I got in a lot of trouble. They stole a shit ton of money from me but I made it work. They didn’t really like that and so now I’m on the shit list for the rest of my life.”

“If that was anything to go by then I can see that,” Wylan murmured. He got the gauze out of the first aid kit and then wound it around his hand until it made a thick pad. He slipped it off of his nimble fingers and pressed it to the cuts on her face before they had the chance to continue bleeding. “Do you want to do the rest of the cleaning and tending back at the house?”

“Yes,” she nodded immediately. “As comfortable as the back of your car is, I would much rather have somewhere that has soap and running water.”

He held his hand out to help her steady herself as she stood back up properly. She was holding the gauze to her face with one hand and moving around the edge of the car with the other. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the asphalt making up the parking lot had to be painful on her stockinged feet.

While she was moving, he packed up the first aid kit again and then shoved everything properly into his trunk. He clicked the light off and shut the hatch before he went to the driver’s side and got in. He turned the car on so that the heater was running and hopefully helping to warm her up since the night was a little bitter and she didn’t have a coat.

“I’m going to text the others to tell them what happened before we get going, is that okay?” Wylan asked as he motioned to his phone with his other hand.

She nodded her consent and he got to work. He opened up the group chat that he had with his partners and then held the phone up to his mouth. He spoke clearly and deliberately so that the speech-to-text program could actually write down what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry for being home so late from work, but I found Nina in a fight with someone. She’s doing mostly okay but I’m going to bring her back to the house so that we can help her. Be home soon, love you.”

He glanced at her, a bit sheepish as he sent the message off to his partners. He connected his phone to the car’s computer and opened Spotify so that he could pick some music as a social lubricant. He felt comfortable with silences, even relished in them at times, but he had been dating Jesper for long enough to know that other people felt pressured to talk when everything else was quiet. Music usually stamped that down at least a little, made silences between acquaintances more comfortable and soothed anxieties.

He had four pinned playlists other than his liked songs up at the top, each with a combination of his name with one of his partner’s. It was something cute that they had done with each other, making a playlist where they could send messages to the other, give music suggestions, or just generally be sappy. It worked best with Kaz, who loved them very, very, very much but had trouble being able to express that physically on some days.

Wylan had been thinking about Inej a lot since he had gotten Nina back to his car, a lot of the feelings he had for her recurring in his chest. Of course the emotions were nowhere near as strong as they were for Inej since he had known her longer, but they were still there. He had only ever felt the warm giddiness pooling in his chest for one other woman before, and it was the one that he was queerplatonically dating. He was going to have to take a moment to process that when he was no longer feeling quite so sleepy and frazzled. 

He finally settled on the one that he and Matthias had made for each other, setting it to shuffle before he deposited it down onto the center console. His phone lit up with a couple of texts from his partners but he was unable to read what they said or who had sent them. The only way that he had been able to parse through his playlists was because the covers had been very unique, for the express purpose of helping him when he was struggling with reading. The combination of him overworking himself earlier that day and the adrenaline made the words swim in front of him whenever he tried.

Once his bag was deposited into the back and Nina was buckled in, he pulled out of the parking lot and began the drive back to his home. He lived on the very outskirts of the city so it was going to take them a while to get there despite the ten o’clock traffic being so light that outside of the center of town, there was no one.

He had been right to start music for the drive. Nina didn’t seem to be up to doing much talking, simply holding the gauze to her forehead and switching hands when one got tired. Wylan made sure to check on her every so often by glancing in her direction, admiring how cinematic she looked when the streetlights were bathing her in soft yellow and red light.

The ride had been going smooth until they got about ten minutes away from the estate. A new song that Matthias had added came onto the radio, and it just so happened to be one of the ones that her band had produced. Wylan had been informed that it was Nina singing since those songs all happened to be Matthias’ and Jesper’s favorites, not that they were biased, but it was also deeply personal to him. He couldn’t relate to every line that was said, but it was so reminiscent of the way that he had grown up and how he would raise children if he and his partners ever decided to have them.

The sultry voice murmured out of the radio as he reached down to change the song. Before he got the chance, Nina’s hand landed on top of his and stopped him from doing so. She gave him a kind smile as she began to sing along, matching the notes perfectly since it was her.

