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yellowocaballero · 4 years

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Continuation of Human Relations (Oh My God, They Were Roommates)

This is a 16k story that’s a bit too short for AO3 but a bit too long for Tumblr that acts as a continuation of my Archivist!Sasha and Immortal!Jon fic Human Relations. I recommend that you read that before this. This story takes place between S2 and S3, and is about Sasha and Georgie’s roommate adventures. I’m uncertain if I’ll continue this and post it on AO3, post it on AO3 as it is, or what, but for the time being I’ll at least post it here.

Serious content warnings for discussion of abusive friendships, gaslighting, discussion of 19th century racism, implied transphobia, and discussion of police brutality. Nothing more serious than what we saw in Human Relations, but it does have a much more explicit investigation of Jon and Elias’ relationship. Rest under the cut. Happy Birthday, @magickko.

EDIT: HAHA READMORE DIDN’T WORK, YIKES.

Sasha dreams, every night.

Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time.

A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap.

A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.

When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again.

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.

Sasha dreams, every night.

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.

Georgie Barker wasn’t a mystery, and she’d be the first to tell you.

Of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you need, honey! I always love having Jonah owe me a favor. Don’t worry about the cops and the law, nobody will ever find you here. Seriously, the entire department’s in my pocket. It’s no hassle having you here, it’s a big flat! It’s been years since I’ve had a roommate, this’ll be fun!

The one thing she hadn’t understood was Sasha begging her not to let Jon in to see her. He knows exactly where you are, Georgie pointed out. He knows you’re not actually a murderer, Georgie said. He might be able to help explain some of what’s going on, Georgie hinted. Jon would respect my wishes, but if Jonah really wants him to talk to you, he’ll definitely do it...

“Please,” Sasha had croaked, the uncomfortable morning after she had stumbled into Georgie’s flat. The Admiral wove around her legs, purring up a storm, and Georgie was munching on avocado toast and sipping pomegranate juice. “I just - I just need some space.”

“Why?” Georgie asked obliviously. That was something that Sasha was rapidly learning about Georgie - she didn’t hold back with impolite questions, or her opinion. She seemed to be regarding Sasha’s life as her own personal Youtuber Drama, which Sasha really didn’t know how she felt about. Her life wasn’t a spectacle, but she guessed even the warfare and tragedy of ants were of obscure and strange interest to humanity. “He’s feeling, like, totally bad about framing you for murder. I can tell he super wants to apologize to you about everything.”

Martin’s words echoed through her mind, from what felt like a decade ago: Jon had ruined Martin’s life, but to him it was as simple as a momentary inconvenience. “I don’t want his apology,” Sasha croaked. “I want not to be on the run from the police. I want to go back to my flat. Unless he’s going to make me human again I don’t want any stupid apologies. They’re useless.”

“Hm. Well, you’re free to stay here as long as you need to, of course.” Georgie sipped at her tea. They were sitting around the breakfast table, Sasha desolately shoving eggs into her mouth as Georgie drank her tea that Sasha was reasonably sure was spiked with brandy. Rich people were literally never sober. “It’ll be so much fun, like a sleepover. We can do each other’s nails and talk about boys!”

“My boyfriend thought I was a monster for the past month and now thinks I’m a murderer,” Sasha said flatly.

“Oh, I see.” Georgie tapped her lips thoughtfully. “We have to get you laid, huh?”

“I am literally on the run from the cops.”

“That’s very sexy to some people,” Georgie assured her.

After that, Georgie waved goodbye and swanned out of the house, either going to her studio to work on her podcast or doing some work for her real estate empire or writing a best-selling book or schmoozing with celebrities or attending parties at exclusive nightclubs or working part-time as a bartender just for gossip or devouring souls. Just from Sasha’s one day at Georgie’s flat, she knew that she did all of these things and then some. It was a stunning contrast to Jon’s laziness, or Elias (Jonah’s) single-mindedness.

Maybe you lost the energy to be so productive after your two hundredth year. Sasha didn’t fucking know. Hopefully she would never know. Or maybe Jon just appeared to be lazy, and every moment that he was complaining about being bored he was secretly manipulating world leaders. Maybe Jonah’s dedication to spreadsheets and dress code was a front, and he was secretly pulling the puppet strings of her entire life…

In the empty spaces of Georgie’s spacious flat, it was easy to be paranoid. Sasha lay on her luxurious couch, hands folded across her chest like a corpse, trying not to think of anything, thinking of everything. Thinking of Tim: of his smile, of his scowl, of his cold looks given to someone he had thought was a stranger. Thinking of Martin: his warm smile, his sharp looks.

She struggled to think of other friends, other family members who gave her comfort, but drew up a blank. Her parent’s faces were blurred after ten years of no contact, not so much forgotten as repressed, and her baby siblings were likely unrecognizable to her now. Almost as unrecognizable as she was to them, probably. Tim, her boyfriend who hated her, and Martin, her subordinate who she had almost never had a conversation with that wasn’t about work or Jon...that was it. All the friends she had in the world. She was sleeping in the guest room of a podcast host/Grim Reaper whom she had met once, and that was all she had.

Loneliness was Sasha’s constant companion. In a crowd, in her family, in the world - no matter how many people she had been surrounded by, she had always been alone. She had never had anybody in the world to rely on besides herself, and for the first time in a long time she was achingly aware of it. Nobody who loved her was going to help her. She was alone now.

After an hour of lying on the couch and crying, Sasha desolately watched Netflix cooking shows on Georgie’s gigantic flat-screen TV, trying very hard to think of absolutely nothing at all. She only moved to pet Georgie’s silky long-haired cat whose name she had already forgotten, and even he left quickly once she lost the energy to give him attention.

That was how Georgie found Sasha when she came home: lying on the couch, still dressed in borrowed silk pyjamas, watching idiots on television fuck up cakes. Georgie’s arms were laden with shopping bags, with names of exclusive London boutiques sprawled along the side, her deep black pits of eyes hidden by designer sunglasses. She burst through the door happily, her cat running up to her and winding through her laps as he purred, and easily kicked off her red pumps. She stopped in the doorway of the living room, looking strangely excited.

“Sorry I’m back to late! Utterly bogged up at work, there was a plane crash and I was processing corpses for hours. I had to do some serious retail therapy just to deal with the tedium - darling, have you moved?”

Sasha grunted.

“You look like Mikey Crew threw you off the Shard,” Georgie said sympathetically. “Utterly disastrous. Don’t worry, Aunt Georgie’s here to make you feel better.” She lifted her bag triumphantly. “I bought you new outfits!”

Sasha eyed her warily.

“You get no say in this,” Georgie said kindly. “Chop chop, we’re doing face masks too.”

That’s how, somehow, Sasha found herself playing an unwilling dress-up doll for the Grim Reaper. Georgie had taken Sasha’s casual mention that she had no clothing besides her work pantsuit to heart, and had hit up her favorite boutiques for ‘cute outfits that accentuated her figure and made her eyes pop!’. Or something. Sasha wasn’t much one for fashion.

As it turned out, Georgie Barker had a walk-in closet. Because of course she did.

The looks ranged from Sasha’s usual, as Georgie put it, ‘sexy librarian’ look, to ballgowns, to tennis outfits, to moddish, to vintage, to wintery. It was February, the seasons lingering in British chill, and according to Georgie the perfect solution to this was a mink coat that was probably worth a month’s rent on her flat.

Strangely, all of the outfits fit perfectly - and Sasha knew that her measurements were difficult to find. Georgie took it in stride, clapping enthusiastically each time and suggesting accessories and how to mix and match the outfits.

She would have thought that she was too dead inside to actually enjoy it, but so far as distractions went it actually worked pretty well. Georgie chatted about everything but their actual problems, and Sasha had absolutely no input or choice in what Georgie decided to dress her in, and by the time they had transitioned from nail painting to watching Legally Blonde and eating ice cream from the carton Sasha was actually feeling a little relaxed.

“The musical’s better,” Georgie informed Sasha imperiously as Sasha dug around in her carton for chunks of cookie dough. Georgie was clutching a glass of wine in one hand, while Sasha was contenting herself with ice cream. Best not to drink when she was this sad. “Reese is such a doll, though. Allergic to shellfish, poor dear, but I told her not to let Leo pick the restaurant.”

“What I’m wondering,” Sasha said carefully, teeth cracking into the frozen chunk of cookie dough, “is that half the time when I see you, you’re dressed like a 2008 goth in jeans and t-shirts.”

“Oh, honey,” Georgie said pityingly, patting her hand. “I used to spend two hours getting dressed each morning. I’m never doing that to myself again. You, however, clearly have never had nice clothing in your life. It’s written all over your face. People’ll walk all over you if you always look like you’re straight from a charity shop. We gotta buy you some self-confidence.”

“Thanks. I think.” On screen, Elle flourished and achieved her dreams. Sasha tried not to feel jealous. “It’s not really as if I had a lot of girly sleepovers as a kid…”

“Word,” Georgie said sympathetically. She patted Sasha’s hand again. “Jon was the same way, you know. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to renovate that boy’s wardrobe. He has no idea how to dress to impress.”

“Do we have to talk about Jon right now,” Sasha groused. “He’s the last person I want to think about.”

“He means well,” Georgie soothed, as Elle Woods proudly proclaimed on television how she, yes, she, was a strong independent woman - who didn’t need a man! “It’s not his fault he’s stupid. He’s just so helpless on his own, you know, he needs girls like you and me to make sure he’s not wasting a decade fixating on obscure Bolivian religious practices or whatever.”

“Helpless? He’s a two hundred year old man.” Sasha spitefully grabbed the bottle of wine from the coffee table, pouring it into a spare glass and drinking it quickly. It probably cost thousands of pounds, but it just tasted like wine to her. “It’s not my job to make sure his little feelings aren’t hurt.”

“Of course not,” Georgie said, but Sasha had the sense she was being calmed instead of listened to. “But Jon’s...you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

Georgie made an interpretive hand gesture. Sasha stared at her blankly.

“...I still don’t.”

Georgie sighed. “He’s delicate. Jonah babies him, honestly.” She patted Sasha’s hand for the third time, making her skin crawl. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him see you until you’re ready to forgive him. Every woman has the right to some time to herself after a guy fucks her over. You two’ll patch things up, right as rain.”

There was nothing Sasha wanted to say to that, nothing she wanted to think about, and she kept drinking her wine and watching the movie, out of lack of any other options.

That night, she drunkenly tipped into bed, so blasted that she slid immediately into sleep and did not dream. It was the first relief she’d had in what felt like a very long time.

It wasn’t Sasha’s job to fix Jonathan Sims.

It really, really wasn’t. It wasn’t her job to make him feel better, or forgive him, or save him from himself. If Martin wanted to waste his time and energy doing that, then god fucking speed, but Sasha had other priorities. She had been profoundly fucked over and had her trust abused by three different men lately, and she wasn’t going to be the one to patch things up.

Two of them she had no desire to patch things up with at all. Two of them she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw again. The last one...Sasha didn’t know what she felt. But that was nothing new.

That being said, as Sasha chewed her way through hangover medication and an acai bowl the next morning, Georgie’s inane chattering about tricking some celebrity or another into taking her to Hungary for authentic Hungarian food didn’t register nearly as loudly in Sasha’s mind as her words about Jonah and Jon.

Jonah babies Jon. That was what she had said. It...it was accurate, right? It had to be. Georgie had known Jonah and Jon for a hundred years, and Sasha had barely heard one authentic conversation between them. She’d known them for a year, and known Jonah’s true nature for maybe a few days. There was no way Sasha understood their relationship better than Georgie did. It just didn’t make sense.

Finally, she put her spoon down, cutting Georgie off in the middle of her ramble about the majesty of Hungarian food made by genuine Hungarian grandma hands. “What did you mean, ‘Jonah babies Jon’?”

Georgie blinked at her, clearly barely remembering the conversation, before recognition dawned. Then she shrugged, sipping her protein smoothie. Which may or may not be spiked. It seemed as if her solution to hangovers was to just not stop being drunk. “Oh, you know how those two are. Jon swans around the world doing whatever he wants, Jonah holds the fort down at home. That’s why Jon’s fun, you know.” She sighed nostalgically. “Romantic cruises to the Bahamas for two months, we tear up the Bahaman government and start a minor military coup, then we take a tour of the beaches. You haven’t lived until you’ve dug your toes into Bahaman sand.”

That was something Georgie said frequently: you haven’t lived until you’ve done X, Y, or Z. It seemed as if Georgie was very intent on living, and very intent on defining it in discretionary ways. To Sasha, living was simply the act of not being dead, but Georgie was almost fanatical about experiencing life.

“If he’s so much fun, then why did you break up?” Sasha asked, before she realized what she said. “I mean, it’s really none of my business, feel free not to answer that -”

But Georgie just laughed lightly. “That’s just how Jon and I work. We spend a few weeks together in bliss, and then we go our separate ways for six months or a year or whatever. Work’s always taking us different places, and seeing each other all day would make us hate each other. Some people work best when they’re not in each other’s pocket.” She took a long drag of the smoothie before speaking again. “Besides, he’ll always be second in my life to having fun. And I’ll always be second in his life to Jonah. It’s just how we work. It works for us!”

It seemed to. Last Sasha checked, Georgie and Jon seemed to be very amicable despite being exes. Lackadaisical, on-and-off, passionate yet going years without seeing each other - it was a relationship uniquely in the providence of workaholic immortals.

It wasn’t until Georgie had already waved goodbye, making Sasha promise not to spend all day on the couch again, that she realized that Georgie hadn’t quite answered her question.

An image flashed through Sasha’s mind - Jon’s face, as he dared to disagree with Jonah, and was utterly ground into the dust for it.

There was something more to this. Something that wasn’t obvious on the surface, something that was so well hidden maybe nobody even knew it was going on. Or maybe it was deeper than that, more insidious: maybe whatever was going on was so well-known and pervasive that it simply wasn’t spoken about. Not polite, not the kind of thing you say about your friends, not normal. Not in polite company. Not vocalized. Utterly taken for granted.

Sasha walked into the guest room, pulling out her phone from her bag and staring at its blank screen. Holding her breath, she hesitantly turned it on, staring at it blankly as it slowly booted up.

She shouldn’t be turning it on. She was perfectly aware of how, given a warrant, the police could track cell phone location, texts sent and received, everything. She could do it herself. The crushing weight of surveillance, the fear of being found and seen and rooted out, settled over her shoulders like an old, familiar friend. A comforting blanket to wrap herself up in at night: where, even if the fear was terrible and awful, at least it was familiar.

You could get used to anything, Sasha thought. Any behavior, any fears, any horrors or tragedies - anything could become normal, given enough time. A year. A hundred years. After two hundred years, maybe you wouldn’t even recognize it as happening at all.

Like a flood, the text messages poured in. Notifications chimed in a cacophony, as text after text after text popped up on her phone. Missed calls. Emails popped up, notifications from the doorbell camera, reminders from her fucking Duolingo...

Dizzily, Sasha scrolled through the texts. Lots from Tim, as expected, and a few from Martin, as expected. Some texts from her mother, which - which wasn’t expected. At all. Sasha hadn’t even known that she knew her number.

Sasha’s brain stuttered over the Spanish, having been years since she spoke it. Her brain also stuttered over the gratuitous misgendering, which was also blissfully novel yet just as uncomfortable and upsetting as ever. Translated, it was a slightly accusatory question about why the police had been calling them about her whereabouts. What had she done? Had she gotten in trouble?

No matter what you did, the text read, God will forgive you. Just call them back.

Sasha stared at the texts, brain buzzing. She felt sick. Forgive her? They’d forgive her? They thought she’d done it? They thought she was capable of -

Horribly, awfully, tears pricked at her eyes. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe you never really grew accustomed to pain, even if it was felt a thousand times. Maybe some pain you never acclimated to, never scarred over or calloused. Maybe sometimes the more you were hurt, the worse it hurt. The pain her parents gave her - how they cut off contact, the misgendering, the coldness - hurt just as badly at thirty six as it had at twenty six, at twenty, at fifteen, at nine. It had always hurt.

So stupid. Sasha deleted the text messages. She didn’t have time for this. She wasn’t a child. She was thirty six goddamn years old, that was way too old to still care about your parents. To still need them.

She clicked on Martin’s texts next. The first one had a timestamp before the murder, the rest afterwards.

Martin: where are you?? I found Tim (he tried to kill me w/an axe but we’re ok now) and were trying to get out of here. I explained everything to him. We’ll meet you in the archives.

Martin: Police are looking for you. I know you didn’t do it so call me back. Tim’s worried. Jon doesn’t seem that worried...

Martin: Shouldn’t text you anymore. Please be safe & careful.

Jesus. Jesus, she had been terrible to Martin. She was a rotten friend. Sasha hiccuped, rubbing at her eyes. She needed to get him a gift basket. Five. He was a freak, but he was her freak. Maybe.

Finally, almost holding her breath, she pressed on Tim’s messages. There were a lot of them - more than was safe, Sasha distantly registered. The first five were from the same time Martin had sent the second text. She guessed it was right after the police finished talking to them. He had called her slightly before - likely when they found the body - but there were also two texts from two am last night.

Tim: pick up your phone

Tim: pick up your phone are you okay im so sorry

Tim: baby please please pick up

Tim: we need to talk & im sorry & i hope ur safe

Tim: dont text me back

Then two texts from two am:

Tim: to warn you im drunk but im sorry (AND DRUNK) but in my defense im a shitty boyfriend. If you want to break up its fine but id like to make it work but i get if you cant because cops i guess. Bitch tonner wont stop bothering me make her stoppp

Tim: I love you and I wish that was enough.

Sasha rubbed at her eyes, exhausted. She wished it was enough too. She knew it wasn’t. Strongly, like burning, Sasha wished so desperately that she had never met Jonathan Sims. Maybe, in that world, things were okay. She and Tim were happy.

She scrolled through the rest of the notifications. Strangely, she even had two texts from Melanie.

Melanie: Hey, I heard what’s going on. I know you couldn’t have done it. A LOT of cops are bothering me - Hussein and Tonner have called like five times. I think you know them? For legal purposes I’ll say that you should turn yourself in or whatever.

Melanie: oh and Martin said to tell you that Mr. Bouchard’s been asking me a lot of questions about what im doing and my job situation - dunno y tho

That….probably wasn’t good.

No texts from Jon. She wouldn’t know what to do if he had. She doubted he knew her number, or how to work a phone. The last thing she could deal with emotionally right now was an apology. She didn’t know what to do about Tonner or Hussein or Melanie. Those were all problems she couldn’t fix right now.

Really, there was only one problem she could fix right now. She walked over to the door to the balcony, carefully stepping out onto the 20th story balcony. She carefully ejected her SIM card, snapped it in half, looked underneath her to make sure there were no passerby in the exclusive London neighborhood, and forced her fingers to release from the phone so she could watch it fall twenty stories onto the concrete.

She imagined a smash, a crack, but it didn’t make any sound at all. Sasha forced herself to step back inside, leaving the past behind her.

There was a lot Sasha had to force herself to do that day. Georgie owned a few laptops, but she hadn’t given Sasha permission to use any of them yet, and she didn’t want to intrude. Despite Sasha’s own...reservations about her personality, she really was being incredibly kind by letting her stay and trying to cheer her up. She did, however, have a great deal of antique books, and Sasha eagerly cracked open the first edition copies of fiction novels from the 19th century. Was that a first edition Pride & Prejudice? Oh, score!

She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat. Food tasted like ash in her mouth, but that always happened whenever she was upset. She forced herself to take a shower, impossibly intimidated by Georgie’s small army of hair care and hygiene products, and even cautiously let herself take a bubble bath with a bath bomb. It was...weirdly luxurious, but maybe not surprisingly. Georgie’s bathroom was like the Queen’s, and you could practically swim in the bathtub. It was intimidating and weird and uncomfortable, but Sasha forced herself to appreciate it. How many people got to take a shower in a stall with five different showerheads?

Halfway through the day the housekeeper came in, terrifying Sasha deeply, and she retreated to her guest bedroom to let the woman work. She inspected her newly painted toenails glumly, halfway through Pride & Prejudice, forcing herself not to think about how Jon could have been a background character in the novel. Wasn’t he in his twenties in this time period? Wasn’t that when he and Jonah Magnus had -

Sasha drank more wine, and put on another cooking program. She hadn’t watched telly all day, so technically she could tell Georgie that. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything productive to do. No work, which sucked when she was a workaholic. No computer to waste time on. No friends she could talk to without the police investigating her. She couldn’t go outside, again due to the aforementioned cop situation. Her life was her work, and her bosses had just framed her for murder.

Somewhat buzzed, Sasha stole several pieces of intricate stationary and wrote down everything Leitner had told her before he was murdered. It wasn’t nearly as much as she wanted, yet far more than she knew what to do with. Halfway through her notes deteriorated into a bizarre sort of mind map, lists of cases connected together and obscure monsters and figures pointing to each other. Salasea and his endless array of dangerous trinkets, mysterious yet lonely ship captains, Michael and his gently twisting deceit, Gerry Keay and his bizarre heroism, Leitner and his ruinous imprints, Agnes and her desolate fate, and the oft-mentioned yet barely understood man, whose name was whispered by shadowy figures entrenched in the supernatural world, Jonathan Sims…

Did he know? How often his shadow stained her statements? Did he care? Did he know how thoroughly he had ruined her life?

She scoured her memory for hints, writing down everything she could remember of his cameos in random statements. Of Leitner’s testimony, the immortal figure who so easily attained what Leitner and Mary Keay had spent their entire lives grasping for. Was there a hint to his true nature, his true allegiance?

In the corners of the cute stationary, Sasha doodled a small eye. She stared at it, and couldn’t help but fight the notion that it was staring back.

She scratched it out, feeling paranoid, not feeling paranoid enough.

A few hours later, Georgie came home, and Sasha fought the pathetically hopeful trepidation. When she heard the front door rattle she left her room, intending on welcoming Georgie back and proving that she hadn’t been watching telly all day, but she stopped short in the hallway when she heard the loud sound of voices. Specifically, the loud sound of Georgie’s still slightly unfamiliar voice, and the quieter tones of a voice that was far too familiar to her.

“ - if you’ll just let me talk to her, she’ll understand.”

“And she said that she’s not seeing you,” Georgie said firmly. Sasha held her breath, pressing herself up against the hallway wall. Next to her was a doorway that led to the living room, that led to a foyer. If she craned her head she could just barely see Georgie standing in the foyer, arguing with a figure holding a leather briefcase that made Sasha’s heart leap into her throat. “You really did screw her over, you know.”

“I know,” Jonathan Sims whined. “I want to apologize. It’s not my fault. Jonah got pushy again, you know how he is.”

“Ugh, tell me about it.” Georgie scoffed. “Did something happen between you two? Sasha was asking all sorts of weird questions.”

“Just Jonah being his usual insufferable self,” Jon said, so carelessly and casually that if Sasha hadn’t known better she would have believed him. “It probably alarmed her, seeing how that man really is. I’m sure she’s feeling very overwhelmed right now.”

“She really is, the poor dear,” Georgie said sympathetically. Sasha’s hands clenched into fists. “But you aren’t getting past this foyer, honey. I’m sure she’ll want to be friends again once Jonah gets the cops off her case.”

“Martin’s giving me a hard time,” Jon sulked. “Says this is all my fault that the dreadful little wolf girl is sniffing around. It’s not my fault. If my Archivist just let me explain, she’d see that it’s not my fault.”

“That Blackwood boy’s always giving you a hard time,” Georgie sniffed. “I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him. He’s overly moralistic and doesn’t know how to have fun. You spend too much time with him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Georgina Barker,” Jon teased. He stepped forward a little closer, and although Sasah couldn’t see his face she had the feeling he was smiling. “It’s a bad look on you.”

