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polaroid15 · 3 years

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To Be Like You

Read on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005406

Summary: I’ll kill you and everyone you love. I’ll kill you dead.

Peter closes his eyes to keep the world from spinning. His panic sits like putty in his throat, blocking the air from reaching his lungs. He wraps his fingers around his neck, his pulse erratic underneath like he had just finished running a mile.

Come on Peter. Come on Spider-Man.

Or, the missing scene in Homecoming after the vulture fight.

----

It’s not working out.

I wanted you to be better.

There’s sand in Peter’s eyes, in his cuts. It mixes with his blood and adds to the ache, stinging and burning every inch of his skin like fire.

It hurts, but really it’s nothing in comparison to the heaviness in his chest.

I’m going to need the suit back.

Mr. Stark. Toomes. Homecoming.

He’s not exactly sure how he ended up on the cyclone, everything in his recent memory a dark blur. One moment he’s standing in front of Toomes, the last of his energy spent in cleaning up the beach and the next he’s sitting in the sky. The air is colder up here, but he’s too in shock to really feel it. Besides, it doesn’t come close to how cold it had been on the plane.

Before he had crashed it, of course.

Or when Toomes had dropped him in the river.

I lost the internship.

Logically he knows he needs to move, that he needs to go home, but the low-burning fire on the beach distracts him and steals all his attention along with the breath in his chest. He stares and reimagines the impact of the plane hitting the earth, of Toomes slamming him into the sand. The burns on his hands make them tremble and the pain brings tears to his eyes.

If you’re nothing without the suit you shouldn’t have it.

I’m trying to save you!

He wants to go home, crawl under his covers, bury his day deep underground and let it die. To wake up tomorrow and for everything to go back to the way it was.

But he can’t, the prospect impossible.

May is home.

It’ll break her heart.

Nothing will ever be the same again and the deep-rooted sadness that accompanies the realization threatens him to tears.

You smell like garbage.

Ned could help him. Ned can help-

It’s almost enough to spur Peter into action. But then he pictures Ned at homecoming with the rest of the normal kids and a deep pain separate from his physical infirmities cuts through him like a knife.

Like a talon in his chest.

Ned doesn’t deserve it, Peter realizes bitterly, even if he is his guy in the chair. Besides, Peter can barely fathom the energy to move off the cyclone let alone travel all the way to Ned’s house.

He has no phone. He’s out of web shooter fluid.

He’s out of options.

Hey. I just saved your life. Now what do you say?

Thank you.

A low noise of anguish comes out of his throat, surprising him. Through the smoke and the fire he can see Toomes’s legs jutting out in the sand. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t tried to escape.

I’ll kill you and everyone you love. I’ll kill you dead.

Come on Peter. Come on Spider-Man.

A sob rips through him, and out of everything that has happened tonight, it’s what surprises him the most. Tony abandoning him, the warehouse crushing him, getting thrown off a plane, his fight with Toomes- it’s all too much and he can’t breathe-

Lights and sirens coax his eyes open, though the tears in them make it near impossible to see. There’s ambulances and firetrucks and police cruisers.

To clean up the mess he made.

Is everyone okay?

No thanks to you.

He’s too tired to be relieved.

He doesn’t look for Happy’s car.

Sorry doesn’t cut it.

He should go to Ned’s.

Peter tries to move. Can’t. An overwhelming chill infects his body. He feels lightheaded and woozy and somewhere through the cutting numbness he feels his entire body give up on him. It’s deep, bordering on bone dead exhaustion. When he reaches up his fingers to touch at his chest they come away painted red.

Red, like May’s hair.

Red, like Tony’s armour.

Red, like the suit he had lost.

A deep nausea starts at the base of his gut and his vision shifts like a kaleidoscope. Only now does he realize how badly he’s screwed up, how he’s going to bleed out on the cyclone of all places.

He doesn’t have his phone, doesn’t have Karen or Mr. Stark or anybody. For once his inability to ask for help is entirely his own fault. There are no plan b’s, no second chances.

He’s alone.

It’s scary.

Come on Peter. Come on Spider-Man.

A bus was thrown at him, a warehouse dropped on his shoulders. He crashed a plane and fought a man with metal wings. It had taken strength. More than he’s ever had to use in his life.

And where is that strength now?

He doesn’t even have the energy to wipe the tears off his cheeks.

Through depleting vision, he sees blurred figures approach Toomes, the lights of their flashlights hitting his makeshift prison.

It’s over, he thinks, but it’s empty and cold. It doesn’t feel anything like he had hoped it would. And maybe that’s what it means to be a hero- to feel like you lose even when you win.

He wants to go home.

But he can’t.

The beach turns black, his chin lolling down to rest on his chest.

He’s so tired.

-----

Tony hadn’t quite expected to end his night on the beach and especially not surrounded by the burning remnants of his belongings. The plane had sheared an ugly line on the coast, though the damage is admittedly nowhere as catastrophic as it could have been.

Everyone is safe, they had assured him. No casualties.

Regardless Happy is a mess, unable to look him in the eye. Tony tries hard not to be upset at him.

His friend comes up to him now. His face is pale and ashen, the panic in it accentuated by the low light of the ruin around them. Breathless, Happy gestures over his shoulder with his thumb. “We uh- we found something boss. Over here.”

Feet sinking into the sand, Tony stumbles after him. It doesn’t take long for Tony to see their destination, standing straight like a beacon through the destruction. All the valuables on the plane, everything, stacked together neatly. A man is sitting at the base of the pile. The Vulture, Tony realizes darkly.

But it’s not what has the breath stalling in his chest.

It’s the webbing holding everything together.

Peter.

World narrowing and ears ringing, Tony crosses the rest of the distance to stand in front of the criminal. He looks smug, Tony thinks, and a little more than rough around the edges. His clothes smoke on their edges. There’s blood in his hairline and under his nose.

And beside his face, stuck to the mess, a note from Spider-Man.

P.S. Sorry about the plane.

“Where is he?” Tony asks, his fingers curling involuntarily into fists. The rational part of his mind is telling him to calm down, because Peter wouldn’t have been able to clean up the beach if he were dead.

He’s okay. He has to be okay.

Toomes smiles crookedly at him, reflecting behind it some foreign aspect of loss beyond the visible world. Tony has seen it hundreds of times, feels the weight behind it. “Pedro?” Toomes asks lightly, and Tony’s blood turns to ice. “Dead, hopefully.”

Happy holds him back from slamming his fist into Toomes’s teeth, though his own face reddens with anger. “You know who he is,” Tony says instead, accusatory to cover the fear creating a sinkhole in his chest. “How?”

Smirk unfailing, Toomes shrugs as if he hadn’t just been beat by a fifteen year old kid. “He was my daughter’s date to homecoming. Too bad he missed it.”

Happy swears viciously and let’s Tony go, taking a resolved step back. Freed, Tony drops to his knees in the hot sand and wraps his fist around Toomes’s collar. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. “Listen closely bird man. If you’ve done anything to hurt that boy I swear to God I’ll end you. You’ll never see the light of day again, you hear? Now where the hell is he?”

Toomes doesn’t flinch. Eyes reflecting fire, he returns Tony’s passion in equal measure. “He was the one so hellbent on fighting me. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be his damn babysitter?”

“WHERE IS HE?”

Toomes laughs. Laughs. He spits out blood. “I don��t know. I don’t care.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“I’d prefer it.”

Disgusted, Tony releases his grip and stands back. He looks towards the water and wishes he could hear the waves hitting shore instead of the uncomfortable buzz in his ears. “You knew he was fifteen,” Tony says, “and you still did this.”

“You did too. Don’t pretend you’re better than me, Stark.”

It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Something rockhard, something he thought was untouchable, shatters in his chest. It leaves him feeling sick and twisted and he fights the urge to throw up.

What if somebody had died tonight? Different story right? Cause that’s on you.

And if you die, I feel like that’s on me. I don’t need that on my conscience.

“Have fun in jail,” Tony says, but there’s no heat behind it. Because criminal or not, Toomes is right. He’s let Peter down. Big time. He turns to Happy and hopes to the universe that the split in his chest isn’t visible on his face. “Leave him. We gotta find the kid.”

“Better hurry,” Toomes says, coughing against the smoke. Some of his bravo is failing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he bleeds out within the hour.” It’s said in anger but Tony is familiar enough with facades to know that Toomes has constructed one of his own. He’s worried.

And if Toomes is worried, Tony is three seconds away from a full blown panic attack. He turns away from the scene without another word, holding his breath so it doesn’t leave somewhere he can’t get it back from. Happy stays by his side, matching his strides with precision and hand outstretched should Tony need it.

“I’ve messed up,” Tony says.

“We all have.”

“I have to find him.”

Happy straightens, eyes cutting across the beach. “He could be anywhere by now.”

If his friend says anything else it dies in the sudden roar in his ears. His eyes attach to a speck of blue and red under the lowlights of the amusement park as if the gods themselves have orchestrated the connection. Even from the distance Tony knows without a doubt that it’s Peter.

I tried to tell you about it but you didn’t listen! None of this would’ve happened if you had just listened to me!

If you cared you’d actually be here.

“I see him.” His mouth is numb.

“What?”

“I see the kid.”

“Where?”

“Oh God. I need a suit.”

“Tony calm down-”

“I need a suit!”

And they’re running.

----

Peter is prodded back to existence by something warm on his shoulder. A faint murmur registers in the back of his mind, like TV static or hearing someone talking from a different room.

So tired.

“Kid? Peter?”

The surface is painful, he decides, so he sinks further.

“Parker! Open your eyes right now. That’s an order, you hear me?”

The voice is familiar. He wants to listen. He tries, but his eyes stick as if fused together with cement.

Cement. The warehouse. Thousands of pounds crushing him, making it impossible to breathe-

He gasps, his body jerking involuntarily with the movement. It makes every ache and pain in his chest triple and he can’t breathe and he can’t move and he’s being crushed. It’s cold. He sees nothing but sky and loses his grip.

And then he’s falling.

The ground rushes up to meet him in a disorienting blur and it’s only then he remembers. Toomes. The beach. The cyclone. The fact that he’s out of web fluid.

He doesn’t have the time or energy to scream before his descent is halted, the warmth from before attaching itself around his biceps and lowering him gently to the ground. Peter collapses against it, grateful, and looks up to his rescuer.

An Iron Man suit, the eyes blank and angry.

Sorry doesn’t cut it.

Something heavy rolls through him and he scrambles back, his breathing ratcheting up like clockwork. The blood on his hands leave marks on the pavement. “Mr- Mr. Stark. Oh man. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry-”

Tony emerges from the suit and it’s him, really him. Just like after the ferry. It’s surprising enough to stop his backward scramble and stare at the worried lines in Tony’s face, in the transparent fear in his eyes. He rushes to close the distance Peter had made between them, squatting down close. “Kid?” he asks, his tone thick with something foreign.

He should be angry. He’s supposed to be angry. Why doesn’t he look angry?

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again, blinking slowly.

“Don’t be sorry,” Tony says. Behind him, a sleek black car pulls up. Happy exits from the driver’s seat and Peter forgets how to breathe again.

Is everyone safe?

No thanks to you.

No thanks to me?

“I messed everything up,” Peter murmurs, backing away further until his back hits something cold and metal. “Oh man. Your- your plane. I’m so sorry.”

Everything blurs again. Distantly he’s aware of Tony approaching him but Peter must make a noise because he stops short.

“You’re hurt,” Tony says, something like pleading in his voice.

“No. I- I’m fine.”

“No, Peter. You’re not.”

I was the only one who believed in you. Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a fourteen year old kid.

I’m fifteen-

No. This is where you zip it! The adult is talking.

“I said- I said I’m fine.” As if to prove it, Peter struggles to his feet because he doesn’t need their help. Tony walked away. Happy ignored him.

These are the facts.

Standing is harder than he anticipates and he can’t help but cry out against the new pain it brings, swaying when it makes him dizzy. Something warm trickles down from his chest and back. He sees double. “I’m okay,” he pants, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not fine!” Tony yells.

Peter flinches.

Tony does too.

He wants Ned. He wants May. He wants everything to be okay.

It’s not working out. I’m going to need the suit back.

“I gotta go,” Peter mumbles, but the world is dissolving. He tries to walk away, to show them that he’s as independent as they want him to be. “I gotta go home.”

He doesn’t even make it two steps.

Tony catches him when he falls and Peter doesn’t have the control or strength to push him away.

I just wanted to be like you.

And I wanted you to be better.

“Help me get him to the car.”

And like a mountain of cement crashing down over his head, everything turns dark.

-----

Peter collapsing chalks up to be one of the most terrifying experiences of Tony’s life. It’s worse than when he had fallen off the cyclone just minutes before, worse than finding Peter strung up between a divided ferry.

He catches the kid before his head hits the ground and promises himself that from here on out, it’s a permanent part of his job description.

Together they manage to haul Peter into the back of the car. Tony crawls in beside him and brings Peter’s head onto his lap, pressing shaking hands down against the worst of the bleeding. Happy scrambles to the driver’s seat, tires kicking up smoke as they peel out of the lot.

Peter looks terrible.

He looks dead.

Pale and bloody, his eyelids bruised and tear tracks cutting through the ash and grime on his cheeks. He’s wearing his original suit. Pajamas, as he had first referred to them as. They’re ripped to shreds, charred and stained with crimson.

I’m going to need the suit back.

Tony’s hands are red. He did this.

“Drive faster,” he says.

“I am.”

“Driver faster!”

“Tony-”

“Just do it.”

Peter’s head lolls with the movement of the car. He looks small and weak and fragile. He looks exactly how Tony never wanted to see him.

He should be at homecoming dancing with his friends. Not here, not hurt.

Your fault, his mind screams at him. This is on you.

“How much farther to the Tower?” he asks, throat constricting.

Happy’s sympathetic eyes find him in the rearview mirror. “The Tower’s empty, remember? We’re going to the hospital. Ten minutes tops.”

Christ. Of course it’s empty.

Because he left. He walked away and took Peter’s only protection with him.

Your fault. All your damn fault-

“Make it five.”

Peter moans, scrunches his eyes before opening them. Tony pats his cheek lightly in hopes to rouse him further. “Underoos?” he prompts. “You back with us?”

Cloudy eyes meet his own but don’t connect.

“M’ St’k?”

“Y-yeah kid. You’re going to be okay.”

Peter’s breath hitches, speeding up. “I’m sorry,” he whispers in anguish. “‘M so s’ry.”

“Peter don’t-”

“Wanted to be better,” he slurs. Weak and uncoordinated fingers latch onto Tony’s sleeve, leaving smudges of red. “‘M sorry. Wanted to be better.”

Happy stiffens. Tony forgets how to breathe.

“It hurts Mr. Stark.”

He’s out of his depth, drowning in the deep end.

“Comfort him!” Happy snaps from the driver’s seat.

Tony feels dizzy. He pats Peter’s head once, twice. More blood transfers onto his palm. “It’ll be okay bud. We’re getting you help. It’ll stop hurting soon I promise.”

Peter closes his eyes. “W’nted to be better.”

Happy accelerates.

----

Happy Hogan’s defenses are crumbling.

Cracking, tumbling, like Humpty Dumpty on his goddamn wall.

Because it’s Peter, and it’s the plane, and none of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t been such an idiot.

Everything after pulling up to the hospital is a blur. He remembers parking behind an ambulance, remembers his hands shaking too badly to twist the key out of the ignition. He remembers Peter tucked against Tony’s side in the back seat, dead quiet as Tony hyperventilates.

“He’s- he’s not waking up Hap.”

“He’s going to be fine.”

“He’s- he’s-”

“Breathe Tony.”

And then they’re inside, carrying Peter between them like a ragdoll. He doesn’t make a sound, lax and broken and it’s all his fault.

It doesn’t take long before Peter is scooped up by a team of doctors. The loss of the kid’s weight leaves Happy feeling cold. He stands in the middle of the hall and watches as Tony follows the staff pushing Peter along on a stretcher. Even from his position he can hear Tony talking frantically about NDAs and giving Peter the best treatment they’ve ever given anyone in their entire careers or so help them-

Eventually Tony can’t go any further. He stops at the swing of a double door, his palm resting on the glass as Peter is whisked away.

The hand curls into a fist.

Crimson smears under the movement.

Happy finds the strength to move. One step, two, until he’s at Tony’s side. He’s scared to touch him, to break something else, but finally works up the courage to lay and hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s sit down,” is all he can manage.

Tony doesn’t say anything, looking nearly as pale as the kid had been. He allows Happy to steer him into the waiting room and flips off other visitors as they gasp and stare. They find a quiet corner and sink into separate chairs.

They don’t speak for an hour.

Cho finds them at the tail end of the time. Happy is surprised to see her and figures somewhere in this whole mess Tony reached out to her. Her hair is windblown and her eyes are wide and alert, ready to jump in and intervene.

“Where did they take him?” is all she asks.

Tony moves for the first time, pointing towards the doors of surgery.

As quick as she had appeared, Cho is gone.

“Damn it,” Tony whispers, sinking low into his chair. The blood on his hands is dry now, flaking off his skin when he reaches up to rub tiredly at his face. It’s only now that Happy realizes his own hands have Peter’s blood on them too.

“It’s not your fault,” Happy says. The walls are closing in, the temperature seeming to increase by ten degrees.

“It is my fault. I dragged him to Germany. I gave him a suit, I gave him protection, and then I just yanked it all out from under his feet. I didn’t even have the guts to wait and see if he stuck the landing.”

Happy swallows. “Peter is stubborn. We both know that. You did the right thing-”

Tony shakes his head violently, throwing up a hand to cut him off. “No, no. You don’t understand. That kid is fifteen years old!”

“I know, Tony.”

“He should be at homecoming with his friends right now.”

“I know.”

“He’s bleeding out in a set of glorified pajamas because I was too scared to trust him.”

“We’ve all made mistakes here.”

Tony is quiet, looking at him with red rimmed and bloodshot eyes. “He’s just a kid, Hap. He didn’t even call for help. He doesn’t- he doesn’t trust me anymore. And he still saved all my crap. Do you know how much damage that stuff would have caused in the wrong hands?”

Yes. Stomach sinking, Happy looks to the doors Peter had disappeared through. He wishes for the kid to come cartwheeling out in his usual energy, in one piece and alive. Bragging about churros and bike robberies and Star Wars-

“Happy?”

Tony’s voice is disant.

“Happy.”

“What?” His throat is dry.

“What are you not telling me?”

Pretending not to feel the blood on his hands, Happy shifts uncomfortably in the cheap hospital chair. “I was stressed about the move,” he says slowly, “and you know what the kid’s been like. Calling and texting about every little thing since Germany.”

Tony is silent, the tension between them thick enough to cut.

“His friend called tonight. Before the plane went down. To warn me, I’m sure.”

“And?” Tony prompts, but the tone of his voice tells Happy he already knows the answer.

“I didn’t hear him out. I hung up. It’s my fault Peter had to do this alone.”

Keeping his focus anywhere but Tony is easy but it doesn’t save him from the reaction. He hears a sharp intake of breath, a muted curse. Tony stands, towering above him. He walks away, disappears, and for a moment Happy thinks it’s over. He hangs his head between his knees.

Then Tony’s shoes come into his field of vision. “We all made mistakes here,” he says.

And that’s it.

Tony sits back down and Happy holds his breath until Cho comes back through the doors. She approaches them quickly, her face completely neutral.

She looks at Tony and Tony alone, his face pained enough to know it must be the priority.

“Is he-?”

“He’ll be fine.”

Tony sags against the chair and covers his eyes with his hands, gasping for breath as if emerging from deep water. Cho waits patiently for Tony to collect himself and it gives Happy equal opportunity to blink the relief out of his eyes.

He’ll be fine. He’s okay.

“Thank you,” Tony says, his voice cracking on the end. “Oh God. Thank you.”

Cho’s expression turns into something gentle, her voice even more so. “He’s young,” she says.

“I know.”

“He sustained a lot of injuries. And though he’ll heal fine on the surface,” she pauses, taking a step closer, “just remember that there are wounds that you can’t see.”

Tony straightens, jaw setting.

It feels like a mantle being set.

“I’ll make sure he’s okay,” Tony promises.

“Good.” Cho stands straight and pulls the clipboard that had been hanging at her hip in front of her. “Before I let you see him, there’s something I think we should discuss.”

Happy holds his breath again. It sits heavy in his chest.

“What?”

“Peter received a variance of injuries. Puncture marks, burns, a concussion, a fractured wrist, multiple bruises and lacerations, the list goes on. All seem to coincide with the plane crash and following fight with Adrian Toomes.”

Tony stiffens, his fingernails splitting the wooden armrests of his chair. “And?”

Cho shuffles on her feet. Happy has never seen her nervous, but she looks it now. “There was something else too,” she says. “Deep bruising around his torso with several of his ribs fractured or broken. I believe something else happened to Peter, perhaps before he got on the plane.”

Happy clears his throat, finally finding the energy to enter the conversation. Tony is sheet white, eyes blank and unblinking. “What’s your best guess?”

Sympathetic, Cho dips her head. “In my best opinion, I would say he was crushed under something with a substantial amount of weight, probably for an extended period of time. There was concrete dust all over his clothes.”

Tony sucks in a shallow breath and doesn’t release it.

“But of course it’s all hypothetical. We won’t know anything for certain until he wakes up.”