“Marrow made a wife of Eve, but no one gave up a rib for me and mine. My hearts did expose to the elements, calloused and untouched by a man's design. Oh, my ugly organs, how lucky we are. Brick and mortar between my bones, built a kingdom fierce and fortified. My name fading from the yellow page, stones are laid upon the mountainside Oh, my savage empire, ow lucky we are, never to be moved by the words of a liar. The dark doesn't frighten me, I chose to close my eyes. It is mine, it is mine. The night doesn't frighten me, I chose to let it thrive. It is mine, it is mine. Time has changed the metaphor. Now, dust is not the origin of bone Little girl, don't let them sell you any armor, all your ribs are still your own. Oh, my precious child, how lucky you are, handed down a shield for your tender parts.”

By the time that they had reached the end repetition of the chorus, Wylan had joined her in singing the song. It felt cathartic to be able to sing it out loud when usually he was too shy to do so. The song was raw in a way that many things rarely were any more, which was only part of the reason that he adored it so much. 

Nina hadn’t removed her hand from where she had stopped him from changing the song. Instead, their hands lay on the center console. Their palms were pressed flush and their fingers slotted together without interweaving. It felt right and gentle, not forward despite them having only known each other for half an hour.

When the song finished, she took a deep breath. “I wrote that song immediately after I left The Fold. So many of my emotions went into it and it was so personal, I wanted to produce it under my other name. It fit better with Shadow and Bone than it did with Heartrender, though, and the band agreed that they’d be okay with producing it.”

“Is it about everything that happened under that label?” Wylan asked, his eyes darting towards her for just a moment. He was worried that he was asking something that was too personal or prying into a wound that hadn’t healed yet. 

She didn’t seem to mind as she gave him another affirmative hum. “It was also based off of some of the things that happened when I was young. I knew Alina, one of my bandmates, when we were both fifteen. We went to that huge Catholic school, the one that everyone else calls the Little Palace because the chapel attached to it makes it look kind of like a castle. We were both so sheltered and we had all that religious drivel drilled into us so hard. It made me feel so guilty for being able to love women as well, but it also opened us up to some pretty nasty older men. I was able to avoid it from the romantic side, but when Kirigan approached us and promised us the fame and fortune that we had been dreaming of, there was no way that we could reject it. We signed with him and things got worse for her but they eventually got better for me. We’re both okay now, but that song…”

“I relate to it too,” Wylan gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “My dad was shit and my mom was always telling me that I had to find armor wherever I could find it. She left when I was eight and then she couldn’t be my armor anymore, so I had to find it in other things. There was no one there to protect me,” he shook his head as the memories all came pouring back.

Nina took in a deep breath and cleared her throat. “That’s enough hard stuff for tonight! We should talk about something else.”

“Yes,” Wylan nodded in agreement. His face then brightened as he turned onto the street that would lead him to his home, “Have you had the chance to meet Trassel yet?”

“I haven’t! Matthias was going to bring him to a date that we were supposed to have in a park but then we got that horrible thunderstorm and had to change to a cafe, which meant no dog,” she pouted. 

“Well you’re about to meet him. I want to warn you that in pictures he looks a lot smaller than he actually is because Matthias is massive. He’s absolutely sweet but can be kind of scary if you were expecting a dog closer to the size of a lab,” Wylan informed her. He had a bad reaction when he first met Trassel because of the sheer massive size of the dog, despite Trassel being the sweetest animal that he had ever had the fortune of living with.

They pulled into the driveway and then the garage. He noticed that Kaz’s car was gone, but the one that Matthias and Jesper shared was parked dutifully in the spot on the other side of the garage. “I knew that it had to be a big place for you to all live together but I wasn’t expecting it to be this huge,” Nina commented as she carefully got out of the car.

“We’re not secretly rich or something, this was the only thing that I inherited from my dad when he died,” Wylan explained as he grabbed his bag and phone. He got out and locked the vehicle. 

A smile pulled at his lips as he could already hear the deep barking from inside the house where his pet had heard the garage door opening. Trassel was smart enough to know that meant someone was coming home and he adored them all so much that it didn’t matter which one of them it was.

Wylan walked over to Nina and brought her to the steps that led to the backdoor of the house instead of the ones that led to the dog run in the sideyard. It had been a massive undertaking for the rest of his partners to get used to the size of the estate when they had finally moved in. The only reason that Wylan had been an exception to that was because he had grown accustomed to every nook and cranny of the place while hiding from his father and private tutor.