“Idiot,” Georgie said fondly, “everything’s a good look on me.” She stretched up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Ditch him and come party with me, darling, I’ll show you a wonderful time. Maybe after all of this nonsense blows over.”

“Judging from what I can make out of Jonah’s monologuing, we ought to get our parties in while we still can,” Jon said glumly. He opened his briefcase, passing a manila folder to Georgie. “Give her these. She’ll be getting hungry. Tell her that the top one is from work, and the second is from me.” He hesitated for a second. “You really think she’ll forgive me?”

“If it’s not your fault, then why do you need to be forgiven?”

Jon was silent for a long minute. Finally, he said, “I’ll talk to you later, Georgie. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Georgie said easily, casually, as if she had said it a thousand times, a million times. “Take care of yourself.”

She stood in the foyer after he left, arms folded, one delicately manicured finger tapping against her arm. She eventually turned around, poking her head into the living room.

“You can come out, darling, I don’t bite.”

Sasha guiltily stepped into the living room, crossing her arms defensively. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

But Georgie just rolled her eyes. “Please. My best friends are Jonathan Sims and Jonah Magnus.” She looked thoughtful for a second. “Well. My oldest friends. Anyway, if you’re in the same house as one of those Beholding types you aren’t getting a private conversation. I’m super used to it.” She held out the manila folder, and Sasha cautiously stepped forward and took it from her.

“Beholding types?”

“Oh, you know, you and your lot,” Georgie said dismissively. “Can’t do anything about that annoying little megalomania the Eye gives you. Have fun with lunch, I have to freshen up. It takes ages to get the scent of Jon’s musty old books off me.”

But Sasha was already tuning her out, because in the manilla envelope there were two Statements. They thrummed under her fingers, charged with energy and power and fear, and Sasha could feel herself gripping them. The first one was a classic Magnus Institute Statement, just like she would have read at work, but the second was what looked like a photocopy of a piece of paper. Judging from the ornate script, it was old, and when Sasha’s eyes wandered to the date her eyes widened. July 21st, 1823.

She looked up, already frantically searching for a tape recorder, and immediately saw one sitting on the coffee table. She didn’t think twice about it, already sitting on the plush white couch and setting the papers out. Which one first - oh man, they were both so exciting - her fingers drifted to the one Jon gave her, and she picked it up. That one, then.

Sasha James pressed play on the tape deck, feeling a familiar thrill go through her at the gentle whirring. She cleared her throat.

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a letter sent by Barnabas Bennet to Jonah Magnus. Statement begins.”

And, as Sasha’s blood ran cold, she began to read.

My dearest Jonah,

I hope you are well. It was an absolute pleasure to vacation at your estate this summer. I’ve never had such interesting conversations with a like-minded individual, and since returning to my own estate I have been sorely missing your company. You have introduced a great deal of brightness and acute interest to my life, and without you the luminescence of Heaven does not thrill me. How I wish you were around to thrill me again!

Do not concern yourself - I have maintained my studies. The library you loaned me is of great interest, and I have been spending many a quiet night bent over one of your occult tomes. I have never felt so enlightened. A world is opening up before us, Jonah, one of richness and wonder, and for the first time in many years I find myself excited to rise each morning. I thank our Heavenly Father each day that I was so fortunate as to cross your path. You must remind me to discuss with you the report by Smirke in detail - fascinating! Theoretical, of course, all theoretical - but the concept of classifying the devils that so bewitch man into fourteen unique taxonomies fascinates me. We must discuss it.

Jonah, I trust that this letter reaches you in private, and that you shall not betray my confidence by discussing it with anyone. I have a private grievance I wish to address with you. It is regarding your boy, the one kept so close in your confidence and trust.

I would never hasten to question any of your decisions, for I trust they are made with great deliberation and forethought. But I must question why you keep that boy so close to you. His air is strange and fey. While summering at your estate, I would frequently see him awake at late hours, pouring over some tome or report or another (I would swear that he reads better than I!). I know he’s somewhat of a project of yours, bringing him into Christianity and your charity, which will surely be rewarded etc etc, but I cannot shake my strange trepidation.

If I were to be quite honest, my fear of him.

He always asks questions. Disturbing and distressing questions. And when I deign to answer them, he acts as if he truly understands. Moreover, that he understands more than me - that he possesses some secret knowledge that only he has obtained. I catch him listening at doorways and around corners frequently, and no matter how many times I box him about the ears for it he will not cease. You encourage it, allowing this behavior. Even after I reported to you the pagan rituals which I am confident he is performing, you brush me off. You two are strangely close. I’m simply concerned for you, Jonah. Please heed my advice: that boy is trouble. I fear that he will bring you into trouble also. Do not allow this paganism to steer you away from the light of our heavenly Father. I understand that the occult is of great interest to all of us, discovering the secrets of the world and its many mysteries, but it is only an academic interest. I would never go so far as to partake of these devilish rituals myself, and you ought to dissuade yourself of such a notion also. Do not allow that John to lead you astray.

I wish you most well. I am encountering some trouble of my own - debts and such - but do not concern yourself with them. The situation is well-handled. I hope to write to you again soon.

Yours, faithfully,

Barnabas

...supplemental.

Jon. Why did you show me this?

Is this your definition of vulnerability? Of honesty? What, are you trying to justify your decisions to me? I get it, it’s disgusting. These people were disgusting to you. I can’t know how you feel, but I think I - my parents -

What I mean is, I can’t understand. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been. I understand how Jonah was the only one to… ‘get’ you or whatever. How he was the only person to see how brilliant you are, how much you have to give.

But, Jon - I don’t think Jonah thought any better of you than Barnabas did. He was just better at hiding it. I don’t know, I didn’t know him and I still don’t know him - but you get that the way he talked to you back then wasn’t right, right? You get that it was fucked up, right?

I don’t know. I don’t think you get that. I don’t think anybody does. Georgie’s too close to it, too used to you and Jonah’s ‘quirks’ or whatever. I...don’t know anything Martin thinks, but I feel as if you’d be pretty invested in keeping this from him. But I’m close enough to you to see it, and I’m far enough away from this that I understand. Something’s really fucked up about this situation. I’m worried I’m the only person who sees it. I hate being that person, the person who Sees it all, who knows it all, but is powerless to do anything about it. You understand, right? You understand how much this is hurting me?

I’m not sure you do. If you’re showing me this, trying to show me how hard you had it, how misunderstood you were, just so I forgive you...I don’t. And it’s manipulative, so cut it out. I’m not sure if you’re consciously doing that, I really don’t think you’re emotionally intelligent enough.

But you aren’t dumb, Jon. I know it’s a defence mechanism or whatever to pretend that you are, to act childish, but you aren’t.

Ugh, listen to me. I sound like Martin. Disgusting. I don’t give a shit about this, I’m not your therapist. But you keep on making your problems my problems, and I’m not tolerating that. We’ll talk when I’m not fucking wanted for murder for something you were complicit in.

Get your act together. I don’t forgive you. Statement fucking ends.

As if Sasha’s life wasn’t hard enough, Georgie wanted to go dancing.

“I am literally wanted by the police.”

“The nightclub’s so dark, nobody’ll even see your face,” Georgie promised.

“Shouldn’t I be spending my time working on my conspiracy theory board?”

“Honey, no offence, that thing is so tacky.”

“I hate clubbing.”

“You’ll like the way I do it!”

“I really don’t want to -”

“Tough nuts.”

So, of course, that’s how Sasha ended up shoved into a tight dress, heels, and makeup, pushed into a taxi, and quickly deposited in front of a warehouse looking building. There was a long line out the door, of women with straightened hair dressed somehow identically, yet way worse, than Sasha, all looking very cold. Georgie looped her arm through Sasha’s, white teeth flashing as she grinned widely, and escorted them both straight through the doors and past security.

She, it seemed, was a known quantity. Sasha, who had spent the last year working in a mill to feed evil psychic vampires and the ten years before that locked in academia, which was basically the same thing, was not a known quantity to any nightclub. She had not been clubbing since uni, which was approximately five lifetimes ago.

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Sasha said into Georgie’s ear as they transitioned from the furiously cold February air into the swelteringly hot club. It was dim and smoky, the noise overwhelmingly grating at her ears. After so long in a quiet office, in a silent flat, she could barely handle it.

Georgie said something to her.

“What?” Sasha yelled. “Georgie, I don’t want to be here!”

Georgie frowned at her, and unlinked their arms so she could reach up on her tiptoes and clasp Sasha on the shoulders. “You have been accused of murder! You just split with your boyfriend because of clown trauma! You haven’t had fun in years! You deserve this, queen!”

You know...maybe she did.

Georgie pressed a drink into her hands, mysteriously procured from somewhere, and without thinking too hard about it Sasha downed it in one gulp. Georgie whooped, clapping her on the back, and directed her towards the bar. She flashed her platinum credit card at the bartender, and suddenly Sasha was MVP of the night.

You know, Sasha thought dizzily as she was given a toxic blue drink and pushed onto the dance floor, maybe she did deserve this. Didn’t she deserve to have fun? After the way things ended with Tim, couldn’t she just act like a normal girl and go clubbing with her friends to dance away the pain? She was almost forty, way too old for this, but maybe she could forget for a little bit. She had never had the opportunity as a teenager, not even as a young adult. Couldn’t she do this, before she died?

Maybe women closer to forty than thirty dealt with this with - with book clubs, with sisterhood, whatever. Maybe women closer to forty than thirty were married, had kids of their own. But Sasha was just Sasha, stuck in a literal dead-end job, going nowhere good, and this was all she would ever have.

Maybe Georgie was right. Why not live, before she died? Everybody on earth died - everybody, that is, except for a small group of people who were willing to sell their soul for the privilege. At least maybe this way she could have whatever joy she could fit into her life before all opportunity was lost, and she was lost.

A man sidled up to her, asking for a dance, and she evaded him. But then there was another one, and another one, and Sasha found herself fleeing back to the bar and ordering another drink. Too soon. Way too soon. She found herself digging in her borrowed purse, searching for her phone, wanting to call Tim or talk to him or ask him if they really were broken up so she could have rebound sex with random dudes in bars, but the purse was empty of both a phone and a wallet. That’s right - she had destroyed it. Because the cops were after her.

Next to her, out of the corner of her eye, a man sat down at a barstool. He said something to the bartender and leaned towards her, mouth spilling something obscured by the crush and heat and sound of the club. He seemed to be asking if he could buy her a drink. Sasha shook her head dizzily, confused and lost. Then he leaned in closer, and Sasha could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Are you sure? I’d like to dance with you!”

Sasha shook her head no again, frantically.

“Aw, come on -”

Then, as if by magic, Georgie was at her elbow. Unintimidating, not more than one hundred and seventy centimeters, with teased hair and sharp black lipstick and eyeliner, she raised an eyebrow at the guy. But there must have been something in her eyes, or a lack of something, because the guy rapidly slipped off the barstool and melted into the crowd, leaving the drink the bartender slid onto the counter behind.

As if she had planned it, Georgie easily stole the drink and knocked it back. She tugged Sasha down, yelling into her ear. “Come with me, darling, let’s check out where the real party is.”

Without taking no for an answer, Georgie grabbed Sasha’s hand and tugged her through the outskirts of the crowd, ducking and weaving between small clusters of people and women dancing the night away. Sasha’s vision swam, details and faces lost in the endless ripple of flashing lights and sound, until all she felt was Georgie’s cool hand in hers, and it wasn’t until they emerged from the choppy sea of people into a small hallway off the main room that she felt like she could breathe. Sasha’s head swam with movement and smoke, and she was barely cognizant that they were in a hallway for a bathroom or something.

But Georgie walked confidently past the bathrooms, into what appeared to be a storage closet. She confidently opened it, halting at the door frame to glance backwards at Sasha. A smile quirked at her bow lips.

“You coming?”

Sasha, slightly intoxicated though she was, couldn’t fight the skepticism. “This is where the real party is? A supply closet?”

“Oh, my dear Archivist,” Georgie said, smirking slightly. “The world is full of far more delights than you could understand. Follow me, and stay close.”

Then Georgie stepped forward, disappearing into the closet, and as little as Sasha wanted to step inside more dubiously supernatural hallways she wanted to be left alone in this club even less, and she ducked after Georgie into the unknown.

The unknown, as it turned out, was another club.

Or, more accurately, a pub. It was a nice pub too, all smoky yellow lights and burnished wood booths. The booths were upholstered in soft and cushy looking brown leather, and the sound where nowhere above a quiet murmur. It didn’t seem to be abandoned, the shadows at some booths deeper than others, but for the life of her Sasha couldn’t puzzle out the faces or figures of anybody at these shadowy corners. There was a single bartender, wiping a grimy glass over and over. He nodded at Georgie when he walked in, and Sasha was forced to wonder how many dubiously physical supernatural bars and hang-outs existed in random back rooms of mundane stores. Were these things just everywhere? Or were there only a few, and so long as you had the right key any door could be an entrance? It was just Sasha’s intuition, but she felt as if it was the latter.

What would, could Georgie open up for her? What power, what majesty? What world of power and control could Jon give her, that Jon was trying to hard to give her that she kept refusing? Nobody was telling her the cost. Nobody was letting her make a decision. She was being swept up in the wake of giants, and Sasha was just trying to keep her head above water.

Georgie was still walking confidently down the aisles, and Sasha stumbled trying to keep up. Finally, she came to a stop in a back corner, utterly secluded with a booth that stretched the entire corner, large enough for seven or more people. Georgie turned to Sasha, smiling broadly, and Sasha tried not to feel intimidated.

“Honey, these are my friends. Girls, this is my new roommate, Sasha James!”

With a flourish, she made a little tah-dah motion, and the smoky yellow lamp above the table flickered on.

The table was crowded with women, or women appearing people. Absolutely none of them were familiar. No - in the corner, there was one person who was familiar. Michael, blonde hair hurting her eyes in curly ringlets, hands in his coat pockets. He smiled crookedly at her, jarring her adrift.

“Uh,” Sasha said, confused. Who were these people? “Hello?”

A short East Asian woman in a white tank top and black jeans scowled from where she was slouching in her seat. “One of those Beholding patsies? Please, Georgie, they’re so insufferable.”

“I like this one,” Georgie said cheerfully. She slid into an empty seat, and Sasha cautiously sat next to her. “Play nice, everyone.”

“You’re such a grouch, Jude,” a woman said, leaning forward and looking interestedly at Sasha. Her eyes were dark and big, her head cocked, giving her an almost insectoid air. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person finally, Archivist. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re really making waves in our little community.”

“Patsy Archivist,” a tall and burly white woman with cascading brown hair said shortly, taking long gulps of a pint. “What’s impressive about that?”

“I’m impressed with anyone who puts up with Sims and Magnus long enough,” the insectish woman said. “No offence, Georgie.”

“Oh, they’re insufferable,” Georgie said cheerfully. “Have you heard how those two like to socialize? They go to galas. With those awful little Fairchilds and Lukases and whatever. It’s just tragic.”

“Word,” the insect woman said, raising her glass. The rim seemed to be coated in cobwebs, making Sasha feel vaguely ill. “Much rather have a pint at a nice little pub with friends. But we haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? My name’s Annabelle Cane. I’m sure you’ve heard of me in all those little stories you like.”

Anabelle Cane. Sasha swallowed. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“A proxy Archivist she may be,” Michael said serenely, “but perhaps our most successful yet. She’s already coming along so much further than Gertrude ever did.” He winked bizarrely at Sasha. “Michael, but you already know that. They and them, if you please.”

Oh. Sasha blinked at them. “Thanks for...saving my life back there. And Tim’s and Martin’s.”

“My pleasure,” Michael said affably. “You’re the most fun I’ve had in awhile. Always nice to have the Eye owe me a favor.”

“They’re just mad they didn’t get to kill Gertrude,” the brunette said evenly. “Julia Montauk. You should know me too, I think. Is it true you killed someone?”

“I definitely didn’t,” Sasha said heatedly. “It was a set-up.”

“Relax, we’re all killers here,” the woman in a tank top said. She scowled at Sasha. “Jude Perry. What the fuck do those old money ponces think they’re doing, installing another patsy Archivist this late in the game? I would have thought that they learned their lesson after that bitch Gertrude.”

“Archivists are quite slow learners,” a woman piped up. She sat in the corner, strangely oddly. Her skin was shiny and strange in the dim light, almost plasticish, and her dark eyes hadn’t moved from Sasha’s face since she walked in. “Nikola. A pleasure, Archivist.”

“Are you guys all…” Sasha trailed off uncomfortably. “You know?”

“Serial killers?” Julia Mauntauk asked flatly.

“Inhuman monstrosities of plastic and flesh?” Nikola inquired.

“Daughters of fear entities that control our every action?” Annabelle said.

“Embodiments of unknown concepts made sentient, forced into a shape that cannot suit them, locked in flesh and fractal prisons, always screaming in endless turmoil, unable to understand the horrors of the concepts of ourselves, always searching for the sweet release of death that can never quite be obtained, because that which does not live can never die?” Michael said serenely.

“Assholes?” Jude Perry said flatly.

“The sexiest Avatars around?” Georgie asked.

How did Sasha’s life devolve to this point.

“...yeah,” Sasha said. “Hey, where can I get more drinks?”

Unsurprisingly enough, the drinks came very fast. Service was excellent when you hung out with eldritch women, Sasha supposed.

The conversion flew thick and fast after that. In Sasha’s experience, joining a new group of established friends meant being ignored for favor of pre-existing dynamics. It was always uncomfortable, and no small part of why she just didn’t join new groups. Tim had never had that problem - he had a loud and persistent personality, the kind that made you pay attention to him. He dominated any room he entered, by force if necessary. It always seemed exhausting to Sasha, but Tim didn’t really seem to have anymore real friends than she did lately. His personality was like an ocean, overwhelming and everywhere, but when his mood turned sour it was just as intense. Gulfs of pleasure, intense pain - it seemed exhausting, to feel so deeply. God knows Sasha didn’t.

But today, in this group, she seemed to be novel. Maybe new fear avatars were a rare enough thing, or at least ones with Georgie’s seal of approval. They aimed a barrage of questions at her, and Sasha did her best to keep up with each one.

How did Sasha know Georgie? Mostly through a mutual enemy. Oh, fuckin’ Sims, right - you guys friends? No, I hate him. You guys fucking? Ew. Right, right, Sims is a giant prude - actually I heard that he doesn’t really - no, Jon decided a while back he doesn’t do that, and we all respect his decision - ew, though, nobody wants to imagine that. So why are you two friends? We’re roommates, mostly, I’m kinda on the run from the cops. Who’d you kill? Nobody. Who’d that old fucker Bouchard kill? Jurgen Leitner, mostly.

“Cheers to that!” Julia said abruptly, raising her glass. “Hate that fucker.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Annabelle said, downing her own drink and what seemed like an improbable quantity of spiders. She leaned over the table to where Sasha had hastily been stuffed in, beetle-black eyes gleaming. “But really. What are you doing here?”

“As I said,” Sasha said uncomfortably, “I got framed for murder -”

But Annabelle just waved her hand. “No, no, we know that. I’m asking what are you doing here? With people like us, in a place like us? You’re just a sexy librarian. Your highest goal in life was owning your own cottage house one day. How’d you get wrapped up in the tangled web of our world?”

Sasha’s mouth ran dry, her head spinning in a way that didn’t really seem to have anything to do with the alcohol. How had she ended up like this? Who was to blame?”

“Jonathan Sims,” Sasha said dizzily. “He -”

“Didn’t know you Beholding types were in the process of lying to yourselves,” Annabelle said, casually yet brutally. “No, really.”

Sasha opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she said, “I guess I just asked all the wrong questions.”

It was a pretty way of dressing up the real answer: that Sasha didn’t know.

Maybe her thoughts were obvious, because Georgie cooed sympathetically and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Cheer up, honey, it’s not so bad. Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it’s just your own rotten luck.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jude called, lifting her glass. “I love my fucking life. It’s hookers, coke, and blow from here to Scotland. The life of a woman with power’s a thousand times better than the life of a woman without, James.”

“What is with you people and hedonism,” Sasha muttered.

“Why not?” Nikola asked, tilting her head strangely. “Life’s so short when it’s this long. It’s just bread and circuses, Archivist. We all need...entertainment.”

“Humans are always trying to make sense of it all,” Michael said arily. They were digging their fingers into the table, scoring long grooves in it. “When you know there’s no meaning, no purpose, then everything else just...falls away.”

Sasha didn’t know if she believed that, but she bit her tongue. Instead, she said, “What about those Avatars like Magnus or Raynor? They seem really...driven.”

Georgie giggled, light and airy, and leaned in. “That’s because they don’t know.”

She shouldn’t even ask. She shouldn’t - “Know what?”

Georgie smiled, sharp and wicked. “That there’s no point.”

And that was all she would say on that for the night: conversation after that devolved into parties, restaurants, drugs, and conquests. Maybe the women were right, in their own clearly demented way: that without death there was no meaning, when when there was no meaning only pleasure held any significance. If there was no afterlife, no reward or punishment - which Sasha didn’t believe, but they seemed to - then there was no reason not to do what you wanted. To have fun. To take revenge.

If all Georgie wanted was to have fun, and if all Jon wanted was revenge, then what did Jonah Magnus want? Sasha didn’t know. She had the feeling that if she didn’t figure it out, she wasn’t going to live much longer.

Why had Jonah Magnus done this to her? What was the point of framing her for murder? She couldn’t do her job like this. What’s the point?

Half-drunk, head spinning, she found herself vocalizing this. Somehow, Annabelle Cane had ended up sitting next to her, letting spiders run along her slightly too long and too jointed fingers. Annabelle Cane just smiled at her, jaw slightly slacking open to expose teeth.

“Maybe it’s just to fuck with you,” Annabelle posited. “Why not? Do you think he has another reason?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha groaned. “I don’t know anything. Everything’s confusing and terrible. I could never understand those psychopaths.”

“You won’t make it very far in this line of work if you never ask why,” Annabelle scolded. She paused a second, spider running thoughtfully across her eyeball. “But too many questions damns you just as effectively, I suppose. Hm. Jonah’s quite good, isn’t he.”

“Why me,” Sasha groaned. “Everyone’s trying to keep shit from me, it fuckin’ - it fuckin’ sucks, man. It sucks. Nobody would tell me what’s going on, but I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on. Not even Jonah, or Jon, or - or anyone. Nobody but me.”

Annabelle blinked at her, somewhat curiously, before leaning in. Her perfume lingered in the air, a heavy rosy scent. “Do you know something that Jonah doesn’t?”

“Yeah,” Sasha slurred, world fading in and out. “Jonah doesn’t know that Jon -”

Then the world faded into black, and Sasha fell asleep.

If she had felt too old for this at the nightclub, she definitely felt too old for this hangover. Sasha spent twenty minutes crouched over a toilet bowl, reluctantly shoved the Eggs Benedict in her mouth that Georgie insisted was a hangover cure, somehow, and refused the Bloody Mary that Georgie also insisted was a hangover cure that her Mum used to feed her. The thought of Georgie’s Mum filled Sasha with a deep fear, incapable of imagining somebody who was both likely born in the 1800s and who had raised a hellion like Georgie.

When Sasha mumbled this to Georgie, she didn’t look offended. She just smiled, strangely fond. “Oh, none of this is my Mum’s fault. She was a darling, her and my Da. My childhood was positively idyllic. All things considered, you know.”

Yes, Sasha thought, struggling to imagine 1910s London in her mind, idyllic. She took another look at Georgie, squinting slightly as her head throbbed. She definitely seemed younger physically than Jon, but Jon had a particular way of carrying age about him that had nothing to do with his appearance. “When did you stop aging?”

“I forget, honestly,” Georgie said airly, sipping her own bloody mary. For some reason, Sasha didn’t believe her. “It always takes a while to notice, you know. I suppose, logically, it would be about when I died the first time.”

That, more than anything, alarmed Sasha. “I thought you couldn’t die.”