“Which will be when?” Happy asks.

“With his metabolism I can’t be sure. Most likely within a couple hours.”

“Can I see him?” Tony asks, voice small.

“Of course. Follow me.”

Tony stands and doesn’t ask for Happy to follow.

He figures he deserves it.

So he sits alone, staring at the ceiling and wishing with every inch of his soul that he hadn’t hung up his phone.

----

Tony sits in the small hospital room.

It feels like failure.

It feels like relief.

Peter is small against the sheets and blankets, the tubes and wires. He’s pale and marred with dark bruising but at least he’s not covered in blood anymore.

He never wants to see Peter covered in blood again.

The kid doesn’t stir and Tony almost wishes that he’ll stay that way, that he won’t have to face reality and fess up to his sins; that Peter will remain safe and whole and better off without him interfering.

After a long hour of collecting himself, he calls May and asks if he can take Peter to an impromptu conference for the weekend. She sounds uncertain but ultimately caves, telling Tony to have Peter call her when they get here.

He thanks her and tries above everything else to keep his voice steady.

Hangs up and stares at the phone in his hand.

Hears the machines breathing air into Peter’s nose.

Hears other machines tracking his heart, reassuring it’s still beating.

He lays his head onto the bed and cries bitterly.

It’s quiet. His chest constricts.

Your fault.

He isn’t sure when he stops. He’s exhausted.

The heart monitor changes. The blankets shift.

“M’ St’k?”

The voice alleviates some of the pain in his chest. Slowly Tony raises his head, feeling slightly embarrassed the kid has found him hanging over him like some mother hen. He covers it with a smile and hopes it conveys a confidence he doesn’t feel. “Hi kid. How’re you feeling?”

Peter’s breath hitches. He looks up at the ceiling with glassy eyes, bottom lip trembling. “The roof,” he slurs, “‘s it gonna fall?”

Confused, Tony looks up. “What?”

Becoming more agitated, Peter grabs Tony’s wrist. The contact burns, makes acid rise up through his stomach. “Gonna fall. We gotta- gotta leave.”

Tony shakes his head but feels otherwise frozen. His mind is working double time trying to process that Peter’s hand is latching onto him, looking at him in a way that signals the difference between life and death. “The roof’s not going to fall,” he says. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay now.”

Unconvinced, Peter lays his head back and squeezes his eyes closed, his grip on Tony unfailing. “No. Falling. Hur’s.”

“I’m so sorry kid.”

“Plane fell too. Plane. Fire.”

“Peter-”

The kid’s eyes grow wide, impossibly so. There’s no coherence behind them, only drugs and pain and fear. “Mr. Stark. My- my parents died in a plane crash.”

Tony feels his eyes sting, his throat tighten.

“Thought I was goin’ die. See them.”

Words are impossible.

“Hurts.”

And then Peter relaxes, closes his eyes, goes limp against the covers with a low whine. His hand is still curled tight around Tony’s wrist. He stares and stares and stares.

Then he pulls it away, stumbles to the trash can in the corner of the room, and throws up.

-----

The next time Peter wakes up he’s more lucid, but barely.

“May?” he breathes, his face pinched in pain.

“I handled it,” Tony says.

“The plane?”

“Everything accounted for and safe. All thanks to you.”

Deep breaths. “Happy?”

A sharp pain. “He’s okay, Peter.”

A tear. “Liz?”

“Who’s Liz?”

But Peter doesn’t answer, his eyes closing against another dose of drugs.

The pain leaves his face in an instant.

----

Thirteen hours later and Peter is eating jello, eyes drooping and paler than Count Dracula. Tony sits in the corner, quiet and unsure, unable to stop watching his every move. He catches the kid throwing him hesitant looks and tries not to think of the implications behind it.

“You can go,” Peter says after his jello is gone, setting the empty container aside. “I know- I know you're busy.”

Every inch of Tony’s body goes cold. “I’m staying right here until you're better.”

“I feel better.”

“I’ll let Cho be the judge of that.”

Peter sighs and sticks out his bottom lip. “Fine.”

None of this would have happened if you had just listened to me!

“You should get some more rest.”

“Alright Mr. Stark.”

Something in the kid’s eyes is dark and sad.

And Tony isn’t brave enough to address it.

-----

Tony doesn’t sleep.

Peter does. A lot, though largely in part to the drugs still being pumped through him. It should be a peaceful sleep. God knows he deserves it.

But he twitches and flinches.

Whimpers.

Cries and wakes up gasping.

Tony sits by Peter’s side like a guard dog and talks to him after each episode until he falls back into a restless sleep. He looks at Peter’s bruised hand and is tempted to hold it like his own father never had, to assure in extra measure that everything is going to be okay.

But he doesn’t, wishing instead he were strong enough.

Peter doesn’t reach out for him either.

“It’s okay,” he says, feeling powerless and unsure if Peter can hear him half the time through a panic undesigned for fifteen year old kids. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

It helps a little. Peter apologizes over and over, and Tony tells him not to.

“I wanted to be better,” is the core of Peter’s delirium.

It feels like a knife to the gut.

-----

Sleep is difficult, a plague of concrete dust and sand.

Of not being able to breathe.

Of hitting the ground so hard he thinks for sure all his teeth rattle out of his skull.

He dreams about Mr. Stark standing in front of him, telling him he doesn’t deserve the suit. Of walking home in Hello Kitty pajamas.

He dreams of Toomes pulling a gun on him in his car.

Of the ringing in his ears after the plane had hit the ground.

Darkness. Dust.

It’s not working out. I’m going to need the suit back.

An impossible weight landing on him, grinding him to dust.

Help! Please! I’m down here. I can’t move!

I’ll kill you and everyone you love. I’ll kill you dead.

He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe-

“Peter!”

The darkness changes, shifting to a light glow. It’s an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar sounds and smells. A heartbeat, loud and erratic.

“Peter it’s okay. Wake up. You’re safe.”

“Wha-”

He gasps for air, certain there’s none despite the pressure of an oxygen tube against his nose. He claws at his chest and feels the distant sting of cuts.

“Peter you gotta breathe.”

It’s Tony. His face swims in front of Peter, looking just as panicked as Peter feels. Why is Tony here? Where is here-

“Breathe, bud. Listen to me, okay? Use those freaky spider powers to listen to me breathe.”

“Mr. Stark-”

“It’s okay. You can do it.” Peter flinches when Tony grabs his hand. He brings it flush against his chest, rising and falling in exaggeration. “Follow this, okay? You can do it kid.”

He tries.

After a while, he succeeds.

Air has never felt so good.

Peter falls back against his pillows but Tony doesn’t let go. He feels exhausted, chest and ribs burning, his mind foggy. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles through numb lips. “What- what happened?”

Tony’s grip tightens. “You were panicking.”

“Oh.” Something in Tony’s expression tells him that it might not have been the first time.

“How are you feeling now?”

Peter shrugs, eyes fluttering but remaining open. Everything comes rushing back to him now. Toomes, falling off the cyclone, being brought here. Tony, for some reason, refusing to leave his side and bringing him jello. “Mm. Tired. Sore.”

“Do you- do you want to talk about it?”

No.

He shrugs.

Tony is quiet for a long time. “I’m really sorry Peter,” he says. His voice is different, heavy in a way Peter has never heard before. “I should’ve never let this happen.”

The pain returns to his chest and Peter smiles in an attempt to dispel it. He tries for humour, a language they both share. “I’m the one that screwed the pooch, remember?”

Tony stills.

“Peter look at me.”

He does.

“You definitely did screw the pooch,” he agrees, “at the ferry. But nothing after, you hear? That was- that was all on me. I screwed the pooch too.”

Peter furrows his brows, shimmying up his stance against the pillows. It hurts, but this is more important. “What? You did nothing wrong.”

“I took away the thing I specifically designed to keep you safe. We didn’t listen to you. We let you go through that alone. You should’ve been at homecoming, Pete. You shouldn’t have had to go through what you did.”

“Toomes was my date’s dad,” Peter admits, then laughs hysterically. It really is funny. “He pulled a gun on me in the car and then-” his mouth goes sour.

Tony’s eyebrows raise. He isn’t smiling. “A gun? Peter- God. Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

Peter sighs. Closes his eyes. Wishes none of this ever happened.

“He kind of dropped a warehouse on me. But it really wasn’t a big deal, I promise! I got out before he got to the plane and everything was fine-”

“Fine?” Tony chokes. “Peter Parker that is so astronomically far from fine!”

To his left, Peter hears his heart monitor double. Tony must notice it too because he visibly relaxes, though a vein pulses at his temple.

“It was scary,” Peter admits, “I- I couldn’t move at first, or breathe. I thought I was going to die.” He pauses, eyes widening, because it’s true. He shakes his head to make the faint ringing in his ears leave. “It’s okay. I got through it.”

Tony’s heart is beating rapidly. Peter can hear it. He doesn’t have the strength to look at the expression on his mentor’s face. “Is that what you dreamt about earlier?” he asks quietly.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Peter lets his shoulders fall. He picks at a string on his comforter. “Yeah,” he says softly, “it was part of it.”

Tony curses, shifts away. It feels like a gaping distance that Peter doesn’t know how to bridge. “I never should’ve taken the suit away. Your AI would have alerted me. I could have helped.”

If you’re nothing without the suit, you shouldn’t have it.

“I get why you did. I was being irresponsible. All those people on the ferry could’ve died. I get it Mr. Stark, really.”

Tony is quiet. “If we hadn’t found you at the beach-”

“You did though,” Peter assures, even though his voice cracks. “Everything’s okay.”

But it’s not. It’s really, really not.

Tony collapses. Peter thinks he isn’t going to say anything more on the matter. Then, “I’m sorry.”

Tears well up in Peter’s eyes. “I’m sorry too.”

And then Peter is sobbing. He can’t help it. Everything since the ferry crashes over him, drowning him. He tightens his hand over his mouth and tries to hold in the noise, turns away from Tony who is sitting shell-shocked in his chair.

“I’m sorry,” Peter gasps between sobs, “I’m sorry-”

And then Tony is hugging him.

That’s not a hug. I’m just grabbing the door for you. We’re not there yet.

And it makes him cry harder.

“You’re okay,” Tony says into his hair. Confident this time. Sure. “Breathe, Pete. Things will get better. I promise you.”

“It was all so scary,” Peter whispers. For the first time it doesn’t feel like weakness. “The- the warehouse. The plane. I thought- I thought it was going to hit the city. And- and Toomes. He said he was- he said he was going to kill everyone I loved and it was- it was so scary Mr. Stark.”

“You’re allowed to be scared. Hell, I was scared too.”

Peter regains control over his breathing and manages to hug Tony back. They stay like that for a while before separating.

Peter pretends not to notice the shine in Tony’s eyes, too.

“I didn’t know Iron Man was scared of anything,” he says, only partly serious.

“Well there’s not much,” Tony agrees.

And then he laughs.

And Peter laughs too. It’s stilted and disbelieving and relieved.

“No more sorrys,” Peter begs between breaths. “Okay? We’re even.”

“Deal.”

They sit in a short silence. Warmth enters the room.

“You deserve the suit,” Tony says. “I mean it kid. You did good. You did the right thing. You deserve it.”

“Mr. Stark-”

“Nope. Don’t want to hear it. My decision is final. If you proved anything tonight it’s that you’re meant to be Spider-Man. It’s who you are, kid. I’m not going to stop you from that.”

The warmth from the room moves into Peter’s chest. He stays perfectly still to prevent disturbing it. “Thanks,” he whispers, because it’s all he can manage.

“Help me upgrade it,” Tony says. It’s an invitation, but it sounds more like a plea. “Come over to the compound on the weekends. I’ll show you the mechanics of it. We can work on it together.”

“What? Are- are you sure?”

“More than anything.”

Peter smiles as the aches and pains in his body seem to disappear. “I’d really like that,” he says.

If you cared you’d actually be here.

And he is, Peter realizes. Maybe he had been all along.

He’s here. And for now, it’s enough.

-----

A month passes.

It’s one of the best in Tony’s life.

Peter heals and springs back like an elastic band. He smiles and talks enthusiastically about Star Wars and May and acing algebra tests.

His scars fade. He talks to Tony on the bad days when it hurts to breathe.

He gets help.

They’re together now, squished side by side to peer into a magnifying glass. Peter’s leg is bouncing, lips pressed into a determined line as he tinkers with the mask under the table. “Like this?” he asks.

Tony nods, though he doesn’t look. He already knows the kid is doing it perfectly. “Just like that.”

It hits him then, how much the kid means to him.

Though really he knew from the very first day. From the first second.

“Kid?”

Peter looks up, his concentration slipping into an easy smile. “Yeah?”

It looks like trust, like family.

“I’m just proud is all,” Tony says quickly. It’s important. “I wanted you to know that.”

“Oh,” Peter says, pink coloring his cheeks. “Thanks Mr. Stark.”

“It’s Tony, kid.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Stark.”

God. This child will be the death of me. He rolls his eyes and ruffles Peter’s hair, an odd display of affection he never would have thought himself capable of. “Fine, have it your way Mr. Parker. Now get back to work already.”

“Yes sir.” His smile is wider than Tony’s ever seen it.

The kid.

Peter.

He could live a lifetime of this, he thinks in content.

And maybe, just maybe, he will.

47 notes · View notes

thecandywrites · 4 years

Text

Of Heaven and Fire Part 4

SO. I would officially like to apologize for this part because ANGST because I am a big meanie. But I SWEAR, it’s gonna be ok...eventually. This is gonna have a happy ending, I promise, but the plot- much like a strong wave of the sea, took out my knees and ankles and sent me into a faceplant. And like in Liar Liar when Jim Carey is in the bathroom beating himself up. And is going OW OW OW. That was me, writing this. and that’s probably going to be you reading this. Oh also you know that vine of a guy scaring this boy who looks like he’s like- 9 and he screams like a little girl and then stares death at the person who scared him? just remember that scream for halfway through this chapter. That was my inspiration.

In case you missed it- Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

Tagging @probablyclever @funmadnessandbadassvikings and @imherefortheforthefanart Enjoy.

You changed your outfit and folded the blanket up and returned it to Brock’s room but he was gone. You knocked on Cugas’ door but he wasn’t there and when you peeked onto the deck, only the night crew were there finishing up their shift as the sun rose over the horizon.

“Wow, you’re an early riser miss.” Cygla, the night captain, noted as he saw you peek your head up.

“I am.” You smiled as you came up on deck, your moura cloak turning into a fur coat to keep out the chill in the air as you looked up and noticed the clouds.

“Oh no,” you groaned in realization as you recognized the cloud formation and even now you coud see certain beings gearing up for something big.

“Aye, there be a storm brewin’.” He agreed.

“Yeah, a storm.” You huffed a laugh as you just shook your head.

“Do you know where the captain is?” You asked him.

“Probably having breakfast.” He mused.

You nodded and walked down below deck and walked to the galley where the chef was making both breakfast for the day crew and dinner for the night crew.

“Goodmorning Miss Yana,” the cook Ms. Avag, Cygla’s wife greeted you cheerfully.

“Good morning, have you seen the captain?” You asked.

“Not yet, ya hungry? I got honey cakes today.” She noted as she gestured to a stack of pancakes sweetened with honey.

“Yeah, I’ll take one,” you nodded before she got a bowl and put one in there with an extra drizzle of honey and a piece of fried steak with some scrambled eggs before she sent you on your way as you carefully walked through the ship- looking for either Cugas or Brock as the day crew were still sleeping as you searched but didn’t see anyone before you felt a pull on your waist and looked down to see the belt pulling you towards the stairs again and decided to follow where it led you.

You found yourself at the stairs to the bottom of the ship where a huge tank of water sat where they would keep the fish once they caught them as Brock was explaining last night’s events to Cugas who was laughing hysterically as Brock was just a flustered mess.

“You’re not helping!” Brock complained as Cugas wiped the tears from his eyes and stood up straight from being bent over.

“The woman of your dreams healed you and then slept with you half naked, you’re the only straight man on the planet who would think that’s a problem.” Cugas chuckled as he held his gut.

“She still hates me though and she’s getting suspicious and I...I don’t know what to do.” Brock complained.

“Well I mean you took a step in the right direction, you made her a space of her own and took off that barbaric chain, which frankly, I’m still appalled you kept it on her even when she showed you her true self.” Cugas pointed out.

“I know, I know, I didn’t...I just didn’t realize it or think about it until I saw it.” Brock groaned.

“Then why the fuck is the shackle still on her?!” Cugas demanded.

“Because she’ll fly away, I can’t lose her yet.” Brock defended as Cugas groaned in aggravation.

“Brock, she’s already gone. Her body is here, but her soul and spirit stayed on that mountain. She has rage like a wildfire simmering just underneath her sweet exterior and the only way she’s going to calm that and the only way she’s going to really be here- is if she’s free to choose to be so. There isn’t a room or even a palace big enough that you could build for her that she won’t feel like it’s a cage and she will fight you until she draws her last breath. The fact that we’re sailing to the black waters just so she can try to talk to some water dragons- which is still all kinds of stupid dangerous which she’s putting her life in the line for- just to be free- no one should have to do that. Now that we know what we’re dealing with now we go about fishing so that we won’t ice the boats anymore. In my book- just her figuring that out would be enough to earn her freedom. This is just ridiculous, call this off, free her.” Cugas insisted.

“No,” Brock argued.

“And it’s your stubbornness that will lose her for good. It’s a matter of time before her brethren come for her. And when they do, they’ll ask for more than any or all of us are willing to pay and when she leaves, none of us will see her or her kind again. And what would it solve?” Cugas asked.

“That’s not your problem to fix.” Brock growled.

“Yeah it will be because when her brethren come for her- it’s your head they’ll ask for and who would you rather lead the clan? Me or your brother Acosh? Who’s still only 11?” Cugas asked.

“It’s not going to come to that.” Brock insisted.

“Wanna bet?” Cugas asked just as someone came up behind you and scared the shit out of you, making you scream and jump up and cling to the ceiling just as Brock and Cugas came running up the stairs to see you laughing as you still clung to the ceiling, your wings sprouted from your back, covering your body as your hands and feet became clawed to hang onto the rafters as the poor crewman was knocked a good 20 feet away by your protruding wings as you crawled on the ceiling towards him, asking him if he was ok as he was laughing himself.

“Are you ok?” You asked him.

“Yeah, I’m ok, lessoned learned, never sneak up on a moura.” He chuckled as he found his feet as Brock and Cugas got up the stairs and stared at him before they looked up and saw you clinging to the ceiling with your wings out.

“What happened?” Cugas asked.

“I was looking for you and just as I found you- he startled me and it must have triggered my angel reflex.” You answered as you tried to get down but it was like you were glued to the ceiling and once you let go, you stayed up there.

“Well, fuck.” You chuckled as you tried to push off the ceiling to the floor but it was like you were a balloon filled with helium and you bobbed right back up.

“OK so talk to me- explain what’s going on so we can figure out how to help.” Cugas invited as you tried to figure out how to get down.

“My angel reflex kicked in, heavenly moura have an ability to turn off gravity’s hold on them and become lighter than the surface air, that’s why they can walk on the clouds like you would walk on the grass. Only heavenly moura are in this reflex all the time and why and how they can stay in the heavens and fly so effortlessly. And up until now, it was believed that mountain moura lost this reflex because we’re half breeds not full bloods. But the problem is- I’ve never experienced this reflex before so I don’t know how to turn it off.” You explained as you struggled against the ceiling like your body was trying to pull through the wood itself and it was incredibly exhausting fighting against it before you had to stop struggling and rest for a bit because the longer you were in this reflex, the stronger the pull became.

“By the way captain, a storm is brewing out of nowhere.” The crewman informed Cugas.

“It’s not out of nowhere.” You argued. “It’s a heavenly moura holiday, last night was the beginning of the fourth lunar month, that means every heavenly moura will be coming for the celebration and how they celebrate is they like to fly in a cyclone, problem is- with billions of heavenly moura, flying in a big circle causes hurricanes for those on the surface. If we had left a couple of weeks ago, we’d be back home by now and be out of danger.” You insisted with a look to Brock.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” Brock demanded.

“Because I forgot all about it until I saw it this morning when I was looking for you on the top deck, the hurricanes get downgraded to storms by the time they reach the mountains and the mountain mouras need the rain.” You explained as you felt yourself grow hot with anger as your body started to glow before you heard a singe as you looked and noticed your form singed the wood before you tried to roll over and at least get on your hands and knees so you could crawl on the ceiling as your wings seemed to want to be glued to the ceiling and rafters around you.

“Fuck these wings are heavy.” You cursed as you struggled to move just a couple of feet before you just collapsed and your face was smooshed against the ceiling, even your hair was splayed out around you like you were laying on the floor.

“Oof,” you exclaimed as you just laid there. So much for saving some reserves.

“We’ll deal with it when it comes, right now, we need to focus on getting you off the ceiling.” Cugas insisted to keep Brock from arguing further before you got an idea.

“Brock- get the chain.” You told him.

“Why?” Brock asked.

“Just get it, I have an idea.” You urged him before Cugas pushed him towards the stairs.

“Well go! Do you have to be told twice?” Cugas urged him before he barked orders at the crewman to get him a ladder and once he got the ladder, he told the crewman to tell the first mate his orders while he dealt with this.

