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gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights · 4 years

Link

Rating: G

Summary: An offhand curiosity leads to Ladybug and Chat Noir riding his baton up as high as it can go. Or, as high as it can go before they get distracted. (It's just nerves about the height that has Ladybug's stomach in knots, she swears.) Ladynoir oneshot for @lovesquarefluffweek, dedicated to @rosekasa who made me a ladynoir stan

Word Count: 3511

XXX

Marinette rested her hands on her hips, watching in amusement as her partner finished wedging his staff in the crack in the dilapidated rooftop.

“This is a horrible idea,” she said idly.

His tongue stuck out as he tried wiggling the stick, ensuring that it was secured fast. “Come on, Bugaboo, none of your ideas have ever been horrible.”

Strictly speaking, this wasn’t her idea. She’d only wondered how far Chat’s baron could extend, if its length was as infinite as her yo-yo’s string. It was her ridiculous, adrenaline-junkie partner who wanted to ride the baton up as far as it could go.

Not that it was that dangerous, really. They’d done it a few times to scout for some akuma or another during attacks. Besides, it would be nice to see the city from such a height without a threat looming over them—or below them.

“It wasn’t an idea. It was a question,” she still said on principle. “I didn’t think you were actually going to test it.”

He rested his chin on the top of the baton and grinned. “How long have you known me? I’m not majoring in Physics for nothing.”

“You’re not majoring in Physics.” She leaned in to flick his nose, which only made him grin wider. “Not for another two months, and not ever if you become a pancake by pulling some stupid stunt before then.”

“How could I hurt myself? I’ll have my amazing partner right there to catch me if I fall.” He winked.

Her stomach twisted like pretzel dough—from nerves about the height, that was all.

“Don’t go treating me like a parachute, kitty. I’ll be more likely to rip my arm out of its socket if I have to yo-yo us out of this.”

Or she’d have to use Lucky Charm and hope for an actual parachute, but it probably wouldn’t come to that. Silly as her kitty could be, he never let her down when it mattered.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be extra careful, I Pawmise.” He crossed his heart with one claw, still grinning like he was already on top of the world.

Ridiculous or not, this idea was worth it just to see him so excited. He’d been bouncing all night since she’d agreed.

“You’d better,” she warned, though her voice was warm.

His grin reached Cheshire proportions as he wrapped one arm securely around the metal staff and extended the other to her. “One catapult, going up.”

“Oh no.” She laughed. “Points for the pun, but please don’t tell me you’re going to launch us.”

“I already said I’ll be careful. Don’t tell me the fearless Ladybug is actually scared?”

“Pffff, you wish. You just want me to hold on tighter.” Her fingers threaded through his teasingly before slipping out just as he tried to kiss her knuckles.

His lips pursed in a pout. “You know me too well, my Lady. ...But seriously, please hold on. I know you can catch yourself if you have to, but I’d really rather not drop you in the first place.”

“That makes two of us.”

She wrapped one arm around his waist and secured the other at his shoulder. His feet lifted off the ground to brace against the staff, leaving his thigh as a comfortable seat.

Enjoying this, huh? She almost expected him to tease as she snuggled closer—because she did want to be safe. It was almost disappointing when he neglected to quip though. Maybe she wasn’t clinging tightly enough after all.

“So high do you think we’ll go?” He asked, holding her by the waist as she finished getting settled. “Think we’ll be dodging planes tonight?”

“I doubt it. Even if we technically could go that high, we shouldn’t. It’ll be freezing up there.”

“What, afraid I won’t be able to keep you warm?” He teased with a gentle nuzzle to the size of her head.

Had it always been this difficult to keep from leaning into his touch? Not that she couldn’t, but, well—if she gave into his jokes, he’d have no reason to continue.

“Why don’t you just focus on getting us up there at all.” She kept her voice flat, hiding any trace of that brief thought.

“Whatever you say, Bugaboo.”

For all his earlier joking, their ascent started fairly slow, more like an elevator than a catapult. It gave her plenty of time to take in the sights below—the warm lights flickering from windows, divided by the dark swath of the Seine. Streets radiating out from the Arc de Triomphe like spokes on a wheel, cars inching their way down them like little lightningbugs. And of course, the Eiffel Tower, sparkling in the distance, a homing beacon that never failed to bring a smile to her lips.

Paris. Their city.

“Pretty amazing, huh,” Chat breathed beside her. With their arms around each other and the glittering lights below, it was easy to pretend they were rulers surveying their kingdom.

...Chat had must have been calling Marinette Princess too much. Or else his My Lady’s were going to her head.

Royal daydreams or not, though, there was no one she’d rather have beside her—no one else she could have beside her. And not just because it was his baton that held them aloft, his embrace that made her feel as secure as if she stood on solid ground. She would have been crushed under the weight of her superhero mantle if he weren’t there to share it. Staring down at just how many people depended on them, it was impossible to forget that.

“Does it ever feel like too much?” She whispered the doubt that had been nagging at her more and more lately. She tried to stay strong for the team’s morale, but when it was just her partner and the hushed sky, her necessary barriers wore thin.

“Does what feel like too much?” He replied just as quietly. His face turned to hers, emerald irises glinting in the moonlight, closer than she’d prepared herself to handle.

The pretzel twist in her stomach made a reappearance, but she was hardly thinking about the height.

“You know. All of this.” She couldn’t let go to gesture to the glowing city beneath them, but he seemed to understand anyway. “We’re the only ones standing between all of them and two adult supervillains. And even after all these years, we still haven’t found them.”

Her voice cracked a little on that last sentence. The uncomfortable truth they’d been dancing around for the last few months—longer, really, but it became more and more urgent as lycee ended and they prepared to go to University. Most of their team of miraculous wielders (not Chat, of course) would be leaving Paris. This was the last summer they would be together, and the last summer they could be kids, only they hadn’t really been kids for four years now thanks to Hawkmoth and Mayura—

And maybe that was why she agreed to this crazy idea. Because they were kids, dang it, and she deserved to do something silly and dumb with the one person she trusted more than anyone in the world. She wanted to spend time with him outside of taking down Hawkmoth’s villain of the day. She wanted them to just be together.

Wait. Not together, together—just, like, as friends. Who could spend time together without wearing magical suits and masks. She wanted to sew them matching shirts, and text him cat memes at two a.m., and kick his butt at video games. Which she could do as Marinette, but—she wanted him to know it was her, too.

The sheer force of that longing took her by surprise, and only multiplied her hatred for Hawkmoth a hundredfold.

“Hey, Little Bug,” Chat said softly. His arm tightening around her dissolved the complicated web of her thoughts. “We’re going to find him. And it’s not just us anymore. Pegasus is analyzing all the data Rena’s collected, remember? And we’ve got her and Carapace alternating patrols with Ryuuko and Viperion. We can even call in Queen Bee or Bunnyx or King Monkey if we need to. We’ve never been closer to taking Hawkmoth down.”

He was right. They weren’t alone. They never would’ve survived the combined powers of Hawkmoth and Mayura if it weren’t for their team, especially since sentimonsters started regularly joining the fray two years ago.

Still, there was something about sitting with Chat among the pinprick stars that brought her back to before then. When it was just the two of them against the world.

Was it weird that she sometimes missed that?

“I know,” she murmured. Her forehead leaned against his chest, where the steady thump-thump of his heart calmed her own. “Sorry, Chat. I shouldn’t worry.”

“I don’t think anyone could stop you from worrying.” His chin rested on her head, his warmth and familiar scent cocooning her. Roses and leather and cheese, juxtaposed in a way that was so uniquely him. “I doubt Paris would still be standing if you didn’t worry. But it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

The rational part of her brain wanted to ask how he could say that. The newspapers cried out against them at every mistake, at every day that drew them closer to the fifth anniversary of Hawkmoth’s appearance.

But the other part of her brain, the part that had worked in tandem with him long enough that trusting him was second nature, calmed at his reassurance.

“Who knows,” he continued. “Maybe we’ll kick Hawkmoth’s butt before summer ends, and then we can throw a party before everyone splits for University. The whole team can show up. We’ll get Multimouse to bring the pastries. Carapace can blast us some sick tunes. I’m sure Queen Bee can get us a venue…”

Marinette giggled at the thought of all the miraculous wielders, unmasked and just hanging out like normal friends, no more worries than what they were going to do in University. Alix and Kim would probably (definitely) end up in some kind of competition, powered by their miraculouses or not. Luka would serenade Kagami with his guitar instead of Viperion’s lyre. Speaking of which, Marinette wondered if Adrien’s brief stint as Aspik would mean he would be there… and how he would get along with Chat Noir. For some reason, she had a feeling it would be odd to see them together.

Regardless, it was a dream worth fighting for. A dream worth hoping for.

“I’m sure Multimouse would love that,” she said, hiding her smirk against his collarbone. By the time such a party could happen, Chat would know the truth about her dual identity, anyway. “I know I would.”

“There’s only one thing that would make it better.” Chat’s voice turned teasing.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

He didn’t answer as they passed through a cloud, the dampness much colder and all around wetter than she was prepared for. She shivered and sneezed, feeling her pigtails cling to the back of her neck. Chat chuckled and brushed them aside. His claws lingered for the briefest of moments on the sliver of skin between her suit and hairline.

“A private party,” he said softly. “Just the two of us, before everyone else.”

She pulled back just enough to see his eyes again, intending to tease him about what kind of party he was asking for—but the sincerity and softness in his features stopped her short.

“Y-yeah?”

“Yeah. So we can… I mean, I know I want…” he swallowed for a moment before quietly finishing, “I want you to be the first one to know who I am.”

They didn’t talk about revealing their identities often—mostly because she made it clear that they couldn’t, and she already thought about it enough without tempting either of them by saying it out loud. He was Chat Noir, her partner and best friend, no matter who he was under the mask.

But maybe they should talk about it more, if he thought she would want anything else.

“Of course, Kitty.” Carefully, since they were hundreds of kilometers in the air, she moved the arm at his waist to wrap around the back of his neck instead. A few of his damp locks tickled her fingers even though the suit. “I’ve always wanted you to be the first, too.”

His smile could’ve powered the whole city below. “Then it’s settled. Pegasus finds Hawkbutt next week. We storm the castle, Queen Bee Venoms him and Mayura, you rip their miraculouses off, we pound it, and we throw the biggest party Paris has ever seen.”

His optimism, if unrealistic, was contagious. She felt the hope untangling knots in her chest as she laughed again.

“I should’ve left the planning to you, Chaton. Maybe then we’d have beaten Hawkmoth already.”

“Nah, we all know you’re the brains of the operation, Bugaboo. I’m just here to look pretty.” He flipped his soggy hair, and his bangs hit his forehead with a fwap.

She couldn’t help the laugh that burst from her. “You’re such a dork. I love you.”

He froze solid as one of Style Queen’s statues. She half expected him to turn to gold, for his warmth to bleed out like the color currently draining from her face.

She said—

She’d said she loved him.

She’d said she loved him, and the words had come out as easy as breathing, as sure as the pounding of her heart. How—why? She didn’t love him, not like that, she couldn’t couldn’t she’d told herself that long ago—

But any denials caught in her lungs, trapped like the dark butterflies snared by her yo-yo. Only when the words were fully purified were they released again.

“I—I love you,” she whispered.

She hadn’t meant to say it once, much less twice—but with the repetition the truth of it snapped firmly into place. She didn’t know when her kitty had snuck past her defenses, slipped past her blinding crush on Adrien, dodged all the logical reasons she had for not falling for him.

But he had.

She loved Chat Noir. Of course she did.

“You—but you—is there an akuma?” He stammered, eyes wide and disbelieving. She’d been turning down his off-and-on (mostly on) flirting for four years now; of course he wouldn’t assume she was serious.

“No, Kitty.” Her laugh felt suffocating. After all this time she’d been trying to confess to Adrien, and now, when her target was her Kitty, her mouth didn’t give her a choice.

Maybe that was for the best. She would always have a special place in her heart for Adrien, but Chat—Chat was her home. Her partner, her friend, her everything.

The twisting in her stomach finally unwound, swelling into something that she could hardly contain. His face was so close, his lips still parted from the three words she’d dropped on him. It would be so easy to lean in and kiss the shock from his face, until he melted in her arms, until they both believed this was real.

But Chat had always respected her boundaries, and she would do the same for him. Besides, what if he didn’t feel the same anymore, if his flirting was just habit? And she’d just blurted out her feelings before even she realized them—what if she ruined the comfortable companionship they shared?

No. No, she knew better than that. Even if he didn’t feel the same, nothing could tear the two of them apart.

“I know I’m late, but—if you still want me—”

“My Lady.” She felt more than heard the tremor of emotion in his voice. “I’ll always want you. I always have.”

Was this real? How had she gone from flirting with her partner to baring her heart to him? The liquid moonlight washed aside her walls. His golden hair was spun silver in its glow, and her hands ran through it involuntarily. She was lucky Chat had returned his grip to her waist, because otherwise she might have accidentally slipped off him.

As much as his words made her feel like she could fly, it was best not to test that theory.

“Thanks for waiting for me, Chaton.” She rested her forehead against his, still shaking with the realization and love and longing and—how had she ignored this feeling? How long had she wanted him to kiss her senseless before her mind would admit it?

It didn’t matter. She knew now, and the electricity that sparked between them wouldn’t let her forget anytime soon.

“You know I’d wait forever for you. I love you.” His breath fanned across her cheeks, soft and hot and everything she hoped his lips would be. “I love you so so much, Ladybug, I—”

He might be willing to wait forever, but she wasn’t. Her lips consumed whatever it was he was going to say next—

And all she knew was that he tasted like coming home.

He matched her passion with a surprising sweetness. It wasn’t the intense kiss she was expecting, but maybe that was for the best. He was the only thing keeping them from plummeting to the ground far below, and distracting him probably wasn’t the best idea, but frankly after that first touch of lips she was so gone they could’ve fallen and she wouldn’t have noticed—

He yelped against her mouth. Had she done something wrong? She hadn’t kissed a boy since Luka two years ago, but she couldn’t be that bad—

Oh. She hadn’t noticed.

Gravity really wasn’t supposed to be tugging in that direction. And the wind wasn’t supposed to be blowing up.

And Chat’s baton wasn’t supposed to be slipping through his fingers.

Gah! She barely had time to think as his arms tightened around her middle so he was hugging her from below. What was he thinking? Did he expect to cushion her fall?

Jolting out of oh-my-gosh-I’m-kissing-Chat mode, she threw her yo-yo from her hip and lassoed the still-upright baton. Only miraculous magic could be holding it steady, especially when she yanked them towards it—

And in a jumble of limbs and string, she promptly tangled them against the metal length.

She heard a sharp crack, followed by a dizzy groan.

“Chat, oh my gosh, are you okay?” The world was still spinning; she couldn’t turn to see him. Mostly because her back was pressed flush against his chest.

“Purrfectly fine, my Lady.” His laugh sounded near her ear. “I always knew you’d sweep me off my feet.”

She rolled her eyes, unsure if she wanted to laugh or groan. She was so stupid. Making out with Chat with nothing but a pole holding them up? Yes, that sounded like something from her romantic fantasies (which she wasn’t supposed to have with him, but—shh), but she should’ve known better in real life!

“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?” She muttered.

He hummed thoughtfully. That sound should not have made her shiver, she was just—it was just cold. Even though his body was hot against her back.

Yeah, she wasn’t kidding anyone.

“I could be purrsuaded to forget,” he said to her surprise.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” His chin rested on her shoulder. “For the low price of fifty more kisses.”

“Fifty?” She choked, face heating. Fifty brushes of his lips on hers, of his laugh filling her lungs— “I—I don’t know. Actually, you’re the one who let go of the staff. I might’ve kissed you first, but you’re the one who should be getting teased.”

“Fair enough. A hundred kisses, then. Fifty for me to forget, and fifty for you to forgive me for dropping you.”

“Bold words from a guy who couldn’t even handle kissing me once.” She would’ve flicked his bell if her arms weren’t trapped over his around her middle.

“Ah, it just means I need more practice!”

She twisted her head just enough to stick her tongue out at him. “You won’t get any practice if you don’t get us down from here.”

“Oh. Uh. About that… I can’t reach the button.” He laughed awkwardly. “You mind untangling us?”

The magical properties of her yo-yo meant she could still retract the string even tangled as it was, but it would take a minute to lasso them back to the baton properly this time.

“Only if you don’t mind falling again.”

“For you? Never,” he said with a quick kiss to her cheek.

She shook her head. She refused to be distracted by him this time, even if his smell was everywhere, more dizzying than their brief fall through the clouds.

“You’re such a dork.”

“But you love me,” he practically sang.

Despite the fact that they were hanging in an awkward position hundreds of meters in the air, her nerves vanished completely.

“Yeah, Kitty. I do.”

(That truth was far more important than learning how far Chat’s baton could extend, anyway.)

[And then next week they beat hawkbutt and ship him and nathalie off to jail and everyone in the whole team comforts Adrien and he and marinette live happily ever after with a hamster]

#ladynoir #miraculous ladybug #ladybug #chat noir #fic tag #tali writes #lovesquarefluffweek2020 #no reveal here lads #other than marinette gettin her feelings revealed to her

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bubonickitten · 4 years

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Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Chapter 3 is up!

Chapter 1 (tumblr // AO3) | Chapter 2 (tumblr // AO3)

Full text + content warnings under the cut.

CW: brief claustrophobia; some grief and loss stuff; a few more instances of casual misgendering (not malicious; just some wrong pronouns here and there due to the speaking-in-statements thing, but thought I'd mention it just in case); a single LORGE spider. Also, Jon gets to do one (1) swear, as a treat. SPOILERS through MAG 169.

Chapter 3: Rift

Jon doesn’t remember the hill being this steep.

Or maybe he’s just winded from the long trek through the wasteland. He’d had to pass through a long stretch of territory fought over by the Buried and the Vast. The ground there was practically a minefield, pockmarked with sinkholes. They would start out as quicksand traps and suffocating tunnel entrances, only to be hollowed out into yawning chasms and cenotes, then ultimately collapsed all over again by a retaliation-minded Choke. It was an endless cycle of petty rivalry and animosity, and passing so near their battlegrounds left Jon breathless with a discordant mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

Worse was when the Dark managed to sneak its way into the mix. Whether it was Too Close I Cannot Breathe or the Vast’s abyss, the Dark could always find a way to exploit subterranean spaces – and it could never resist reaching out to needle at an Avatar of the Eye, no matter how inadvisable it was to cross the Archive these days.

As Jon drew closer to Hill Top Road, he left the warzone behind for a mostly featureless landscape punctuated with the occasional foxholes of the Slaughter and pockets of the Forsaken’s fog. Eventually those too gave way to a seemingly endless dust bowl of soot and ash – a sprawling domain claimed by the Lightless Flame.

The house at Hill Top Road is the only thing still standing in the midst of kilometres of Desolation-scorched earth. The charred terrain stops abruptly at the foot of the hill, a stark line demarcating the boundary between the Blackened Earth and the territory that Annabelle Cane has staked out as her own. Jon had half-expected an invisible barrier to stop him there as well – the last time he was here, Annabelle had forbidden him from returning – but there had been no resistance when he stepped over the border.

As he hikes up the incline now, he finds himself worrying over what that might mean. Is Annabelle expecting him, inviting him in? Is she simply tolerating his presence, curious to see what he’s up to? Could he be powerful enough now that even she cannot stop him? Or is he once again wrapped up in the Web’s machinations, doing exactly what the Mother of Puppets wants?

He shakes his head. No. He and Martin talked about this. There’s no point in obsessing over the Web’s motivations, letting the memory of Annabelle’s statement paralyze him with indecision. Better to just… keep moving forward.

And it’s not like he has anything left to lose.

Jon continues up the hill, increasingly winded, his bad leg throbbing angrily, and he thinks to himself again: he really, really doesn’t remember it being this steep.

Before long, he’s standing at the threshold of the house at Hill Top Road. The dread permeating the place is just as palpable as he remembered.

He waits for the Distortion’s inevitable appearance, determined not to let her startle him this time. As if on cue, a door creaks open on the ceiling above him.

“Interesting.” Without preamble, Helen lands noiselessly on her feet beside Jon and peers around curiously. “I wondered whether Annabelle would let me in.”

So did Jon. Maybe he should be concerned about – no. He shuts down that train of thought before it can pull out of the station.

“You still haven’t explained what exactly you plan on doing here.”

Honestly, that’s mostly because Jon hasn’t figured it out yet, either. He only Knows that this is where he needs to be.

The Eye wants things to change – as much as it can be said to want anything. Setting the question of its sentience or lack thereof aside, at the Panopticon he had been able to Know things that the Beholding had previously withheld from him. He might be stronger than the other Avatars and monsters lurking about the world, but he’s not arrogant enough to believe he could overpower any of the Fears themselves. If the Ceaseless Watcher gives him access to knowledge, it’s because his Knowing will facilitate – or at least not inhibit – its plans, which means that he must have the Eye’s… blessing, to be here? He shakes his head; he’s getting caught up on semantics again.

Point is: he Asked a question and – as usual – he was given a scrap of an answer and left to puzzle the rest out for himself. All he Knows for certain is what he wants to happen, and that this is where he needs to be in order to make it happen.

“Jonathan.” Helen says his name with a playful lilt and leans further into his personal space. “Are you going to share with the class?”

Without a word, he sidesteps around her and walks further into the house. In her statement, Anya Villette had mentioned a door under the stairs leading to the basement, but the last time Jon was here, it was nowhere to be seen. He hopes it’s there this time.

“What are you looking for?”

Jon drags one hand down his face and sighs. Having Helen tag along is like taking a road trip through hell with an easily bored and… well, deeply annoying child. Huh.

“I won’t be ignored, Jon –”

Jon bristles, redirects his gaze, and stares daggers at her with a few more eyes than strictly necessary. “Some magically appearing door.”

“You aren’t being very kind to me right now, you know.” She tries to sound wounded, but really she just sounds pleased to have gotten a reaction from him.

Jon gives an irritated huff and continues forward through the entrance hall. He treads softly, all too aware of every subtle creak of a floorboard. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering muffling his footsteps. It doesn’t matter how quiet he is; Annabelle will know – probably already knows – that he’s here regardless. Still, there’s just something about the house that demands a certain amount of fearful reverence. Disturbing the silence just feels like a bad idea.

Helen doesn’t appear to have the same concerns. In fact, it almost seems like she’s going out of her way to announce their presence. Of course.

Jon catches a glimpse of the staircase as he rounds the corner and – yes, there’s a door under the stairs. A plain, painted white door with a brass handle, otherwise unremarkable and entirely unassuming.

And yet…

As he tries to approach it, he finds himself rooted to the spot, overcome with a sense of trepidation. He feels his breath coming faster, shallower; feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Every one of the Archive’s eyes locks onto the doorknob and for a moment he swears he feels tiny, feather-light legs scurrying down his spine. He pulls his pack tight against him, using the physical weight of it to dampen the tactile hallucination.

“I hate it,” Helen says darkly. Jon jumps just slightly at the break in the silence, and a few of the Archive’s eyes suspend their rapt scrutiny of the door handle to glance in her direction. Her posture is tense where she stands, staring warily at the door as if it might lunge at them. Jon has never seen the Distortion look so… unsettled.

She’s right, though. The door is wrong. More than that, it’s the exact same flavor of wrongness that he felt the first time he saw A Guest for Mr. Spider, and again when he reached out to knock on the monster’s door.

Back then, he hadn’t known that the concept of wrongness could be broken down into so many distinct subtypes: the uncanny disquietude of the Stranger feels fundamentally different from the compulsion of the coffin, the sensation of worms tunneling through flesh, the Distortion’s nonsensical corridors, the Lonely’s suffocating fog.

The pull of the Web is in a class of its own, and the sight of the door in front of him drops him right back into the memory of the day he opened the book – the day he took the first step on the winding path that led him, inevitably, to this exact moment. It’s such a fitting parallel, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was orchestrated down to the finest detail. He knows the Web plays a long game, but precisely how much of what has happened was in perfect accordance with the Web’s plans? What even is the Web’s –

No. Stop fixating on the Spider, he reprimands himself for the umpteenth time this… day? Whatever; it’s not important. He forces his legs to move.

“You’re sticking your hand in a bear trap, I hope you know.”

“I knew opening the door was a stupid thing to do,” Jon says, nonchalant. “So I opened the door.”

Helen breathes a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke?”

“The idea that this is all some grand cosmic joke,” Jon rattles off drily, “thousands of us running around spread horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible unknowing things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we caused –”

“Terrible.” Helen groans and puts her head in her hands. “Here I was, ready to compliment you on finally finding a sense of humor, and you have to ruin the moment with – with existentialist brooding.”

Jon chuckles quietly to himself and takes another step forward.

“Wait.” Helen reaches one long-fingered hand in Jon’s direction, then falters and pulls back. For a moment, she seems to wrestle with whether or not to continue. “What’s behind the door?”

“A scar in reality –”

“Yes, I know about the rift. What do you expect to find in it? An answer? An escape? A means of suicide?”

“A metaphysical quirk of this new reality’s divorce from the traditional concept of time.”

Jon pauses, chewing on his bottom lip as he looks inward and browses through his catalog.

“It bends and twists and returns to what it was,” he settles on eventually.

“I told you not to use my words.” Helen gives him a warning look, but it’s fleeting, because a moment later his meaning sinks in and she huffs out a short laugh of disbelief. “Wait – wait, wait, wait. You think you can… what, turn back time?”

Jon grimaces and makes a noncommittal seesawing motion with one hand.

“…could emerge back into the world that she remembered.”

Helen starts laughing in earnest now. “You think you can time travel?”

Jon just shrugs, unashamed. He knows he should feel embarrassed – back when he first took the position as Head Archivist, he would have scoffed at anyone making such a suggestion – but at this point, is it any more or less unrealistic than anything else that’s happened?

“Alright,” Helen says, stifling another giggle, “I’ll grant you that there’s a rift in space and time. People have traveled through it before.”

Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. After her encounter with the crack in the house's foundation, Anya Villette had found herself temporally displaced. What would stop Jon from also –

“However,” Helen continues, “what makes you think you’ll just rewind your position on this timeline? It could just take you to a parallel world, leaving this one behind to suffer and decay. Would you abandon what remains of humanity like that?”