“Not permanently,” Georgie said, as if this was somehow obvious. “Eat your eggs, they’ll get cold.” Sasha frantically shoved eggs in her mouth, desperate for the story. But Georgie just sighed and propped her chin on her hand, eyes distant. “You know how it is. Small town girl, grew up in North Birmingham, Alabama - back when it was just a tiny little thing, you know. I wanted to be a star. I always did. Scared of dyin’ in the dirt. If I was gonna die young, I wanted to do it where everybody knew my name. So long as they remember you, it’s no kind of death at all, really.” She sighed, lost in memory. “I could sing so good...so I went to Harlem, ‘cause all my friends and I always had dreams of going to Harlem and making it big singing in the jazz clubs. They didn’t get so far, staying at home with their babies, but I did. Wasn’t really made for babies and such, I think.” Something strange emerged in her words, the last vestiges of a Southern accent. “I was pretty, and I could sing, and I took to the spotlight like a duck to water. It was tough, but man - if it ain’t tough, it ain’t worth it. I worked so hard. Like I was working myself to death, almost.”

She trailed off, birds softly trilling outside, and Sasha was silent.

Quietly, Georgie began speaking again. “Got into some trouble. You know how it is. I spent dozens of years wondering if it was my fault, if there was something I coulda done differently, zig instead of zag...but now, I don’t think so. Just my own rotten luck, you know. Put my trust in the wrong people. Had the wrong sentence whispered into my ear.” She shrugged listlessly. “Couldn’t handle the truth. Just another girl who couldn’t handle the limelight, that was what they said. But I was set up to fail. All those jazz clubs were ganger run, you couldn’t avoid it. Every girl in that golden age fell prey to those men, same as I did. I just wanted to feel again. Tried everything once, just to feel something.” She sighed, taking another drink. “Got shot. Got back up. I remember it, clear as day. Must have been 1923. I scrubbed the blood out of my show dress and went back on stage that night, cuz you can’t get a rep as a flake. They said, that day...that day was my best performance.”

She trailed off, Sasha finally alert. She wanted more details, almost desperately, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to risk putting the whammy on her host, even if she wasn’t sure that she could. If Georgie was being purposefully vague...well, Sasha wasn’t entitled to her pain.

Instead, she said, “I bet you were good.”

Georgie smiled at her wanly, eyes far away. “I was the best.”

They sat in silence for a little while, eating their food, Sasha’s head ringing and mind buzzing. What about this picture was she not understanding? What was so important that she was missing?

Finally, Sasha carefully floated, “I bet you must have met Jon soon after.”

Georgie looked up from her bloody mary, surprised. “Oh, yes. Just a few months after. He must have caught the word on the wind, you know, of that singing girl who got back up after getting shot in the lungs.” She sighed, propping her chin on her hand again. “Saw him in the front row of my club. He was so handsome, and so finely dressed. But there had been something strange in his eyes, you know? Like little marbles, reflecting the lamps. He caught up to me afterwards, and I figured he was just another fan to squeeze dry, but he told me in his funny little accent I’d never heard before that he could help me.” She swallowed, looking away. “That he could help me understand what was happening to me. Why I was having those strange dreams, seeing those strange tendrils. I guess he was right. After I met him, I understood it all. Things moved fast after that.” She smiled weakly at Sasha. “I suppose you know the rest.”

She really didn’t, but Sasha understood the dismissal for what it was. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me all of that.”

“It’s no secret,” Georgie said dismissively. She smiled cunningly. “A hundred years later almost exactly, and what I did to those gangsters was still my finest work. They say that if you pass by an old building on St. Nicholas Avenue, you can still hear the screams. Anyway, I have a meeting with my land development company in an hour, must run, ta!”

On that distressing note Georgie swanned out the door, and Sasha was left alone with nothing but a stack of conspiracy theories, an opulent flat, and bad memories.

Time seemed to move quickly, yet sluggishly, after that. After another day of writing down literally every Statement she could remember off the top of her head and trying to fit them into the weird and seemingly kind of arbitrary categories that Leitner had given her, she had hit a roadblock. She couldn’t remember any more Statements, she didn’t have access to them, and the ones she did remember she either already sorted or couldn’t dredge up enough memory of them to sort them in a satisfactory way. Either that, or the Statement itself was just incomprehensible - Sasha still didn’t know what the fuck was going on with Tessa’s problem. She tended to have a better memory of the ones that seemingly mentioned the Avatars in the background, just because it had been so startling to actually meet them - and a few even mentioned Jon, usually in context of Salasea or any Eye Statement.

When Georgie came home that night, they watched another movie and they both studiously avoided mentioning anything supernatural. Best not to take work home with you, even if Sasha had never quite been good at that.

The next day Sasha did what she should have done in the first place, and hacked into the Magnus Institute server.

It was seriously, comically easy. Sasha had installed a backdoor connection to the desktop of her work computer from her laptop ages ago, and all she had to do was borrow one of Georgie’s laptops and redownload the program. With an easy virtual desktop she was already in. It was somehow satisfying to see all of her work programs pop up on the borrowed laptop, and it was almost a relief to access the Archive drive that connected all of their computers. More importantly, where they all put their research follow-ups and the spreadsheet that documented the debunked, uncertain, and verified statements. It had gotten to the point where if the statement refused to record on the computer they automatically put it on verified, but what Sasha really wanted from that spreadsheet was the one sentence description they had all put for each Statement.

From there, it was much easier. Sasha, sick of the disorganized conspiracy theorist aesthetic, made her own spreadsheet and began categorizing the verified Statements that way. Much more reliable than working from memory.

If only she could actually access the Statements...Sasha’s life would be so much easier if everything could be digitized. The debunked ones were typed up, filed, and recorded, but the verified ones only existed on paper. Couldn’t be typed up, couldn’t be recorded. It was so stupid.

Sasha checked the clock. Eleven am on a Wednesday. They were definitely all still working. Maybe…

It was an invasion of privacy. Did she actually care about that? No. Was she worried about apparently being locked into an employment contract with an...entity of some sort that preyed on invasions of privacy? No, although she felt like she should. Was she concerned that Jon and Jonah were trying to turn into her a conduit of this entity’s power into the world, probably gradually turning her, if not evil, at least into a giant dick? Somewhat.

Words echoed through her mind, and Sasha’s fingers halted over the keyboard. Her powers manifesting differently than Jon’s...her unique skill with hacking…

Well, that was just kind of offensive. Sasha had worked hard for her skills. They weren’t given to her by Jon’s weird god. Also - seriously, a god? It was just a malevolent eldritch entity living in a separate dimension that encroached tendrils into Sasha’s life. There was nothing divine about it. That was just offensive. Sasha was a good feminist, transgender Catholic on the run from the law and didn’t worship false idols.

It was only then that Sasha noticed a folder on the drive that she hadn’t created. It was labelled ‘For the Archivist’. Despite herself, she clicked on it.

It held a few pdfs. Sasha clicked on one curiously, and saw that they were photocopies of statements. No - of Statements. She was already recognizing this one as one of those spider ones. She quickly printed them all out, conscientious of how easily supernatural files corrupted, and quickly exited the drive and the virtual desktop.

It wasn’t until Sasha was already in the kitchen and pulling down a bottle of Jack that she realized what she was doing. She sighed, replaced it, and fetched herself some sparkling water instead. She drank it slowly as she returned to her laptop and logged remotely into the police database, which she already had a backdoor into.

It occurred to Sasha, perhaps belatedly, that if the police found her laptop and the incredible variety of highly illegal programs meant explicitly for accessing secure servers she was probably triple going to jail. This time, for something she had actually did.

All of the hacking had never felt illegal. It had just felt...well, fun and necessary. It had never been about whether or not she should, it had been about if she could.

Was that how it had started for Jon? Collecting household secrets because he had to, so secure the money and influence he desperately needed, because he could, because it was fun?

Whatever. Sasha shook herself. She could have her moral crisis after she was no longer on the run from the cops for murder. This wasn’t the time to be squeamish about something that wasn’t hurting anybody. She knew, as Jon probably did, that just because something was illegal didn’t make it wrong.

It was easy to log onto the police database and check out her own open case. She frequently checked out open homicide cases for fun, but it somehow hit a little different when it was her they were talking about. Incident, Senior Citizen, Offence: First Degree Murder, Location of Arrest: N/A, yeah, yeah, yeah…

One victim, a John Doe. Foul play was suspected...yes that’d be the gunshot wound. No witnesses. Reporting officer’s narrative...Elias Bouchard and Jonathan Sims the Fifth had walked into Head Archivist Sasha James’ office to discuss work with her when they found the body. Both were shocked and called the police...gun found at the scene had her fingerprints and the ballistics matched...suspect still at large. Friends and family had been contacted, everyone denied knowledge of where she was. Suspect had a noted history of mental illness...great…

The officers dispatched had been Alice Tonner and Basira Hussein. Sasha found that strange: Basira had history with one of the witnesses and the suspect, wouldn’t it be unprofessional to send her out?

There couldn’t be that many sectioned officers, Sasha reasoned. Even if the incident hadn’t officially been sectioned, because the police report still existed, as a general rule if something happened at the Magnus Institute it was sectioned until proven otherwise. Even if the murder itself was seemingly mundane.

Out of curiosity, she searched up Detective Tonner’s records. Been on the force for a long time, worked her way up the ranks. Very, very few cases and incident reports for a detective who had been on the force as long as she had. Sectioned, obviously, but even Basira had more official cases than she did. When Sasha clicked on the incident reports, they were extremely spotty and strange. Obvious details were omitted or censored.

Something cold began to creep down Sasha’s spine. She found the arrest records of the latest four people with official records of Detective Tonner arresting them.

Almost all of them had entered custody with bruises, cuts, and in one case a broken limb. They all had records down as ‘resisting arrest’. Sasha felt sick.

There was one case that stopped strangely short. A clear perp, a rapist but one with little evidence, who Tonner had quickly caught. That was where the case ended: the report that Tonner had found his hiding spot, but no arrest, no trial, no prison sentence. When Sasha investigated the perp, she found that he had unceremoniously vanished shortly after Tonner had reported that she had found his hiding spot. A month later, a death certificate had been filed.

Sasha stared at the death certificate, nauseated. This was who she was dealing with. A vigilante, some batshit pig who had obviously decided that the law was best taken into her own hands. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but...if anybody looked at Sasha’s case on paper, they’d say the same thing.

And that was just the cases on record. It was the only obvious instance Sasha could see of Tonner having offed someone just because she felt like it, but cops were good at covering shit like that up. How many other arrest records had fallen in the cracks? How many other dead perps that nobody gave a shit about? How many sectioned cases?

God, Sasha was fucked.

She begged off hanging out with Georgie that night, instead staying in bed with the covers pulled tight over her head as if that could ever protect her. Why was Jonah doing this to her? What did he have to gain? If he wanted her to die a mysterious death in the bottom of a ditch, why wasn’t he man enough to do it himself?

Tonner was going to murder her, Sasha thought hysterically, and she was going to pat herself on the back for keeping another monster off the streets.

And Jon knew. The fucking hypocrite. He wasn’t going to help her. Nobody was. But, god, she was so alone…

The next morning, as if she knew, Georgie slipped Sasha a burner phone over the breakfast table as they both robotically ate quiches.

“It should be untraceable, but just know that anybody you call you’re putting at serious risk,” Georgie warned, before her expression softened. “This’ll all be over soon, honey. I promise.”

“Did Jonah tell you that?” Sasha asked bitterly.

“Nah. I just know those two.” Georgie delicately ate a forkful of quiche. “They get bored of terrorizing humans pretty quickly. Now, Michael’s a different story. They’ll terrorize someone for decades. I’ve seen them do it!”

“Great,” Sasha said.

It seemed to be at this point that Georgie realized she was actually making Sasha feel much worse, because a slightly panicked expression crossed her face and she quickly reached out to pat Sasha on the hand. “But I’m sure they won’t do that to you,” Georgie said quickly. “They love you! Jon especially. Jonah’s just on another of his little power trips right now, he’ll get over it. And Jon, like, feels really bad about this whole thing. He’s been super annoying about it, actually -”

“See,” Sasha said, standing up to clear away her dishes, “I would rather handle an enemy who obviously wants to kill me than a friend whose good side I always have to be careful to stay on, who I can’t afford to ever make mad. I guess that’s the only difference left between me and you people.”

She angrily put her dishes in the sink, where the housekeeper would do them, and stalked to what was rapidly becoming her room, slamming the door.

Flopping down on the bed, she stared at the burner phone. Tim wouldn’t be at work yet. They could talk. They could -

Do what? Get back together? Split up? Could he explain, beg for her forgiveness? Did she have to apologize too? Sasha didn’t understand.

That was rare for her. She understood a lot of things, or at least she thought she did. Maybe she had been lying to herself, about everything: that her and Tim were a good idea, that Martin was sketchy, that Jon was evil, that Jon was kind, that Georgie just wanted to help her, that there was nothing that Jonah Magnus would do to her, that she was safe and human and a good person.

God, her capacity for self-delusion was ridiculous. But maybe people needed a little bit of self-delusion to survive. Nobody could live in complete honesty, in full sight of their flaws and shortcomings. You could burn away, living like that.

No. No time or space for fear. Sasha wasn’t afraid of anything. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would be true. She desperately punched in a number that she didn’t remember memorizing, holding the phone desperately to her ear, her one connection to humanity.

It rung, and rung, and one, and Sasha’s heart thumped in her chest.

Finally, the ringing stopped, and a slightly sleepy voice punctuated the dead air. “Hello?”

“Tim, it’s me,” Sasha burst out, everything she wanted to say to him rushing through her throat and choking her, and she burst into tears.

Distantly, through the sound of her crying, she could hear Tim on the other side losing his shit, and eventually wrangling himself to calmness.

It was almost funny, how they could work each other up like that. Eventually, by the time Sasha had managed to wrangle her own crying, Tim had calmed himself down enough that he was able to clumsily try to cheer her up.

“We’re all fine. Everyone’s perfectly safe. Martin’s gotten, uh, even more annoying since you left, and we’ve technically hired Melanie, which is - not good but it’s funny? Are you still crying? Please don’t still be crying.”

“I’m fine,” Sasha hiccuped. She rubbed at her red eyes. God, she’d missed him. “Tim, what happened?”

The line was silent for a while. Finally, he said, “Is this line secure?”

“Uh - probably? I mean -” Sasha quickly checked herself. She didn’t want to mention Georgie. The less he knew the better. “ - it’s a burner, if that’s what you’re asking, and I’m not the one who bought it.”

“Where are you living?” Tim asked harshly. “Are you homeless? You have to come stay with me, I can -”

“You mean the first place Tonner will look?” Sasha shot back. “No. I’m safe, I’m dry, things are fine. That’s all you need to know.” She softened her voice. “I promise, if it was safe I’d tell you more. I want to see you again. Tim, I - I’m really sorry.”

Tim laughed hoarsely, without humor. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that? I’m the one who thought you were a monster.”

“...yeah, that one’s on you.” Sasha sighed miserably, lying down on her bed, wishing Tim was next to her. “I am, though. A monster, I mean. Tim, I - I’m definitely not entirely human anymore.”

“God, Sash, that’s the least of our problems right now,” Tim said, laughing slightly again. “Can you just tell me what happened? I know you didn’t fucking do it. That dick Bouchard keeps playing dumb and his shitlead lackey keeps on avoiding the Archives. I bet Sims killed that old man, right? He totally did. Martin keeps on saying that his precious Jon wouldn’t let you take the fall for something he did, but I’m not so sure.”

“I...it’s more complicated than that.”

Sasha explained in short order. For once, Tim was totally silent the entire time, letting Sasha dispassionately recite the entire sad story. She finished it at Michael helping her escape, not detailing where she had been dropped off.

Finally, after a long silence, Tim said, “So this is my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Sasha said harshly. “You were manipulated, same as I was.”

“I’m the idiot who -”

“Yes, you were being an idiot. You should have talked to me, talked to anyone. You should have done anything other than your homicidal partner in crime. You definitely shouldn’t have been buying a fucking black market gun when I know for a fact you have no idea how to shoot. But you tried playing hero and you played straight into Magnus’ hands. You fucked up. Okay? Now let’s try to do better.”

More silence, until Tim sighed. “Can’t believe the Douche’s Jonah Magnus. Explains why Sims is always playing lackey for him. Can’t wait to spill to Martin how his boyfriend framed his boss for murder.”

Sasha chewed her lip, uncertain. She hadn’t shared the details of Jonah and Jon’s conversation too closely - it had seemed private. “See, I’m not sure this is...entirely Jon’s fault.”

Tim groaned. “Not you too! Why is everyone but me and Melanie a fucking Sims apologist?”

“Jon and Jonah are...they’re weird, okay?” Sasha moved to chewing her hair, uncertain of how to describe it. If it should even be described. It seemed so private, so unsuitable to name...but maybe everybody thinking that was how these things stayed perpetuated for so long. “I think Jonah’s kind of, you know, abusive?”

The line went silent again.

“Wow,” Tim said finally, “Martin’s going to be so disappointed his boyfriend’s taken.”

“They’re just friends! I think. I’m like, ninety percent sure. But you didn’t hear them, Tim. They’re really...it’s messed up. Trust me.”

“Jesus, Sash, why are you defending someone who fucked all of us over like this? Sims is a big boy, he’s responsible for his own shitty decisions and the shitty company he keeps.” Tim snorted. “I’ve heard them talk, anyway. If anything, Magnus is the one always giving into Sims and his little tantrums. Jesus, I just want to throttle the both of them.”

“Maybe you need to get over your anger issues and focus on actually solving the problem for once,” Sasha snapped. “Nobody has time for your revenge fantasy, Tim! We need to fix all of this.”

“Which one is it, Sash?” Tim asked coldly. “Was I manipulated, or was it my anger issues and hero complex? Are you going to decide if this is my fault or not?”

Sasha’s heart stuttered in her chest. She didn’t know how to explain to him what she knew - that it was everything, that it was all of the above, that he was manipulated through his anger issues and hero complex, that Tim had been pushed in a direction but he had taken the steps all by himself. But she couldn’t blame him entirely, because Sasha had been manipulated the same way, and so had Jon and Martin and Georgie, and if she started thinking like that then she would have to start hating the whole damn world.

“Tim, are we going to stay together?” Sasha whispered, broken-hearted. “Can we even still be together? I love you. I want you here with me. But there’s so much ugliness that’s growing between us. I don’t know if this can be fixed.”

A long silence again. Sasha wanted to be there with him, to read his face, to see what he was thinking. She had always understood him so well, or at least she thought that he did.

“I love you too,” Tim said finally. “I want to fix this too. I - I don’t know, Sasha. I love you. The thought of you alone, in danger, and not even knowing where you are, is fucking me up. It’s like Danny all over again, Sasha, I can’t handle this. Can we have this conversation again when I know you’re safe?”

“Okay,” Sasha said, and she knew that this was probably the best both of them could do right now. “Are we staying together?”

“...I don’t know.”

“...are we breaking up?”

“...still don’t know.”

“Okay,” Sasha repeated again, and sighed. “I won’t call you from this phone twice. I’m doing the best I can here. I’m safe, I think. Things will be okay, Tim.”

“Sash,” Tim said, “I don’t remember the last time things were okay.”

And neither did she, and they both knew it, and she hung up on him without saying anything further. She lay on the bed, listening faintly to the sound of the housekeeper vacuuming, staring up at the fan as it beat in a steady rhythm on the ceiling.

Was Tim right? Was she reading too much into Jon and Jonah? It wasn’t her job to fix Jon, to puzzle out his weird psychology. Maybe he was just an asshole without a spine,and there wasn’t anything more to that.

No. Sasha didn’t believe that. This was a puzzle that she hadn’t solved yet, and she had the feeling that at the heart of this puzzle was the key to finally keeping herself and Tim safe. She couldn’t abide a mystery, couldn’t trick herself into thinking that the truth wasn’t important. The truth was all Sasha had. She couldn’t close her eyes to it, that awful and ugly reality.

Tim...he had been such a bad idea. But he had always been her favorite one: the way he could always cheer her up, his bright and bold smile, his courage and heart and sensitivity and vulnerability. He had loved her, truly and wholly, for who she was. He knew the ugly corners of her and loved them as much as he loved her best attributes.

Was that still true? Was Sasha turning into a person that Tim just couldn’t love? Was Tim turning into someone that Sasha couldn’t love?

People changed. Sometimes they changed apart. And for some strange reason, Sasha just couldn’t bear the thought of that.

Lying on the bed of a grim reaper, crying like a broken-hearted teenager, Sasha didn’t notice that the housekeeper’s vacuum had stopped running. She didn’t notice the knock on the door, or the creak of the door opening, or the gentle rise and fall of voices. She only heard it when there was a soft knock at her own door, and she was forced to roll off the bed to open her bedroom door.

Standing in front of her, looking nervous, was the housekeeper. Standing behind her was Jonathan Sims.

He looked pretty bad, Sasha noted clinically. Eye bags, even more pronounced than usual, stood starkly under his eyes, and his hair wasn’t as cropped short and styled as it usually was. It had grown out a little, making Jon look more like a tired modern guy walking the streets of London than a centuries old immortal psychic vampire. He was still dressed in a suit, as he always was, but the suit jacket was off and his dress shirt was rolled up to the elbow.

He stared at Sasha, probably registering every minute change in her appearance as she did his, before glancing down at the housekeeper. “You’re excused for the day. Thank you for your time.”

He passed her something - probably neatly folded bills - and nodded at her as she shakily nodded back and escaped the flat as quickly as possible. Jon stepped backwards in the hallway, gesturing for her to come out, and walked back into the living room. Because Sasha was just slightly too prideful to barricade herself in the bedroom, and partly because she wasn’t sure that Jon wouldn’t break into a woman’s bedroom, she stepped out into the grandiose yet cluttered living room with him. He stood in the center, hands in his pockets, looking over the flat with a clinical eye.

“Georgie’s sense of interior decoration is as immaculate as ever,” Jon noted clinically. “She used to spend months getting every house we ever lived in just right. Said it was her job as lady of the household. She had never been a lady of any household, of course, not in the way that Jonah and I had once known - but her fun’s important to her, and it doesn’t hurt anybody important.” He sniffed slightly. “You coming to stay here was for the best after all. She’s been lonely, I think.”

“I’m staying here because I’m homeless,” Sasha said flatly. For the first time, she noticed a small manila envelope under his arm, tucked slightly into his back pocket. “Because of you.”

“I’ve kept your flat for you,” Jon said eagerly, stepping forward, and letting his cold mask fall. In him now was something eager, something almost pleading. Sasha forced herself not to step away. “All of your possessions are intact, and I can get your bank accounts unfrozen easily enough. Once all of this blows over, your life can be right back to normal.”

“Wow,” Sasha drawled, crossing her arms, “how kind. Were you so busy being this nice to me that you forgot that Georgie barred you from this flat because I don’t want to fucking look at you?”

“She’ll get over it,” Jon said dismissively. “She’s been wanting us to make up, anyhow.” He stepped closer again, fluorescent green eyes fixed on her large and warm brown ones, and Sasha fought the tingle crawling up her spine. “Sasha, I really am sorry. Jonah was out of line in what he did. But - but you know, he really does know best. Even if it doesn’t seem so. What we’re doing now, it’s for the best for your development. I promise this will all blow over soon, and things will be better. For all of us.”

“For a subject of a truth god,” Sasha said, voice dripping sarcasm, “you have a unique ability to lie to yourself.”

Jon puffed up, scowling down at her. “That’s ridiculous. I -”

“Does Jonah Magnus respect you?” Sasha pressed.

Jon...hesitated, and they both saw it. Jon frantically tried to cover, quickly saying, “Of course he does. I’m his partner, and we’ve been partners for two hundred years. There’s nobody on earth he respects more than me. There’s nobody he respects but me.”