“Ok, so what’s your idea?” Cugas asked as he stood on top of the ladder and got as close as he could get, so that he could reach you and he tried going down the ladder but the force pulling you to the cieling was stronger than his own weight and strength and he didn’t want to hurt your delicate wrists or hands.

“Well I was going to wait until we got to the black waters to reveal this but if it will get me off the ceiling now, it’s what I’ll do, so, my dad, he’s not entirely human, his mother, my other grandmother- is a siren. I’ve only changed into a siren form once when I was little but if it’ll reset my body by changing form, it’ll turn this off.” You explained as you managed to roll over again, your wings spreading out over the ceiling as you just laid there and waited for Brock to return.

“So what’s the chain gonna do?” Cugas asked.

“Luckily the cuff is now my belt, attach the chain, use to pull me down and drag me to the tank for the fish, pull me down enough that you can put a net over me and then, tie an anchor to me or some kind of heavy weight and basically- drown me, my body should change before I die.” You explained.

“No, absolutely not.” Cugas immediately shook his head no. “There has to be another way.” He insisted.

“Look, with my other abilities I have a measure of control over them, but this- I don’t. I didn’t even know I had this. It’s the only thing I can think of.” You explained as he sat on top of the ladder as he waited for Brock to get back.

“Thank you by the way.” You said softly after a moment.

“For what?” Cugas asked.

“For fighting for me. I got to hear a little bit of your conversation with Brock, thank you for trying to get him to free me.” You thanked him.

“You’re welcome, seeing you chained is...well it’s just plain wrong. And every time I look at that thing I get sick and panicky, like it’s on me too.” Cugas explained with a hateful look at the silver belt as you grinned knowingly. All mouras hated enslavement with a passion and were incredibly empathetic. You mused his moura genes were incredibly strong, why else would he love the freedom of the open ocean?

“By the way do you even know what it is?” You asked curiously before Cugas huffed and breathed in and before he could speak Brock came down the stairs with the chain in hand.

“Oh good, we got a ladder.” Brock noted in relief before he started to climb it before he reattached the chain, standing on the ladder to do so.

“Are you going to ask her what her idea is?” Cugas prodded.

“She’s a moura, mouras are very intelligent, I’m sure it’s a good one.” Brock answered as your heart melted- just a tiny bit before Cugas barked a scornful laugh.

“Ha! No, Yana, tell Brock your plan, Brock- for the love of all that holy- actually listen to it.” Cugas implored.

“So what’s your idea?” Brock asked.

“Ok, so, my dad isn’t entirely human, his mom is a siren, so if you can drag me to the holding tank for the fish and manage to pull me into the water by attaching this chain to something really heavy, I should change and it should turn this angel reflex off.” You explained.

“That’s an awesome idea, why do you hate it?” Brock asked Cugas who just gave you a meaningful look.

“How many years has it been since you changed into a siren form?” Cugas asked you.

“Oh only a few,” You answered dissmissively before you bit your lips anxiously as you wouldn’t look either of them in the eye.

“How many years exactly?” Cugas pressed.

“Eleven.” You answered a little sheepishly.

“So you were seven.” Cugas pointed out.

“And a half.” You argued.

“What were the circumstances of your changing?” Cugas pressed.

“Well, uh, we were swimming in the lake.” You answered vaguely.

“Really? You touch water and magically you turn into a siren?” Cugas questioned. “Well... not exactly.” You answered. “Look, we’re wasting time, just drag me to the tank and I’ll change it’s as simple as that.” You insisted.

“No, no it’s not, tell Brock exactly what he has to do to get you to change because I sure as hell ain’t doing it.” Cugas insisted.

“What do I have to do?” Brock asked.

“You have to tie me to something heavy and basically...try to drown me.” You finally confessed as Brock’s eyes got wide before he looked at Cugas who was giving him the most emphatic shake of his head ‘no’ and a dangerous look. “Uh, so tell me exactly what happened that you turned when you were seven and a half.” Brock insisted before he sat on the other step.

“Ok so- funny story- my siblings and myself were swimming in the lake and I got too deep and I wasn’t that good of a swimmer and everyone else was distracted and I started to drown but before I died, I changed and suddenly I was able to breathe water and I had a tail and everything and I scared the literal shit out of my big brother when I swam up to him and grabbed his leg, I had never heard a boy scream like he did.” You answered with a fond smile at the memory. Indeed your big brother had screamed in an octave you thought he had grown out of.

“That’s not a funny story, you almost could have died!” Cugas chastized you.

“How did they get you to change back?” Brock asked curiously.

“My dad had to come and he walked me through it, I basically had to drown in the air as he held me and coaxed me through it.” You answered.

“Have you been to the lake since?” Cugas asked.

“Not really no.” You answered.

“Can you even swim?” Cugas asked.

“Well, um…” You stuttered as Cugas dragged his hands down his face and took a calming breath as he clenched and then unclenched his own hands before focusing back on Brock.

“You hear that? You have to drown her to get her to change, are you gonna drown her or are you going to listen to sense and take off that damn shackle and just let her fly free for the god’s sake and when she figures out how she can turn it off, she figures it out. Period, we still have time, we can sail back to the harbor, we’ll make it before this hurricane hits.” Cugas insisted.

“Not necessarily-” you argued as Cugas looked at you like you grew five heads.

“If the fleet stays in the eye, it’ll be ok, the eye shouldn’t move too much.” You assured them.

“Brock please, it’ll work, we’re so close.” You pleaded and Cugas was about to pull his hair out.

“Ok,” Brock agreed before he grabbed the chain and tried to pull you off the ceiling with his body weight but it was like he weighed a fifth of his real weight and was nearly to the floor by the time you budged from the ceiling as Cugas growled in frustration.

“Both of you have lost your goddamn minds!” He complained as he got a board and shimmied it behind your back.

“You’ll break her spine pulling on her like that.” Cugas groused before Brock stopped and wrapped his hands in his shirt and wrapped the chain around his wrapped hands so it wouldn’t cut his hands up as Cugas climbed back up to the ceiling and put a rope behind the board and tied a net around you and the board so you wouldn’t slip away and pulled too, together both of them managed to pull you off the ceiling.

“How in the world did you manage to get on your hands and knees with a pull like this?” Cugas asked as he and Brock worked together to pull you down and towards the stairs before the first mate Karsu came down and saw what was going on.

“What the hell?” Karsu asked.

“Help us drag her to the pool.” Cugas ordered and the three of them managed to get you down the stairs but the lower they went, the stronger it got.

“It’s like the pull’s getting stronger.” Cugas noted before Karsu called for help as the night crew that were going to bed came and dragged you over the pool as more ropes were pulled over you as the whole night crew managed to pull you until you were above the water.

“Are you absolutely sure you can do this?” Cugas questioned.

“As sure as I’ll ever be,” you answered as you looked around.

“I need that ballast.” You nodded before Cugas’ men got it.

“Now drop it in. Who’s a good diver?” You asked before everyone looked at Cugas.

“He’s the best.” Karsu answered.

“Oh no, this is as much as I’m gonna help, I’m not going to have a hand in actually drowning you.” Cugas insisted before the men paused and looked at each other before Brock just jumped in and grabbed the ropes and chain and swam with all his might before he tied it around the ballast before he had to swim back up to the surface before he ran out of breath, leaving you only a foot under the surface.

“You fucking piece of shit! I can’t believe you did that!” Cugas yelled at Brock as he punched Brock in the face. “She’s supposed to be the love of your life and you’re killing her! You don’t fucking deserve her!” Cugas spat before he grabbed a knife off of one of his men and dived in, cutting all the ropes just as your wings started to flail in the water, the water itself starting to boil and steam from your wings touching the water as Brock dove back in to stop him as you screamed your last breath, the sound making everyone cover their ears as their eyes had to close because the light emanating from you was too bright to look at before the light faded and Brock and Cugas both looked to see you start to float down, unconscious before your body landed gently onto the bottom of the hold and Cugas, in a fit of rage- stabbed Brock before he dove down to you and held you, tried shaking you and blew his last breath back into you but it was no use- you were gone, he was about to jump to the surface before Brock’s blood wafted in front of your face and your eyes snapped open as you breathed in Brock’s blood causing Cugas to try to swim away before he watched your wings pull into yourself and your body transform into the prettiest mermaid he had ever seen, your eyes now pitch black before you smiled, way too many teeth lining your jaw as you did so before you kissed Cugas sweetly as now it was his turn to freeze at the display of affection.

“Thank you so much for trying to help.” You thanked him, your voice having an ethereal quality to it as your whole body then lit up with bioluminescence, lighting up the hold beautifully as you gestured for him to go up to the surface.

“You stabbed me!” Brock yelled at Cugas as Cugas finally made it up to the surface.

“Yeah but your blood got her to change.” Cugas smiled as he treaded water and watched as you untied the chain from the ballast before you picked it up and swam it to the edge and chucked it out of the hold.

“Holy shit, even as a siren she’s strong.” Cugas smiled as he just watched as you swam over to Brock who was hanging onto the side as you tried to gently coax him from the side.

“Come on, time to heal you again.” You giggled as Brock just stared at you again as you held his hand.

“It worked!” You smiled, your smile literally from ear to ear as Brock just stared in horrified awe at the three rows of very sharp teeth greeted him before you went to his side that was still bleeding before you gently coaxed his hand away from the wound before you took a deep breath and pulled more magic from your core and blew it into his wound as a bioluminescent gel that stuck to the wound as Cugas swam over to Brock and helped him stay afloat because Brock wasn’t the best swimmer himself.

“How do you keep getting so lucky?” Cugas teased him.

“You fucking stabbed me!” Brock accused.

“Because you drowned her.” Cugas answered defensively.

“Yeah but it worked, her idea worked.” Brock argued.

“I still think we could have done it another way.” Cugas argued as he watched as you coiled yourself around Brock before you pressed your hand over the wound and just hugged Brock, the marks on your body starting to pulse as you did so.

“What does it feel like?” Cugas asked curiously.

“Like she’s put ice into it.” Brock answered with a wince as he watched, noticing you were swimming up so he didn’t have to as Cugas had a hold of him and you were managing to keep both of them up.

“It’s hypnotizing isn’t it.” Cugas whispered in awe.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful.” Brock whispered back before he noticed his own tattoos start to glow and pulse too.

“Woah,” Cugas breathed before he let go and got a little bit of space before he dove down to get a better look.

“Hi,” you greeted.

“What are you doing?” He asked, his voice muffled by the water before you just shook your head and blew a big breath at his head before his head was encased in a huge bubble.

“Oh this is the most amazing thing to ever happen to me.” Cugas giggled with glee as he was able to stay under water and breathe from the bubble as you giggled.

“It’s an undiran, for someone who wants to breathe underwater but doesn’t want to change to a merperson, siren or otherwise.” You smiled.

“So why are his tattoos glowing?” He asked as you had to think of a half truth to tell him since this wouldn’t let you lie completely.

“Orcs have magic too, I’m calling to it to help heal him, you stabbed his liver, it’s taking quite a bit to heal him, I’m having his own being do half the work.” You explained.

“Oh, awesome.” Cugas nodded in understanding.

“You stabbed my liver?!” Brock asked as he glared at Cugas.

“You drowned her!” Cugas argued back before you uncoiled yourself from Brock to reach out and grab Cugas.

“It’s ok, it worked, that’s what matters. Please give the orders to stay in the eye of the oncoming storm, I can feel the currents down here, tell them to find the circle current, it’ll keep you around the black waters and in the eye of the storm.” You gently urged him. “Please.” You added.

“I can’t say no to you.” Cugas complained.

“Thank you Cugas.” You thanked him sweetly before he came back up to the surface, his undiran popping once it touched the surface as he gave more orders and left you and Brock in the hold as his men left and gave you some privacy.

“You’ll be ok.” You reassured Brock as you coiled around him again, your tail underneath to gently swim to keep his head above water so he didn’t have to tread water himself as you sat in companionable silence again for a moment.

“Yana,” Brock suddenly murmured, his voice softer than you had ever heard it before.

“Hmm?” You asked, craning your head up from where it had been resting on his chest.

“Please don’t ever ask me to do anything like that again.” Brock requested as his arms seemed to gravitate around you as one seemed to find the back of your hand, his fingers threading into your hair.

“Afraid that Cugas will succeed in killing you next time?” You tried to tease but the look on his face told you that this wasn’t a matter light enough to joke about.

“That was really hard for me to do and I took a big leap of faith that you knew yourself better than any of us do. I can’t…” His bottom lip quivered for a moment as his eyes got glassy as emotion choked out his voice.

“That was really dangerous and we almost lost you. Kids can be physically resilient but mentally fragile and as we age that reverses. I know you’re strong and powerful and you have abilities I can only dream of. But everyone has their limits and this was beyond mine. I knew it was a mistake before I even did it and I don’t blame Cugas for reacting the way he did and frankly if I had lost you, I never would have forgiven myself and no one else would have either. Please, don’t ask me to do anything like that again.” Brock pleaded and you were moved by his words.

“Ok.” You agreed as you nodded in understanding before he just hugged you and held you while you healed him and this suddenly felt like the most natural thing in the world and just as you finished you felt something hit the bottom of the ship as you heard the whole crew start to scream and panic before the tank doors at the bottom of the ship were pried open and you quickly got Brock on top of you as you quickly swam him to the side against the suction of the water pulling you down before a big hand reached inside and grabbed you.

“Brock!” You called before you were pulled out of the hold and the doors were shut behind you before you dragged to the dark, dark depths.

#Orc #orc boyfriend #monster boyfriend #female reader male monster #well technically female monster and male monster #but still #fun times #exophilia #exo #orc romance #orc love story #reader insert #Of Heaven and Fire #Of Heaven and Fire Part 4 #Moura

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dontdoitluke · 5 years

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We Could Be Heroes (Superhero!5sos AU)

Sky High AU, but instead, it’s a superhero University.

Featuring Jenna, Skyler, Emma, and Val, more to come!

Summary: After graduating from the Superhero high school Sky High, students can choose to enroll in the University for Supernatural Abilities and the Valiantly Educated (S.A.V.E.U) to further expand their powers.

Chapter 1/?

CHAPTER INDEX

Word count: 2,607

Let me know if you wanna be added to the tag list!

Tags: @calumamongmen @myloverboyash @wildhearthood @vintagehoods @lukescherrypie @burncrashbromance @dukesnumber1 @calsophat @kindahoping4forever

“It is a great pleasure to inform you that you have been selected for admission to the University for Supernatural Abilities and the Valiantly Educated for the fall semester.

You were chosen from the largest and most competitive applicant pool in the institution’s history for this opportunity based on your perseverance, potential for improvement, and your exceedingly high scores on your H.E.R.O. exams during your time at Sky High. On behalf of our Headmaster, the faculty, and students - congratulations and welcome to the S.A.V.E.U. community!

As a S.A.V.E.U. student, you are joining the very best, along with a student body from around the globe, all here to educate themselves on how to further improve their supernatural abilities, just like you.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we hope you take advantage of. Please do not hesitate to contact the Office of Admissions if you have any questions or concerns. I look forward to greeting you in the fall.

Sincerely,

Malinda Breton

Director of Undergraduate Admissions”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ally threw her last suitcase into her dorm room and closed the door, immediately turning to throw herself on to her bed. She had begun to question her decision to pick a room on the top floor sometime during the second trip upstairs. This school has so much money and they can’t install a damn elevator?

She sighed deeply and closed her eyes, smiling to herself. “I did it, mom. I made it into the best Superhero University in the world.” Then she erupted into a fit of giggles. “And you said I couldn’t do it! Haha! Suck on that!”

She was floating and jittery with happiness and was about to start unpacking but was interrupted by a knock at her door. Without even waiting for Ally to answer, the door opened and a girl with straight blonde hair poked her head inside.

“Hey, have you seen a 6’4 Australian dork pass by here? Probably sopping wet, looks like a douche nozzle, and sounds like a dog whistle?”

“Um...no, no I haven’t.”

“If you see him can you tell him Jenna is looking for him?”

“Yeah, uh, okay.”

The door closed and the girl was gone.

This year is going to be very interesting indeed.

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Ally’s first class of the semester was Supers History. The class itself was surprisingly small for such a large university, maybe only 15 students, maximum. While waiting for the professor, most of them were occupying themselves. The girl that poked her head into Ally’s room earlier was there also, twirling her fingers and making a cyclone out of the water in her water bottle, and there was boy at the front who was using what looked like telekinesis to draw crude pictures on the whiteboard.

“Good morning, class.”

Everyone jumped. No one saw the professor come in, but there he was, erasing the drawings on the board. “You’re not in grade school anymore, son, try to act like an adult and keep the phallic artwork to yourself, okay?”

“Welcome to Supers History. In this class you’ll learn about Heroes past and some present. You’ll learn about mistakes they made so that we don’t make the same ones. You’ll learn which Heroes turned to the dark side and which Villains came to the light. I’m not here to waste your time, so I hope you’re not here to waste mine.”

No one said anything, so the professor continued.

“We will get to the syllabus in a moment but we have to do ice breakers first. I know what you’re thinking and I agree. They’re a waste of time. But they’re required for some reason so let’s just get them over with as fast as possible. I’ll start. My name is Professor Reinchecht. I’ve been a professor at S.A.V.E.U. for 27 years now, my power is teleportation."

If you had blinked the very second he teleported, you would have missed it entirely. There was no noise, no cartoonish whoosh sound, and no movement except for the fact that he was standing behind his desk one moment and in front of it the next.

Again, no one said anything at first. Most of the students were taken aback by how deadpan and to-the-point Professor Reinchecht was, as S.A.V.E.U. had a reputation for having fun and comical professors. One of the girls in the back stood up shakily however, and wrung her hands together nervously.

“Hello everyone, uh, my name is Emma, I’m majoring in animal sciences and biology, and I’m a shapeshifter.”

“Are you comfortable with giving us a demonstration of your power, Emma?”

She nodded and walked toward the front of the class before turning to face the students. She bent down on her hands and knees to shift; her skin seemed to vibrate and pulse, then a sickening crack was heard as her bones began to grow and change shape. She began to grow fur and her face stretched into a long snout, and her hands turned into huge paws with long claws. The entire class was buzzing and murmuring with excitement. Shifting was a pretty common power but it’s not every day you get to see one of your classmates shift into a giant tundra wolf up close and personal. Even Professor Reinchecht seemed impressed. Wolf-Emma bowed her head and shook her entire body, and in a split second, she was back standing in her human form.

The professor spoke up with a slight smile. “Fascinating. Tell me, can you shift into anything or just a tundra wolf?”

“I can shift into anything I’ve seen in person, or have a clear image of. But I haven’t been able to stably shift into other people yet.”

“Wonderful. Well, that’s why you’re here at the University, to learn how to expand your power. Thank you for your demonstration.”

Emma smiled brightly and walked back to her desk with a spring in her step. At this point the entire class was excited to see each other's powers and to show off their own.

Without being asked, a tall, leather clad guy sitting next to Emma stood up, smirking cockily. “Hey, my name’s Luke, some of you know me, the rest of you can’t wait to know me. I haven’t picked a major yet, and my power is my voice.”

Even the crickets were silent.

Reinchecht blinked twice and looked at Luke with a bored expression, having seen arrogant students like this every year. “You’re gonna show us what that means, aren’t you?”

Luke nodded and smiled widely. “You guys might want to cover your ears.”

No one moved to cover their ears. However, Luke looked around the room before setting his sights on Reinchecht’s desk. Taking a deep breath, he let out a very quick but very loud yelp, similar to the sound of an airhorn, albeit higher pitched, causing one of the pencils in a cup on Reinchecht’s desk to shatter into dust. The students let out groans of protest and rubbed their ears, and the professor just sighed and took his glasses off to clean the pencil dust off of them.

“That was my favorite pencil, but go off I guess, as the kids say these days. Have a seat, Luke. Who’s next?”

Ally thought to herself that this guy must have been the one Jenna was looking for. She was excited to see the rest of the student's powers.

The girl who visited her dorm earlier that week stood up quickly. “Hello, I’m Jenna, I’m majoring in criminal law, and I can do this.” Jenna opened her water bottle and poured some into her right hand, but instead of the water pouring over and onto the floor, it formed a grapefruit-sized orb in her palm. She turned toward the back of the classroom and threw the water orb directly at Luke’s face, soaking him and all of his belongings as the class roared with laughter. Luke sputtered and tried to shake the water out of his eyes, but it seemed as if Jenna was also using her powers to force the water to stay on his skin.

“Fuck, I knew I recognized you! I ought to burst your eardrums.”

The professor finally spoke up. “Alright, alright, that’s enough. Jenna, can you dry him off?”

“I can. But I don’t know if I should.”

“Jenna.”

“Okay, fine.”

With a wave of her hand, every drop of water on Luke and his things reformed into the orb that flew toward the front of the classroom and dropped itself gently into a potted plant. The class was still laughing softly and Luke was red-faced with embarrassment. Ally, however, was getting more and more anxious with each power she witnessed. She felt as if her power paled in comparison to her classmates powers.

Another guy sitting toward the front of the room stood. He was wearing a pair of noise cancelling headphones, and looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.

“My name is Michael, I’m also studying criminal law, and I have supersonic hearing. I don’t really know how to demonstrate it well enough to prove it. I can’t turn off my power, so I just use these all the time to dull down the noise so that things aren’t so loud,” he said quietly, tapping his headphones and shuffling his feet.