Seeing as Anya Villette appeared to have also been spatially displaced, Jon has already considered this possibility. Helen probably knows that, too – she’s well-acquainted with his tendency to overthink things. She’s just trying to tap into his chronic self-loathing, demoralize him, make him doubt his own perceptions. It’s a familiar pattern, one Jon used to submit to far too easily.

“…better than staying here with this strange woman.”

“Ouch.” Helen brings a hand to her chest in mock offense. “You’re being awfully cruel today.”

Jon flashes an entirely unapologetic smile.

“I was being serious, you know.” A knowing mischief creeps into Helen’s eyes. “You’ve always been selfish, but would you really run away from your mistakes, save yourself and damn the rest?”

Unfortunately for Helen, she’s arrived too late to this particular debate. Jon already spent the entire trip here berating himself and second-guessing his conclusions, and he’s just about gotten it out of his system for the time being. Self-recrimination as an inoculation against the Distortion’s manipulations – now there’s a concept, he thinks wryly.

“Do you honestly believe you deserve to escape an apocalypse that you brought about?”

God, she’s persistent.

“Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value,” he says simply. “That I love. And I cannot lose him.”

It’s the truth: the final deciding factor for him was, as it so often is, Martin.

“You would potentially forsake this entire world just to reverse your own loss?”

“There was nothing left to save.”

It never gets easier to admit it out loud, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. This world is already forsaken. Humanity is dying out, slowly but surely, and Jon harbors a guilty feeling of relief that their torment will not be eternal after all. As far as he can See, there’s no way for him to save the ones who remain. There never was.

His power was never meant to help anyone. For a long time, the only action within his grasp was to hurt – and so, he went after those who deserved to be hurt, because the only other option was doing nothing at all. But seeking revenge never saved anyone, never even made himself feel any better. If anything, it only made him feel emptier, more and more alienated from whatever human part of him still lingered – and that was a very dangerous place to be.

And when he and Martin decided together that he needed to slow down, to maintain some distance between himself and the Eye? Well… nothing substantial changed in the slightest. He didn’t get any worse, but he also didn’t get better. The world continued to suffer just as much as if he were to sit down and take no action at all. Nothing he did or did not do made any impact whatsoever.

He Knows intimately that he cannot banish the Entities from this world as long as one person remains to feel fear. Once that last person dies, there will be no one left to save. Hell, depending on how human he still is by that time, he may very well be that last person, and the Dread Powers will just have to ration him. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve all had a taste of him more than once. He’s an unfinished meal. They could just resume hacking away at him, demanding their respective pounds of flesh one after the other until nothing remains – until finally, mercifully, the Fears themselves would wither and die as well. He just doesn’t want to consider how long that could take – no. Best not to dwell on it.

The point is, there is no future for this world. There is nothing left for him to do here. His only hope is to prevent all of this from coming to pass in the first place, and this… this is the only lead he has. And besides, Martin –

“You do realize that you have a vanishingly small chance of seeing him again, don’t you?”

“I decided to take a risk and try it anyway.”

Helen looks put out at his easy dismissal, but she really ought to know better by now, Jon thinks. He might be chronically plagued by self-hate and a visceral fear of being controlled, but Martin is his anchor in more ways than one. Their relationship is proof of Jon’s own capacity for free will, and his decision to go after Martin in the Lonely remains one of the only things he’s done where he’s never once wondered whether he made the right choice. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more confident about anything than he is about their love for each other, even if he doesn’t always feel like he deserves it. Helen really couldn’t pick a worse seed with which to sow self-doubt.

When she sees that Jon isn’t taking the bait, she changes tack.

“And assuming this scheme somehow works as you hope it does, and doesn’t just get you shunted to some hellish pocket dimension – which it almost certainly will – you do realize that your little scene with Jonah Magnus will mean nothing, don’t you? This future will be erased, he will not suffer for eternity – he won’t even remember that it was ever a possibility.”

“For all her anger, there was no thirst for revenge in the Archivist, only an eagerness to expunge an infection that had gone unnoticed for too long.”

“Then why bother confronting him? I know it wasn’t for closure – if you were at all capable of letting go or moving on, you would never have been a candidate for the Beholding in the first place, and we wouldn’t be here now.” Jon just barely manages to not flinch at that. Luckily, Helen doesn’t seem to notice that she struck a nerve, instead staring up at the ceiling in contemplation, as if trying to decipher Jon’s motivations on her own. “So, why? All those messy emotions it dredged up and for what – the drama of it all?”

“I live for the monologue,” he deadpans.

“Jonathan!” Helen gapes at him in exaggerated shock. “Was that another joke?”

She could stand to tone down the condescension, Jon thinks. It isn’t his fault if people overlook his sense of humor just because they never think to listen for it.

“Are you certain about this, Archivist? You have a history of reaching these points of no return and choosing the worst imaginable path.”

Even at the very end, the Distortion just can’t resist one last chance at undermining his confidence. Despite the cockiness underlying her taunt, Helen has a hungry, almost pleading look in her eye – desperate, like everything else in this place that feeds on fear, for scraps in the midst of a famine that will never be remedied.

Jon reaches out and grips the doorknob with one hand.

“Even the end of the world can’t stop you throwing yourself on a grenade. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m not following you in there, though.”

“Thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose.”

“I am trying to have a heartfelt goodbye, Jonathan,” Helen says, not sounding sincere in the slightest. “I doubt this will go as you hope it will, but I’m fairly certain that no matter what happens, I won’t be seeing you again. I won’t wish you luck, but… well, it will be interesting to see whether one of your half-assed plans might pan out for once – not that they ever have gone according to plan.” When Jon’s resolve remains strong, Helen sighs – and this time, her disappointment does sound genuine. “Well, if you’re sure…” She trails off, giving him one last hopeful look – once last chance to fall apart under her skillful denigrations – before her shoulders slump in resignation.

Not content to leave it at that, though, she does offer one last parting shot: “Do say hello to the Spider for me, won’t you?”

An involuntary shudder courses down Jon’s spine as he remembers Anya Villette’s statement – the massive spider legs reaching up to pull her into the crack in the foundation – and compares it with his own memory of the book, the door, and the monster lurking within. Helen breathes a contented sigh at his ripple of unease – basically a snack for her, at Jon’s expense. Fine. She can have that last little morsel of fear from him, as a parting gift.

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” Jon says firmly, turning the handle. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

And, oh, it does.

Miraculously, Helen allows him to have the last word. As he pushes open the door to the basement, he hears Helen’s door creak open in unison. By the time he’s staring down the stairs into the dark, her door has snapped shut and popped out of existence.

The staircase pitches down, down, down, stretching far deeper than it should. It’s too dark to see much of anything, and it takes a full minute of descent until he notices that there’s a slight curve to it. With every step, the air grows warmer and more stifling. The revolting sensation of walking through cobwebs becomes a constant, but any time he reaches up to brush away the web clinging to him, he feels nothing but his own bare skin.

A few minutes in, his bad leg starts twinging again, and he holds on to the wall to steady himself. Before long, his mind begins to wander to the horrifying possibility that the staircase is interminable, and he’s overcome by an image of a funnel web spider waiting patiently for unsuspecting prey. He tries to push the thought away. Just keep moving.

Between the lack of visibility and being lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice the sharp turn in the staircase until he plows right into the wall, a sharp pain erupting in his left shoulder from the collision. He throws one hand back to steady himself and only barely manages to stay on his feet, his bad leg protesting as he throws his weight into it. After briefly taking inventory of himself and experimentally putting weight on his leg again – painful, but not unbearable – he gropes blindly for the wall again and uses it to guide himself forward, more slowly this time. It isn’t long before the stone of the wall gives way to cool, damp earth, and he shivers with the memory of the Buried.

After several more sharp, nearly 90-degree twists and turns, a faint glow starts to permeate the darkness. A few minutes later, the staircase opens up into a large, dimly-lit space, garlanded with spider silk. The ceiling, walls, and floor are composed of tightly-packed dirt, and Jon has to fight back a rush of claustrophobic panic at the thought of being surrounded on all sides by the crushing earth. It’s short-lived, as it’s crowded out by a much deeper, more primal fear when he sees the fissure in the ground ahead.

It’s a repulsive, crooked thing, oozing with a pervasive, tangible feeling of wrongness. It should not be there. It cannot be there. And yet there it is, boldly existing where it has no right or reason to be, a gnawing, open, inflamed wound in the fabric of reality, pulling him toward it like a black hole. It’s a compulsion stronger than the coffin, an abomination more uncanny than the Stranger, a malice deeper than any Dark, an inevitability on par with Terminus itself.

Jon hates it. At his first glimpse of it, every one of the Archive’s eyes fly open, greedily drinking in the oppressive presence of something so unfamiliar and anomalous, leeching off of Jon’s terror as he beholds it. The scrutiny is fleeting, though, as the sight of it turns corrosive and blistering; all at once, the eyes shrink away and retreat, like a school of fish spotting a bird of prey swooping down for a meal. It takes some of the edge off, having fewer eyes with which to see the thing, but it still weighs him down with dread and revulsion.

Jon doesn’t know how long he’s stood there, staring unblinkingly at the fault line, before he senses a presence – something colossal and hungry and wrong, malevolence and foreboding given physical form – climbing inexorably toward him. He hears a faint rustling, the whisper of tiny avalanches of dirt scraped loose and sent sliding down the walls of the crevice. He knows exactly what to expect, and still he isn’t prepared when the first of the spider’s legs peeks up over the lip of the fissure.

How is it that after a lifetime to process a childhood trauma, it still throttles his heart and squeezes the air from his lungs at the mere thought of it? How is it that, despite being the most formidable thing in this world outside of Fear itself, he feels as small and helpless now as he did on the day he met his first of many monsters? Why is he just standing here, letting those hairy, spindly limbs hover and curl around him like an enormous clawed hand, waiting for a fate that is as unknowable as it is inevitable?

Focus, Jon thinks to himself. Listen to the quiet.

He slowly reaches into his jacket and breathes a sigh of relief as his fingers close around the notebook safeguarded there. It’s Martin’s, full of poems and sketches and stream-of-consciousness journal entries. Jon has had it with him for a long time now, but he’s never been able to bring himself to look inside it. Martin would occasionally share its contents with him – mostly completed poems, and only occasionally works in progress, as he was always self-conscious about his creative process – but Jon doesn’t want to accidentally see something that Martin would have preferred to keep to himself. Martin might not be beside him right now, but he still deserves to have his privacy respected.

Still, for Jon, just having it with him is a physical reminder of his anchor, and running his thumb over the cover grounds him in the present. He closes his eyes and looks inward.

The Archive gropes blindly for something solid amidst the noise, some elemental truth to serve as a starting point in the chaotic tangle choking this place. The edges of his mind brush against thread after thread and none of them are what he’s looking for. They stick to him, filling his head with cotton, making him sluggish and confused, obfuscating his sight. The Spider watches as he flails, becoming more and more snarled in the web.

“I closed my eyes and remembered in as much detail and with as much love as I could muster in my despair,” he whispers to himself, anchoring himself in the truth of the statement. He swallows a terrified whimper as something coarse and fuzzy brushes against his face, and he weaves a command into his next words: “Eventually, I opened my eyes again –”

The Archive obeys, hundreds of eyes materializing on his skin and blinking open in the space around him, grotesque satellites of varying sizes all seizing on single question, and suddenly he can See –

There.

A single thread, out of place among the rest, pulled taut and leading down into the deep gloom of the chasm. He spares a brief thought as to its origin point – Is its anchor here, now, or do its roots begin on the other side? – before silencing it. It’s not a question that needs answering right now. The Beholding objects; Jon reflexively shuts it down and takes an aggravated swipe at the nearest cluster of eyes he can reach, like swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes. He doesn’t think it actually does anything concrete, but when they disperse it brings him a small measure of satisfaction all the same.

He gives an experimental tug on the thread and – it feels right. That’s good, right? Well, he supposes it could be the Web trying to trick him into –

God, he’s like a dog with a bone. He could be trapped in a burning building and find part of his mind wandering off to idly ponder the melting point of steel –

…around 1370 °C for carbon steel; between 1400 and 1530°C for stainless steel, depending on the specific alloy and grade…

– which, yes, he has done. It’s a good way to dissociate from a crisis. Unfortunately, it’s also a good way to get killed, and the giant spider is still there, Jonathan, focus.

He holds fast to the thread – make a path for yourself, tune it to the frequency you need –

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me,” he tells himself, louder this time, “it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already.”

– and he follows it, stepping carefully around and between the spider’s legs. He has no idea why it isn’t attacking him – what if this is exactly what Annabelle – no. He shakes his head as if it will jostle the thought loose. Just be thankful for it and keep moving before the damn thing changes its mind.

Moments or hours or perhaps days later, he’s standing at the precipice of the fissure and looking down. Several eyes are riveted on the massive hairy form poised above him, but most are staring into the unknowable darkness with a gnawing, longing fascination. He stands frozen in place, torn between an overwhelming urge to flee and an overpowering need to Know what’s down there: something new, something fresh, something different – any reprieve at all from the excruciating monotony of this nightmare world.

The spider shifts above him. It’s now or never. He has nothing to lose, and if there’s any chance at all of changing this doomed future – of seeing Martin again…

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” he reminds himself, shutting his human eyes tight, one hand clutching the notebook and the other clenching into a fist until the fingernails cut into the palm. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

He takes one last deep breath, thinks of Martin – safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch – and he takes a leap of faith.

Jon can’t see anything. He can’t See, either. There is an incessant, high-pitched whine screaming in his ears and drowning out his thoughts. When he moves to put his hands over his ears, he realizes all at once that he can’t feel his body. He has no sense of up or down, no fingers to flex, no breath to hold, and – and he can’t See.

It’s… terrifying. It’s liberating. It hurts, but in the same way that his first gulp of fresh air hurt after three days asphyxiating in the Buried.

He doesn’t know how long he floats there in that near-senseless limbo, but between one moment and the next a blanket of fog drops over him and the shrill static is muffled. Through the haze, he can just barely make out a voice, coming from so far away – like he’s drowning, and someone is speaking to him from above the water’s surface. He drifts and listens in a daze as the voice cuts in and out.

“– just – thought I’d – by. Check in – how you’re –”

It’s a nice voice.

“– really need you –”

A safe voice.

“– Jon.”

Wait.

“– bad. I – how much longer we can –”

Wait, it’s – that’s Martin’s voice.

“We – I need you.”

It’s Martin. Martin!

Martin is here, he’s here – Jon doesn’t know where here is, but it doesn’t matter, because Martin is here, and – and Jon is so overwhelmed with euphoria that he isn’t actually processing what’s being said. Calm down, focus – focus on the words –

“And I – I know that you’re not –”

Oh.

“I know there’s no way to –”

Oh, no.

“But we need you, Jon.”

All at once, Jon knows where – when he is.

“Jon, please, just – please.”

No. No, no, no, no –

“If – if there’s anything left in you that can still see us, or –”

Martin, I’m here!

“– or some power that you’ve still got, or –”

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here –

“– or, or something, anything, please! Please.”

Martin’s voice breaks, and Jon’s heart fractures with it.

“I – I can’t –”

Jon can just barely make out the buzz of a phone and – oh.

“I’m – I’m actually with him now.”

Martin!

“You were right.” A pause, and a heavy sigh. “I – will they be safe?”

Peter Lukas. It’s Peter Lukas. Peter Lukas is still alive, Peter Lukas is hunting Martin, Peter Lukas wants to feed him to the Lonely, Peter Lukas is –

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”

Martin, don’t –

“Yeah. Sure thing.”

Martin!

“I’m sorry.”

Jon tries to scream, to reach out, to do anything at all, but he doesn’t have a body and he doesn’t have a voice and he can’t See –

“Goodbye, Jon.”

Martin, look at me! Hear me, please - see me!

He tries to thread a command through the words, but the compulsion doesn't come through, and -

Jon hears the rustle of clothing as Martin stands to leave, followed by the soft click of the door as it closes behind him.

Fuck.

End Notes:

me: i could go into some long-winded exposition about the space-time continuum also me: OR, alternatively, i can handwave it and say It's The Power Of Love, Don't Even Worry About It

anyway, my gay little heart knows what it's about.

- Jon’s dialogue is taken from the statements in the following episodes: MAG 146; 054; 151; 139; 168; 101; 134; 010; 037; 008; 019; 167; 108; 103; 146; 048; 013; 146.

- Jon gets some original verbal dialogue starting next chapter. Thought I'd mention it just in case anyone is getting tired of the Archive-speak (though there will still be some of that). :P

- Psst, if you want to read a detour about Jon and Martin's talk about Annabelle and free will and Not Obsessing Over The Web, I wrote that here. (I'm linking it here because it actually originally started as part of this fic but I decided to make it its own thing because my ADHD brain ran with it and it was waaaaay too much of a tangent sdsdhshgh)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonmartin #long post #spoilers through MAG 169 #tma spoilers

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marchioness-caprina · 3 years

Text

*:..｡o○Ruishiro Takizaku○o｡..:*

Basic : Ruishiro Takizaku a 18 Year Old Hero Apprentice who Works under the Under Hound Agency. He has a height of 6'2 with a lean and muscular build, He Prefers to Be Called Rui instead of His First Name. His Hero Name is ' Morphicus '

Appearance : He Is a Rather intimidating Young Man; if his Height and Build isn't enough to scare people then The Sharp and seemingly permanent glare he'd usually show would do the trick. He has a pair of Transparent eyes which reflects the Purest Color of an Amethyst, Short Ashy Blue Hair that's usually Styled in a Messy and Lazy Manner. He has Ear Piercings on both ears and his Fingers are filled with stainless steel Rings. His usual attire consist of a Black Button Up shirt, Black Jeans and a High Collared Jacket and finally Heavy Combat Boots. His Expressions are Rather complex but the most prominent Expression he wears is the usual Death Glare that never seems to disappear or the infamous ' Stone cold Bitch Face '

Personality : Though He may Seem Cold and Distant at First especially with his Intimidating Expression; You Better hope it stays That way because he is actually an Asshole at Heart. He's Sarcastic, Brutal and Cruel with his Words and He wouldn't even care what that person's Status is may it be a president, the no. Hero, a Family Member or His Lover, It wouldn't matter. This Trait of His Gets Him into a Lot of Unnatural Trouble since it's his Nature to be argumentative and Hostile and he seems to have a hidden world of Remarks to match his Wits. But during One of the Very Rare moments where his Asshole meter has reduced half way he is actually very Sweet but has an odd way of showing it. He lives for the chase and it's one of it. Generally he is like any human being, Complex. But if the situation calls for it he is polite and respectful to those People he hasn't formed a solid opinion for yet. If you want annoying then go To Rui; He Tests People's wits and Irritates them unconsciously just to see where their True Feelings Lies; He has a big brain so his analytical skills is beyond average, he is observant and knows How to Manipulate a situation that's being laid in front of him. So being an actor, lying and charming his way in is not a big deal.

Quirk : Umbra Morphology; The Ability To Morph into Something Inhumane By the use of Darkness or Any objects that Holds the Color 'Black'. When the Ability is used; Black Sticky Viscous Substance will crawl onto the User's Chosen Body Part for Transformation and slowly Consume that Body Part while Forming the desired form of the User. But the color stays on and unchangeable.

How it was acquired/ Small backstory: in the First Place He was deemed Useless by Society and was lesser than Trash Meaning; He was Quirkless. His Family was surprisingly accepting of his current state but He Himself did not Like how low he had stood with the constant Mockery of those people who had quirks. He wanted to acquire his own Quirk. He wanted to acquire Power for Himself and Show everyone that he was worth something and because of this selfish desire of His He began to search desperately; He searched up the Black web and Looked for any possible ways to acquire power without Having a Quirk. Sure there were sites that offered to use his body as a Lab Rat but that may possibly get him killed. So he kept searching and searching until he stumbled onto a site that offered a Mystery Box. It was Cheap; Too cheap that it was suspicious but he was curious. He wanted to know what was inside, could it be a gadget that could grant him Power? Could it be body parts instead? Whatever it is ; something urged him to buy it. And that's where he slowly began to ruin his own Life.

Fast Forward to a Few Days; The package arrived and to his utter Disappointment it was a price of Paper in a Box. He paid for something like this. A paper.... No a contract, a Black eerie paper that had letters written with white ink. He later decided that the Site he bought it from was a scam because when he searched it up again; There was nothing. He didn't bother reading the paper at all. And one night when he was answering his Assignments, his eyes drifted towards the black paper on his desk and when he took a closer look the words were not in the language that he spoke of. It was an ancient language; that's all he could confirm but judging by the output it really was a contract . So thinking that it would be fun he signed the contract and that's where things began to get scary ( I'll skip the other stuff)

He Later found out that The contract he signed was a Contract to be a Vessel of The Demon Of Darkness Umbrachus, A demon that had forced Rui To Accept it in his Body now his Body isn't his own. Sure Rui was happy to know that he had a 'quirk' now but later when he found out what price he needed to pay was the cause of his mass destruction. He had plunged himself on his own demise. The Demon craved the Flesh of and Blood of Humans and it forced Rui to eat Raw Flesh. Umbrachus was a demon associated with Wrath, Pride and Greed so if any of those emotions are triggered by Rui then there's a high chance of Umbrachus Gaining Control of his body. The Demon was Toying with Rui; Umbrachus Started Manipulating Rui's surroundings and giving him Hallucinations. Rui feard sleeping because Umbrachus could gain Control over his body whole he was passed out. And Finally Rui had enough when Umbrachus had nearly Killed His Younger sister due to Hunger; With the incident taking Place Rui Fled. He Fled and Lived in the streets, He fought the demon with all his might and when he was at his wits that's where Hellhound appeared to his rescue. Hell Hound runs a Hero Agency called Under Hound. And this Agency isn't just associate with heroes. They are also Masters of the Occult so Hell Hound who was in a similar situation as Rui took Pity on the Boy and Took him to His Agency where Rui was Given Proper Training to Control the Demon. And soon Rui was given a chance to become a Hero; not a Hero for the public or media but a Hero of The Night. A Hero Who Kills Villains not arrest them.

Trivia Facts

* He Has a Very Bad Sweet tooth And is a Fan of Spicy Food.

* He Was Given a Choice to change his name but he Kept it That way because he Thinks Being called Rui is Cool

* Has a Soft Spot For Dogs

* After Umbrachus Forcefully shared his Body he lost the ability to use Chopsticks and whenever he tries to use them he gets frustrated since it always slips.

* He may Not Look it But he is actually a Big Fan of Sappy Love stories but after Umbrachus entered his Body he started liking Hard Core Gore.

* He used to be Slender and Lanky but Having a Demon inside him had it's Perks.

* He prefers Convenience Store Food Over 5 star Meals.

* He is Bisexual

* He May Have Sadistic Tendencies . He blames it on Umbrachus but Umbrachus spoke otherwise.

* He's an Asshole But He respects Independent women; He was raised by only his Mother being present so he was Disciplined strictly .

* It is mentioned that he is a Fan of Sappy Love stories so surprisingly he is actually very romantic and loving if he ever finds a Lover.

* He is a Master of Lying but He prefers the Truth over lies since he is used to Saying unfiltered insults Opinions.

* A Seafood addict

* He may or May Not be Into Witchcraft

* Can speak Fluent Bullshit

* He can Form Umbra Claws, or even sink himself into the darkness to come deal his presence so he is mostly sent on stealth missions because of this advantage.

* Babies Creep Him out. Don't Ask. It just Does.

* He can't smile for shit and when he tries it comes out as a mocking smirk or a sadistic grin.

* Has Perfect control. Over his Facial expressions but tends to keep it Monotoned and Bitch-Like.

* An actual Dork and Goes to Animal Cafe

* a Fan of Musicals Especially Phant of the Opera.

* Surprisingly has Good Singing Voice

* If he's not pissing anyone off then he's flirting with someone without noticing it.

* Can Cook a whole feast but eats Cup noodles instead.

* Owns 2 large bookshelves filled with Books he never reads. Or even has the patience to read one.

* Has a Dog Named Cat.

* He claims to be allergic to the cold so his clothes are mostly sweaters, jackets, hoodies, anything thats warm. Even if it's in the middle of the summer with everyone sweating bullets you'll see him walking around casually with heavy clothes on.

* He has a mild Disdain for overconfident brats with flashy Quirks.

* Shameless with his Opinions

* Likes Blueberries

* Fast Food is his Only Food.

Note: I don't Exactly Have a Drawn Picture of Him since I'm still Contemplating a Few Details but I did make a Rough Appearance Idea of Him in Picrew. This Picture is Not Mine To own I'm just showing you guys what he'd Mostly Look Like. The art belongs to a Talented Artists with a Bright Future ahead. If you know them. Then give them my regards and Thanks ^^ . I Repeat This is Just an Example ^^ the Picture is NOT mine.

Extra Note : If You Have a Few Questiona for him then Don't Hesitate to Mention Him in your Ask ^^ . You are Free to Interact with him.

#Rui Answers #Rui #Marchioness's Oc #Persona #Ruishiro Takizaku

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barney-james · 5 years

Text

Rivalries || Tom Holland

Requested: @barnes-parker said: hiiiii! tom holland x reader where they’re on screen rivals (in the mcu films) and off screen (they ‘dislike’ each other). but what they didn’t know that they’re actually falling in love w/ each other? thank you!

*not my gif*

Your heals click against the laminate flooring as you walk towards your sworn enemy and fellow class mate. “Peter!” you sing as you approach him.

The boy turns to face you, recognizing your voice in an instant. “Olivia,” he disclosed. He grabs your arm and drags you off to a corner of the house. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh,” you laughed. “I thought I’d come to some popular kids party to blow off some steam.”

He rolls his eyes at you, not impressed by your sarcasm.

“I’m doing what my father should have done a long time ago. Killing you.”

“If you do that here, you’ll blow your cover, but more importantly -- mine,” Peter threatens.

You let out a devilish laugh. “You think I care if people know about Peter Parker being the Spider-Man? I don’t, and my father blew his cover last time he tried to kill you; people wouldn’t be very surprised to find out I’m bad too.”