“Then why does he talk to you like you’re an idiot?”

“He talks to everyone like that.”

“Because he doesn’t respect anyone but you. You just said that. But if he respects you, then wouldn’t he talk to you differently?”

There it is - Jon’s shoulders hunched slightly, unconsciously on the defensive. “Does he give you equal input on decisions?”

“I always give my -”

“Does he listen to them?”

Jon was silent. Finally, slowly, he said, “Jonah was right. He said you’d get like this.”

Fuck. Sasha’s heart sank, even as her jaw dropped in incredulity. She had lost him. “You must be kidding.”

“He said you’d get jealous.” Jon crossed his arms, turning slightly away from her, but what he clearly meant to be a closed-off stance just seemed defensive. “He said that you’d get upset that I’m more loyal to him than to you. What we’re doing now is for your own good, Miss James. You’ll see one day that this - this unpleasantness is helping you grow.”

Unpleasantness? Unpleasantness?! Putting her life at risk was an inconvenience? “I’ll see, huh?” Sasha said bitterly. “Just like you saw? Just like how you changed your mind from this being cruel and traumatic to it being a momentary unpleasantness?” She barked a short laugh, not very humorous at all. “I was there. He called you stupid, he said that you couldn’t trust anybody but him, and he called you an idiot. Are those the words of someone who respects you? Of someone who even likes you?”

Jon stiffened, mouth tightening, and he broke eye contact and looked away. “Don’t concern yourself with the private business between Jonah and I.”

“When you’re having the conversation over a cooling corpse that you framed me for then you’re making it my business, you absolute shitheel!” Sasha yelled, finally losing her temper. “Your bullshit is ruining my life! Your complete inability to stand up to that sack of shit is ruining my life!”

“Shut up!” Jon yelled, seemingly having taken her losing her temper as permission to lose his. Distantly, Sasha was aware of his stupid this must have looked: two fully grown adults, yelling in a living room like children. “You’re a spoiled child who doesn’t know anything! All I’ve ever done is try to help you, and you spit in my face! You’re no better than Martin!”

Abruptly, strangely, Jon stopped short. He seemed almost embarrassed, almost in pain.

And just like that, Sasha knew. “He’s not letting you see Martin, is he.”

For just a split second, Jon’s expression crumpled, but he forced it back into his haughty mask. “I decided that it was best I didn’t waste my time with manipulative traitors.”

“Was that your idea?” Sasha asked flatly, abruptly extremely tired. “Or was it Jonah’s?”

Jon was silent. They both knew the answer.

“If you walked up to Jonah now and told him that you wanted to start dating Martin, do you think that you’d leave that conversation still wanting to do it? Or would you somehow decide, all by yourself, that you’ll end up doing what Jonah wants anyway?”

Jon didn’t say anything.

A strange mix of emotions swirled in Sasha’s stomach. Anger and disgust mixed with pity and sadness. What had Jon been like, before he met Jonah Magnus? Had he been a good person?

But maybe that wasn’t so important. Maybe the question that had to be asked was - what kind of person would Jonathan Sims be without Jonah Magnus in his life?

All at once, the fight seemed to go out of Jon. His shoulders sagged, and he abruptly deflated. He looked down at the ground, ashamed and aware of it. He had always been aware of it. He had just been lying to himself. Maybe it was impossible to live without it.

“I don’t know what to do without him,” Jon said quietly. “I’ve never - I need him.”

“You don’t,” Sasha said, abruptly exhausted. “You want to help me, Jon? You want to protect me and Martin? You can’t do that while staying friends with Jonah Magnus. You have to choose. So long as you stay close to him, you are going to stay within his complete control. That’s what he does. He controls everybody and everything. And you’re letting him. You’re justifying it. You’re doing his work for him. Everybody around him is - even Georgie. There are two people in your life who are trying to get you away from him, and he’s trying to convince you to cut them out of your life. You think that’s a coincidence?”

Jon opened his mouth, then closed it. Weakly, he said, “You’re wrong.”

“I need your help, Jon,” Sasha whispered, and to her shame found her voice cracking. “I need someone on my side. I can do it alone, but - but I’m scared. And I don’t want to. I need help. I’m scared.”

But she knew, even as she said it, that Jon was scared too. He couldn’t reach out a hand to her - not now, not here. Jon had carried around his fear for hundreds of years, pushing it down and pretending it wasn’t there, and it informed everything he’d ever done. Scrambling for power, exerting that power, desperately dominating even as he was dominated - it stemmed from that fear, all of it. And Jonah Magnus kept those flames fanned, because a Jon who was afraid was a Jon who could be controlled.

A Sasha who was afraid, who was isolated, who was trapped, was one who could be controlled.

The realization was dizzying. Somehow, the thought that kept running through her mind was - who’d do that? Who was such a terrible person that they’d go through all that trouble, all of that plotting, just to make someone suffer? Not because they disliked them, not in revenge, not because of any human emotion - but just because it was convenient? Useful?

Because you could?

So this was what power did to a person, Sasha realized. So this was what power and immortality and money and supernatural gifts did to you. It made you someone who Sasha could never hope to understand, whose depths of depravity she could never truly rationalize. To Sasha, who prided herself on knowing people and being able to understand them and their motives - it was almost a relief, almost a blessing, that she couldn’t possibly understand the motives of Jonah Magnus at all.

Jon stared at her, fluorescent green eyes wide, and for just a minute she could see the fear that she knew was there written all over his face. For just a minute, Sasha and Jon were scared together, both trapped in tumultuous waters that they couldn’t control. For the first time Sasha empathized with Jon.

Jonah Magnus was somebody that Sasha could never understand. But Jon was, and for the first time Sasha knew what Martin meant when he said that he felt as if Jon had been a good person, a long time ago.

You can’t understand someone and hate them. Not really. You could be angry, upset, betrayed...but if you really understood someone, backwards and forwards, true hate was difficult to find.

“I have to go,” Jon said, almost dizzily. He shoved the manila folder at her, both of them having forgotten that it was even there in the first place. He glanced at it, frightened and guilty. “Be - be careful when meeting Jude Perry. Don’t take her at her word. I have to go.”

He fled, as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at his heels, and Sasha was left standing in an opulent hallway, clutching a manila folder as if it was a time bomb, completely certain that it was meant to hurt her and cause her pain and damage her, completely certain that she was going to read it anyway.

Like Jon - what choice did she have?

But as she stumbled back to her room, as she sat down on the comfortable chair and thumbed on the tape recorder that sat at the desk, the words of Jonathan Sims ran through her mind. His warning. A clumsy attempt at protection. At the very least, a signifier of desire.

Sasha knew, as she sometimes knew things, that Jon had started out somebody who deeply desired to protect others like him. To take revenge, to grab power, yes, but also to spread that precious knowledge and resources around. He had never stopped thinking of himself as one of those vulnerable people, people who society had stepped on and ground into the dirt. Deep down he had just wanted things to be fair, wanted some justice in the world. Jon, at one point, had only wanted to help.

Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all.

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist…”

#my writing #YES I KNOW THIS IS TOO LONG FOR A TUMBLR POST BUT CONSIDER: ITS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR AO3 AND MY STANDARDS ARE INSANE #jonathan sims #georgie barker #sasha james #archivist!sasha #human relations #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #jonmartin #jason's tims age

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a-collection-of-villainous-aus · 4 years

Note

galaxies: what are three things you want to do before you die?Twisted Family and Pirate Au? Please?

(All right small side note for those who come across this, twisted Family au is an au set on where black hat and flug were in a relationship but Black Hat kept treating Flug like trash and so one day Flug tries to leave, Hat can't handle that Flug would try to leave him, he snaps like mentality wise.

Turns Flug into a life size marionette.

(usually dressed but this was for me to figure out a basic design for him)

He takes in abandoned children or sometimes adults and turns them into puppets, saying they're one happy family now.)

Black Hat pulled at the lace gloves embroidered with finely stitched top hats, placing them beside his tea cup, after all he did not want to ruin them with the wood varnish he was about to use.

Acylius’s head was tilted to the side, cheek on his shoulder.

“Amadeus…please…may I have some freedom to move? It would make it easier to apply the varnish would it not?”

Black hat paused, considering his words, nodding he gave him enough free movement to lift his head at the very least.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh darling, please call me Amadeus or Amy, I miss the fondness in your voice sometimes.”

The eldericht was sweet in his tone, to anyone just passing by you would think it was natural…but upon closer inspection you could see those hints, feel that unhinged ring in his voice.

Black Hat stroked his marionettes face, finger tips caressing over smooth wood, smiling as his doctor leaned into his touch.

“Did you get my favourite varnish Amy?”

Amadeus’s ears perked under his hat, which now donned a long pink mourning ribbon with a bow at the back, watching as Acylius shifted his jaw into a smile, wood tapping as the joints of the doctors ears shifted.

“Of course sweetheart, only the best for you!”

Black Hat replied affectionately as he dipped the cloth into the varnish only to be interrupted but Acylius clearing his throat

“Amadeus , do not forget our guest asked a question.”

“Ah yes, our new addition, well now let’s see…”

Black Hat began while applying smooth strokes over his lover’s cheeks.

“I would love to marry Acylius, but according to him we haven’t quite reached that point just yet…maybe have a few more children, I am trying to decide if we should go natural or wood shop it and well when one are two are true that will be enough for me.”

The demon was so happy and Acylius was practically purring as his wooden body was getting treated to an expensive…you had to wonder was it akin to a sponge bath with how Black Hat tended to him.

“Little one I will have to apply this to you next, after all you are new to our family and I should make sure you are properly treated.”

Amadeus chirped.

You only stay silent, you cannot move, unable to speak now, eyes unblinking, frozen in place, body conforming , changing to be another of the many child like puppets you see and realise are all watching you…were they ever children to begin with…were they once a child…faces become familiar heroes and villains that also once were can be seen there…and for one moment you can see past the illusion that made this place look so beautiful, so perfect…

The reality is , the manor is derelict , dusty, broken and strung with cobwebs, Hat’s dress is tattered and the doctor…god…the marionette is full of holes as insects scuttle across his face and into an empty wooden eye socket, perhaps once he’d been alive and if he was still…

“Time to sleep, baby doll.”

Hat whispers and once again you see the lie, lush rich and beautiful colours, full of such life…perhaps what you saw was a nightmare crafted by Black Hat to torment you…

Or was it?

Pirate Au answer

Acylius folded his arms on the edge of the tank, tail splashing lightly , water lapping gently as he moved.

Black Hat was at his desk going through pages of a book his merman had told him of, however he keeps a watchful eye on you to make sure you are up to no business he might disapprove of.

“So you want to know what three things I want to do before I die huh?”

Acylius smiled resting his cheek on his arm, glancing over at the Pirate king, ear fins flicking, oh he was so clearly in love it was bloody adorable, even if he didn’t say it out loud you could see it for yourself.

“Well one is to be free of White Hat…Amadeus I believe is working on that though so I suppose I am half way there on that one.”

Black turned a page without looking up

“Damn right, no self righteous brother of mine will get to lay a hand on Flug.”

You watch in awe as the merman’s scales turn from the iridescent likeness of a peacocks to hues of pink and yellow with glowing sky blue fins

You can't help but smile, awww he's blushing.

"Let's see, what else, ah yes another thing would be to spend more than one day on land every twenty ninth of February, it can really make keeping time quite difficult and sometimes one can be so busy the opportunity is missed.”

Black Hat listened to Acylius talking, he’d not actually turned his page for five minutes…his merman could transform once every four years?

That meant…oh no…

Pulling open his desk drawer, he recalled someone he’d once seen, a face human in appearance, similar to the merman’s, features hauntingly beautiful only , Flugs were far finer, far more beautiful…but what if…they were one in the same.

Setting the sketch on the desk, remembering how he’d paid heed only to their title and not their name…picking up a pencil that sat in the skull of the last crew man that had dared defy him he added ear fins and those scars, those delicate silver lines on white marble…

He stared at it , it was him, it was Acylius, looking up he found cold blue eyes staring back, he in his nonchalant manner had handed Thaddeus the Ocean and dethroned a king…if it were anyone else he would not care…but he’d done this to Flug, his Flug, was karma finally catching up to him, would the Great and Powerful Black Hat be torn down by the simple act of rejection…

Perhaps, he felt, perhaps he deserved it.

“You do not need to be a land walker to be you Flug, don’t do an Ariel she soon found herself sick for the sea and fell deep into depression when her Father had not even given her the choice to decide when she could go back to her home.”

“Who said I wanted to be human, that would be crazy, they’re all dreadful messes though there are the few exceptional such as Demencia and 505.”

Acylius raised a brow and splashed him a smirk forming on his face

“Oh I see, someone is finally putting the pieces together, stop worrying you egotistical buffoon, if I cared about being king I would have bitched about it already, true I was a caring king who took care of his subjects but they quickly changed sides when an Eldericht came to take the throne.”

He settled on the sand, shoulder to the glass and sighing, you and Hat still being perfectly able to hear him despite his being under water

“How quick they were to abandon me…fuck them, I chose to talk instead of devouring humans to be always at my full power to show I wanted peace between worlds, they wanted destruction…however…”

He looked at you with the saddest eyes and Hat felt a twist in his chest

“There were those like me, deep sea in their breed, most of them were scattered for being devoted to me, Thaddeus and his soldiers hunted them out, slaughtering them to near extinction, oh they certainly got the monster they wanted and I believe perhaps they even regret their fickle loyalty.

You ask him softly

“What is the third thing?”

“Save what little of the deep sea merfolk that still remain.”

#villainous #Villainous au #Paperhat #Acylius flug #Black hat #pirate au #twisted family au

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neerasrealm · 3 years

Text

The Arrangement

Part Two to this story

In which the mysterious gold-stringed figure finally reveals their intentions, and their identity. Words: 1664

The hotel was comfy. It felt nice, being in a room that was meant for more than a one night stay. Every cheap motel room started to look the same after a while. She rummaged through her old green backpack for a bit until she found her bong and box of matches. She stood up off the ground and walked over to one of the two chairs in the room. The chair was fairly comfy. Fancy too, with a flowery pattern. She sat cross legged and filled the bong up with weed and water before lighting it up. She leaned down, taking a long drag of the smoke. She relaxed at the familiar warmth and finally looked at the person sitting in the chair across from her.

Could she even call them a person? Their skin was a pale purple, and they had long black hair. They wore a grey beanie and sweatshirt, long black coat, jeans and sneakers. A very casual outfit for a creature that stalked girls in alleyways and had golden glowing eyes and teeth. They were fiddling with the ends of their fingerless gloves, watching her smoke. She sighed and relaxed back in the chair.

‘’...you’re still waiting for me to answer your question, aren’tcha?’’ she asked tiredly. They nodded. She really, really didn’t want to give her answer right now. She just wanted to smoke, and if she gave her no, the gold-eyed fucker wouldn’t stop bothering her. ‘’How about you gimme more details first, huh?’’ That oughta keep em occupied long enough for her to finish. Or at the very least, get a decent high that she very much deserved.

‘’Well, Mrs Downs-’’

‘’Just call me Rachel.’’ she grunted.

They gave a slight nod. ‘’Well, Rachel…’’ they began. ‘’You probably already know what I want. To hire you as a murderer.’’ they began. ‘’You show promise. It’s uncommon for humans to possess psychic abilities like yours, and you have experience with killing...’’ they looked at her. ‘’It’s my hope that I can assist you in honing these abilities. You’re strong, but you could learn much, much more.’’

‘’Lil rude but okay.’’ Rachel grunted. ‘’How ya gonna do that?’’

They smiled a bit in amusement. ‘’I apologise.’’ they said. ‘’I have a friend. His father was a teacher. He can help you hone your abilities, once he notices them.’’ they explained. ‘’He has a home, hidden away from humans. You won’t have to worry about the police finding you. It’s comfortable there too, you’ll like it.’’

‘‘Better be the fanciest place I’ve ever seen.’’ Rachel thought to herself. "Who's your friend then?"

"His name is Slender," they folded their hands in their lap. "He's very old, but wise. Kind too. You'll be safe with him…" they trailed off. "I know his family well. He is trustworthy."

She nodded. "Where's he live?"

"Louisiana."

"Louisiana?!" She almost choked on her weed. "That's like- across the entire country!"

"Is it?" They tilted their head for a moment. "Geography never was my thing...Writer was good at that…" they trailed off for a moment before returning to the conversation. "Anyway...I know him well. He'll help you."

Rachel glared at them for a moment before sighing. You'd think she'd be freaking out more, but honestly…? This wasn't the first time a poltergeist or demon or some other shit had cornered her and tried to make a deal. This one was different though. More corporeal, more...real. and very well spoken. "Aight well...why do you want me to kill in the first place?"

They paused, staring at her for a long moment before sighing. They relaxed back in the chair and stared down at the ground for a long, silent moment. Rachel looked up from her bong and frowned. They...seemed upset by the question. Which was very awkward. She held out her bong. "Wanna hit?" She asked, trying to cheer up the sad supernatural entity sitting across from her. They looked up for a moment before shaking their head.

"I don't smoke," they replied softly. "But thank you."

"Aight." She took the bong back and took another hit. It was quiet for another few beats before they sat up.

"I suppose it is fair I warn you about this job…" they murmured. She looked up at them. "You see...I kill myself. Dozens of people, every week…" their voice was low, soft. "My targets are all people who have been affected by the same thing. A man named...Zalgo." they ran their hand down their arm as they said the name, golden strings leaving a trail down it. "He's...power hungry. Cruel, manipulative. He has a way of charming people. And once he charms people...there's no saving them." They shook their head. "He claims souls, or in some cases...takes humans and...morphs them. Steals their humanity away and makes them monsters. But as of late, the amount of people he targets has been increasing. I need help."

Rachel stared. "He sounds dangerous." She murmured.

"He is," they nodded. "He's extremely powerful. He's...a god. Like I am."

Rachel's eyes widened. "What?" she asked "You're- you're taking the piss here, right?" She gave them a bemused look. A god? No, no they couldn't-

"I'm not." They replied softly. "Both of us are gods. I was- am...the god of design. I weave the strings of life and design every single creature on earth. Or at least...I used to…"

Rachel stared, mouth agape. She snapped back to reality and cleared her throat. "What-" she hesitated. "What happened?"

They looked up at her. "...Zal'gatoth happened." They murmured. "That's his full name. Zalgo is...a nickname he's taken on as a new identity. I-I don't know- I don't know what's happened to him...what's gotten into him. He's not the same person I knew he-" their voice cracked as they spoke. "He was my son…"

Rachel stared as shiny gold tears poured from their eyes. They wiped at their face as they cried silently. She looked away, feeling like watching was disrespectful somehow.

Finally, they spoke again. "I don't know what's happened to him but- there isn't anything I can do except save the ones he corrupts…"

Rachel nodded, glancing away. She felt bad- touching a nerve like that. "So...how dangerous is this gonna be?" She asked lowly.

"Very. I won't pretend, this is a safe or easy job," they murmured. "Zalgo is extremely powerful and volatile, and his...minions, are brutal. Stronger than a human should be, and sadistic in nature." They explained. "You'll be risking your life doing all of this, which is why I understand if you say no but...I want you to know that by doing this work, dirty as it is...you're helping others."

"How?" She tilted her head. Her voice was low, like she was actually considering it.

They reached into their long black coat and pulled out what looked like...a doll. Or rather, a puppet. "This was a person once," they said softly. "A person Zalgo corrupted. They were doomed. As soon as they were killed, their soul would be yanked down to his realm to reside with him forever." Golden strings wrapped around the puppet, making it stand on their lap. "But...instead, I captured that soul, and put it into this vessel. In this form they are dormant. They have no idea they're a puppet, instead they are reliving their life, over and over, on a loop, inside their head. It's not the best but...it's pleasant enough. And they don't remember Zalgo. Or me."

Rachel nodded. ‘’So...am I gonna do that too? The soul thing?’’

They nodded. ‘’Yes. You’ll learn to trap souls, and make your own puppets. I can’t always supply them.’’

Oh great...she had to sew. Of course she knew how to do that, it was a skill you’d need when you were travelling on the road alone, but still. She didn’t particularly enjoy it.

‘’So will you consider it?’’ they asked. Her head snapped up. Consider it-? She’d- she’d...actually been doing that hadn’t she? Considering the job…

‘’When can I start?’’ she asked. They smiled a bit, golden teeth glowing.

‘’I can have you in Slender’s house by tomorrow. But you’ll be given plenty of time to settle and train before you begin your official work.’’ they replied. They reached into their robe and pulled out the knife they’d used before. Golden strings floated from their fingertips, curling around and forming a circle. They cut the string and smoothed down the loose edge. The strings solidified, turning into a gold ring. ‘’But...there are two rules you need to promise me you can follow.’’

‘’What are they?’’ Rachel tilted her head.

‘’You only kill targets I give you,’’ they said. ‘’And you do not tell Slender or anyone else about me. My presence will attract Zalgo’s attention...it’d be putting you and Slender’s family at risk. I’ve...they’ve already lost their sister. I don’t want that happening again…’’ they looked away, their voice lowering at the mention of the sister.

She nodded. ‘’Won’t say a word. Promise.’’ she said. They stood up, padding over to her. They were extremely tall, and a little intimidating, but they were like a gentle giant almost. They knelt down, holding out the ring.

‘’By taking this you agree to the dangers of fighting against Zalgo and assisting me. You accept the risk to your life, and vow to help those targeted by Zalgo.’’ their voice was soft, gentle. ‘’Do you accept?’’

She stared at the ring for a long moment before reaching out and taking it. She looked up at them. ‘’I’ve been following orders from a ghost my whole life, and it’s all been for revenge. I’ve only ever hurt people…’’ she looked down and slipped the ring onto her middle finger. ‘’...I think it’ll be nice to help for a change.’’ she said with a smile.

(Part Three here)

#creepypasta #creepypasta fanfic #creepypasta fanfiction #the puppeteer #the puppeteer creepypasta #puppeteer #puppeteer creepypasta #arcane #arcane creepypasta #rachel margaret downs #lore #writing #weaver

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hollow-haven · 4 years

Note

Catradora. Something soft pls

I know I said drabble requests but Scone gets a whole ass fic because why not.Title: After it allWord count: 1730Rating: General

“AAaddooorraaaaa, I’m tirreeddd.” Catra groaned while she flopped herself down on the blonde’s lap. “I’m just gonna, stay here.” Catra told her, the Magicat purred and laid on her lap. Adora looked down at Catra with surprise. They had just finished their meeting about what to do next for Etheria after the defeat of Horde Prime. Adora was surprised that after everything they’ve been through, Catra was just to lay down on her lap and complain how tired she was?

Adora looked down at her, Catra still had some scars on her here and there. Her new outfit looked fitting to her from Adora’s angle, yet didn’t. Adora looked at her mismatched eyes, her head tilting as her slightly while she wondered what to do next. Adora was so surprised, she never had Catra be this close to her without fighting her in a very long time. It felt so odd to her, especially since Catra was just sitting on her lap purring loudly like old times. Adora didn’t know what to do. She just sat there on her chair, looking at Catra in surprise. Catra squinted at her, stopping her purring and looking annoyed with her.

“Heellooo Etheria to Adora heeelloooo.” Catra waved at her. Adora blinked and looked at her in surprise. Adora’s eyes widening and bits of her hair falling from her ponytail.

“Oh um…hey Catra.”

“Hey Adora. You’re my bed now. Get used to it.”

Catra hasn’t changed much, Adora realized.

“That’s fine but…wouldn’t you want to sleep on an actual bed?” Adora asked raising a brow at her. “There’s a lot of rooms in Brightmoo-”

“Adora, there’s no spare rooms.” Glimmer quickly added in while she looked at the hologram on intercom. She hummed and swiped a few things here and there, then began typing. “I can understand if you two need space, but there’s a lot of rebellion fighters sleeping in the castle and it’s going to take awhile to well…empty out any rooms since we need to focus on the rebuilding efforts. Plus…Catra is literally laying down on your lap and you’re letting her stay there. Why don’t you just let her use your bed?”