Reinchecht replied softly,“That’s alright, Michael, you don’t have to demonstrate your gift to us. Thank you for sharing.”

Poor guy, Ally thought. Is it a gift or a curse? He must never get a break.

Another girl stood and waved. “Hi, I’m Valeria, I’m here to study human biology, and I can shrink myself down to the size of a pin head.” She’d begun shrinking before she’d finished speaking, but her dress didn’t shrink with her so she was struggling to hold it up and keep herself covered. Luke and a couple of other students catcalled and whistled, much to Michael's dismay. He pressed the cups of his headphones harder onto his ears and grimaced. Valeria shrunk herself down to about a foot tall before holding her dress up became cumbersome and grew herself back to her normal height. She swayed in place for a second and fell back in her seat dizzily.

“Very useful, I imagine. I should have you come shrink down for me if I ever accidentally lock my keys in my car.” Reinchecht chuckled and took a seat on top of his desk. “Anyone else?”

A boy with tan skin and bleached hair stood. “My name is Calum. I’m majoring in powers theory, and I have indestructable digestion. And a spare stomach pouch. I can swallow and store or digest pretty much anything I can fit into my mouth. I...guess I can show you”

Valeria made a pained noise in the back of her throat that sounded like a cross between a groan and a squeak at that.

Calum moved on, pulling a small leather bag out of his pocket and taking out a small handful of large glass marbles. He popped them into his mouth as if they were a handful of peanuts and swallowed them whole.

A red haired guy scoffed and shook his head. “You’ve been trying to prove that since we were kids, Cal. I’m still not convinced that’s a real power. Anyone can swallow some marbles with enough practice.”

Calum furrowed his brows and frowned. “Yeah, but can they digest them? Not everyone can digest glass marbles, Ash.”

Ash shrugged and slouched in his seat. “Still not convinced it’s real.”

“Real enough for me,” Valeria sighed, smiling at Calum, who was beginning to look very uncomfortable.

“Alright, we have to finish up soon, let’s move on,” Reinchecht interrupted. “Anyone else want to volunteer?”

“I will,” a girl with long black hair bounced up excitedly. “I’m Skyler, I’m studying physics, and I have invisibility and forcefields. Jenna, can you shoot some water at Luke again?”

“What!?”

“With pleasure,” Jenna grinned evilly. She pulled another orb of water from her bottle and sent it flying toward Luke. Skyler raised her hand and summoned a shield of light in front of the blonde Aussie, preventing him from getting soaked again.

“You have GOT to stop doing that. You’re like a nerf gun gone wrong.”

“Hey, Sky asked me to, yell at her,” she raised her hands in defense and pointed toward Skyler, but she was invisible all except for her clothes. It was kind of eerie to see clothes sitting in a desk without a body.

“It takes me a little bit to come back...sorry guys, I’ll be visible in a few seconds.”

The red-haired guy from earlier stood. “I guess I should go. Hi, I’m Ashton, I’m majoring in geology and earth science. And, surprise surprise, I’m an earth elemental. Cal Pal here used to call me Captain Earthquake when we were kids because of it.”

“I called you Captain Earthquake because your farts shook the whole room.”

“Gee, thanks Cal. Love you, man.”

“Of course, you’re my best bud.”

Luke opened his mouth to say something but Jenna flicked two fingers and shot a water stream directly into his mouth, making him gag.

“Moving on, now. Jenna, please stop trying to kill Luke, you can do that in the arena on rally days. Skyler, that’s a pretty incredible power. I can’t wait to see how you end up progressing. Alright, who hasn’t gone yet?”

Ally looked around the room to see if anyone else would volunteer before her, and when no one did she stood up shakily. Public speaking always made her nervous.

“Hello, I’m Ally. I’m, uh, here to study environmental science, and I can...multiply things.”

Emma looked at Ally with confusion. “Like...mega math powers?”

“No, um...like this.” She grabbed the pen off of her desk and rubbed it between her hands. It was one of those things where if you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss it. One pen turned to two, two turned to four, and four turned to eight, until she had a handful of blue ballpoint pens in her hand. Some of her classmates clapped in approval, and that calmed her a little. She felt subpar to her classmates, so even the slightest bit of approval made her feel much better.

“Thank you, Ally. That’s a very useful power. I imagine you’ll be able to improve far beyond your expectation.”

Reinchecht cleared his throat and glanced at his watch. “However, we are out of time. We’ll have to get to the rest of you tomorrow. Please, take a syllabus on your way out today. Read over it and make sure you get the required textbooks. You’re dismissed.”

All the students stood up and started gathering their things, chit chatting with each other about their powers. A now-visible Skyler and Jenna were bombarding Emma with questions about her power, Luke and Ashton followed Michael out of the classroom, and Valeria busied herself with trading phone numbers with Calum, pouting when he exclaimed “I have not and will never attempt to swallow a human, no matter how small they are.”

“But you CAN do it, though.”

“Bye, Val.”

“Wait, I have more questions!”

Ally stuffed all the new pens in her bag and headed for the door, but she was stopped by Jenna.

“Hey, what are you doing for lunch?”

“Uh, I was just gonna grab a sandwich or something from the commons, why?”

“Why don’t you join us? We’re gonna meet the boys at Pablo’s and have lunch there. They’ve got the best fish tacos. Please?”

Ally smiled to herself. This was already much better than high school and regardless of what her mother assumed, she loves it here.

“Sure. I’ll meet you there.”

#I'M STILL NERVOUS ABOUT THIS #5sos #5 seconds of summer #um #idk what else to tag it #WCBH

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itsshortfurball20 · 5 years

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Percy Jackson, The Avenger

Summary: Percy has an encounter with Nick Fury. A year later, he’s being called on to help protect the world… again. He’s not alone in this Avengers Initiative. A genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist; a super soldier; a green scientist; a Norse god; and two secret agents. What could go wrong?

1 2 3 4 5

This chapter has 4,205 words

6 – The Shaquille O’Neal of Lying

There were certain things Percy could live without. Quests, over-arrogant and dramatic gods and goddesses, pranks from the Hermes cabin that left him covered in peanut butter and harpy feathers... but the one thing Percy probably hated most was demigod dreams.

As soon as Percy had fallen asleep, he found himself in the last place he wanted to be—Loki’s cell. The green glass prison formed around the son of Poseidon. Across the cell from where Percy stood, Loki was sitting on the small cot. He was staring at the camera that the others had watched him from earlier.

Loki finally shifted his gaze from the camera to Percy. “What a pleasant surprise,” he said in a tone that made Percy know that this wasn’t pleasant nor a surprise. Loki spread his arms wide, gesturing to the small cell around them. “Welcome.”

Percy crossed his arms in front of him. All of a sudden, he was glad that he had fallen asleep in his clothes, instead of standing in front of Loki in his PJs. “What do you want, Loki?”

“I want to offer you a proposal.”

“Uh, sorry, but I already have a girlfriend.”

“A business proposal,” Loki stressed. “I know you want to avoid this upcoming fight. You’re not prepared. You haven’t practiced or so much as swung a sword in three years. You’re hopelessly outmatched for what’s coming. But, if you agree to work with me, then you won’t have anything to worry.”

Percy remained unmoved. “I assume this proposal isn’t free.”

“Listen carefully, for I will only offer this once,” Loki stated. “If you agree to work with me, you will lend me your forces, your armies, then I will make you powerful. You can have mortals kneeling at your feet, and all you have to do is give me command of Olympus’ armies. Together, we could control those pathetic mortals.”

The son of Poseidon remained silent for a couple seconds. His hands drifted down towards his pockets. Percy curled his hand around Riptide, ready to pull his sword out in case things went south. “I think you’re forgetting what I am. Sure, I’m the son of Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, but I’m also the son of Sally Jackson. Half human, half god. You, on the other hand, are a mixture of vegetables and Ares’ sweat—nothing but plain nastiness.”

Loki’s smug smile melted away as he sneered. “You’re a fool. Letting unlimited power go for what? A family that has used you as a pawn before? For a world that would shun you if they knew what you truly were?” Percy’s hands tightened into a fist as Loki kept talking. “Join me, Perseus. Together, we can show those mortals what real power is.”

“I’d rather die protecting my family than live knowing I betrayed them.”

Loki rushed him. Percy pulled out Riptide and held the sharp blade carefully against Loki’s neck. The Norse god froze. Loki carefully eyed the blade, before raising his hands. He gave a small laugh. “Fine. When the Chitauri come, you’ll fail, and you’ll realize that you should’ve accepted my offer while you had the chance. You will die knowing that you had the chance to save yourself but threw it away.”

The edges of Percy’s vision started fading, the green cell disappearing. Just before Percy’s dream took him elsewhere, he whispered, “Go to Tartarus.”

Loki’s face disappeared and suddenly he found himself in a different place.

Space, to be exact.

A gasp escaped Percy’s mouth as he floated around. Living in Manhattan, Percy had never seen many stars. Instead, city lights lit up the night. There had been a couple times when he’d gotten the chance to get out of the city and see the stars, but none of those times could ever compete with what he was seeing now.

Hundreds upon thousands of stars surrounded Percy, larger and brighter than he had ever seen. Percy was struck by the beauty of it all. He couldn’t help but think of Bob, the titan who sacrificed himself to help Annabeth and him escape Tartarus. Bob, whose last request was to say hello to the stars.

A loud roar came from behind him. It took the demigod a couple seconds to turn around—having to move like he was swimming without water—before he could see the cause of the noise. High above him was a large spaceship, something straight out of Star Wars. Flying in and out of the ship were the equivalent of alien whales. Huge, swimming, aliens that vaguely resembled whales. In space. Oh gods.

One of the space whales let a big roar or scream. A sick feeling settled in Percy’s—not like the time he had gotten on the Cyclone after eating one too many hotdogs despite Annabeth’s warnings (that hadn’t been a pleasant experience for either of them, nor the dude that sat in front of them). That was a different sick from what Percy was feeling now. His neck was tingling, and his stomach was twisting in knots. These had to be the Chitauri that Thor had mentioned. The thought of having these creatures invade Earth, his home, didn’t sit well with the Greek demigod. Loki had to be stopped.

The dream changed again, and Percy finally found himself in a place he recognized; a large loft overlooking half of Manhattan, paint supplies scattered around on the coffee table, and a big mural on one wall that featured the cabins of Camp Half-Blood. He was in Rachel Dare’s apartment.

Rachel herself was sitting on one of the leather couches, probably an old gift from her father when she had first moved into the loft. A sketchbook sat in her lap. Percy could sense that she was frustrated with something, most likely with the picture not coming out right. The demigod had seen some of her art blocks before and they were never fun to be around.

Percy wondered if she was working on a piece for college or for one of her clients. The demigod could still remember the big fight that had occurred between Rachel and her father that had led to her taking on clients to help pay for her college after her father dropped the pay. In the months that had followed, Rachel had made a decent amount of money. Percy had seen the amount some people paid for a small painting, and it made him wish he knew how to draw past stick figures.

Out of nowhere, Rachel jerked up. Percy reached out for her when he noticed that her eyes had turned green. The son of Poseidon reeled back a little, watching as green mist started swirling around them. Rachel’s mouth opened and the haunting voice that belonged to the oracle started speaking.

It comes from day as dark as night,

After evil's rule, the final fight,

They're gone, they're broke, they come together,

Charged to protect, earthly tether,

Rolling Stone, purple reign,

All must end in blazing pain.

As soon as the prophecy was done, the green glow surrounding Rachel faded and she started swaying. Percy rushed forward to help her, but she fell safely back into her couch. Her sketchbook fell off her lap and onto the floor, landing upwards and revealing what had been plaguing Rachel.

The sketch showed a tall building that Percy didn’t completely recognize, but he would know the surrounding skyline of New York anywhere. High above the city, in the sky, was a huge hole where Percy recognized the Chitauri flooding though. Just as his blood turned to ice, the dream started fading away, pulling him back to the real world.

Percy shot up in his bed, heart racing. He scrambled out of bed, reaching for a golden drachma and heading into the bathroom to make an IM. Percy turned on the shower and let the water flow through the light. He tossed the drachma through the water, asking Fleecy to patch him through to Rachel’s home.

Rachel’s distressed face appeared a moment later. “Percy!” She cried. “Why are you—”

”I had a dream about you last night.” Percy interrupted Rachel, cutting her off. She frowned.

“Please tell meet wasn’t one of those sexy kinds of—”

“No!” Percy shouted. “No, not that kind of dream. Although I’m not sure this is much better.”

“Percy, anything is better than you cheating on Annabeth.”

“You gave a prophecy.”

Rachel’s face turned serious. “What about?”

“I think it’s about the upcoming battle with Loki.” He paused. “I also saw the sketch you drew.”

“I was actually just about to call Chiron. Show him the sketch.” She turned around to pick up her sketchbook. “I just drew this last night. It wasn’t until this morning that I recognized the building.” Rachael held up the sketch. “That’s STARK Tower. I don’t know what those things are, but it’s obviously not good. What was the prophecy?”

Percy recited the prophecy. Rachel wrote it down in the corner of the sketch, like an artist’s signature. When Percy was finished, she sat there for a moment silent. “Blazing pain? They’re broke? This doesn’t sound like a typical prophecy.”

“What are you thinking?”

Rachel frowned. “I’m not sure. I might talk it over with Ella, see if there’s anything similar to this. Something I don’t understand, ‘the final fight’? What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know.” Percy shrugged. “Most times, the meaning isn’t clear until it’s happened. The only line I’m worried about is the last one.”

“I can see why. Make sure to stay away from any fire that might cause blazing pain.” Rachel sighed. “I’m going to call Ella, compare some thoughts, ideas.”

“Got it.” Percy gave her a wave. “See you later.”

“Later,” Rachel said before waving through the rainbow, leaving Percy standing alone in the bathroom. His mind wandered to his dream conversation with Loki, and the sick feeling he’d felt earlier returned as he came to the conclusion that prophecies were worse than dreams.

\~*~/

Percy didn’t know if he was allowed in any part of the ship that wasn’t the main area and his own room, not even one of the small supply closets in the halls. Fury didn’t seem to be the sharing type. That didn’t stop the demigod from wandering the huge ship.

After talking with Rachel, Percy had found the urge to escape the confines of his room. He started walking through the vast halls, trying to let go of his thoughts for a little while. It wasn’t too long in that he’d gotten lost. Percy was sure that he’d passed the same section of doors three times now.

“Mr. Jackson.”

Fury stalked towards Percy, clearly angry and annoyed with the demigod.

“Hey Pirate,” Percy gave him a wave. “Just checking out your man-o-war. Got a bit lost. Do you have maps to hand out?”

The director sighed. “Cut the pirate lingo and come with me.”

“Aye.”

Fury didn’t even bother with a glare at Percy’s remark. Percy followed Fury through the halls as the director led him past the residential hall and the main area and eventually into a conference room, complete with a fake plant in an attempt to try and make the room look cozier.

“What’s happening?” Percy asked.

“Please take a seat, Mr. Jackson.” Fury pulled out a chair and took a seat, gesturing to one of the empty chairs around the long table. “I just have a couple questions I’d like to ask you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“SHIELD does their homework, and we do it well. But even we can’t figure out everything sometimes. We just want a little help to make sense of some things.”

Percy hesitated a second before he pulled a chair out. “What do you want to know?”

“We’ll start easy. What’s the extent of your training?”

The son of Poseidon shifted in his seat. “Uh, I can fight with a sword?” It came out more of a question, unsure if that was what Fury was looking for. “I started when I was twelve. Um, I have control over water.”

“What all can do you with water?” Fury interrupted. “I know your father is Poseidon, but just how does that work? Do you have hydrokinesis?”

“Yeah,” Percy nodded. “I can also breathe underwater and even talk to sea animals. Horses too.”

Fury frowned slightly. “Horses?”

“My dad created them out of sea foam to try and win and be the patron god of Athens. But then Athena went and invented olives and for some reason they liked that better.”

“Mr. Jackson—”

“Just call me Percy.” The demigod told the director. “My father isn’t Mr. Jackson but hearing that just sounds weird.”

“Okay, Percy, I’m curious. This is the second time I’ve seen you wear that shirt.” He pointed at Percy’s CAMP HALF-BLOOD t-shirt. “What is Camp Half-Blood?”

Percy suddenly felt uncomfortable sitting in his chair. “Nothing really. Just a camp that I’ve gone to.”

Fury leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “Percy, I’m interested in helping everyone, keeping the world safe and protected. I need you to tell me the truth. If you want, you don’t have to answer, but if Camp Half-Blood provides a danger to anyone, I need to know.”

“No one at Camp is a danger,” Percy assured. “It’s just a safe haven for demigods; a place for them to train and not have to worry about monsters hunting them down. If you’re worried about us trying to take over the mortal world or something, don’t.”

“Okay,” Fury leaned back but kept his hands on the table. “Okay. I just want to make sure. Can we continue?” At Percy’s nod, he asked, “What are the locations to the entrances of the underworld?”

“I’m sorry?” Percy said. “You want to know what now?”

“You heard me.”

“Pass.”

Fury sighed. “Fine. I suppose you won’t tell me the location of Olympus either?”

“Gods no,” Percy snorted. “I may not be the brightest, but I don’t want a death wish. My uncle would gladly kill me before that ever happened.”

“Just needed to ask.” Fury told Percy. “As I said before, you don’t have to answer questions you don’t want to. But,” he added. “it would be better for all of us if you were more forthcoming.

“One more question and I request that you answer this one, please.” Fury said, throwing in the please as an afterthought. “Is there anything that might warrant watching? Any threats?”

Percy thought for a second. There were several things he could mention, monsters for starters, but those weren’t the big problems. “Watch out for titans and giants. Most of them are still in Tartarus, the monster prison,” Percy explained. “but they just reform and come back. I don’t know how soon they would though after the wars.”

“What wars?”

Percy opened his mouth to start explaining about the war against Kronos and the one with Gaea, but a loud beeping noise stopped him. Fury seemed to tense as he pulled a phone out of his pocket. With a quick glance, he scowled. “Stark,” the director muttered with distaste before leaving the room.

Jumping up to join him, Percy followed Fury through the halls and into a lab were Tony and Bruce were sitting. Fury stormed into the room, Percy following just a couple steps behind. Tony and Bruce looked up as they entered. Fury stood in front of Tony who seemed to be watching a computer intently and not looking at Fury. “What are you doing, Mr. Stark?” The director asked.

“Uh...kind of been wondering the same thing about you.” Tony rebutted.

“You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract.”

“We are,” Bruce interjected. “The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile.”

“And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss,” Tony promised. Percy watched the billionaire frown as the computer beeped. “What is PHASE 2?”

There was a loud thud behind Percy. Steve had set down a large gun on the table, looking pissed. “PHASE 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons. Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow.”

Fury turned towards the captain. “Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're...”

“I’m sorry, Nick.” Tony interrupted Fury, turning the computer around to show what seemed to be plans on building weapons. “What, were you lying?”

“And earlier you told me you wanted to help people.” Percy scoffed.

Right at that moment, Thor and Natasha walked into the lab. Banner turned to Natasha. “Did you know about this?”

“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?”

“I was in Calcutta; I was pretty well removed.”

“Loki's manipulating you,” Natasha told him.

“And you've been doing what exactly?”

“You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you.”

“Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” Banner grabbed the computer and pointed to the weapon on the screen. “I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

“Because of them.” Fury pointed at Thor and Percy. Percy’s eyebrows raised in shock.

“Wait, what?” Percy asked at the same time Thor asked, “Me?”

Fury sighed. “Last year, not only did earth have a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town, but also learned about the existence of immortal gods whose affairs have started countless wars since forever. We learned that, not only are we alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet,” Thor said.

Percy stepped forward. “Mortals have gone for centuries without knowing about the existence of the Greek gods living among you and you’ve been fine. We take care of our problems.”

“But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve asked, clearly not believing Fury.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies,” Thor informed Fury. “It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

Steve frowned. “A higher form?”

“You forced our hand. We had to come up with something.” Fury tried to explain, but by that time it had all descended into chaos.

Tony argued, “Nuclear deterrent. Cause that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?”

“I’m sure if he still made—” Steve started saying before he was interrupted by Tony.

“—Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is—”

“—weapons, Stark would be neck—”

“—this now about me?”

“—deep… I’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

“I thought humans were more evolved than this,” Thor commented.

Percy whirled on Thor. “Oh, I’m sorry, but out of all of us, who’s the one blowing up other planets?

“Did you always give your champions such mistrust?” Thor questioned Fury, ignoring Percy’s remark.

Everyone started shouting over one another. At one point, it got too hard to tell who was saying what.

“You understand that—”

“I can’t believe—”

“Are you boys really that naive? SHIELD monitors potential threats.”

“Captain America is on threat watch?”

“We all are.”

“Just a little concern, Doctor.”

“You're on that list?”

“Stark, just one more word…”

“Threatened. I feel threatened.” Tony shouted loud enough for everyone to hear.

”Cool it, tin can.” Percy shot. “They just said that everyone in this room is on that list, including you.”

“My suit isn’t tin, it’s a titanium-gold alloy.”

“You speak of control, yet you court chaos.” Thor’s voice boomed.