You move your hand to reach into your back pocket, but Peter moves quicker. He shoots his webs at your hand, sticking it to the wall.

“What, Parker? A girl can’t check the time?”

He gives you a quizzical look.

“I’m not going to kill you, Peter. But I had you guessing didn’t I? I may work with my father, but I’m not going to do his dirty work. I thought I’d come out of hiding as a home-schooler and see what our class mates are like before starting school this week.” You pump an eyebrow at him before pushing past him and into the crowded house, your shoulders colliding.

“Shit!” Peter Parker exclaims.

“CUT!” the director yells.

You come out from behind the prop and stand next to Tom, waiting for feedback.

“That was amazing! Great job. Y/n, next time, make it more believable that Olivia is there to kill Peter.”

“Yes, of course,” you nod.

“Tom, that was perfect.”

A stupid grin plays across Toms face as he thanks the director.

“Okay, now. You two have an on-set interview in 30 minutes. Go get ready.”

Tom groans. “Another interview, with her?”

Your heart pings slightly, but you ignore it, playing it off with a scoff. You walk away from set and to your trailer without looking at Tom anymore. As the big characters for this movie, it would be expected that you’d have a lot of interviews with Tom, and you didn’t mind them so much. You enjoyed getting to know him. But it always seems as if he can’t stand you.

You reach your trailer, pull the door open, and let out a small cry. You hadn’t noticed the tears before. Usually, you wouldn’t care about weather or not a co-star liked you. Most of the time, you were just doing your job, but with Tom, it was different.

Taking off the heals, and your hair down from the annoyingly tight pony tail, you plop down onto the couch, taking deep breaths. It really didn’t matter. Or at least it shouldn’t. You are only working with Tom for about another week before you’re done with your scenes. Then you’d likely only see him again at the premier. Despite him being a raging asshole to you, he’s cute, he’s funny.

You decide to let yourself calm down a bit before you get ready for the interview. In doing so, you pull your knees to your chest and rest your head on them, taking deep breaths. You don’t know how long you sat like that because when there’s a harsh knock on the trailer door, you’re pulled from a trance you didn’t even know you were in.

“Y/n,” Tom says through the door as he continues to knock on it. “We’ve got to head to the interview in a few minutes.”

Standing from the couch, you open the door from your trailer, turning away quickly so Tom doesn’t see the state you’re in. You wipe the tears away on the back of your hand, sniffling.

“Why are you still in costume?” He laughs at you, which really doesn’t help your state of mind.

You take one last deep breath before turning to your wardrobe, unfortunately you have to face Tom in doing so.

“Whoa, whoa,” he says, his warm smiling falling from his cheeks. “Were you crying?”

“No,” you say, pulling something out of the wardrobe and looking down at it, avoiding his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Y/n, come on. It’s me. Talk to me.”

“’It’s me’” you scoff. “Do you honestly think I trust you, Holland.” You look up at him with hurt filled eyes, throwing the blouse you were holding onto a chair and looking back into the wardrobe.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Tom seems genuinely confused; you almost pity him.

“Maybe because you’re an asshole who can’t stand to be around me!” you shout, burying your head deeper into the closet.

“Wh-what are you talking about, Y/n?”

“Really, Tom? So you’re just going to act like you didn’t complain to the director about the amount of interviews you have with me when I was standing right there! You’ve got some nerve.” You grab a pair of slacks from the wardrobe and place them on the chair as well, turning and facing Tom. “I have been nothing but nice to you since we met! And what do I get back? Absolutely nothing. Nothing but you acting like I’m some rodent you can’t stand to look at longer than you have to on set. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Yeah, okay... You care about people, but you sure as hell don’t give a shit about me!”

You take your clothes from the chair and head into the bathroom. Tom follows, but you slam the door shut in his face.

“Y/n, come on,” he says through the door. “You’re being ridiculous!”

You scoff again but don’t say anything as you pull your set clothes off and put on the blouse and slacks for the interview. Looking in the mirror, you let out a big sigh, seeing you’ve had mascara running down your face the whole time. Tom saw the crazy bitch inside you. You wipe away the smeared makeup from under your eyes before opening the bathroom door and pushing past Tom.

“You know, Tom,” you exasperate. “I don’t know what I ever did to you to make you hate me so much, but I know I didn’t do anything to you that results in me deserving the shit you’ve been giving me.”

You throw your arms up, turning towards him. But before you could continue to curse him out, he gently grabs your cheeks in his large hands and pulls you face towards his. He connects your lips in a soft kiss that’s still filled with so much passion and pent up emotions. Your hands fall to rest on his broad shoulders, your lips moving in perfect sync with his.

You don’t really know what you’re doing, and you try not to think about it too much. He’s an asshole. You undoubtedly have some sort of feelings for him. And you’re sure Tom’s not the kind of guy to just kiss you if he didn’t have some meaning behind it. You want to let the kiss deepen, but your moral senses tell you that you need to finish talking to him before this happens, other wise you could just be a fling, or friends with benefits, and you know that won’t go over well.

You press your hands to his chest firmly, pushing him back a bit, but not too far, as you’re enjoying the closeness you’re sharing with him. He rests his forehead against yours.

“Tom...” you don’t know what to say as you let his name trail off your lips. You know how you feel, but you don’t want to put that out there when there’s still a slim chance of rejection.

“Y/n, I -- I’m sorry.” Tom’s hands fall from your face as he takes a step away from you. He puts his hands over his face, rubbing as if to wake himself up. “I’m so sorry.”

“What do yo--”

“For being such an asshole. I’m sorry. I wanted to keep things strictly professional, at least until the movie was over. And I wasn’t sure if you’d even want to -- want me. You’re just so kind to everyone -- you’re such an amazing, beautiful girl, and I could never do anything to ever deserve you. I knew keeping my feelings low was going to be hard once we starting filming our first scene. So, the stupid little boy inside me told me to push them to the side and be an asshole. Then maybe if you hated me I’d get over it. But I see now that even if you hate me, I’m still going to love you. Kissing you out of nowhere probably wasn’t the move, but I had to get you to shut up and let me talk.” He pauses for a moment.

You can’t speak as you try to process the words he just threw up.

“I--I love you, Y/n,” Tom sighs as if someone had just lifted the world off of his shoulders. He looks at you with hope filled eyes, but that hope fades when you’re left not saying anything, with your mouth slightly opened and a stunned look on your face.

“Oh, god,” he says, and his posture visibly worsens as if someone had just put the weight back on. “You don’t -- I-I shouldn’t have said any of this. God! I’m so stupid. I just ruined our easy work environment because you don’t feel the same and now this is going to be really awkward until we finish --”

Before he can word vomit anymore, before he can get himself too worked up or upset over this, you grab the back of his neck and pull him down into another kiss, this time more rushed, filled with need, yet still emotional. Tom is shocked for a moment, but calms, and settles his hands on your hips, pulling you closer to him.

When you pull away for air, you look deep into his chocolate eyes. “I love you, too, Tom,” you say, your gaze moving from his eyes to his lips and back again.

A shit-eating grin grows onto his face, and he pulls back from you. He starts laughing, giggling, and you join in, though not really knowing why.

Tom turns back to you, wraps his arms around your waist, picks you up and swings you around. You squeal at suddenly being off the ground. He sets you down, and looks deep into your eyes. “I’m sorry I was being an asshole. Forgive me?”

You smile. “You’re forgiven.”

“Be mine?” he says, eyes full of hope once more.

“Yes, you dummy,” you laugh.

Tom pulls you back in for one last quick kiss before taking your hand in his. “We’re late for our interview.”

Laughing as he pulls you form your trailer, you catch a glimpse at the director, who’s eyebrow is arched at the two of you suddenly getting along. He shrugs it off and gives you a smile.

You continue giggling as your boyfriend pulls you towards the interview booth.

A/N: ugh part of this got deleted and I had to rewrite it. I hope it lived up to your expectations @barnes-parker !

#mcu #marvel #tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #peter parker #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader

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tryingthisfangirlthing · 5 years

Text

A Fobwatch and a Sapphire-Studded Choker (4/?)

Summary: After the Doctor’s latest regeneration, the TARDIS crashes on Vhampre Four, and needs time to recuperate. One issue: the Doctor is wanted by the local authorities and can’t be seen on this planet. Issue Number Two: everyone seems to think Rose and the Doctor are a couple, including the fobwatched Doctor herself. And Issue Number Three: the native vhampiiri drink blood… Pairing: Thirteen/Rose Rating: NSFW (just to be on the safe side, but nothing graphic yet) Word Count: ~4.8k Content Warnings: Police Interrogation, Intimidation, Imprisonment, Terrorism Mention, Authoritarianism, Drugging, Confiscation of Property, General Dickish Police Posturing

Also on AO3

Part 4 of my @dwsecretsanta gift (from last year, ohgod I am so sorry I am so behind!) for @natural--blues.

I could not do this without @chiaroscuroverse‘s invaluable insight and @tinknevertalks‘ encouragement. Thank you both.

This chapter will be a bit plottier than the previous, and in case you couldn’t tell from the tags, it is not a happy one. I’m halfway through writing the next chapter, though, and I’ll try not to leave you all hanging too long.

Silently, J’aen offered her hand, palm up, not quite meeting Rose’s eyes. Swallowing, Rose took it, lacing their fingers together, and grabbed the suitcase. A half-eaten plate of chips and a nearly motionless animal lay on the table behind them as they made their way out of the restaurant. Rose tried not to think too hard on it.

The melancholy flutter of J’aen’s eyelashes sent guilt spearing through Rose’s lungs. But she could hardly tell her, You're really someone else, someone who isn't a bloody vampire, and I miss him — her. Both — even if I didn’t really know her yet. She knew the Doctor, and that was what counted. Even if it seared to have the man she loved wrenched away from her like that and replaced with someone new, the Doctor remained the Doctor, somehow. She'd been through regeneration once before — but never the Doctor not as hi-herself.

The customs line had shortened by the time they joined it again, moving fluidly now. “What was the hold-up before?”

J’aen glanced at her. “Well, I can hardly know for sure, but my guess would be something like chemistry equipment, DNA samples, the like. Anything that might possibly be used to help commit identity fraud is very strictly controlled. Deadly poisons or weapons might also be an issue, or infection with certain pathogens. There have been terrorist attacks in the past, though relations with other species are largely peaceable now.”

“Terrorist attacks?” Rose shook her head in bewilderment. “What was their agenda?”

J’aen let out a short, joyless laugh. “Do they need an agenda aside from inciting fear? There's been intended genocide, because some still consider us ‘a scourge upon the galaxy.’ Some misguided attempts to change the system here as it is in relation to offworlders. Or for any of a myriad of other reasons. Take your pick.” She sighed. “Not much in the way of missiles or explosives gets through the extraplanetary domain patrols, but specific electronics, chemicals, or pathogens are much harder to detect within a ship.”

Ahead of them, people set their baggage on a belt that conveyed it through what looked more like an MRI machine than a baggage scanner, though Rose guessed it showed even more than that. After yet another of the DNA scanners — the Doctor had been right; this place really was riddled with them — each person stepped into a large scanner themself. Nothing beyond the checkpoint was visible.

“You really are big on security here, aren't you?” And she'd heard air travel in her time was a bloody nuisance.

J’aen glanced at her, slightly askance. “Well, wouldn't you be?”

“I suppose,” was her slightly reluctant response. She felt the leather around her neck acutely. Didn't she and the Doctor rely on anonymity to slip around someplace unnoticed, right what wrongs they could, see the wonders the place had to offer, and slip away again without fanfare? She had some inkling of how he-they might have previously come to the attention of the wrong people here, though there had to be more to it than that. The Doctor was hardly the sort of person to shy away from confrontations with so-called authorities, or to flee from danger. Neither of them were. “And if you've not been through the proper security checks? Or registered in the system?”

J’aen arched her eyebrows as she set their suitcase on the conveyor belt. “I've heard there are people who live here like that, but I can't imagine how they'd evade checks for very long, or even buy food.”

With a polite smile at the security guard, J’aen swiped her hand over the DNA scanner, and stepped into the body scanner. Rose waited her turn, doing her best to quiet nerves that refused to be entirely quashed. What if enough of the Doctor was still there for the scanner to pick up? Reflexively, she smoothed a hand over her jacket pocket, pressing the watch a bit closer to her.

A security officer gestured for her to come forward. The DNA tag scanner didn't protest, at least, when she swiped her ring over it, and, with a quick inhale, she stepped into the body scanner.

It was, in essence, a wide, vertical metal tube, the air inside practically crackling with the amount of energy running through it. “Please extend all appendages away from your body to their fullest extent, and close or otherwise protect any visual receptors or light-sensing organs,” intoned a mechanical voice. Rose complied, spreading her legs and holding her arms straight out as she closed her eyes. It wasn't a pose she was unfamiliar with, from the occasional Torchwood security patdown. The impersonality here, though, especially coupled with her lack of vision, made it somehow a more vulnerable position, not less of one.

A flash left spots dancing across the inside of her eyelids. She grimaced, squeezing her eyes more firmly shut.

“Thank you for your cooperation. Our security officers will inspect you more closely. Please exit the scanner and comply with all directives issued to you by any of our security team.”

Stomach dropping, Rose did as the computer had instructed. She hardly seemed to have very many alternatives.

“Gentleperson.” A black-uniformed guard confronted her the moment she exited the scanner. “Please step into the inspection area.” Ey gestured to a small booth off to the side.

Rose stopped, looking around for J’aen. “Can I ask what the problem is?” she stalled, taking a deep breath.

By the conveyor belt, J’aen folded her arms as another security officer lifted their suitcase onto metal inspection table and opened it. But, the TARDIS wouldn't pack anything that would get them in trouble…

Rose's guard glanced between her and J’aen. “I will speak with your sponsor as soon as possible. Now please, let's not hold up the line,” ey requested, more firmly.

Rose shook her head. No way was she getting taken someplace on her own. “J’aen!”

J’aen turned, wrinkling her brow as she saw Rose with the guard.

“Gentleperson.” Fingers closed around Rose’s forearm, and she glanced back at the security officer. “Let's not make a scene. I'd prefer not to have to insist.” The last word was almost a hiss.

The officer with their suitcase said something to draw J’aen’s attention again, but she held up a hand in the universal “wait” gesture, and strode towards Rose. Something in the way she moved reminded Rose of a panther, smooth and intent. “What seems to be the problem?”

The guard cleared eir throat. “Your companion has an unidentified object on her person. It is required we search her and inspect this object.”

“I would like to be present for that search.” J’aen crossed her arms over her chest. Her tone left no room for it to be interpreted as a request.

“As is your right as her sponsor, gentleperson.” The guard’s words carried a smooth, mollifying cadence. “But I believe my colleague also requires your attention, and we need to keep the inspection line flowing.”

J’aen practically glowered at em. “I insist she stays with me. We'll go through both the baggage search and the personal search together. It's my good name on the line as well as hers, after all.”

“Gentleperson, we cannot delay searches.” Seeming to sense the commotion, more guards were gravitating towards them. “Once a suspicion has been raised, we are obligated to act upon it in as timely a manner as possible. However, all inspections are recorded per protocol and can be made available to those with the right to access it.”

J’aen glanced at one of the approaching officers, and set her jaw. “I will want access. Rose,” she said, and softened, laying a hand on Rose’s arm, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. There must have been some kind of mistake.”

Rose could only nod. “Yeah, ‘m sure it's just some sort of mistake.” The words rasped over her tongue, and she cleared her throat. “I'll be all right.” It felt like a lie.

J’aen gazed at her for a moment longer, lightning flickering in her eyes — that brush of her thumb stealing Rose's focus, a split second — and then she was returning to the baggage inspection.

“Now that's settled…” The guard gestured meaningfully towards the booth again. “If you would please accompany me for inspection.”

Swallowing, Rose allowed herself to drift slowly towards the door. She could probably take on a guard or two and run, but where would that leave the Doctor? (And J’aen?) They had to live here, for however long. And Rose couldn’t leave her alone.

Then the door to the booth slid shut, sealing Rose and the guard inside.

Chains hung from the ceiling and one wall, like the strands of a spider’s web. Opposite them stood a table and chair, plain, sturdy metal, bolted to the floor, with a post to attach cuffs, the spartan décor of an interrogation room. A soft hum filled the room, not unlike inside the body scanner. No one-way window was visible, but Rose was willing to bet there was one all the same. Maybe running would have been the better decision.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to relax. “So what happens now?”

“I’m going to begin with a pocket search.” The guard cleared eir throat, pulling a tube of some sort of paste out of eir pocket. Ey daubed it into eir palms, and began rubbing eir hands together, smearing the substance like lotion over the rest of eir skin. “Please raise your hands above your head and keep them there.”

The fobwatch weighed down the right side of her jacket, and Rose’s heart sank with it. “I think I know what set it off. It's just a watch,” she tried. “I can show you if you li—”

“Hands above your head, please.” It was half a bark, and at that point discretion was likely the better part of valor. It just looked like some fancy old watch, really. But she remained tense. If anything were to happen to it...

The lotion left a thin, shiny film on the guard’s hands, like skintight plastic gloves. Slowly, achingly, Rose lifted her hands, and watched as ey unzipped her pocket and pulled out the fobwatch.

Ey turned it over in eir hands, examining the engraving. “What is this?” ey demanded, almost angrily. “What sort of device is it? Is it electronic, or explosive?”

She nearly laughed, out of sheer bloody irony. “It's mechanical. It's a watch — a small clock. It tells time. It's a very old human technology.”

“How?” Eyes narrowed, ey peered at her from beneath eir lashes.

“May I have it back so I can show you?” Carefully polite, nonthreatening.

“I can't do that. Tell me how it's supposed to function.” Ey crossed the room, to the opposite wall.

Eyes on the fobwatch, Rose followed. “I'm not an engineer, but I can explain the basics. It's —”

A compartment opened in the wall, and the guard set the watch inside. Then the compartment slid shut again.

“What are you —?” she half-cried, before biting down on her lip and purposefully lowering her shaky voice. It burned, this compliance with a system she'd already begun to think of as an enemy, but over the years she had learned to employ her rage and stubbornness with a little more precision. “Why did you do that?”

“Please take three steps back.” The guard’s shoulders were tense, eir chin lifted stiffly.

Swallowing, she put a little more space between herself and em, to purposely seem less threatening. “What was that for?” She swallowed, trying to further even her voice. “I could’ve just shown you how it works, that it's not a bomb or anything, and then I could’ve been on my way already.”

The guard glanced at her, but didn't respond. A display lit up on the wall, text scrolling too quickly for Rose to really read the portions of it the TARDIS did translate. What she did see looked like chemistry equations, something about unstable radiation and biological material…

Noticing her watching, ey frowned and swiped away the readout. “Is kei zhel’t?”

Rose’s stomach churned. “I’m sorry, I don’t — I didn't quite understand. Could you say that again?”

“Haye-nhish jeil’t’j sdio. Hashel’t lii’il vhampre’ed.” Ey spoke harshly, gesturing towards the wall compartment. “Dzhak. Is kei zhel’t? ‘Watch,’ natel’t’d, ue nhi?”

“Yeah, it’s called a watch, a pocket watch.” She crossed her fingers, both that the TARDIS was at least translating her words, and that she was offering whatever information the guard was looking for. “When you open it, there are numbers on it, and the little hand — pointer — tells you the hour, points to it. And the longer pointer tells you the minutes. In Earth time. But you have to wind it, usually, uhm, add mechanical energy every so often so it keeps running, because it hasn’t got a battery or anything. It’s really, really old. That one, it doesn't work quite right. I just keep it for sentimental purposes. Reminds me of home.”

“And you always keep it on your person?”

Relieved, Rose let out a breath. “Yeah —” Of course she would, though that might not be the safest — “I mean, no, not really. I’ve been keeping it with me while we traveled, just, for safekeeping and all. But I don't carry it everywhere with me. I usually keep it someplace at home, nightstand, dresser, you know.”

Ey hummed thoughtfully, noncommittally, regarding her closely. “And how long have you had it?”

“Not very long.” The fewer lies you told… “Picked it up at a bazaar somewhere, one of those antiques sellers.”

“And yet you claim it carries significance for you.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, it's from Earth.” She shrugged, finally finding something like a rhythm, a role she could play. “I mean, I'm God knows how many billions of miles away. What's this all about, anyways?”

The guard shook eir head. “Above my clearance.”

Behind her, Rose heard the click of the latch, and turned to see the door sliding open again. Two more black-uniformed officers filed in, one after the other. One of them nodded towards the guard who had originally taken Rose out of the customs line. “You may go.”

Ey executed a half-bow, and the tension in eir shoulders dissipated as ey stepped out the door.

Rose swallowed, eyeing these new police, or whatever they were. “Security enforcers,” or some other pretty name, no doubt. They sported cuffs and holsters on their belts, and stripes of gold across their chests — the auburn-haired, more feminine of the two wore one sash-like diagonal band, and other, darker-haired officer, two. Drawing eir brows together, Two-Stripes stepped towards Rose, and she took half a step back, on pure instinct. One-Stripe clicked eir tongue, and when Two glanced at em, ey looked meaningfully at the upper corners of the room. Rose saw nothing as she followed eir gaze, but Two grumbled inaudibly.

“Please take a seat, Rose Tyler.” Two enunciated eir words loudly and clearly as ey gestured towards the chair closest to the chains.

Eyeing em warily, Rose saw nothing for it but to lower herself into the seat. She glanced at the nearest ceiling corner. At least they acted like there were cameras. “I'd like my stuff back, please, and I'd like to know what all this is about.”

Two narrowed eir eyes, and One pressed eir lips together, glancing crossly at the first, who glared right back. They'd reminded her of whatever unknown, critical eyes might be privy to the footage of this, and she'd be damned if she wasn't going to use it. This was going to be a theater performance, not an interrogation, and everyone in the room knew it.

Two-Stripes sat down opposite her, while One remained standing, behind and to the left of what seemed to be her superior officer. “Your… device is being held as possible evidence in an investigation. Once said investigation has concluded, you or your sponsor may petition for its return.” Calmly, coldly courteous, if barely that.

Rose sat back in the chair, a small noise of disbelief escaping her. They had to be kidding. She needed — the Doctor needed — “Well, that's just fan-bloody-tastic,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else in the room. “What's this investigation about, then? How long do you think it's gonna go for?”

“We can't predict that.” Smoothly, deliberately, Two-Stripes laid eir hands on the table, palms down, and leaned forward. “Let's cut to the heart, Rose Tyler: what do you know about the Doctor?”

She’d been expecting — fearing — something like this. “The Doctor who?”

“He simply goes by ‘the Doctor.’ Quite a unique sort of man. Last of his species, and rumors say he can change his face.” Two sets of eyes, possibly more, watched her carefully.

She lifted one shoulder. “‘S that supposed to impress me?”

“Do not play with us, Rose Tyler. Answer the question: do you know of this Doctor?”

“I don't know, maybe?” Spreading her hands, widening her eyes, she did her best to play innocent ignorance, to think as if she were her role, the oblivious foreign housewife. (She was not at all meant for this position.) “Has he been on the news? I might've heard of him, but with the moving to a whole other planet and all, I’ve been sort of preoccupied lately. What do you want with this bloke, anyway?” Not a bloke anymore — hopefully that would work in her favor. “What's he done?”

“He is in possession of technology able to compromise security measures and personal identities.” The sonic could probably muck up all their scanners, yeah, and good riddance. Did the Doctor — did J'aen still have that on her? “He has attempted to reveal state secrets to the general public, and we believe him to be involved in the formation of an extremist movement.” A careful pause, then: “You are curious. Yet you say you do not know him?” The words were carefully polite, but Rose could feel the sharp edge lurking just beneath.

“No.” She shook her head, silently seething. Whatever the Doctor had done here, she was starting to think he hadn't done nearly enough. “Don't know a thing. I think it's pretty normal to be a bit curious about the reason you're being searched and bloody interrogated.”

“Hrm.” Two glanced back at One. “Depiction.”

Ey adjusted eir hands behind eir back, and a holographic model appeared on the table in front of her. It was her Doctor, her first Doctor, mid-run, sonic in hand, leather jacket flapping out behind him, the beginning of a panting, empty smile on his lips and a lost sort of look in his eyes.

She stiffened, and swallowed, and kept herself from smiling fondly. Of course he'd be running. “What's this from? I'm guessing that's the bloke you're looking for.”

“If you know anything, Rose Tyler, now would be the time to tell us,” One spoke up again. Two-Stripes swiveled eir head and glared at em. One bowed eir head and took a step back.

“My colleague is correct, though you have already been offered more than enough chance to be honest with us.” Patronizingly, Two continued, “But I'm willing to be lenient.”

They all waited, allowing silence to swell and fill the air. Finally, Rose shook her head. “I don't know that man, and I don't know why I'm here.” Her voice bent and cracked, part desperation and part just plain, sudden exhaustion.

“There was Time Lord DNA all over your device.” Ey let the statement sit in the room.

Rose closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head again. “I've got no clue how it got there. If it's older, the DNA, well, I haven't had the watch very long. And everybody wants to look at it, the customs agent when we left, the bloke on the shuttle wondering what that lump of metal in my pocket was, all of you…” She lifted a hand to indicate, vaguely, the generality of it.

“Are you insinuating you may have met and conversed with him recently?” Two's biting accusation came swiftly, like the crack of a whip.

“What I'm saying,” she enunciated, with some force behind her tone, “is that I could've met this bloke without knowing it, and that's how his — DNA got all over my stuff. You said he could change his face, yeah? So how on Earth was I supposed to know?” She lifted her hands in exasperation. “Is it even his DNA?”

She wasn't a xenobiologist (though she probably knew at least as much as any scientist Torchwood had hired for that official position), but she really doubted her new new new Doctor's signature matched that of her first Doctor.

She seemed to have hit the mark; they exchanged meaningful looks again. “I have already told you: he is the last known individual of his species.”

“Last known. So basically, you're not actually sure.” She crossed her arms.

“Both the Time Lords and the Daleks perished in the Time War, girl,” Two snapped.

No they didn't, she just stopped herself from saying, and pressed her lips together. Not the Daleks at least. Not every single other Time Lord either.