They stepped over the threshold and into the kitchen just as Trassel finished barreling down the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. The space that they were in was massive, but felt more snug than it had in Wylan’s childhood because of the details that his partners had helped him add to the space to make it his own. The tile was white and black diamonds that went halfway up the walls. They had recently painted the kitchen to be a butter yellow color, with red curtains hanging and drawn over the windows. All of the appliances had been updated within the last couple of the years but were also the ugliest stainless steal. The fridge was the best part, now covered in little magnets and sticky note reminders for each of them. Art hung around the cupboards, which were a rainbow set of colors in the most obnoxiously bright yet not neon colors that they could find. Every surface other than the counters was also cluttered with aloe vera and spider plants, which Inej had brought from her apartment when she had moved in. 

“Hi puppy!” Wylan beamed as he patted his lap to call the dog over to him. He knew that Nina would likely need a second or two so that she could become accustomed to the new space that she was in.

Trassel barked excitedly as he immediately ran over to Wylan. He was massive even for a utonagan, coming up to the Wylan’s waist with all four paws down on the ground. He was also about a hundred and ten pounds, most of which appeared to be fur as they got closer to the winter months. He was beautiful shade of brown-black with the white clinging to his chest and the underside of his muzzle. It would likely spread as he continued to get older, but at only five years old he had retained all of the luscious color he had been born with.

“Have you been good today?” Wylan asked as he began to run his fingers through the side of the dog’s face. The fur around the top of Trassel’s head was his favorite, soft and already brushed back so it didn’t hang in front of his eyes or nose. 

He received another bark as the dog’s excitement rose. When Trassel got so overwhelmed that he placed his hands onto Wylan’s chest to get closer to his face, Wylan reached down and took his hands. It stressed his hips enough that he calmed down, so Wylan let him go as soon as he had calmed.

When he saw Nina he barked again and rushed over to her. She knelt down in front of him as she dug her hands into his fur and began to baby talk him. “Hello there, hello! I bet I smell like all kind of interesting and same things, don’t I? You’re so handsome, so handsome,” she murmured.

The meeting was cut short as they were reminded why they were there in the first place. Matthias walked down the hall with Inej and Jesper hot on his heels. “Nina?” he called out, his voice more accented than it was normally, which just illustrated how stressed out he was.

“Hey,” she breathed as she rose to her feet. Matthias was by her side in an instant, peeling back the gauze that was just barely soaked with enough blood that it was sticking to the wounds on its own.

Trassel was wuffling and barking to be played with, so Jesper grabbed him under the collar and led him to the back door. “Go run,” he instructed with a firm point to the space that they had for him. He listened and rushed outside so that he could complete his course and get a prize. As soon as the dog had been taken care of, Jesper rushed back to his girlfriend to check on her. “What happened?”

“I was attacked by an old friend of mine’s husband. He was drunk,” Nina explained. She winced as Matthias reached up and peeled the gauze away. It broke some of the scabs that had begun to form there and restarted some of the bleeding.

“Here, why don’t we move to the bathroom to get you cleaned up,” Inej said. She swatted Matthias hand so that he would leave the wounds alone until she could take care of them herself. Matthias did know a decent amount of first aid and wouldn’t make anything horrendously worse, but he wasn’t as knowledgeable as her.

The group moved through the house until they were upstairs in the master bath. While they were walking, the shorter of the two women said, “My name is Inej. You probably guessed that since I’m the only feminine presenting person here that could be called girlfriend,” she chuckled.

“Nina Zenik,” the other replied. “You’re about to go on some sort of tour, aren’t you?”

“I have a couple of shows in Vegas that I’m doing this week,” she nodded. “I was cuddling with the boys while waiting for Wylan to get home when we got his message. I’m the one that knows first aid the best so I got up to help you. It’s wonderful to meet you, Nina, even if I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“At least we got to bring it forward?” she offered with a light laugh. 

The master bathroom was huge, so it was no trouble for the five of them to get inside. Matthias took up the spot on the edge of the tub where he could see all of his partners. Wylan and Jesper stood near the shower part of the room, leaning heavily against the gray colored glass with their fingers interwoven between them. Nina was sat down on the counter space between the two sinks while Inej spread out the things that she would need to check and clean the wounds around them. “How did you get these?” she asked as she turned Nina’s face to the side to get a better look at them.

“Ivan broke a beer bottle above my head and some of the glass got on me,” she said. “I think that they’re mostly just weeping so much because they’re on my face, they don’t feel all that deep.”

“They’re not,” the other woman answered. She got a wet cloth with some antibiotic soap and then carefully began to drag it across the wounds. Nina winced and let out a little whimper, holding her hand out towards Matthias. He was there in a second, threading their fingers together so that she could focus on something other than the pain of having her wounds checked.