Adora blushed at the suggestion. Catra, use her bed?! That was a shock. Adora would have never thought- “If you’re going to take me to your bed you’re going to have to carry me because I don’t feel like walking.” Catra said looking at her sharp fingernails. Catra was oddly out of character even for Adora at this point. Adora couldn’t help but growing suspicious. Since when did Catra get so bossy?

“Fine. I’ll take you to my bed then.” Adora picked up Catra with both of her arms. Catra mewled in surprise, blinking. She was expecting Adora to just well…stay there. Laws of the cat laying on a human and all. Adora broke a sacred rule among cat lovers and she wasn’t sorry for it. “My bed is far more comfortable than the other beds in Brightmoon anyways.” She told her with a smirk. Catra pouts at her smirk.

“Just shut up and take me there already, Adora.” Catra hissed. Adora laughed. Glimmer looked on in surprise.

“Taking her to your bed just like that then?” Glimmer noted with a grin on her lips. She pointed at the two of them, noting how Adora was carrying Catra bridal style. “I thought you would put up more of a fight, but Bow still owes me money then.” Glimmer responded with a smug expression. “So tell me, have you guys well…told each other yet?”

Catra and Adora looked at each other confused. “Told each other what?” They both asked in unison.

“That, well…” Glimmer made her hands fold into the perfect shape for one to make sock puppets. She pressed her hands together and made kissing noises. “Oh Adora I missed you so much, I’m so happy to finally be with you. Hiss. Hiss. Purr.” Glimmer mocked Catra’s voice. “Oh I love you Catra! Mawh mawh mawh.” Glimmer pressed her hands together more, her expression stayed that same smug expression while the two looked at Glimmer in shock and their faces turned red. “Mawh, mawh, mawh. I love you so much Catra, let’s get married and never have to leave each other ever again. Mawh mawh.”

“Queen Glimmer of Bright Moon!” Adora gasped out, shocked.

“Sparkles!” Catra equally yelled out in shock.

“I’m not lying though!” Glimmer slammed her hands on the table, her look striking fear into their souls. “Ever since me and Catra came back from Horde Prime’s ship all you’ve been doing is giving each other bedroom eyes!! I’m sick and tired of this romantic and possibly sexual tension! Just kiss and get married already! Queen’s orders!” Glimmer grabbed the end of her cape, flipping it with her as she turned around. Glimmer teleported away, assuming she was done being third wheel to Catra and Adora’s antics.

Adora and Catra looked at each other with confused and scared looks. The blush still on their faces. Adora smirked and opened her mouth to say something then Catra added, “No. I’m not going to marry you. Sparkles is not the boss of me.”

Adora’s smirk turned into a frown. “B-”

“What is marriage anyways?”

Adora soon realized that Catra didn’t know what marriage was. Adora didn’t know much of it herself until Spinerlla and Netossa came into the picture. The two were married. So Adora hummed as they walked out of the war room to Adora’s room. Adora had to think, and thinking of an explanation to a concept she barely understood was harder than she thought. “Well, marriage is kind of a fancy way of saying you want to be with someone for as long as their alive. You know how we have our squadron back in the Horde? And we stayed with them until we become Force Captains? It’s like that…but with two people, and you get to pick who you stay with.”

“So it’s basically a fancy way of saying partners for life?”

Adora nodded. Catra gave her a sort of look that told her that everything came together.

“We should get married then.” Catra told her with her ears perking up. Adora froze. Catra pouts and waves her hands in front of her face. “Heellooo Etheria to Adora?! You’re really doing this again?! Are you sure you’re not brain damaged?!” Adora looks down at Catra, her face was one of pure shock.

“A-are you sure about that?!” Adora asked her, Adora picked up the pace, walking a little quicker to her bedroom.

Catra sighed, waving her hands around. “Sure why not, I mean since we are on the same side now, why not make it official right?” Catra responded nonchalantly.

Adora wanted to scream.

If Catra didn’t stop she was going to scream.

Once they got to her room, Adora kicked that door open like it owed her lunch money. It was probably broken in some parts but she didn’t care. Adora was trying her best to suppress her emotions. Catra looked a little worried…maybe saying that was a bad idea. Adora was going insane. Catra leaped off of her hold, landing on her feet on the ground. Catra took a good look around the room before looking back at Adora who was closing the door. “Hey. You. Bed. Now.” Catra commanded. Adora blinked.

“What?”

“You heard me. Bed. Now. You’re acting crazy.”

“You’re the one who’s acting crazy!”

“Oh, are we really going to argue over this?”

“Yes, we are.”

Adora and Catra looked at each other. Both females sharing grins while they prepared for their ritual. “Oh you wanna fight huh?” Adora asked her with playfulness in her expression. Catra nodded, her claws retracting and her tail lashed about. Her haunches rose as well as her fur. The both of them look at each her. They were ready. “The first one to touch the bed has to admit their crazy.” Adora proclaimed.

“I can agree to those terms.” Catra replied, with their wager set the two began battle. Catra being the first one to launch at Adora. Adora moved herself to the side, barely dodging Catra’s attack. Catra was able to counter and used her agility to turn herself around and grab Adora by her waist, pushing her to the bed. Adora attempted to push, pull, or even stop herself but the momentum was so strong that Catra pinned Adora to her bed.

Catra looked down at her, grinning widely while her tail lashed about. Catra’s pupils turned from their natural slits to wide dilated pupils. Catra was treasuring in this moment. Adora heard her loud purrs. It was obvious that the Magicat was enjoying this. Adora in a sense enjoyed their swift battle too, even if she lost. The two stared at each other. Catra couldn’t help but be excited at seeing her below her. Her claws slowly pulled out while she dug them into the bed, tearing some of the blanket and bedding. Catra’s breathing was rapid as if she ran for her life.

Adora looked up in surprise, Catra was liking this a little too much? Adora’s blush returned to her face. Catra looked beautiful, even as she tore into her bed. “Hey.” Her voice soft and gentle. “Come closer, I want to tell you something.” Adora whispered. Catra pulled her face closer, wanting to hear what the loser had to say.

What surprised her, was what Adora did next.

Instead of admitting she was just some crazy person who needed sleep, Adora kissed her. Catra’s fur stood on end, her tail froze in surprise. Everything froze in surprise, the only sound heard in their room was Catra’s loud purring and the tear of her claws through the bedding. Adora closed her eyes while the two shared that kiss. The tears began to fall between them, both of their eyes watering. Catra retracted her claws, holding that kiss for a few moments before pulling away.

“I love you.” Adora told her.

“I love you too, ya dork. Now…let me just hold you for awhile.”

Adora nodded, the two moved enough that they were both lying in the same bed. Side by side, looking at each other. Catra smiled and held Adora, pulling her close and nuzzling into her neck. Catra purred loudly while she kissed her shoulder blade up to her neck, then her cheek and finally to her lips. The two shared a soft and tender, while brief, kiss.

Catra and Adora fell asleep after that kiss. They were going to have a long recovery to help with, and they would need all of the rest they would be able to get.

#eevee drabble #catradora #play fighting #catra being a cat

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mentalmimosa · 5 years

Text

none of this is righteous anger (part ii)

Previous installment here: [mentalmimosa.tumblr.com/post/184549229465/none-of-this-is-righteous-anger]

The next time they kiss, it’s through bars. They’ve been watching each surreptitious for well nigh an hour, Steve grinning and Tony grinning and the sheriff’s deputy, Barnes, reading the paper with his chicory coffee and waiting for true night to come and by the time he finally ambles out, gun belt at his waist and body aimed at the saloon, they’re both desperate for it, the ability to touch, and no matter how pissed off he is, Tony wants so goddamn bad he can’t hardly wait.

The key’s stuck in the lock and Steve’s hand is still on it but Tony’s got him by the belt, hot fingers jammed under old leather, got him yanked flush against the bars and that mouth, the one that Steve’s dreamed about this whole week, is open against his and even awkward like this, a kiss shoved between steel, it does something wicked to his insides, something perfect and unholy and good. Tony’s tongue is a rattlesnake and Steve aches for his poison and it’s so bad, what he wants; bad enough to want another man’s cock and not some nice girl’s hand in marriage, worse not to give a damn if the door’s locked, to remember if he heard Bucky shoot the bolt. Anyone could walk in here. Anyone. The mayor, the man who owns the feed store, the woman who keeps the books at the bank--hell, God himself could stroll in carrying a stack of newly-bound Bibles and Steve wouldn’t want to stop, wouldn’t want to let go of the only person who’s made him feel alive out here on the windswept edge of America: a n’er do well and a scoundrel and the smartest man he’s ever met.

He’s rutting against the cage, that’s how bad it is: the cage he'd thrown Tony Stark in. It was an attempt to make Stark see reason, to scare him into paying Barton out so this whole thing could be set aside, finished without a Pinkerton man from Helena coming to town and poking around, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. People came to Lee’s Crossing to start over, to leave their old lives behind, and generally that made for a well-behaved populace; when everybody had a past they were inclined to pretend hadn’t happened, no one was ever anxious to call in the law. Which told him how blatant Tony’s swindle of Barton must have been if the bowman had been so quick to run to the sheriff’s door, but then, everybody at church seemed to agree, Barton had always been a strange bird.

But what would everybody think if they saw Steve now, getting pawed by a prisoner, his cock harder than a hammer and his heart a hare tearing through dirt.

“Get in here,” Tony says against his lips, more air than sound. “Goddamn you, Steve. Please.”

He feels the key turn and the lock snickt and then the cell door is open and Tony is in his arms, bucking like a wild horse until Steve catches hold of his wrists, squeezes, and then he stills, Stark, stills and stares at him, those dark eyes barely catching the light.

“You need to pay Barton,” Steve says.

“No.”

He lets his grip tighten. Tony’s mouth trembles, a sight that make Steve feel greedy.

“Yes. It’s gone far enough. Pay back what you owe.”

“I don’t owe him a damn cent. Any loss he thinks he suffered, well, that’s the cost of him being an idiot.”

He folds Tony’s arms behind his back and catches both wrists in one hand, tugs the other back to stroke Tony’s hip, and oh, the look Tony gives him--fury and desire and need--makes him want to fall to his knees.

“You pay him, he won’t bother you again.”

Tony laughs. “Oh, that’s exactly what he’ll do. Once the mine bears gold, why the hell would a man stop digging?”

“I’ll talk to him.” Steve’s eyes are on his fingers, tanned and dusty against the black stretch of Tony’s fancy trousers, the swell he’s not quite ready to touch. “I’ll make sure he understands that once is enough.”

“You will, huh?” Tony leans forward, pulling against the iron of Steve’s grip. “The sheriff as my heavy, is that it?”

The strain in Tony’s arms makes Steve breathless. “I--I don’t want him bothering you anymore.”

A soft snarl. “Since when do you care?”

“Since--since---!”

He wants to say, since Barton made you my problem or since I kissed you or since you bought me a drink my first night in town and laughed in my face when I turned it down and asked for sarsaparilla instead. But words don’t come easy with Tony, they never have, and it’s so, so much easier to push on his chest and pull on his hands and get Tony’s ass flat on the old Army cot Bucky rustled up from somewhere and kneel right there before him, the filthiest sort of prayer.

Then it’s easy to touch him, to kiss his sharp, wet mouth and pet at the bulge of his fly, trace the long, fat line of his cock, and the way Tony clings to him, arms locked hard around his neck and body quaking under his hands, makes him angry at himself for not riding back out to Stark’s small, neatly-kept ranch that night, any night since, instead of running to God and staring up at the rough, wooden cross and asking for guidance, forgiveness, a line of some kind of light.

But Tony Stark is nobody’s puppet, not even the Devil’s, and if he’s here, mewing into Steve’s kiss like a kitten while Steve unbuttons his flies, then it’s because Steve wants him to be. God might be testing him, surely, but the weight of Tony in his hand, the tear of wet at the tip, is real and good and beautiful. It’s no trick.

“I’m sorry I didn’t touch you before,” Steve murmurs.

“Me, too.” Tony hiccups and rocks into Steve’s fist. “Oh, fuck. Me, too. God, you’re good at that.”

“I liked the way you touched me. The way you took me in your mouth.”

Tony moans, a banshee that rattles the cot. “You did, huh?”

“Yeah.” He tips his lips against Tony’s cheek. Kisses the edge of his whiskers. “Never had anybody do that for me before. Felt so good.”

“Oh. Oh, god.” Two hands in his hair, tugging. “No wonder you came so fucking hard.”

He turns his head and finds Tony’s mouth, whispers: “May I do it for you?”

Which is how Steve ends up with his face in Tony Stark’s lap as the lamp burns low, taking pleasure in the body of a man before the eyes of God and the Holy Ghost and anyone who might walk through the door. Outside, it’s nine o’clock on a Friday and there are boots on the wooden sidewalk, boots and shouts and the high, happy calls of men too drunk to remember they have to work in the morning: that there are cattle to tend to and crops to mind and only one more day until the Sabbath, until Sunday, when they’ll each walk before God and wash themselves clean of the sins of the week past to make room for the sins of the future and press out of the church doors into the sunshine, hearts light and hands empty, ready for Sunday dinner and an afternoon drink.

It’s more difficult than he’d thought, swallowing Tony’s cock, but Tony guides him, murmuring things and using his hands like pulleys and getting Steve’s mouth his lips his tongue exactly where he wants it and it’s heaven when he figures it out, how to suck and to slide until Tony’s grunting, rough kicks of his hips and the choke of no breath and the high, urgent slur of his words fuck and Steve and fuck and when Tony comes, it’s a shock how good his spunk tastes, how easy it is to drink down, to take in; how ready he is, even before he can breathe, to have Tony like this again.

“C’mere,” he hears Tony say over the cannonball of his heart. “Come up here, you wondrous creature. I need to kiss you.”

Tony licks at Steve’s mouth, eager, chasing the taste of his own release, and it only makes sense to put him on his back, to press him into the creaky spine of the cot and climb over him, guide Tony’s hands to his belt and let himself be cracked open and watch Tony spit in his hand and grab him, jerk him just this side of too hard, and the only thing that Steve knows is how good it feels to have Tony touch him and look at him like that, like he’s something wonderful, and smile like an angel when he makes Steve come.

He empties himself on Tony’s starched shirt and the hems of his coat and has to bite his lip hard at the sight of it, the smell: his mark on Tony’s fancy, city-bought clothes.

They kiss some more, after. Long, lazy kisses, more molasses than an afternoon’s heat.

“Do something for me,” Steve says.

“Mmmmm. Anything.”

“Give Barton his money. We both know you took what was his.”

“Not my fault he wasn’t smart enough to hold on to it.”

“No, I know. But still. It’d make your life a whole lot nicer, wouldn’t it, if you weren’t being harassed by Pinkertons. Or by me.”

Tony sighs, sighs and combs a hand through Steve’s hair. “Maybe I like being harassed by you, sheriff. You ever think of that? Maybe you should harass me more often. Try and shepherd me towards the light.”

He nuzzles Tony’s throat, the heat that’s pooled there, the rough catch of sweat. “I’d rather just kiss you, if that’s all right.”

“Mmm, maybe I want your moral guidance. Maybe I need you to remind me of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Maybe,” Steve says as the church bell starts ringing ten, “you need to straighten yourself up and go home.”

A chuckle. “Does this mean I’m free to go, Oh Ye Guardian of the Law?”

“Always.” A touch of lips, a small, dirty kiss. “Always.”

“Come to dinner after church on Sunday,” Tony says at the door. His collar’s askew and his face is flushed. He looks drunk. “Soon as God sets you loose, you come back to me.”

Steve smoothes back Tony’s hair, dark curls run amuck. Says softly: “Promise. Once I hear the last amen, Tony, I’m yours.”

#stony #western au

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crystalninjaphoenix · 5 years

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Resurgence

A Jacksepticeye Fan Fiction

Part Nine: The Witching Hour

Previous | Next

Summary: JJ and Marvin have a serious talk in the middle of the night.

(Yes I know, it’s been forever, mostly because I don’t know how many people are still interested in this story. But! I will still get it out! Shit goes down in the next part and I’m excited for that but this has to happen first)

Jameson bolted upright, gasping silently. It took him a moment to remember where—and when—he was. He reached over, grabbing blindly in the dark until he was able to turn on his bedside lamp. With a simple click, yellow light flooded the bedroom. He looked at the clock: 12:10 a.m. He looked at the calendar: May 2018.

When was the last time he’d had one of those nightmares? It had to be at least a month since a bad dream had woken him up. Or, not a dream exactly. A memory he’d rather forget. What happened with the doctor must’ve triggered a relapse. He could still hear his words... He works for him! And you all are just letting him be here! You have been fooled, my friends, so dangerously fooled!

JJ shivered, then got out of bed. He found that, on nights like these, it helped to walk around, just to be alone with his thoughts. To reassure himself that they are his thoughts.

As he left the bedroom and entered the hall, he turned on all the lights. They were modern, electric lights, the sort of which that had only been mildly common back in his day. Their artificial glow, while helpful in ridding the house of shadows, made Jameson feel a vague sadness. He loved his new friends, of course, but he’d left so much behind. What ever happened to his old partner, who’d helped him behind the scenes? Or that kid who made toys, and wanted to be a part of the film business? Or his mother and father? They hadn’t been on the best of terms, but he still missed them.

He was halfway down the stairs when he realized there was a light already on. He stopped. He didn’t think it would be Anti. He was a creature of darkness. Still, that could leave any number of more conventional threats. JJ considered retreating back upstairs, but curiosity got the better of him. And there was no guarantee to be any danger. So he crept silently down the hall. The door to the parlor was ajar, and JJ peeked inside.

Marvin was there, slumped in one of the armchairs with his portable computer on his lap, eyes glued to the screen. His mask and wand were on a nearby table. All the lamps in the room were on, artificial illumination flooding their surroundings.

Relieved, JJ knocked on the door frame to announce his arrival. Marvin jumped, halfway to closing his computer when he spotted JJ standing in the doorway. “Oh, it’s just you,” he said, relieved. “Fuck, dude, don’t scare me like that. I didn’t even hear you coming down the hall.”

My apologies, JJ signed. He opened the door fully, entering the room. If I may ask, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to stay at a hotel tonight.

“I thought about it, but...I dunno man, I just didn’t want any of us to be alone right now.” Marvin shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. The worry in his eyes gave him away. “You're not gonna, like, kick me out, are you?”

Of course not! JJ reassured him. He didn’t want to admit it, but it would be kind of nice to know he wasn’t alone. But why are you still up so late? Marvin was still wearing the same clothes he was yesterday, showing that he either hadn’t had the foresight to pack a pair of pajamas, or he hadn’t gone to sleep at all. Possibly both.

Marvin raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same question.”

JJ hesitated. His first instinct was to not bother his friend with his troubles, but Marvin—actually, all of the others—had repeatedly told him that if there was a problem they’d be happy to help. So he braced himself and signed, I had another nightmare.

“Oh.” Marvin slumped. “I’m...sorry. Do you...want to talk about it?”

Jameson shook his head. Not tonight. But I don’t want to go back to sleep. Do you mind if I stay in here for a time?

“Not at all. It’s your fucking house, after all. Take a seat.”

JJ let out a sigh of relief, then sat down in the armchair next to Marvin’s. The magician stared at him for a bit. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to talk about it? I’ll listen.”

I know you will, JJ signed. But this is...a difficult subject for me to talk about. It’s nice that you are open to it, but I don’t think... he trailed off, hands frozen in the air.

“I get it.” Marvin nodded. “I really do. Just making sure you know I’m here for you.” He glanced back down at the computer, presumably checking for glitches, before looking back up. “It’s been a while since you had one, huh. Do you think yesterday...set you off, or something?”

Jameson nodded. The doctor. He seems like a kind enough person, but...he said some things to me.

“Schneep’s not kind,” Marvin muttered. “Or, well, okay, let me explain. He’s nice, and he really wants to help people, but to me, ‘kind’ implies being polite and doin’ good things in everyday life. And in that area, he’s sorta lacking. He’s not afraid to speak his mind, even if it might hurt others. Also he yells a lot.” Marvin shook his head. “I’m getting off topic. The point is, you shouldn’t let his words get to you. He’s been through hell, and he was just...I dunno, projecting his frustration onto you. It’s nothing to do with you.”

But it is, Marvin. The sign Jameson used for Marvin’s name was rather simple, just the BSL “M” followed by the sign for cat. But using a name sign in personal conversation made the whole thing sound much more serious. I was there that night, when the doctor failed. I did help...him. And I know it was not my fault, that I was just a puppet, but I can’t help but feel guilty.

Marvin remained silent for a long time, long enough to make Jameson nervous. But then he spoke. “That’s understandable. It’s probably like survivor’s guilt. You felt you should have done something, even if you couldn’t. And I...well, I can’t imagine going through what you did, feeling like that, for ninety years. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re...a bad person, or whatever your trauma is calling you, for not being able to stand up to him. And neither do Chase or Jackie. You did all you could, and you got fucked over for your trouble. That sucks. But you’re not the bad guy.”

Jameson folded his arms, hugging himself tight. He did feel a little better. Not completely one hundred percent better, but better. The doctor’s words still upset him, and he had the feeling he’d have to confront Schneeplestein directly to get over that. But for what it was...this was good.

Thank you, Marvin, he signed.

The magician smiled reassuringly. “No problem, dude. You ready to go to bed again?”

JJ shook his head. Marvin nodded, and returned to his computer. What was he doing anyway? What were any of them doing when they were logged onto the Interwebs? On an impulse, he leaned over and looked at Marvin’s screen.

“Wh—no!” Marvin slammed the computer closed, but not before Jameson had time to see what exactly was on display. His eyes widened. Anyone else wouldn’t have recognized them, wouldn’t have known what type of spells those were. But Jameson did. He looked at Marvin, hoping for an explanation.

“You know what, I think I’ll go to bed myself,” Marvin laughed nervously. He stood up, holding the computer close to his chest, and made his way over to the room’s exit. Quickly, Jameson scrambled to his feet and ran in front of Marvin, blocking him. “Uh—JJ, dude, I know I’m usually a night owl but I’m pretty tired right now, y’know?” He sidestepped, only for Jameson to block him again. A second time, the same result. “Jameson, really, leave. Please.”

JJ shook his head, then made two simple signs. Black magic?

Marvin froze. “I...”

Marvin, why are you looking up spells like that?

“I—I mean, th-there’s—” he scrambled for an explanation. “With An—with him out there, I-I thought that we could, ah, use some more—some firepower, and these are really powerful spells, and—”

You’re better than that, Marvin, JJ signed sadly.

“I...no, I’m not.” The words were almost too quiet to hear. Marvin looked down. He didn’t want to see the look on JJ’s face when he explained. “I’m really not. I know that to you and Jackie and Chase I’m—I’m the magic man, the expert, the-the good to balance out his evil magic—but I’m not, JJ. I’m not a good person.”

JJ waved his hand in front of Marvin’s face, making him look up. Jameson wasn’t disappointed at all, but somehow that made it worse. He didn’t understand what Marvin was trying to tell him. Jameson raised an eyebrow, and signed, What was that you were saying earlier, about me not being the bad guy? I’d hate to throw your own words back at you, but that’s exactly what needs to be done here.

Marvin was already shaking his head. “No, it’s not the same thing, JJ. You were forced to do terrible things. And even when you sought out the dangerous kind of magick, you never really wanted to use it, you just wanted to know. I—I’m not like that.” He swallowed nervously. He knew this would come out eventually—he didn’t want it to, but he knew—so it would be better to rip the bandage off. “Back when I first discovered magic, I wanted to know more. I wanted to be more. And I didn’t have any noble reason for it, I wasn’t even simply curious. I wanted to be the most powerful, most famous magician out there. And when I found those spells, I read the warnings and everything, and I didn’t care. As long as it got me where I wanted. And I just kept going down, and down, and down, until I almost—I almost did something terrible, JJ. And I almost didn’t regret it. Do you—” he took a deep breath. “Do you honestly think that somebody like that could be a good person?”