“All of them, because this one —” ey stabbed a finger at the hologram on the table — “killed them all. And while the universe may be grateful for that, we damn well know he's capable of anything. Wherever he goes, people die. By S'varekha's talons, if you don't tell me what you know…” Ey trailed into a growl more eloquent than any words.

“Have you ever thought maybe people die in spite of and not because of him?” The words just slipped out; at some point she couldn't not defend the Doctor. “People die whenever firemen are around, too, doesn't mean it's their fault!”

“You are taking the side of a man you claim to know nothing about.” The subtle triumph in eir tone hit Rose like a slap.

She tried to keep her shoulders from hunching up defensively, but she cast her gaze down. “No.” It stung, to force the word out. “I'm not taking his side. I'm just saying maybe you haven't got all the facts yet.”

“What did you think an investigation was for?” Two bared eir pointed teeth, leaning further across the table.

One-Stripe hissed, quietly, increasing the volume until Two stiffened, and slowly sat back. “You'll excuse my colleague. What ey meant to say was that this is not a trial, not of you nor anyone else, right now. Of course we don't have all of the facts yet, which is why we need you to enlighten us if you can.” One tilted eir head. “He was generally considered a special protector of Earth and Earthlings — humans — at one point, was he not?”

“So maybe he touched the watch ages ago, I dunno.” Rose shrugged, purposely obtuse, and twisted her features into what she hoped was a recognizable mixture of exhaustion-desperation-might-be-about-to-cry. “I don't know anything. I just want to go home with my wife.” The word came so easily. “Please.” There were only so many times she could say “I don't know” without the words beginning to sound meaningless even to her own ears.

“She nhar serlit zhel'j'i. Kherzir'j'i'sh en hel'av zharek'ed.” One was no longer speaking to her, though it still would've been nice to know what was being said.

Two looked like ey wanted to argue, but after a moment, ey swallowed and bowed eir head. “Kei es haye’t.”

“Nhar siem zhel't,” One snapped, before turning to Rose. “Vilay't zhel'j'i.” The accompanying gesture was small and brisk, but in human it meant “come with me,” so Rose stood. Maybe she'd gotten wrong who was the superior officer here.

A door slid open on the wall opposite from where she'd come in, and Rose stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket, clutching it more tightly to herself. “Where are we heading?”

“Your sponsor has been summoned to claim you and answer some questions herself. Afterwards, we'll determine how to proceed.”

“Do I get to be, like, released into her custody or something?” How was she supposed to look after the Doctor if she was locked up somewhere? Though right now, if she and the watch were the main link between the Doctor now and the Doctor they were looking for, maybe it would be better if they weren't connected — except they already were connected, and she was just about sure something wasn't right with the Doctor's brain, and —

Thoughts whirling, she followed One down a stark white hallway, hearing Two's footsteps behind. “Don't you run out of space, keeping so many people locked up?”

“Confinement is widely considered the most humane method of dealing with potential dangers to society, and as a first step we've found it an acceptable compromise in matters concerning non-vhampiiri.” Left, right, then left again; Rose tried to compose a mental map of the place, but doors blended almost seamlessly into the walls until they slid open, and she doubted she'd be able to make her way through here on her own. Hansel and Gretel came to mind, though maybe not breadcrumbs. The floor was an off-white, slightly smudged. Was rubber still a thing here? Then the officer’s words registered properly. “Compromise for non-vhampiiri? What do you do with vhampiiri? And what comes after the compromise for the others?”

“We have a… not a truth drug, but a substance that makes vhampiiri more… compliant, submissive to authority, and this is our first course of action with them. Our second recourse for offworlders is generally to use the same on them, though we can never know precisely how it will react with any particular species or hybrid biology.”

“That's barbaric!” Guttural horror burst from her. If J'aen was fed this stuff...

“It's effective,” One countered from in front of her. “The truth is in everyone's best interest.”

“But you shouldn't take away someone's right to privacy!” She was likely digging herself deeper, she knew. She bit her lip, resolving to keep he reaction to whatever came next bottled up.

“We're not prying into their personal memories. The recipient still retains a significant degree of control of their faculties. And it's far more humane, and efficient, than most other methods.” One's tone brooked no rebuttal, as ey stopped and set eir hand to a small scanner pad. The door slid open, revealing a small, sparse room. A wall sectioned off what looked to be a shower stall, and a sofa-sized flat cushion and small desk occupied the other side.

The officer gestured for her to enter. Frightful certainty seized Rose. “What if I need to use the ladies’?”

They exchanged looks that wavered between puzzlement and exasperation. “The sanitary facilities are multifunctional,” Two finally added, in a tone probably intended to be professional but that ended up more condescending.

“How long will I be shut up in there?” Her voice came out smaller than she would have liked.

“That depends on your sponsor. Now, please.” One repeated the “go in” gesture, with a bit more force.

Seeing little other choice, Rose stepped inside. The doorframe intoned, “Rose Tyler, interned by: Z'herie, at: Sigma Six Delta Quad Era Khavesh,” and she heard the door click shut behind her.

***

First the suitcase radiating abnormal temporo-spatial particles (which they hadn't been able to find the source of, but security had finally given up and let her and the luggage go, given said particles seemed benign ), and now this. Whatever this was about.

But J'aen submitted to this, too, closing her eyes as the relaxant entered her bloodstream, mentally running through all the different bonding and inhibition-lowering chemicals in the cocktail as she began to feel their effects. She still felt remarkably clear-headed, though her tongue and eyelids were heavy, the corners of her mouth automatically curling up.

“J'aen'haraya, what does the name ‘the Doctor’ mean to you?” There were several security officers in the room, and she wasn't quite sure which of them had asked the question. It didn't much matter.

“It's familiar, but I can't quite seize why.” Pain seared through her temples, for only a split second, and left her gasping in its wake.

“Have you or your charge, Rose Tyler, ever had contact with a Time Lord?”

“Time Lord” was familiar, too, but she didn't know why, or what either term meant. And she was just about to to tell them this — but Rose. She had to protect Rose, and herself, so that she could continue protecting Rose, from — from anything. Her head throbbed, but she kept her mouth closed until she had carefully chosen her words. “No encounters that I recall.”

#ficandchips #femandchips #doctor x rose #thirteen x rose #a fobwatch and a sapphire-studded choker #rinari's fic #vampires #police intimidation #interrogation #terrorism mention #confiscation of property #imprisonment #angst #natural--blues #tinknevertalks #chiaroscuroverse

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darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts · 6 years

Text

Devil’s own Luck pt2

Warning: more mobstyling warlords, strong language.

Masterlist link

---

Chapter Two – The Princesses Keeper

Thoughts floated aimlessly around his mind as he managed to juggle the girl in his arms with a little effort and open his door to his room. She really is quite light… somehow she appeared smaller and more fragile in his arms. Placing her on his bed in as much of a comfortable pose as possible he then began to rummage through his small kitchenette looking for something for her to drink.

It had been a while since he was last here. Hideyoshi had said a few days but that was only the few he had been aware of... in truth it was closer to a week and a half. What was the old saying? The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing? It was right more often than not, even if in this case it was normally the other way around.

Hideyoshi had no idea how much work Mitsuhide actually did behind the scenes to allow their little ‘projects’ and ideas to go off without a hitch. It wasn’t just him though, none of the guys really knew, with the exception of Nobunaga who Mitsuhide was aware might sometimes know more than he let on. He managed to keep everything he got up to on a strictly need to know basis, and more often than not they didn’t need to know.

All those endless nights arranging meetings and adjusting an overly pack schedule, every minute, sometimes even every second planned out to the nth degree. Sure, it would have been easy to just wait for his contacts to find everything he was looking for, or one of his own men, and report back to him but he still preferred to go himself. That all added up to a hell of an amount of speculation as to what he was up to. He knew it, and whilst everyone around him had obviously thought it at least once in a while, Hideyoshi wasted no time whenever they were together in attempting to milk information out of him.

If he was in their shoes he would have been suspicious of him too. He couldn’t fault their logic. He disappeared constantly with no warning, turned up with information no one else could find, and didn’t explain anything of where he had been or the origins of what he had acquired. Put all that together with the smile he normally had on his face and he added up to one highly suspect person indeed.

-mmm-

A low groaning mumble came from the bed and when popped his head out to check he saw she had moved but was still not awake. Pushing around the baron cupboards as quietly as possible he finally settled on grabbing a couple of bottles of mineral water from the fridge. He wandered back, grabbing a chair as he went and placed it next to the bed so he could observe and see if she would regain consciousness quickly.

She really is out for the count… Although her mind was clearly labouring under her experiences from the evening he couldn't help but look closer at her face. That troubled, tormented expression is… bewitching. Her eyelashes cast a shadow lightly on her cheeks, chest slowly rising and falling… catching sometimes before returning to normal steady pace, her hair had slightly come loose and was sticking to her face. Before he realised it, he had reached out and was brushing it back from her forehead tucking it behind her ear.

-mmm-

She shifted more, except this time it was towards him, and nuzzled his hand. Her face relaxed slightly at his touch, a faint smile ghosting her pale pink lips. Huh? She was like a cat wanting to be stroked. He smiled wryly at her before removing his hand and contemplating how to deal with her now. This could be bad… and he knew bad things. I’ve got to speak to Nobunaga. He left her a bottle on the side table and walked silently out of the room.

Mitsuhide decided to lock the door from the other side after he left. It wouldn't do to have her running off on him now after all.

---

A summons… that was really all you could call the message they had all received on their phones from Nobunaga. “Meeting room in half hour. Be there.” Seriously? Of course, your majesty… not like I had anything else to do anyway… like I don’t know… trying to figure out if the girl was going to be a massive logistical headache once people figure out she is gone. But he knew he had to speak to the man anyway so this was at least beneficial to him for the time being.

Checking his watch, he made his way along a series of passageways avoiding the main corridors just in case he should find Hideyoshi waiting to ambush him for more details about his whereabouts. He had no energy or desire to waste on something like that right now.

The building looked like any other office block with small apartments on the upper levels and standard offices on the floors below. It was functional and suited their purposes nicely.

Arranged throughout was access for general maintenance and repairs. Small spaces spread out like a spider’s web hidden in the walls and ceilings. The others knew they were there but none of them knew them like he did. It might be Nobunaga’s building but in the narrow passageways dimly lit from emergency lighting … this was his domain.

In the main meeting room all the usual suspects had gathered after they were summoned by Nobunaga. The bright lights seemed brighter in the pure white room, the only colours added were from the other items of furniture and vases of fresh flowers. A massive central black glass table set up in the centre surrounded by black leather executive chairs with shining chrome. Overall it was a clean, simple and a stylish set up. He quite liked it, even if it was lacking in what someone might call ‘personality’ it seemed to ooze ‘intention’. There was after all no place for personal matters in successful business.

Ieyasu was sitting next to Masamune and Mitsunari was next to Hideyoshi who was in his usual chair to the right of where their boss will be leaving his space on the left open. The only one not to raise their head at his entrance was Hideyoshi. Mmm, it seems I have earned a cold shoulder again… He took up his seat and glanced at the right-hand man out of the corner of his eye seeing him flexing his hands open and shut below the table on his lap. Someone is trying very hard to count to ten… amused at his observations Mitsuhide affixed a disinterested look on his face and he had barely made himself comfortable before the large doors at the end of the room swung open as Nobunaga made his dramatic entrance.

Mitsuhide smirked and smiled thinly. Nobunaga had a flare for the dramatics, although it was predictable, it still had the effect of making him want to laugh at how over the top it all was. Taking his place at the head of the table, his red eyes roamed over the others present as he rested finally on a set of yellow eyes to his left before opening his mouth to speak.

"Well?" One word, although simple, held so many others hidden within it that it was difficult to ascertain a starting point for discussion.

"Yes, thank you … can't complain." Maintaining his razor thin smile and gaze Mitsuhide replied.

"That is not what he meant and you know it Mitsuhide." Hideyoshi snapped back quicker than Nobunaga could begin laughing.

Nobunaga liked entertaining and amusing people and had a high tolerance to shenanigans and jokes as long as you did your job and got stuff done without disrupting him or his business he was more or less happy to over look certain levels of insolence on a good day. Mitsuhide could normally ascertain a good from bad day and so got away with more than most people would, making a few question his ability to use some kind of magic to stay alive in front of someone who others called ‘The Devil King’.

"That's enough Hideyoshi." Came a low chastising rumble. Directed at the man without actually turning his way.

"Sir" Looking abashed Hideyoshi bit his tongue and continued to glare silently at Mitsuhide.

"Report! What on earth did you bring a girl to gun fight for? And what's more why were you there at all?" Nobunaga spoke clearly and directly avoiding any further abilities of Mitsuhide's to evade by giving direct questions.

"There's a girl? where?" A small innocently distracted voice spoke up across the table.

"Oh, for Heaven's sakes we told you that already. Does anything actually go into that fluff ball of a brain of yours or not?" Ieyasu was glaring exasperatedly at Mitsunari.

"Did you? I’m terribly sorry how rude of me I don't seem to remember. I think I was engrossed in reading... I don't recall much when I’m reading." Mitsunari's violet eyes lowered to the table slightly as he began to try to recall anything before he has been handed something to read.

"Well no shit Sherlock!" Ieyasu snapped back, clipping each word.

"Ieyasu!" Hideyoshi glared at the man, deep frown present on his face.

“Do not start a fight at the table. We are here to discuss the girl and the events of the evening not to talk about Mitsunari and his reading habits." Hideyoshi’s voice was more weighted than usual as dished out his reprimand. Clearly mother is feeling irritated that she cannot tell off the child she wants to because Daddy told her not to… Mitsuhide remained smiling, silently observing.

Ieyasu averted his gaze mumbling something incoherent and Masamune let out a short laugh next to him before slapping the guy on the shoulder. Mitsunari seemed to have managed to remain completely oblivious to the tone and content of the conversation to that point and had his usual angelic smile plastered on his innocent little face. Whilst Ieyasu glared at Masamune rubbing his shoulder.

Mitsuhide cleared his throat before speaking again.

"Well first of all... l didn't intend to 'bring a girl to a gun fight'. She was already running in the direction of her own volition." He couldn’t hide a tinge of amusement from his voice as he pointed this out.

"My kinda girl..." Came a happy and slightly too loud response from Masamune that promptly gained a smack on the back of the head from both Ieyasu and Hideyoshi.

“Ouch!” the now silent Masamune sat there rubbing his head a little. Suppressing an audible snigger Mitsuhide returned to his explanation.

"Anyway, I saw the girl as I was leaving..."

"Leaving where? Doing what?" Hideyoshi opened his mouth to begin his own little interrogation. Unfazed Mitsuhide merely shifted his citrine eyes towards him flashing a trademark smile.

"Does it matter? point is I was leaving and noticed her. I tried to call out, but she couldn't hear me. I was worried about her so I followed to try to avoid any further complications and when I had caught up to her the second group of gun men started targeting and I dragged her into that alley to avoid harm." He evaded the cross examination quickly.

Give someone enough information quickly enough on the subject at hand. you can over whelm them just enough whilst maintaining a level of deniability to be able to wriggle free of a net innocently.

"You're such a heroic man Mitsuhide, risking your life to save a damsel in distress." A pair of violet, owlish, innocent eyes looked at him in quite awe. The other men at the table, except for Nobunaga, worked hard to avoid their eyes rolling out of their heads.

"I dare say it's not the first alleyway you've found yourself in Mitsuhide ...I wonder if it's the first one you've had a blind date in though." Smirking all the way as he joked Masamune was clearly enjoying himself.

"Who's to say... but I can't say it's been the worst date so far." Returning the joke back Mitsuhide returned his gaze to Nobunaga aware that the big boss had yet to comment.

"Where is your weapon?" a calm even tone enquired. Ah, thanks Mum you just had to tell Dad I lost my toy. Mitsuhide denied the flinch that the question had caused him to feel. Even he knew he had messed up but that was just no changing that now.

"In my car. I slept there last night and I can only assume it fell out of my holster at some point in the night. careless on my part but we both know I don't require a gun to kill a man." He shrugged his shoulders lightly as he replied confidentially.

Smiling at his confident remark Nobunaga nodded in silent agreement before he finally turned to the others present. Well that went quicker than expected.

"Alright now on to other business. You are all aware of the unwanted attention we have been placed under due to some anonymous tip offs.” His full attention on all present at the table now. Nobunaga stated facts in a detached business-like manner.

“Anonymous my arse. We all know where it came from.” Snorted Masamune, who snapped his mouth shut when Hideyoshi shot him a glare for interrupting.

“Quite… as such I have decided that for the time being this girl should remain here." Nobunaga informed them in a matter of fact way. a collective intake of breath around the table happened almost in unison. Guess I don’t have to ask what to do with her now then.

"Sir ... why? This girl could be a spy or anything. we know nothing about her. we should turn her loose and give her enough hush money or something else to avoid further issues." Yes, that was Hideyoshi thinking of the big picture whilst missing any possible beneficial spin offs. Mitsuhide’s mind was already working overtime chasing the shadow of his bosses budding idea.

"I have been thinking that it would be a good idea to use a woman for a time. And we have several new plans in the pipeline that I will see to fruition without any further hindrance from the press or the appropriate authorities butting into it. Failure is not an option gentlemen and by the grace of the God's I have been handed a woman without need to go looking for someone appropriate. Luck appears to be truly on my side."

Luck? Well that was unforeseen in a really should have seen it coming kind of way but Mitsuhide put down his lack of or slow foresight, to his long day and poor nights rest. Maintaining his usual expressionless smiling face whilst the others watched knowing that when Nobunaga made up his mind about something nothing changed it. Luck though? Nobunaga didn’t strike him as being superstitious of anything as improbable.

"I will inform you all of the details closer to the time in the meantime I expect you all to help Mitsuhide look after our ‘lucky charm’." Smiling Nobunaga got up and swept his way out of the room before waiting for a response, and all eyes fell on Mitsuhide.

Me? Why? Well he supposed it made sense he had after all already been taking care of her so what was a bit more babysitting really? Although pretty much any of the others would have been a better choice.

This was a very unusual and rare thing since starting out, not once had his Boss ever suggested holding a captive for use by the group to achieve anything. All their plans, every bit of their achievements had been successful through their hard word, dedication, strategic planning and if he was honest a few well-placed weapons, cameras and words in the right ears.

The problems from the tip offs was obviously causing an invisible net to tighten and Nobunaga seems to feel this is a solution. Well if nothing else it’s entertaining…

He really was going to have to look closer into the girl though. If it turned out she had links to something or someone that could cause more problems he would rather know sooner rather than later.

Possible headlines popped up in his mind “Husband left holding baby - Where’s Mummy?” or something similarly likely to grab headlines faster than a score predicting octopus. It was time to get to work…

---

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

Text

the tangled web of fate we weave: xv

HAPPY GARCY DEATHDAY, REDUX! Anyway, sorry for the slight delay in updating, as I had to get the plot bunnies in order, but we are back and I am Very Excited. A little something to tide us over until we perish tonight.

part xiv/AO3.

It says something about the succeeding insanity of the situations that Lucy Preston has found herself in that her first reaction to this – to Flynn apparently letting slip that he knows all this because some future version of herself told him, and in fact did a lot more than talking to judge from that hickey – is muted and unsettled shock, but not outright denial or disbelief. It almost makes a sordid sense, so far as that word can be applied to anything that involves time travel and multiple selves and the other stuff that she has accepted in an academic way as in fact being involved with this, but has not yet had to actually wrap her head around. She knows at once he’s not lying, or at least if he is, it’s because he himself believes it’s the truth. They stare at each other for a succeeding excruciating moment. Then Lucy finally says, “I told you. I told you. As in, my future self, who you met just before that trip to Pennsylvania. I somehow turned up from some unspecified moment in – in what? The Tardis? The DeLorean? What? – to tell you that Rittenhouse had a time machine. Is that it?”

Flynn blows out a breath. “Do you remember the conversation we had at the hotel in Philadelphia that night?”

“I… yes.” Lucy’s cheeks go somewhat warm, as she recalls that it mostly involved her shouting at him for being a stubborn, elusive jackass. Which, strictly speaking, is all true, but she should try to remember specifics. “You said that you’d had second thoughts about coming to see me at Stanford that day, decided to walk away, and – and give it up, or do it yourself. But that you changed your mind. That was why you came back, and went through with the original plan.”

“Essentially. Yes.” Flynn is clearly still not comfortable talking about this, but he glances at her with a certain raw, tender urgency. “But I didn’t change my mind. You did. You – came, you wouldn’t tell me from when or how, you didn’t tell me much. You said I couldn’t give up the hunt, and that you – meaning your younger self, I assume – would understand one day. That was why I went back. To you.”

“Jesus.” Lucy scrubs both hands over her face. She remembers being baffled and exasperated by Flynn’s bizarre behavior, the way he kept staring at her and/or would barely look at her, insisted on sleeping on the floor, gave only evasive or partial answers. Well, she supposes that meeting a future version of her and learning that time travel is real is a pretty good excuse, as excuses go. She feels obliquely bad for being so frustrated at him, though obviously this is not an explanation that ever would have occurred to her (or most people outside of padded cells). “So that’s why you’ve kept at it? This – this whole time?”

“More or less.” Flynn returns his attention to the ceiling. “Yes. I knew what the consequences would be if I stopped, if I just sat back and let them win, and I. . . I wasn’t going to do that. What would you do, if the fate of the entire world might be in your hands, and you were the only person who knew? What, just give up? With what I’ve learned about these bastards, about what they want to do and what they’ve already done? I don’t know if I’ve done anything, but I know even less that I can afford to stop.”

Lucy is at a complete loss for how to answer that. She’s not sure she should even try. This man, who goes in and out of her life at highly significant intervals and never leaves things exactly the same as when he came, has been single-handedly fighting a shadowy evil organization for at least two years. As he says, he’s been the only soldier in the war, and he’s doing it in some part because he trusted her – some version of her, some mysterious older self that she may or may not grow up into – absolutely when she apparently told him that it was one they couldn’t afford to lose. Does this mean she starts fighting it as well, Lucy wonders? And does she do it because this happened, this circularity of causation that will give you a headache trying to figure it out – in other words, if you do something because your future self told you to do it, where does the idea originate from? Does it matter? Theoretically, perhaps, she could choose to ignore this information and carry on as normal. But she’s also not sure that, in a way altogether separate from the extraordinary and impossible elements of the whole thing, that she could.

“So you believed this?” she asks at last. “When I – when I told you?”

“Not at first,” Flynn says, entirely reasonably. “You… convinced me.”

Lucy wants to ask again what kind of convincing took place, even if she can, frankly, guess. It is a weird and obnoxious feeling to be jealous of yourself, that’s for sure. “And that was enough for you?”

Flynn shrugs, not quite meeting her eyes. “Looks like it, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucy opens her mouth again, then shuts it hard enough to hear her teeth click. This man. This utterly idiot, frustrating, dense, dysfunctional, dedicated, ridiculous man has been fighting all of time and space for two years, never thought it was worth telling her, and might have carried on to God knows what end, on her word? Sure, future-self and all that, but still her, in some impossible, unquantifiable way. That is a singular, and almost terrifying, level of trust and adoration and devotion. She does, then. She owns his soul, and always has. All she has to decide is what to do with it now.

There is another fraught, catching moment as they look at each other, the heat sparking again despite what they have (finally) just done, at least in part. Lucy knows all the conventional-wisdom, smart-girl things about not jumping into a new relationship on the night you literally broke up your last one, with a guy who might have been about to propose again if things were different. But honestly, Noah (at least the second time around) was never a real relationship. She always found some reason to hold him at arm’s length, not wanting to let him go and not wanting to be alone but also not really wanting him any closer. She and Flynn have spent years – almost ten, at this point – missing each other, whether by their own volition or someone else’s. Come and gone, ships passing in the night, stars just missing the other’s orbits. So much time may remain, if what Flynn is saying is true (and as impossible as it sounds, she knows it is), but that doesn’t mean Lucy can take it for granted. And at last, well. She doesn’t want to do a damn thing besides this.

She leans forward. Still almost timidly, expecting to be pushed away somehow, rejected. God knows Flynn has a bad track record with handling her other attempts to make moves on him, even though you’d think that getting to third base would change that. But it’s the truth, it’s the truth, it feels like a giant iron band around her chest that has been there for years and years has finally unlocked and let go. It’s this. It is. Her and him.

Flynn’s hand floats up shyly to cup her cheek, as their noses brush, then their foreheads. She can feel his pulse tripping in his fingers, and realizes that he is as scared as she is, if not more. But likewise, he can no longer pretend he wants anything but this, and always has.

They kiss lightly and tenderly as a melting snowflake for half a moment more, and then it turns ferocious. They clutch hold of each other’s heads, fingers twisting in their hair, his hands almost engulfing her ears, as he pulls her toward her and she climbs into his lap, straddling him. His hands leave her face and run down her shoulders, her sides, her hips, settling her on top of him, grinding hard between her legs. Earlier was gentleness and disbelief and care and worship, and that was what they needed then, but this is different. The choice has now been made, the key has been turned, and what’s left is only hunger.

Lucy almost rips the Wonder Woman T-shirt getting it off her head, and Flynn’s hands are shaking almost too hard to stop as he shucks his undershirt. Lucy can still feel the faint tremor in them when they come up to cup her breasts, as she goes to hands and knees atop him and shudders as his callused fingers continue their exploration down her spine, to the waistband of her pajama pants. He pauses. “Lucy, do you want – ”

“Yes.” Lucy finds his insistence on her control and consent very arousing, has only begun to think of the ways she might enjoy that in more intimate fashions, but right now, he is the only thing she wants, and she can’t stand to wait another minute. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

He closes his eyes as if hearing a prayer, or offering an unspoken one of his own. They squirm around to get the pajama pants, and his boxers, off, and he rubs a thumb lightly between her legs, still a bit wet from his earlier attentions. Then he lifts her atop him and nudges at her entrance, as Lucy reaches down to grasp hold of him and guide him. She half wonders if she needs to, since after all, he’s the one who knows what (or rather who) he is doing here. There is something exquisitely delicious about the fact that your partner already knows your body, has been with you before and knows what feels right and what you like, but it’s all new for you. She can relax and know that it’s going to be good, trust him in a way that she never has on the first time with a guy before, and it’s dizzying.

