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divine-mistake · 3 years

Text

'till death blooms us art

Summary: You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

Characters: Sam Wilson/Plus-sized Reader

Warnings: 18+ (no smut), strong language, Hanahaki AU, angst with a happy ending, weight insecurity, allusions to eating disorders, talk about death, blood, past domestic abuse and trauma, gun violence, original male character, book quotes, anxiety

Word Count: 12796

A/N: Thank you for reading! This fic won the vote during my 500 follower celebration and it's finally out now! This story has a lot of meaning for me, due to it being a bit of a metaphor for disorderly eating. I know that will make some people uncomfortable, but as someone who has struggled for a long time, I want to talk more openly about this kind of thing. Anyway, thanks so much for sticking with me and I hope you enjoy!

main masterlist | AO3 | playlist by @tripleyeeet

—STUBBORN WEEDS—

They are everywhere—covering the space of the sitting room like an overgrown garden made of glass and paint, canvas and pages torn from old waterlogged books, stained mugs filled with decaying brushes. Wanda walks through your room like it’s a maze, her fingers trailing over the air but never touching the art. She’s pretending she’s in a museum, or a gallery, or something fancier than what you could ever appear in, but a twinge of something akin to warmth stabs through your heart at the thought.

“These are incredible,” she says, not looking at you. “How do you do it?”

With a shrug, you bend down and pick up one of the canvasses from the floor, holding it out to look at it.

“I don’t know,” you lie.

White space in the shape of flowers, uneven and missing petals here and there, is outlined in streaks of paint that go every direction, in every different shade, hard edges and soft, blurred lines and covering the entirety of the canvas except for those spaces where flowers once sat, pinned to the medium.

“They are beautiful,” Wanda says.

Your nail sneaks under one of the dried chunks of acrylic and you chip it—a fleck of ultramarine blue falls from the painting.

When you turn, Wanda studies a different piece in careful hands. It’s a glass case, trimmed with shitty, shaky lines of gold you painted on a whim. But inside, between the thick panes, dried flowers painted over are encased in eternity, arranged to match their exact placements on the canvas where your brushes stroked life onto them, around them, through them. Two perfect pieces that once belonged together, separated like an act of Adam against his God.

Maybe they were meant to be together, but no one will ever know their story.

“They’re amateur,” you tell her, laughing. “I’m not much of an artist. It’s just for fun.”

She smiles at you, placing the glass piece down. “You have a talent.”

Wanda takes another turn about the room, another circuit, another spin. She looks at every piece in such focus, taking in every single detail, fingers stretching and curling as if she wants to caress the dried flowers, the dried paint, and feel their meaning. You wonder what she would say if she could read their minds—the art you’ve made. Would your pieces tell her the true meaning behind their existence? Or maybe they would laugh, or cry, or howl in pain.

But Wanda only stares, at the paintings and at you, a small smile on her face like she knows something you don’t. Like she’s keeping a secret. Is she keeping the secrets that the flowers have whispered to her when you weren’t looking?

“What inspired them?” she asks, the very tip of her nail tracing a different glass box filled with dyed petals reconstructed into a larger artificial flower, protected by its own display.

You wring your hands together. “I like flowers.”

She laughs. “That’s obvious. But what makes them special enough to paint? To—To make such lovely art out of?”

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you place the small canvas you’d been holding back on the side table, crossing the room to your bookshelf. Your fingertip finds the spine of a hardcover book you’re too familiar with, pulling it out and into your awaiting hands. Sheets of paper, a little bent and crooked, stick out of the pages.

You crack it open, the dulling white petals of a daisy pressed flat between the crackling spine fluttering from between the black inked words, then fall to the floor at your feet.

“The Devil’s hand directs our every move,” you read. “The things we loathed become the things we love.”

Wanda stares at you as you fiddle with the book, tracing the words of the cover.

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” you say. “The Flowers of Evil.”

Gently and without word, she bows at your feet and picks up the drying daisy, cradling it in her pale hands, but you don’t have the strength to take it from her.

(“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I had to run some errands this morning, y’know how it is, so I’m out of the Tower right now. I was just wondering if you needed anything while I was out. Anything—really, anything at all. Even breakfast, or maybe a latte? Just a little pick-me-up. Well, give me a call back if you need anything. If not, I’ll be back soon. See ya.”)

—BETTER TOGETHER—

“Steven Grant,” you say his name like a curse, shaking your head. “This is why you spend three hours a day in the gym.”

Too busy shoving the first bite of his first hoagie into his mouth, Steve doesn’t reply. You roll your eyes, but the smile on your lips gives you away. When he’s finally swallowed, wiping crumbs from his mouth, he looks a little indignant.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Well, you would be if you didn’t have that serum running through you.”

He frowns, brows furrowed, a little confusion on his face. “I thought it was because I work out three hours a day. And I’ll have you know—”

“—you work out six hours a day between your morning runs and training, I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before Steve.” You groan at the thought. “It’s like it’s your job.”

“It is my job. Saving the world and all that.”

“Okay, you really need to let America know that it’s giving you a complex, ‘cause if I hear one more thing about you saving the world, I think I’m going to scream.”

He shrugs, taking another gigantic bite out of his sandwich. Scraps of shredded lettuce fall out from between the buns and litter his plate. You pick at your own, pulling uneven pieces of sliced onion and stray pickles from the hoagie, content to sit and stare at it instead of eating.

Food is good. You brush the grainy crumbs of bread from your fingers. Food is good, but you just aren’t hungry. And you don’t work out three hours a day. Maybe you should start. Your body feels like a balloon with all your insides threatening to come up in a retch and choke you. Food is good. Food is good. You just have to pick up the sandwich and eat it.

Fingers shaking, you take the sub in your hand and stare at the corner where you mean to take the first bite.

“You good?”

Steve, still chewing, looks at you with concern clear in his crystal blues and it makes you put your food back down on the plate. Instead, you busy yourself with another sip of your water, nodding at him.

“Yeah. We can’t all be Steve Rogers, demolishing two hoagies in less than two seconds, y’know.” You throw in a snort, trying to sound nonchalant. “Wipe your mouth, Captain. You’ve got mayo on your cheek.”

He doesn’t, but him grabbing a napkin to embarrassedly wipe a nonexistent condiment from his face gives you enough time to pick your sandwich back up and contemplate taking the first bite. You’ve just gotta start with the first bite and the rest will go down.

But you aren’t hungry. How can you be hungry when you’re already so full? Stuffed, even. There isn’t room in your insides. All your organs are bursting. It’s so painful sometimes, the expanding of your skin to accommodate. Waves of sickness roll through you, spreading. Your stomach is stretched, bloated, filled with all the swallowed—

“What are you doin’ to my girl, huh Steve?”

The sound of his voice alone makes the ache inside of you dissipate, the nausea escapes from your throat, the anxiety twitching through your hands steadies. Your head perks up, shoulders rolling back as your entire body relaxes, and you look behind you.

And there, dressed in a tight blue polo and a pair of pants clinging to his legs like they were made for him, the very angel who blessed you, the devil who cursed you, the god of the fucking sun and everything it could ever touch, stands before you with a smile saved just for you.

Sam Wilson.

His dark eyes are piercing, like he’s trying to peel back the layers of your skin to see underneath, as he shoves his hands in his pockets and grins with all his teeth.

“Hey honey,” he says—simply and easily and not serious. Never serious.

Your lungs burn. Your mouth feels too dry to answer him.

“Oh, your girl?” Steve asks him, brows a little too furrowed to be joking. “When did she become your girl?”

Sam shrugs, walking toward the empty seat next to you, placing his hand on the back of your chair so dangerously close to your body that it makes you pull in a deep breath. His thumb could brush against the fabric of your shirt, run along the seam of your spine. And, goddamn, it should be illegal for him to look so casual and so unbothered while still looking that handsome.

Like this, you can smell the spice in his cologne, a powerful mix of something you’re sure is designed to drive you crazy.

He looks down at you, still hovering over where you sit, and throws a wink your way that brings heat to the surface of your cheeks.

“Aw, she’s always been my girl, ain’t that right? Tell him, darlin’.”

You stare at Sam for one second too long, breaking away to gaze down at your uneaten sandwich again. With every flutter that Sam sends down your stomach, the heaviness inside it seems to fade away. Your fullness is replaced by a familiar hunger—the rawness of your throat waning as a burning itch takes over. A cough is threatening to bubble up. You choke it back, smiling instead.

“He’s right, Stevie,” you say all bright and cheery again.

Steve meets your eyes with a stony gaze, unreadable, his blue eyes looking gray in the light. Beside you, Sam throws himself down in one of the chairs and pulls up to the table, hand still sitting on the back of your seat. His knees are spread a little wide, thigh resting against yours.

It’s so innocent but your brain thinks it’s so intimate. A lie. A lie.

In the end, Steve relaxes back, his eyebrows lifting as he watches the scene unfold in front of him. He tosses one of the sticky plastic menus toward Sam, nodding at it.

“Order up, man,” Steve says, his tone more neutral than you think you’ve ever heard it in regards to Sam. “But I’m not paying for yours. You’re on your own.”

At that, Sam laughs, full and robust with his face up to the ceiling. He rocks back in his chair, shaking his head, and he looks so beautiful even in the shitty sub shop that Steve drags you to for lunch every other week that it makes you ache and your lungs contract in an attempt to cough.

You swallow it back again, trying to even out your breathing. The itch in your throat is so bad that you almost pick up your sandwich to eat again, but your hand passes it up to take another few sips of your water. It’s cool, clear, refreshing—but it can’t make the tickle of the cough go away.

“So,” Sam starts once he’s finished ordering his own hoagie, “how’s that apartment hunting going? Found anything good yet?”

A frown forms, heavy, on your lips. You pick off a flaking piece of bread from your sandwich, watching it turn to crumbs underneath your fingers.

“It’s going,” you say, but anyone who ever responds to a question of how’s it going with it’s going is absolutely lying and it is absolutely not going—and maybe Sam knows that, or maybe Steve does, or hell, maybe they both do but it makes you look weak to admit that things aren’t going so well out loud.

And you—you can’t admit the truth, so it’s just better to lie about it.

You don’t want to leave the Tower.

“It’s going, huh?” Sam asks, his tone proving that he can see right through you. “You need help looking at some places or something?”

“Well—”

“You know,” he barrels through your words as if they are nothing, “I think I actually know a realtor around here. Maybe he can get you some leads on rentals or something. I could make some calls for you, honey.”

It’s not supposed to—Sam only means well, he always does, always trying to do so much for people—but it hurts to hear. Because you don’t hear him saying that he’s trying to help you out. You hear him saying he doesn’t want you around the Tower anymore.

Because, well, why would he want you there?

To him, you’re just an outsider. A girl who doesn’t belong. Someone who daydreams and doodles flowers on every surface as soon as she thinks of him. And you always think of him.

Before you can think about it, your hand flies to your mouth reflexively to hold back a cough. Instantly, Sam’s leaning closer and that damned hand of his falls soft against your back.

“You okay?”

There’s barely a moment for you to nod, signaling that you’re fine, before Steve’s got on his game face, all hard lines and furrowed brows and thin lips pressed tightly together.

“Hey,” he says, grabbing Sam’s attention. “She’s allowed to stay as long as she wants, alright? The Tower is her home now, too. So there isn’t a rush for her to find a place unless she wants to leave.”

The passion and care in Steve’s voice is strong, almost so overpowering it’s oppressive, and something rises up from within you and threatens to send salty tears careening down your cheeks if you don’t blink them away.

Sam raises his hands in front of him dramatically. “Okay, okay, I get it. I wasn’t trying to run her off or anything, just wanted to lend a hand if I could. Damn, Steve.”

Something changes at the table, then. It’s like a fog, thick and cloying, falls over the three of you and keeps you lethargic—so much so that the only words spoken in the next few awkward minutes are Sam’s thanks when the waiter brings his sandwich by.

You still haven’t even touched yours, and you hope it seems like you’re just waiting for Sam to get his, because Steve’s tearing into his second and by the looks of the mustard dripping down his fingers messily, he’ll be done any minute now.

But as you prop your head up on the table, leaning on your elbow boredly, Sam nudges his leg into yours to grab your attention. When you turn to look at him, he’s got that grin again, all pearly and white with the little crooked gap you think you could stare at forever as long as it meant he was smiling and laughing and happy.

“You gonna eat, girl?” Sam picks his sub up in his hand and gestures at you to do the same. God, he makes you dizzy just by talking. The butterflies in your belly are fighting tooth and nail against your organs, trying to take up all the space, but they aren’t really butterflies. The soft monsters in your stomach leave a taste on your tongue you can’t explain.

“Oh.” You mimic his movement and then Sam toasts his hoagie against yours with a chuckle.

“First bite,” he says, and there’s no thought in your head or balloon in your stomach and no bloated skin to make you second guess yourself.

You follow Sam, sinking your teeth into the bread of your sandwich, and its flavor explodes over your tongue just enough to take away all the bitter, floral, fragrant taste of the daisies that are building up in your stomach, their petals choking you out, downy fluttering things inside you.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I was coming to see if you wanted to grab a bite with me for lunch, maybe at that little Italian place you like to go to around the corner? Or maybe sushi or something? Been a while since I got to go out for lunch, so I thought I’d ask, but I guess you’re busy right now. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Enjoy your lunch.”)

—NEW BEGINNINGS—

You’ve got to call him. You have to. You have no choice anymore.

Danny is on the other side of the locked door, his fist pounding on the wood and threatening to cave it in from the repeated force. The sound is louder than it should be, really, echoing off the tile of the bathroom you’ve barricaded yourself inside. He’s shouting above the sound.

“You fucking bitch. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna fucking kill you. You lied to me? What else are you lying about, huh? You fucking whore. I took you in, I gave you a home, I gave you everything. Fucking fat slut—how many other guys are you sleeping with, huh?”

None, you had answered earlier when he was questioning you in your shared bedroom, his fist tight around your soft arm and squeezing so hard it made you want to scream. None.

But that wasn’t the answer Danny was looking for. And, well, once he threw you onto the ground and stomped to the dresser, clothes strewn around the room as he furiously ripped through it until he found the shiny black firearm you didn’t know he had, you were gone.

But there was only one place to go and that was the bathroom.

Now, trapped inside, you know you have no choice. You have to call him—the man from the coffee shop you’ve been going to regularly for a few months. The man who noticed the bruises Danny always left on you after a rough night. The man who pressed and pried and tried to do anything to get you to open up to him even as you refused over and over again. The man who put his number in your phone because he wanted you to call him if you ever needed him, not because he was a hero, but because he was worried about you.

You press the number two on speed dial. The phone rings.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Steve?” Your voice is nothing but a sob. “Steve, you were right.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, but you hear the rustle of clothes and a jingle of keys on the other side beyond the static, a sound that makes you almost cry with relief or hope or maybe just stress.

“Hold on,” he tells you. “FRIDAY is pulling up your address. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Are you safe?”

“Bathroom,” you’re able to mumble out from behind the waterfall of tears rushing down your face. “He’s locked out but—but I’m scared.”

“I’m on my way. He’s not going to hurt you. I promise you.”

And then Steve hangs up, and you wish he hadn’t because now you’re left all alone with just a flimsy wooden door, painted fucking white so the blood will show up real pretty when Danny kills you, between you and your boyfriend.

Well, ex-boyfriend if you get out of here alive.

“Four fucking years!” he shouts from outside. “I gave you four fucking years of my life, you stupid bitch. I put up with your dumb fat ass for four years and this is what you do? Is this love? Do you think this is love?”

You figure anything is love as long as it doesn’t look like this. The ring of bruises around your upper arm from Danny’s grasp is already turning black and blue, a sight that makes you flinch.