There was no hesitation. JJ nodded.

Marvin blinked. “Did—did you even hear a word I said?”

He nodded again. Look Marvin, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can’t change what you’ve done in the past. And the fact that you acknowledge your mistakes and want to improve means you are better than you think you are. And if I’m not allowed to berate myself, you aren’t either.

“I—” Marvin realized he was clutching his computer so tight that it was leaving imprints in his hands. He relaxed his grip a bit, and somehow that was the cue to start the breakdown. Suddenly there were tears coming from his eyes and his shoulders were shaking and JJ was hugging him gently. All he could do was bury his face in his shoulder and dully repeat through the sobs“I’m not—I’m not—” even though every time he tried to say the words he could feel JJ shake his head.

They stayed like that for a while, before Marvin finally pulled away. He blinked away the remains of the tears. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

JJ smiled brightly. It’s no problem, Mr. Magician. I owe you for rescuing me in the first place, not to mention everything since then.

Marvin laughed. “By that logic, I still owe you for letting me stay in your house for free. And since when have you called me—what was that? Magician?”

M-I-S-T-E-R Magician, JJ corrected, spelling out the word.

“Well, that’s even stranger then.” Marvin looked down and realized he was still holding his computer. “I think...I think I’m gonna put this away. I, uh, brought a duffel bag of my stuff and left in in your guest room. I’ll go put this there.”

JJ nodded, standing aside so Marvin could get past. He was going to go back to bed himself. It had been a long night, but they both came out of it feeling alright. It wasn’t perfect; JJ had the sneaking suspicion there was more to Marvin’s problem. But a start was better than nothing.

Bang!

JJ jumped. What was that? It sounded like it came from the front. He walked out into the hall and looked toward the entrance. There was the creak of the door opening.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!!”

He didn’t waste time in running down the hall and toward Marvin’s shout. He rounded a corner into the entrance, only to see Marvin staring, shocked, out the front door. He was holding something in his hand. He must’ve heard JJ’s footsteps, because he immediately turned around upon his arrival in the entrance. “Dude...” the magician said. “You’re not gonna fucking believe this...”

What? It’s not anything bad, is it?

“To the contrary, I think.” Marvin held out his hand, showing the thing nestled in his palm to JJ.

JJ, meanwhile, stumbled back in shock. That’s not...?

“It is,” Marvin nodded.

We have to tell the others. Right now.

“Fuck that, we have to show the others right now. Get dressed. They’re at Jackie’s apartment, so that’s where we’re going.”

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #jameson jackson #marvin the magnificent #antisepticeye #dr schneeplestein #brigid writes fanfiction #resurgence jse fic

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ryukoishida · 6 years

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Quan Zhi Gao Shou | The King’s Avatar Fic: In which WZ is a white snake spirit/bodyguard and ST is a sword spirit who suffers.

Title: Counter Spark Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): YuHuang, Su Mucheng Summary: Atavists were beings whose veins ancestral blood ran through, allowing them to transform into their powerful spiritual forms. To protect them, Secret Service agents with similar powers were hired to remain loyal by their side. Huang Shaotian learned to protect himself with false smiles and high walls, but when he met his assigned SS agent Yu Wenzhou, a man with the blood of a white snake spirit, his resolve to stay away from others began to crumble. [Secret service/bodyguard AU] Part: 1/4 of “Two Way Monologue” series Rating: T A/N: It’s basically an “Inu X Boku SS” AU, to be honest. Have fun reading this mess!

Writing Commission | Editing & Translation Services

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Two Way Monologue, parts:

i. Counter Spark (YuHuang) ii. The Magic of Us (WangYe) iii. Ghost Notes (GaoQiao) iv. Fire Bird & Electric Lady (ChengChu)

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i. Counter Spark

“I can’t believe your family is actually allowing you to move out on your own,” Su Mucheng laughed as she gracefully folded herself into the couch, crossing her legs and glancing up at her childhood acquaintance as she accepted the cup of tea offered by the new occupant of Unit 14 of Glory Complex.

“What the hell are they gonna do about it?” Huang Shaotian scoffed, throwing himself into the adjacent couch uncouthly by comparison, and continued in an irritated tone as he glared daggers into his own glass of water, “I’m an adult already; I don’t need their permission to do anything. It’s high time I get out of that shit hole.”

“You say that,” Su Mucheng took a sip of her tea before placing it delicately back on the saucer, her glossed lips twitching up into a small, knowing smile, “but I bet your parents threw a fit, huh?”

The prestigious Huang family was regarded as one of the most influential Atavist clans in China — politically- and financially-speaking — and as the only son who inherited the divine powers of the legendary sword spirit Ice Rain, Huang Shaotian had always been surrounded by walls upon walls of protection in case other clans were planning against them. Adults of other smaller clans boasted and praised his talents, though they were also secretly envious of his powers, while peers of Atavistic origins or normal humans tended to either avoid him or crowded around him with special treatment because of his family background.

Huang Shaotian had learned to deal with the burden of being a prominent Atavist. When he was young, he didn’t know any better, and would display his emotions openly before others: the bitter sneering when he heard others talking shit behind his back, the angry, disappointed tears when he realized that those who were willing to befriend him were only doing so in order to gain something from him and his family.

“They’re never satisfied with what I do,” Huang Shaotian concluded with a huff, crossing his arms, “so I might as well just stop being an eyesore and get the hell out while I still can.”

Su Mucheng had known him since they were young; their families had been neighbors for years, and they would visit each other’s houses on many occasions. She couldn’t say she entirely understood what Huang Shaotian had went through in his own household all these years, but she could take an educated guess from how isolated he was kept by his own parents and the other caretakers in the mansion, and how much of himself he eventually learned to hide from others.

She gave him a soft, sympathetic smile and left it at that.

“Have you met the other residents yet?” Su Mucheng asked, attempting to carefully change the topic to something more cheerful.

“Listen, I’m not here to make friends, all right? The point I’m trying to make by insisting on moving out on my own is to show my folks that it’s not that big of a fucking deal, that I don’t need to be protected like I’m some sort of fragile, little flower, and I’ve had had enough of them controlling me like I’m a goddamn puppet, existing just for their own greedy objectives,” Huang Shaotian said, the irritation in his voice starting up again at the thought of his overly-dominant parents. “And who cares about the other residents? They’re all Atavists like you and me, right? At most, after they’ve heard of who I am, they’d try to get on my good side in the hopes of getting something in return. I know how it works; this had always been the case no matter where I go, and I’m fucking sick of this bullshit.”

In the past, Huang Shaotian would have happily accepted any forms of interaction with others — it was less troublesome that way. He’d learned to put on a bright, pleasant smile because that was what his parents wanted him to do, but now that he was finally out of his family’s shadow, he had more freedom over how he’d deal with these sorts of wearisome interactions.

Su Mucheng was about to open her mouth to defend her housemates, but Huang Shaotian was faster, and for once, his tone had softened into an almost remorseful tenor at his next question, his topaz eyes lowered to stare at his lap instead.

“Anyway, how are you holding up?”

This sudden change of direction didn’t throw either of them off; they both knew what Huang Shaotian was referring to.

“What do you mean? I’m doing well!” Su Mucheng exclaimed with a little too much enthusiasm that even she wasn’t convinced. “Even better now that you’re here!”

A brief moment of hesitation, and then Huang Shaotian said, glancing up at Su Mucheng with an apologetic light to his eyes, “I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your brother’s funeral.”

Su Mucheng sighed softly, placing a gentle hand over Huang Shaotian’s shoulder, and said, “Hey, don’t worry about it, okay? It’s the thought that counts. I’m sure Brother appreciated it all the same.”

Su Muqiu hadn’t been a close friend of his — there weren’t many people in his circle Huang Shaotian would dare call his close friends — but he had been a respectable Atavist, a doting elder brother, and an agreeable acquaintance; and those qualities, if nothing else, were enough for Huang Shaotian to feel a sense of loss when he’d heard the news. After all, he knew how important Su Muqiu was to the young woman sitting beside him right now. He was the only family Su Mucheng had after the great war that took place almost two decades ago.

As if the thought had just come up to him, Huang Shaotian suddenly asked, “Where’s Lao Ye anyway? I’d have thought that he’d be under you now that Muqiu had… passed away.” Huang Shaotian was uncomfortable at the topic of Su Muqiu’s death, but it was unavoidable at this point, so he tried to use the most respectful tone, “you two were like siblings, too, weren’t you?”

“Ah… Ye Xiu, he’s working for someone else now,” Su Mucheng replied with an uneasy chuckle, her hand only shaking slightly when she lifted her cup up to her lips to take another sip of the lukewarm tea. She winced at the bitter aftertaste.

“You fucking serious? After what had happened, Lao Ye just broke the contract and left you on your own?” Huang Shaotian’s eyes widened in disbelief, the anger surfacing up once more like furious, towering waves of a stormy ocean.

“He didn’t leave me,” Su Mucheng immediately protested in emphasis, and in a smaller voice, she said with her head lowered, “I was the one who nulled our contract.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

The Su siblings were two of the few people Huang Shaotian was familiar with, and so of course he knew of their family’s circumstances, though some parts of it remained a mystery to this day. He knew that the siblings were orphaned from a young age due to the great war, yet as to how Ye Xiu became their shared Secret Service agent, serving the brother and sister known to the Atavist community as “Feng Huang” — the two majestic, five-coloured birds that ruled over other bird species in Chinese legends, their status and importance equal to that of the dragons — nobody had yet figured out how that had come to be.

All Huang Shaotian was aware of was that Ye Xiu was an important figure in the Su siblings’ lives; as far as Huang Shaotian was concerned, Ye Xiu — with the blood of the green dragon spirit running through his veins — had always been by Su Muqiu and Su Mucheng’s sides, protecting them as the two’s guardian, but more than that, playing the role of a genuine friend and brother-figure throughout the siblings’ difficult lives.

“He and Brother had been really close — you know that, right?” Su Mucheng recalled their childhood days, and the flash of pain reflected in her eyes, in the firm line of her lips, made Huang Shaotian regret bringing up this topic at all, “and he blamed himself for what happened, even though there was nothing he could have done. I couldn’t stand seeing him like that, and I knew that his guilt and sense of duty was only making it impossible for him to leave on his own, so… so I made the decision and forced him to leave.”

Ye Xiu was like another older brother for her, and she wanted what was best for him, too. Tying him down to a place that would only allow unfounded remorse to eat him alive because of something as rigid and impassive as a contract would have been too cruel, and so, despite the excruciating agony that clawed deep within her chest after she’d made that decision, Su Mucheng did what she had set out to do.

If it weren’t for the fateful encounter with Chu Yunxiu soon after the tragedy, Su Mucheng wasn’t certain if she would still be able to be where she was right now.

“It wasn’t easy to let him go, but I couldn’t depend on him forever either,” Su Mucheng smiled at the other man, “and hey, everything turns out pretty okay in the end, I think.”

“The little miss is all grown up now, huh,” Huang Shaotian grinned, running a hand over the woman’s hair to playfully mess it up, which Su Mucheng didn’t appreciate as she dodged skillfully off to the side and stuck her tongue out at him in a childish gesture.

“I totally take that back,” Huang Shaotian cackled.

“Come on, stop being such a loner and let’s get out of this room,” Su Mucheng pulled Huang Shaotian off the couch with a grunt and a surprisingly strong grip for a woman of her height, “I’ll introduce you to the other residents of the complex. It’ll be fun, I promise!”

“Uh-huh,” Huang Shaotian rolled his eyes even as he allowed himself to be pulled out of the door of his chamber.

“It’s about dinner time now, so most of them should be in the dining hall,” Su Mucheng was telling Huang Shaotian as they entered, only to be met with an almost empty room.

Two teenagers sat at the far corner, and one man with shaggy bangs falling over one eye was sitting on the other end, quietly concentrating on his own dinner while reading.

“Wow, what a party,” Huang Shaotian sniggered, and Su Mucheng slapped his arm in retort.

“Mu-jie,” one of the young men sitting by the corner greeted them with a small wave of acknowledgement and a shy smile. The teenager, a high school student, it seemed, as he still donned a set of uniform in navy blue and grey, had kind-looking eyes, and when Huang Shaotian glanced over at him, he instantly nodded a quick and formal greeting at the stranger.

“Xiao Jie, and Yifan, you two just got off from school? Pretty late for you guys, isn’t it?” Su Mucheng wandered over to the table where the two young men were sitting with their half-consumed dinner, and Huang Shaotian had no choice but to follow from behind.

“Mu-jie,” Qiao Yifan, the other boy whom Huang Shaotian hadn’t taken notice before, murmured in greeting, but even as the two adults came closer, he shrunk back against his seat as if he wanted to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

“It’s going to be finals week next week, so our instructors had us all stay behind for extra lessons,” Gao Yingjie replied, making a face.

“Sounds rough,” Su Mucheng commented sympathetically. Even as the teenagers were eating, they had notes, binders, and textbooks spread out all over the table so that they could make the best of their time to study.

“A new resident?” Gao Yingjie couldn’t help the curiosity as his gaze once again focused on the stranger standing next to Su Mucheng.

“Huang Shaotian, a childhood friend of mine,” Su Mucheng spread her arm towards the blond-haired man.

“Neighbor,” Huang Shaotian quickly corrected, “from a long, long time ago.”

“Whatever, stop being such a jerk,” Su Mucheng grumbled before facing the two youngsters again with a sunshine smile and continued the introductions, “This here is Qiao Yifan, and this is Gao Yingjie, Yifan’s contracted SS agent, but everyone calls him Xiao Jie because he’s the youngest in the complex. They’re both in their third year of senior high, so Shaotian, I’m saying this now, please be a good role model for these boys.”

Before Huang Shaotian could come up with a good retort, the two teenagers’ eyes turned extra bright and excited at the sound of the newcomer’s name.

“Hold on, you mean you’re the Huang Shaotian?” Gao Yingjie gasped, almost dropping the chopsticks he was holding, and he was grabbing onto Qiao Yifan’s sleeve as if the other boy was unaware of the significance of this discovery.

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that, kid,” Huang Shaotian rolled his eyes and ignored Su Mucheng’s rather painful elbow jab against his side.

“The Atavist with the title of Sword Saint, the one who inherited the spiritual power of the legendary sword Ice Rain — that’s… that’s you, right… sir?” Gao Yingjie’s cheeks tainted a soft pink when he finally realized how rude he was probably being, and like his companion, the boy shrunk back against his chair when Huang Shaotian stared icily down at him.

“So, what if I am?” his tone was sharp and cold as a storm of ice shards.

The respect, the expectation, the fear, the exhilaration — these were all displayed blatantly in these youngsters’ eyes, and it was forming a rusted chain from years and years of practiced smiles and forced laughter, restricting him from moving forward, suffocating him from the inside.

‘And there it goes again,’ Huang Shaotian thought, a hint of disappointment and something darker, more desperate and forlorn, seeping into his bones like poison corroding what was left of his hope of starting anew in a different environment with different people. ‘They’re all the same. They all want the same thing from me,’ he reminded himself bitterly, ‘all the same.’

“I-I’m sorry,” Gao Yingjie apologized when he saw Huang Shaotian’s expression darkened in an instant, “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Don’t worry about it, Xiao Jie,” Su Mucheng quickly said, pulling Huang Shaotian away, “he’s just in a prissy mood because of uh, jet lag. We better get out of your way and leave you to your studying.”

Gao Yingjie and Qiao Yifan both nodded numbly before burying their heads into their notebooks once more, though once or twice, they lifted their faces from pages of notes to peek over at the stranger with curiosity that they didn’t dare show when Huang Shaotian was still standing close to them.

“Why do you have to behave like this?” Su Mucheng hissed at him as she pulled the man almost a head taller than her towards the double doors that would take them out into the hallway, her eyes narrowing in annoyance. There were a few more people she was planning to introduce him to, but if he was going to be uncooperative right from the start, there really was no point, was there?

“I was half-considering playing nice, I swear to god I was, but did you see those kids’ faces the moment they realized who I am?” Huang Shoatian snarled, fiercely shaking off Su Mucheng’s hands on his arm. “That’s exactly the type of unwanted attention and behavior that makes me sick, absolutely fucking sick to my stomach. They wanted something from me — I don’t know what it is yet, and I don’t fancy finding out — but there is no way in hell I’m just going to smile and accept it like I’ve done all these years to make my family happy.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Shaotian! Oy, listen to people when they’re trying to talk to you! You little—”

The elevator doors shut in her face before Su Mucheng could finish. Leaning her back against the wall with a heavy sigh, she was contemplating whether it’d be wise to go up to Huang Shaotian’s apartment unit and tried to explain Qiao Yifan’s situation to him or if it’d only make the matter worse.

“I see you’ve tried to introduce Shaotian to the others,” a man came and stood by her side, eyes casted down to see that Su Mucheng was restlessly pulling on a loose thread on her sweater. He wrapped a warm, gentle hand around her smaller one as a gesture of comfort. The lingering, familiar scent of cigarette smoke hovered warmly over her like a blanket. “How did it go?”

“You clearly saw the whole thing, didn’t you?” Su Mucheng squeezed the man’s fingers appreciatively before letting go, and she glanced up to meet the man with a lazy smirk that confirmed what she’d guessed. “Want to try and convince him that not everyone here is out to get him? It’s hard to get through his thick head sometimes, but you’d know that already.”

“There’s someone else who’d be much more suitable for this task, and he’s already waiting upstairs as we speak,” the man grinned. “You haven’t had dinner yet, right? Let’s grab some food. Big Eye might get lonely the longer I’m away.”

Su Mucheng snorted at the confident tone with which her companion spoke of his relationship with Wang Jiexi, his current charge, but followed him anyway.

“Welcome back, Master Shaotian. I apologize deeply for arriving so late in the evening that I was unable to help you move in and unpack this morning. Please accept my offering of remorse and forgive my negligence.”

Kneeling with one knee by his unit entrance with a bouquet of what seemed to be blue hyacinths and forget-me-nots was a man who was close to his age, with a head of dark locks combed stylishly into a casual curtain haircut and donning a slim-cut suit and tie of ink black, pristine white shirt, and leather gloves. Since his head was bowed low, Huang Shaotian couldn’t see the man’s eyes or his expression, and he was instantly wary at the first sight of this well-dressed stranger.

“…I know I’m going to regret asking, but do I know you?” Huang Shaotian sounded hesitant. “Also, can you please get up? You are making me super uncomfortable. And do I even want to know what those flowers are for. Wait, don’t tell me those flowers are for me? What the hell is this? Am I suddenly living the life of a shoujo manga protagonist?”

“My apologies,” the man pulled himself to his feet and stood with his back straight and tall, and finally lifted his head to look at Huang Shaotian properly for the first time. With a gentle tenor that could rival the moon’s soft brilliance, and a harmless smile lining his lips, he introduced himself, “My name is Yu Wenzhou, your assigned Secret Service agent during your residency in Glory Complex. To answer Master Shaotian’s question, this bouquet is indeed a welcoming gift for you, but should it displease you, I can certainly get that out of your way. I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, and I look forward to serving you starting from today.”

Yu Wenzhou bowed once more, his manners perfectly immaculate; nothing about the man could be considered disagreeable, and if Huang Shaotian wasn’t in such a stupor right now, he might actually take the time to appreciate the angular planes of the man’s face and the beautiful deep blue of his eyes without feeling so conflicted about the entire ordeal.

Huang Shaotian blinked once, then twice, and when he realized that he’d been staring for too long, he began to ramble, “Hold-hold on a moment, would you? What do you mean, you’ll be serving me? What SS agent? I don’t remember signing any contracts with an agent or being assigned to one! Is this a trick of some sort? Were you sent here by my family’s enemies to screw with me? Because I can tell you right here right now, that I have nothing to do with them the moment I stepped out of that estate, so like, if you’re looking for trouble, you’re going to have to leave and go bother them instead. Hey, you listening to me, buddy? Oy, I’m talking to you, oy! What the hell are you smiling for, damn it!”

“There must be some misunderstanding, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou patiently explained, though it was difficult to maintain a neutral expression after Huang Shaotian’s hilarious outburst, “I am here to serve you under no one’s will but my own.”

“Wait,” Huang Shaotian put up a hand to halt the other man from talking, his eyes growing wide as a sudden realization dawned on him. “Wait a fucking minute. My parents send you here, didn’t they?! They think I’m useless without them! Well, in that case, you can fuck right off back to the estate and tell my folks I’m doing just fine and that I don’t need a goddamn butler to take care of me.”

“Master Shaotian, please,” Yu Wenzhou took a step forward, an arm reaching out but when he saw Huang Shaotian flinched at the motion, the bodyguard immediately remained in his place and continued with a raw, agonizing look in his eyes that only briefly surfaced before it was drowned out by the dark tranquility once more, “I have nowhere else to go.”

That flicker of emotion didn’t escape Huang Shaotian’s observation, and he wasn’t sure how to respond to that or what it could possibly mean, yet it was that exact moment of fragility that Yu Wenzhou accidentally let slip that allowed Huang Shaotian to think twice before he started again.

“Listen, buddy,” Huang Shaotian decided to try a different tactic then — one that worked with the majority of the people he used to have to deal with on a daily basis — and sent Yu Wenzhou one of his signature friendly grins, “I honestly have no use for an SS agent, and I don’t want you to waste your potential here. So why don’t we sit down, have a nice talk, and see if I can find you a new, more fitting employer, huh?”

Yu Wenzhou’s lips tightened into a firm but determined line at the other man’s suggestion, and when he glanced up to meet Huang Shaotian’s gaze, Huang Shaotian’s heart was trembling at the inkling of gritty resolve — an absolutely contrasting image to the elegance of his gestures and the warm tone he spoke with — reflecting bright in those dark eyes.

“I do not wish to serve anyone else but you. You see, the reason why I’m still here…” Yu Wenzhou swallowed, taking in a deep breath as if he was letting go of a deep secret that’d been buried within him for a long time, and said, “You may not remember this, but the reason that I’m able to survive until now is because of you, and no matter what happens, knowing that I’m more capable than before, I’d like to repay your kindness with my humble service.”

“You’ve completely lost me, man,” Huang Shaotian sighed. With what little he could discern from Yu Wenzhou’s words, he could only assume that they’d met before, a long time ago, perhaps, so long that he had no memory of such an encounter. A part of him wanted to find out more, but mostly, he just didn’t want to deal with this strange man any more for the time being.

He had things to unpack, and a new semester of school to prepare for in a few days.

“Okay, okay, let’s settle the situation like this until we can find a better solution: you can stay for the time being, but you are not under any obligation to… do things for me, all right?”

Glancing up at him from beneath his blond fringes, Huang Shaotian’s tone became a little less aggravated and more frayed on the edges, as if he was too tired to carry on with this conversation, and perhaps Yu Wenzhou could tell, because with a small yet grateful smile, the SS agent agreed.

“Thank you, Master Shaotian, for allowing me to stay,” Yu Wenzhou lowered his head in a respectful bow again while Huang Shaotian walked past the man to enter his unit. He only hesitated a little when he silently retrieved the bouquet from Yu Wenzhou’s offering hands.

The next morning was a Sunday, but Huang Shaotian woke up before his alarm went off. His phone informed him that it was only 5:32 a.m., but he didn’t feel the slightest desire to go back to sleep. The unfamiliar environment made him antsier than usual, and the best way to rid of that discomfort was to get out of bed and physically work off the excessive energy.

But first — as his stomach reminded him rather loudly with an obnoxious growl — he needed to get some breakfast. He quickly took a shower and threw on a set of comfortable clothing before heading out.