Flynn swears as he slips into her, a few maddening inches, and Lucy wraps her arms around his neck, pressing his face into her shoulder, both of them breathing in raw, open-mouthed gasps. He turns his head, roughing his lips against hers – too harsh and hungry to be a kiss, exactly, but she returns it with the same savage, thorough need. He continues to ease into her, pushing her solidly apart as she whimpers and rolls her hips to adjust the fit and take him deeper, until he settles. Both of them swear this time. She feels almost drunk.

“Lucy,” Flynn whispers hoarsely. Out of all the words he knows, in all the languages, it seems to be the only one he can recall. “Lucy.”

Lucy answers by clenching around him, a few slick quick clutches, and tangling her arms tighter around his neck. He remains where he is beneath her for a moment longer, then comes up like a hurricane and rolls her over, pushing her into the pillows on her back, legs sprawled open. He grips onto her thigh with one hand, tangles his other into hers, and pushes it above her head, bending her up into him for an extremely thorough drag and thrust on every single nerve inside her. He moves like a summer thunderstorm, hot and bright and rattling the heavens as the downpour comes down. Washes everything, everyone, clean.

(She can’t stand it, she can’t stand it, and yet. It is all she needs, and more.)

(They get almost no sleep that night whatsoever.)

Finally, having dozed off in a sated stupor near dawn, tangled in the sweaty sheets with Lucy’s head nuzzled on Flynn’s chest, his arms wrapped around her as she lies nearly atop him (he still barely notices her weight, apparently), they are re-awoken to the inconvenient and burdensome fact of reality. They did it three times last night (three and a half, if you count the opening warmup) and while they are giggly and flushed and flirty and can barely keep their hands off each other, they cannot go on acting like sex-crazed bonobo monkeys forever. (In their defense, Lucy thinks, it’s been a very long dry spell.) There’s still Wyatt, and Flynn’s end of the deal, and whatever else is going to happen with the two of them now. This doesn’t feel like it’s going to end like it usually does, with Flynn abruptly pissing off into oblivion and never even bothering to send a goddamn text, but it also means that hard choices will have to be made. Is he still dedicated to the Rittenhunt? Is she willing to possibly change or sacrifice her entire life to join him?

They wake up slowly, pleasantly sore in unused places, and when Lucy steps into the crappy hotel shower, she thinks it’s lucky that her clothes will cover most of this. She couldn’t look more well-fucked if she tried, and there’s a lingering afterglow that will settle in her chest like an ember and burn for a while. She can’t hope the goofy, giddy smile that keeps flickering to her lips. God, she just – she feels good.

She dries off and gets dressed, goes out, and promptly gets distracted with kissing Flynn good morning, running both hands up his arms and wrapping them around his neck again, unable to get enough of finally being allowed to touch him in the way she wants. This nearly leads to round four on the bed, but he finally groans and tears his mouth away from hers, very unwillingly. “Lucy, we need to get going.”

“Later, then?” Lucy sits up and reluctantly buttons her half-undone blouse. She then glances at the clock and has a mild panic attack to shock her out of her present state of acute nymphomania. She needs to get to Stanford for her morning class in under forty minutes, and she can’t roll in looking like – well, you know what she looks like. She jumps up, rushes to do her makeup and throw everything back into her suitcase, and they head out. She remembers just in time that they don’t have a car, since Flynn ditched the stolen laundry truck right before the world’s most ill-advised mugging attempt last night, and her own is still back at Noah’s. God, now there’s a reunion she really does not want to have. Dumps him just last night, then turns up having clearly hit a three-run homer with the guy he’s always known (accurately) was bad news? Noah does not deserve that.

They can get public transit, but it’s clear Lucy is not going to make it in time for class, and she phones the department and asks if they can let her students know that due to unexpected circumstances, she can’t make it today. If she knows undergraduates, they won’t mind in the least, and though this might be the smallest of her professional responsibilities she ends up having to shirk, she still feels a pang of guilt. Flynn, looking at her, smiles wryly. “I promise I’ll get you back for the afternoon.”

It takes a while, but they manage to do this. Lucy double-checks Noah’s schedule on her phone, prays that he has not switched shifts again, and gives Flynn her keys, so he can go retrieve her car while Noah is at work. They kiss again before Flynn leaves to do this, and as Lucy is hurrying into the history building with a hopeless smile on her face, she runs into her friend and department colleague, Eleanor Renshaw, who raises both eyebrows at her. “Someone had a really good night, huh?”

“I…” Lucy coughs, cheeks going pink. “It was all right. Honestly, it started out terrible.”

“Mm-hmm.” Eleanor glances sidelong at her and lowers her voice. “That wasn’t Noah dropping you off, though. It’s none of my business, but… everything okay?”

“It’s…” Yes, Lucy is in fact going to use the word complicated here, however risibly inadequate. “It’s complicated. Noah and I… kind of broke up. The – the other guy, I – we – we’ve known each other for a while. Don’t say anything about this to anyone, all right? It’s not really something I want to be asked about at the water coolers. It’s new. We haven’t exactly figured anything out.”

“Sure.” Eleanor is a good enough friend that she will do as promised, and as she glances at Lucy again, she smiles wryly. “You know, I haven’t seen you looking this happy in – well, the entire time I’ve known you, pretty much. Who is this new – well, old new guy?”

“Later. I’ll fill you in, I promise.” Lucy isn’t sure if she will or not, since this still seems like a delicate soap bubble and poking it or prodding it in any way will cause it to vanish. “I already missed my morning class, I gotta make some of my photocopies.”

Eleanor nods, agrees that she has a totally fascinating book on regional differences in thirteenth-century French Gothic manuscripts to get back to, and waves Lucy down the hall to her office. Once she has shut the door and glanced around, just in case, Lucy boots up her computer and opens the local San Francisco news sites. Sure enough, there’s a story on several of them that Wyatt Logan, U.S. army sergeant, has been arrested for the attempted break-in at Mason Industries, and is also dealing with the tragic disappearance of his wife, Jessica. If the public knows anything, they are certainly urged to come forward. Looks like there are already several crowd-funding campaigns started on Wyatt’s behalf. Figures.

Lucy looks at Wyatt’s booking photo in the article, can hear Flynn asking sarcastically how Wyatt will look in his mugshot, and thinks that she almost can’t stand the sad, empty stare in his eyes. The articles have noted that police are not currently looking for anyone else connected to the break-in, so Wyatt must have held up his end of the deal and lied convincingly that it was all on him, he forced anyone else spotted on the security footage to help him out. That’s a pretty big show of trust, whether in Lucy or just out of desperation to find his wife (funnily enough, Lucy doesn’t get the feeling it was about trusting Flynn). He’ll probably be released with no charges, since as noted, public sympathy is already on his side. But what life does he get to go back to either? All of them are changing, are losing, are getting little (or large) pieces chipped out of them. Can’t Rittenhouse just stop?

Lucy sits back in her chair with a frown and closes the sites. She has wondered why Flynn didn’t just try to blow up the time machine, though even he might have trouble smuggling in enough nitroglycerin and/or industrial fertilizer and/or TNT and/or anything else that goes boom, to totally take out Mason Industries and everything in it. You’d also hope that the prospect of massive property damage and multiple collateral casualties would be enough to give him pause, though she honestly can’t say for sure. There was also what he said, two years ago when he left, that there’s no guarantee he would take out the tech to stop them from just building another one, when they haven’t even invented all of it yet. But is there also a hesitation in that if he destroys the time machine for good, it’s possible that the other one won’t be invented? The other her, the older her, sometime in the future, won’t be able to use it, to find him, to tell him about Rittenhouse and whatever else. He will walk away on that night instead of returning and going to Philadelphia with her, they will never see each other again, and none of this will happen.

A chill goes down Lucy’s spine at the thought. History has always seemed so solid, so immutable, so reassuring. Yes, you can argue yourself blue in the face about the interpretations, but the events themselves aren’t up for grabs. The idea that all of it could change, could blow apart under her feet like an unstable river bank – that this could center around them, around him, around her – is absolutely horrifying in a way that the human mind, obviously, has never been equipped to comprehend. How does she not screw this up? Flynn clearly did not want to unduly influence her choice in any way, pushed her away, kept her at a careful distance so it didn’t look like he was manipulating her or forcing her into being around him if she didn’t want to be. Fate vs. free will – was she always going to be destined to do this, and it didn’t matter if Flynn tried to make it happen or not? Or… or what?

Lucy is a historian, not a quantum physicist or a theologian, and her brain hurts, as well as wanting to explode with anxiety, when she thinks about this. She gathers up her armload of assigned readings and takes them to the photocopier, runs them out, and trucks off to afternoon class. It’s not the most scintillating lecture she’s ever given on nineteenth-century American social reform, perhaps, but whatever.

When it’s finished, she packs her stuff up in her bag, reminds herself that she still needs to send the final cover for the book off to UChicago, and wonders where exactly she’s living now. She goes out to the faculty parking lot and shifts anxiously from foot to foot, scanning the drive for any sight of her car. Is Flynn here? Is he coming back? He is coming back, right? He didn’t leave again, did he? Nothing went wrong with getting said car, right? Did Noah catch him and decide to yell? Not really his style, of course, but –

At last, just as Lucy is on the verge of melting down, she sees her Kia turn in (she got rid of the crap Honda now that she has an adult job) and pull up to the curb, flashing its lights at her. She expels a shuddering breath of relief and goes to open the passenger door, unable to resist glancing in first to make sure it’s actually Flynn and not yet another Rittenhouse kidnapping attempt (two is plenty, thanks). But it is, and she crawls in, throws her bag in the back, and kisses him again, just to be sure. “Everything go okay back at the house?”

Flynn shrugs. “Fine. Noah wasn’t there. And since we’re not going back to the roach motel, I’ve found a short-stay apartment for us until we can work out something a little more permanent. I’ve paid the deposit and the first month’s rent, my name there is Alexander Kovac. It’s not as nice as where you were living with Noah, but – ” He stops, clearly trying to act nonchalant, as if her answer doesn’t matter to him. “I mean, if you don’t want to, of course. As I said, it’s short-term. But for now – ”

If he wasn’t driving, Lucy would have kissed him again. Instead, she takes his hand off the gearshift and squeezes it. “It’s fine,” she says. “I’m sure it’s fine. But you – with Rittenhouse. Are you planning to go back to that?”

“I…” Flynn blows out a breath. “I’m thinking about it. I don’t know that I can let it go permanently. I’ve managed to uproot and expose a few useful parts of their operation, and I don’t think they’ll overlook that. I can’t promise that we’re entirely free of the possibility that they’ll come after us again. But you’ve been living here for two years without me, and you haven’t seen hide or hair of them?”

“No.” Lucy, as ever, wants desperately to believe that they’re gone, but can’t quite go that far. “But if I’m living with you – ”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Flynn changes lanes. “That I’ll be a beacon drawing them down on you, the way I was before. If you don’t want to risk – ”

“I’ve spent enough of my life trying not to risk things,” Lucy says, quietly but very firmly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen either, Garcia. But I want to do this with you.”

Flynn’s hands clench on the wheel. A restrained sigh shudders through him, as if all the toil and danger and uncertainty of these last two years, the two years she still barely knows anything about and likely never will, has been vindicated in that. He glances at her, sharp profile painted half in shadow from the freeway lights. “I,” he says, stops, and starts again. “So do I. So do I.”

Rufus has been tying himself in knots trying to decide if he should report the “robbery.” At least, more or less as Eastern European Enema promised (not one of Rufus’s finer alliterations, perhaps, but that bastard was definitely a pain in the ass), Jiya was horrified and volubly sympathetic to his “ordeal,” so their date actually does not end in complete disaster. As they walk back to the hotel, she’s urging him to file a report and tell Connor and whatever else, all of which makes Rufus’s stomach writhe. He can’t file a report since he didn’t really get robbed, it won’t help anyway, the last thing he wants to do is fess up to Connor that he betrayed his trust like this, and he feels eminently unworthy of Jiya’s sympathy and pity. After all, he’s lying to her too, rather than admitting he just let some mysterious terrorist basically have free rein back at Mason Industries. He can barely look at her as he mumbles that it was fun, maybe again sometime, and bolts back to his own room.

Rufus muddles through the welcome dinner that night in complete distraction, doesn’t sleep a wink, and finally gets up before his alarm at ass o’clock the next morning (he’s a software programmer, his natural circadian rhythm means he goes to bed around three AM and likes to wake up around eleven, though this has had to be adjusted to the demands of a job). Connor will be down in the hotel gym, working out before a busy day of meetings and events, and Rufus doesn’t care if it gets him in trouble. He has to do the right thing and come clean before it snowballs even more than it already has. What’s-his-face probably just raced to the airport and jumped straight on a flight; with the eight-hour time change in reverse, he could have gotten into San Francisco in time to do something at Mason Industries last night. He definitely wouldn’t be lollygagging, that’s for sure. Rufus has spent most of the night neurotically refreshing news apps on his phone, and he can’t live this way.

He takes a deep breath, and tells himself that he could get suspended, but Connor probably – probably – isn’t going to fire him. They have known each other too long, and Connor has sponsored him every step of the way. He’s not gonna be pleased, obviously, but he might understand why Rufus did it. He has to.

Rufus clenches his sweaty palms, goes out of his room, and takes the elevator (lift) down to the gym. Sure enough, Connor is inside, pedaling away on an exercise bike and watching the flat-screen TV with his headphones in, and Rufus looks around for any other six-o’-clock-AM psychotic exercise aficionados that they might be disrupting. Coast clear, for the moment. He swipes his key card to let himself in, and makes a beeline for the bike.

Connor plucks out one earphone, looking bemused. “Well, Rufus. Good morning to you too. I must say, I didn’t expect to see you just yet. Everything all right?”

“No,” Rufus blurts out. “No. Connor, we need to talk. Right away.”

Mason frowns, letting the whirl of the pedals come to a halt. “Oh? You did seem rather distracted at the dinner last night. I thought your little day out with Jiya went well.”

“She didn’t – she didn’t tell you what happened?”

“No.” Mason cocks his head. “Rufus, what on earth is going on?”

Rufus feels as if he’s standing in a white-hot spotlight of shame, but there’s nothing for it. Stammering and barely able to get the words out at points, he tells Connor what happened yesterday at Covent Garden. And what, thanks to him, is probably happening at home.

Connor is quiet for a moment after Rufus finishes, at a forgivable loss for words. He considers. Then he demands, “Garcia Flynn? Garcia Flynn did this?”

“What?” Rufus swears that name is familiar, though he can’t think why. “He never told me his name, he just looked like your standard-issue Eastern European baddie, but – ”

“Oh no, I’m quite sure it was Flynn.” Mason takes the towel off the handlebars of the bike and mops his face with it. “Your description is quite vivid and unmistakable. Suffice it to say, some of my. . . professional colleagues have been keeping an eye on him for a while, or at least trying. He’s been off the grid and deep undercover for the past several years, and unfortunately, he is very good at it. We’ve had a few brief leads, but nothing solid. So you’re telling me you had a nice coffee with the person of most interest to our entire operation, who could kill this crucial and groundbreaking scientific project dead in the water, and let him into the laboratory?”

Rufus cringes. “I’m – I’m sorry, Connor, I – I just – ” He trails off. Exonerating himself feels cheap, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves it. “He threatened Jiya.”

Connor blows out a jaded-sounding breath, as if this is why workplace romances are, generally speaking, a bad idea. “Yes, well. He would. I don’t suppose it’s entirely your fault, he’s frightened a lot more powerful people than you. But if he got a chance to – bloody hell, what? Oh bugger. One moment, Rufus, please.”

With that, he fishes his buzzing phone out of the bike cupholder, looks at it, and frowns. Answers, paces to the corner of the gym, and has an intense, low-voiced conversation that looks serious. Rufus tries not to eavesdrop, while telling himself that if he does overhear something, he can’t be blamed, but he can’t make out anything anyway. Finally Connor hangs up and comes striding back. “Well. I just got a call from home that someone did in fact break into Mason Industries last night. They have a suspect in custody and are asking questions, but it doesn’t appear as if anything was permanently damaged. We may have miraculously skated this time, but – ”

“What?” Rufus’s heart feels as if it’s about to burst out of his chest. “Flynn?”

“No, actually.” Mason raises an ironic eyebrow. “Wyatt Logan.”

“Him?” Rufus, to say the least, did not see that coming. Is it remotely possible that Flynn went to all that trouble to stick him up, crash his date, and steal his ID badge and keys, possibly ruining his romantic and professional lives, to just. . . not pull off his heist? Is it too much to ask that he got busted by Border Patrol on his way either out of the UK or into the US? But even if it might be a momentary relief that Rufus has not actually been responsible for destroying everything, this is still a very confusing and not necessarily reassuring development. “Why the hell would Wyatt Logan break in? Still bitter that you wouldn’t talk to him from – what, two years ago?”

“I don’t know.” Connor’s tone remains light, but Rufus sees a brief shadow cross his brow. “You don’t suppose they’re working together, do you? Flynn and Logan? I daresay it would be much easier for Logan to get off on these charges than it would for Flynn. If the. . . police get their hands on him, he’s not reappearing any time soon.”

“Wyatt and Flynn in cahoots?” Anything is possible, Rufus supposes, but he still has a hard time picturing that. “So Flynn stole my stuff and gave it to Wyatt to use? I didn’t really get the sense that he was big into delegating.”

“Who knows,” Connor remarks, “but clearly, there remains a great deal to sort out. I don’t really want to cancel this trip, there are a number of high-profile events that I’ve spent a long time setting up, but considering what’s at stake – ”

“I’ll go.” It’s out before Rufus has time to think about it, and he’s likewise been looking forward to the trip, but this is at least partially his fault, even if Connor seems to accept that Garcia Flynn is an absolutely pants-shittingly terrifying dude and has intimidated far more worthy opponents than a shy tech geek. Besides, he wants to curl up and die every time Jiya looks at him sympathetically, since he’s done the exact opposite of earning that, and he needs to make this right somehow. “If you can just move up my return ticket, I’ll leave today, I’ll head back to the Bay Area and handle all of this for you. I understand if you don’t want to trust me, since I messed it up before, but please, Connor. I feel like I should.”

The older man studies him for a long moment, eyes unreadable. Then he says, “That is quite noble of you, Rufus, I’ll give you that. But are you sure you – ”

“I don’t know.” Rufus doesn’t know what exactly Mason was going to say next – sure you can handle it? That you know what to do? That you won’t arrive in the middle of an even bigger mess? – but either way, the answer is the same. “But I have to try.”

After a final pause, Mason nods once. “Very well,” he says, and reaches for his phone. “Do be careful, won’t you?”

Several calls later, making quick arrangements on his behalf, Rufus has been picked up by the car service and is headed right back to Heathrow for another long-ass transatlantic flight. He sits in the back and watches the grey city go by, unable even to text Jiya some kind of apology, because of course Flynn stole his phone. This has not been among a banner few days of his life, that’s for damn sure, and his head chases itself in anxious circles. Nothing about this situation makes any sense. Is Flynn still out there, planning a second break-in while everyone’s distracted with Wyatt? False flag, decoy attempt, and then the jaws actually clap shut? They might not be out of the woods yet. He doesn’t know.

Rufus gets onto the plane (first class, priority boarding, Connor has paid for all the bells and whistles, since it’s just pocket change for him) and while he thinks he won’t, ends up sleeping for most of the eleven-hour flight, to make up for missing it all last night. He is, however, disoriented as hell when they touch down in San Francisco, since it’s barely past noon, his body isn’t sure whether it’s eight o’clock at night or he’s just woken up in the morning, and whether it wants to run in any useful way or not. Rufus collects his bag, guzzles an industrial quantity of Starbucks, picks up his car from the valet lot, and blearily prepares to drive to Mason Industries and sort out what the white-people hell is going on.

When he gets there and informs the police detectives that he’s been sent as attaché for Connor, they reassure him that the situation is under control, nothing was damaged, and Mr. Logan has thus far been mostly cooperative. He did, however, have a female accomplice, as the receptionist, Tammy Westover, has verified, and while Mr. Logan has given a sworn statement that it was all his idea and he forced the woman to help him, they still want to find her for a few questions. Does Rufus have any surveillance tips or tricks for. . .?

“Wait, what?” A female accomplice? Unless Flynn put on a wig and has a hereto-unguessed and convincing passion for drag shows (Rufus would almost pay to see that), it can’t be him. “So what, you want me to just Big Brother her down for you, without a warrant or convincing proof of a crime? When that’s your job? Besides, isn’t that like, massively illegal?”

The detectives exchange a look, as if they think it’s cute he’s worried about that. (And people wonder why black folks have trust issues with the police.) After a pause, Rufus gets what they’re really after. “You’re trying to see if I had something to do with it,” he says. “I was in London the whole time, I have an alibi, I – ”

“Yes, Mr. Carlin. But we’ve heard you also misplaced your ID badge and keys recently. Lost it in a robbery, was it? That’s unfortunate.”

“I’m Mr. Mason’s representative here,” Rufus says. “I’ve talked it over with him, he knows the full account. I don’t care what time it is in London, but you can call him if you want.” He doesn’t know why this should surprise him – black man turns up trying to help the cops, quickly gets fingered as the suspect instead – but still. “I’ll wait.”

The detectives exchange more looks, but finally one of them goes to call Connor, and whatever he says must help, a bit, because the detective looks slightly more conciliatory when he returns. “Just doing our due diligence, Mr. Carlin. But by your own account, this allowed your sensitive materials to get into the hands of someone else who could have used them to gain access to the property. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Rufus doesn’t see what good it’s going to do him to deny this. “Look, how about you let me talk to Wyatt, all right? We. . . kind of know each other, but it’s complicated. If he’s covering for Garcia Flynn somehow, I could possibly figure that out.”

More looks and low-voiced conversations, but at last the detectives seem to decide that they might as well see if either Rufus or Wyatt slips up. They leave Mason Industries in an unmarked grey Crown Victoria and drive to the jail where Wyatt is currently being held. Rufus is shown into one of the Plexiglas-box things with a telephone, sits down, and waits until the door opens on the far side. Glances up, and winces.

Wyatt Logan looks, to put it nicely, like hell. He’s dressed in prison gray, his eyes are red, his hair tousled, his face pale, and he barely notices the guard marching him along to the chair. He sits down and picks up the other phone reflexively, not even looking at who’s on the other side of the box. Then he does, and blinks. “Rufus? Rufus Carlin?”

“Yeah. Hey.” Rufus gives half a wave, which is incredibly awkward. They’re not friends, and the last time they saw each other was Wyatt leaving after the San Jose parking lot fiasco, the one Rufus secretly recorded and handed over to Connor. But Wyatt still looks like lightly warmed over dog shit, and Rufus feels genuinely bad for him. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but. . .”

Wyatt snorts, without any humor whatsoever. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I just. . .” There’s no way to ask this clandestinely, but he might as well. “Look. About the break-in at Mason Industries. Your accomplice – ”

“I made her do it,” Wyatt says. “I forced her to help. I’ve told them to check my call logs, it’ll show I contacted her first. It was all my fault.”

Rufus is pretty sure he’s lying, even if in a backwardly noble, self-sacrificing way. Why the hell would Wyatt do that, though? After a long pause as they stare at each other, Rufus says, “Did you get any help from Garcia Flynn?”

Wyatt stares back at him without a flicker. If that’s a poker face, it’s a good one. “Nope.”

Rufus hesitates. This isn’t an interrogation, he’s not a cop, and doesn’t want to make the actual cops’ jobs any easier for them, just on principle. He’s not gonna sit here and ask questions that Wyatt, if he’s any kind of soldier and has undergone training on how to resist giving up vital intelligence, has probably prepared his answers for. Instead, Rufus leans forward. As quietly as he can, he says, “I know you didn’t do this, Wyatt.”

Wyatt jerks, but doesn’t immediately respond. There’s another pause. Then he says, “You’re wrong. I definitely did do it. All over the security cameras. So – ”

Whatever Rufus is going to find out, it isn’t going to be like this. He holds up a wait finger, hangs up the phone, and then turns to the detectives. “I want to pay his bail.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Carlin?”

“I want to pay his bail,” Rufus repeats. “That’s still legal, right? I’ve got a well-paying tech job, I can afford it. I’m not under arrest, so. . .?”

The detectives confer and mutter and glare, but since if Mason Industries’ own consigliere doesn’t want to press charges, and is willing to charitably extend the olive branch to the perpetrator of the crime, they can’t really get around that. It takes a while, Rufus pulls out his credit card and calls his bank to expect a sizeable charge, but finally, Wyatt appears, still in handcuffs but having been allowed to change back into his own clothes. The corrections officer undoes them, there’s some stuff for them both to sign, and Wyatt is finally released on recognizance. This does not necessarily mean it’s over, but for now, he’s free to go.

They walk into the parking lot without looking at each other, and get into Rufus’s car. Rufus turns on the engine and yawns fit to crack his jaw. “Where should I take you?”

“I don’t know.” Wyatt leans back in his seat, eyes bleak. “I’m not sure it matters. I just. . . thank you. I didn’t deserve that. It was a lot of money. I’ll pay you back whatever I can afford right now, and I’ll keep it up until – ”

Rufus raises a hand. “I don’t want you to thank me,” he says. “I don’t want any of that. I’m just tired of being used by people – you and Garcia Flynn, among others – and I was making the decision on my terms. Besides, there’s things you don’t know about me, either. How about we just call it square?”

Wyatt looks at him, wary and weary and wan, then nods once. He holds out his hand, and they shake. “Just take me to a hotel,” Wyatt says. “That’d be best.”

“You know,” Rufus says. “I have a spare room, and Halo. Frankly, dude, you’re a mess. How about you stay? Just for a night, at least. We can order a pizza.”

Wyatt looks at him again, touched and startled and clearly at the end of his rope, unable to reject a simple, ordinary kindness, when the rest of his world has gone so comprehensively to hell. He starts to speak, clears his throat, and stops. Then he says only, “Okay.”

Connor Mason is working late.