Honestly, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. All the cash you were stashing should’ve been hidden better. You knew better. A shoebox up on the top shelf of the closet? Amateur. You should’ve cut a section out of one of your prized books or something. Danny never fucking reads. He probably doesn’t know how. He would’ve never found all the money if you’d stashed it there.

“Six thousand dollars!” he roars, punching the center of the door. The wood bends slightly. “How long’ve you been fucking stealing from me, huh? Fucking bitch. Stupid fucking bitch.”

And then it happens.

Danny’s fist breaks through the first layer of the door with a curse of pain falling from his lips. Then, a laugh. He’s laughing.

“I’m gonna kill you.”

He punches the door again and then his hand is through, wood splinters shattering and flying toward you, and with a scream you shield your face with your arms and duck down. You’re sitting beside the bathtub, squished against the toilet, and you scoot back as far as you can trying to wedge yourself to safety.

But there is no safety here. Danny’s bloodied fingers find the doorknob and unlock it with a click, and it’s over. It’s over. It’s fucking over.

With a kick, the door comes flying open and you’re screaming again at the top of your lungs, throat tearing itself raw. Danny’s broad frame possesses the entire room as he shoulders his way inside, his lips pulled back to show all of his teeth in a feral grin, the overhead lights catching the shine of the sleek gun he’s carrying.

You can’t even look at him. All you can do is stare at his back in the bathroom mirror hanging over the counter, your mind completely devoid of thought.

“Fuckin’ dead,” Danny says, and you don’t see him aim the gun at you. You stare in the mirror, right in the mirror and memorize the pattern of the plaid jacket he’s wearing, how the colored stripes form new colors, how the fabric all blends. It’s a pretty shirt. You bought it for him two Christmasses ago. He looks good in it.

You are going to die.

Then, suddenly, you can’t see the plaid anymore. Instead it’s a gray shirt on a much bigger body blocking out the mirror, and when you turn your head to look, Steve’s there.

Steve’s here.

He’s got Danny in a chokehold, grappling for the pistol in your boyfriend’s hand. Ex-boyfriend. Despite Steve being completely unarmed—he’s Captain America for christ’s sake, a goddamn super soldier, he doesn’t need a fucking weapon—he easily brings Danny down to his knees and onto the floor, kicking the gun away from their bodies and out of the bathroom completely.

“Fucking whore,” Danny manages to spit out, the sound strangled as Steve’s arm buckles over his neck. “You’re fucking him too, huh? I’m gonna kill you.”

“Shut up,” Steve grits through his clenched teeth, pulling Danny toward the destroyed door. “You’re done.”

They disappear from the bathroom in a tangle and thrashing of limbs. Danny curses the whole way down the stairs, struggling to break out of Steve’s grasp you presume. He’s a fighter—that’s what he always said. Dog meets dog eats dog world, he would tell you. You can’t ever trust anyone.

And, well, he certainly proved his beliefs. You had the bruises to show for it. The scars as evidence.

Sitting alone in your wrecked bathroom, still sprawled out on the tile, you stare down at your hands. The lines run deep in your palms, fingers stubby and chubby and not at all feminine. Too small to grab Danny the way he always grabbed you. Too soft with fat to deliver a good punch.

You don’t know how much time passes before a much larger hand enters your vision, slowly, like approaching a kicked mutt on the street, and when you don’t flinch, Steve lays his fingers across your palms. Apprehensively, you grab onto his hand, and he squeezes back.

Looking up, he’s crouched in front of you, the beginnings of a bruise forming on his left temple. With your free hand, you reach out and let your fingers brush over it, but Steve just smiles at you.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here,” he says, gently tugging on your hand. You hold onto him a little tighter and let him help you up off the ground, his arm immediately sliding around your waist to steady your shaky legs.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” you say. “The money I saved…”

You don’t even know what happened to it. For all you know, Danny burned the cash. Or stashed it somewhere else.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” Steve says in a soft voice. “I’m taking you back to the Tower. The police are dealing with Danny right now. Can you help me pack some clothes for you?”

And so you sat on the bed among your wrecked bedroom as Steve picked through the messy drawers that had been pulled from their dresser, some articles of clothing crumpled on the floor where Danny flung them in his mad search for your secret money stash. And the gun. You almost forgot about the gun.

Steve helps you pack, his face only a little pinker than normal when you’re shoving your intimates into the black duffle bag he fished out of his car, and then he’s helping you slip on your sneakers and guiding you out of your house.

You don’t say goodbye to it, though. That house. Even after four years, you don’t call it home. In a lot of ways, you’re happy to watch it disappear from Steve’s rearview mirror, hoping you’ll never be back.

“They’re going to love you there,” he says quietly in the silence of the car, both hands tight around the steering wheel. He glances over at you, then back at the road. “You’ll fit right in. You’ll be safe. Right at home.”

But you think Steve is a bit of an optimist. Homes, you think, are for people who are loved.

(“Hey honey, just me here. Look, I remembered you saying something about how you wanted those, what were they called, the fairy lights for your room? The ones that look like Christmas lights? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You’re too short to do it yourself, girl, you know that. Anyway, give me a call if you want to, or just come down to my room and get me, anytime. I’ll be waiting. Talk soon, honey.”)

—KEEPING SECRETS—

Wanda hums a tune under her breath. “I just can’t wait to get out of this place! It’s been too long. Mission after mission after bloody mission.” She sighs and starts to apply a thick coat of mascara, eyes wide as she stares in the mirror.

“Agreed,” Natasha says from somewhere behind you. The sound of her bare feet on the bathroom tile is the only warning you have before she sidles up beside you, gracefully lifting herself up onto the counter and sweeping various cosmetics aside to make room.

You’re still undressed, standing in your panties and an old t-shirt with a stretched out neck, just finishing up your eyeshadow when Nat taps a black bottle on the marble top near your fingers.

“Want me to do your eyeliner?” she asks.

A few months ago, you would have seen it as an insult—a beautiful, dangerous woman telling you in less words that your makeup looked like shit. Now you know it’s an expression of Natasha’s unending love for you. A willing act of service. A small thing she can do for you.

“Yes please.”

Natasha motions you forward, between her legs, and when she takes your face in her hand you close your eyes.

“Pretty colors,” she says, probably about your eyeshadow.

“Thanks,” you reply, and then you feel the cool wetness of liquid liner right on your lash line as she begins to paint a wing on your lid. “You always look pretty.”

“So do you.” She blows softly on your left eye. “It’s like you never need makeup, I swear. Are you even wearing foundation?”

A smile works its way onto your face. “Nope.”

From beside you, Wanda giggles.

“Slut. You’re so perfect it makes me want to scream sometimes,” Natasha says, tongue clicking her teeth as she finishes off your right eye.

All the breath seems to leave you in that moment. Like someone punched you straight in your gut, your bones like the gel shock-absorbing layer protecting your organs. Your eyes want nothing more than to shoot open, but Nat is blowing cool air over the newly formed wing and you force yourself to relax so you don’t mess everything up.

“I’m not perfect,” you tell her. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“Don’t deflect.” You hear her cap the eye liner and set it down on the counter, then her palms engulf your cheeks. Slowly, you let your eyes open, blinking gently.

She’s staring at you, eyes narrowed.

“Just because I’m beautiful doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful,” she says, simply, as if it’s just easy for her to not compare herself to anyone else. “If you’re perfect, you’re perfect. Doesn’t matter if I’m perfect, too. And that Wanda is perfect. Or that anyone is perfect.”

Natasha takes your chin in her fingers and grabs a tube of lipstick—the one she and Wanda always tell you to wear because it looks so damn good on you.

“Your beauty and your worth doesn’t come from other people.” She runs the silken rouge over your lips. “It comes from who you are, not comparisons to other people.”

And, god, you want to scream at her. You want to shout and tell her that she isn’t allowed to say that to you when she looks the way she does—slim and picturesque and every human being’s wet dream. She doesn’t get to say that you shouldn’t compare yourself, with your heavy chest and your wide hips and all your soft pockets of skin, to someone like her. To someone like Wanda. To anyone else that doesn’t need liposuction with a side of diet pills, please.

You can’t be perfect, because if you were perfect, if you were enough, you wouldn’t be dying in agony every night over someone that doesn’t look twice at your too-large stomach and your too-large thighs.

They’re just trying to make you feel better, but all it does is make you feel worse.

“Look,” you say when she’s done with your lipstick, “I get what—”

In a split second, your chest is wracked with hard coughs, lungs struggling for air. It’s choking you, your own insides, and you’re hacking and wheezing and grasping at the bathroom counter and Natasha’s hands are on your shoulders and Wanda is slapping your back in hope that it will help and someone, somewhere, is saying the word heimlich and you can taste it on your tongue like old wallpaper from the 70s, floral and disgusting and toxic and ugly.

You throw your arm over your mouth, smearing your lipstick. It doesn’t help. Natasha is looking at you, eyes wild. You’re coughing and coughing and you think you taste blood underneath the overwhelming velvet on your tongue.

They’re saying your name. Shredded petals are between your teeth.

And then you break, pushing past them to the toilet, skidding on your knees until you’re doubled over and retching. It’s all burning acid and fresh flowers. Rot and fester and earth and greenery. A pair of cool hands—Wanda’s, you think—rest upon your forehead and move your hair away from your face.

Vomit and daisies leak from your mouth until your stomach is done contracting and your insides are empty. All that’s left is your sputtering coughs that taste caustic and beautiful.

It’s getting bad.

When you finally pull away from the toilet, slumped back and wiping your mouth, the toilet is full of an explosion of crisp white and bright yellow, tinged with the faint pink of blood. Wanda is glancing back and forth between you and the unflushed toilet, horror stitched on her face.

Before Natasha approaches, a glass of tap water in hand, you lean over and flush the petals down the drain. The look you shoot Wanda is pleading, but you don’t even know what you’re asking for.

Everything on the inside hurts, burning like a pit of snakes in your belly, hissing and spitting venom and biting into you like they mean to kill you. Perhaps the daisies have grown fangs. Your lungs feel chewed.

Nat places the glass in your shaking hands, her fingers holding your own as if she knows you can’t do it yourself. She helps raise the glass to your soiled lips and you gulp the water down like it’ll flood the valley unfolding in you.

“Who is it?” she asks, her voice calm but her eyes uneasy. You nearly choke, a hand pressing against the middle of your chest as if you need to feel your lungs as they work to assure yourself of your own survival.

“What?” you barely eke out, throat thick and scratchy. One of Wanda’s hands strokes down your back and she doesn’t speak, only shakes her head.

“Who is it?” Natasha repeats.

You look away.

“God.” Wanda sniffles behind you. “How could we not have realized?”

“Because it doesn’t happen,” Nat says, shifting from crouching in front of you to sitting on her knees on the floor, a hand resting on your thigh. “I’ve never known a single person—until now, I guess—who had it. I thought it wasn’t real.”

“They tell it like a fairytale in Sokovia,” Wanda says, her words just as watery as her eyes. “A story you lull children to sleep with! But I should have seen it. We should have seen it.”

A new abundance of petals tickle the back of your throat.

“All that art,” Natasha hisses, but she isn’t looking at you. She’s glaring down at her lap.

“All the daisies,” Wanda cries. Her head drops against your shoulder. You feel the wetness of her tears.

“It’s okay,” you tell them, but your voice is too small. “It’s okay,” you say, louder this time, tasting the flowers like they are the blood of your bitten tongue.

“Who is it?” Natasha asks again, a begging in her voice you don’t think you’ve ever heard before.

“It’s okay,” you say again.

And with this, Nat’s face changes from one of concern to something of realization—like she’s been struck with a thought she never considered, like she’s seen the future.

“It’s him.” Her jaw is slack, staring at you even as Wanda looks at her with confusion etched on her visage. “You have to tell him.”

“No,” you say simply.

“This is bad,” Nat snaps, as if you don’t know it already. “This is getting bad. You need to tell him or you’re—you’re going to die.”

A laugh breaks through the bathroom, echoing. “How can I tell him? How could I ever tell him that I love him when the simple fucking fact that these flowers are growing—rooting—in my goddamn lungs is proof that he doesn’t love me the way that I love him?”

You lean back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

“Sam Wilson doesn’t love me the way I love him,” you whisper.

The tips of Natasha’s fingers catch the tears you don’t feel streaking down your cheeks like the screaming of shooting stars, hot and bright and dying.

“It’s sort of beautiful, don’t you think?” Your nails dig into the fat flesh of your thighs, trying to puncture skin. “To make art of your own death. To make something lovely out of something so tragic.”

You can’t swallow it back this time. A cough wracks through you, jostling your bones, and you fold yourself in half as soft white petals emerge from your esophagus and choke you. You grind them against the backs of your teeth with your tongue, trying to mash them into nonexistence, but it’s not enough. You retch another wave of daisies into your awaiting hands.

Wanda calls your name and it sounds broken.

“Death like this,” you rasp, catching your breath, “is the most beautiful way to go.”

Your finger drags over one of the downy petals, a bead of blood catching on your skin and smearing across it like a brushstroke of paint, ruining it.

“Death like this is the only way I want to go.”

(“Hey beautiful, it’s me again. I heard you were going out with the girls tonight—I hope you have fun. I just wanted you to know that if you need a ride back home, or you get into trouble and need a hero, or anything, really, I’m just a phone call away. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I’ll be up if you need anything, at least ‘till you get home. Have fun, girl.”)

—INNOCENCE—

You’re beginning to ask yourself if the mirror lies.

It doesn’t. You know that. You’ve been trying to find the lies in it for years at this point, pinching and pulling at all the places you find are thicker than the women you see on TV, the women you see floating around the Tower, the women you’ve seen on the arms of Sam Wilson. Chubby hands caress down your soft belly, poking and prodding the skin you wish you could make disappear. The mirror never lies.

But you wish it did when you stare at yourself and all you see are the bruises beneath your eyes, the hollows in your cheeks, the drained look in your gaze. The longer you stand there, the less you recognize yourself.

You aren’t hungry anymore. You never get hungry—the flowers filling up all the space in your stomach, coughed up from your lungs and swallowed back in pieces. Perfume is what your mouth tastes like now. Perfume and iron. The vomiting hasn’t stopped since the night your secret was revealed to Natasha and Wanda.

And you’ve never looked better.

That’s the part you hate. The part where when you look in the mirror and you can see the places where those daisies have shaved you thinner. It almost makes you laugh. People say you pack on the pounds when you find love. Maybe they should try having toxic flowers take root inside of them and slowly steal their lifeforce while they watch the person they love never love them back.

It’s a slow process, this death. You wonder which will kill you first—the starvation or the suffocation.

The walk down to the gala is as equally exciting as it is dreadful. You’ve never been to a Tony Stark gala before and you’re eager to dance the night away with your friends. But you’re also exhausted.

Oh well. The makeup helps you look less like a corpse and more like a dancing queen. The dress, which you’re sure someone paid far too much money for, is part of the solution. It’s all flowy and gorgeous as if you are a Greek goddess meant to be worshipped and highlights your figure while hiding all the imperfections the mirror seemed to find.

And when you finally enter the room, classical music playing from the live band and people laughing loudly and champagne twirling about the floor for people to take, the first thing you see is him.

Grin taking up his entire face, lighting up the entire ballroom, dressed beautifully in a navy suit that makes him look utterly dashing, is Sam Wilson.

He’s surrounded by people—women who are better dressed than you are—so with a shaky breath and a pain in your lungs, you quickly turn on your heel and head toward the next familiar face.

“Woah there, doll, where you hurryin’ off to?” Bucky, hair neatly pulled back and wearing a black suit, grabs you by your waist.

“Nowhere,” you blurt. “The bar. I just got here.”

He raises a thick brow at you, a silent question, but when you choose not to answer he shrugs.

“Well I can’t refuse to escort a pretty lady, can I?” With a charming smile, he holds his elbow out to you and gestures for you to grab on. You slip your hand around his arm and grasp him tightly, shooting him a grateful smile.