“It’s his M.O., isn’t it? I mean, what are we, a team?” Bruce started ranting. “No, no, no. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re… we’re a time-bomb.”

“You need to step away.” Fury told Banner.

Tony threw his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?”

“You know damn well why!” Steve pushed Tony’s hand away. “Back off!”

The two squared each other, turning face-to-face. There was a fire building in Steve’s eyes as everyone else turned to watch the showdown. “Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.”

“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?” Steve asked him.

Without missing a beat, Tony replied, “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

Percy’s eyes bounced between the two fighting men. It was like watching a tennis match, serving the ball back and forth to each other.

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you.” Steve took a small step forward. “Yeah, I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

“I think I would just cut the wire.”

Steve let out a small chuckle. “Always a way out… you know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero? Like you?” Tony scoffed. “You’re a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

Immediately there was a change in the air as the room grew tenser. Steve’s face grew tighter and his jaw clenched. “Put on the suit, let’s go a few rounds.”

Thor laughed. “You people are so petty… and tiny.”

“As opposed to looking like a hippie surfer.”

“Yeah, this is a tee…” Banner muttered.

“Agent Romanoff,” Fury started to order. “would you escort Dr. Banner back to his...”

“Where?” Banner asked. “You rented my room.”

“The cell was just in case...”

“In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!”

Everyone turned to Banner at his confession. The doctor took a second to regain some of his breath. “I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out! So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!”

Banner was getting more and more upset. He looked at Romanoff, who for the first time that Percy had seen, actually looked unnerved. “You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff?” Banner asked the redhead. “You wanna know how I stay calm?”

Percy reached for Riptide as soon as the Doctor grabbed the scepter. Out of the corner of his eye, the demigod noticed Fury and Natasha reaching for their guns. “Let’s not do anything rash now,” Percy spoke. “Put the scepter down and we can all go home happy and in one piece.”

Banner looked down and noticed he was holding a glowing scepter. His grip loosened, but he didn’t drop it. Shocked, the doctor stared at the scepter in his hands.

The computer beeped, breaking the moment. Banner quickly put the scepter back on the table and made his way over to the computer. “Sorry, kids. You don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“Located the Tesseract?”

“I can get there faster.”

“Look, all of us…”

“The Tesseract belongs on Asgard,” Thor said. “No human is a match for it.”

“That’s fine,” Percy agreed. “As long as no one else on your planet tries to use it to take our planet.”

Tony turned to leave, but Steve held out one of his hands to stop him. “You’re not going alone.”

“You gonna stop me?” Tony argued.

“Put on the suit, let's find out.”

“I'm not afraid to hit an old man.”

“This is stupid!” Percy shouted. Everyone turned towards him. “Look, none of us by ourselves can defeat Loki and whatever army he’s bringing. We can only do this if we work together.” Percy took a second to scan his eyes over the group. “I don’t care if you guys think that the others are lame, I don’t. You can butt heads later. All I care about is making sure that New York City is still standing tomorrow.”

Everyone was quiet. Steve’s head hung a little, like he was ashamed. Tony just stared at Percy, looking away when Percy made eye contact.

At that moment, Banner, who had been looking at the monitors, gasped and said “Oh, my god!”

The ship shook violently, and a big burst of fire came up from the vent underneath, throwing everyone in different directions. Percy landed hard on his back just a couple feet from where he had been standing originally. He was left winded, desperately gasping for air. The room was filled with smoke. Percy heard Steve from somewhere in the room yelling, “Put on the suit!”

The demigod pulled himself up just in time to see Tony and Steve run out of the room. Fury and Thor were still getting back up. Percy ran a quick scan of the room, not finding Natasha or Bruce.

“Styx,” Percy swore as he headed for the door.

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

Text

Coldflash one-shot - “The Ring” (Rated PG13)

After an anxiety-fueled dream that Len waves away as time travel sickness, he opts instead to think ahead to what his and Barry's eventual future may be.

But could that dream be a more accurate indicator of what's in store for the two of them? (1471 words)

Notes: So, I wrote this for Valentine's Day, based off of a 'Yuri on Ice' fanart I saw on Instagram. It gives hints on what's to come in the upcoming sequel of Cover Up, which I hope to have done and uploaded before summer.

Read on AO3.

“Bare … Barry?”

Len’s footsteps echo within the confines of his anxiety-riddled brain as he tries to walk in a direction that feels like forward, but only because that’s the way he’s headed. A field of absolute darkness stretches out ahead of him and he struggles to walk straight, tunneled in this direction by a perception of safety that he has no solid evidence exists. If he was safe, he wouldn’t be alone.

Barry would be with him.

“Barry? Are you … are you there?”

Fine filaments of red light flash in the corner of his eye – combustion bright and so blinding, he has to physically turn away from it to keep it from searing his retinas. But when he turns his head, the light changes course, zipping in front of his face as if it’s trying to get his attention.

“Barry?”

The light bounces closer and closer, carrying with it a sharp, zapping noise like a laser …

… or Barry’s tattoo gun.

“Barry?” The light stops its sporadic jumping and swirls around him. It dries out the air, causing his eyes and sinuses to burn, making the hair on his arms stand on end. The ink on his body, put there by Barry, begins to sting; the cover up concealing the scars on his spine aching so powerfully, it bows his back.

It almost brings him to his knees.

“Barry? Where … where are you, Barry?”

“Here,” a voice crackling from within the cyclone replies. “I’m here.”

Len doesn’t answer. He assumes that this electrical phantom is a meta of some sort and it’s taunting him. It can probably read his mind, knows what’s important to him, and it’s using that to bait him into submission.

Playing him like a cat with a mouse.

He clears his mind, refuses to give it any more ammunition than it already has.

But the next, “Len … I’m right here,” sounds sincere.

It sounds sad.

It sounds like Barry. His Barry, not some copycat.

Len has had metas trick him before, but he’s never met one this good. There’s always something underneath the deception that manages to give them away – a tone, a sneer, a thread of malice. But Len doesn’t hear that in this voice. His head knows, and his heart knows, that this is Barry Allen.

“Barry?” Len reaches out a cautious hand to try and touch the red lightning, worried that Barry might be trapped inside. An arc springs out from the mass and winds around his finger. Len’s first instinct is to leap back, but that would launch him into the bulk of the electrical field that’s built up around him. More tendrils of electricity reach out to touch him. They form together and take his hand. Len shivers at the touch, at the heat surging through his skin and up his arm.

At how familiar it feels.

“B---Barry?”

“Len?”

“Barry?” As the cyclone tightens, the light glows a brilliant crimson, like a lost desert sun. Len squints into it, his head pounding as he searches for signs of his missing boyfriend. “Barry? Where are you?”

The light gathers in a single knot … and a face leaps out at him. “Len! I’m right here!”

Len screams, scrambling backward straight into the swirling vortex. The electricity grabs his arm and shakes him. With each nudge, the grip on his bicep feels softer, more corporal, bones and skin palpable underneath. The eyes staring into his are no longer full of red forks, but are the concerned, human eyes of Barry Allen leading Len out of the dark.

Len blinks and the electricity dissipates, dissolves into the cool room around them, chased by floating lights - the remnants of a dream that felt so real, the skin on Len’s arms still prickles with its static. But it wasn’t real. It was just a nightmare - the dark tunnel simply Barry’s bedroom; the electricity - the tripping bulb in the street lamp outside that stutters and pops as night transforms into day, hours before preparing to switch off.

“Len …” Barry relinquishes his hold on sleep when it becomes clear how much his boyfriend needs him “… are you all right?”

“Ye-yeah.” Len breathes in deep and pauses before he answers again, taking a moment to make sure he’s not lying. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Did you have a nightmare?”

“Yeah.” Len turns his face away, running the back of his hand over his cheeks to banish a few obnoxious tears. “I guess I did. But it’s over now.”

Barry scoots up a few inches, trying to sit up. “You haven’t had one of those in a while.”

“I know. It’s all right. Just some residual time travel sickness. Nothing major.”

“Do you … want to talk about it?”

Len smiles - a weak smile at best. “Nah. It’s not worth it.” He puts a trembling hand on Barry’s shoulder and pushes him gently down the mattress, then tucks him in under the blankets. He doesn’t mind discussing his nightmares with Barry when they’re easy, about the things Barry already knows – his father’s abuse; his fears over leaving his sister alone and vulnerable for long periods of time and what that might be doing to her mentally; the idea that he may never truly be able to leave his past behind him; that without the Waverider, he might fall back into old habits and become an even worse criminal than he was before.

That he might lose everything he’s fought hard for, that he’s come to hold dear … Barry included.

“Are you sure?” Barry asks, slipping obediently underneath the blankets, but only so he can get closer to his boyfriend. “Should we contact your team? Like Dr. Stein? Maybe he can …”

“I’ll be seeing my team sooner than I want,” Len interrupts, running his fingers over Barry’s scalp and through his hair, knowing it’s a surefire way to get him snoozing again. “Go back to sleep. We only have the one more day together, and I need you all good and rested for what I have planned.”

“Hmmm …” Barry mutters, heavy eyelids drifting closed with little persuasion necessary. “Sounds fun. Athletic.”

“You know it. I need to work off all that pizza we’ve been eating.” Len leans over and kisses Barry on the temple, pressing his lips down his cheek to his neck until he hears the soft whisper of Barry’s breath as he begins to sleep again. Len nuzzles the line of Barry’s jaw with his nose and sighs. He looks Barry over, from his disheveled hair to his naked shoulders, his muscular body wrapped in the thick, red comforter on his bed. Nearly his entire body is covered by the thing except for his head, his neck, and his left hand. On that hand, balled slightly, he wears a single ring.

The pinkie ring Len gave him.

Barry wears it on his index finger. Funny that a ring that fits Len’s pinkie fits Barry’s forefinger, but Barry’s fingers are so thin compared to Len’s. Aside from that, it was almost as if the ring stretched to fit Barry’s finger. Len couldn’t explain it. Then again, when it comes to Barry, he’s stopped trying to explain anything. That vibrating habit of Barry’s? It still bugs Len, but mostly for what it might mean for Barry’s future, the implications if a meta, Rip, or any other Time Master finds out. But as long as Len is a part of that future, he’s going to make sure that nothing bad happens to Barry; that Barry lives a long, safe, and happy life.

Even if it’s in exchange for his own.

But there’s more than one way which that may go, and the one that Len’s thinking, the one that could ensure everyone’s happiness all the way around, requires that ring to be on a very different finger.

Calling back on his skills as a second-rate pickpocket, Len grasps the ring with his fingertips and tugs it up Barry’s finger. The ring takes its sweet time sliding off, resisting like it doesn’t want to go, but Len manages to slip it off without waking Barry. Len looks at the ring in the dim, sputtering light from outside. As far as rings go, it’s nothing special – just a plain old silver band. But Barry wears it incessantly, like it means the world to him.

Fitting since Barry means the world, and several timelines, to Len.

Len switches the band to Barry’s ring finger. Again, there’s no way it should fit, but it does, sliding down easily over his knuckle and resting at the base.

‘There,’ Len thinks, curling around Barry’s body, his left hand over Barry’s, his thumb resting against the ring. ‘That looks better.’

In his sleep, Barry smiles.

#leonard snart #Captain Cold #Barry Allen #ColdFlash #frankie writes

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thecityofselcouth · 2 years

Text

The tall wheat swayed lightly in the breeze around her, and Veronica turned her face towards the sun, closing her eyes against the blinding light. From her blanket spot in the fields, she was completely hidden from the world around her. Veronica stretched her arms up above her head, enjoying the peaceful moment of calm. She allowed the gentle wave of the grasses lull her into dozing quietly.

By the time she realized drops of rain had landed on her, Veronica sat up abruptly and the wind whipped her hair across her face. Pushing it out of her eyes, she was faced with a wall of dark clouds heading straight towards her. She scrambled from the ground, grabbing her book and blanket as she fought against the wind. As she stood on her bare feet, she witnessed the wind die down to a nearly dead silence. Her own breathing picked up in her ears, keeping her heart beat company, as her world began to get a greenish hue. Amongst the festering clouds in front of her, she stood in horror as the cyclone came into full view, and from the angle she was standing, it didn’t look like it was moving at all.

A memory appeared in her mind from when she had been very, very small. Her gran sat on the front porch with a plastic bag of long green beans in her lap, as she broke them piece by piece, dropping the good pieces into the deep metal bowl at her feet. With a lit cigarette hanging from her lip, she spoke, “Now Ronnie, if you see one of them big storms that don’t look like it's a-movin’.” She gestured up to the clear sky above them, “It’s coming straight for ya, and there ain’t nuthin’ you can do then but pray.” Putting one foot in front of the other and the words from her memory behind her, Veronica flung herself down the path between the rows of wheat, heading across the field towards their small farmhouse.

Thunder crashed around her in the present time, and Veronica stared blankly at Damian’s outstretched hand. Part of her wondered briefly if he had lost his mind, while the other half recognized that he might actually be doing this out of genuine kindness. But why would he do that? the small voice in the back of her head chimed in to do its usual of removing all the positives from a situation.

“Wait, weren't you getting ice cream for your mom?” she asked him, her eyebrows pulling together as she remembered. She began shaking her head at him, playing with her own hands, “You probably have way better things to do than worry about me.” Veronica nervously glanced back over at the windows, where the rain had reached a torrential downpour.

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

Noah hummed and nodded in perfectly practiced, fake understanding. It was apparent now that Olly did not know much about his now-ex girlfriend, and that set off alarm bells in her head. She would have thought that he would have wanted to know everything about what happened during their years apart. Noah had never been one for relationships, but she knew that it would have been natural to be curious about something like that, especially if it was a rekindling of what had been lost. So June was right, she admitted to herself, it was just sex.

Something felt like it had clicked in her brain, and taking a small scalding sip from her coffee, Noah peered down her long nose at him. “Oliver Rhodes,” her tone rang with authority as she paused for dramatic effect, “Have you been sleeping with your high school ex-girlfriend and hadn’t even bothered to ask her anything about herself or her life?” She flicked her cigarette ash into an ashtray that was perched on the coffee table, not removing her eye contact to be able to watch him squirm.

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

James raised an eyebrow inquisitively at her giggling, and groaned at her explanation that followed. “Don’t fucking remind me,” he grumbled, falling backwards and bringing her along for the ride. With her perched over top of him, James settled his hands on her thighs, letting his fingertips sneak beneath the hem of her boxer shorts. “Ronnie dearest has never been my biggest fan,” he snorted and rolled his eyes at the thought.

“I understand that she’s your best friend,” he grimaced at the terminology, “but that woman has always been one mental breakdown away from a looney bin.” He removed his hand from her thigh to rub the small bruise on his cheek. He didn't want to think about the comments or jokes that would be thrown his way once the men learned that it had come from a petite woman with sharp bony edges and a wild look in her eye.

0 notes

rememberthe4th · 5 years

Text

Tales of the Hunt: What Remains pt. 1

It has been a long time coming, but we’re finally wrapping up this ‘arc!’ I hope those who have followed along this far enjoy what I offer this time, and know there’s more to come! Here’s to tomorrow! -PAE IV

For a refresher: https://rememberthe4th.tumblr.com/post/179288927232/tales-of-the-hunt-a-flower-under-the-frost

Ribbons of smoke curled from where the roof was anchored to the shack’s walls, curling in tiny spirals beneath the night-watcher’s yellow glow. More billows out from where the front-door once stood. The room within crackles and groans as a growing-blaze eats its way through insulation.

Just outside the fire’s reach, the Old-Hunter slowly stems the flow from the holes Kakisi left in his shoulder. “You ought to warn me next time. Lucky I didn’t decide to keep those teeth.”

Kakisi responded with a wide grin, his mouth still stained with blood, “No promises, brother. Can’t think, much less talk, on such an empty stomach.” His thick-accent would normally make understanding him a challenge for some, but the words fell from a languid tongue. Enunciating each with a sluggish care, “Better bite when they don’t know it’s coming. Tension makes the meat tough.” He carefully works each joint and muscle with tired-fingers, stretching and cracking each limb.

“I’d like to think I’m a little more than ‘meat.”

“And I would like to never spend more than a minute in another closet.” The thin tails of smoke reached through the threshold as Kakisi massaged the last of his cramps. “And what is that you have cooking? Enough for two?”

“Just the strix. That cocky little sorcerer slipped through my fingers.”

Kakisi turned to the Old-Hunter with a perplexed frown, “Really? A strix? I did not have the chance to see her in action, but that is quite the surprise. What cause is worthy of one so reclusive?”

“The chance of a new day. They called themselves ‘Children of the Black Sun,’ so I can only assume they seek to bring about the end of this era. They present themselves as a force great-enough to consume the Order, and have shown their potential to draw our attention. However, most of this is hearsay until confirmed. Right now, our concern should be recovering what remains of the strix, and getting the hell out of here. Headquarters will want to hear about this.”

Kakisi strolled to the furthest-wall, “You finish-up with the barbecue. I will worry about making our exit.” Smiling, he gently patted the wall, which violently contorts under his touch. With only a nod of agreement, the Old-Hunter disappeared into a low-hanging cloud as rolled-in through the threshold.

Lucas let his ghostly-steed join the others. With the herd complete, their whirlwind began pulling the loose snow and debris from the ground around it. Even the Young-One felt its strength from several yards away. She tried to focus on staunching the flow from her wound, but the cyclone of ice and snow dancing beneath the silvery moonlight was slightly distracting. Cries were barely audible from within the spinning walls, but she could feel the beast’s panic. She pried her eyes from the vortex for a moment, gauging Lucas’ focused expression. There was confidence there, and that wall all she needed.

Lucas clasped his hands before his chest, fingers lacing tight between one-another. Eyes still locked to his trap, his voice cut through the cacophony, “Hear me and heed these words! You have trespassed upon this world, and tainted it with malice and bloodshed. You have been weighed against the laws of our world, and deemed Unholy. I, Lucas Blackfeather, on behalf of the Woodsmen Clan and the Holy Order, sentence you to return the otherworlds. I bid you safe-passage by the hooves of Grani.” The cyclone came to a reaching-peak, like a twister flipped upside-down. Its point stabbed through the night-sky, plunging through the abyss, and opening to somewhere beyond. “Farewell.” The winds rose to a ear-splitting shriek. The pounding of hooves grew. And when the Young-One could hardly bear its presence, the vortex began to lift off of the ground. Like a living-veil of white, it peeled from earth.

Lucas let a lungful of air free as his spell resolved. He was careful not break eye-contact, but let himself relax for the first time in far too long. Like cloth pulled through a metal ring, the cyclone was whisked into oblivion. All that remained in its wake was a circle of frost-starved earth, and the shape of two people at the center.

As the moon’s pale light touched the ground, Lucas and the Young-One watched a thin stream of mist rise from the figures. Without a word, they both rushed into the circle.

A man, naked and shaking in the frigid air, knelt there. Clutched to his chest was what remained of Yoko. Her robes still sparkled under the moonlight, but their color had waned as countless year caught up to her. The rest of Yoko fared far worse; unblemished and smooth skin turned a brownish-black and drawn tight against the bones. As the two came to his side, they could see tears falling onto Yoko’s cheek. The Young-One looked to Lucas for an answer, but the pain he wore was enough to tell her there was no easy solution. He couldn’t make this problem vanish like before.

“You should go back to the truck. You can wait there for me. No need for you to see this. Even the Old-Timer wouldn’t blame you.” His voice was hoarse, fists clenched at his sides. From the corner of his eye, he could see the Young-One shake her head. Sighing, “Sometimes… Sometimes there’s not a neat and tidy ending to these tasks. Sometimes you have to make mercy out of a mess.” Speaking to the man, “You, can you hear me?” The man only shivered as the night stole the heat from his bones. Lucas’ frown deepened, “I didn’t think so. If she’s anything to go by, they’ve been at this for at-least a century, so he could have been raised knowing a now dead-language.”

“Why does it matter?” The Young-One asked, wondering why Lucas didn’t just put the poor guy out of his misery.

Another sigh, this one heavier than before, “He needs to know why, child. He must not leave this world believing us to be the hands of darkness. I doubt he had any memory of his change; no concept of why this has happened. Such sorrow, such pain, can corrupt the soul. I’ll not have the end of one monster bring about another. And… I need the body clear of any blood that might be spilt, there’s a chance it could bring just enough of her back to cause trouble.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’re fluent in… every language?”

“No such luck, but I have a ‘friend’ who could lend us a hand.” Lucas pulled what appeared to be a small doll from his pocket. He let it rest in his palm for just a moment; long enough for the Young-One to get a good look. It seemed to be molded from clay and grass, several strands poking out from its finger-smoothed surface. Despite the severity of the situation, she couldn’t help her heart’s hop when she recognized the shape of a rabbit with two comically oversize ears. In his other hand, Lucas held that emblazoned lighter. With a quick flick, a tall flame rose from the flint. Carefully, he fed the figurine to the flames. The doll was engulfed in a flash, like a strip of phosphorus. Its ashes hung in mid-air for an instant, before being swept off in a sudden gust. From the shadows which caught the remains, a shimmering silhouette of gold came forth. A tiny, semi-transparent, nose poked from the darkness, sniffing hesitantly at the night-air.