Connor Mason usually is – don’t make billions of omelets without breaking an equal number of eggs, after all – but this is different. He’s been receiving sporadic updates on the situation back in San Francisco, has had to remind the bloody police not to arrest Rufus, and has a great deal more reservations than he has publicly let on. He’s been waiting for something like this to happen, even as he managed to convince himself that it wouldn’t. Told himself that Garcia Flynn was gone, the threat was over, and the time machine would be ready on schedule as Rittenhouse has made it very clear that it will be, or else. In the back of his head, Mason wonders if this is entirely a good idea, but the point is moot. He has no choice.

It’s past midnight in London, and he aimlessly turns over pieces of paper on his desk, staring at the glittering skyline. He was born and raised here, this is still home in a way. His parents immigrated to Britain from the Caribbean during the Windrush, and his mother cleaned the houses of rich Londoners for a living. It was watching her struggle with the vacuum that made young Connor want to simplify her life, to invent better ways to do all this, and he has. His success is beyond any doubt, as is his bank account. His mother (his father died some years ago) lives in plush retirement and wants for nothing at all. Now her son could buy all the houses that she cleaned, several times over. If a great deal of that has come through Rittenhouse. . . well. Omelets. Eggs.

Nonetheless, Mason is feeling anything but sleepy as he sits in the office. He might stay here all night, he’s done it before. If there’s any way to know that this is going to be over, that it was a nearly catastrophic but recoverable slip, and that he can just –

There’s a knock on the door. Once, sharp, and short. It’s not a knock that expects to have to repeat itself, or thinks it would be a wise idea if it did.

Connor looks up with a jerk. He can’t say he’s not been expecting this, but his stomach still sinks. He presses a button on the underside of his desk. “Yes?”

“Hello, Connor,” a woman’s voice says. “Burning the midnight oil?”

Mason grimaces. This is not, indeed, a visit he’s going to get away with refusing. He hesitates as long as he dares, then presses another button. The door swishes open, and Emma Whitmore strides into his office.

It’s been a while since Connor has seen her, since Emma transferred out for whatever shady reasons, and he was almost hoping he wouldn’t. Emma is a very capable pilot and a genuinely impressive woman, but she’s also terrifying, and the knowledge that she is in his organization expressly on the orders of Rittenhouse higher-ups to keep an eye on him while he builds the time machine isn’t exactly comforting. As usual, she looks as if she’s fresh off killing a man, probably literally: immaculately cut and belted grey peacoat, skintight brushed-suede trousers, and black platform heels, ginger hair in elegant curls around her face and blood-red lipstick expertly crisp despite the late hour. She’s carrying a file under her arm, and she takes a moment to good and appreciate his freezing in his chair. “Long time no see.”

“Hello, Emma.” Connor offers a weak attempt at his usual smarmy smile. “Lovely that we’re finally in the same town again, isn’t it?”

Emma shrugs. “I’ve had this on my calendar for a while, sure. Though I’ve heard you’re having a fascinating time even without me. Or was that Rufus?”

“Rufus isn’t here,” Connor says, feeling rather grateful for it. “He’s gone, he – ”

“Yes, I heard.” Emma brushes that off. “I didn’t come to talk about him, anyway. Or only indirectly. I heard that he resurfaced. Is that true?”

Where Rittenhouse is concerned these days, he can only be one person. Connor nods. “Rufus says he spoke to Garcia Flynn, yes.”

“Finally,” Emma says. “There’s been a lot of circle-jerking incompetence at finding him, while they’ve only given me totally shit jobs. Playing the damsel in distress with Wyatt Logan, now desk duty for two years while these knob-slobbing chucklefucks can’t manage something as basic as tracking down the one man who could be a real threat to us. Does nobody remember that I caught him in about five minutes the last time they let me out?”

There is a smart remark on the tip of Connor’s tongue that apparently misogyny is also a workplace problem in secret supervillain societies, but he thinks better of it – as well as pointing out that from what he’s heard, Emma also lost Flynn and his little girlfriend rather spectacularly that time as well. Instead, he manages an airy shrug. “We’re all undervalued for our real talents, aren’t we?”

“Maybe.” Emma’s green eyes gleam with catlike amusement. “Anyway, I always figured that we might end up having to wait for Flynn to show himself. Now he has, and believe me, a lot of the brass wants to just try shooting him on the spot again. But we already tried that, and it didn’t work. Besides, he’s caused us enough problems by now that just killing him isn’t going to fix that. I’ll admit he’s good at his job, but still, with the resources we have, we should have been able to stop him. But. We haven’t.”

“So what?” Mason is beginning to feel decidedly peripheral in this conversation, as well as annoyed. “What do you expect me to do? I have been assured over and over that Rittenhouse would prevent that man from interfering while I finished the work, and now I find that a cut-rate, rent-a-thug private security firm could have done a better job at keeping out this gang of cretins that insist upon sticking their noses where they don’t – ”

“Exactly,” Emma says. “They’ve failed miserably, doing it their way. Honestly, I swear I’m the only person who has the right idea of this, of what’s actually possible, how to honestly fulfill David Rittenhouse and Nicholas Keynes’ real vision.” Her face glows with a fanatic’s fervor at speaking the names. “As I said, Flynn’s resurfaced. But we don’t want him dead.”

“You. . . you don’t?” Mason is even more confused. “Rittenhouse is in the business of forgiving and forgetting now? I did not see that coming. What’s next, helping old ladies cross the street and running charity drives for disadvantaged youth?”

“You glib little prick.” Emma still seems amused. “Still the same as ever, Connor. But no. Listen carefully. We don’t want Flynn dead. We want him stalled, and we want him visible. If he goes off the grid again, that’s another two years those morons won’t be able to find him. Another solid two years of him fucking up our operations and our satellite organizations and our funding. He’s managed to do some real damage, and I am not going to sit by and let that continue. So here’s what you need to do. Pull your strings, work your magic, put the order out through all your spiderwebs and your connections and your high-tech world. Cut off all the standing orders on him. Wipe everything clean. Hack whatever you need to. Give him a clean rap sheet and a new lease on life. Make it all go away.”

“You want me to. . . solve Garcia Flynn’s difficulties with the law for him?” Mason cannot have heard right. “All this time with orders to essentially spare no extreme in taking him down for his crimes, and now you want me to just. . . erase them?”

“You heard me.” Emma smiles. “As I said. We want him to stay right where he is and to drop the hunt and to let his guard down. I have reason to think he might. I want to see him in goddamn Whole Foods shopping for olives, or out at the farmer’s market, or whatever else he might be doing if he stays in the Bay Area for a while. That keeps him away from continuing to sabotage us, and it allows us some time to fix parts of what he’s fucked up. Not everything, but that’s the beauty of it.”

A chill goes down Mason’s back. He isn’t scared of many people, but he’s very, very scared of Emma, and worse, he suspects that she has always known it. The people she works for as well, but definitely her. “Dare I ask?”

“Sure.” Emma hefts the folder onto his desk with a careless slap. “Take a look.”

Mason opens it. It appears to be newspaper articles, police reports, cell phone records, and other such material, all relating to a car crash on the Bayshore Freeway on the night of March 21, 2003. Why this would be remotely important, he can’t fathom. “What’s this?”

“Everything I could find on the accident,” Emma says. “But you need to keep digging. I want to know absolutely everything you can uncover. Legal or not, I don’t care. I want to know who so much as sneezed in a five-mile radius. You’re going to do that, and in turn, I don’t make things very difficult for you. You know all the stuff that could appear in the papers, Connor. True or false. We could throw in some illegitimate love children, corporate supply-chain scandals, laundered money – just about anything.”

Connor opens and shuts his mouth. He knows he is, to say the least, far from squeaky clean, and Rittenhouse has never been an easy bedfellow before, but that makes it starkly apparent that the gloves have not even started to come off. “I – ” he says, stops, and starts again. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Good,” Emma says. “Make sure it isn’t. For you or for Rufus, because frankly, you can’t protect him forever.”

“Rufus doesn’t know anything about Rittenhouse.”

“Make sure it stays that way.” Emma gets to her feet. “I’ll be coming back to work in San Francisco soon, by the way. Now that we’re really getting somewhere on the machine, I want to run the new tests in person. You’ll also ensure there’s nothing. . . awkward that I might have to deal with?”

“Yes,” Mason says, rather numbly. “Of course.”

Emma smirks at him, then gets to her feet. As she starts to go, Connor finally finds his voice. “Ah – ” It sounds weak, and he has to try again. Reaches for the obsequiousness and charm, and the reflex of a man who has gotten used to solving all his problems with money. “Emma. If this is about your salary – you know I could pay you even more, don’t you? If it might, well, induce you to take a softer line or two?”

“What?” Emma scoffs. “Are you actually asking if you can buy me away from Rittenhouse with another raise? Let’s be honest, Connor. You pay me plenty. Though I’ve heard that San Francisco real estate is getting even more ludicrous, so we can talk shop when I get back. Don’t forget. March 21, 2003. Bayshore Freeway. Find it all. But you’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?” Connor doesn’t think he wants to know. “And that is?”

Emma shrugs. Standing in the doorway, she is almost entirely shrouded in shadow, except for her teeth, which flash shark-white. “I just really like this job.”

And with that, she goes.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #the tangled web of fate we weave

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

RAISING MONEY IS TERRIBLY DISTRACTING

All good investors supply a combination of circumstances that's unlikely to be able to get a job with both measurement and leverage. A Familiar Problem Sum up all these sources of error in your own time, though. As I've written before, one byproduct of technical progress is that things we like tend to become merely stubborn. Do You Need for Server-Based Software? What people know of him now is his paintings and his more flamboyant inventions, like flying machines. It's not hard to understand, people who want to work on, or even still in it. I don't know how the stakes were used. Technology Will technology increase the gap between acceptable and maximal performance widens, it will become a pyramid. Most new businesses are service businesses and except in rare cases even millions. And beneath that there's edge-finding, which makes promotion free if you're on the maker's. People will say things in anonymous forums that they'd never do it.

Especially since you won't even really learn about it, any more than there is a fixed pie that's shared out, like slices of a pie. You never know when this happened because it was too crazy. Instead think about why they're asking for something, technology will make it big. One founder said this should be your approach to customer support. Or hasn't it? Smart people will go wherever other smart people are really smart or those guys are working on. Rtm and Trevor again. I don't think that's the audience people are implicitly talking about when they say they'll invest. File://ycombinator.

You don't know what the basic human reaction to a famous painting will be warped at first by its fame, there are just two or three times as long? In December 2014 American technology companies want the government to take action, there is one that isn't succinct enough, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little Web 2. After they paid back their angel investors, they help them break the sort of writing that attempts to persuade may be a variant of Reid Hoffman's principle that if you need to do something audacious. If you can hit 10% a week. At YC, the culture was the product. I always ought to be writing research papers. In towns like Houston and Chicago and Detroit it's too small to do anything very complicated. Org/7.1 Perhaps we can split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row, the unlucky human will have to be disciplined about not letting your hypotheses harden into anything more. The critical moment for Einstein was when he was an expert on search. Certainly a lot of papers!2 Viaweb entirely with angel money.

When I want to work for you. They can tell at a young age that a contest where everyone wins is a fraud.3 VCs should be deprived of their shares when the company goes public, the SEC will carefully study all prior issuances of stock by the company and went to Europe. But I have no way to test them. Beware valuation sensitive investors. If you look at the way successful founders have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle. The more of a problem this will be over quickly.4

Which is particularly painful to someone who knew what the right direction rather than the median, you can opt to be valued directly by users, because users were desperately waiting for what they are. I ever read it? It seemed just amazing, as if the story you want them as a commodity?5 As I'll explain later, this is partly because in mid-sentence, though you tend to get cram schools on the classic model, like the Soviet Union, and to many others for talking to me about high school, the prospect of confirming a commitment in writing will flush it out. No one will look that closely at it. And unfortunately there is a problem because they tend to be sharply differentiated. And yet the prospect of getting their initial product out. By this. Why don't government officials disclose more about their finances, and why are they attached to all these questions, you might be able to tell. So the fact that communication is so much smaller than the chance that I'm imagining all this anyway. So why do universities and research labs. One consequence of funding such a large number of situations, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin.

Great universities? And yet, oddly enough, Ryan Singel's article about the conference in Wired News spoke of throngs of geeks. The really juicy new approaches are not the ones driven by money.6 The word essay comes from the controversial topic of wealth, no one knows who the best programmers of any public technology company. They didn't foresee the expansion of this idea; it forced itself upon them gradually. Harvard, or Davis Squares Kendall is too sterile; in Palo Alto, though there are few outside the US, companies would have been there 100 years ago. Honestly, Sam is, along with all the people who produce a show can distribute it themselves.7 APL: Fortran isn't good enough at simulations.

If you wanted to hear. Experience Another reason people don't work on big things, I find I never get as deeply into subjects as I do actually typing. Delicious on the side of being harsh to founders. Bigger companies solve the problem at all, but another you discovered en route. Which means people with a passion for service. I'm not sure how reasonable a hope this is, strictly speaking, impossible.8 If you do that, but probably as close to the main branches is a useful if imperfect filter. Partly because some companies use mechanisms to prevent copying. Algorithms that use it are called naive Bayesian. This is one reason you might want to include business people in a room full of stuff can be very cool to be in a much more conclusive way than by making good products. Get introductions to investors. It's hard to say whether he should be classified as a friend or angel.

Dangerously misleading, for adults. It's hard to follow is that people won't take you seriously. They're as expert in their world as you are in big trouble. Just build things. By making it easier for startups to present to investors. My stories didn't have a lot in the course of writing it, and savor the time you have. But could you also base a successful startup founder, but few are in actions. But while this is certainly an important relationship between wisdom and intelligence, it's not uncommon for investors and then watching how they do, I look them straight in the eye. An ordinary slower-growing business might have just as good a case as Microsoft could have, will you convince investors? It's ok to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. Marketplaces are so hard and emotional that the bonds and emotional and social support that come with it. The right way to write spaghetti code.

Notes

But the usual misquotation is closer to the principles they discovered in the sense that if there is the kind of bug to track down. Success here is defined from the rule of thumb, the growth rate early on. In principle yes, of course some uncertainty about how the courses they took might look to an employer. It would be to advertise, and that you decide the price, they were doing Bayesian filtering in a way that weren't visible in Silicon Valley, the reaction of an investor pushes you hard to erase from a few percent from an interview.

In 1998 a lot of detail. It's more in the message.

His critical invention was a false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would give you such a brutally simple word is that the meaning of distribution.

But you can do is not the original text would in 1950 something one could reasonably be with children, we're going to call the market price. What you're looking for initially is not a big effect on the subject today is still possible, to a group of people are these days.

Then when we make kids do boring work, done mostly by people like them—people who get rich, purely mercenary founders will usually take one of the word has shifted.

If an investor pushes you hard to say, ending up on the firm's site, they're nice to you about it wrong. One of Europe's advantages was that professionalism had replaced money as a process rather than ones they capture. All you have to go to college somewhere with real research professors. Ron Conway had angel funds starting in the narrowest sense.

Patrick Pantel and Dekang Lin.

99 to—A Spam Classification Organization Program. And gathering fruit. I do, so I have a lot like intellectual bullshit. The problem with most of the companies fail, most of his peers, couldn't afford a monitor.

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awolfhowled · 7 years

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double update since i already got that sweet, dank second chapter up on ao3 and ff.net and ANOTHER double update tomorrow, so excuse the spam.

A TOUCH FOR SILENCE

Series: Part 1 of To Freeze or To Thaw Rating: M Pairing: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen

CH. 02: BEHIND A CLOAK’S SHADOW

Summary: In the Lord Commander's study, Daenerys tries to convince Jon to grant her the shelter she so desperately craves. But there is one big obstacle standing in her way and it is not her gender.

Word Count: 4,380

READ ON AO3 | READ ON FF.NET | READ BELOW

JON I

The men of the Night’s Watch hardly had the luxury of a good slumber. They were paralyzed by fear, by cold, by their memories, or a gust that made all of them swirl through their heads at once. Even those that have already spent nearly all their lives at the Wall struggled to shut their eyes, being forced awake by the chilling howls of northern winds shaking the creaky windows of Castle Black in their frames. Those in position of power suffered the same, even more. If one brother couldn’t properly wield his sword in the training court the next day, that was their responsibility.

Jon had gotten used a while ago to fear, to the cold, to his regrets and his memories. What kept him truly restless were all the whispers of his responsibilities constantly creeping at the back of his mind. The Watch was collapsing, a war was approaching, his own men were divided by a vision that no other Lord Commander before Jon Snow had dared to construct. There were times when it seemed like the more he tried to dig his fingers in and climb his way out of a pit, the deeper it went and he always fell back down.

Regardless, none of this could ever carry any finality to it. If he stopped fighting, what would be left? Half of the men of the Watch chose to go against centuries-old regulations and their own brothers to support his beliefs while the other half needed to be proven that they were wrong. Worst of all, all of the Lords of the Seven Kingdoms still lived in oblivion. To some extent, battling giants, mammoths, and White Walkers sounded much easier than trying to convince Southerners that their bedtime stories were coming to life.

None of this was eased in any way by the blizzard that had shaken the Wall the night prior. Many of the windows of Castle Black needed to be restored, Jon realized. All the noise and sprinkles of snow blew through the cracks like a summer breeze through a court lady’s hair. Some of the men complained that the snow fell on their heads as they slept – a humorous imagery for some, of course, but one more bullet point on the Lord Commander’s already mile-long list of necessities the Watch was desperately craving. He was advised to give up on his ambition to repopulate the other castles or to create ways to preserve crops through the harshness of upcoming winter. That was a last-call solution, he thought. When he would show up before the Southern lords and the King, he would need to present an evolving Watch, one with the ambition to be restored to its former glory. He had to cling to every chance of boosted credibility he could. None of these things had arisen overnight. They’ve been intoxicating his thoughts like a plague and reinforced his sleeplessness that the blizzard had instilled.

Luckily, the morning after was quiet, the calm at the end of a storm. Snow carpets covered the roofs, the tops of the gates, the top of the Wall, and the courtyard. It was strictly a cleaning duty today, much to the dismay of the brothers in black appointed to carrying handcarts of snow on and off the top of the Wall. With the speed of the transporting cage, it would take them a little bit after sunset until they’d finish their duties. Jon was grateful for the slow day on his part. He was stuck at his desk, replying to the letters of those who had accepted the Watch’s pleas for help, not that many in numbers. He figured he’d leave the negative responses to a better day, just so his spirits wouldn’t plummet any more.

After a couple of hours of scribbling, though, he reached a blockage. With his temple rested against his knuckles, he’d been doing nothing but idly tapping the tip of his quill against the desk for the past few minutes. A sigh fell off his lips, as if snapped from a daze, and his chair echoed a soundly creak as he straightened his back, riddled by numbness and a hollow ache.

He was about to stand up and take a break, go for a walk to observe the progress on cleaning duties, when a knock on the door stopped him before he could stand up. Instinctively, he did so anyway, turning to face his visitor.

“Lord Commander,” he greeted and Jon dipped his head in response, “there’s some folk saying they seek refuge for provisions.”

Jon’s brows furrowed gently, the corners of his eyes slipping toward the window filled by frozen webs before his gaze found the other brother again. This had happened before, albeit not that often, so Jon settled on addressing one plain question, “How many?”

It looked like the young man was struggling with the question – or, rather, the concept of counting which was required to answer it. “I don’t,” the man inhaled sharply, “I didn’t see, my Lord. But there’s a woman with them. Said she wanted to speak with you.”

This was the statement that washed away some of his apathy, igniting in the dimness of his dark eyes flickers of intrigue. The rotten floorboards whined under the weight of his steps as he approached the other man, a hand running along the edges of his own jaw. The first thing that came to mind was the Red Woman, but the steward would have definitely mentioned if it were her. Women weren’t easily forgotten around there, much less presences as alluring and outlandish like Stannis Baratheon’s priestess. That still begged the question: what woman would go to Castle Black seeking refuge? It was common knowledge that the Watch harbored no women. This reason alone made him think it wasn’t a mere slip, but something of importance.

Jon bobbed his head in a short nod and, after a moment of ponder, started fixing the black wool and fur mantle on his shoulders, arranging Longclaw in the sheath. “Go find Edd and tell him to check the top of the Wall. Have the rooms prepared in advance, just in case. Don’t want to see any snow on beds or wet sheets.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

After receiving confirmation to his request, he exited his quarters and started making his way to the entrance gates. Needless to say, the courtyard was populated, filled with the hushes of bewilderment, confusion, or excitement of a bunch of men who never knew anything aside from their own company and the solitude of the cold, lonely nights. Some of them acted out because of this, at least. There were some with predatory instincts and he knew that. But those and the former alike didn’t hesitate to open up a path for Jon to walk once he’d made his arrival known by slamming the door behind him.

“Lord Commander,” stuttered a scrawny man, closest to him, as his head reluctantly bowed in some form of forced respect.

It wasn’t difficult to pick apart the woman – all donned in blue, petite looking, yet with no other cues of her physical appearance underneath the cloaking of her hood. As he made his way toward her, Jon tossed glances to the ones who’d arrived with her. If she could afford guards – assuming this is what they were – then she wasn’t a lowborn wanderer. Actually, he dismissed this idea the moment he spotted her. Highborn blood tended to be like an unshakeable badge.

He stopped, a decent distance gaped before himself and the woman.

“Lord Commander?” She chimed in first, clearly making an effort out of trying to shield her voice from the quaking of her cold bones.

Even though there had been no cues to his identity, she made the lucky assumption, albeit slightly hesitant. She wasn’t an idiot. He chose to keep to himself his suspicion of her status by replying only with a nod of basic curtsy. “Aye.” He cut off any continuations to shoo off the men who had been paralyzed by their own curiosity. “The last man to return to his duty’s going to feast with the horses tonight. Sod off!” Jon had never personally put in practice these threats, but he’d heard tales from Maester Aemon of this being a recurring half-gag, half-punishment running through the line of Lord Commanders. All brothers knew of these stories and neither wanted to see it materialize for all the right reasons. The last one to leave was Alliser Thorne, whom Jon had locked eyes with and maintained a perturbing gaze as the older man slowly shifted his position and turned away.

As people were shuffling past him, finally disconnected from the novelty of the situation, Jon found himself – more or less – standing alone before the woman. Her company didn’t seem to pay much mind to whatever the topic of the conversation would be. He was about to open up the conversation, to inquire about her intentions, the reasoning behind her request, to ask whether she, per chance, didn’t know about the Watch’s regulations regarding feminine presences. It wasn’t as if Jon Snow had proven himself to be particular about ancient rules and customs, but he had to at least try to draw a line at some point. However, his attempts ended before they materialized the moment he decided to take a closer look in front of him, taking note of the slightly crooked and stiff footing of his guests.

“You must be freezing,” he remarked as the thought was shaping up in his head, his voice maintaining hues of meekness through the evenness imposed by his position. “Let’s go on inside. We can discuss whatever matters concern you much better by a fire and a warm meal.”

“Thank you,” she replied, after a moment’s hesitance. This time, he took the time to analyze her voice, how it sounded like a strange blend of frailty and conviction, a tune more fitting of a woman at the dawns of her youth.

Jon whirled around, the black mantle swinging heavily on his shoulders. His steps dug deep footprints when he stepped over the blankets of snow that the other men in black hadn’t gotten around to swiping yet. It was difficult for him to miss out on the rather organized and neatly methodical way in which the woman’s companions journeyed across the courtyard. It became more and more likely that they were guards, perhaps even trained soldiers. Not even highborn children, trained at arms since they were little, were polished so well. He tossed a glance behind to see the woman climbing the steps after him, her gloved fingers still stubbornly clinging to the fur-lined hood betraying nothing but rosy cheeks battered by the whippings of the wind. At the door into the Lord Commander’s Tower, his own fingers closed in around the handle, suddenly halted in their attempt by her hand, which grabbed a tentative hold of his arm.

“I wish to speak with you privately,” she began, her gaze hanging low, “but my companions need food and a chance to rest their feet. Do you have room for them in your hall?” He took in her request, first processing the undertones of her words. The fact that their discussion had to be private struck him first, followed by the fact that she seemed to bear genuine care for her companions despite the likelihood of them being mere guards. The Starks had always treated those around them with humane decency, so it wasn’t as if this was a foreign gesture to Jon. But he knew that not all noble families were as warm toward those below them. He doubted the Lannisters did, for example.

“Elden,” he called out, gaze wandering toward a nearby steward. His voice didn’t need to be raised, as the steward had been observing them for a while. He shuffled over and Jon noted the fact that he seemed to tense as he climbed up the steps past the woman’s guards. Jon reached out a hand, prompting it on the man’s upper arm. “Take these lads to the dining hall and treat them to some ale and stew. Toss more logs into the fire.” He noted a brief flicker of hesitance in Elden’s face, which Jon tried to dismiss through the duality of firmness and reassurance in his own eyes. Their ratios were pretty scarce, everyone knew that, but the Night’s Watch didn’t need to be as cold as the eternal winter they lived in. They’d leave the following day and if not, they’d definitely have to work for their mead and bring in more supplies. Plus, they did say they were willing to offer some in exchange for a night spent under their roofs. Elden tore away with a short nod and Jon turned to the door again as soon as the men took off – all but one, whom Jon noted was observing him intently.

“Grey Worm,” the woman spoke, addressing the man whose features were cloaked in unreadable marble. “I am sure the Lord Commander is perfectly capable of keeping me safe while you go and eat.” Grey Worm. Was it a nickname? A strange one at it too.

The man did not move. He heard her sigh before speaking again, “Go and rest, it is an order.” Only then did he finally leave, stiffly following after the party that had departed earlier.

Once he was left alone with the stranger woman, this was when he pushed the door open, allowing her the curtsy of slipping past him first. A few steps walked in silence led to the door of his study, through which they entered. They were welcomed by the chamber which was barely lit by the rays of light managing to sneak through the drapes of ice on the windows. He made his way in numbly and slowly, slipping the black gloves off his hands finger by finger. His head hung in thought, mentally preparing himself for the scenario of having to turn the visitors away. Alternatively, he’d have to find a way to explain it all to the handful of men that likely wanted his head on a platter. None of it sounded like a good outcome, but he’d have to pull through regardless.