“Thanks, Bucky.”

But as the two of you start dodging through the crowd of excited party-goers, on your way to the bar in the back, Bucky stops short and gets a look on his face that you’re not quite sure you can describe as mischievous, but it’s close enough to make you frown.

“Y’know what,” he says, glancing over at you with that boyish grin, “I think we should take a spin on the dance floor instead.”

“Oh no,” you tell him, eyes wide. “I can’t dance—”

He snorts. “I’ve seen you dance around the kitchen, doll.”

“I can’t dance in front of all these people.”

“Can’t is a word for losers.” Bucky closes his hand over yours, locking you to his elbow. “Don’t wanna be a loser like Stevie, do ya? Oh Buck, I can’t stop fighting, gotta teach ‘em a lesson. Oh Buck, I can’t rinse out my cereal bowl, I gotta go for a run.”

It makes you laugh, maybe a little too loud, but it eases you just enough for Bucky to pull you into the menagerie of dancing couples, and then he’s moving your hand from his arm and onto his shoulder and clasping your other in his fingers.

“There we go.” His eyes shine like the ocean sparkles under the Tower lights.

Bucky has something magic in him, you decide, after two songs of him swinging you along the floor. He has something magic that makes everything so easy, which is something so admirable after all he’s been through. He has you laughing and smiling and spinning across the room with so little effort you forget all your worries in an instant.

“See?” Bucky dips you in his arms, making you squeal with glee, collecting the stares of the people peppered around the room. “Knew you could dance, doll.”

Panting, you rest a hand on his chest, still giggling. “Only ‘cause you’re so good.”

“Song’s over, Buck,” a new, familiar voice cuts in. When you look up, Steve is standing there, eyes crinkling with his own smile. “I can’t wait for another.”

At that, Bucky rolls his eyes with such drama it has you laughing yet again.

“See? I told you. It’s all can’t this, can’t thatwith Stevie. But fine.” Bucky guides you by the waist over to Steve, passing your hand over, and then gives you one last grin with all his teeth. “I had fun, doll. Thanks for dancin’ with me.”

“Anytime,” you tell him, and then Steve’s adjusting your grip on him. The song changes from the upbeat tune Bucky was twirling you to down to a slower classical piece.

“You doing okay, sweetheart?” Steve asks, his eyes roaming over your face.

“Yeah,” you hum. “Bucky and I had a lot of fun.”

Steve’s grip at your waist tightens a little. “No, I mean in general. Are you doing alright?”

There’s worry there—in the wrinkles on his brow, the blue skies of his eyes, the curve of his lips. You know he’s staring at you and seeing everything the mirror told you. All the gaunt places. The hollow, haunted look you’re parading around. The weight you’ve been steadily losing. You know he sees it.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, and you wonder yet again if the mirror ever lies. You know you do.

Steve sways you gently, more carefully than Bucky had. Steve dances with you like you’re made of something fragile. You still don’t understand why. You don’t know why he ever looked at you and saw something important, someone to protect. Maybe it’s just how he was born to be.

“You can tell me anything,” he says, so seriously that your heart breaks a little.

You move your hand from his shoulder and up to cradle his cheek, smiling.

“I know, Steve. I know.”

And if he pulls you into him, crushes you against his chest, and holds you like that for the rest of the song, no one mentions it. Steve lets you rest your head on his shoulder and, not for the first time, you think this must be how it feels to have a family.

But then the lights in the ballroom brighten a little and a spark finds its way into the music, changing into something jazzy and fun, and someone slaps Steve on the shoulder.

“Alright Rogers, she’s ours now.”

There, dressed like she could kill a man with her heels alone, Natasha has her arms crossed over her black satin gown. Beside her, in a red, flowy dress, Wanda has her hands on Nat’s shoulders, giggling from all the bubbly you’re sure she’s consumed.

Steve pulls away from you with a chuckle, holding his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright—she’s all yours, ladies.”

With that, Natasha pounces on you, and the three of you start to shimmy the night away together.

You lose count of the songs you spend dancing with them, sweaty and out of breath and having the time of your life, before you wave them off and step out onto the outside patio where hardly anyone is loitering. You pass up a couple sitting on a bench, cuddled up in the cool air of New York, and leave a man smoking a cigarette to himself.

Instead, you find a lonely bench far away enough from the gala that you can hardly hear anything but the bass strings resounding through the building. There, you sit, and turn your head up to the stars you can’t really see anymore.

“You okay, girl?”

Startled, you whirl around to face the object of your affections, standing behind you with his hands shoved casually in his pockets. He isn’t wearing his usual smile. Just staring.

And then you taste dirt. Freshly upturned soil coated in congealing blood. You cough into your hands and hear him approach, laying a warm palm on your back as you choke the daisies down and down and down, swallowing as many as you can, the pungent taste still ripe in your mouth.

“Honey,” he calls out all smooth and sharp like whiskey. “Honey, are you okay?”

You lick the blood from your lips. Sam crouches before you, gathering your cold hands in his, looking up at you with such a fucking expression that you want to kiss him so solidly he can taste the vines growing up your throat. You want his tongue to taste the soil of your suffering—the flowers of your own doom.

“I’m worried about you,” Sam says, his dark eyes searching your face for something.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, just as you’ve been telling everyone.

“You’re not looking so good these days,” he murmurs, and you recoil.

“Wow.” The hurt in your voice is so palpable it makes you cringe. “Thanks, Samuel.”

You move to get up from the bench, heart twisting, but Sam grabs your arms and cages you there.

“I didn’t mean it like that, darlin’, you know better than that.” He gives your arms—too soft too wide too fleshy too—a squeeze of reassurance. “You’re not painting much anymore either. You think I wouldn’t notice?”

Sam holds your gaze until it’s too much and you have to break away.

“C’mon, girl. Are you even sleeping?” Sam shakes you a little. “Eating?”

The flowers of evil root in your chest. See, you know how this book ends. You don’t need to read the last page to find out. It’s just as Baudelaire wrote, you know: “My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.”

Your organs have been replaced by daisies. Sam Wilson won’t love you—not tonight, not tomorrow, and not in time.

So you shrug, forcing your lips to curl into what you think might be a smile.

“I can’t paint. I’ve got too many flowers to press,” you tell him. Sam’s visage morphs into confusion, and he shakes his head slightly. He doesn’t understand. He won’t understand.

You take his arms from your body, holding his hands for a split second, long enough to steal their warmth and imagine what it would be like to hold them every single day, and then you pick yourself up off the bench and give him a wave.

“See you inside, Sam.”

And you leave him there, confusion still frozen on his face, the gritty blood ripping shreds in your damaged throat as you swallow it again and again and again in an attempt not to taste it anymore.

(“Hey, uh, it’s Sam. I was just calling to, uh, y’know, remind you about the gala. You have a date yet? I didn't ask anyone. I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. Try not to kill me with your good looks tonight, you hear? Save a dance for me, baby.”)

—THE SUN AND ALL ITS STARS—

Dishware rattles into your room, signaling Nat’s arrival. By the time you gather the energy to sit up in bed, she’s already entering, a tray of food in her hands and an icy look on her face.

“Breakfast in bed,” she says monotonously.

You shift and pull your duvet up as she fits the tray over your lap. There’s not much—a sweating glass of cold water beside an amber glass of apple juice, two slices of buttered toast, and some melon she cut up.

“Thanks,” you say, voice strained and weak.

Natasha doesn’t leave, but you wish she would. She seats herself on the edge of your bed, staring you down as you sip on your water. You purse your lips in frustration, but pick up the fork and begin to poke at the fruit.

“Eat,” she says.

“I’m trying,” you grumble back. “Stop staring at me.”

Natasha throws her hands up on the air. “Well if I don’t watch you, you’ll just sit here and waste away,” she snaps. “You’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, hell, you aren’t even coming out of your room anymore. You go to work, you come home, you don’t talk to any of us. Steve says—”

“Steve doesn’t know anything!” you shout, interrupting her. As soon as you do, her eyes narrow into slits and you shut your mouth, gulping. That wasn’t what you wanted to do.

Natasha takes a deep breath. “Steve says you’re still looking for a place.” It’s eerie how calm she keeps her tone. “Leaving isn’t going to stop them, you know.”

Even now, not doing anything but staring at the food in your lap, you can taste them like a funeral home, saccharinely floral, covering the smell of death.

“I can’t stay here,” you say.

“You’re dying,” Natasha stresses. “Please. Please, I am begging, krasavitsa. I’ve not begged for much in this life. But I am begging you to please, please tell him. Tell him or consider the other option.”

Two options in the scale, tipping weights. To die or to have the roots of true love carved out of your lungs, peeled away from where they wrap around your heart.

You stab your fork into the tender flesh of the melon. It gives way so easily, letting the tines puncture it. Natasha stares at you, her gaze heavy. Your fingers fumble with the fork and it falls, clattering, to the tray of dishes.

The blood is too hard to swallow anymore—it builds up in your mouth and stains your teeth red, the petals colored pink when they fall from your lips.

“Okay,” you whisper. Maybe you don’t even say it aloud.

“Okay?” Natasha asks. You nod your head, not looking at her.

“I’ll tell him.”

It takes you hours, it feels like, to gather the courage. With all the energy you have left in your bones, muscles only satiated a little by Natasha’s breakfast, you drag yourself out of bed and to your bookshelf. It’s memorized, the place where your book sits, and you pull it out with a gentle tug of your finger.

The Flowers of Evil, its pages nearly chock-full of pressed daisies that have ejected themselves from your body, eager to find the man you love and spill all your desires to him. You thumb through it, gaze flitting over all the damn flowers that have dried in this damn book, and you close your eyes in order not to cry this time.

You press the book tight to your chest, feeling the desperate beating of your heart echo through it, and you head to Sam’s room.

The walk is long and lonely—the Tower feels empty. Devoid of people. You’re a little glad because you’re sure that anyone could see the sickness painted on your body, the illness from inside you that’s staining your outsides. It’s not anyone’s fault but your own, really. The flowers are too beautiful to supplant.

And now, you’re in front of his door, a fist raised to knock, a loud buzzing in your head that keeps saying no, no, no. But your heart, traitorous thing still hammering away in your chest, it just keeps saying yes, yes, yes, finally.

Sam Wilson doesn’t love you.

But do you have any other choice except to take a garden spade to your lungs and dig them out of your chest cavity, to destroy your ribcage and break through the mulch that makes up your nervous system? Is the only option left to die at the hands of Sam or to wither away until your decomposition will feed the very things that killed you off?

You shudder a breath and knock on the door. And you wait. And wait. And wait.

He doesn’t come. He isn’t there. He doesn’t love you.

The tears come suddenly—unexpectedly. They are hot and stricken and fast. They drip off your chin and careen down your neck and dampen the collar of your shirt and your hands are trembling, grasping your book too tightly, to even begin to wipe them away.

You don’t know why you’re crying. You already know this. Sam Wilson could never love you the way that you love him. Sam Wilson is perfection, you know. He possesses the strength of gods, he radiates love, he’s passionate about every fucking thing he does. He’s beautiful. He’s everything and you are nothing when standing next to him, but you love him. You love him.

Sam Wilson doesn’t fucking love you.

“Well,” you laugh to yourself, “I can either die a fool or live a life without you.”

I can either die in love or live my life not knowing what it feels like to be in love with you.

Something tickles your tongue. You reach between your lips and pluck it from your mouth, letting it sit upon the center of your palm. Blood drips down your arm like a river, violent and sooth.

The daisy covers your entire hand, white petals tinged with pink reaching toward your fingers. The center, all yellow florets seeming to seek out warmth, are so bright and full and so big—these are too big, they could choke anyone, anyone, they are choking you.

And like them—god, just like them, just like these daisies that grow from your lungs and destroy you from inside out—you are heliotropic. Everywhere you go, you’re focused on the sun, looking for the sun, stretching toward the sun.

You need the sun.

So you crumble the daisy in your hand, fist tight, blood still easing from between your fingers. You back away from his door, then turn and break away to head back to your room in silence.

You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. Just calling to let you know that Steve and I got called for a mission. It looks like an emergency, wheels up in ten and all that. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. To Steve, I mean. Just in case. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness.”)

—FAREWELLS—

It happens faster than you think it will. You swear you have weeks, or a month at least. You swear you have time.

Four days later, your knees buckle and slam into the wooden floor beneath you, stomach contorting and contracting, balloon finally bursting. Someone is shouting your name from the common room, something is knocked over, scrambling. You barely hear it over the sound of your own vomiting.

On your hands and knees, you stare down at the lump of flowers you couldn’t swallow back. They’re coated in a mixture of soil and blood and stomach acid, but the sweet perfume scent breaks through the rest and makes you retch again. It smells so sweet. So sickly sweet. Dead people and churches.

Did churches always smell so much like blood?

There’s a hand on your shoulder. It’s pulling your hair from your face. Someone is saying something—something—something you can’t make out over the blood rushing between your ears.

You’re dying. This is it.

You collapse upon the ground, rolling onto your side, arm thrown over your mouth as if that will stop the flowers from pouring out of your body. And when you blink, trying to see through the dizziness, it’s him again.

The god of the fucking sun, your sun, mouth moving frantically as he says things you can’t hear and the little gap in his teeth that makes you feel at home when he smiles at you and his eyes, oh, Sam Wilson has eyes that set you on fire and burn you alive and you’d be happy to die like this, you’re so happy you get to die like this, so thankful that the daisies chose you, so thankful you chose him.

You were right. Death is so beautiful like this.

“It might be too late.”

Helen Cho’s heels clack on the tile of the medbay’s room as she shoos the nurse out with a wave of her hands, shaking her head. He shoots to his feet, fingers already curled into fists, and he shoves them in the pockets of his jacket to hide them.

“Too late?” It’s impossible for him to keep his voice low. “How can it be too late? What even—What’s wrong with her?”

She frowns at Sam, folding her hands together in front of her.

“It’s… rare,” she says. “Some of us didn’t think it was real, to be frank with you.”

His brow furrows. “What is it?”

“A disease caused by unrequited love,” Helen says plainly, staring straight at him. “Typically, the patient finds themselves in what is regarded to be true love, but the feelings are not returned, so they build up. It’s theorized that the stress of that creates the problem.”

Sam swallows and it tastes like vomit. “Unrequited love?”

She ignores him, continuing, “The part that is normally so hard to believe is that flowers begin to grow inside the patient, the roots puncturing their lungs and creating masses that eventually will suffocate their host.”

It’s a bag of bricks to his stomach. A super soldier punch to the gut. A bomb blown up in his face. Sam doubles over, clutching his middle, trying to breathe again. He can’t breathe at all. The flowers. The flowers.

“It seems she was swallowing them in an attempt to save herself,” Helen explains. “It’s what kept her alive much longer than she should have been. But now, I don’t know. It may be too late to save her. If she’d just said something earlier, than the surgery might have been able to stop it, but—”

“Surgery?” Sam asks, still gasping for breath. “What surgery?”

“You can extract the roots,” she tells him, glancing at the sleeping woman in the sickbed. “It’s a difficult procedure but it would have saved her. But, from the very little research we have on it, removing the roots also removes the feelings entirely. The love that the patient has disappears. They aren’t able to ever feel anything for that person ever again.”

He falls back into the plastic chair, his limbs numb. Or, at least that’s what he wants to do. But Sam doesn’t. He steadies himself, crosses his arms over his chest, plants himself so firmly there in the hospital room that he doesn’t think an earthquake can move him, and looks at her.

She’s sleeping, but she doesn’t look at peace. Her eyes, lovely things, are sunken in and it makes him so mad. Her collarbones have shadows beneath them and he feels fury wracking his own bones. And how long has it been since he’s seen her smile?