Once they were cleaned, Inej put some cream on them that would help fight any leftover bacteria and numb the area to dull the pain. “Do you have any allergies?” she asked as she fished through the pile of band aides. Kaz had topical allergies, bursting into hives whenever he had an adhesive that less than medical grade on his skin.

“No,” Nina replied. “Nothing that you’d have in that kit, anyway.”

Inej plucked one of the larger plasters from the pile and then opened it up. She set it over the biggest of the cuts and then used two smaller bandaids for the others until everything was covered. “I don’t think that there’s anything I can do for that bruise, other than this,” she supplied a small jar containing a balm. “It will sting really bad and it smells quite strong, but it helps aide the healing process.”

Nina glanced towards Wylan and he gave her a confident, reassuring nod. The balm that Inej had was a godsend for sore muscles, which he and Kaz often got. “Alright,” Nina agreed with a little nod. Matthias brought his hand to the side of her head that wasn’t being tended to, running his long fingers through her thick hair as he pressed a kiss to her temple.

Inej’s skilled, calloused fingers dipped into the balm and then began to carefully and evenly spread it across the darkened area on Nina’s face. When she finished, she wiped her hands off on a baby wipe and offered Nina a makeup remover wipe. “If you’re going to be staying here tonight then I think you’d like to be comfortable.”

“Yes, thank you,” she replied as she took the offered object. Inej cleaned up the rest of the scraps before she ushered the other two boys out of the room. Wylan and Jesper hung in the background long enough to hear them making plans about clothing and where she might sleep.

Eventually, Wylan tugged his boyfriend down to the kitchen so that he could cook something. Eating always settled their nerves and made them feel better, especially since they had both been rather food insecure at one point in their lives. Jesper jumped up onto the island counter in the center of the room, folding his legs underneath him to make balancing easier while watching Wylan working. “So what happened?”

“Well, I got lost in my work, which is why I was late coming home,” he winced. He had forgotten to properly apologize for that and bringing it up had reminded both of them that it had happened in the first place. He set down the tortillas and cheese that he had gotten out of the fridge as he walked over to Jesper. He wrapped his arms around the other man’s waist to bring them closer together, knocking their foreheads together softly. “I’m sorry for not texting you as soon as I realized what time it was and for losing track of time. I know you worry about us when we go silent.”

“Inej had to talk me down like four times. I was a second away from texting Nina to get reassurance that you were alright and she doesn’t know anything about that particular issue yet,” Jesper mumbled. He was pouting slightly but there was real hurt behind his words.

“I’m sorry,” Wylan apologized again. He brushed their lips together in a sweet yet chaste kiss to accent the words with something positive.

It worked and the anger immediately drained from Jesper. “I know. I just worry that something bad has happened to you guys when you don’t respond like that. Like with my mom…”

“I love you,” Wylan whispered as he brought their lips together for another sweet kiss. Jesper’s mom was a sensitive topic that would result in a lot of feelings about his own mother, feelings that Wylan wasn’t quite emotionally prepared to look into that night. 

“I love you, too, baby,” he mumbled as he held the side of Wylan’s face.

Neither of them had been able to clock the sound of the garage opening and shutting over Trassel’s barking from the backyard. They lived far enough away from the city that sometimes he found deer and foxes out past the fence that he wanted to talk big game about but could never dream of ever getting to, so they tuned out the sound of his barking at that tempo. They both realized what he had been barking at when the door to the garage shut and Kaz said, “I thought that we had agreed no food was to be left out on the counter.”

Wylan broke away from his boyfriend and then flushed when he realized that he had been caught. They were supposed to make sure that anything that wasn’t actively being eaten or used was put away to make sure that their mischievous puppy didn’t devour it and make himself sick. “I’m sorry, I was supposed to be cooking something for myself since I missed dinner but then Jesper and I got talking and that led to…” he trailed off and felt his face flush harder. “Sorry.”

Clearing his throat loudly to get the attention on himself, Jesper jumped off of the counter and stuffed the food back into the fridge. “That is enough apologizing from Wylan! We don’t want our sweet boy thinking that he has done all the wrong in the world, after all,” he grinned as he wrapped his arms around the aforementioned man’s waist.

“Jesper,” he complained as he was bombarded with kisses. He knew that part of it was actual adoration for him and the other part was the actor trying to make sure that his anxiety didn’t overwhelm him. When it was clear that Jesper wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, Wylan turned to face their boyfriend, “You’re home early. Is everything okay?”