The rest of Lucas’ “friend” followed its nose, and the Young-One could barely restrain the urge to squeal as it came into view. The creature had an ethereal presence; the snow behind it just visible through its soft-gold form. It moved across the snow in steady hops without leaving a trail. It was undoubtedly the fattest, fluffiest, and most long-eared rabbit the Young-One had ever seen. When it came to a rest between Lucas and the man, she realized it was also the largest: reaching Lucas’ shin without sitting-up.

Knowing it purpose, the rabbit went right to work. It gave the man a quick sniff, to which he took no notice, before sitting onto its hind-quarters. With both ears stretched straight-up, it reached Lucas’ shoulder.

Taking one last breath, Lucas began, “I’m sorry for what you have lost.” As each word left his lips, different words left the rabbit’s. The spoke with Lucas’ voice, but the Young-One could hardly decipher a single syllable. The man perked-up immediately upon hearing a familiar-tongue. As Lucas continued, the man stared only at him, as if no-one else was speaking on his behalf. When light found the man’s face, the Young-One could see frost forming along the path of his tears. Her heart broke at the sorrow in his eyes.

“There are no words which can ease your suffering, but know you need not prolong this pain. We offer you release, as we too have had our lives twisted by the Unholy. We-” The man’s grip started easing with each word Lucas spoke, until he made mention that his companion was something corrupt. Catching both off-guard, he bared his teeth before curling himself around the corpse.

Though his words were muffled by the silk robes, the rabbit echoed them in a tear-choked voice, “You lie! Yoko was my child, my world! You do not know her as I do!”

“Even the worst fire will provide a gentle warmth to those at the right distance. Only from afar can we see its destruction. You knew her as your heart wanted you to, not as she truly was. Let us take the burden of what was done by her hand. We will bear this memory. Please, accept this mercy.” The man leaned back for a moment, studying the one laying in his arms. With a sigh that seemed to carry the last of his strength, he let Yoko slide from his grasp. Lucas gave the Young-One a distinct nod, “Go ahead.”

Trying not to show how heavy a burden he’d just placed on her, the Young-One creeps beside the man. Making each slow move deliberate and as obvious as possible, as-if she were dealing with a drowsy-beast, she slid her arms beneath the body. As she tried to pull it away, the man resisted. In that instant, she could feel how weak the cold had made him. Knowing he couldn’t resist her for long, he releases the corpse before turning back to Lucas. The rabbit spoke again, hope just barely heard over his broken tone, “Will… will she be there?”

Lucas held the man’s gaze, “If you hold her in your heart as you pass, perhaps you’ll find her.” The man searched Lucas’ eyes for a sign of deceit, but all he found was pity. Another tear cut across the frost forming on his cheeks as he turned to face the moon above them. In its somber light, he found something which a brought a smile to his lips.

The moment Yoko was clear, Lucas pulled a Bowie knife from beside his boot. When the man offered his throat, Lucas swung wide and fast. That razor-edge slipped through flesh and muscle without hesitation. Steam poured forth alongside warm life. With only a few final shudders, after so many years lost to madness, Li left his shell behind.

It didn’t take long for Lucas and the Young to have what remained of their foes wrapped and secured within the truck’s storage. They shared a silence as they went about their grim task. When they could finally rest within the warmth of the cab, she broke the quiet, “Was all of that a lie? The stuff about finding her?”

Lucas, who had been pondering over a three-quarters-empty pack of cigarettes, lit another. “Does it matter? That devalue having peace in his last moments?” The Young-One didn’t have an answer. All she had were questions to be saved for a better time. As the heavy odor of smoke filled the cab, they waited for the Old-Hunter’s return.

#writing #series #fiction #fantasy

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dialux · 6 years

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a tempest, a cyclone, a goddamned hurricane, ii

First chapter can be found here. The premise of the story is that Sansa can see ghosts, but there’s quite a bit of worldbuilding going on behind that.

Chapter Two: only the brave and broken are kind in this world

The Tyrells come and go, pity in their eyes as they stare at the pale red-haired girl who drifts through the Red Keep, bruises rimming her arms and face, as stern and proud as the North itself. Sansa braids the flowers Margaery offers her in the mornings, fingers as nimble as ever; during the nights, she burns them and uses the ashes to craft spells of protection around herself, around her family.

…

Sansa’s life changes slowly, in bits and pieces: the hours Visenya spends training her lessen, gradually, leaving her with time that she hadn’t realized she had.

It’s a gruesome sort of a schedule, but a schedule nevertheless- her mornings are spent dodging Cersei, praying in the godswood, practicing swords when she feels safe enough for it; her afternoons are spent at court with Joffrey’s threats and the Kingsguard’s fists; her evenings are spent embroidering and other tasks Cersei finds acceptable for Sansa to do. But before she’d trained under Visenya, Sansa’d snuck away on evenings as well as nights, and sleep had felt far less important than fighting against the Lannisters.

Now, Sansa has both sleep and knowledge. It makes the muscles along her lower back spasm sometimes, as the slow-burning desire to do something flares.

Which is why, when Visenya stands before her in the dark-lit corridor where Bloodraven had once hidden Dark Sister, Sansa doesn’t flinch away. There’s a light in Visenya’s eyes that’s frightening, but there’s a rage in Sansa’s heart that’s just as terrifying, and if she’s learned anything in all these months it’s that swords are not as intimidating as they’re made out to be, for all that they’re more dangerous.

“Did you never wonder?”

Sansa frowns up at Visenya. “Wonder?”

“I can teach you to fight,” Visenya announces. “I can teach you to be strong. But I cannot teach you to look at the world. That is something that you must decide on your own.” Her eyes narrow. “Thousands have died inside the walls of the Red Keep. Millions inside the city. And yet you don’t wonder why this city isn’t crawling with ghosts.”

“I thought most slept,” Sansa says carefully. “Like my grandfather.”

“That many? Impossible.” Visenya smiles- though it looks to be more a sneer, cold and bladed. “What have I taught you of assumptions?”

Sansa pulls herself back. “To ask before making them.”

“So ask,” she orders.

…

Foolish curiosity, perhaps, but Sansa’s always loved the old stories and Visenya’s always refused to speak of her own experiences. And what can a few harmless tales do, in the end?

Sansa learns, then.

(Visenya is many things, warrior and queen and sister; she is loved, she loved, she is loathed; she is cold, and terrible, and wrathful as the son she’d once borne.

Here is one thing she is not: harmless.)

“Daenys saw the dead,” Visenya tells her, the next day. They sit in the gardens; or, Sansa sits, and Visenya stands beside her, sunlight catching on the silver planes of her hair to shimmer gold. “Daenys, and then Daenerys, and then Viserys, and then Daeron, and then Aelora, and then- Brynden.” Her lips twist, cool disdain in the arch of them. “Three women after me, and all of them fools lost in their minds. Viserys did the best he could, but- he was only one. And Brynden!”

Brynden.

There is no Brynden in House Targaryen. Not unless-

“A bastard and a fool and a failure,” Visenya spits. “I ought to have slit his mother’s throat myself, I ought to have saved that blood for someone better suited for these deathful things.”

Sansa weaves the roses between her fingers. The petals are soft but the stems are hard, fibrous from being cut too late. It’s late summer. She can feel it: the air is different from only a few months previous, a bite accompanying the mornings, a tooth to the wind’s chill. Winter is coming, but few seem to know it.

“He did not do what you wished?” she asks mildly.

“He was strong,” Visenya says. “He had the blood stronger than all the rest. But he had ambition as well, ambition enough to swallow the world whole. And for that ambition was he banished by Aegon. I was close- so close- to allowing Rhaenys’ bones to sleep. I gave him Dark Sister, I gave him everything he ever wanted. Had he only gone to Dorne-” she slashes her hand down, and Sansa feels the wave of ice follow in its wake. “-but he did not, and he went to the Wall, and I had to wait for another hundred years.”

Her eyes are bright, Sansa thinks idly. Fever-bright. Star-bright.

War-bright.

“You’ve still not explained what going to sleep is,” Sansa says, dropping the rose. The thorns catch on her slippers, tear the edging of lace, but she cannot bend to lift it. There are cuts on her lower back that will open if she lets her posture soften a little. “The dead are dead, are they not?”

Visenya pauses. “They’ve not told you?”

“Who’s not told me?”

“Your uncle,” she says, flatly. “Your uncle and your grandfather. This is…” she trails off, staring at Sansa. Then she smiles, and she looks- frightening, as if a dragon were just leashed under her skin. “Unexpected.”

“Why would they have-” Sansa begins, but Visenya speaks over her.

“The Stark inheritance is not just a meaningless crown, nor a castle old enough to make dragons quail, nor a land cold and dead and hard,” says Visenya. “It is your blood, and the tales that every heir has been told, from Brandon the Builder down to your own father.” Her lip curls, faintly, and the air thrums with a chill that cracks in Sansa’s bones. “Perhaps- your father- has not been told. But that does not mean they can shirk their duties.” She straightens, proud and stern, more terrifying in one motion than Cersei could hope to be in a thousand. “You have power to make the seas shatter and the stars shake, and I am not one to hope that you will learn to tame it by accident. I will not make their mistakes.”

Sansa shivers, just a little, and the pain that follows down her back makes her teeth clatter like dice in a cup.

“The dead are dead,” Visenya tells her. “They will always be that, once their life drains from them. But some do not rest, if they are angry, or if they are strong, or if they are scared- it matters little, the reason. All that matters is that moment, between life and between death, when the soul is stretched between two realms.”

She flashes her teeth, glinting points that shimmer like so many crystals, and Sansa remembers the tales she’d once read in Winterfell’s library: of men and women who’d not ridden dragons but become dragons, who’d learned to take all of a dragon’s viciousness and flame and strength inside them and master it until one couldn’t tell when they would be human and when they would be dragon and when they would be a strange, terrible mix of both.

If ever there was a woman suited for such a thing, it would be Visenya.

Visenya, who smiles a smile too fanged to be anything called reassuring, and says, “Death is painful. It is a sundering of the soul from the body. It is more painful than stripping the flesh from your bones, than burning you alive, than making a thousand cuts upon your body. It is cold, to some: the cold that goes straight to your soul, and aches worse than you can breathe. It is heat, or stabs, or something else altogether.” Gold strands spread behind her, dancing in a wind that doesn’t exist in the living world; it looks, Sansa thinks, as if they’re caught in the wind of a dragon’s wings, fierce and buffeting, rolling. “And in that moment of all-consuming pain, when our life slips from us, we must want, desperately, yearningly; we must want something more than we want the pain to end. And if you want it badly enough, you will have it.

“It is a terrible gift,” she murmurs, calming a little, enough for the pale glow surrounding her to dim, enough for Sansa to look at her without spots dimming her vision. “There are so few times that we are given what we want in life, and we are trained to hone that wanting for so many years, and the one time we are offered a chance- we take it, without knowing the consequences, and we must wait for others to release us of that which tethers us to life after.”

Wanting, Sansa thinks. You must want something more than you want to live, more than the pain, more than all else.

The Targaryens are- or were- known for it- for being mad, and being great, and being something the world could not quite hold in its seams. But those were the kings, who spent their lives in the sunlight and the glare of the world; not the women, who played games of twisting, moonlit webs instead, who were offered little, who were given even less.

You learn to want, Sansa thinks, her hand clenching in her lap. That’s what you learn, for years and years, and then you die, and you want something even then- and of course you stay.

Of course you do.

Life is never easy, she knows, she’s learned, back under Winterfell’s steady, untrembling eaves. She’s listened to Sansa’s stories of Jonnel, and Lyarra’s stories of her mother, and Donnor’s stories of his father- she’s learned all of them, all of the older, harsher stories, all of the sharper, terrible tales.

Life is never easy, but death- Sansa’s always expected death to be simpler, somehow. Death is death, and it is terrifying, and it is inevitable, and it is beautiful, sometimes, but it is simple, too, or so she’d thought.

But maybe it isn’t.

Maybe it’s killing that’s easy, but death itself isn’t.

Sansa breathes, in and out, air in her lungs that freezes and aches.

“And the wanting,” she asks, “that’s enough?”

Visenya’s eyes narrow. “Those of Old Valyria have different rituals for when we die. From flame have we come, and to flame shall we return.” She says the last differently, as if she were reciting a song, or a catechism. “If our bones are not touched by flame, we remain. One can stay back by wanting- that is what happened with Rhaella, to hear her tell it- but the lack of flame chains us here just as much. It is why I know Rhaenys to be here still, and not beyond. And that- that is why I have stayed.”

For a long moment, Sansa cannot respond. Her muscles hurt, and she bleeds in rippling scars across her back, but there is another ache unfolding inside her, now: a kind that makes her chest quiver with a strange emotion, a kind that makes her eyes sting with tears she’s not shed in months.

“You could have left,” she says, quietly. Of course Visenya could have left- she’s met six people who could have passed her over, but she’s refused them all. She’s stayed, for centuries, helpless and aching and hurting, all for the slender hope of saving a sister a half a continent away.

“Of course,” says Visenya. “But Rhaenys remains here. Aegon has passed into peace, but she has not, and I am the eldest of us. If I do not care for them, there is none else who would, and so I will.”

Fierce enough to burn the world, thinks Sansa, lips pressed together until they’re bloodless thin. Not just madness, or greatness. Love, fierce enough to last through death.

“And you’re certain of it,” she murmurs. “Rhaenys- she is here. Not gone.”

“Of course,” Visenya repeats, but her eyes are sharper now, and colder. “We cared for her, both Aegon and I, since the moment she was born. Even Meraxes loved her as I’ve never seen a dragon love a human, before or after. No flame ever touched her. And none of us knew what would happen if flame did not touch us- a simple burn would have been enough- before death, but Aegon read it in one of our father’s books- they called it a deathless life- and he told it to me in passing. And I told it to Rhaenys, and Rhaenys told it to one of her lovers, and her lover betrayed her to Dorne.

“And then they fell, both of them- Meraxes and Rhaenys.” Her voice is clipped and toneless, but Sansa thinks there is a rage there, right beneath the control. It is always there, with Visenya. “And the Ullers tortured her for years. It was only- only after Nymor assumed the princedom that he sent a peace treaty. He told Aegon that he would end Rhaenys’ suffering with flame, and so ensure that she passed peacefully.”

Sansa tips her head to the side. If there is one thing clear in history, it’s that- “He took the peace.”

“He was a fool,” snarls Visenya. “I told him, I begged- but no, he took it, and the Ullers consigned her to death with poison, and Aegon had not the strength to remain here even after we knew the truth.”

“I- I don’t-” Sansa shakes her head, dislodging the rage that Visenya seems to blaze with, seems to infect everyone around her with. “Is that it, then? Flame, and you’ll pass over?”

But before Visenya can answer, another voice interrupts.

“I’ll thank you not to teach your blasphemies to my granddaughter.”

Visenya looks over Sansa’s shoulder and tosses her head as Lady had once done, right before she leapt at Grey Wind and bore him to the ground.

“Stark,” she sneers.

“Lady Targaryen,” says Rickard, and emerges out of thin air, beside Sansa’s left shoulder.

“What nonsense are you talking of now?”

Rickard moves one hand over the flat of the other, sharply, as if he were honing a blade- and light winks around his wrists for the briefest heartbeat, silver and bladed. “You have overstepped. She does not know her own histories, and she will not be taught them from a Valyrian conqueror. They are a Stark inheritance, and they are a sacred inheritance, and we shall not-”

“It is your duty, and you have neglected it,” Visenya murmurs.

She rests her hands against the smooth lines of her gown, but Sansa isn’t fooled- she knows how fast Visenya can be when she wants to be. The air had been cold with only Visenya present, but now there’s an electric tang there, one that makes her back ache and ache and ache.

“She is but a child.” Rickard flexes his shoulders, and Visenya’s face twists in disgust. “I will not have your quest for peace mar another child’s innocence, much less one of mine own blood.”

Another child? Sansa frowns.

“I am teaching her,” Visenya hisses. “She owes me two debts now, Stark, and both are heavy ones. You cannot deny that.”

Rickard remains calm, for all that Sansa can feel the blaze of power that Visenya’s wielding, for all that it must affect him even more. “I deny one debt,” he says, levelly. “You named the price of your teaching when you first met her, and knowledge imparted is not confined to one sphere alone. You cannot name a debt of death-knowledge, Lady Targaryen.” He smiles, then, and even Visenya swallows at the promise there, at the cold implacability of it. “I am not Torrhen, and I am not either of my sons, and I have told you once before: I care nothing if you wish to pass your sister on, but my protection is upon my blood and you shall not manipulate them to your ends again.”

He lifts one hand, and rests the other on Sansa’s shoulder, light and cold as the first breeze of spring after winter. “Begone, I say, for one sennight. That ought to impress upon you the strength of vows sworn.”

“Starks,” spits Visenya, looking as if she might just breathe out venom. “I told Aegon he ought to have taken your swords, but the fool didn’t listen. If he’d only taken Torrhen’s head…”

“Then you would not have Sansa, the first hope you’ve had in near a century,” says Rickard. “We are contrary creatures, we Starks, but when winter comes we are the only hope in all the world. And winter is coming, Lady Targaryen, no matter how much your dragons breathe flame.”

He bows, an incline that looks as severe as a mountain’s own silhouette, and waits. Visenya snarls again, though this time it’s soundless- and then she fades out of sight in the same manner that Rickard had appeared.

“Targaryens,” says Rickard, and it sounds amused, now, as opposed to the unyielding solemnity of before. “They have the pride to swear vows, and the temper to cross them, and the pride yet again to accept their missteps. A strange house, altogether.”

Strange, Sansa thinks, staring. You- you just- you just sent her away for no reason, and you don’t-

“I don’t understand,” Sansa says, finally, voice high and piercing. “I thought I did, but there’s- there’s vows, and debts, and she’s telling me about death, and-”

“-and, there has been enough talk of this for today.” Rickard gestures for her to rise. “Lady Targaryen is impatient- she has been forced to wait for so long- but she forgets that you are a child still. There is a reason our ancestors placed safeguards, granddaughter: until you have reached adulthood, you cannot be compelled to listen. And that shall not happen for some time yet.”

Sansa clenches her fists. “I want to listen.”

“You shall,” he promises, gently. There’s a howling sadness, though, in his eyes, when he says the words. “I have been remiss to trust in Brandon’s care. I have been even more remiss in avoiding you.” Rickard pauses, and waits for just long enough that Sansa starts to rise. It makes her hiss through her teeth as the simple motion pulls at the scars of her back, but she rides through the pain instead of surrendering to it. “This is a good lesson to you: grief is a potent drug, and you shall only lose more if you lose yourself to it. It feels so very good to surrender to it, but you must fight, fight as you do against the pain, and for your pride.

“We shall speak on the morrow,” he tells her, and disappears.

No one accompanies Sansa back into the castle.

…

“I do not know the whole story,” Rickard says, when he meets with her the next day- this time, they’re in the godswood, and Sansa has a bruise over her cheekbone, reddening into a deep purple. “Do you remember the story of Rickon? The Stark who died in Dorne?”

Slowly, Sansa nods.

Rickon had died in Dorne, fighting in Daeron’s Conquest, but he’d not left his daughters, Serena and Sansa, defenseless; he’d named his own half-brothers their champions before he’d left Winterfell. He’d not expected those self-same champions to seize his daughters’ rights, however, and certainly not expected them to name themselves Lord. Serena hadn’t lived in Winterfell when she died, but her sister had.

Sansa’s named for her.

And she knows all of her stories.

“The stories were lost with him,” Rickard says. “I shall tell you as my father told me- Eddard does not know what he lost, when he lost Brandon and I in one day- and he never will.” It’s a dull shock in her belly to realize that it’s her father Rickard’s referring to. “You are lucky you can listen, Sansa, so that you can tell your brother’s children, and pass on the knowledge.”

“I still don’t know the knowledge,” she points out.

“That will come,” Rickard replies, with more patience than seems fair, particularly with the sharpness of her own tone. “First I shall tell you the sundering, and then I shall tell you the beginning, and then I shall tell you of another half-a-hundred tales I once believed false, and now know to be truth.” He leans forwards. “The year has not yet turned- we are just past two of its thirds. By the time we reach the turning, you shall know all that I know. That is as far as my protection shall carry.”

“Your protection against other ghosts,” she says, quietly. “Like Visenya.”

“I am a Stark,” he says, proudly, simply. “We do not fear death and we do not fear dying. It is our legacy. And you are a daughter of my son, blood of my blood. There are protections that I can offer you, simply because of that. But even more: I did not let Visenya meet with you until I was certain of her control- she swore a vow to me, to not kill you as she did Daeron. And so I could send her away.”

“I,” says Sansa. “I do not understand.”

He nods. “You need not know everything to understand this. All you need understand is that we are not Targaryens to search for peace in unknown lands. We are Starks, and we are descendants of Brandon the Builder, and we stay on forever. There are rituals you can do, to make it easier- Lady Targaryen spoke truly, when she said it was painful beyond imagining- but in the end it is your own will.” He doesn’t smile, not exactly, but Sansa’s seen the way her father’s face shifts when he’s satisfied with something. “And we have never lacked in that. Sense, yes, and honor, often- but not will.”

Sansa lifts her head, flattens her shoulders, imagines her bones to be as long and lithe as a wolf’s. “And when you lack that will?” she demands. “When you must do something you dislike, as you are doing now.”

What then, grandfather? Do not think that your reluctance has gone unnoticed. You hate this, but you are still doing it. And you are not doing it properly, either.