“Do the surgery,” he demands.

“You know I can’t do that without her consent,” Helen says, sighing.

“Then I’ll wait until she wakes up and get her consent,” he seethes through a locked jaw.

Helen’s face doesn’t change. “She might not wake up.”

“She will.”

Sam doesn’t get it. He understands—in a way—but he doesn’t really get it. He knows why she wouldn’t want to get a surgery like that. But he loves—he loves just as fiercely as she does, and that’s why he understands. Why he knows.

So why did the flowers pick her? Why would they pick her and not him?

Helen glances down at her feet, says nothing, and turns to exit the room. He’s left there in the silence, with the crowing of the machine keeping her alive to punctuate all his thoughts. If there is one thing he hates in the world, it’s feeling helpless.

He lowers himself in the plastic seat, leans his head back against the wall, and closes his eyes.

“You’ll wake up,” he says to her, but he can’t look at her.

Or maybe he’ll wake up and it’ll all be a dream.

There’s a soft rapping of knuckles on the door, and it opens slowly and quietly, and Sam has to lock his fingers around the arms of his chair to keep from jumping up and sending a right hook right at Steve’s face.

“How’s she doing?” Steve has the audacity to ask, has the audacity to look worried, has the audacity to pull up another plastic seat next to Sam.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he mutters under his breath, spite burning his tongue.

Steve glares at him. “Yeah, that’s why I asked. What’s your problem?”

“My problem is you, Rogers.” Now, Sam can’t help but stand, towering over the super soldier. He immediately grabs Steve’s arm and hauls him out of his chair, through the door, and out into the hallway. Steve stumbles, a hand on the wall, and Sam’s nostrils flare.

“How could you do this to her?”

“Me?” Steve sounds genuinely taken aback, but Sam doesn’t buy it. “What are you talking about? Helen told me—”

“I thought you loved her, too!”

He really did. That’s why Steve brought her to the Tower, didn’t he? That’s why they go out for lunch every other week and why Sam never gets a chance to take her out himself. Why he always makes sure to say goodbye to her before a mission, like he doesn’t want to leave her behind. He really thought Steve loved her too. If he had thought for one second that Steve didn’t love her...

“What?” Steve’s jaw slackens. “Not like that! She doesn’t—She’s not in love with me, Sam!”

He pants, unable to catch the breath that’s leaving him like a slow leak.

“Then who the hell is she in love with?”

Steve stares at him, a look that Sam can’t recognize, can’t name, in his eyes. Steve stares at him and smooths his hand down his beard, shaking his head.

“She’s in love with you,” he says, and Sam chokes.

Because all the pretty things in his world lead back to her and man, if she loved him, it would all be so perfect that he would never want to leave it. He would never want to say goodbye. He’d ask god and anyone else who would listen to grant him a deathless life so he could look at her forever, with no end in sight, because he would. He would. Sam would love her forever.

“No,” he says, a dry chuckle escaping his lips. “That can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” Steve says.

“That’s impossible.” He backs up, against the wall, holding his head in his hands and staring at the floor. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Steve repeats, staring past Sam and through the window of the medbay’s room to look at her, lying so still in her bed. “I know it is.”

“Steve, I’m in love with her,” Sam confesses, an ache in his chest. “It can’t be me. I’m in love with her. I’m so fucking in love with her.”

A heavy hand clasps his shoulder, and when Sam looks up, his breathing unsteady, Steve has a look of regret smeared all over his face.

“But does she know that?”

And, for the first time in years, Sam cries.

(“It’s me. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”)

—SINCERITY—

Sam Wilson thinks she’s starlight.

When she first arrives she’s a collection of stars and their ashes, explosions and deaths, supernovas and black holes and earthbound meteorites.

What he means by that is she’s covered in bruises but she’s so beautiful, and he wants to gather her in his arms and tell her it’s going to be okay.

Steve introduces her, and Sam tries to bite his tongue, but all his words pour out of him anyway as she holds out a hand to him and he takes it, soft and trembling, and he knows she’s special somehow. She’s special.

“You’re the prettiest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” he says, and he means it, but she ducks her head and tries to hide the little smile on her face.

Sam Wilson thinks the world of you. But even when the bruises fade, you’re still left with all the land and the water and the galaxies hidden in your eyes when he catches your gaze, and he looks at you and he swears that you’re reaching into his chest and taking his heart in your small hands and squeezing him dry. You have realms inside of you, he’s sure, all the worlds and all their wonders. But you—you look at Steve like that sometimes, and then Sam is just grateful that you even let him breathe in your general atmosphere.

He can fly, sure, but he certainly isn’t an astronaut, so this is about the closest he can get to you.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

—TRUE LOVE—

The first thing you see is the ceiling, hazy and sleep-filtered, but it looks just like the ceiling in that bathroom, back in Danny’s apartment, back when you thought the pain of love was bone crushing, before you knew the pain of love was slow suffocation.

It makes you stutter back to life and that sends you into a coughing fit. You can still taste them—the daisies. They taste like the rawness of sunlight.

Hand pressed against your chest, your eyes dart around the room, trying to catch your bearings. There’s an IV in your arm, the bed railings are plastic, Sam is sitting in the corner, the lights are dimmed.

Sam Wilson is sitting in the corner.

You gasp, looking at him, and he’s staring right back at you, a familiar book in his hands.

Sam Wilson is sitting beside your bed, holding The Flowers of Evil, and the look on his face is far from happy to see you. It’s not anger. And it’s not sadness. It just… is. And Sam is never “just” anything.

Even if he thinks that sometimes, like the times when he calls you and says, “It’s just me,” as if he isn’t something special, so important you can’t live without him in your life.

Well, you can’t live with him, either.

After a solid minute, Sam looks down at the book between his dark hands, and he begins to sift through the pages. He stops sometimes, lingers on the sheets of dried daisies that have been pressed, their color leaking onto the text only slightly. But then he moves forward, searching for something. You don’t know what.

“How long have you been here?” you ask, throat sore when you speak.

“How long have you been in love with me?”

Your teeth gnash together, bite into your bottom lip, worry a sore there as he doesn’t look at you. He just keeps flipping through the book as if he didn’t just thrust a dagger straight through your heart, as if it isn’t beating so fast and hard like it’s trying to stay alive. You feel like you can’t breathe and you don’t know if it’s the flowers crawling out of your lungs and trying to get to him or if it’s the fact that he knows.

You can’t answer him.

Sam stops on a page, his finger trailing over the script, and then he begins to read.

“And yet

to wine, to opium even, I prefer

the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;

and in the wasteland of desire

your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.”

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” he says, shutting the book with a thump and striking his palm with it. “Baudelaire sure had a lot to say, didn’t he?”

Your mouth is suddenly so dry. There’s a pink pitcher of water next to the bed, just like a hospital would have, and you reach weakly for it. Sam grabs it immediately, pouring you a cup, and passing it gently to you. You gulp what you can down through the straw, hardly breathing.

When you finally feel like you aren’t going to cough your lungs up into your hands again, Sam takes the cup back from you, and embarrassment is a cold shiver down your spine.

He sits back down beside you, looking straight at you. “Do you want to get the surgery?”

Your lips part to speak, but he interrupts.

“Be honest.”

Chewing your lip, you take a deep breath. “No. And I never planned on it, either.” From the corner of your eye, you see his jaw tighten.

“Why not?”

“Because what is a life without the fucking sun, Sam?” The words are spat from your mouth. “A life spent not loving you—not knowing you, not feeling you anymore—it wasn’t worth it. Because I love you, Samuel Wilson. I have loved you since the day I met you and you told me—told me I was pretty for some goddamn reason. And I’ve loved you every day since. I love everything about you and there is not a single iteration of life that I would want to live if it meant not loving you.”

This time, nothing tastes like blood. It’s all just daisies, like they’re populating your mouth, changing the way your tongue works, turning to paste in your teeth. It’s so strong that it hurts. Like you’re eating paper valentines and crying too many tears as you say goodbye to a body in a casket.

But it’s beautiful and lovely and gorgeous because you swear that, somewhere beneath it, you can taste what you think love might taste like.

Sam doesn’t speak and it hurts, but it tosses your book down on the side table and reaches into his pocket and it still hurts. He pulls out his phone. You swallow down the rising earth in your chest.

He pulls out his phone—no, it’s your phone. He turns the screen toward you and punches in your password. You furrow your brows. When did he learn your password? But it doesn’t matter, really, because he just swipes to your call log and pulls up your voicemails. And then he begins to play them.

“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Have fun, girl. Save a dance for me, baby. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”

The sobs fall from the broken seal of your lips, loud and crashing, like a waterfall. Your hand, shaking and weak, comes up to try to cover your mouth, but Sam lunges forward and catches your wrist in gentle fingers.

He’s looking at you like you’re everything—and you know, you know now that you are—to him.

“You’ve been saying that this whole time?” you ask, a laugh bubbling up from your lungs. No flowers retch up your throat.

Sam smiles, lips pulling back to reveal that gap in his front teeth.

“You haven’t been listening, baby girl. I’ve been tryin’ to tell you I love you for months.”

He rests his forehead upon yours, and as close as he is, all you can smell now is the spice of his cologne. Nothing smells floral.

“I never would have thought,” you whisper. “I was sure—so sure—that you didn’t love me. I thought because of the flowers, I thought that meant for sure that you didn’t love me. I mean, why would you? Why would you ever love someone like me?”

“Honey,” he says, so softly, “you’re starlight.”

Tears flood your cheeks and Sam cups your face in his large hands, wiping them away with gentle thumbs.

Sam Wilson is sunlight. You never considered that you could be starlight.

“Why wouldn’t I love you, darlin’? You’re so good, so gorgeous, so perfect.” He laughs and it makes you laugh too, but it comes out like a sob. Your heart feels lighter. “But you’ve never considered yourself worthy of love before, have you?”

“I’m sorry,” you cry. “I’m so sorry, Sam.”

He hushes you, soothes you, smooths his palms over the planes of your face and over your hair,

“You don’t have to be sorry, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.” He presses a warm kiss to your forehead and the memory of every single time he’s kissed your forehead like this flashes through your mind, an electric current, and you wonder how you never saw it before now.

“I love you,” you say, and this time, your lungs don’t feel as though they will burst from the pressure, the roots, the vines twined around them. You don’t feel choked by petals. You don’t taste blood in the back of your mouth.

“I know,” he says, “and if you let me, I will spend the rest of my days with you convincing you that you are worthy of love, honey. Because I’m in love with you. I’m so in love with you.”

When he presses his lips to yours, he doesn’t taste like flowers. Not like the daisies that wrote your death sentence. He tastes like golden pools of sunlight, warm and wanting. This is your heliotropism. You are a magnet for him, Sam Wilson, god of the fucking sun.

And maybe he’s phototropic, always drawn to you, moving toward your starlight.

(“Hey, it’s me. Sorry I missed your call! I’m on my way home now, and guess what? I have a surprise for you. It’s a bit ironic, but I think you’ll like it. What do you think of the name Daisy for a baby girl?”)

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x plus sized reader #plus sized reader #sam wilson angst #sam wilson fanfiction #hanahaki au #sam wilson fluff #thanks for supporting me!#divine masterlist #the flowers of evil

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escapewriter · 3 years

Text

Midnight Coffee

pairing : mingyu x reader

synopsis : who knew trying to finish your essay at a 24 hour cafe would earn you a free cup of coffee.

genre : very fluffy, humor, my attempts at trying to make it flirty, flustered gyu🥺

word count : 1.5k

a/n : I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKED WRITING THIS AND MADE MYSELF SAD. then i made my friend read it and it made her feel so single lmao. i apologize for any typos.

svt written masterlist || main masterlist

Your head fell forward, body jolting in reaction to try and keep you awake. Your droopy eyelids attempted to fight off the slumber your body craved. I need to finish this paper.

You thought working on your homework at a 24 hour cafe would help you stay focused and encouraged; it doesn’t.

Sitting up straight, you fixed your glasses and stared hard at your computer.

It was currently 12:24am. Anyone, whoever at this godly hour, who passed by the window of the cafe would see a stressed college student who had no clue what they were doing.

Staring at your computer did no justice for you, but only gave you a headache. Yippie.

You rubbed your temples and decided to eat your cold muffin that was bought hours before entering this predicament. The muffin did nothing but fill your empty stomach. A small nap shouldn’t hurt, right? I have some time to spare.

Your eyes snapped open when you heard someone clear their throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll continue working. Don’t kick me out please.” Still half asleep, you typed on your keyboard; an unintentional keyboard smash.

Your mind failed to register what the worker had said after leaving a coffee cup at your table and returning to their station behind the counter. Looking at it, you took a sip of the warm liquid, a new fire igniting within you as you pressed the backspace key and typed away.

The cup was empty by the time you finished your paper. Although you weren’t satisfied with the finished product of the topic, it was finished. I have a week to fix it before it’s due anyway. How extra of you to finish it so early.

You sighed happily and checked the time on your computer screen. 1:02am, I need to head home. You began to pack your things, the only remaining item on the table is the coffee cup. You shrugged, mind hazy and not remembering how that got there or if you bought it earlier.

Throwing your trash away, you went back to your table to retrieve your bag before freezing in your spot. Quickly you sat down and took out a book, opening it to a random page. You lifted it high enough to make it look like you were reading, when in reality, you were staring at the gorgeous man that was on the opposite side of the room, reading a book too.

Your mouth fell agape, eyes focusing back on the book so it wouldn’t be that obvious if he caught you staring. If only Seungkwan was here so you could whisper yell at him.

Why have I never seen him before? You shook your head before glancing back up, making eye contact with him, then quickly averting your eyes back down, biting your lower lip in embarrassment.

The man at the table smiled, thinking you were so cute trying to be subtle. You failed to notice your book was upside down.

You slowly looked up again, seeing his brown orbs stare back at yours as you quickly looked away again. You squeezed your eyes shut, fuck it. You closed your book, putting it back in your bag and grabbing your things before standing up. You made your way over to the man, his eyes never leaving yours, a small smirk on his lips.

Okay, you got this YN. He’s just a very attractive man that's all. No biggie.

“This seat taken?” You glanced over to the chair that was across from him. He gestured his arm, signaling to have a seat. Taking your place, you took a deep breath in.

“Now, why are you here at 1 in the morning and only reading,” He smiled and closed his book, crossing one leg over the other, “I could say the same thing to you Princess, although I do envy your talent.”

You tilted your head in question. He cleared his throat, “Reading the book while it’s upside down,” Your cheeks began to heat up as you purse your lips, “very talented may I say. You think you could teach me?” The man leaned forward, a smug look on his face.

You narrowed your eyes, and straightened your back, lifting your hands in the air, “Looks like you caught me, but what can I say? You’ve looked in the mirror before, haven’t you?” He smiled and took a deep breath, “Well, I can’t say I haven’t, but I do look once in a while,” He ran his fingers through his hair, his ego clearly enjoying this.

“Loving the compliment, huh?” You saw a blush creep onto his face and you smiled, “I’m guessing you do.” He shifted in his seat, both of you never failing to lose eye contact.

“Does this prideful man have a name?”

“Mingyu, Kim Mingyu. And you are?” You gave him a cheeky smile.

“What’s the fun with telling you my name? I liked it when you called me Princess.” His eyes widened, not expecting you to be so bold.

He composed himself and leaned back to the chair, “Alright fine, I’ll become one of the guys that play the chasing game, although it did seem like you were after me, no?”

You rolled your eyes, heart pounding in your ears, “Oh please, who’s really chasing now?” He nodded in agreement, “I admit, this is very intriguing for me.”

You shifted in your seat, trying to get more comfortable. “So, Mingyu, tell me. What is it that you do?”