“Good morning, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou greeted him from the entrance the moment he stepped out of his apartment.

“Shit, how long have you been waiting out here for?” Huang Shaotian almost skipped back when he saw the agent standing in the same position as he had left him last night. He still looked as impeccable as ever, and Huang Shaotian half wondered if he’d been standing out here the entire night.

Instead of answering with a direct response, Yu Wenzhou merely gave him a gentle smile and said, “I didn’t want to miss the chance to serve you again like yesterday. I learn from my mistakes.”

“I can see that…” Huang Shaotian was a little bit weirded out but didn’t want to elaborate on this topic, so he asked with a hesitant voice, “Um, have you had breakfast yet, at least?”

“I am not certain what dishes would be to your liking, so I have asked the kitchen to prepare a bit of everything,” Yu Wenzhou responded as they walked towards the elevator together, the bodyguard always remaining two steps behind Huang Shaotian — a careful distance.

“You’re not really answering my questions — did you notice that?” Huang Shaotian’s brows dipped into a slight frown, and Yu Wenzhou was afraid that he’d unknowingly aggravated his charge. “Why is that?”

“My first priority is your wellbeing, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou said, slightly taken aback by Huang Shaotian’s question, but he responded truthfully, “please, do not concern yourself over me, for I’m of no consequence at all. Nothing would make me happier than to please and serve you.”

Huang Shaotian noticed the detached way with which the other man verbally belittle himself like it was a normal occurrence, and he wanted to say something about that, but as they entered the elevator and Huang Shaotian glanced over at Yu Wenzhou, who still maintained a respectable distance away from him, his facial expression as smooth and impenetrable as the surface of a mirror, he only said with a shake of his head, “You’re a strange one.”

He didn’t think he had the justification to ask, and he was sure that Yu Wenzhou would not stay here for long anyway. Why made it complicated by getting into businesses he had no right to be in?

Since it was still so early in the morning, the dining hall was fortunately empty. Set up on one single table were breakfast items ranging from western cuisine like eggs, sausages, and cereals to the Chinese usual like deep-fried dough sticks, hot savory soymilk, and rice porridge. On a wheeled cart, there were a variety of teabags and coffees.

“For fuck’s sakes, there’s no way I can finish all this by myself,” Huang Shaotian fell into the chair pulled out by Yu Wenzhou, and turning around with an almost accusing stare, he continued, “you’ve got to help me eat some of this.”

“I cannot possibly—” Yu Wenzhou started.

“Yu Wenzhou,” the man used his name for the first time, amber irises glaring up at him through his blond forelocks with the kind of commanding light Yu Wenzhou found impossible to ignore, and his lips upturned into a forced, cold smile, “Let me rephrase this a little: I’m not asking you to join me at the table; I’m…” he sighed, averting his gaze guiltily when he said his next words, “…I’m giving you a direct order.”

Huang Shaotian was used to people doing what he asked without thinking too hard about it: at home, except for his parents, the caretakers of the mansion would easily do anything the young master requested and would never dare to go against his wishes; and at school, his easy-going attitude and charming smiles effortlessly won over his teachers and peers as well.

Yet when faced with the humble — or rather, self-deprecating — manner with which Yu Wenzhou carried himself around him, Huang Shaotian found it much more difficult to understand the actual intention of the SS agent.

“In that case, I shall do as you wish,” Yu Wenzhou lowered his head in respect and took a seat across from Huang Shaotian, but he didn’t start touching the food until Huang Shaotian finished his second piece of deep-fried dough and consumed half of the soymilk. All throughout breakfast, neither of them had spoken, but Huang Shaotian would occasionally observe the SS agent with what he thought were discreet glances.

By the time they finished their meal, the other residents had finally begun to show up for breakfast. To Huang Shaotian, most of them addressed the newcomer with a stiff but polite enough ‘good morning’, while to Yu Wenzhou, it appeared that most of them were, to varying degrees, acquainted with the SS agent and so were more comfortable with friendlier greetings. Ye Xiu even came over to give the initially startled man a one-armed hug, mumbling something in his ear that only Yu Wenzhou could hear before he stepped away to join Wang Jiexi at his table. While taking a sip of his coffee, Ye Xiu managed to catch Huang Shaotian’s attention and sent him a knowing wink, which Huang Shaotian was utterly perplexed by and so decided to ignore him all together.

Though they had known each other since they were children, Huang Shaotian could tell when Ye Xiu had something up his sleeves, and that wink had been anything but innocent.

“I didn’t realize you’re friendly with Lao Ye,” Huang Shaotian said with an interested expression as they entered the elevator, “or with the others, for that matter. Who were you contracted with before?”

“Ye Xiu-qian bei had helped me in the past,” Yu Wenzhou only said, and then with an almost imperceptible bitter twitch of his lips, he murmured, “though we’d also been compared a lot when we were younger — perhaps since our abilities stem from similar roots — but Ye-qian bei’s powers and his command over it have always been exceptional among the Atavist community, so there was no comparison at all. I look up to him, and he had taught me much about my own abilities.”

“Lao Ye is a monster,” Huang Shaotian agreed with a laugh, “even I’d have a hard time fighting against him depending on the conditions. And what about the others?”

“I have the opportunity to be acquainted with Mistress Mucheng through Ye-qian bei, but I only started becoming acquainted with the others since I started living in Glory Complex several months ago.”

“You acted differently when you’re with them,” Huang Shaotian tried to tread along this route carefully, because he also noticed that even though Yu Wenzhou accepted the others’ amiable approach (sometimes overly so as had been with Ye Xiu’s case), the SS agent still had that aura of invisible armor around him that made it hard for others to get closer. “If it’s a matter of spending time together, does that mean that given enough time, you’ll stop with all this overly-courteous nonsense and start talking to me like a normal person?”

They were about to go into Huang Shaotian’s unit, but Yu Wenzhou stopped short.

“I apologize,” was the first thing that came out of Yu Wenzhou’s mouth.

“Whatever the hell for?” Huang Shaotian raised both of his brows in confusion.

“There is simply no way for me to treat you as I treat the others, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou lowered his head, unable to meet his charge’s eyes, but he continued in a soft yet revered tone, “you are different; you mean so much more to me than the others.”

“You know, it’s funny you say that,” Huang Shaotian shook his head and pulled the SS agent into his unit, closing the door behind them so they could continue this conversation with more privacy, “because I see no difference between myself and those guys down there. I mean, sure, the Atavist community is organized in such an outdated way that some clans are viewed as more ‘distinguished’ and so were given more powers over the others, but we are all essentially the same, aren’t we?”

“This is not what I mean,” Yu Wenzhou took a step forward, as if the chain inside him had suddenly snapped and something akin to desire in the form of a meandering, hissing snake had been set free, breaking the mask of calm that he always hid behind. He kept forcing Huang Shaotian to walk backwards until his back hit the wall and he was trapped between plaster and the man’s fist braced against the wall a mere inch beside his head. The ink in Yu Wenzhou’s eyes darkened, thick and endless like the depth of night, when he whispered brokenly, like a desperate man pleading for Huang Shaotian to understand, “To me, clan politics and hierarchy is meaningless. To me, you — Master Shaotian — you are my one and only concern. Always had been. Always will be.”

“Yu Wenzhou,” Huang Shaotian was overwhelmed by the SS agent’s abrupt change of mannerism, his breathing hitched and heart thundering at the proximity, but his eyes were cold and aloof when all he could see, all he could smell, all he could breathe in was Yu Wenzhou’s face, his scent, his exhales. Still, there was only so much Huang Shaotian allowed himself to tolerate, and this was it; there were too many unknown variables where Yu Wenzhou was concerned, and he didn’t like surprises. He also didn’t like almost-strangers getting into his personal space without just cause. “You’ve crossed a line,” he uttered each syllable curt and clear so that there was no chance of misunderstanding, “get out.”

The darkness in the SS agent’s eyes dissipated, clarity gradually returning to his senses, but it was too late. He’d let the roiling, starving monster within him escape, and in the end, Yu Wenzhou was helpless against its deadly claws, its suffocating yearning. Exhaling shakily, he retrieved his arm back to his side and took a step back, and with another bow of apology, Yu Wenzhou exited the room.

Muttering colourful swear words and running frustrating hands over his hair worthy of a bird’s nest, Huang Shaotian felt his heartbeat slowing down finally, but what got left behind was a strange void that threatened to swallow him from the inside. He recalled those horrifying, beautiful eyes from that one moment of weakness, the simplicity of and faith in his words, and Huang Shaotian had to squeeze his eyes closed in a futile attempt to forget. After several minutes of useless struggling, he began to tidy up his belongings and make this place feel more like a livable place.

“All right, I’ve had enough of this game of hide and seek,” Huang Shaotian breathed out through his nose as he narrowed his eyes with obvious impatience, his golden irises hardening into a sharp metallic tone as the late afternoon sun reflected off of them.

It was his third week living in Glory Complex and second week since the new semester had started. Ever since the first day of class when he hadn’t expected to be picked up from school with a flashy black sedan at the entrance of the university and Yu Wenzhou opening the door for him like he was a foreign prince, Huang Shaotian had very firmly instructed the SS agent to never do that again.

Yu Wenzhou had seemed slightly disappointed then, but with his usual calm demeanor, he only nodded and apologized for causing trouble for his master. Huang Shaotian was about to open his mouth to say something — to reprimand him, maybe, or to tell him again to stop using such formal language around him — but knowing it was no use, the man simply snapped his mouth shut and said nothing.

“Not too shabby for the heir of Ice Rain,” the man — presumably the leader — standing in front of a group of ten, maybe fifteen people with a gun held expertly in his hands, cackled loudly.

“Oh, so you do know who I am,” Huang Shaotian gave them a pleasant smile, shouldering his messenger bag more securely, and said with a subtle warning tone, “you can still run away now before I change my mind.”

“Ah, and an arrogant, smug brat as well. We’ve been ordered to deal with you as nicely and quietly as possible, seeing as you are the only precious son of the Huang clan after all, but I like feisty little boys like you — putting up a decent fight makes the reward that much more captivating.”

His underlings laughed at the crudeness of their leader’s taunt.

“Ugh, you are so not my type, man,” Huang Shaotian wrinkled his nose in disgust, and dumped his bag by his feet, cracking his knuckles in readiness with an animalistic grin stretched across his lips, “give it up.”

With his eyes closed and feeling his own soul reaching out for that of the ancient Ice Rain’s, he followed the strand of familiar light, pulling the thread towards himself and winding it tightly around his heart until he and the spirit of the legendary sword became one. A burst of wind picked up in the narrow alley, and gladiolus flowers surrounded his frame in a whirlwind of dazzling blue and deep violet petals. When the wind finally subsided and the group of attackers could see clearly once more, standing in front of them was the spiritual form of Ice Rain.

All humanistic traits of Huang Shaotian had been washed away and transformed into something more ethereal: azure swirls marked his left cheek, sunlight-gold irises deepened to sky blue, blond hair grew long and styled into a messy ponytail that brushed past his lower back, and the pale blue fabric of his garment, bordered in soft silver, was accentuated by the dark mazarine scarf wrapped loosely around his neck.

He unsheathed his sword, the blade shimmering with a cold gleam befitted of its title, and its commander swept his enemies with eyes of a predator.

“Well?” one of Huang Shaotian’s brows arched upward in challenge. “Am I going to have to waste time kicking your ass one by one or will all of you be fighting me together at once?”

“Get him!” the leader hollered before Huang Shaotian had a chance to taunt them some more, but that was fine with him, too.

Upon the leader’s command, the group split up into two teams and went around the swordsman in an attempt to surround and attack him from all directions. Those with long-distance assault skills began throwing elemental spells at him, as turfs of red angry flames and sizzling balls of electricity, like bursting fireworks, got easily deflected by Huang Shaotian’s blade, ricocheting back to the group and injuring them from the delayed explosions. While this was happening, agile fighters sneaked close to the swordsman’s side and tried to attack him with various weapons: daggers were flung towards him like horizontal raindrops; swords were jabbing and slashing at him with no mercy; and punches were thrown his way in a flurry of rushed movements.

Huang Shaotian, with a choreographed-like dance that allowed him to move in between these bulky bodies easily and gracefully like rivers carving delicately into earth, successfully refracted most of the incoming attacks as he manipulated his sword as if the weapon was an extension of his arm. Within the span of a few minutes, he had injured over half of his attackers with long, bloody gashes on their arms, their backs, their chests, leaving these men heaving and staggering into the nearest wall for support.

“Had enough yet?” Huang Shaotian wiped the splatter of blood that had landed on his cheek with his sleeve, smearing the red across his pale skin and making him seemed more bloodthirsty and impossible to conquer.

Blood thrummed in his ears, and the thrill of the fight made Huang Shaotian hyperaware of his surroundings as he gracefully swung his sword to one side to discard of his enemies’ blood, the liquid spattering against the ground like heavy rainfall. Yet even with his heightened senses, he was too intoxicated by the blood that shrouded around him intimately like a piece of silken cloth. It was too late by the time he heard the cocking of the gun, and a flash of heat surged against and into his right shoulder, the force knocking him slightly backward.

“You fucker—” Huang Shaotian muttered with clenched teeth.

Blood began to seep into the blue of his garment, but Huang Shaotian hardly felt the pain. However, before he could take another step, before the leader could aim another shot at the swordsman, a figure appeared in between them, lithe and abrupt, surprising everyone in the vicinity.

Another shot rang in the air, but everyone was frozen in place by the unannounced appearance of the stranger donned in white.

The bullet hit its mark, though it wasn’t the target that the leader had intended. The stranger’s hand had been in the way of the gun’s muzzle, and the bullet spun its way into his palm and through his flesh and bones, leaving behind a bleeding gap in the center of his hand.

“Yu… Wenzhou?” Huang Shaotian was uncertain, since the man’s physical appearance was very different from the one he was used to seeing, but deep within his body, the soul of Ice Rain was pulsing and responding to the spirit embodied in the other man’s frame. That familiar hue of light, the exact degree of warmth — Huang Shaotian’s heart instantly felt more grounded, though he couldn’t even begin to explain why.

The man turned around and gave him a soft smile; that, at least, was the same smile — harmless yet somehow distant. His eyes were the pale shade of lavender, matching the markings on his forehead, and his long snow-silver hair flowed freely behind his back and over his shoulders, which perfectly complimented the white and purple hues of his clothing, as well as the snake that had made itself comfortable resting around Yu Wenzhou’s shoulders, its head bobbing, pink eyes glazed, and forked tongue occasionally darting out in quiet hisses to taste the particles in the air.

“Your pet?” Huang Shaotian asked with a playful grin, all the while eyeing the snake with a cautious glance. At the sound of his voice, the snake turned its head sharply towards Huang Shaotian, the cream white and pale rose scales glittering in the light.

“Hush, Swoksaar, he is not our enemy,” Yu Wenzhou murmured comfortingly to the reptile, one hand reaching over to gently pet the snake on its head with the tip of his finger, causing the snake to turn its attention back to its owner, and then said in response to Huang Shaotian’s question, “In a manner of speaking. I apologize for arriving so late again, Master Shaotian.”

“You couldn’t have come at a better time, actually,” Huang Shaotian chuckled, and this was when he noticed Yu Wenzhou’s injury. “Hey, your hand…”

“Ah, this?” Yu Wenzhou lifted his injured hand up to inspect it, but he seemed undisturbed and merely said, “This is nothing. Please do not concern yourself over this. I would rather you grant me permission to deal with these gentlemen so as to not dirty your hands further.”

“You sure you want to do this all on your own?” Huang Shaotian’s expression became more somber. Though he knew Atavist blood ran through Yu Wenzhou’s veins, yet the swordsman wasn’t at all certain about his spiritual strength or combat skills; despite this, Huang Shaotian wanted to believe in him.

“Please allow me to take this chance to prove to you my worth and loyalty,” Yu Wenzhou bowed, gaze lowered in humble reverence.

“Then they’re all yours,” Huang Shaotian put his sword back into its sheath with a nod.

“All right, all right, who the hell are you? Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt?” the leader’s patience had been running thin during this short exchange between Huang Shaotian and Yu Wenzhou; he was even more pissed that he was pointedly being ignored by the two youngsters while his underlings were watching.

“And do you not understand the definition of ‘disrespect’, sir,” Yu Wenzhou turned back to the leader with a deliberate slowness that had the other man freeze with a sudden seizure of fear. The Atavist’s pale-eyed stare impaled him calmly like a snake observing its prey, calculating the perfect moment to strike and kill, “when you and your friends decided to harass my master without even identifying yourself?”

The leader swallowed loudly, the arm holding the gun trembling and had to be steadied by his other arm as he took a step back.

“What is the matter?” Yu Wenzhou advanced another step, the corner of his lips twitching up slightly as Swoksaar tasted the waves of avid fear emitted from the men around them, though his eyes remained impassively cold. Curled up along his shoulders, Swoksaar the snake continued to hiss threateningly at the leader. “I thought you wanted to know who I am? Have you lost interest already? Or is it your nerves that you’ve lost?”

“It doesn’t matter who the fuck you are! Whoever is in the way, we’ll get rid of them, too!”

His subordinates echoed the leader’s proclamation, though some of them were doing it halfheartedly.

“Oh, is that so?” Yu Wenzhou hummed, his smile growing wider, adding a hint of sensual maliciousness to the line of his lips. He lowered his head and whispered a command to Swoksaar; without any warning, the snake struck forth, mouth stretched wide with its dripping fangs exposed.

The leader hadn’t expected the swiftness of the reptile; in a second, the gun clattered to the ground uselessly as Swoksaar’s curved, sharp fangs sank deep into the man’s lower arm. Once incapacitated, the snake coiled along the injured arm — now boring two small puncture wounds and a sickly dark red-purple bruise beginning to bloom around that area — and continued its way up until it happily wrapped itself tautly around the man’s throat, its muscles beginning to contract.

The man grabbed onto the body of the snake with both hands to try and pull it off, but the harder he yanked, the more unwilling Swoksaar seemed to let go; he began to wheeze as his lungs slowly but surely ran out of oxygen.

“L-let our boss go, sonovabitch! Call your dirty snake off, now!”

The group of men, who had been so rambunctious before when they had been attacking Huang Shaotian, had suddenly become much more cautious as they tried to approach Yu Wenzhou, but even that degree of vigilance was no use. With a wave of his arm and a dramatic sweep of his wide sleeve, a wall of violet-tinted needles materialized from thin air before Yu Wenzhou, and with another swing of his arm, the needles were discharged.

Upon being shot with the needles, which seemed to have melted as soon as they made contact with exposed skin, the men wailed or swore in agony, tripping and toppling over each other as they dropped to the ground into a mess of limbs. Their skin burned with biting acid, and strands of yellow smoke hissed from affected flesh.

Watching from the side, Huang Shaotian whistled, obviously impressed with the SS agent’s accuracy and skill.

Now that the underlings were no longer a threat, Yu Wenzhou crouched down by the leader, who was still grappling with Swoksaar but to no avail.

“Swoksaar, relax,” Yu Wenzhou ordered softly.

The man felt sweet air filling his lungs once more as soon as the snake slackened its body, and he gasped noisily to regain some semblance of consciousness. He glared darkly up at Yu Wenzhou, but the Atavist simply looked back at him with that frustratingly calm and unperturbed smile.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” the man spitted out.

“I want to know the name of the one who hired you to instigate this.”

“I’m the one who wanted the brat dead!”

This time, Yu Wenzhou was the one who had his fingers clasped tightly around the man’s neck, the tip of his fingers digging painfully into the flesh of his throat with nails sharp enough to draw blood. He lowered his head to speak directly into the leader’s ear, “What was that again? I don’t think I quite heard you.”

The man, shaking feebly against the menacing tone and sharp claws of Yu Wenzhou, muttered a name, and after nodding once to express his approval, Yu Wenzhou let him go and summoned Swoksaar back so that the snake could rest on his shoulders once more.

“What would you like me to do with him, Master Shaotian?” Yu Wenzhou asked once he got back to Huang Shaotian’s side.

“How badly did you hurt those assholes?” the swordsman wanted to know.

“The acid will merely leave small scars after the affected flesh is completely healed. Swoksaar’s poison, however…” Yu Wenzhou paused, glancing over his shoulder impassively to observe the bruising of the wound on the leader’s arm before letting out an amused chuckle, “that man is going to lose the arm, at least.”

Huang Shaotian nodded, satisfied, “let them go, then.”

The group didn’t need another invitation. Those who could move without aid quickly came to their leader’s side and hauled him up, and without daring to look back to the two Atavists, they scampered away.

“So, you wield the spiritual powers of the white snake,” Huang Shaotian commented with an interested glint to his eyes.

“Indeed. Swoksaar is not a separate entity but is actually a part of my spiritual form; we cannot be separated for too long a time.”

They transformed back to their human selves after the last of the enemies had disappeared around the block.

“You know, I could have totally taken care of that bastard by myself, thank you very much,” Huang Shaotian picked up his discarded school bag but hissed in pain when he apparently forgot that one of his shoulders had just been shot with a bullet.

From his own bag, Yu Wenzhou took out a package of dressing and a roll of bandage, and despite Huang Shaotian’s initial protest, the man finally gave up and allowed his SS agent to deal with his injury.

“I have never doubted your abilities, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou was saying while he worked to wind the bandage around the dressed wound with enough pressure to stop the blood flow. “It is simply that, I cannot control myself when I see someone trying to hurt you.”

He paused momentarily as he applied tapes to keep the bandage intact.

“Give me your hand,” Huang Shaotian said.

“Master Shaotian?”

“Your hand,” he emphasized, rolling his eyes, “you know, the one that had a bullet blasted through it?”

“You don’t have to trouble yourself—”

“For fuck’s sakes, Yu Wenzhou, will you please just give me your goddamn hand?”

“Okay,” he seemed a little dazed when he lifted his injured hand out for Huang Shaotian, who took it carefully into his and started to disinfect it as best as he could.

Huang Shaotian had a much more difficult time bandaging him since he had never done this before, but Yu Wenzhou appreciated his effort anyway, his lips lifting up into a gentle smile that Huang Shaotian didn’t spot at all. Yet as his gaze settled onto Huang Shaotian’s injured shoulder, where blood was still seeping into the white of the bandage, his eyes darkened with shame and discontented resentment aimed at himself. He wished he could have taken the bullet for the other Atavist instead; he wished he had done more; he wished Huang Shaotian wouldn’t push him away again. Not like last time.

“Please punish me,” Yu Wenzhou finally said, the syllables heavy, his heart heavier.

“You say the weirdest shit, Yu Wenzhou,” Huang Shaotian shook his head, a little exasperated, a little fond, “and why would I do that? Have you done something terrible that warranted punishment?”

“After all I have said and promised, I’d failed to do what I have set out to do properly. My duty is to protect you from all harm — precisely during scenarios like the one we have just experienced — and yet I wasn’t here when you needed a shield the most; I wasn’t here to take that bullet for you. I’ve caused you to bleed.”

It wasn’t like him to ramble on and on like this, and Huang Shaotian was too distracted by the man’s soothing tenor that it took him a few seconds to process what he was saying. “I do not deserve to be contracted as your SS agent.”

“Woah, woah, woah, okay, let’s slow down, shall we?” Huang Shaotian quickly stopped him from going further. “First of all, this bullet wound? Not your fucking fault. Did you ask those bastards to attack me? No. Second of all, I was the one who forced you to stay away from the campus in the first place, remember? Because honestly, that car is so embarrassing. So, if anyone were to be blamed here, I think I’d be the perfect candidate in this case, right?”

Yu Wenzhou didn’t say anything; he merely shook his head in disagreement, his head and gaze lowered to avoid direct eye contact with Huang Shaotian.

“What, are you saying I’m wrong?”