Rickard looks at her- just looks- and that’s enough to silence Sansa. He looks like Lyarra, a little, and like her father too, but more than anyone else he looks like Brandon Snow, Torrhen’s bastard brother. He looks sad, and angry, and sad that he’s angry.

“It is my duty,” he says. “I ought to have protected my family better. My ambitions and my loves outweighed the duties Brandon gave us, and I let both Stark lord and heir die together, for the sake of a vengeance I have not yet found. And you are too young for this, far too young, but there are ghosts waiting to teach you falsehoods, and there are whispers of terrible things from the North, and I am afraid you have not the time to learn slowly.”

“The duties,” Sansa says, as a question.

A smile, small and bright as a flash of moonlight on waves, darts across Rickard’s face. “That is the beginning.” His voice deepens, shifting into the same cadence with which Visenya had spoken the day before. “We shall begin with the sundering, which was Rickon, Rickon son of Cregan- who died in Dorne and would have let the hopes of the world die with him had he not loved his sister so dearly.

“He told her the truth of our heritage, though not the whole of it, and so when he died she could preserve it- she was also a speaker, and so knew the truth- away from Jonnel, and away from Edric, but alive for the next of the Stark line. From Sarra it passed to Serena, and from Serena to Arrana when she had the gift of the sight; from Arrana to Arsa, who bore the burden of telling it to her brother Beron when he showed his gift; from Beron to Donnor, eldest and dearest child of Beron; from Donnor to Willam when he lost his breath of a wasting sickness; from Willam to Rodrik, when they were captured at Long Lake and Artos negotiated the release of one of them; from Rodrik to Edwyle, who took up the Lordship of his father; from Edwyle to Rickard, who did not believe in the tales; and from Rickard to you, dearest: across death and across generations.”

He reaches out, and catches her hand. Her palm blazes with the cold of it, but Sansa holds still, keeps her eyes fixed to Rickard’s.

“Eight thousand years,” he says, with the inexorable weight of the ending of a story, “this tale has been carried, from one Stark to another. We have lost pieces, and added pieces, but we are the hopebringers and the dreamspeakers and the wolfsingers, and we shall not falter, not through war, not through death, not through the greatest pain, not through the oldest hurts.”

He shudders to a halt, and reaches out to brush against her wrist.

Then he fades.

…

The next day, he tells her of Brandon the Builder, who had founded their house, and of Brandon the Breaker, who had defeated the Night’s King all those millennia ago.

The day after that, he tells her of the wolfsingers, people who could become wolves when they wished it, people who sang songs in their wolf form of such ferocious beauty the Starks had managed to conquer the Vale and half of Essos before being turned back.

The day after that, he tells her of the history of the title hopebringer, for when all of Westeros faltered in the winter, when both wildlings and Northmen were on the verge of dying in snows higher than mountains and colder than death, it was the Starks who stepped forwards, and the Starks who fought it back, and the Starks who slayed the Night’s King when all the rest could not.

He’s already taught her dreamspeaking, but not of Cregard’s penchant for making his enemies scream the night before a battle, nor Jocelyn’s iron ambition that had ensured highborn marriages for all three of her daughters by twisting their desired husbands to the same cause.

(“But it’s wrong,” Sansa says, when he tells her of how Cregard had made Dagon Greyjoy scream for a fortnight before Beron truly confronted him. Rickard flickers when he sees the horror on her face, in and out of sight, before he says, fiercely, “Dagon would have slit half the North’s throats in their sleep if he thought he’d get away with it. In battle- you do not let honor dictate your motions. It might be wrong, or it might be right; what matters is the tools, and whether you use them.”

He says, “It is the truth. Shall you turn from it?”

Yes, thinks Sansa.)

She folds her hands over one another, parchment pale, and bears through it, breathes through it, through the instinctive horror and the twisting pain. She is a Stark yet, and the first princess of the North in more than three centuries, and she has survived both swords and words sharper than swords.

Sansa will survive this too.

…

Visenya approaches Sansa a sennight later, when Rickard’s order ends, but Rickard transposes himself between them before she can speak.

“I am not Torrhen,” he says warningly, and Sansa remembers what he’d said before, in the gardens- I am not Torrhen, and I am not my sons. She wonders what the words mean. “Do not forget that, Lady Targaryen.”

“I could never,” she says, baring her teeth. “Now move, you old fool. I must speak to the girl. I am her tutor yet, and there are things I must teach her that you have no right to hear.”

Again, Rickard bows, but this time he’s the one to fade from view. Visenya spends the rest of the afternoon training her on the way of swords, of turning and twisting and dancing to the music of steel and death.

…

It’s at the year’s turning that Joffrey strikes her.

It’s the first time that he does it himself- it’s fast, two slaps that sting more than hurt, that surprise more than ache- but Elia appears at it, and she makes a noise that hurts Sansa’s throat to think of, all high and scornful.

“When we wed,” he says, wrenching her chin up to meet his mad green gaze, “you will scream. I will present your brother’s head and your father’s head and Winterfell’s cornerstone at the feast, and you will drink wine made from your bitch mother’s blood, and you will thank me for putting a crown on your head.”

For months now, Sansa’s been silent.

She wonders if anyone has noticed it, but she’s quite certain that nobody has. The ghosts whom she’d once been close to had stopped spending so much time with her after Visenya started teaching her swords, and both Rickard and Visenya- the ghosts she spends most of her time with- are too lost in their own minds to pay much attention to how quiet she’s been. Brandon’s the one who might have realized, but he’s been sulking off in a corner after Rickard shouted at him.

But Sansa’s been quietly shifting her mind for months now, learning movements from Visenya that would kill a man without much more than the scrape of a nail, learning truths from her grandfather that would leave Joffrey’s mind broken more cleanly than the Mountain crushing it- she’s changed, and she feels something flare up within her to match that change, through the cracks of her mind where she’s grown up.

She has a mountain’s steadiness in her. But she also has a wolf’s ability to smell when tides are turning, when duty calls her elsewhere, and Sansa lifts her lips to smile at Joffrey.

Sansa wonders, briefly, if he knows who last smiled like this.

(Not Visenya, who smiles like a dragon. Not Rickard, whose smiles are more elusive than a wolf in the midst of winter. Not Brandon, who smiles like the cut of a broken blade.)

(It’s a smile Sansa has seen only once before, a smile she yet has carved into the curve of her heart: Elia’s smile, when she saw her brother come to King’s Landing, when she heard his bitterness against the Lannisters.

It is a terrifying smile.)

It doesn’t matter. Joffrey will know of her rage, and he will fear her soon, but the time for that has not yet come.

“Yes,” she says, because she is a girl who can be hurt.

Within, she says, in a swirl of cold that echoes of a vow: I am a Stark. I am a princess. And when my brother comes to King’s Landing, he will take your head, and my father shall take the Kingslayer’s head, and I will drink of your mother’s blood and then- and then, my vengeance shall be satisfied.

Septa Mordane’s head is a husk, now, little more than a skull. Jeyne’s has more hair stuck to it, but there’s nothing of the girl that had once sat beside her and loved her. Sansa stares at them when Joffrey brings her up here, and every single time she has thought of her grief and her fruitless rage.

Rickard’s protection would last her until the turn of the year. A fortnight to plot, and plan, and fight her way out- it’s not enough, but it will have to be. Sansa’s been making do with cobbled-together hopes and hastily-considered plans for a long time now, and she has little hope her escape will be any better.

She tilts her head back, eyes affixed to her first friend and oldest mentor. If she’d been born before Aegon’s conquest, Sansa would have bowed and called Septa Mordane her second mother- but her Septa would have hated to be remembered in such a manner anyhow, so she only nods and whispers, “Goodbye.”

Joffrey, as always, doesn’t hear.

Elia, beside her, does. There’s a longdrawn inhale, like a choked-off cry. Sansa waits for her to speak but Elia doesn’t. There’s only silence, and then she winks out of sight.

It doesn’t matter. Sansa has done what she has to, and when she leaves she will not leave regrets behind her to fester.

Goodbye. Her footsteps echo in the red-stone hallways. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Sansa will not leave anything of herself behind.

…

That night, for the first time in months, Betha appears to her.

“You shall leave soon,” she says carefully.

Sansa nods. “My grandfather’s protection shall fade at the turn of the year. I’ve learned all that I can, and I’ve spent long enough here, I think.”

More than a year and a half. Sansa wonders if anyone has ever ached as much as she has, in these past months; the pain has sunk into the weave of her skin, right up until she cannot imagine life without it.

“Not only your grandfather’s protection,” Betha replies softly. “Ours as well.”

“Yours.” Sansa frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Rickard Stark bound Visenya Targaryen in chains borne of blood and debt,” Betha murmurs, before she lets one hand lift up, slowly, as if she were unzipping the fabric of the world. “But they are not the only cages possible, and they are not half so powerful as chains of blood thrown by blood.” She smiles, almost confiding, but there’s a nasty edge to it that makes Sansa’s want to flinch. “Naerys rather enjoyed hearing Aegon’s screams.”

Sansa can feel herself pale. “He hasn’t passed on?”

“Not him, nor Aerys, nor Maegor. It takes a strong soul to stay on, Lady Stark- strength that comes from pain, or madness.” Betha smiles again. This time, the very air chills at the bitterness in it. “The Targaryens have always had overmuch of both.”

“I thought myself safe,” Sansa replies faintly. “I thought myself safe.”

“And so you are,” says Betha, briskly. “For another fortnight. Our chains are strong, but they shall last for the period of a year alone. When it shifts from old to new, so too do the bindings, and if any of them evade us then, they shall likely attempt to hunt you down.” She reaches forwards and cups Sansa’s cheek, frozen fingers blazing pain down her neck. “We cannot allow it.”

“So you wish me to leave?”

“I wish you to be safe,” Betha says. “It matters little how.”

…

Naerys comes to her next, and Alysanne is supposed to come to Sansa after, but it’s no woman who appears to her on the third night.

It’s Brandon, instead, and it’s a Brandon with a set to his face that leaves Sansa wary.

“I shall have to be quick,” is what he tells her, before anything else. Sansa straightens further, painfully stiff. “We have little time before we’ll be identified. If we’re found-”

Even as he speaks, Sansa sees a faint silver curtain float away from his body. It creeps forwards until it envelops her, filmy and insubstantial. Sansa’s experienced many types of cold in her life; the cold of winter, the chill of ghosts, but never before the emptiness of death. The cold that it slices into her muscles is worse than anything she has ever known before.

“-it won’t be good,” Brandon finishes, before he notices her wincing. “I will leave it soon enough. This takes far too much energy for me to maintain the shield for overlong. But this assures privacy in a manner that none other can.”

She tilts her head to the side, watching him. “Why?”

Brandon, bless him, understands immediately.

“Because Father believes you a child,” he says, voice low and fast. “I would not have interfered, but there are rumors from the North of- eldritch things. Terrible things. Our blood has defended the realms of mankind for millennia, and we cannot falter now, not for all that you are a child.” His face twists. “Sansa, I am very sorry for this. But there is no room for pity, or compassion, or whatever- whatever my father believes, here. You must go North.”

So my grandfather is still hiding things from me. She shakes her head, lets the irritation drop away from her as water off a dragonflower’s leaves. I will have to look, and see, and take note of even more, then.

“I don’t want your pity,” Sansa retorts sharply. “I want to understand. But even if I did understand what you want- and I don’t, not at all- I can’t listen to you. I’ve promised Visenya to burn Rhaenys, and Rhaenys is in Dorne.”

“Yes,” says Brandon, “but you must know where she is, first.”

“She’s in Dorne,” Sansa repeats slowly, exaggerating the syllables.

“Where in Dorne?” Brandon demands. “Hellholt? Sunspear? Is she lost in one of the half-a-hundred deserts the fuckers live in? You’ll never find her if she is. No.” He leans forwards, places his palms on his knees and swings close to her face up until her eyes sting from the sheer pain. “What you must do is find the last person who found her.”

And in that moment, Sansa sees it: the plan, unfolded in front of her, gleaming as a sword the heartbeat before battle. Brandon’s always been brasher than he’s smart, but that’s saying little; he’s bolder than most any other man Sansa’s seen. And when he puts his mind to it…

“Oh,” she says.

“You go North.” Brandon smiles, feral and triumphant. “You fight whatever is worrying the ghosts of Winterfell. And then you speak to Bloodraven, find out where the Targaryen’s bones are buried, and burn the ashes to dust. Your debts will be paid thrice over, and none shall ever speak against it.”

“Oh,” she says, again, but this time the surprise is tempered with disquiet. “The ghosts are worried?”

Brandon tips his head forwards. “Terrified might be a better term. They’re not saying why, though, and that’s even worse.” He taps his lips. “Means it’s a Stark secret, and gods only know how dangerous it’ll be. Mother hasn’t sent a message in almost half a year.”

Sansa stills. If Lyarra is afraid… “She sends them more often than that?”

“Once a month,” he affirms. “For more than ten years, now. It’s how I counted time before-” Brandon shakes his head. “Before.”

“We certainly tend to attract dangerous secrets,” Sansa murmurs, smiling weakly.

“The cold,” Brandon replies, but doesn’t smile. Of all Rickard’s children, Brandon looks the most like Lyarra; he has her flatter features, as opposed to Rickard’s hatchet-like face. But in that moment, he looks the same as Rickard had, in facing against Visenya. Stern and terrifying, made of an old, proud wrath. “Death. It is coming for us all. Father has still not told you the truth of our burials, has he?”

“No,” Sansa says, but before she can say anything more Brandon drops the silver veil. Heat rushes back to her, painful in its suddenness, and Sansa bites back the reflexive urge to hiss. Brandon’s face is shadowed with sympathy, but there’s a grim undertone to it that’s more eloquent than any of his words could be: he’s frightened, and Sansa feels her own stomach tighten to match.

A moment later, he fades out of view, and Alysanne enters.

She doesn’t speak to Brandon alone after that.

……

Sansa doesn’t tell anyone else what she knows, either.

…

Four days later, she breaks enough to ask Rickard what the Starks’ death rituals consist of.

“Brandon,” Rickard says, instead of answering. His face darkens rapidly, as if thunderstorms were scuttling across the bridge of his nose.

“No,” replies Sansa. “Only- the Targaryens burned their dead, and they all seem to want to go beyond. But every Stark who died with the death rituals has remained here, and none seem ready or willing to go either.” She tilts her head up and looks at Rickard, steadily, calmly. “Why?”

“You are too young-”

“I’m old enough,” she snaps. “I’m old enough, Grandfather. Rodrik the Crusader led his men at the age of thirteen, and none spoke against him despite his youth. I am only a year younger, and I am not asking to lead armies- only for information! What is so dangerous in words?”

What is so harmful in tales?

Her own thoughts come back to her, and Sansa represses them with a shudder. Visenya might have spurred her grandfather to teach her, but there has still been nothing truly dangerous in what she’s been told.

“You ought have been older,” Rickard says wearily. “This burden is too terrible.”

“But I am not.” Sansa remembers the way her mother had once set her jaw, when her father wished to go out riding in the middle of a snowstorm; Catelyn had set her jaw and given Ned a look, and that was all it took for all of Winterfell to know that no such ride would take place. She does her best to emulate that tilt of the head, that mocking smile, now. “I am not, but I am enough. And you will have to tell me anyhow.”

Rickard pauses. Then he says, in the same practiced rhythm of a memorized tale: “Brandon the Breaker defeated the Night’s King, all those millennia ago. The Night’s King, whose Queen was of the Others- it was a bitter battle, and at the last Brandon slew him. It was too late, however. When he returned to Winterfell, it was to a slaughter: of daughters and sons and wives and husbands, all by the Night’s Queen’s hand. He killed her after he cut up the corpses of his sons she sent after him.” His eyes shadow. “She cursed him, Sansa, before he killed her. For slaying blood of his blood, she cursed him with a prophecy: that the Others would rise again, and the Night’s King with them, and all Brandon had lost would be in vain. So he answered by using her power and binding his line as close to death as the living can walk. When he died, he became the first ghost in the North.”

“She cursed him,” Sansa says, quietly. “For what?” Because she heard, but no, it can’t be true-

“For slaying blood of his blood.” Rickard smiles, sweet and bitter. Sansa thinks she knows, now; or Brandon slew his sons and daughters, his own blood. But Rickard isn’t finished; he continues: “For the Night’s King was Brandon’s brother, trueborn and of his own heart.”

No.

Sansa imagines it: seeing Robb at the other end of Dark Sister, pale and blue-veined, hollowed. She imagines driving that sword forwards, and she sees the pain that erupts in Robb’s eyes, feels the horror that erupts in her own stomach.

And then Brandon returned to Winterfell to see it broken, blood running down to the White Knife in a river, and he faced the specters of his sons, his daughters-

“That’s why it’s called Winterfell,” she says, abruptly assured of it.

“Yes,” says Rickard. “For winter fell at Winterfell, and the man who let it fall was thereby named its King. We have been called Kings of Winter ever since.”

“If Brandon was the first ghost-”

“-most other ghosts are his descendants.” Rickard smiles, barely. “The Targaryens come by the ability separately, yes, but the ghosts that remain without Targaryen blood have some measure of Stark-blood in their veins. Either that, or a will to overcome a pain more overwhelming than any you can imagine. They might not be direct descendants, but- enough. By spirit, at the least.”

Sansa leans back. “That’s not what Visenya told me.”

“Lady Targaryen knows far fewer secrets than she believes herself possessing,” Rickard says quietly. “And knows even less what she pretends. Stark secrets shall remain secrets, granddaughter, never fear.”

“There are so many ghosts,” she says, then, remembering: silver flashes have lit up her eyes for so long, the corners of her vision shimmering strands of gossamer; Sansa can only imagine how many people she has met, how many people of Brandon Breaker’s line she has met over her scant years.

“Eight millennia is a long time,” he replies. “The Targaryens have not been here for even a half of a tenth of that time, and they’ve wreaked havoc on the continent. Imagine- eight thousand years.” The smile fades. “But that is not why I hesitated to tell you, Sansa. There have been whispers from the North of terrible things. The usual channels of information are hesitating, and those ghosts who are communicating are speaking less- as if there were little to say, or they were afraid to say it.

“There is only one reason for it. Can you think of one?”

What would the dead fear? Sansa frowns into the distance. Why would the dead be silent? Brandon said it would be a Stark secret. If Brandon Breaker did bind us so close to death, then…

“I can’t be right.”

“Say it,” Rickard orders.

“I cannot be right,” Sansa repeats. “It’s impossible. It-”

“The dead are afraid,” says Rickard. “Lyarra has not spoken to me in months, and there has not been a Stark in Winterfell for just as long. The dead are terrified, and Winterfell has scarcely spoken more than a few words on this subject. If you hide behind your fears and call them impossible, all your training shall have been for naught.”

I can be brave, yes. As my grandmother before me, and my namesake before her. I will be brave.

“Someone is reanimating the dead,” Sansa says flatly.

Rickard inclines his head.

“The Others are reanimating the dead.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The question is how,” he says. “And how to stop them. There is one last tale I have not told you, Sansa, and then you shall know all that I do of our stories- all that is worth knowing, anyhow.”

“Tell me,” she demands.

Slowly, Rickard shakes his head. “This is a tale that another shall tell you. It is not my place. But when you reach Winterfell, tell Lyarra that you’ve heard all the tales but one- she shall know what to do.” He reaches out and brushes a hand over her face, gentle for all its pain. “You look so much like my daughter, for all that you are so different. May the gods guide you well, when you leave.”

“Who said that I was-”

“-the ghosts have known of your decision to leave since you told Elia,” Rickard says, the same faint smile on his face.

“I didn’t know Elia spoke so much with others.”

“She doesn’t. But this was more important than her resentments.”

Sansa juts her jaw out. “If Lyarra is afraid, then it is something to be afraid of. I must go North.”

“You must go south,” Rickard says evenly. He flickers, slightly, in and out of view.

“First the North,” she says. “To see my home, and my-”

“-and your oaths?”

She hesitates for all of a breath. Rickard’s mouth purses. Even as she opens her mouth to speak, Sansa feels the temperature drop, so quickly her blood feels as if it might crack in her veins. When she turns around, she sees Visenya.

A Visenya blazing brighter than all the stars in the night sky, causing frost to creep down the room’s walls from her sheer wrath. Had it been any colder- had Sansa been in the North; had winter been any stronger; had the sun been any lower- she’d likely have frozen alive before any action could be taken. As it is, there’s just enough warmth for her to bear through the initial pain and slip to her knees, teeth chattering wildly.

“Traitor,” snarls Visenya. “Oathbreaker, I name you, Sansa of House Stark. Oathbreaker and traitor and fool, all in one. Did you think you could rescind your oaths to me and live through the consequences? I will have your head for this.” She starts forwards. “And when you die, I will spend the rest of eternity shredding your soul to tatters.”

She swoops down, and Sansa rolls away, face turning towards the window just in time to feel a warm breeze enter. It feels like a slap across her face, turning all her bones brittle; warmth warring against the unnatural drop in temperature. She coughs, and feels the slickness of blood across the back of her throat.

Sansa speaks through it.

“If you kill me, you condemn Rhaenys.”

“I do not care,” Visenya spits. “I have waited almost three centuries; what is another? I shall wait for another, and they shall come. I have an eternity to wait!”