Mingyu began to talk and you couldn’t help but just stare at him. From his dark luscious locks down to his eyes, then to his soft lips, and to his grey fitted suit. God, how is he so handsome? He opened his jacket, pulling out the business cards from the small pocket, showing you, then putting them back in their place. I should really listen to what he’s saying.

“Princess?” You blinked a couple of times before looking back into his dark orbs, “Having fun there?” You smiled cheekily, “Can you blame me?”

He laughed slightly, “No fair, I’m the only one talking.” You leaned forward, setting your elbow on the table while your hand supported your head. “Well, what do you want to know?”

“A name would be nice,” He mumbled under his breath as you grinned at him, “but tell me, what course are you studying in?”

You winced, recalling back to the paper that you were struggling on writing earlier. “I’m an english major, nothing interesting, just the fact that I like writing.” He scoffed, “You call that mess earlier ‘I like writing?’” You shrugged moving your elbow off the table and playing with the sleeve of your long sweater.

“Writers have their moments when it comes to writer's block.” He opened his mouth making a ‘tsk’ sound, “I see, and you get those all the time?” He looked at you expectantly. He’s messing with me.

“No, in fact I do not. That paper you just saw me demolish? It’s due in a week.” You smirked at him as his face fell, losing whatever battle this was.

“Did you at least enjoy the coffee I ordered for you earlier? It seemed like it helped a lot.” Your brows furrowed, before the imaginary lightbulb lit up, “Oh! That was from you?” He smiled and nodded.

“Well, I guess I have to repay you, now don’t I?” He smiled, “I guess you do. Do I finally get your name?” You stood up with your things, contemplating on whether you should tell him or not.

“You’ll find out soon,” You walked closer to his seated form, bending over slightly to be level with his face, “but Princess fits me more, don’t you think? Unless you have a better name?” You ran your fingers through his smooth hair as he took a deep breath in.

“No, Princess fits you.” You smiled, “Good. Now,” you reached into his jacket, feeling his muscles tense under the soft touch of your fingertips, and into the small pocket where his business cards were, “I’ll give you a call, Kim Mingyu.” You stood up straight and winked at him, making your way to the counter and speaking to the cashier before walking out of the cafe.

Mingyu’s eyebrows rose, face flushed and embarrassed that you were able to fluster him. However, his thoughts immediately changed when he saw you skipping, arms up, a sign of success for you. He smiled and shook his head as an employee came over with a warm cup of coffee

Nice, 1:30am coffee he thought. “This is from YN.” He looked up, confused. “Who?”

“The person who just walked out, they said to tell you their name. Their name is YN.”

Mingyu smiled, thanking the employee before looking at the empty seat in front of him, “YN.”

#seventeen #mingyu #seventeen oneshot #seventeen scenarios #seventeen reactions #escapewriter oneshot

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fullmetalscullyy · 3 years

Text

the way it was - chapter 40

summary: what if riza never went to war? riza hawkeye has just married the man she loves. six months into their marriage, an unexpected surprise stops her from following roy to the military. a canon divergence au that explores what might have happened had riza been unable to join the military. there will be plenty of family fluff, angst, and royai.

rated: m | warnings: graphic depictions of violence (updated)

read on ao3

1915

i'm not afraid of burning bridges

'cause i know they're gonna light my way

like a phoenix, from the ashes

welcome to the future it's a new day

The fight against Father was not what Riza had been expecting. Roy had briefly described the situation as they were lifted into the sky by his alchemy – that they needed to drain Father’s Philosopher’s Stone and the many lives contained within it in order to beat him. Numerous souls being trapped inside one man was unfathomable, however after learning about homunculi, “world ending” plots, and one being’s desire to become God – however briefly that had happened – Riza didn’t think it was too far out the realm of possibility at this point in the day.

Riza had been Roy’s eyes, guiding his attacks and gauging distances for their target. She let him know what was coming their way and when to defend against it. It had been difficult as her vision wavered with exhaustion, but Riza pushed through. With a quick slap to her cheeks to perk herself up, Riza forced herself to keep it together and continue fighting.

After a rather large stream of fire from Roy, Father sent it back their way with no mercy.

“Incoming attack, dead ahead!”

Roy clapped his hands and dropped like a stone, slamming them into the ground. Riza kept her grip on his shoulder, so her body jerked as he moved, but managed to maintain continuous contact. After the sharp movement her head spun, and a burst of light-headedness almost overwhelmed her. Through the fog in her vision Riza saw a wall of stone pop up from the ground as a shield. It sent the incoming flames off their path, dispersing them around and away from them.

“Nicely done,” Riza complimented, feeling relief relax her shoulders as the force of the flames stirred her hair and loose jacket. She hadn’t even had time to explain what was coming, but Roy had saved them both, as well as Major Armstrong, from being consumed by the fire.

Roy smirked and thanked her, remaining low. Once Father’s attention had been diverted away by someone else, Riza patted his shoulder twice, indicating they were about to move. Wearily, Riza steadied herself with a hand against Roy’s chest and one on his shoulder.

“You okay?” He picked up her slight sway before they started to move, as well as how hard she was gipping onto him. It was much needed to keep her upright. He was a pillar of support that kept her moving forward.

“Fine,” she nodded, starting to move.

Riza guided them around the wall of stone, so they’d have a clearer view of the fight. Roy’s arm slid around her back, holding on as tightly as he could. More support. As they walked, he assisted with keeping her upright while she assisted with keeping him on a safe path. They worked together fluidly ducking out of the way so Major Armstrong could demolish the wall with an enthusiastic yell and alchemise it himself, turning it into an attack.

“Are you really okay?” Roy prompted her again. It was not out of disbelief towards her, but probably fear of the unknown in his current state.

“Tried, but okay,” Riza reassured. “You don’t trust me?” She made sure to pat his chest affectionately and keep her voice light so Roy could hear she was only joking, as a means to lighten the mood.

“On the contrary, there’s no one I trust more.” He faltered as Riza tugged him gently to the side, prompting him to sidestep to avoid a large stone. “That’s why I asked you to be my eyes, after all.”

Riza angled her head to look at him, smiling.

“However, I know what you can be like, Mrs. Mustang,” he teased. The corners of his lips tugged upwards slightly in a smile.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Her quip was quickly forgotten and before Roy could open his mouth to reply, Riza pulled him up short.

“Debris, incoming! From the left. Fifty feet in the air.”

Roy clapped and dropped low again without missing a beat. Riza followed him, crashing painfully onto the concrete as her knees almost gave out. Both palms hit the gravel, scraping her skin roughly as it bit into her skin. Darkness consumed her as a sheet of stone rose up and covered their heads. It extended far over their bodies, much larger than was necessary, however, Riza appreciated it, nonetheless. There was the sound of gravel as it rained down upon their shelter, followed by a loud thud above them. Riza looked over, noticing Roy’s drawn expression and how he cringed at the loud noise. She tried not to think about how and where that could have hit them if she hadn’t noticed it in time.

“Are we okay?”

“Wait here.” She squeezed his shoulder as she passed by, crawling towards the edge of the shelter he’d made.

“Riza?”

It was much larger than she realised, and it took a while to reach the edge, especially in her tired state. Her muscles protested and shook as she moved along the concrete. Sharp stones bit into her palms, irritating her skin.

“Riza?” Roy prompted her a second time, impatience and concern clouding his voice.

“I’m fine,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re fine. The shelter’s a lot larger than anticipated. I’m still crawling to the edge.”

Looking out, Riza found they were safe. Her tired legs quivered as she fell to the side and sat on the ground, before shuffling back over to Roy.

“I made it too large?”

“After that thud we heard, nothing could be too big,” she reassured.

“I suppose you’re right,” he chuckled.

“The expanse was much appreciated,” Riza reassured, placing a hand on his back. “Head straight forward. You’re safe and there’s nothing in the way. Just stay low so you don’t bang your head.” The ceiling above them wasn’t too low, however, she didn’t need to add a potential concussion onto their already too long list of injuries.

She eased herself out after Roy. A heavy hand was placed on the roof of the shelter to help Riza lift herself to her feet.

“What’s our next move?”

“Everyone’s attacking with alchemy,” Riza explained as she looked around the battlefield. “They’re draining Father’s power, but they need more.”

“Then let’s give them more,” Roy smirked.

She nodded. “I’ll give you the signal.” Riza grasped his elbow and turned Roy so he was facing Father directly. “He’s dead ahead and unmoving.”

“Do I need to hold back?”

“No,” she replied firmly, giving his elbow a squeeze. “Give the bastard all you’ve got.”

Roy snorted, muttering it would be his pleasure as he wrapped an arm around Riza’s waist. She rested her hand on his chest, moving the other to his lower back, sliding it underneath his uniform jacket, as she watched for an opening.

Another round of shells and a boulder hit Father’s shield but didn’t pierce through. Izumi transmuted the ground to rise up, high into the air, forming a cone around his body. Father didn’t move, didn’t react. He remained still.

“Now, Roy!”

The fire burned so hot and so bright that Riza took an instinctive step back. Her eyes screwed up after the blinding flash of flames. As the light eased the fire became a violent vortex inside Izumi’s transmuted cage, towering high into the sky. Embers fluttered on the wind across the battlefield as everyone cringed, taking brief cover from Roy’s alchemy.

It still hadn’t been enough. Riza’s stomach dropped.

Nothing was enough.

Except…

The attacks continued and Riza watched on as Edward approached, almost striking Father in the head with a well placed kick. However, Father had to block Edward’s leg physically, rather than using his shield.

“Anything?” He was hopeful, but Roy’s tone was still reserved as he asked for confirmation on his attack.

“It hasn’t been enough, but –”

Edward was thrown off to the side, landing in a heap painfully after he rolled to a stop. Riza’s heart jumped into her throat and her grip on Roy tightened as she feared for the teen and his safety. He’d already lost his automail arm, thanks to Father. She didn’t want him to lose anything else.

Black tendrils of smoke started to escape from Father’s mouth. He clutched his head, body bowing forward and writhing in pain.

“He can’t keep the power of God he claims to have in check anymore!” Hohenheim’s cry echoed around them as Father continued to struggle to keep a hold of his power. Red sparks jumped around his body as they all stared in disbelief and horror. An eye appeared inside Father’s mouth, staring out at them all.

Father screamed as the light reached a crescendo. A pulse of energy pushed out from his body, blasting back everything in its path. People went flying into the air with a cry and Riza didn’t even have time to warn Roy of what was coming when it hit. Their grip on each other loosened with the surprise of the sudden attack, as they were knocked back in the shockwave of energy.

Riza hit the ground painfully, landing on her back. The wind had been knocked out of her, causing her to gasp and desperately try to refill her lungs with air. Rolling onto her uninjured side as she coughed, Riza searched for Roy. He’d landed a few feet away from her.

“Riza?” Roy coughed as he lifted himself slowly to his knees with a groan. His expression was twisted into a grimace of pain and his back was hunched over, his body curling inwards as his arm clutched at his stomach. “Riza!”

She couldn’t even reply to him. She tried, but still felt like she couldn’t breathe. Roy started to crawl in her direction, following the sound of her heaving breaths. His arm never left his stomach as he moved and his shoulder dropped every so often, giving out underneath his weight.

“I’m okay,” she tried, but it was nothing more than a croak in between gasps.

Roy’s hand reached for her calf, which he clamped onto immediately. He ran it up to her hip, over her waist, then to her shoulder.

“Riza?” His hands fretted over her, his expression pulled into deep concern.

“I’m fine,” she finally managed.

Roy’s hand slid up to her neck, his touch gentle as his thumb stroked her cheek.

“The wind was knocked out of me.”

“Apart from that, are you all right?”

Riza grimaced as she assessed her injuries. Nothing felt too hurt or out of place. Her back hurt from the impact but that was it. “Sore back,” she revealed, “but it’ll be okay.”

“Do we have time to take a minute?”

Riza glanced around, noticing others rising to their feet slowly and nodded, a movement which Roy felt. “We do.”

“Easy,” he soothed.

Her elbow supported her weight as she shifted to a half-seated position. Roy’s hand moved to rest on her back, taking some of her weight, but the arm across his stomach remained in place.

“Are you okay?” Her breath left her in a wheeze as she tried to speak louder.

He grimaced. “My old wound is playing up. I think I landed on something, but I’m not entirely sure.”

“Let me see.” Riza shifted and sat up properly to take a look at him. Gently, she pried Roy’s fingers away. “There’s no blood.” She looked back in the direction of where he’d landed. There was some gravel littering the ground accompanied by some larger stones. “It looks like it might’ve been a stone. Something blunt, but solid.”

“It certainly felt that way,” Roy chuckled, but it was pained.

They helped each other to their feet before they were halted by a chilling call.

“Al, no!”

Riza’s head snapped up in alarm as she heard Edward’s cry.

Lying on his back, Alphonse’s arms were raised into the air, where he clapped. That one clap seemed to echo around the whole area, signalling a finality that Riza didn’t particularly understand but could definitely feel.

Blue light consumed Alphonse completely, expanding outwards, however, this was much gentler than Father’s had been.

“Alphonse!”

Riza looked on in disbelief and with fear, after hearing Edward’s anguished cry.

“Was that –?” Roy never even finished his sentence and Riza didn’t think she’d be able to reply to him anyway, because Edward Elric miraculously had his arm back. The automail was gone. He surged forwards and ripped the rebar from his arm, attacking Father without mercy.

Everyone cheered him on, urging him to keep fighting. A true show of moral support for the teenager who was squaring up against the one person who had tried to kill every single one of them.

“Edward!” Riza offered her own cry, urging him onwards to beat Father. Her heart was in her throat, thinking that he finally had a chance to stop this, to put an end to Father and his scheme. Her pride for him surged inside her chest, wishing, and hoping that his alchemy attacks would be enough to stop him once and for all.

“Fullmetal!”

Riza turned to look at Roy. He was looking in the direction of the fight, but all he had to go on was the yells around him. She gently placed a hand in between his shoulder blades, rubbing his back slowly.

“Riza, what is it?” His head briefly turned to acknowledge her presence but returned to face ahead, towards the battle. “What’s happening to Fullmetal?”

“He’s fighting Father,” she relayed. “It’s a fist fight. Everyone’s cheering him on.”

“Is… Is he winning?”

“Looks that way,” she confirmed, almost hesitantly, in fear of jinxing Edward’s chances.

“Do we need to assist?”

“Not right now. But we’ll stand by.” Riza stepped closer to him, moving her hand to his shoulder as Roy wrapped an arm around her waist. She leaned on him for the moment, giving herself a brief moment of rest.

Riza watched as Edward Elric struck Father again and again, until finally, Father was beaten. After a powerful strike to his stomach, red streaks escaped from Father’s new body made of carbon - thanks to Greed’s sacrifice. What seemed like thousands of souls raced into the sky above, dissipating the higher they climbed, until they were gone. Father staggered before dark hands sprang forth from the hole in the centre of his torso. He screamed in desperation as he fought against their restraints, but there was nothing he could do. The small hands consumed his body whole, leaving nothing in their wake. He winked away into nothingness.

The world was silent as everyone basked in Father’s defeat.

“Did he beat him?” Roy’s voice was quiet as he voiced the question. The arm around Riza tightened its grip a fraction as he waited for an answer.

“Yes…” Wonder clouded Riza’s tone as she was suddenly flooded with relief.

It was finally over.

There was movement around Edward as people began to approach him. His father was speaking to him, but Riza didn’t know what about. With an anguished cry, Edward looked over towards her and Roy. Riza wasn’t sure what he was searching for in that moment – they were too far away to make out any distinct conversation – but Riza trusted him. She nodded once in encouragement.

Whatever he needed to do, she’d support it.

“What’s happening?”

Riza didn’t want to tell Roy, to reveal what sacrifices had been made in order to defeat Father, but she couldn’t keep the truth from him.

“Alphonse… Al is… gone.”