Still, the other man pressed his lips tight. He didn’t dare outwardly challenge Huang Shaotian, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Huang Shaotian — the one who’d saved him from himself all those years ago, the only one who could light the smallest flame of hope in the dying ambers of his heart with one smile — placing all the blame onto himself on his behalf.

“Wenzhou,” Huang Shaotian called out his name without the weight of his surname for the first time, and he felt the man’s fingers hooked under his chin, forcing him to look up and directly meet his gaze. “Wenzhou, look at me.”

“You want to stay by my side and be my SS agent — fine,” there was a hint of yielding to his tone, and Yu Wenzhou’s heart stuttered when Huang Shaotian looked at him with a hesitant smile, and then his expression turned serious again with his next words, “but I won’t have you blaming and beating yourself up every time I got a papercut or, you know, got attacked by some random wild Atavist clan. I want you to promise me that, as long as I am your master and you are my shield, you will take care of yourself so you can… um, well, so you can take better care of me. You hear?”

He realized belatedly that the last part of his statement could be taken entirely out of context and be interpreted in several ways, yet when he tried to gauge for Yu Wenzhou’s reaction to his longwinded and awkwardly-phrased arrangement, his forelocks were covering any emotion that might be reflected in his eyes, but his next gesture stunned the usually boisterous Huang Shaotian into absolute silence.

As gently and tenderly as he could, Yu Wenzhou picked up Huang Shaotian’s right hand and lowered his head to place a light kiss on the back of it, his breath burning the skin there, like a fiery brand, a silent pledge.

“I promise,” he said, and the smile that followed was one that Huang Shaotian had never seen on the man before: it was warm, but it was the sort of warmth that travelled past the curve of his lips, reached his eyes, making them that much more kind.

“Awesome,” Huang Shaotian said, blinking blankly and five seconds too late with his cheeks tainted a light pink as he quickly retrieved his hand and stuck them into his trouser pocket. “Now then, will you finally tell me what’s up with all these overly courteous honorifics you keep drenching me with for the past few weeks? I want to know why I’m… ‘different’, as you said, compared to the rest of them in your eyes.”

“You really can’t recall?”

“Remind me, will ya?”

They had begun the short walk back to Glory Complex, and evening was fast approaching as the sky was awash with a palette of blazing reds, rich violets, and griseous blues.

“Do you remember a small snake that you’d rescued from a group of children throwing rocks at it? And then bringing it back to your home, where you had to hide it in a warehouse in your backyard because you were afraid someone might find it and throw it away? You must have been fairly young then — five, or six years old?”

“Are you—” Huang Shaotian stopped to turn and look at Yu Wenzhou with disbelief in his eyes, his mouth agape, “—are you telling me that, that tiny, little snake from back then — that was you?!”

With a chuckle, Yu Wenzhou nodded in affirmation.

“With Swoksaar’s spirit resting inside of me, my body was never really stable in between transformations,” Yu Wenzhou explained, craning his neck to stare at the beautiful sky as the painful memory washed over his mind in sheets that threatened to asphyxiate him, “in addition to having a frail physical body and poor mental control over my spiritual powers, I was seen as some kind of lesser misfit in the Atavist community; the humans, of course, would never welcome me as one of their own. So, I was never accepted in either spheres.

“When you found me, I was about to give up,” Yu Wenzhou glanced over at the other man with a light-hearted smile that didn’t quite match the desolate connotation of his words. “But then there you were, shielding me — a dirty, nameless nobody — with your own body, and taking me into your home like I mattered.”

“But… you were gone after like, two days!” Huang Shaotian recalled, “I thought you’d been eaten by another wild animal or something, I was so worried.”

“You were?” his voice remained leveled, but his heart felt incredibly light.

“I guess I worried over nothing though, huh?” Huang Shaotian laughed, leaning against his arm easily like they had been friends for years, the sound a wonderful melody reminiscent of a bittersweet memory.

It was strange to think that just three weeks ago, Huang Shaotian hardly wanted to have anything to do with him, but he understood now — why Yu Wenzhou had been so insistent when they first met, when they saw each other after so many years, a fateful reunion.

“I guess you did,” Yu Wenzhou said with a soft smile.

“Oh, if it isn’t Wenzhou,” Ye Xiu sat across from him, placing down a mug of coffee and a notebook scrawled with messy handwriting on the table.

“Ye-qian bei,” Yu Wenzhou greeted him, glancing up from the book he was reading. He slipped a piece of paper to mark his place in the book and set it aside. “How are you?”

“Pretty good, pretty good,” Ye Xiu replied, then turned to the younger man with a knowing grin, “but it looks like you’re doing very good for yourself, too.”

“Is it really that obvious?”

“It’s okay, Huang Shaotian has that effect on everyone,” Ye Xiu smirked, and then asked with a more serious tone to his voice, “so, he finally remembered?”

“Yes,” Yu Wenzhou took a graceful sip of his earl grey and left it at that.

“Well, I’m glad it all worked out for you, I really am,” Ye Xiu patted his shoulder good-naturedly.

“And how are you and Master Wang getting along?”

“Me and Big Eye?” Ye Xiu hid his face behind his cup of coffee.

“It must be different from when you were serving the Su siblings, surely?”

“That’s, uh, one way of putting it,” he lighted a cigarette and sucked on it like his life depended on it, and this was the signal that Yu Wenzhou could clearly interpret as one that he should stop talking about a certain someone.

“Wenzhou, Wenzhou, I’m back!” the door to the dining hall slammed open and in bounced Huang Shaotian who’d just been set free from school.

“Welcome back, Master Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou gathered his book, excused himself from the table, and went over to greet his charge with a smile.

As the two left the dining hall, with Huang Shaotian chattering about something unfortunate that had happened to one of his classmates that day and Yu Wenzhou attentively listening and nodding at the right places, Ye Xiu happily returned to his previous task of consuming his coffee and making notes on his design.

“Ye Xiu, there you are,” Wang Jiexi sounded unimpressed, though it was subtle enough to not be easily noticed.

“Miss me already, Big Eye?”

“I’ve booked us flight tickets to Sri Lanka tomorrow morning,” Wang Jiexi ignored Ye Xiu’s playful teasing.

“What is it that you’re gathering this time?” Ye Xiu sighed and pulled himself out of the chair. The cigarette, almost burned out, was left inside the ashtray, a lonely trail of smoke rising up weakly from the pile of days-old ashes.

“Alexandrite,” Wang Jiexi said. “I expect you to diligently carry out your duties as my SS agent during this trip. Will that be a problem?”

With a mocking grin, Ye Xiu turned to face the witch, renowned in the Atavist community as a powerful healer and diviner, and bowed before him, right hand crossed over his heart and said, “Of course not, my lord.”

---

A/N: So the next part will be WangYe, but I’m gonna leave this AU for awhile because jfc it has killed me for the last few weeks. Thank you for reading ‘til the end, guys!

#qzgs #tka #quan zhi gao shou #the king's avatar #yuhuang #yu wenzhou #huang shaotian #bowie's crappy writing

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legendofzeldaalinktothepast · 3 years

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Pathetic, Clinging Poetry - Chapter 4 (of 25)

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I feel their burning gazes on our backs. My hands feel dirty, so I let go of yours And hide them in my sleeves.

Your smile fades, yet you understand That my hands have always been pristine. My nails are filed, my skin is soft; But soon, like yours, They'll be tough and callused, Patting down the soil for our garden.

Sunlight shone in through the window and roused Pearl from her sleep; with a tired whimper, she stretched and turned to peer at the clock on the wall. 6:21. While she'd only gotten roughly five hours of sleep, she couldn't recall any of her dreams and felt relatively well-rested; compared to her sleeping habits these past few weeks, that was good enough. As she sat upright and smoothed her hair out with her fingers, she heard the heavy footsteps of Jasper in the kitchen. Pearl pulled herself off of the couch, making sure to fold up her blanket, and quietly wandered into the kitchen.

"Good morning." Pearl greeted, her voice still a bit raspy from sleep.

"Hey." Jasper stirred some sugar into her cup of tea as she sat down at the kitchen table. "How was last night?"

"It was a lot of fun!" Pearl said, leaning against the doorway. "We played some video games, I held one of Peridot's hamsters..." She was also tempted to mention the centipede incident, but wasn't sure if Jasper wanted to hear something that disgusting while she was eating her breakfast. "Oh, and before you ask -- I was not annoyed by her friends at all! We got along pretty well, actually."

"That's good to hear." Jasper said, taking a sip of her tea. For a reason she couldn't put into words, Pearl wasn't quite satisfied with Jasper's response -- perhaps she wanted to hear some sort of apology for how insensitive she'd been towards Amethyst the previous night, but she decided it'd be best to let it go. With a tired smile, she sat down across from Jasper. "I've been doing a lot better, too... I applied for more jobs online, but as you probably know, none have gotten back to me just yet." she said, tracing her fingers along the patterns of the wooden table.

"Don't worry so much about that." Jasper reassured, waving a hand. "I'm not exactly short on money or anything."

"I guess it's not so much about that..." Pearl sighed. "I just... hate sitting around doing nothing all day. I get so bored, and my mind wanders, and I feel useless..."

"Yeah, that makes sense." Jasper shrugged. "Still, though... Wish I could do something to make you feel less shitty about it."

"Don't worry, it's my problem, not yours!" Pearl reassured.

"Yeah, but I care about you." Jasper said, reaching her hand across the table. "Don't want you feeling bad..." With a slight blush on her face, Pearl extended a hand and placed it on top of Jasper's.

"Thank you." she said, giving her hand a little squeeze before finally pulling away. "Perhaps I can find something else to do... But it seems I've already cleaned this place down to the bone, huh?"

"You sure have." Jasper smirked. "How about you go to the library or something? You still like reading, don't you?"

That idea perked Pearl right up. "Ah, you're right! I guess I hadn't really considered that... I brought a few of my favorite books along, but I've already gone through all of them, so... That might be a good idea!"

"There you go!" Jasper said. "Go read some books like the little nerdy girl you are."

Pearl chuckled. "Oh, I'm the nerd? I'm sure you had to do far more reading to become a surgeon than I've ever done in my lifetime."

"Yeah, but I read about organs and diseases and all that cool shit. You, on the other hand, read sappy gay romance novels. Nerd." Jasper teased.

Pearl burst into a fit of giggles. "Oh please, I don't restrict my reading entirely to romance! Sometimes I read nonfiction! For instance, one of the books I brought from home is about the discovery of our solar system! I really love reading about the universe... So perhaps I'll look for something of that sort when I go to the library today!"

"You're just proving my point even more. Nerd." Jasper stuck her tongue out, and Pearl playfully kicked her from beneath the table.

"You're lucky you're my friend." Pearl huffed, keeping a smile on her face to assure Jasper she was in on the joke.

"Ohh, what are you gonna do? Beat me up?" Jasper snorted.

"Maybe I will!" Pearl jumped to her feet and tackled Jasper in a hug. "I'll squeeze the life out of you like an anaconda! Hiss!"

"Oh, fuck! You're strangling me! I'm dead! Nooo..." Jasper pretended to gasp for air, and then suddenly went limp against the chair as if she'd died. Once she felt that she'd won, Pearl finally released Jasper from her grip. "I've defeated the oh-so-athletic Jasper, huh? Never thought I'd see that day."

Before Pearl could even finish her sentence, Jasper rose from her chair and lifted Pearl into her arms, squeezing her even tighter than before. "Not yet!" she said, spinning her around.

"Ah, it seems I spoke too soon!" Pearl giggled as she felt herself lifted from the ground.

After spinning her around for a few moments, Jasper placed Pearl back down on the floor, but the latter was still holding on tight. "Don't wanna let go of me, do you?" Jasper remarked, giving her a little pat on the back.

With a slight blush on her face, Pearl slowly pulled away from the hug. "Ah, right. Can you blame me? I'm touch starved."

Jasper placed a hand on Pearl's chin, tilting her head upward so she could look into her eyes. "What a coincidence, because I am too." she said, her voice just a hair above a whisper.

Pearl's heart raced in her chest; for a moment, she couldn't pull herself away from those golden-brown eyes. But she soon snapped out of her trance, slowly backing away from Jasper. She reached for her hand and gave it another squeeze to reassure her that she wasn't uncomfortable -- just uncertain. "Then... I'm glad we're close enough in our friendship that we can show affection like this. It feels like I never really left..."

Jasper looked slightly disappointed when Pearl moved away from her touch, but didn't want to cross her boundaries, so she didn't push any further. "Yeah, you're right. I'm so glad you're back." With a bittersweet smile, Jasper headed back over to the kitchen table and grabbed her dishes, placing them in the dishwasher. "But uh... anyway. I gotta head off to work soon." she said.

"Ah, right! I hope our little shenanigans won't make you late..." Pearl blushed.

"Nah, not even close. I usually get there pretty early, anyway." Jasper said, giving Pearl one last pat on the back before heading out of the kitchen. "I'll see you this afternoon, Pearlie."

"S-see you!" Pearl said, still visibly flustered from what had just happened. 'What a pleasant way to start to my morning...'

While some aspects of the library had changed -- furniture replaced, shelves moved around, walls re-painted -- for the most part, it was still the same library Pearl remembered from her childhood. They still had some of her favorite farm animal puppets in the kids' section, and she even recognized the familiar faces of some of the library workers.

As she approached the romance section, Pearl couldn't help but overhear the storytime session going on in the nearby activity room.

"...But when Goldilocks sat in the third chair, she found that it was just right!"

The soft, familiar voice alone was enough to cause Pearl's heart to leap with joy; fond memories of her childhood washed over her, and she couldn't resist the urge to take a peek inside. Pearl approached the door and peered into the small window -- but she made sure to just take a quick glance so she wouldn't come off as creepy. A group of small children, sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the floor, were arranged in a circle with a familiar, grey-haired woman as she read aloud from a book. 'Even after all these years, Mrs. Fluorite is still working here and doing storytime...' she thought, a smile spreading across her face. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be that age again, not having to worry about anything other than learning her ABCs or trying not to scrape her knees at recess.

Once she'd snapped out of her nostalgic daydream, Pearl turned her focus back towards the wide selection of romance novels. She dragged her finger across the spines of the books, searching for a title that jumped out at her... but none of them really seemed to catch her eye. So she simply chose the first book she saw -- perhaps it would be interesting, even though the cover was generic! -- and held it to her chest as she searched for somewhere to sit.

She remembered having a favorite couch, somewhere she would often sit together with Rose. They usually went on "dates" to the library with the intent of reading together, but Rose was never much of a reader, and usually ended up falling asleep on Pearl's shoulder instead. She remembered the seat being near a window, but when she approached that same window, she realized the couch was no longer there, and had been replaced with a single bean bag chair. Her heart sank as she sat down, realizing there was only room for one person to sit there, now. 'How ironic...' she thought. Shaking off her negative thoughts, Pearl got herself comfortable -- or at least as comfortable as one could manage in a beanbag chair -- and opened up her book to the first page.

After reading the first paragraph at least four times and not comprehending a single word of it, Pearl placed the book in her lap and let out a sigh. 'This was a bad idea.' she thought, leaning back against the wall. She'd thought this would be the perfect place to keep her mind busy, but all her mind could do was wander. And she hated herself for it, because it was incredibly cliche, but all she could think about was how much she wanted to be on that couch again with Rose resting against her shoulder.

'I wonder what she's doing right now...' Pearl thought, pulling her knees up to her chest. That borderline-romantic interaction with Jasper from earlier that morning had somehow made her even more touch starved, which provoked more pleasant-yet-painful memories of Rose. And the more she thought about Rose, the more she thought about the events that led to them being torn apart.

Her heart ached. 'I'm so childish...' she thought, tears welling up in her eyes. 'What if she's not even around here anymore? What if she moved across the country like I did? Wouldn't that be cruel...' Pearl wiped her face on her sleeve.

Pulling herself to her feet, she decided reading just wasn't what she needed right now. She placed her book on one of the return carts and began to head towards the exit; but not before spotting a colorful flyer hanging on the cork board.

"Looking for storytime volunteers! Must have a passion for reading, and a love for children!"

Ten little strips of paper with phone numbers hung from the flyer; Pearl reached for one of the strips and carefully tore it off. She wasn't so sure how she felt about kids, but reading was one thing she knew for certain she did enjoy. 'If I can't get a job, at least I can give this a try...' she thought. 'It's better than doing nothing all day...' Feeling a bit more hopeful, now, she continued out the door and headed to her car.

"Hey, P." Amethyst greeted when Pearl walked in the front door; she was sprawled out on the couch with her phone in her hand, only paying half-attention to the movie playing on the T.V. "Where did you go?"

"Oh, just took a little trip to the library." Pearl said, taking her shoes off and placing them in the closet.

"Oh, nice." Amethyst said. "Read any good books?"

"Not really... But I did find something that might be even better!" Pearl said, bouncing happily on her feet.

Amethyst sat upright on the couch, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. "And what's that?"

"I found an opportunity to volunteer there!" Pearl said, unable to resist flapping her hands a little. "They need someone to help out with storytime! Doesn't that sound lovely?"

"Oh, like with kids?" Amethyst raised an eyebrow. "You're brave; I could never deal with more than one of those little shits at one time. But I'm glad you found something you like."

"To be honest, it's been so long since I've interacted with a child... There aren't very many in my family, after all." Pearl said with an awkward smile, sitting down on the couch beside Amethyst. "But it can't be that hard, right? I mean, I just have to read from a book while the kids sit there and listen, maybe help serve snacks afterwards..."

Amethyst smiled awkwardly; she was tempted to bring up the possibility that the kids might not simply sit there and listen like they're supposed to, but didn't wanna crush Pearl's spirits. "Yeah, that's true." she responded with a shrug.

"And if I end up not liking it, that's fine, I can just keep looking for more opportunities, but... I want to at least give it a shot!" Pearl said. "And... you know, they seem to be looking for multiple volunteers! So perhaps you could also give them a call, since you have about as much free time as I do! Would you like to do that?"

"Eh... I dunno about that." Amethyst smiled awkwardly. "If it was literally anything else, I'd consider it; but kids give me headaches, so I'll pass. Thanks for offering anyway, though."

"Aw, alright..." Pearl decided to let it go; she'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little disappointed, but didn't want to pressure her too much. "But if you ever change your mind, just let me know, and I'll give you the phone number."

Amethyst began to say something else, but stopped as she heard the sound of a car door shutting. "Ugh, dickhead's home." she said, shoving her phone in her pocket. "Welp, I'm going back to my room."

Pearl's heart sank; if she didn't know any better, she'd think Jasper and Amethyst were the same person, considering she rarely ever saw them together in the same room. "Oh... mind if I come with you?"

Amethyst raised an eyebrow at her. "Uh... you sure about that?"

"Yes?" Pearl said, a bit concerned as to why Amethyst seemed baffled by her suggestion. "You know, it's the only room in the house I haven't seen yet... And I'm curious to see what it's like!"

"Uhh..." Amethyst had a look of uncertainty on her face, but forced a smile so she wouldn't concern Pearl. "You sure? Jasper thinks it's awful and doesn't like when I bring guests in there. It's just kinda... I dunno."

"I'm sure it's fine. And Jasper isn't my boss; she said it herself." Pearl said, rising to her feet and extending a hand to help Amethyst up as well. "Come on, show me! I want to see what it's like!"

"Alriiight." Amethyst said, standing up and heading out of the living room. "But if Jasper throws a bitchfit, don't say I didn't warn you."

Pearl rolled her eyes. "Oh, it's fine." she said, gesturing for Amethyst to lead the way up the stairs. Amethyst complied, holding the door open for Pearl once they reached her room.

Pearl was... intrigued, to put it simply. "Messy" wasn't the right word to describe it; in fact, the only word she could think of that could apply to Amethyst's room was "chaotic". Every inch of the wall was covered with posters, picture frames, canvasses with abstract paintings, or weird knick-knacks one could only find in the shadiest of thrift stores. There was a huge canvas sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by cups of water, paint, and stained newspapers. Her bed was unmade, and covered with a variety of stuffed animals and cloth dolls. She had a desk in the corner of her room, but every last inch of it was covered with more obscure knick-knacks and sheets of paper covered in chicken-scratch handwriting.

"So yeah, now you know why I hesitated." Amethyst said, shutting the door behind them. "I know it's a mess, but I like it this way, you know?"

Pearl approached one of the abstract paintings, dragging her finger across it. "Really, it's not bad -- it's just not what I'm used to!" Pearl said. "My mother's house was so... dull. Barely had anything on any of the walls... And not a splash of color in sight. Everything was either white, grey, or black." She turned back to Amethyst. "Did you paint these?"

"Yep!" Amethyst said. "All of the paintings in this house are mine, even the ones in our stairway. Jasper let me hang up a few of the ones she thought weren't hideous."

"They're all lovely!" Pearl said, clasping her hands together. "I didn't even know you were an artist! You're very good at it, you know."

"Eh, to be honest, I just kinda dick around and throw paint around without any sense of direction." Amethyst shrugged. "Sometimes it turns out sorta resembling something cool, other times it looks like I took a big rainbow dump on canvas. But I'm glad you like them."

Pearl chuckled, amused by Amethyst's odd choice in words. "Well, I think even the 'rainbow dumps' look very nice!"

"Aw, well, thanks." Amethyst said, a slight blush on her cheeks. "I'm glad."

"Look -- this one kind of reminds me of a sun setting." Pearl said, pointing to another canvas. "See? That looks a bit like the sun..." her finger traced a small, uneven, yellow circle off to the side of the picture. "And the colors around it are very reminiscent of a sunset!" She traced her fingers around the surrounding shades of pink, purple, and blue. "Was that intentional?"

"Not really, but I also noticed that after I finished painting it!" Amethyst said. "Like, I kinda paint things without really thinking about it, and then decide what it's supposed to be after I'm done. That... sounds super pretentious when I say it out loud, though."

"Not at all!" Pearl said. "That's unique! I like it." She turned to the current work in progress sitting on the floor; there were a flew splatters of green in each corner of the canvas, but nothing in the middle just quite yet. "And be sure to let me know when you're done with this one; it's looking lovely so far!"

"Pffft, you flatter me wayyyy too much, Pierogi." Amethyst said, giving Pearl a playful nudge. "It's really just a bunch of paint splatters... But, still, thanks." she added, not wanting to dismiss Pearl's kindness entirely, even though she didn't quite feel her art was deserving of it.

"Of course! I'm just being honest." Pearl said with a smile. "Ah, but--"

Pearl was cut off by the sound of a knock at Amethyst's door. "Amethyst?" Jasper's voice called from the hallway.

Amethyst bit her lip, looking at Pearl with an expression that said "oh shit".

"...Yeah?"

"What the fuck are you doing?" Jasper asked.

Pearl pulled the door open, giving Jasper a reassuring smile. "Don't worry -- I asked to have a look in her room! I was curious, since it was the only room in the house I hadn't seen yet... She said you weren't fond of her showing it to guests, but I insisted! So don't stress, alright?"

Jasper's expression was hard to read; she barely looked at Pearl, her glare boring right into Amethyst instead, who had her fists clenched at her sides. "That's all?" Jasper finally asked, her gaze softening as she turned it towards Pearl.

"Yes, Jasper." Pearl sighed. "Seriously, it's fine. You don't have to defend me from Amethyst. Now come on, let's go start dinner."

"...Alright." Jasper's tone didn't sound very convinced. She put a hand on Pearl's shoulder and guided her out of Amethyst's room. Amethyst sat on her bed with her arms crossed, refusing to look at Jasper or Pearl. "Yet I'm the insecure one..." she mumbled just under her breath. Jasper must not have heard this, or at least didn't care, because she didn't even react; Pearl, on the other hand, felt her heart sink at hearing Amethyst's tone of voice.

'Something isn't right here...' she thought, crossing her arms and refusing to look Jasper in the eye as she followed her down the stairs. 'I don't know what's going on between them, but... I really hope it doesn't get any worse.'

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