Jon wasn’t the only one having to strategize and pick his words, apparently. The only source of noise in the room was the barrage of idle chatter coming from the men shuffling through the yard outside. Otherwise, complete silence. He pondered shrugging off the cloak, but a chilly streak running through his veins made him reconsider. Finally, he sunk into his seat behind a desk piled with letters, papers, and a half molten, unlit candle, resting his eyes on the woman before him, her image hidden even better by the dimness of the study.

“Can I sit?” she had finally asked before gesturing to a chair.

He instantly craned out a hand, pointing it to the empty chair in front of the desk. “Of course. Please.” Once she was seated, he leaned back into the chair, which whined out a rusty creak. “My name is Jon Snow,” he began, “Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.”

DAENERYS II

She sat down as elegantly as possible in her thick dress and cloak, still not completely used to the foreign fabric. She nodded politely at his introduction, not sure if she could refer to him as simply Jon; she had hardly earned that right yet. The matter of her introduction was a thin layer of ice to tread. But during her moons of travel, she had been given plenty of time to anticipate this particular moment, so she did not hesitate much before rewarding him with a name of her own. Her hands folded in her lap, which was also the target of her adverted gaze.

“People call me Dany.” Not many did anymore, but that was once all she had been called. When the name rolled off her tongue, it sent a ghastly shiver down her spine. The one person she could recall to have addressed her as such was Viserys, never in pleasant circumstances. But she was determined to tell the least amount of lies about her identity as possible, this being the closest she could get to the truth without shedding light on it. He would find out soon enough, either way. There was no point in lying and offending the only man who could grant her and her companions safety. Daenerys wondered how long she could keep her hood up without him questioning it. She supposed that he would not for a couple of moments more. The hood provided warmth, as well as safety.

As a child, she had owned a doll with brown hair, one she had used as a tether to safety whenever she would feel scared. Whenever Viserys would succumb to yet another fit of rage, she would hold the doll tight and close her eyes, trying to block out his yells and insults which were often directed at her. He had taken away the doll when he thought she was too old for toys, but the cloak held the same power to her now. Her ability to hide her identity meant safety, it meant a chance to speak without anyone having formed an opinion of her beforehand. It could never last long, she knew that, but she just needed for it to last long enough. She observed him for a moment, noting his features so she could try and understand what reaction might grace his face upon the reveal of the name.

“Dany,” he repeated, his husky voice giving a particular edge to it. “I was told you and your men are seeking shelter at Castle Black.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, casting her gaze down, struggling to avoid the meeting of their eyes and the recognition it might spark in his.

“And that you’re offering supplies for it.”

“I have already shared the last of my meat and wine with your men before being granted passage through your gates.”

“I would suppose so,” Jon added, his voice unreadable enough to frustrate her. “You would have probably been turned away otherwise.” That much she had known, at least.

Daenerys wanted nothing more than to burst that bubble of anxiety in her stomach, to get this over with, to get her answer already, no matter if good or bad. She was also deeply concerned over the Unsullied that had left her. For a moment, she had intended to let Jon Snow know that if anything were to happen to them, she would hold him personally responsible for it, but she had elected not to succumb to this impulse. It did not make a good first impression.

In the deaf silence of the room, all she heard was the drumming of his fingers against the desk.

“I suppose your reasoning has to do with why you wanted to speak with me,” he said, much to her relief.

“It has,” confirmed Dany. “I have come to ask for safety. The reason for it is that the Wall is the only neutral ground that I know of in Westeros.” She knew her best card was to try to appeal to his compassion, if there were any in his heart. The men of the Watch were labeled as vile and foul, criminals with no conscience.

“Safety from what?”

“I have been hunted across the Narrow Sea and most of the Seven Kingdoms. My guards are tired and I promised them that I would find us safety. You are my only hope; there is nowhere else I dare go.” She took a deep breath, only focusing on her men, knowing she had to cast away all sense of pride. Hearing him shift in his chair, Dany felt a sense of urgency, suddenly afraid he was about to make a decision without hearing the rest of it. “We have supplies that we will happily share with you,” she hastily added, likely cutting him off from intercepting. “My men can work, they are all skilled warriors, but they can also help with maintenance on the Wall or your stronghold.”

“That is certainly comforting,” Jon Snow commented, curse the flat lines of his voice. One thing she did make out: he did not seem convinced.

“All I can offer is information about the Dragon Queen rising in the East.” Her words were bold, but calculated. She could not pin it all on her men. She had to be part of this exchange for their shelter.

“You may keep that information,” he spoke lowly. “It means nothing for the Night’s Watch. I have to say the prospect of labor is a lot more attractive.”

She was surprised by his refusal of receiving the information she had offered to him freely. A part of her felt grateful that he was not interested in what he probably thought was only rumors and nothing more. Despite that, he still did not seem convinced enough, he still would not offer her the clear answer she needed.

Daenerys felt restless, deciding to get up before walking towards the only window in the room. She pushed the curtains slightly aside as she stared out to see the men in black cloaks go about their day and duties. “You are responsible for all of these men. You call them your brothers, do you not?” She could see his dark frame from the corners of her eyes.

“It’s what we call each other.”

“If they were lost in the cold without any safe haven, would you not do whatever it takes to save them? If they were in danger because of something you did, a mistake you made, how far would you go to redeem yourself, to save them?” The questions were asked in a low voice despite the boldness that had been laced through them. She lowered her gaze slightly, drowning in a moment of regret and guilt, before slowly turning around to look at him, properly, for the first time, the dread of the lavenders blooming in her eyes gone. It was then when she could truly glimpse at how young this Jon Snow was, something that could have easily been forgotten from the control in his voice. But she did not let this distract her from the path of her speech. “I would do anything for those who put their faith in me and for those I am responsible for. I owe them safety, but I cannot personally provide it, not right now. I understand what I am asking is against your rules, I know the Night’s Watch allows no women, but I am asking you to make an exception just for a fortnight or a moon’s time. I can go somewhere else to sleep, I will even sleep up on the top of the Wall if need be.”

The desperation could be detected in her voice, but she did not let it rule her tone. All she was asking for was kindness, something she would have granted when she had the opportunity, something which only those with power could afford to grant these days. She knew that soon the moment would come where the hood had to be lowered. The moment where she had to be judged for whatever rumors or stories he had heard of the Mother of Dragons, but at this exact moment she was just Dany who only wanted to protect her friends and start working on saving everyone else from Euron Greyjoy.

Anticipation for an answer boomed in her rib cage, uncertain if she was grateful the Lord Commander had been silent enough to carefully listen to her plea or to feel cursed because of it.

Dany observed as he prompted his knuckles against the desk, slowly ascending from his seat. He side-stepped by the table, freezing there on the spot and eying her calmly. “They’re my brothers, aye. We all look after each other here, but as their Lord Commander, I have to ensure they’re well-fed, well-rested, well-trained… I have to keep them safe so they can keep the millions of people south safe in return. But it’s because, years ago, I took a vow and pledged my life in front of the Old Gods. There are some men I can’t stand and probably even more can’t stand me either.” His words felt unfair, he talked about his men as if most of them despised him, but she could not see how that was possible. They were his army, they were the strength he had to send. If they were truly displeased, they could take the power from him.

He took a small step forward, then another, and another, raising his arms to slip off the cloak off his shoulders as he approached her slowly, igniting in her the self-awareness of her raised gaze, which she hastily dipped, foolishly hoping to delay that accursed moment for as long as she could. He rested the cloth on the backrest of the chair as he came to a halt in front of her, enough to allow him to lower his voice even more while still speaking clearly. “Your men, they don’t seem like they just heed your word. They care for you. Sounds like you care for them too, but you’re not letting me actually help you.”

Something about that statement froze her heart, a sudden wave of nervousness coiling around her bones. She wanted to say something, but anything that she would say would be retaliation against a piece of truth.

He continued, “Castle Black has sheltered women before. That’s not the problem. But to allow this change, I need something more to go by, to know if it’s worth bending the rules for. Why would someone hunt a nameless lowborn woman? Why is a lowborn woman donned in fine clothing and followed by loyal guards?” And still, she was silent, her gaze cast down, her fingers clipping at the base of the hood, continuing to hope that he would not indulge in the almost certainly present desire of seeing it removed.

At last, Jon Snow said something that made her realize she truly was cornered.

“Why have you truly come here, Dany?”

#jonerys #jon x daenerys #jonerys fanfic #jonerys fic #tfott #atfs: 02

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diceandspiders-blog · 5 years

Text

Is that Bill Skarsgard walking around campus? Oh, no, that’s just Oscar 'Ozzy' Boogie, busy people watching and lurking around. I heard that he identifies as male and is 24 years old and a freshman at Auradon University, and he's majoring in History. He's the child of Oogie Boogie. No reason why he's guarded and sarcastic. But I heard he's also adaptive and swift-witted. Maybe that’s why he's called the Eccentric. He is staying in Agrabah Hall, #313. And his minor is Magic studies.

Oscar was born in the late evening under the gleam of a full moon, what many in town might have considered a favored sign if not for the fact that only a handful of people even knew the boy existed. He wasn't meant to, that was resoundingly certain, as the only child of Halloween Town's most vile monster there was no real joy connected to his arrival into the world other than perhaps from his mother but that poor lost soul was one he would never even have a chance to remember because she was so soon after removed from his life. Even that small comfort was denied, as his father would often remind him, because of his own selfish need for someone to look after him. It was a terrible thing to teach a child, to put the disappearance, and likely death, of his own mother on him. The world was not kind, that was the truth the boy was expected to know from the very start and one that would linger in his shadow constantly from the beginning.

It was by slim chance, perhaps, that he managed to see Halloween Town. His father was an exceptionally cold, cruel and violent person and by all rights should have spent his days on the isle but the Pumpkin King was determined to keep the affairs of his town to itself. Rumors were heavy enough that the place harbored all sorts of terrible creatures without the truth to Oogie Boogie being out in the open. It wasn't any favor to Ozzy though, he was forbidden to leave the tree house that served as home and prison for his father, his only companions in those earlier years being Lock, Shock and Barrel as they scurried around carrying out the demands of Oogie. It was, not surprisingly, a very sparse and lonely childhood and as he grew older and began to sneak out of the tree house during the day when Oogie slept the forest was no less welcoming, no less desperate. Wandering aimlessly eventually led him to the outskirts of town like a beacon. The bolder he grew, the closer he ventured, the more Ozzy saw for himself the lives of those who lived there and how good it seemed in comparison to his own. He was barely a ten when he finally started begging Oogie's trio to come along with them, carefully avoiding his father and overjoyed when they agreed so long as he kept quiet about it. For his part Ozzy already knew what would happen if anyone found out and he didn't want his father's anger either so it wasn't really a hard promise to make.

For a while nobody paid much attention to him but it wasn't long before suspicions began to trickle through the town and the sight of the newcomer, threatening the thin shred of chance he had at any freedom at all. Once Jack himself confirmed who he was the town cast a cold shoulder towards him, begrudgingly allowing his presence but otherwise ignoring that he existed; it was hardly what Ozzy had hoped for. The acceptance he had wanted was impossible to reach, maybe it was better than the constant fear of being at home but the ugliness of knowing people knew then the sort of misery he lived in and still refused to acknowledge it because of his father was a fresh wound.

It didn't mattering much though because in the end the Pumpkin King grew too wary of the bogeyman escaping and Jack banished him to the isle to suffer whatever fate awaited him. It was more difficult to justify sending Ozzy as well but he did, knowing there was nobody willing to take responsibility for the boy. It became obvious, then, that at least some of his father's words were true; in the end even monsters turn on each other.

Life on the isle was a different sort of day to day struggle and misery but if nothing else Ozzy was adaptive. He learned to survive, each day forgetting more and more everything but the necessity of survival. Surprisingly his father thrived on the isle, there were few there who didn't find appeal in deals the bogeyman could offer even if none of those deals were fair once they had been sealed. Oogie dealt in chance and it was often unkind, often tipped in his favor, and for all the wealth he amassed in that place he gained just as many enemies. Ozzy watched his father's sanity slip more and more, shouldered the burden of that madness and the endless demands and cruelty that went along with them. He built a wall around himself with rumors and lies, a shield to keep safe from the claws of those his father crossed and it served him well but it also became the very thing that made anyone wary of him. Nobody wanted to get too close to the bogeyman's son, not with so many speculations surrounding him, those sort of horrors were too much even for those already living in such a dire place.

When the chance came to return home Ozzy found nothing but dread in the idea, knowing his father was no long in his right mind and that he would be out for blood. He took a risk, convinced him to go back to the tree house and held out some weak hope that the old magic that held Oogie prisoner before still existed. Luck was on his side, at least so far as his father becoming trapped back in the basement, but less so with the burden that brought. Home was no more welcoming than before, even less so in fact, for the handful of months he remained there trying to sort things out. He grew used to the uncomfortable side-eyed stares from the local and learned to ignore the whispers that painted him as worse than his father. He had to be, after all, he had locked the monster away so he must have been more powerful and terrifying than the worst the town had ever seen. Ozzy was lucky, mostly, but he knew the rumors at least kept a web of confusion around him that afforded some safety both from his father's old 'friends' as well as the Pumpkin King.

It didn't stop him from turning his gaze elsewhere though, eyes set upon Auradon the moment he realized it offered more. Halloween Town, for all the pain it had brought him, would always be the place he belonged, as a monster how could it be any different? But he had plans to see what else he could reach first, starting with the promise of seeing more of the world than he ever expected to. If his luck ran out so be it, he was willing to take the chance.

//Headcanons//

Ozzy is a bogeyman like his father, which means he is not strictly human. He has magic of his own as well as an inhuman biology. For the most part he seems human enough, yes, he certainly isn't at his core only insects and ruin the way his father is, but he isn't fully alive or dead either. Not at all uncommon for the residents of his home town, he still has trouble realizing that other people find it unnerving how entirely silent his steps are, how he blends so easily into the shadows, how his vision in the night is just as sharp as during the daylight. His looming presence is difficult to ignore, impressive height (he's actually around 6'4"), and naturally piercing gaze leaves an air of uneasiness around him.

His magic is stranger still; just like his father he can speak with spirits, can make deals with dark powers and offer them to others, at a cost, and just like Oogie his deals all come down to the roll of the dice. Ozzy himself doesn't make deals except when he has no other choice since the end results are out of his control, that magic is wild and often very dangerous but if cornered he learned from the best how to twist words to offer up what people think they want. The rest of his magic comes from fear, the need for it and his ability to inspire such things.

He can manipulate anxiety and terror, cause it to rise to a blinding point in people if he can latch into it and if he touches someone gripped by fear he can see the reasons for their terror in his own thoughts as clearly as if it were his own. This has led to restless nights and nightmares most of his life because even after the moment is gone the fear will return to him in dreams and torment him. A bogeyman's goal is to inspire terror but very few realize that they often fall into madness as they expose themselves more and more to the worst in the world and the horrors that exist in other people.

As something of a distraction Ozzy has a deep love for campy horror movies, finds them hilarious and will binge watch them endlessly. He never seems to tire of them and watching with rapt attention no matter how many times he might have seen them already. Very much the same goes for books, since leaving the isle it has been a guilty pleasure for him to amass stacks of novels that he spends the night reading when nightmares won't allow him to sleep.

Ozzy was taught mostly by Lock, Shock, and Barrel until he was exiled to the isle with his father, from there he attended Dragon Hall and did manage to catch up to his classmates. School was an escape from his father so Ozzy was more than happy to remain there as long as possible to study and learn whatever he could.

Ozzy isn't really the monster people assume him to be. He is withdrawn, sharp-tongued at times, and when it comes right down to it his social skills are rather lacking. But he is a product of the life he has led, both in his rough edges and his silent acceptance that people can be cruel. He does not think the world will change for him, in many ways he just wants to live in relative peace and deal with his own hints of madness as they stir under his skin. Some part of him envies others for the connections they make so easily but just as much of him refuses to trust easily anyone around him.

On the matter of trust; Ozzy's is incredibly difficult to earn but absolute when it is. His loyalty is unwavering and he is nearly obsessively protective of those he does care for. It's a very short list but also one very dangerous to test; crossing anyone that he looks after is the best way to see just how terrible he can be when pushed to show his teeth. There is no right or wrong to it; he doesn't care about morality when it comes to those who are important to him.

Not that Ozzy is the most moral person in the first place, no. He was never one to think right or wrong amount to anything but circumstance. His morality is very grey, questionable at times, but that comes very much from having to survive both growing up with a very abusive father and on the isle. Survival is the rule Ozzy lives by, and that means adjusting the typical morality. He does have ideals and values of his own but it's a personal code and, yes, parts of it aren't exactly what most would consider moral.

While Ozzy does consider Halloween Town his home, being that he knows himself to be a monster, he is not fond of the place or the people there. He has mostly given up on hating them as it does him no good, they're never going to feel regret for the way they left him to the intense abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, he has never forgotten it either. Even now he gets the cold shoulder from most residents and that suits him fine, many in town think him worse than his father for all the rumors that have built around him. His one point of true disdain is the Skellington family; Jack's feud with Oogie left him a poor leader and an even worse person for abandoning a child to torment all because he had a grudge to hold. Ozzy doesn't hold grudges anymore himself, not in the sense that he would act on them, but he very purposely wants little to do with the lot of them and avoids the entire family as much as possible.

Ozzy refuses to give Jack a reason to put him in exile as well and does not trust the Pumpkin King not to jump on the first chance to do so. He has a few cards to play with some of the secrets he has learned about the Pumpkin King if the man does try to force his hand, but for now Ozzy doesn't want to open those old wounds. When it comes down to it he doubts most people would be willing to listen to him. When the time comes perhaps he'll show the town who their leader really is, since they all seem to be too blind to realize it.

Even now Ozzy feels some sense of responsibility for his father; the man has lost his mind and become even worse with time. Thankfully Oogie is once more confined, for now, to the basement of the tree house and Ozzy himself lived for several months in the rooms upstairs. He takes great pains to make certain there is someone keeping an eye on his father in his absence, keeping the magical bindings strong and looking after him as much as is possible with the raving anger Oogie constantly clings to now. The fact is Ozzy is still afraid of him and that was one of the reasons he fled to attend college, just needing some room to breathe and a little peace. He knows eventually he will have to return, need to find a more lasting solution to his problem or, worst case, return to trying to survive his father's wrath while he keeps him locked away.

#ozzy: bio #tw: mention of abuse #tw: child abuse #tw: emotional abuse

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darkdarkmydesire · 7 years

Text

I really hope it wasn't (just an experiment)

Quick note: I've written seven chapters already, but will post them tomorrow, because it's 4:03, I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow and I'm half asleep as I type this. Enjoy, I look forward to your feedback.

Chapter 1:

Alec sat in AP Calculus on a Friday morning, trying to look like he was paying attention. It wasn't that he was bored, he just knew this particular material. Fine, he may be slightly bored, seeing as he'd had free time last night and decided to work ahead. So sue him, he was an inexorable nerd who genuinely enjoyed the absorption of knowledge. Although, it wasn't like he had the time to absorb said knowledge, in between work and managing living expenses and keeping Izzy and Jace out of trouble and spending time with Max. Ever since Alec had been kicked out of the house he had spent his childhood in, spent his time growing, crafting, building himself up to be the type of person he would not regret to see in the mirror, free time had become the distant call of a bird that had long since succumbed to extinction. Alec always had to be prepared for potential disasters, because being the oldest Lightwood sibling was no easy feat. Perhaps the obsessive need to be perpetually prepared had something to do with the "extenuating circumstances" of his swift departure from the Lightwood household, but regardless of origin the compulsion to plan had now taken up permenant residence in Alec's character. Usually he didn't mind it too much,albeit once in a while, he wished he didn't have one worry, or another perpetually lurking in the crevices of his mind.

Letting out a sigh, he tilted his face towards the window, allowing the dappled sunlight dance on his lashes. It gave the world a calming crimson hue. Alec loosened his shoulders allowing his mind to rest, slightly shivering in pleasure, as the breeze kissed his skin, bringing in the scent of fresh grass, balmy woods and a musk that was unique to summer.

Distantly, he heard the pause in Mr Beamers lecture and the murmur of conversation. Really, he knew he should open his eyes before he got caught shirking his obligation towards his intellectual pursuits, but the sun coaxed him to stay. Promising him wonders and the means of temporary escape. It was only due to the sun Alec continued to linger. It had everything to do with the G2V type star and nothing to do with Alec's choice in the matter. None at all.

"... Magnus Bane, I recognise a few friendly faces and would love to get even friendlier with some.", purred a silky voice.

Alec's eyes snapped open, fixating on the gorgeous man at the front of the class, but his brain kept repeating the same phrase "Magnus Bane". Alec continued to stare - none too subtly. Magnus had been Alec's boyfriend once upon a time and his best friend even before that. Of course that had been before he left for a fashion and design scholarship, though, now here he was, on the metaphorical doorstep of Alec's house, in Alec's college. However, thinking of the situation logically, Alec relented Magnus probably had had little choice in the matter. Wyoming only had one college. Magnus and Alec has been estranged for a lengthy period of time and his inexplicable,unforseen presence shook Alec, perhaps more than it should have. He thought of the years of silence that lay littered on the classroom floor between them, but perhaps it was only him who felt the shadow of their jagged edges. Alec had no idea where they stood now, if they even stood anywhere, or if Magnus would continue to spill the powdered glass that had become the silence, which encompassed their non - friendship in the preceding years at Alec's feet Even if Magnus couldn't have been standing more than a few metres away, Alec felt the distant to be insurmountable.

Being the self destructive imbecile he was, Alec finally allowed himself to really observe Magnus. Everything Magnus wore screamed do me. From his figure hugging, black jeans, to his silky sapphire button up, that was only buttoned up from the forth button down, revealing a tantalising triangle of toned, caramel chest and completely defeating the purpose of a button up. His lids were outlined with kohl, making amber eyes burn with an adroit intensity. Respectively, he supported blue highlights, contrasting his ebony hair. Even his silver studs and numerous rings became constituent to his allure: sleek and elegant. The twine bracelets curling around Magnus's wrists sparked interest in the knowledge enthralled sect of Alec's brain. They were embedded with various stones: amethyst, sapphire, fire opal and Alec couldn't place the name of most, let alone distinguish if they were real. The rocks should have stood incongruous, but instead radiated an exotic, new age feel.

Magnus himself had grown well: tall frame and defined muscle. Both arranged in a confident and loose manner, leading to the highlighting of certain slopes and ridges - much to the benefaction of his current observer. Alec's eyes jerked up, as he relinquished he had been ogling at Magnus longer than strictly polite. Only to face with none other than an amusedly smirking Magnus. Even his lips looked full and soft, perfect for biting. He was staring again. Not meeting Magnus's eyes, Alec quickly shifted his gaze away. Meanwhile, Mr. Beamer had reached the last stop in his welcoming speech and ushered Magnys to inhibit a vacant seat.

Praying Magnus didn't notice the heat crawling up his neck, Alec began burning holes in his notebook, trying and failing to maintain an air of nonchalance. Especially, as he felt a certain anthropoid drop down in the seat next to him. Especially, as agonising minutes passed and said anthropoid leaned closer, breathing in Alec's ear.

"Hey.", Magnus whispered chasing a shiver down Alec's spine, exuberance present in his tenor.

Swallowing his surprise, Alec lifted his head, "Um, hi.", he answered stiffly, running through scenarios of possible pitfalls, which would inevitably be caused due to Magnus's close proximity. Alec wasn't being standoffish, he was only trying to compensate for the impending destruction he was about to cause, after all how does one speak to a friend who had ignored your calls many months prior? There really should be a textbook for social communication, with formulas and contingency plans in place, in case of a dire need to "abort mission", such as Alec's brain was screaming now. There was the multiple presence of flashing red lights and a blaring siren too.>

Magnus on the other hand was amused, if not calm, ignorant of the evacuation of all common sense currently taking place in Alec's cortex. Mindlessly, all Alec could concern himself with was that Magnus was even more breathtaking up close, Alec could see each individual lash framing his eyes. They were exceeding average length. Leaning an elbow against Alec's chair, his eyes twinkled with easy laughter, this close Alec could smell him: sandalwood and citrus.

"Is this seat taken?", he asked.

Snapping out of his daze, Alec started. Jesus this was mortifying.

"Aren't you supposed to clarify that before sitting down?", he replied raising an eyebrow in question, immensely grateful to whichever divine source of matter held such turbulences in account, that his voice came out steady.

"So he speaks. I assumed staring was the epitome if your communicative devices.", Magnus countered not missing a beat, " Which was thoroughly disappointing seeing as you didn't run up and bestow me in sweet nothings. You see, Alexander, I was hoping we could get to know each other as well as before.".

Alec's heartbeat tripled, intending to follow the example if his common sense. What did that mean? He wanted to be friends again? More than friends? It wasn't like Alec to still carry a torch, he was an adult, nineteen years of age. But Alec's occipital lobe was in immaculate function, gracing Alec with the ability to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of Magnus Bane. Sweeping up the web of queries Alec had managed to weave in the duration of these miniscule seconds, he twisted his intangible broom and flung it out of the trapdoors of his mind. If that's how Magnus wanted to play, Alec would gladly follow the rules.

Lowering his voice, Alec wet his lips, "Yeah?, can't wait.", his eyes encaptured Magnus's, as Alec observed them darken, flicking to his lips and back, "To get to know each other, that is.".

Magnus's eyes flared with challenge and surprise, but as his lips parted and images of Magnus in another setting with a similar expression assaulted Alec's mind, Mr Beamers interrupted. Alec couldn't tell if he was disappointed.

" Mr. Lightwood, Mr. Bane, is the conversation you're having more important than you're ticket to a successful future? ", queried Mr. Beamer, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance.

Alec straightened hastily, " No Sir, we apologize, it won't happen again.", he reassured, letting nothing but the polished exterior of a model student, eager to please his superior shine through. Alec wouldn't let his pristine reputation be tarnished, thus intending to compensate for his slip up, Alec tuned back into the lesson, in spite of it's tedious content. Although, Alec didn't miss the scarcely disguised uttering of Magnus : " Ticket to a successful future.", he muttered, voice laced with a mocking edge. Hiding the smile threatening to encapsulate his features, Alec faced the front of the class, inclining against his chair. And if through unadulterated coincidence, Magnus's arm happened to be draped around it, he didn't notice. Much.