“Gone?” Roy was immediately alarmed. His body tensed.

“He – He sacrificed himself and returned to the gate. I don’t think he’s bonded to his armour anymore.” That thought terrified Riza, but she exhaled slowly, willing herself to remain calm. Alphonse was incredibly smart and would have known what he was doing. She placed her trust and faith in him, as well as his brother, knowing what they were capable of.

“What?”

“Come on,” she encouraged, sensing Roy’s anxiety. “Let’s go over and see them.”

Roy’s feet were moving immediately, walking forwards with purpose and confidence. Once Riza had caught up she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder before sliding it down to his elbow. Carefully, she guided him around the debris and breaks in the concrete.

Edward was sketching something on the ground by the time they arrived. The piece of rebar scraped along the stone, sometimes catching, and squeaking horribly enough to make Riza wince.

They were both silent as Edward drew a transmutation circle.

She didn’t particularly want him to go ahead with it. After hearing Edward being referred to a sacrifice and his disappearance, she just wanted him to be safe… But Riza trusted Edward and his abilities. He knew more about alchemy than she did, and knew his ultimate goal was to get his and Alphonse’s bodies back. Whatever he had planned, it would work towards achieving that, Riza was sure.

After a flash of light, Edward was gone. Riza tried her hardest not to panic. This was the second time Edward had gone to the gate and with Riza’s own personal experience of someone going to the gate, it was not one she wanted to witness again or wish on anyone else.

The payoff, despite Riza’s fears, was certainly worth it.

Another flash had her shielding her eyes, but when they opened, Edward, and his brother Alphonse – not in a suit of armour, but in a real, human body – were sitting before them.

“What happened?”

“It’s… It’s Alphonse. He’s…” Riza blinked at the grinning face of the young man before her.

“He’s what?”

“He’s back in his body.” The smile that spread across Riza’s face almost split it in two. Slightly dazed still that she was finally looking upon Alphonse Elric in the flesh, Riza slid her hands underneath Roy’s black overcoat. His arms lowered from her body automatically so she could remove the piece of clothing from his shoulders. “I need your jacket.”

Roy didn’t protest and proceeded to shrug himself out of it.

She stepped forward and held it out to Edward. He paused as he gazed upon his brother’s face and turned, showing Riza everything she needed to know about how elated he was to see Alphonse in the flesh again. His eyes were filled with tears, but they never fell. His grin wobbled on his face as emotion overwhelmed him, but when he set eyes on Riza he inhaled sharply, sucking in a breath as he tried to compose himself.

“Here,” she offered warmly. Riza gave Edward a proud smile, handing over Roy’s jacket.

Edward took it gratefully and wrapped it around Alphonse’s small form. It dwarfed him, but it was him. It was Alphonse.

They’d done it.

Those two kids had really done it.

Riza laughed quietly to herself as she slipped her arm around Roy’s back. She placed her head on his shoulder as she held him, blinking away tears.

Roy pressed a kissed to the top of her head “Is everyone safe?” His question was quiet, spoken in a breath so only she could hear him.

Riza nodded against him. “They’re okay.”

Alphonse laughed and Riza felt Roy’s head jerk up as he listened carefully, recognising the sound and noticing how it wasn’t distorted by hollow metal.

“They’re both back.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In the aftermath of the battle, those who were well enough to keep working assisted with assessing and moving the injured. Both Roy and Riza were ushered into a hastily thrown up medical tent so they could finally be seen to about their injuries.

Roy sat on a chair by her bedside. Both of his elbows rested upon his knees and his head was down, facing the floor, as they waited for a medic.

She’d been given priority status. Being a civilian was a pain because Roy could pull that excuse and get Riza help faster than anyone else. No one wanted to argue with the man who’d successfully staged a coup either, so the urgent request was undisputed. Riza huffed quietly to herself. There was no doubt in Riza’s mind that her injuries were serious - she was well aware of the fact she’d almost died today - however there must have been others who needed immediate medical attention before her. She’d seen the result of the fight with her own eyes, seen the bodies. Riza would feel guilty taking up a space in place of someone who needed it more.

There was no use in arguing with Roy though. Once sitting on the cot assigned to her, Riza had removed her jacket as instructed by the trainee medic and pulled aside her shirt as best she could, exposing her injured neck to the world. Roy had fumbled to find her shoulders once she was settled and gently pushed, urging her to lie down. Automatically her mouth had opened to fight it, to insist she was okay and could manage, but his brow had been furrowed with such deep concentration as he felt out the dimensions of the bed with his foot – probably worrying he’d push her off the edge – that Riza just situated herself on it comfortably and lay down.

Lying there, her head spun often. The blood loss was hitting her in waves and hard enough sometimes that it made her whole world blur. However, she fought the urge to let her eyes droop closed like they so desperately wanted to. Roy had asked her to be his eyes and losing consciousness would mean that would disappear for him. She didn’t want him to be left alone.

A sigh left her husband making Riza’s head turn on the bed. It didn’t move far. There was the distinctive feeling of her flesh moving that made Riza pause and bite her teeth in discomfort. It felt like the skin of her neck was moving against itself in a way that was not natural. As though the wound was open and gaping, open to the elements and the dusty air of Central. Forcing the thought from her mind, Riza let out a slow, quiet breath to calm herself. The urge to reach up and touch her skin, just to make sure it was still stitched together, made Riza’s fingers twitch. Casting the disconcerting feeling aside, Riza tried to think about anything else.

Remembering his sigh, Riza tried to watch Roy out the corner of her eye as best she could. She was worried about him. He would be just as battered and bruised as she was. Not to mention he’d been stabbed through both of his hands. Physically, there were no issues with his eyes. Truth had taken his vision away. That was it. Riza’s heart sank as she realised that he’d never be able to set his eyes on their children again. He wouldn’t physically get to see Mia or Maes grow up, grow taller, or witness them succeeding in anything with his own two eyes. The thought was sudden and unbidden, bringing along with it a wave of tears that made her nose run as one escaped her lids and fell into her hair. She tried to remain quiet. Roy would only worry if she didn’t, and she had no way of articulating any of her emotions after the day they’d had.

However, she failed. At the sound of a sniff, Roy’s head jerked up. He searched in her direction with concerned eyes as he tried to determine what was the cause of her upset.

“Riza?”

“I’m fine,” she reassured, breathing out slowly as she got a hold of herself. Being so exhausted was wearing her thin. It was breaking her down.

His hand reached over for her, searching for contact. Riza grasped it, feeling him holding on for dear life.

“Please tell me what’s wrong,” he begged her quietly. His voice caught in his throat as he spoke.

It broke her heart. He’d always been very attentive and noticed a lot about her, even the minute changes in her mood or expression. They’d been together for so long that Riza found herself feeling the same way as him, easily picking out his moments of stress or worry. Now that was all gone for him.

“I’m all right, I promise. I’ve just been doing some thinking.”

“About the kids?”

Riza froze, and Roy noticed. Shifting in his seat, he moved closer and swiped his thumb over the top of her hand. The bandages across his palms were coarse against her skin, but his fingers were the touch she remembered.

“I was thinking about them too,” Roy admitted.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine –”

“I would always want to talk about it with you, Riza,” he interrupted softly. “No matter how hard it may be. I…” He coughed, then swallowed thickly. “I keep thinking about Mia’s smile,” he frowned, “Maes’ too, as well as yours. I keep trying to picture them in my head, but it doesn’t seem right. It feels like a figment of my imagination, like a false picture. And I… I want to see them again. Just to check.”

Sorrow engulfed her. Tears collected in the corner of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Roy.”

It surprised Riza to see him shrug. “It is what it is, I suppose,” he stated grimly. His expression was pulled tight though, indicating he was lying. The muscles of his brow trembled before relaxing with a heavy sigh.

“Roy…”

“I should’ve gotten so much worse in this life,” he scoffed. “This,” he gestured to his eyes, “is a punishment, I suppose.”

“It still wasn’t right for them to force you to open the gate so Father could try and kill everyone,” Riza reminded him. “Plus, you’re still needed in this country.”

His blind eyes lifted to meet hers, but they weren’t on her face. They were looking just above her head on the bed.

“You successfully staged a coup and took down a corrupt power, one that was trying to kill all of this country’s citizens. You had a dream, remember? We’re not there yet. This was only the beginning.”

“I don’t know if I can get there blind,” Roy replied gently, trying to soften the blow for her - or for himself. “I had a vision,” he chuckled darkly, “and now it has been taken away. Quite literally. How kind of Truth,” he scoffed, casting his eyes down to the floor.

Riza struggled to sit up in the bed. Her neck ached, the muscles shaking with fatigue, and her head grew woozy as blood rushed there.

“What are you doing?” He’d sensed and heard her movements. Roy’s brows pulled together in disapproval.

“Come here,” she commanded.

“Riza –”

“Come here,” she repeated calmly, tugging him towards her gently by his hand.

Huffing, Roy stood and took a tentative step. Patiently, Riza guided him over to the cot, making sure he was sitting comfortably by her side. Her weight leaned heavily against his side as he snaked an arm around her back.

“We’re both alive,” Riza stated, eyes fluttering closed to relish in the warmth he provided. “We’re both physically able to walk and talk.”

“Except you shouldn’t be,” he muttered, referencing her insistence that she was all right.

She nudged him gently with her weight, a slow smile spreading across her face. “No, I shouldn’t be. Not anymore, anyway. But I couldn’t let the team down,” she smirked.

“You were extremely helpful in that final fight against Father. I feared I would’ve hit our own soldiers if it had just been myself.”

“Happy to be of assistance, Colonel.”

“I ought to promote you to a Lieutenant,” he added thoughtfully, angling his head so his cheek came to rest upon it. “Make you my aide full time. And Hayate too. That pup was invaluable today. He has a nose for homunculi, who knew?”

“I bet that would’ve been useful to discover beforehand,” Riza snickered.

“Oh, absolutely! I would’ve taken him to the office and let him loose to see if he could sniff them out for me,” Roy joked. “It would’ve saved me so much time and effort.”

“You’re just lazy.”

“… Maybe.”

Riza snorted, enjoying hearing his amusement as well. They laughed quietly together on that bed, both alive. Knowing that everything he’d work towards over the past year was over… It was surreal. Despite the tumultuous storm of emotions and fatigue brewing inside of her, one emotion that stuck out the most in that moment was relief. They were alive. They’d won. The plan to stop Father had succeeded and they were both still here to see through the aftermath.

“It’s all over…”

“I know,” Roy agreed. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“I’m proud of all you’ve accomplished, Roy.”

“Most of it is thanks to you.”

A proud smile fought its way onto her face.

“I just listened.”

“And that help was invaluable. Your input has always been a massive help to me, and I want to hear it every time I come up with a plan. It kept me on the right path and kept me moving forward.” His head cocked to the side in thought. “I really should enlist you. You’d be a big help at the office. I could probably promote you straight to a Lieutenant too after all your help today,” he tempted.

Riza hummed tiredly to herself.

“Get some rest, Riza.” Roy’s body turned slightly and a hand ran up her arm slowly to find her face. Once he did so, a kiss was pressed against her forehead.

“I will,” she reassured, feeling a wave of exhaustion roll over her entire being, now that her eyes were finally closed, and the adrenaline had worn off.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”

The wound on her neck was throbbing in time with her pulse and it would be so easy just to stop fighting and let go, give into her fatigue, and let sleep claim her.

“Sleep.” Roy’s command was soothing, lulling her further into unconsciousness while reassuring that he would be right there beside her, every step of the way.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Reality returned to Riza slowly. She didn’t remember dreaming of much. There were fleeting memories of Mia and Maes’ faces as she slept peacefully, but not enough for her to grab onto and remember why they were there. It was a comfort, seeing them again. Now, in the land of waking, that comfort was replaced by longing. She wanted to see them. Riza wanted to hear Mia’s tales from her holiday with her grandmother and see Maes’ little hands reach for her with a grin, begging to be held close.

Her entire body ached. That was the first thing she noticed. Every muscle felt like it had been through the wringer and then some more. They protested as she tried to shift on the hard mattress below her back, a light grunt erupting from her throat.

“Riza?”

It took a moment to realise someone was calling to her. Her head turned to the side automatically and Riza instantly regretted it. A sharp pain suddenly flared there, making her hiss loudly. She gasped, squeezing her eyes tightly closed as a hand clumsily lifted to protect the area of injury.

“What’s wrong?”

Roy was fretting. Slowly, Riza turned her whole torso to look over at him, grimacing at her aches and pains, and opened her eyes. His hands were ringing together in his lap. His eyes were wide and staring in her direction, flicking back and forth.

“I’m all right,” she soothed, but it didn’t lessen the nervous energy so apparent within him. “I turned my head too quickly.”

“The doctor said you have to keep it as still as possible,” he admonished firmly.

Riza almost nodded, then realised that probably wouldn’t be the best idea. “All right.”

“But are you okay?” He was stressed, still worrying over her.

“Roy?” She called to him, waiting for a response to try and slow down his mind that was probably picturing the worst, given his expression. It worked because his head perked up immediately and his hands still in his lap. “I’m all right.”

It took a moment, but slowly his shoulders relaxed. His posture slumped slightly.

“Promise?”

“I promise,” she replied sincerely.

It couldn’t have been easy for him to be unable to verify it for himself. He trusted her implicitly, Riza knew this, but still, suddenly becoming blind would be difficult to adjust to. He’d always been so good at picking up how she was feeling from micro expressions alone, so the sudden lack of it would be frustrating. Not to mention the fact she’d probably been out of it for a while. It certainly felt like it, despite still feeling exhausted upon waking.

Before anything else could be said, there was a knock at the door and Breda entered. Riza watched as he and Fuery piled into the room with grins on their faces. They stared at her, ecstatic to see she was awake.

“Hello,” she greeted warmly, extremely pleased to see them all.

Before anyone could reply, Rebecca Catalina stole all of Riza’s attention, just like always. She butted past them both hurriedly, stopping as she zeroed in on Riza.

“Riza!” The volume of her cry made her wince. “I’m so glad you’re okay!” Riza’s vision was filled with the black hair of Rebecca’s ponytail while she was enveloped in her best friend’s arms.

Riza patted her friend on the back gently. “Hey, Becca.”

“How are you doing?” She wasted no time pulling away to examine Riza’s face with a critical eye.

“I don’t know,” was Riza’s honest reply, “other than I feel okay. I just woke up.”

“Any pain? Any discomfort? Do you need to… go?”

While her questions were short and sharp, Riza still appreciated her friend’s concern.

“Fine, Becca,” she soothed, patting her forearm. “It’s just sore when I move my head.”

“You keep it still then. Do you hear me?” A finger was shoved into Riza’s face. “Don’t go messing up the good work the hot doctors did on you.”

“Hot doctors?” Riza raised an eyebrow at her.

Rebecca’s face lit up in glee. “You were so lucky,” she snickered.

Roy cleared his throat from his bed, unamused.

“I’m kidding, Mustang,” Rebecca stressed, but still loudly whispered, “no, I’m not,” before slipping off the bed, walking over to Roy’s. “And how are you doing Colonel?”

“Ready for the day,” he nodded, very matter of fact in the way he spoke.

“Good. We have a lot to cover,” Rebecca announced, taking a seat by his bedside. Her legs were lifted, propped up on the edge of his bed. Feeling the dip, Roy turned his head downwards towards them, but said nothing.

“She’s right, boss,” Breda interjected. He pulled a book out from underneath his arm and flipped it open. “Good to see you awake, Riza,” he grinned before continuing.

“It’s so good to see you, Ma’am,” Fuery gushed, eyes twinkling with joy behind his glasses.

“You too,” she replied. During the Promised Day, she’d lost sight of them and was glad to discover they were safe and visibly unharmed.

“Before we get into it, could we get a minute?” Roy’s question had no room for argument as he gestured between himself and her.