“An eternity of suffering for your sister, and an eternity indeed: for the dead come, and the Others with them, and there is little you can do for it at all.” Sansa twists her neck and spits on the floor, blood bright against the red stone. She remembers an old saying, one that Torrhen’s eldest son had been very fond of: Aegon built a castle of blood on the site of his triumphs. Her palms ache.

“I am not your tame pet,” Visenya whispers, seemingly so far beyond rage her voice cannot get louder. “I am not a person to let you walk away from broken vows. I am the first queen of these realms, and the strongest of them all, and the cruelest.” She bares her teeth. “And you, little girl, are soon going to be dead.”

Gods above, Sansa thinks, scrabbling backwards- she cries out, and falls, when Visenya slashes her hands down, but the expected wave of cold doesn’t come.

Had it touched her, Sansa’s sure she would have died from the inside out. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does: her blood would have cracked in her veins and turned to blocks of ice; her heart would have burst from the water’s expansion; her muscles would have torn apart in a singular moment of pain-

But it doesn’t happen.

Rickard flashes between them, and he absorbs the cold that Visenya sent at her without even flinching. He straightens, instead, and says in a voice that rolls around them like thunder: “I have warned you twice now, and this is the third, Lady Targaryen. You have overstepped your duties, and your rights.”

“She overstepped,” Visenya cries. “It is your granddaughter who has broken her vows, Stark, not I! And you heard it with your own ears: she said it, promised to go North instead of south, stated a desire to see her blood before she ever saw her oaths through. You tried to convince her otherwise, and now-”

“-and I have not heard her finish,” he says, level as he’d been with Sansa. “If I thought her an oathbreaker, then I would not have stepped in.”

Sansa stares at him, horrified. Her grandfather needs her to convince him, and the only possible reason she might have to go North instead of south has been given to her by a person who does not deserve to be revealed in such a manner. But between Brandon’s desire for secrecy and her own desire for survival, Sansa knows well which she’ll choose.

“I swore to save her,” she croaks. “But she might be anywhere in Dorne, and I cannot spend overlong searching for her. So I must find the person who saw her last.” Sansa slowly, achingly, draws herself up. She doesn’t once look at her grandfather, not even when he frowns thunderously. “Brynden Waters, if you were wondering. And then I shall search for Rhaenys in all the deserts you wish of me.”

She turns and leaves slowly.

...

Neither of them curse her, but she half-expects them to do so- curse her in the back with waves of ice that tear her apart. Perhaps for all of Joffrey’s attempts, he’ll find her a red-ribboned corpse within her own chambers, slain by Westeros’ first queen and Sansa’s own grandfather, both of whom have been dead for decades.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens, but Sansa only relaxes when she is in the sunlight. Her teeth still feel cold, and she shudders at it.

I will return, Lyarra. She stares into the sun and does not blink. I swore that to you before I ever swore anything else, and I shall hold to it.

I will return.

…

“I am not Torrhen,” Rickard says, days later, and it sounds like an apology.

Sansa’s throat is rawer than she’s ever screamed in front of Joffrey, and her hair feels like a weight along her spine.

“It took Visenya all of a breath to decide that I’d broken my vows,” she says softly. Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees him stiffen. “Either someone alerted her to what was going on in the room, or she has been following me all this time.” For the first time in two days, she looks at her grandfather. Her voice is mocking when she quotes his words back at him: “Stark secrets shall remain secrets, granddaughter, never fear.”

You either told her yourself that I was going to break my vows, or you let her follow me without my knowledge. But Rickard would not have given away Stark secrets, not the kind that came through the lineage. Sansa knows which one will leave her heart in fewer pieces, but she also knows that she cannot flinch from the truth. You must have told her, when you touched me- you looked so soft, then.

Liar.

“I am not Torrhen,” says Rickard, again. “I am not my sons. I am a hard man, Lady Stark, and-”

“-and I am your granddaughter,” Sansa hisses, fury surging up her throat, rawer than any blood. “You might not be Torrhen, but at least Torrhen knew when to kneel. Knew when lives were worth more than honor. And at least your sons know what it is to love, for I am certain you’ve forgotten all traces of it.” She turns to the window, lets the breeze warm her face as she’d done when she laid on the floor helpless.

When Rickard stood by silently.

“You disgust me,” she finishes, and it tolls in her soul as a ringing bell.

Oh, Lyarra, I am sorry for this. But your husband is not a good man, and I cannot forgive him for choosing his honor over my life, when he knew himself to be all the family I had within a hundred miles of this city.

I am sorry, but I cannot forget this.

When she looks away from the sunlight, the spots are so bright in her vision that she cannot see whether ghosts are present or not. There is silence around her, and the sun feels very warm along her skin. It takes her a moment, and then Sansa realizes- Rickard’s left. This is likely the first time that she has been alone all her life, without any ghosts around her. This is how the truly living feel, every moment of their lives.

Sobs do not shudder through her shoulders, and there are no tears in her eyes, but she sinks to her knees anyhow. There is only silence around her: long and unfettered and terrible for it.

Her palms ache, as they’ve done since Joffrey struck her.

Her palms ache, but they do not shake at all.

…

She says goodbye to the ghosts she has met, over the months. There are more than she thought there would be: enough to make her wonder when she met them all. It is not so long a farewell as in Winterfell, but there are fewer ghosts in the Red Keep, and Sansa has not been so friendly either.

There are two ghosts she does not speak to, however, and Sansa has no intention of going to look for them either. Visenya and Rickard are far too capable of turning her words back on herself, of twisting her up until she’s uncertain of everything she’s ever done all her life.

Sansa’d decided to not go looking for them, but if there’s one thing that Visenya is incapable of, it’s taking a hint when she’s set her mind on something.

The night that Sansa plans to leave, she flickers into view, and Brandon- who hasn’t left Sansa’s side for almost a full sennight- growls low in his throat at the sight.

“You’ve some nerve showing your face here,” he says.

“I’ve more nerve in one finger than you’ve muscle, boy,” Visenya sneers back, before lifting a brow. “Though- that’s not saying much, I suppose.”

Brandon snarls low in his throat, but before he can answer, Sansa steps forwards.

“Why are you here?” she asks evenly.

Visenya keeps the eyebrow arched. “Has no one ever told you that leaving your tutor without any notice is the height of rudeness? I came to rectify the situation, as soon as it was confirmed to me.”

Which means that she didn’t know at all, and the other ghosts only told her recently.

“You have no right,” Brandon begins, but Sansa cuts him off again.

“There was one thing that I was wondering about.”

“Speak, then.”

Sansa’s palms feel damp; she wipes the sweat against the inside of her sleeves. “When Daeron died, he died without finding Rhaenys. According to you- he searched in Hellholt, and it was on his way to Skyreach that he was killed.”

Visenya inclines her head.

“Did you mourn him?”

“He died a great man,” Visenya replies. “He died a better death than any I could have offered him, in pursuit of a goal he came closer to than any other king in all of my dynasty. Of course I did not mourn him.”

I will not have your quest for peace mar another child’s innocence, Rickard had said, all those months previous. Sansa hadn’t known then, hadn’t known until now, how true Rickard’s fears had been. Had Sansa been more biddable, she’d likely be on her way to Dorne by now; she’d likely be half dead under the Dornish desert sun, and no one would be the wiser for it.

“He was eight and ten when he died,” Sansa murmurs. “Far too young.”

“Old enough.”

To die? To know his enemies so clearly? I think not. Not unless you told him those truths, whispered them in his ear until you had him more pliant than any cow raised for the slaughter.

“So,” is all she says, lip curling just slightly: “You fed his hatred.”

“I ensured he knew his enemies.”

“He died,” Sansa bites out.

“Yes,” says Visenya, eyes wide and flat as pools of still water. “He died, as we all do. He died trying to do what he felt was right, and was good. It was a noble death.”

She swore a vow to me to not kill you as she did Daeron.

I trusted you, Sansa thinks, and curls her nails into her palms, straightens with all the fluid grace that Visenya has drilled into her over their practices. She feels Brandon hunch downwards, just a little, behind her left shoulder, and it feels like a second shield, a living protector, a net to fall back on. I trusted you once, but no longer.

“You killed him,” she says, and for all that she whispers, it is an accusation that hurts her throat from the fierceness of her delivery. “You told him whom to hate, and how to hate, and then you set him free. And if he’d truly burned Rhaenys- you wouldn’t have wept, would you? You wouldn’t have cared at all.”

It’s a secret that Alysanne had given her, one that she remembers from a childhood spent with her mother. Visenya had always hated many people, but the rage she’d set aside for Alyssa Velaryon was remarkable in its intensity. Alyssa had always returned it, and she’d won the best of their bitter rivalry in Visenya’s death: it was Alyssa’s line on the Iron Throne now, not Visenya’s.

And every day of her life, Alyssa had called Visenya a heartless shrew.

One of Visenya’s oldest wounds, but one of the most effective nevertheless. Sansa faces Visenya and bites her tongue before she rubs more salt in an already-stinging wound.

“You little bitch,” Visenya whispers. “I am your-”

“-you are nothing to me,” Sansa says, quietly. “I shall pay the debt you have named for knowledge rendered, but nothing more. When Rhaenys’ bones burn, there shall be nothing between us.”

Visenya’s mouth opens in a gaping maw, rage flickering over her face. But Sansa’s ready for this, has been ready for this, ever since Visenya covered a room in frost and left her on her knees for nothing but her rage. Even as Visenya swoops forwards, Brandon dodges in front of Sansa. They flicker in and out of sight, but Brandon’s not strong enough to hold her back properly.

It little matters. Sansa reaches for the cloth she’s braided over the past few weeks, made of the flowers she’d requested of Margaery. It’s clumsily made, but it will do the job.

Bonds of blood are the strongest, but there are other kinds. And you bound yourself to me when you named yourself my tutor. These aren’t bonds of blood, Visenya. These are bonds of unforgiveness and unexpected betrayal.

Soaked in her tears and the melted frost of Visenya’s temper, bound with the cloth that had once been wrapped around Dark Sister, made of rosemary flowers for remembrance. The physical aspect won’t affect Visenya, but the rage it was made with will surely burn her.

Just before she readies herself to throw it, Rickard appears beside her.

“That will not work,” he says conversationally.

“It will,” Sansa replies, before she lashes out; where it touches Visenya, the silvery edges darken, turning almost opaque where they’d once been translucent. Visenya throws her head back to howl, twisting to glare at Sansa, before she fades entirely out of view, taking Brandon with her.

“Those must have been well-made,” Rickard murmurs. “To hurt a ghost so strong as Visenya- strong indeed.” He frowns. “Not that it shall do you much good. You shall not be able to trap her half so easily, now that she knows what to expect.”

Sansa shoulders her pack and tightens the crude scabbard she’s tied around her waist. “It doesn’t need to," she says firmly. “It only needs to keep her away from me for tonight. By morning I shall be far from here, and Visenya’s power shall be faded.”

Rickard pauses. “You used rosemary for this. But you asked the Lady Tyrell for both rosemary and-”

“Lilies.” Sansa smiles blandly back at Rickard. “Sword lilies.”

He pales, staring at her, when Sansa pulls a thin slink of brilliant red flower. Sword lily meant strength of character and honor, and paired with the blood she’d coughed up from when Rickard had refused to protect her, bound with cloth the grey and white of their house, it’s all but an accusation of familial infidelity.

“Then I believe it is time for you to leave, granddaughter,” he tells her, and smiles, sadly. His eyes flick away, and then back to her. “If you can find it in yourself- tell your grandmother that I miss her, very much.” He hesitates, briefly, before continuing, “And that she has raised a wonderful granddaughter, with enough iron in her spine to forge a half-hand sword.”

Then Rickard starts to move towards where Visenya disappeared, but doesn’t stop speaking. “And worry not of Visenya. She shall not trouble you any longer, that much I swear to you.”

Then he disappears, and Sansa doesn’t pause to see the end of it; she turns and flees, slippers slapping against the stone floor.

…

When Sansa leaves King’s Landing, she leaves behind this: a doll of straw and wool, fitted for smaller hands than hers have been for near a decade; a cloak of white offered to her by a fire-scarred man, the bloodstains washed fastidiously away and hemmed with near-invisible stitches in a pattern that suggests a wolf’s teeth; and a braid, thick and red and tossed in a roaring flame before anyone could see it.

…

There are old sewage drains, leading out into the sea. According to Alysanne, they began as a method for emptying the castle’s waste out of the city, but the impact the drains had on fishing quickly stopped their usage. They’re small drains, all of them, but Sansa’s just slim enough to fit through the larger ones, and once she’s outside she can trace the shoreline until she reaches the Kingswood.

Sansa shoves her palms outward at the grate covering the exit. The metal grate is rusted almost fully-through and bends for the first two shoves, but it breaks across the middle after that. The pieces clatter down the hillside, a little louder than Sansa had thought they’d be.

It’s the turn of the year, though.

Anyone on guard will be drunk by now, and anyone who isn’t knows that this night is for eldritch things. Ghosts can break free of their bonds, or monsters of moonlight and stone can appear out of thin air, or tears in reality can become abruptly wider, more visible. One ragged-haired urchin will not draw anyone’s attention.

She pauses, though, before she drops onto the beach- Sansa’s never been alone before, and now the ghosts she thought would walk beside her for a few hours at least are caught up keeping more terrible ghosts from catching her. When she flees the city, Sansa flees all alone. It’s more difficult than she’d ever considered.

Except- even as she pulls herself out of the drain, even as she finds some purchase on the soft hills- Elia appears before her.

Elia, who looks weary, and triumphant, and dangerous, all at once. Sansa’s seen even less of her over the past few weeks, as Elia’s been trailing her brother around the city, but there’s a solidity to her now that Sansa’s not seen in any ghost save Visenya at her angriest.

“Princess Stark,” she says, quietly, hovering over the open air. “You are leaving, now.”

“Yes.”

“You are afraid.”

Sansa breathes in slowly. “Yes.”

“You have no cause for it,” says Elia firmly. “You are a girl after my own heart, Sansa of House Stark: a girl whom the world hates, and whom the world cannot forget. I have a brother to carry my banner yet, but I think you- you shall not have need of any such thing. You shall carry your own banners, and when you fall, the world shall carry it for centuries to come.”

“Lady Elia-” I don’t want that, Sansa thinks, wildly. I don’t- I don’t know what I want. I just- I wish I was back in Winterfell with Mother and Father and Robb and Lyarra and-

I wouldn’t mind being forgotten if I was happy.

Elia smiles at her, terrible and true, as if she knows Sansa’s mind, as if she knows the epiphany Sansa has just had. “You have grown. You have grown in ways that none of us expected, I think, painfully and regrettably; but grown nevertheless.”

Rickard’s words echo in her ears, then, and Sansa finds herself staring: The ghosts that remain without Targaryen blood have some measure of Stark-blood in their veins, Rickard had said, either that, or a will to overcome a pain more overwhelming than any you can imagine.

Sansa cannot imagine that a Stark married into the Martells, not with the distance between the two realms, not when the Starks never managed to wed into the Targaryens. Which means Elia faced a pain truly unearthly in its immensity, and retained her mind through it.

“Yes,” Sansa says cautiously.

“For your strength, then, with all the tears you’ve never shed over months of terrible pain, I offer one knowledge to you: Joffrey shall not live out the next year.” Elia reaches up and casts something away, and a scrap of silver floats down to the sand below before winking out. She glows a little brighter yet. “And for your kindness, with all the courtesy you’ve offered me over months of captivity, I offer one advice: do not return to your family until you have done what you wish to do, not if you wish to keep the vows you have sworn.”

She turns, and throws her arms upwards, and the beach is flooded with a pale, beautiful light, as if Elia’s taken all the moonlight off the ocean and crystallized it on them.

“And for your humility,” she says, voice echoing, a strange after-beat that sounds like a hundred voices speaking through her own- “with your determination to send your family away despite losing your own freedom, I offer one vow: the House of Martell has no issue with the House of Stark. The oath of vengeance I swore when your aunt ran away with my husband is rescinded.”

Elia holds the position. And above them- far above them, growing out of one of the stars shining in the sky, Sansa sees a silvery tunnel, one which brightens the beach further and leaves Elia looking almost solid. There is no wind that Sansa can see, but Elia’s silks whip about her with more and more fervor, until she looks as if she were being buffeted by a typhoon.

Do you accept?

The voice comes not from Elia, but from the silver tunnel above her. If Sansa squints into the light, she thinks she can see other ghosts, a hundred-hundred of them, all with dark hair and tanned skin. The voice thunders up her bones and shakes in her mind, so powerful it hurts.

“Accept-” her own voice shrivels, but Sansa beats down the dryness with all of Visenya’s training. “Accept what?”

One of our blood has rescinded her oath of vengeance. Daughter-Elia has offered the price of false vengeance. Shall you accept the price, or do you require more?

Oath of vengeance.

Rickard had mentioned it, once, to Sansa. The oath of vengeance called for equality- from what Rickard had said, Sarra had sworn one against Jonnel when he wed Robyn Ryswell only a moon’s turn after Sansa’s death; Sarra had taken the oath in the name of all the children Jonnel had ensured Sansa could not bear, and in return Robyn Ryswell had borne none either. It’s why Barthogan became Lord after Jonnel, not any of Jonnel’s get.

Sansa doesn’t know what the price of rescinding the vow can be, but she thinks she has a fair idea now: the agreement of the oathsworn party. If she agrees, the oath is dissolved. If she doesn’t…

But dissolving the oath is not a singular issue.

Elia must have needed a reason to stay back through that terrible pain, and now Sansa thinks she knows what it is: hatred, of her husband and of Lyanna Stark. If she lets go of that hatred, then she can move on. Which means that if Sansa refuses to accept her offer, then Elia shall remain in the city where she was raped and murdered for- eternity.

In the end, there’s only one answer she can give.

“I accept,” she says, before correcting herself, “we accept. House Stark accepts.”

Despite the stutter, the ceremony seems to be concluded. Elia lowers her hands, and when she looks at Sansa, there is a deep satisfaction suffusing her face. She shines so brightly she looks as if the very sun were contained within her bones.

“Thank you,” she says, simply. “I shall have my vengeance on the Lannisters through my brother, Lady Stark, and peace through you, before this new year is finished. And in the next turning, I shall return to the light of my ancestors.” She flicks her fingers, and the silvery light fades away, replaced with the normal light of the stars. It feels so much darker now- Sansa exhales through her teeth. “Thank you, Lady Stark. May you find kindness in the world around you, and may the gods guide you to your destiny without grief. From one princess to another: may you live a long, fruitful life.”

Sansa scrapes for words, but before she can find them, Elia disappears.

Goodbye, Sansa thinks, and I hope you find peace, and may the gods guide you well.

But even as she slides down the hill and across the beach, footprints fading beneath the rolling tide- Sansa cannot help but remember the silver tunnel above her, showing countless Martells all looking down on their daughter.

She’s never seen anything of that for the Starks.

All the Starks have remained in Winterfell, bound to stone and to a half-life, all for the grief of their ancestor.

Unfair, Sansa thinks, and cannot shake it for all the time she heads North.

…

The road is hard, but not harder than the Kingsguards’ mailed fists. Sansa binds her breasts as Betha had taught her, smears mud over her arms and eyes and hair, learns to shift her center of gravity lower, rooted. She is slender, still, painfully so; the gentle swells of her breasts and hips are easily disguised in clothes a few sizes too large.

Ghosts help her on her travels- they tell her where old berry-copses are, or knives they’d hidden for centuries, or cloth that won’t be missed for weeks. Sansa learns to steal into a town and out of it without anyone knowing the better. Dark Sister presses bruises into her thighs when she sleeps with it strapped to her waist, but she cannot find it in herself to leave it anywhere else.

Finally, finally- weeks later, months later, Sansa crests a hill and sees Riverrun.

It shines blue and red. There are rivers roaring around her, ghosts whispering behind her, and her parents, her brother, they’re almost within sight. Sansa steps forwards, out of the shadows, into the light-

“Sansa,” a woman calls.

“Mother?”

A woman steps out of the darkness, smiling up at her. Shining down her back is dark, gleaming hair. Her eyes are light, but not lighter than Lyarra’s. She looks exactly like Sansa remembers her mother to look, only less substantial, only older, only- frailer.

“Hello, Sansa,” she says, and her voice sounds like Sansa’s mother as well, but- but there are differences. “It is good to see you, child. Catelyn spoke true when she said you’ve her look about you, albeit lovelier by far.”

Not Mother.

“Grandmother,” breathes Sansa.

She smiles warmly. “Eddard did mention your sharp mind.”

“Why are you here?”

Minisa’s face grows more solemn.

“Because,” she says, “I am here to tell you: you cannot see your family.”

#sansa stark #got fic #my writing #good lord i am sorry for how long this chapter took #but the worldbuilding was EXHAUSTING let me tell you #also to anyone confused by rickard/visenya/all the information: stuff's meant to be confusing yada yada yada #unreliable narrator blah blah blah #sansa knows fuck all and people are hiding shit from her and stuff's getting worse before it gets better #as per the usual #and next chappie will have sansa back north with kickass grandmothers and an oblivious as FUCK jon #which is all canonical so like...... i'm still surprised that people don't write more crack fic for this series tbh #a tempest; a cyclone

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