“It was a slow night and I thought that you would all be able to use me here more,” he replied. “Also, I got you all something to eat.”

He placed the bags of food down on the table and Wylan felt his heart sing. It was hard for Kaz to show love in the same way that Jesper did, but his actions meant so much in their relationship. “Thank you,” he breathed as he tried not to cry from how overwhelmed he felt.

“You’re alright,” Kaz reminded him gently as he brought their lips together in a very chaste kiss. That was all that Wylan was going to be able to get from his partner after work. Even if the Crow Club had only a dozen patrons, the amount of strangers that he had to be around when he was working often overwhelmed Kaz to the point where he didn’t feel safe being touched unless he instigated it. He had updated the group chat when he had been in the office for half an hour, which Wylan had seen just before he realized what time it was.

They moved to the living room with the food and an extra set of paper towels. The living room was their biggest work in progress yet since it had been a formal parlor before they had moved in. They were slowly replacing all of the hyper modern furniture with the more vintage pieces that they preferred, which meant that seating was a little bit sparse at the moment. The most modern piece that they had left in the room was the sectional that could transform into a big enough space for all five of them to cuddle together when they wanted to. The TV stand was pulled straight out of the sixties, reshaped by Matthias and Jesper so that it could actually fit their flat screen in the middle of display case. The rug and coffee table had been picked out by Inej, both of them reminiscent of how her house had been decorated before her parents’ accident.

The trio settled in to eat what Kaz had picked up for them, Wylan and Jesper both sitting on the ground with their backs pressed to the couch while Kaz sat in the armchair that he had gotten to help with his pain before they had even moved in. Other than his clothes, it was the only thing from his old apartment above the Crow Club that he had brought with him.

About fifteen minutes later they heard some of their partners coming down the stairs and turned the TV off. Nina was walking hand-in-hand with Matthias, wearing a pair of Jesper’s sweatpants and one of Matthias’ shirts since everyone else had a vastly different body shape compared to her. 

“Hey baby,” Jesper said as he moved onto the couch. She smiled, trying to hold back tears as she trekked over to him. She collapsed down onto the couch, her legs pulled up near his chest and her head immediately on his shoulder. He moved his arm around her back and pressed a kiss over the top of the band aids on her forehead. “How are you doing?”

“I’m tired and scared,” she mumbled. “Glad that it was Wylan that helped me, though.”

“Yeah, he is pretty great like that,” Matthias replied. He stooped down and kissed Wylan within an inch of his life. “Thank you for being such an amazing, kindhearted person, min brandstifter.”

“That was one time,” he muttered, his cheeks turning a dark red color with embarrassment.

Inej sat herself down in his lap and stole a couple of his fries. He didn’t mind, since she indulged in processed foods so rarely that she deserved a treat. “It’s fun to tease you.”

He buried his face into her shoulder, which he knew was why she had sat down on him like she had. “Fun for you, maybe.”

Nina laughed, which was a great sound to hear with how clearly worn out she was. The energy in the room got a lot more somber when Jesper asked her once again what had happened. She recounted some elements from her past like she had for Wylan in the car, still refusing to let herself cry. She cuddled in between her boyfriends like they were going to be able to save her from her own bad feelings, something that Wylan remembered doing vividly after he got the news that his father had died.

She finished telling her story and they all agreed to watch something calm to wind down before bed. Wylan finished his food and then gave Inej a sweet kiss on the cheek before he dumped her down onto the couch next to Kaz. He made sure that there was enough space between them that they wouldn’t accidentally crash together. “I’m going to go shower, I know you’ll all probably be in bed by the time I get back,” he sighed. He was both glad and upset that he had gotten off work so late.

“We’ll see you in the morning,” Matthias promised as he tenderly kissed his boyfriend. Jesper mimicked the movement as well before settling in next to Nina. 

“I can give you a kiss if you want, but what I really want to do is say thank you,” she replied, witty and sharp-tongued even in her exhaustion.

“I would have done it even if you weren’t dating two of my partners,” he replied as he fought back another blush. The only thing that Kaz was able to do was give his hand a squeeze through the thick leather of his gloves, which Wylan was okay with. 

He disappeared up the stairs as exhaustion sunk low into his veins. A lot had happened in one night, but the net effect seemed to be good overall. Nina fit right into their flock like she had been there from the beginning.

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