“Uh, yeah, of course,” Rebecca hastily reassured. Her feet hit the linoleum floor with a thud before standing.

“Of course, boss. We’ll be back…” Breda shot Fuery an uncertain look. “We’ll give you guys some time. We’ll be back in an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The three of them filed out, leaving Roy and Riza alone. She felt exhausted, feeling it creep up into her head and take residence behind her eyes, forming a dull pain, after only a few minutes of conversation. Just what she needed on top of the slowly receding pain in her neck. A headache.

“Do you need anything?” Roy’s tone was asking her for the truth. Pleading with her for it. He couldn’t see it for himself so needed her to be honest with him and give more than an ‘I’m fine.’

During the Promised Day there had been so many bigger things at stake than her. Riza had kept focussed and kept moving forward, to do the right thing and put an end to those that had wronged her, her friends and family, and the entire nation with their lies and schemes. She had to be there to assist Roy and help the Elric brothers fight Father. Looking at the bigger picture, it was absolute top priority that they succeed on that day. So, her own health and wellbeing were pushed aside for the greater good. She was filled with dismay to realise that her insistence of being ‘okay’ had resulted in Roy pleading with her for the truth. He shouldn’t have to, but now that they were safe and unknown danger no longer lurked around every corner, Riza knew what she had to do.

“I don’t feel like I need anything at the moment,” Riza answered. “My neck hurts a little bit,” she added quietly, “and it really hurt after I moved my head too quickly.”

Roy’s fingers dug into the sheet over his legs.

“So I’m staying as still as possible. It was an automatic reaction to turn my head. I need to remember not to do that.”

“Like I said, the doctor said you have to keep it still.” His voice was authoritative, betraying his worry and concern for her. “They said the morphine will probably wear off soon, so if it does, we have to let a nurse know. Has it started to wear off yet?”

Riza paused to assess how she was feeling. “I’m okay for now. The pain from before is already fading after I moved too quickly.”

Roy’s lips pursed. “If you need more, we will get you some –”

“I’ll let them know if I do need more, I promise.”

Roy nodded, but Riza could still see the tension in his body. He would never fully relax, Riza was sure.

One idea to assist and make things easier on him popped into Riza’s mind.

Throwing the sheet off her body, Riza slowly swung her legs out of the bed. Every muscle protested and she groaned quietly.

“What are you doing?”

“Just… Give me a second.”

“Are you getting out of bed?” He asked as if it were the most ridiculous course of action she could have taken. “Riza –”

“I’m fine. I can walk okay.” Her feet were sore as they contacted the floor and the muscles in her legs were aching, but that was just from overexertion.

“Get back into bed,” he growled at her. “You shouldn’t be up –”

“This will help us both,” she interrupted him. There was a brief feeling of light-headedness as she stood, but it passed quickly.

“How?”

Riza didn’t answer. She shuffled over, movements stiff after being still for so long, but she managed it.

“Move over,” she commanded, nudging his shoulder gently with the back of her hand.

Roy was unimpressed, but did as she asked. Riza slipped into the bed next to him with slow and careful movements. As much as she would have loved to curl up against his side, she couldn’t with her neck, so opted to remain on her back. However, Roy took up the mantle for her. He rolled onto his side and immediately latched onto her. His arms pulled her into a tight embrace, one that told Riza she’d have great difficulty removing herself from his hold. Not that she minded at all.

“You will be the death of me, woman,” he muttered. Immediately his head was by hers, his breath warming the skin of her face. His forehead came to rest upon her temple.

“You love me for it though,” Riza countered with a smile.

“I do.” Roy lifted his fingers carefully towards her face, contacting her skin gently. He caressed her cheek with his thumb before cupping her chin and moving forwards to kiss her cheek.

He placed his head on the pillow and adjusted the arm that lay across her stomach. With his bandaged palms he couldn’t grip onto her completely, but his fingers did as best they could. His hold was still weak – a detail Riza noted and shelved for later. If he pressed too hard with his fingers, from the direction his palms had been sliced into, too much pressure may aggravate and reopen his wounds.

“Now I feel much better,” Riza sighed happily.

Roy hummed in agreement. “I must admit, I do prefer having you by my side.”

Riza ran her hand up his bare arm, noticing him shiver. “I can’t imagine it’s been easy.”

“It's hard being unable to see you for myself.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“It’s been about two days. It’s hard to grasp time and keep track, but that’s what the doctor said when they came in this morning. So probably just over that.”

“I’m sorry I was away for so long.” He’d asked her to be his eyes, and she’d left him.

“It’s hardly your fault,” he scoffed lightly. “You sustained life-threatening injuries and needed to be cared for too, as well as rest.”

“I know.” She swallowed. There was a twinge in her throat as she did so, and Riza silently hoped the injury wouldn’t affect that action too much.

“You getting the help you needed was my top priority. I’m just glad to finally be able to feel and hear that you’re up and awake.”

“I love you.” Her hand stopped on his bicep and gave it a quick squeeze.

“I love you too, Riza.” A kiss was pressed against her shoulder just below her bandages.

“How are you feeling?”

Roy shrugged. “Sore and tired. They performed surgery on my hands. There was enough to work with to repair some of the damage but they won’t be perfect. However, the correct care and physical therapy will help. And my vision… I’m completely blind. I won’t recover from it.”

Riza nodded in acceptance. She always thought that would be the case. Hearing it confirmed wasn’t easy, but she’d support him through it. They would adapt and adjust.

“We both went through a lot on the Promised Day.”

Roy nodded. “We did. And you…” He swallowed. “Helping me with Envy…”

“I would do it again in a heartbeat, you know that.”

“I almost lost it all.” His voice was hoarse.

“You stepped back from it though. Being subjected to torment like you were over the murder of someone you loved… How could anyone not be upset over that?”

“I yelled at you too. That was undeserving when you were only trying to help.” Roy snorted, his face twisting in disgust. “It seems I have a track record of that,” he added bitterly.

He moved to pull away from her, but Riza didn’t let him. She held on tight. “You were upset.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“No, it’s not. But you were upset and teetering on the edge. They were trying to goad you over the edge, but you didn’t let them.”

His head bowed so his forehead came to rest upon her shoulder.

“You won that battle. Remember that.”

Roy was silent as they lay there. As they did so, Riza’s mind wandered towards her own wrongdoings on the Promised Day.

“Besides,” she swallowed, “I’m not completely innocent in all of this either. I killed someone.”

Roy’s hand moved from her stomach. He rubbed her upper arm gently in comfort. The bandages scratched her skin slightly, but not uncomfortably. “I can’t tell you that guilt and regret will ever go away, because it doesn’t.”

Riza clutched at his shirt tighter, scrunching it as she realised his meaning.

“But you’re not alone in this,” Roy reassured her. A kiss was pressed against her shoulder. “I’m right here.”

“I know you are.”

“You saved my life, and I’ll be forever grateful to you for that, however, I’m aware it comes at a price. I’m sorry you have to pay it.”

“I vowed to myself that I would do anything to protect my family.” Riza swallowed. “And I meant it.”

“It still doesn’t make it easy, does it?”

Riza shook her head. “No.”

“Talk to me whenever you need. Although it was incredibly difficult, sometimes impossible, I wish I had opened up more after Ishval. If I had, I could’ve maybe spared us some heartache.”

“We were both still young,” she reminded him. “Your world had been cruelly turned on its head and you’d been turned into a weapon, so, on an emotional level, I don’t blame you for wanting to briefly shut it out.”

“I could’ve been better, though.”

Riza sighed. “We learned from it though.”

“Sometimes I didn’t,” Roy grimaced. “What I would give to take back how I handled Hughes’ death.”

Riza patted his shoulder in comfort. “I think we were both at fault. Grief isn’t easy and it can be unfair. Especially when forced upon us so suddenly and,” Riza swallowed, “so violently.”

Roy repositioned his arm across her stomach, giving her body a tight squeeze. “We made it through in the end.”

“We did,” she confirmed.

Silence descended over them as Riza struggled to try and find the right words she needed to voice her thoughts.

“How… How do you deal with it, day-to-day? The memories of what you’ve done?”

“Before the Promised Day it was by working towards the coup. By taking down Bradley and the corrupt powers, I was working towards stopping something like Ishval from happening again. Now that’s over with… I want to rebuild Ishval. That’s the next project on the agenda. That’s why the team has been coming here every day, so I can learn about their customs and practices. I took part in taking that away from them, so I’ll work to give it back. Then…” He exhaled a long breath. “After that, I will continue to try and make up for all that I did until my last breath.”

“After Ishval?”

Roy nodded. “If I become Fuhrer I can enforce laws that ensure nothing like Bradley and Father will ever happen again. By devolving power and turning the system into a democracy, it removes it. And then, those who were involved with Ishval will be punished for their war crimes.”

On instinct, Riza’s body stiffened. They’d been over this. They’d discussed this outcome plenty of times and she’d somewhat made her peace with it, however, it didn’t mean it was easy. However, she’d respect his wishes, as well as the Ishvalan’s.

“Sorry,” he added quietly, noticing how she tensed underneath his hands.

“No. No, it’s okay. We have to talk about it.”

“If my execution is called for by the elders, then I won’t fight it. I have no right to deny them of how they judge me.”

Riza swallowed. “Obviously, I don’t want to lose you. I love you. However, I want you to know I would never fight it either.”

Her shoulder was squeezed tightly.

“It… It hurts to think about and talk about. It always has, throughout the years, but…” Riza sighed, the weight of the conversation settling heavily on her heart and her mind. “I agree. We can’t take that away from them. Not after what you did.” Riza almost cringed at the bluntness of her words, but she shouldn’t shy away from what happened. Roy wouldn’t, so she shouldn’t either.

“You’re right,” he agreed.

“I helped put that out into the world, so I always felt partly responsible. I suppose that will be my punishment for it.”

“It may not even come to that. If they don’t choose that avenue for me, then I keep on working as best I can. Whatever happens though, we will deal with it.”

“Yes,” Riza agreed, “and I will be with you every step of the way.”

His fingers lowered to entwine with hers. The digits were stiff and couldn’t move too far, which made Riza think back to her concern about how much pressure he could apply with his hands. Riza curled her fingers around his carefully.

“We can work to redeem ourselves together.”

“Until the very end,” Riza vowed.

Roy’s head cocked to the side when she let go of his hand. Riza shifted on the bed, rolling into her side. It wasn’t painful like she imagined it would be. Her neck showed no signs of discomfort as she lay down on the soft pillow.

“You okay?”

“Perfect,” she smiled. She brushed his fringe off his face.

Roy lowered from his elbow to lie next to her. His hand found her lower back and he shuffled in closer to her body. Gently, she cupped his cheek, but noticed how he flinched slightly at the sudden contact.

“Sorry,” she murmured, alleviating the pressure she’d placed on his face.

“No, I didn’t realise what you were doing.”

“I’ll need to be slower and more careful in the future,” she scolded herself lightly.

Roy lifted his bandaged hand to place it on her wrist. He pressed her hand back against his cheek, back to where it had been when he’d flinched. “You don’t need to do anything. You’re perfect. It's… jarring. Being in such inky blackness and feeling something so suddenly, not knowing where it came from. Especially after everything we went through that day.”

Riza studied his face as she tried to rack her brain for a way to announce herself before touching him. Her thumb stroked his face lightly and he sighed into her touch, his body relaxing underneath it.

“What is it like?” She hated to ask, but she wanted to know, so she could find or work out some way to help Roy ease into his new condition.

“It’s terrifying. I hate it.”

Hearing that was like a punch to the stomach.

“And I want to see you again. I so desperately wish I could.” His breath hitched and as Riza blinked, tears appeared in her eyes. “I miss you,” he admitted hoarsely. “I miss your beautiful face and your gorgeous eyes,” he grinned as a tear tracked down his cheek. “And your winning smile.” His hand lifted to cup her face, and he made contact with no issues whatsoever. He didn’t bump into her or end up off target.

Riza smiled. “You did that without thinking,” she praised. Her fingers trailed from his temple to chin, stroking the skin lovingly as she smiled. “You knew where I was.”

His mouth opened then promptly closed again.

“We’ll work through it,” Riza whispered, closing her eyes as their foreheads moved to rest together. “I promise. You won’t go through this alone.”

“I know.” Roy inhaled sharply before letting it out slowly. The hand on her cheek moved to rest on the back of her neck. “I know I won’t.”

She kissed his cheek, pulling him into a tight embrace. The two of them remained there, holding each other, finally able to do so and rest properly after all they’d experienced on the Promised Day. For Riza, she finally felt at peace laying there in Roy’s arm.

Two hours passed before Rebecca knocked on the door, apologising, but asking if they were ready to get to work.

#royai #royai fic #royai fanfic #royai au #the way it was #emma writes #i've stared at this for too long soooo.... YEET #if u see any mistakes yes u did but also no u didn't ❤

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nalgenewhore · 4 years

Audio

It was almost a year to the day, the anniversary of the day her world had been flipped upside down and the pain was still completely fresh, a new wave of it every single time she saw something that reminded her of him, of them.

Elide had already told her boss she wouldn’t be in that day and planned to stay at home mending her shattered heart. Just thinking about him had her chest clenching and her throat closing as she fought back tears, wanting nothing more than to curl into a ball and cry.

The night air was bitingly cold as she at last stumbled out of Blueblood, the local club, and began to make her way home. Her ankle was smarting from the time she had spent dancing with her friends, letting the beat and the tune carry all her woes away even if just for one blissful moment when it was only her and the music.

Once she was outside, the giddiness and warmth she had felt in the club left her and as she waited for a cab she watched as people spilled out of the building, happy couples hanging off each other and she remembered she was alone.

Tears pooled in her eyes and she looked down at the sidewalk, eyes tracking over the cigarette butts and gum ground into the. Someone slammed into her back, causing Elide to stumble onto the road, freezing when a car swerved around her and nearly hit her. Hands dragged her back onto the sidewalk and when she turned to thank them, she almost sobbed because for one, tiny second, the stranger had his face but then it was over and she saw he was just an ordinary man, nothing special about his features, nothing remarkable about his black eyes. “Are you okay?”

Elide nodded, her heart beating hard, “Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it, have a good night!” The man called over his shoulder as he left through the crowd, leaving her mind just as soon as he left her sight it seemed.

She didn’t know how long it took for her to get home and she didn’t care, not as she closed the door behind her, the sound of the lock sliding into place deafening in the frigid silence of her apartment. She heard paws padding on the dark walnut floors, Hellas’ nails clicking with every step as he walked up to her, his heavy tail wagging.

“Hey, buddy,” she murmured as she ran her hand through his thick coat, the Husky nudging her thigh with his head, his eyes wide and sad and he let out a soft whine, looking at the door behind her when no one walked through it. She knew exactly who he was missing when his tail dropped and they both walked into the living room, Hellas pressed into her side like he was holding her up.

Elide settled into the loveseat, eyes on the electric flames dancing behind the glass of her fireplace, her dog curling up beside her and she leaned on him, her head resting on his side, his coat thick and soft, varying shades of black and white. He rested his chin on his paws, staring at the door, even when she whispered, “He’s never coming back, bud.”

Her phone buzzed and she dug it out of her back pocket, seeing Aelin had texted her.

>>> hi lovie

>>> u good?

She breathed out shakily as she typed her answer.

<<< not in the slightest

>>> :(

>>> anything i can do?

<<< no

<<< i’ll be ok eventually

She saw the three dots and turned her phone on Do Not Disturb before she could read whatever her sister had to say. She loved Aelin but nothing she said, nothing anyone could say would stop her from feeling like there was a hole in her chest.

She had deleted his number long ago and it didn’t matter, she would know the ten digits that made it up for the rest of her days.