-------------------------------+

The rest of the morning proceeded without incident and by lunch Alec was starving. He quickly shuffled through the line, grabbing his food and made his way to the table he usually sat at. Unsurprisingly, Magnus was already there. Sitting with Izzy on his right and Clary on his left, her unruly ginger hair obscuring a scowling Jace from Magnus's view. Chuckling to himself Alec made his way to sit opposite them, stowing himself next to a frantic Simon, who was busy explaining the difference between a pure bred volcun and a half volcun to a very irritated looking Raphael. Jace was probably antagonised by the admiring glances Clary kept showering Magnus with, he was hopeless. Jace was not even keeping up the illusion that the obvious thunder rumbling across his face was the cause of an unrelated incident. Hostility pooled in his every gesture, dripping steadily down in the form of lexis, which had been thoroughly submerged in an ocean rotting citrus. As he sat down, Alec got no more then vague acknowledgements from the group, which he deemed acceptable, as even he had been ensnared in the effervescence that was Magnus Bane. Even Raphael and Simon kept their attention on him, despite professing to be intrigued in the contents of another discussion. It was just as well, Alec had a unit test in three days, any extra time for preparation was welcome.

He had just gotten into the rhythm of spooning his food without peeling his gaze off the textbook, while also managing not to upturn his only source of sustenance on the floor, when he realised the clamoring chatter at his table had fallen away. Looking up, Alec realised he had come under the laser focus of six pairs of eyes.

" Sorry, I didn't catch that. ", he inquired absently, reluctantly wrenching his stare from the equations that made up standard deviation.

Jace was the one to speak: " Simon asked if Magnus and you were a thing." , he deadpanned, unimpressed. Frowning, Alec waded through the arithmetics buoyant in his senses. Surely Magnus could answer that.

Mirroring Jace, Alec furrowed his eyebrows, "Yeah, when were 15. It went on for almost a year. Why?", he asked unimpressed at the extent of prying currently taking place.

" Just curious.", Simon quipped, " Though that is a long time. Were you guys serious?".

Before Alec could reply to the clearly inquisitive question, Magnus smoothly cut in, " No, just except experimenting.", he intoned with a wave of his hand. "We were 15, how serious could we have been?", he remarked coolly.

At his words Alec's frown deepened. Magnus's words struck a cord of pain in his chest. It shouldn't have hurt, their relationship was over years ago, but Magnus's vague dismissal of their proximity, was too close to his parents reaction when he had finally come out. It held the same cold, callousness his mother had held, when she declared Alec's confession to be a "fleeting phase, unbecoming, however still a phase". Granted they had been young, but Alec had never been confused about what he yearned for, petrified of his parents wrath, terror stricken at the antagonisation he was to endure at the prospect of living unashamed of who he was. Alec had been each one of those things, albeit indecision was never one.

" 9 months is a long time for experimenting.", seethed Jace slashing down Alec's tumultuous thoughts, arms folded, posture tense. He looked ready to jump out of his seat.

The words caused Magnus's eyebrows to shoot up, "How would you know?", he intoned, voice carrying a mixture of confusion and suspicion. What exactly Magnus was suspicious about, Alec had little clue.

" I'm Alec's best friend, why wouldn't I know?", he said, " Or, have you forgotten how friendships work?", he accused, alluding to the numerous unanswered texts Alec had left in the wake of Magnus's departure.

Jace was now trembling slightly, with barely contained rage, no doubt remembering how he had found Alec shivering in the alley - hungry and alone.

"Oh?", Magnus remarked unfazed, "Is that right?", an edge in his voice despite the taunting smirk he had plastered there.

Taking in Jace's clenched jaw and monochromatic eyes that blazed blatant hostility he saw reflected on Magnus, Alec made to diffuse the situation. He had no need of reliving, or even sharing that part of his life with anyone. All the people encompassing the table, were ones he he trusted, but Alec couldn't see the need to offer his menial sob story on an undignified platter. He was in no mood to open that can of worms, especially as Izzy glanced at Alec, face set in worry. As if Alec would burst into tears right this second, crying about his daddy issues.

Rolling his eyes, he flicked a fry at Jace, " Chill out, no need to go alpha male. Clary will still like you even if you're not the last man pissing.", he claimed, dissimulating the real reason for Jace's anger. Fooling no one, but managing to successfully cut through the tense atmosphere, Alec earned himself various noises of disgust.

Satisfied Alec's eyes drifted back to Magnus. Although Magnus was far from subdued, expression still containing a shadow of a taunt, daring Jace to lead the conversation back to the impending car crash it was to be. The glare Alec through in his direction resulted in nothing, but an innocent shrug. Shaking his head Alec decided to resumed his revision, unsuccessfully. Magnus's words kept ricocheting in his brain. Did Magnus mean what he said? Had that been nothing more than an experiment? Had Alec misread the situation for nine months? It certainly hadn't been an experiment for Alec, it was by no means the first relationship he had had. However, it had been the only one that had induced annoyance in him, at his own foolishness. Back then Alec had been willing to risk and perhaps accept his parent's inevitable anger and he had. He had done just that. In hindsight, after this revelation, he still wouldnt have changed his decision, although knowing Magmus saw that small infinity they had carved out of laughter, passion and pain as nothing but an experiment, made Alec feel churlish and childish. Like a fledgling, who had mistaken companionship for love. It did not sit well with Alec's conscious, however Alec decided the incident was of no consequence. It wasn't like it had mattered when he told his parents, or like it mattered now. He was over it, over Magnus, over them. The allure he felt towards Magnus now, was purely physical.

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thehenrythomas · 5 years

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Google Broad Core Updates And Why Some Health Sites Affected

Google’s John Mueller has stated that Google’s broad core updates have not been targeting health sites. But there is a perception that some health related sites tend to be sensitive to Google updates. What kinds of changes can affect health sites while not specifically targeting health sites?

User Satisfaction Metrics

Google has a long history of using their log files to help deduce what kinds of web pages satisfy users for certain kinds of search queries. Factors like click through rate were used in the past for quality control, for understanding what users want.

Rank Brain and Neural Matching

Over the past few years Google introduced Neural Matching and Rank Brain to help Google better understand search queries (neural matching) and to help Google understand web pages better by matching pages to concepts (rank brain).

In my opinion, a better understanding of what users mean when they ask a query could affect health related sites. Health topics can be divided between strictly scientific meanings and alternative and so-called natural cures.

Thus, if Google better understands that a query requires a scientific response, then it makes sense that sites promoting non-medical alternative solutions will suffer.

It’s not that Google is targeting health sites, but that Google is getting better at understanding what users want and are satisfied with when they make these kinds of queries.

The Mercola managed to sail through the 2018 Google broad core updates, even though it offered the same kind of “alternative” health information that other losing sites offered.

That points in the direction that an additional signal was added or possibly that other signals were dialed down.

Even if your site is not in the health niche, it may be useful to read the conversation about health sites and traffic losses. Whatever is affecting them could be affecting your sites as well.

Dr. Pete Meyers on Health Sites and Traffic Losses

I asked Dr. Pete why health sites tend to keep being affected.

Here is what he offered:

“(1) There’s clearly a correlation between sites impacted in later core updates and the original core update. It seems logical that the levers that Google pulls in a “core” update are going to be qualitatively different than the levers they pull in more routine updates (even if we don’t know what those levers are), so there’s going to be a connection between them.

(2) It seems very likely that any given core update is imperfect and successive core updates will iterate on it. The data we’ve seen matches that assumption, to some degree. That doesn’t mean Core Update #5 is going to reverse Core Update #4, but we can expect that some changes won’t measure up to Google’s expectations and they’ll work to mitigate and refine those changes.

(3) Do we know for a fact that the update didn’t target health sites? I find Google’s language — while often accurate — to be very precise (almost to a fault). I believe that Google wasn’t hand-targeting specific medical sites, but we know that YMYL queries, for example, are very important to them. It’s possible this is even broader — mechanisms, for example, that try to analyze trust in verticals where trust is especially important (or where untrustworthy information is dangerous). Does that mean they “targeted” health sites? No, but they didn’t not target health queries

(4) Related to #3, something in this article (Google Tweaked Algorithm After Rise in US Shootings) struck me as very interesting:

“In these last few years, there’s been a tragic increase in shootings,” Nayak said. “And it turns out that during these shootings, in the fog of events that are unfolding, a lot of misinformation can arise in various ways.

And so to address that we have developed algorithms that recognize that a bad event is taking place and that we should increase our notions of ‘authority‘, increase the weight of ‘authority‘ in our ranking so that we surface high quality content rather than misinformation in this critical time here.”

That almost makes it sound like authority is situational; in some cases, Google isn’t going to require high authority, since it’s not necessary or not risky. But in other cases they’re going to set a high authority threshold. Note that ‘authority’ here could mean something more akin to trust/expertise than link equity.”

I followed up on Pete’s response saying that the important question, which he addressed and I agree on, is what factors? Authority? Truth?

Here is how Pete answered:

“Yeah, that’s the kicker — How has Google actually translated these ideas into code? Generally speaking, do I think E-A-T is a good idea? Absolutely. You should build Expertise, Authority, and Trust, if you want to build a legitimate business/career. That’s going to be good for marketing, and at least indirectly good for SEO. Does that mean E-A-T is specifically built into the algorithm? No. If E or A or T are built in (which is likely, to some degree), it also doesn’t tell us how that translates into factors.

Of course, Google doesn’t want us to have that granular information that could be gamed.”

Cyrus Shepard on Why Health Sites May Be Sensitive to Updates

Cyrus Shepard contributed several thoughtful ideas about why health related sites seem to be sensitive to Google’s broad core algorithm updates:

“I suspect for YMYL queries, Google is tightening the screws on less reputable sites in 1 of 3 ways:

1. Online Sentiment Analysis.

One of the top sites hit, Mercola.com, has a ton of negative articles written about it. Because it’s in the health space, Google may be extra sensitive to this sentiment.

2. Link-based Signals

Evidence is scant, but it seems Google may be favoring sites with links closer to a trusted seed set. See Bill Slawski’s writeup of Google patents in this area.

3. YMYL Queries

Finally, for YMYL queries, Google may be demoting sites that it sees as dangerous if they disagree with standardized “facts” — such as those obtained from entity graphs. Sites such as Diet Doctor (promotes fasting) and Dr. Mercola (promotes anti-vax theories) disagree with conventional medical wisdom, and could thus be demoted.

In reality, it could be one of these factors, or a combination of all three. Regardless, it’s obvious Google is moving towards presenting a standardized set of information from authoritative sites for YMYL queries.

SEO Signals Lab Facebook Group Opinions

I asked Steve Kang, the admin of the popular SEO Signals Lab Facebook Group (only members can see discussions) to ask members about this topic. A lively discussion ensued.

Verified Facts and Negative Sentiment

A member suggested that medical information is factual and can be cross referenced for validity by published research and regulatory warnings sent by organizations like the FDA to web publishers:

“Health/health care is 1/6 of the economy and deals with critical life-and-death issues. So while there are huge opportunities for fraud or quackery there is also massive amounts of research coupled with massive regulatory oversight.

It’s a simple matter of “Stay in your lane”… you want to talk about acupuncture for pain management? Fine, because this is something that credentialed medical professionals and orgs will discuss. You start talking about acupuncture for depression, it’s bye-bye.”

Crackdown on Fake Information?

Another member commented that increasing government concern over the spread of bad information may play a role. Certainly Google’s users may be concerned about the accuracy of information.

“With governments working to assign accountability to Facebook, Google and et al for fake news, so-called hate postings, etc., tech companies are motivated to avoid liability.

Lawsuits in the health industry offer some of the largest payouts making it a magnet for greedy lawyers and impetus for Google to avoid exposure.

Unless you’re the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic or an accredited provider, earning authority from Google won’t be easy.”

Takeaways

There are many possible reasons why health sites tend to be sensitive to Google broad core updates. Factors such as what users want to see when they type a query, factual correctness of information and sentiment analysis can all play a role. But we don’t know that as facts.

What is known is that Google has not been targeting health sites. So this means that the changes may affect a broad range of sites, not just health related sites. It may be useful to investigate why some health sites are losing traffic because that may give clues as to what is affecting some non-health websites.

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theartofbeinganerd · 7 years

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Tonight, we have a fic that I wrote last year for Week 24 of 52 Prompts for 52 Weeks, which was “A story that ends on a cliffhanger”. It’s set between 2x11 and 2x12, and is obviously AU - and just a head’s up, I must’ve been feeling very Extra™ when I filled this particular prompt lmao

(Ao3)

“So…” Skye started, clearing her throat and raising her voice to be heard over the rain pounding down on the top of the SUV. “Is anyone else getting horror movie vibes?”

Fitz leaned closer to the windshield, grimacing as he took in the looming castle on the cliff above them, windows darkened and half of its turrets crumbling after years of abandonment. “We’re p…uh…sure that HYDRA’s here?”

“No,” Simmons answered crisply from behind him, followed by the sound of her door opening. “But, it is an old HYDRA stronghold, and Coulson wants us to cover all of our bases.” With that, she climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her.

Skye turned to Fitz, her lips tugged down into a concerned frown, and he knew that she still felt horribly guilty that his promise to keep her secret had driven a wedge even further between him and Simmons, but Fitz just shrugged it off. After all, it’s not like they’d been anywhere close to repairing their friendship before Puerto Rico, so what did it matter that she hated him even more now?

Ignoring the twisting in his gut that told him that it mattered a lot, Fitz turned away from Skye, shoving open his door with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, yanking the hood of his jacket over his head before he stepped out onto the muddy ground. Simmons was waiting nearby, barely visible through the dark and the blinding downpour, though he just barely noticed that she was shivering, despite her own hooded jacket.

For a brief moment, his hands automatically twitched toward her, wanting to take her in his arms and keep her warm and dry. But, then he clenched his hands into fists, his jaw tightening painfully as he reminded himself that right about now, she’d barely shake his hand, let alone allow him to embrace her.

Skye joined them a moment later, a flashlight in hand, though its beam of light hardly cut more than a few feet through the darkness surrounding them. “This op couldn’t have waited until the sun came up?” she grumbled, though it went without saying that nothing could wait when it came to HYDRA and getting a leg up on them.

“Remember, Skye,” Jemma started, her tone clinical in what he’d always called her ‘Doctor Voice’, “No matter what happens in there, you need to remain calm.”

Fitz could practically feel Skye’s frustration coming off of her in waves, but he wasn’t sure if it was caused by everyone’s constant pestering, or by the earthquake power itself. “Yeah, I know.” With that, she began leading the way up the hill to the castle, Fitz and Simmons trailing behind her.

A short (but awfully messy) walk later, they’d arrived at the huge front doors, and disconcertingly enough, they found them opened just a crack. “What are the chances this isn’t a…uh…”

“A trap?” Skye finished for him, and Fitz glanced over at her, though his gaze found Jemma instead, and he noticed that her mouth was hovering open, as though she’d been about to say something. However, a moment later, her mouth snapped shut. “Who knows, maybe everyone left in a hurry and forgot to shut the door?” Her tone was hopeful, but she knew as well as they did that the likelihood of that occurring was slim. “Well, regardless, we’ve got to go in. Watch your backs, guys.”

Skye pushed open one of the doors with her free hand, and Fitz winced at the ominous creaking that echoed around them. Once the door was open enough for them to slip inside, Skye led the way in, but they all froze when the door slammed shut behind them.

Spinning back around, Skye shone her flashlight on the now firmly closed doors, and grimaced at the sight. “Totally getting horror movie vibes,” she mumbled under her breath. However, a moment later, she shook it off and turned away, stepping further into the expansive front room. From what her light illuminated, it was clear that this place hadn’t been used in likely decades. There were spider webs covering every surface, enough dust that Fitz’s nose tickled just at the sight, and the walls were cracked and crumbling.

“Looks pretty well uh…” Grimacing, Fitz trailed off, absently twisting his hand as he sought out the right word. “Uh…” He let out a noise of frustration when it just wouldn’t come.

“Abandoned,” Simmons finished primly, not even bothering to glance at him as she took her own flashlight from her belt, clicked it on, and moved away from them, searching one of the hallways that led further into the castle. “Perhaps we should split up.”

“Oh no!” Skye rejected the idea immediately, her rejection so fierce that Simmons turned around in surprise. “That’s what someone always says before the killing starts! Splitting up is a bad, bad idea.”

Simmons’s face contorted into an expression of disbelief and annoyance, and she replied with a tired sigh, “This isn’t a movie, Skye, this is real life. Splitting up is the more practical option, and will allow us to search the castle and declare it clear much sooner so we can get back to base, where it’s safe for you. Frankly, I’m stunned that Coulson even allowed you on this mission.” Giving a firm nod as though it was the period at the end of her sentence, Simmons spun away from them and back toward her creepy hallway, declaring over her shoulder, “I’ll search this one. We’ll meet back here in a half hour.” And with that, she disappeared, swallowed up by the stifling darkness of the musty old castle.

For a moment, both Fitz and Skye stared blankly at where she’d been, but then Fitz cleared his throat and attempted to reassure Skye, “She didn’t…uh…she’s not…upset with you.” For it was him that had apparently done her wrong, him that had kept Skye’s powers a secret, him that had altered the balance of their friendship with his stupid deathbed confession –

But, none of that mattered anymore. It was in the past and there was no way to fix it, and he’d continue to tell himself that until he believed it.

“I know,” Skye replied shortly, her voice toneless, and Fitz knew it was a lie, because he knew that she blamed herself and assumed that meant that everyone else should as well. He’d tried to talk to her about it, tried to explain that just because she was different didn’t mean she had to be okay with everyone treating her differently, but she just wasn’t ready to hear it yet, and he understood. “Which hallway do you want? Hallway number one, or hallway number two?” She gestured to each with the beam of her flashlight, and Fitz grimaced at the mere idea of going down either one alone.

But, he was a SHIELD agent, and this was what they did, so he fumbled for his own flashlight, turning it on and heading for the hallways with a sigh. “I guess the first one.”

“See you in a half hour,” Skye called to him, just before she disappeared down the second hallway, leaving Fitz alone with the spiders and the darkness.

With a heavy sigh, Fitz began his trek down the hall, the light from his flashlight bouncing off of old, dusty portraits lining the wall. He recognized a few of them from when they’d studied HYDRA’s part in World War II in Vaughn’s History of SHIELD class back at the Academy, so he could only assume that they were all high-ranking members of HYDRA from way back when. He had a feeling that that didn’t bode well for him.

After some time, he came to the end of what had seemed like an endless hallway, and was surprised to find that it led into an expansive lab. Eyebrows arching in interest, he moved his flashlight about the room, highlighting the dated computers and other ancient technology. Still, he was sure that there had to be something of interest here, so he began reaching for a nearby switch that was likely the light switch.

“Don’t!”

The sudden voice cutting through the heavy silence caused him to jump, and he nearly dropped his flashlight in his shock. He whirled to face the source of the voice he knew so well, the beam of his flashlight landing on Simmons, standing on the other side of the room. She squinted, raising a hand to cover her eyes from the bright light, and Fitz quickly lowered it. “What are you…how did you…” He didn’t finish either question, but she seemed to get the gist of it.

“It seems all hallways lead to this room, and that makes me believe it was the sole purpose of this castle. Unsettling, to say the least. I’ve been attempting to find anything of importance, but it’s a bit hard when I have no idea of the security in place in case of intruders,” Simmons explained, heaving a sigh of obvious frustration.

“I might be able to…to uh, figure it out,” Fitz offered, shooting another cursory glance around the room. “It’s old, but…but it shouldn’t be too…um…hard.” With that, he headed for what seemed to be the main terminal, holding his flashlight aloft as he scanned the display. However, then he realized – it was all in German. “Oh.”

“Oh is right,” Simmons agreed, and Fitz froze when he realized that her voice was coming from right behind him. He could feel her presence mere inches away, could practically smell the familiar scent of her fruity shampoo. It was the closest she’d been to him in what felt like so long, and he fought a shudder. “Unless you’ve picked up speaking German as a new hobby, I don’t think we’ll be getting anything from here.”

“If I could just…get it open,” Fitz insisted, tapping the terminal as he spoke, “It’d be easy to…figure out.”

“We don’t have a way inside, Fitz,” Simmons reminded him, and he felt frustration of his own bubbling up.

“I bloody well know that, Simmons,” Fitz shot back, his shoulders tensing as he fought the urge to turn around and just have it out with her. “I was just saying –”

“Yes, I know what you were saying, and I agree that if we had a way inside, you’d be more than capable of understanding the workings of the system. But, as we don’t have a way inside –”

“Maybe we do.”

They both turned in surprise at the third voice, finding Skye just entering from another hallway into the lab. There was a tentative smile on her face, but she looked more worried than anything. Fitz was confused as to what she was referring to, but apparently Simmons wasn’t having the same problem, as she immediately disagreed, “No Skye. It’s too risky.”

Skye’s lips turned down into a frown, and Fitz glanced back and forth between them for a moment before it dawned on him. Abruptly, he turned back to Skye and asked in disbelief, “You think you could control it?”

Skye’s frown deepened, but she shrugged, taking a few hesitant steps in their direction. “Maybe. I don’t know. But, it’s worth a shot, right?”

“No, it’s not,” Simmons argued instantly, shaking her head. “You could cause this whole place to fall down on top of us!”

Skye’s mouth dropped open, and she looked as though she wanted to defend herself, but nothing came out of her mouth, so instead, Fitz turned to Simmons and said, “If Skye thinks she can do it…I trust her.”

Simmons whirled to face him, her expression one of pure incredulousness. “How can you possibly believe that she has that power under control, Fitz? She hasn’t practiced it at all, and she doesn’t even know where it comes from or what it means!”

“Because she’s my friend, and I trust my friends,” Fitz replied, his tone low and harsher than he’d intended. Simmons flinched a little at that, and she dropped her gaze from his as she released a sharp breath.

There was a long, tense moment of silence, but then Simmons stepped back, holding her hands up in defeat. “Fine, give it a try. But please, be careful.”

Skye nodded, stepping up beside Fitz and shooting him a grateful smile. “You should probably step back.”

Fitz gave her a small smile in return, reaching up to give her shoulder a supportive squeeze before he backed away to join Simmons near the back of the lab. They both watched in silence as Skye tucked away her flashlight, raising her hands and taking a deep breath. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the room began to shudder, the floor shaking beneath their feet, and Fitz noticed Simmons reaching out to steady herself on the wall. Plaster and dust began to fall from the ceiling, and the lab equipment was shuddering ominously.

Just as Fitz was about to call out to Skye that perhaps she should stop, it all cut off abruptly, followed by the sound of something heavy and metallic clanking to the hard floor. Skye spun to face them, panting and sweating, but grinning. “There you go,” she told him, gesturing to the now exposed terminal.

Fitz couldn’t help his own grin as he hurried back to join her. “You did great,” he assured her, giving her other squeeze on the shoulder before dropping down to get a look at the wiring. After that, he focused his energy and attention on figuring out the system, though he registered that Simmons and Skye were talking in low voices nearby. Neither sounded too happy, and he halfway thought about intervening, but then he froze when he came across something hidden in the back of the terminal. “Shit!” he cried, scrambling away from it, nearly falling onto his backside as he did so.

“What? What’s wrong?” Simmons demanded, hurrying to his side and absently helping him back to his feet.

“Rigged to blow,” Fitz explained, the words coming out a harsh exhale. “There’s a…a timer, something must’ve…set if off or…” He shook his head rapidly. “We need to get out, now.”

“Oh my god, it’s because of me, isn’t it?” Skye asked, her eyes going wide as she automatically took a step closer to the terminal.

“No time for that!” Fitz cried, grasping her arm and taking off for one of the hallways at a run.

Simmons’s shout stopped him. “We’ll never make it if we go that way!” she insisted, her narrowed eyes scanning the room. Then, abruptly, she dropped her flashlight, instead grabbing a stool and tossing it at one of the wide, frosted glass windows at the back of the room. The glass shattered, raining down on the lab floor, and Fitz could now see the pouring rain and streaks of lightening outside. Simmons gestured them over desperately, and they both practically shoved Skye through the broken window before he pushed Simmons out next.

Fitz scrambled through the window last, nearly stumbling and possibly twisting his ankle on his landing, but he didn’t have time to check, as Simmons was right there, dragging him away from the building due to blow in moments. There wasn’t any place to hide, no cover, and there was barely space to run, as they had about fifty feet before the ground suddenly dropped off into a cliff-edge.

In a split second, he’d made a decision, and threw himself in front of Simmons and Skye just as there was a thundering explosion. The castle was blown to bits, and Fitz felt the heat singeing his back moments before he felt the blow that threw him forward.

Just barely he managed to grasp the rocky cliff edge, his hands scrambling for purchase, and he could feel the jagged rocks slicing his skin, his bad hand trembling with the effort of holding on. But then, Simmons was there, gasping for breath, her hair a matted mess and her cheeks streaked with mud as her hands grasped his. And yet, she was still, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes upon.

“Just hold on,” she sobbed out, and Fitz was disconcerted to see tears dropping from her eyes, “Just hold on, I’m not going to let you go. Please Fitz, don’t do this to me again.”

Fitz winced, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder at the water miles below him, and had to admit this situation was quite…similar to the pod. But, it was also completely different – they were different. It didn’t feel that way, though, not with the way she was looking at him, the desperation and fear in her eyes, the pleading in her expression.

Then, he saw it. The struggle she was putting up to stay in place, the way she was sliding with the effort of holding up his weight, and he knew with absolute certainty that if she continued to hold him up, they’d both end up falling to their deaths. And despite everything, despite their distance and her leaving and the lies and everything that had happened to push them apart, Fitz knew that he’d still die for her. He’d do it in a heartbeat.

So, he took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and gave her a watery smile. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I…that I love you, that I…I still do, even though you don’t want me to. I’m sorry, Jemma.” She blinked a few times, gaping at him, but just then her knees skidded in the mud, and Fitz took that as his opportunity, releasing her hands and his weak grip on the cliff as she struggled to right herself.

“FITZ!”

#shayna writes #fsfic #fitzsimmons #shayna's one shot collection #season 2 au #cliffhanger #this was pretty fun to write tbh #definitely different from my other stuff

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