Before she knew what was happening, she had tapped out his number on the keypad and pressed the phone icon, tapping on speakerphone as it rang, her heart in her throat when he picked up.

“El?”

Her voice failed her as she tried to answer him. She hadn’t known how much she had missed his voice, the low, rolling sound that came from deep in his chest. “I don’t know why I called.”

“I’m happy you did.”

She sat up straighter, Hellas turning to look at her, “You are?”

Lorcan chuckled dryly and she could see it so clearly, him standing in his kitchen, only illuminated by the open fridge door, a slight smile on his face as he gently shook his head. “Of course I am. I missed,” he cleared his throat and the image changed to one of him sitting on his couch, elbows braced on his knees as he sat in complete darkness, his dog, Anneith, lying at his feet, his brow furrowed as he struggled to keep the hurt at bay. “I miss you.”

Elide pressed her hand to her mouth like it could keep the sobs inside her. “I miss you, too. This car, it almost hit me and,” she caught his sharp intake of air, like it still made his heart race in fear when she got hurt. “And I thought the world was ending ‘cause the person who caught me when I fell,” her voice broke because the last time she fell, Lorcan had caught her like he always promised he would. “He looked like you, just for a second, I thought he was you.”

“Are you okay?” It wasn’t despite himself that he asked her, he would always worry about her, would always break if she got hurt. If they were still as they had been, she would have laughed, chiding him for his protectiveness but they weren’t and it just reminded her of that.

“If the world was ending, you’d come over, right? You’d come over and you’d spend the night and hold me tight and you would love me for the hell of it. We wouldn’t be scared and we wouldn't even have to say goodbye.” She breathed in deeply, “I know, we weren’t made for each other but if the world was ending, you’d come over, right? Right?”

“The world isn’t ending, Elide.” His voice was hard and she could still detect the strain, like he was trying to convince himself that they were right to break up.

“But what if we pretended it was?”

He didn’t say anything and she waited for what felt like an eternity before she heard the unmistakable sound of a call ending. What was left of her heart was demolished and she knew without a doubt, he had moved on and it was time for her to move on as well.

Tears slipped down her face as her phone fell from her hand to the ground, the screen shattering but she didn’t care, she didn’t care as she stood up, Hellas barking softly and jumping down to walk beside her as she went to her room.

The dog hopped onto her bed, turning in a circle before flopping down, resting on his side as she dried her tears and undressed, leaving her clothes where they landed. She opened the drawer beneath her wardrobe, feeling like she was mended and torn apart when in opening the heavy blackwood drawer, his scent of clean, midnight rain, wild wild wind and campfires, filled her senses.

Elide dwelled on every item of clothing she had in the drawer, reaching out a trembling hand as she sat cross-legged to touch each piece of him. She laughed in spite of herself at the memories behind each t-shirt and hoodie and sweatpants, every scrap of them that was woven in the fabric.

Her heart became heavy as she took out one of his hoodies, her favourite one because it felt like his arms were wrapped around her when she wore it. She pulled it over her head, her fingertips barely sticking out of the sleeves only this time, this time it was just a hoodie, the feeling of him holding her tight forgotten. Elide shut the drawer slowly and rose from her spot on the floor before crawling into bed but not beneath the duvet, instead she rested her head on Hellas, her tears dripping onto his fur.

Hellas shifted, bopping his nose on her forehead, letting out a low whine before bumping her again, prompting a tearful laugh from her, her hands smoothing over his belly, his tail sweeping back and forth. “We don’t need him, do we? No, we’ll be just fine, just fine, Hell.”

He shot her a look that asked You sure about that? And she wasn’t, she wasn’t sure about anything.

She was drawn out of her thoughts when someone knocked on her door and quicker than he usually did, Hellas was up, racing through her apartment to the front door. He barked at the door, not sitting like he usually did as Elide made her way to him, leaning down to scratch his ears, “Who is it, bud?”

Another bark came from the other side of the door and she froze, blood running cold while she opened the door to find Lorcan standing on her doorstep, Anneith on her leash next to him. Hellas tried to squeeze past her to get to the other Husky but she grabbed his collar, holding him in place as she and Lorcan stared at each other, his eyes darkening at the sight of her in his hoodie. “You’re wrong, El.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Us. We were made for each other and you know it.”

The Husky she was restraining struggled and she couldn’t hold him as he broke free, crashing into Anneith, the two of them tumbling to the floor of the hallway. Lorcan let the leash drop, their eyes still locked on the other’s. She hadn’t seen him in over three months, that awkward moment when they bumped into each other on their morning runs before she had gone home and cried over him again. He looked good but then again, he always did except for the circles under his eyes, the slightly flat light of his eyes and she suspected he saw the same things in her. “Then how did we get here? How did we ruin us if we were made for each other?”

“Because we took it for granted, I took you for granted and it was the right decision, it was right for us to end things at the time because we fucked it up but,” he trailed off, silver brimming in his eyes.

“But what?” She crossed her arms, gripping the cotton fabric to stop herself from reaching out to him.

“But it’s wrong now. It’s so unbelievably wrong and the world ending shouldn’t be the only reason we’re allowed to see each other, for me to tell you I love you, I always have and I will never stop loving you, Elide Lochan, I will spend the rest of my days on this gods-forsaken earth loving you the way you deserve, if that’s what you want.”

Elide sniffled as she nodded, half-sobbing as Lorcan smiled and she stood on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck and his arms banded around her waist. “That’s all I want.”

A furry body rammed into them and they broke apart, laughing as they looked down at Anneith and Hellas, the two dogs’ sides pressed together as they shoved Lorcan and Elide out of the way to pad into her apartment, Anneith’s leash dragging on the floor behind her while they made their way to the warm spot in front of Elide’s fireplace, curling around each other.

“Annie missed you,” Lorcan murmured as she wrapped her arms around his waist and he closed the door. “She would always stare at the door after I walked in, like you would be right there.”

“Hell did that, too. He’d sometimes wait on the carpet, standing and waiting for you even when I told him you weren’t coming back.” Elide swore under breath when she stepped in a manner that had most of her weight shifting onto her right ankle and he didn’t hesitate to scoop her up, lifting her like she weighed nothing.

She smiled and nuzzled her face into his neck, sighing contentedly, “I missed that.” I missed you were the words she didn’t speak but the ones he could hear just as clearly.

“Me too.”

@myfeyrelady @kandasboi @the-regal-warrior @highqueenofelfhame @westofmoon @empire-of-wildfire @rhysands-highlady @city-of-fae @shyvioletcat @alifletcher2012 @tangledraysofsunshine @tswaney17 @ttakeitbacknoww

#oops my hand slipped #isa writes #if the world was ending

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lets-talk-appella · 5 years

Text

Roman Holiday

Bechloe Week 2019 -- Soulmates

Summary: Three years after the events of Pitch Perfect 3, Beca and Chloe meet again on a long-haul flight to Rome.

Word Count: 9k

Rating: G

AO3 and FFN

For @acabellas, who read it first.

Beca shoves her bag into the overhead with a muffled curse. She’d told herself to pack light, but apparently, she hadn’t listened.

“Do you need help with that, ma’am?”

Beca glances over, making quick eye contact with the overly-perky blonde flight attendant (really, just that simple sentence had been coated with enough false sugar to rot Beca’s teeth) before returning her attention to stowing her carry-on.

“No, I’m good, thanks,” she grumbles, then puffs out a breath when her bag finally slides into place and stays.

The attendant walks away, and Beca plops down into her first-class seat, barely taking the time to appreciate the enormous, clearly-able-to-turn-into-a-somewhat-comfortable-bed window seat and the large TV screen in front of her as she reaches for her headphones. She settles back into the cushy seat, places the headphones over her ears, starts the first track, and closes her eyes with a sigh. She’s looking forward to listening to some demos and then maybe watching a movie before passing out on the overnight flight to Rome.

On second thought, Beca thinks as she starts to doze off almost as soon as her eyes are closed, maybe she’ll skip the movie and just sleep. Sleep would be good.

And, who knows, if the seat to her right remains empty, maybe she can stretch out even more on that.

With that hope in mind, Beca lets herself drift off to the sound of her music, which perfectly muffles the commotion of hordes of other people—vacationers, mostly—boarding the flight.

Unfortunately, not ten minutes later, she’s pulled back to consciousness by that same annoying, overly-sweet voice that somehow manages to pierce through her otherwise relatively sound-proof headphones. Rather than opening her eyes to acknowledge the annoyance, she keeps them closed and hopes the flight attendant will leave soon.

However, that isn’t the case.

“I’m sorry, but as the plane is at capacity, we can’t move your seat,” the attendant apologizes extremely loudly, apparently speaking to another passenger. “The best we could do is move you to business class, but as you paid for first class—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine,” comes a softer, almost contrite voice that Beca finds herself straining her ears to listen to. “Thanks for trying.”

Someone has kicked Beca in the stomach. That’s the only explanation for the horrible pang that rocks her gut at the sound of that voice.

Before she can stop herself—she realizes too late that she should feign sleep for the entire flight—her eyes open, first finding the irksome flight attendant, then sliding past her and onto the person she’d been speaking to.

And she looks directly into Chloe Beale’s face for the first time in three years.

There’s a moment, a single half-second, where Beca thinks—hopes—that this is some kind of fever dream brought on by exhaustion, years of failed repression, and expired turkey in her airport sandwich. But her hope is almost immediately crushed, demolished, absolutely obliterated by the simple fact that she can see the trace of laugh lines that had formed around Chloe’s eyes and maybe the slightest hint of lighter streaking in her hair, pulled up into a messy bun. Beca knows herself well enough to know that she isn’t dreaming; she doesn’t dream in that much detail.

She can see a similar struggle of some kind going on behind Chloe’s eyes, can tell by the way her brows furrow just slightly and lips part only a hair in surprise; to anyone else, the signs might not have been noticeable, but Beca can tell. Chloe isn’t happy to see her.

Time resumes in the next beat of Beca’s heart—though for a moment, she’d thought it might have stopped—and Chloe’s face pales. “H—” she starts, then has to pause and clear her throat. “Hi, Bec.”

It’s automatic and so, so easy for Beca to say, “Hey, Chlo,” as if it’s been mere hours since they’ve seen each other.

Then, Beca stares at Chloe and Chloe stares at Beca and no one makes the first move until the sugary flight attendant (Beca had almost forgotten she was even there) clears her throat pointedly. “Yes, well, seeing as you have elected to keep your seat, I suggest you take it,” she says, gesturing to the seat to Beca’s immediate right even as she starts walking away. “We will be taking off shortly.”

Chloe’s eyes slide closed and her lips tighten, but then she nods and lifts a large pink duffle to hoist up to the overhead. Beca’s ears ring as Chloe gets settled, and she takes off her headphones automatically even though she knows they aren’t the cause. Her mind races, full of panic and guilt and disbelief and anger—because what are the odds of this happening now, today, when she’s had no time to prepare the words she knows she needs to say but were never intended to leave her lips.

She’s startled when Chloe’s knee bumps hers as she sits. She thinks Chloe even apologizes for the minimal contact but Beca doesn’t hear her, too busy shifting away and doing her very best to make herself small while also fighting back the torrent of memories threatening to overtake her.

Chloe looks a little older, a little more strained (which is probably to be expected after three years—Beca knows she’s certainly looked better), but still so familiar, still so Chloe that being this close to her pierces Beca like a knife.

God, the last time she and Chloe touched—Christ, even the last time she saw Chloe in person…

It’s unfortunate and a shame and absolutely beyond painful that one of Beca’s freshest, most recent memories of Chloe is how gorgeous she looked while kissing Chicago Walp.

Beca puts her headphones back on.

Leaning against the wall of the plane, she pretends to be staring out the window while in fact seeing nothing and doing her best to think of nothing. A feat in which she is only semi-successful.

Their flight is going to last nearly nine hours; it seems like it takes even longer than that for the plane to finally leave the gate and begin its roll down the tarmac. Even then, it’s almost twenty minutes before the real takeoff begins and the plane, along with its 375 passengers, hurls itself forward with a roar.

The takeoff—and the ten minutes immediately following as the plane builds altitude—isn’t smooth.

It’s pretty much the exact opposite of smooth.

Beca doesn’t mind a little turbulence, but she has to admit this seems excessive for a plane of this size. She can hear her bag and Chloe’s sliding around in the overhead, and a particularly hard jump of the plane almost makes her smack her head against the window. After that, she takes her headphones off so they don’t become damaged.

At the next heavy jostle, Chloe lets out a sharp gasp and Beca reflexively glances over. Chloe’s knuckles are white from her grip on the armrests and she’s tense as a board, ramrod straight in her seat. Her jaw is clenched, chin tilted down, and her eyes are squeezed tightly closed.

Beca grimaces; she remembers holding Chloe’s hand during the rocky sections of their flights as Bellas. Or, more specifically, she remembers Chloe’s grip nearly shattering all the delicate bones in her own hand. Beca hadn’t minded, though. Not really. All that mattered was that it made Chloe feel better.

She knows it isn’t her place anymore.

She wonders if Chloe has ever flown with Chicago, and if he ever let Chloe squeeze his hand to death.

Beca clears her throat. “So. Rome, huh?”

Chloe’s eyes fly open and she glances over sharply but doesn’t reply. If anything, she seems to draw in on herself even more, looking away just as quickly.

It’s a clear signal for Beca to stop talking now, please. And maybe she really should. Maybe she should stick with her original plan of music, movies, sleep, and—most importantly—seclusion, because there’s a reason they haven’t seen each other in three years and, going into the flight, Beca had had no intention of changing that. She had no real reason to.

But she can’t just sit in silence when Chloe is right there and is obviously terrified. She just can’t. So, with a promise to herself to cease any and all conversation once the turbulence has passed, Beca leans in.

“I’m not gonna bite, you know,” she shrugs, hoping she seems more relaxed than she really is. “And it’s a long flight, so…”

Chloe glances over again, but this time, she doesn’t look away. Her posture doesn’t budge—Beca wouldn’t be surprised if there were finger indents left on Chloe’s armrest—but she does seem to at least consider the fact that Beca is talking to her.

“Yeah,” she eventually says, her voice clipped. “Rome.”

“No layover?” Beca prods, for no reason at all other than she’s worried about potential damage to Chloe’s spine from being that wound up.

“Nope, just—just Rome.”

“Oh, nice. Uh, me too. Rome.”

And then Beca’s completely out of ideas for conversation topics. She settles for bobbing her head, a move that, in accordance with a poorly-timed jostle of the plane, actually does cause her to whack her head against the window. Despite the sharp pain, she pretends not to notice in the hopes that Chloe didn’t, either. It doesn’t quite seem to work, though, because a corner of Chloe’s mouth quirks up and—thankfully—her posture seems to relax just slightly.

“You’re not too busy being a superstar?” Chloe asks, only the barest hint of teasing leaking into her tone.

Beca’s brain stalls for an instant as she processes the fact that Chloe’s actually engaging in conversation. “Superstars get vacations, too,” she shrugs once her brain defrosts.

Chloe’s hands relax on the armrests, color flooding her knuckles again. “I suppose. They don’t get private jets?”

Beca can’t stop herself from smiling just a little, thinking about how incredulous Theo had been when she’d turned down his offer for just that. “I wanted something more low profile.”

As soon as she finishes her sentence, the flight levels, reaching an altitude that doesn’t attempt to knock Beca’s teeth out. The noise level of the engine drops as Beca pops her ears, and she realizes she had basically been shouting at Chloe to be heard.

The turbulence (hopefully) finished for the moment, Beca settles back into her seat as Chloe moves her hands to her own lap, folding them with a soft sigh. If Beca kept the promise she’d made to herself, she would put on her headphones again and block out Chloe for the rest of the flight. It would maybe be for the best, thinking long-term.

But, as in the case of her overpacking, Beca doesn’t listen to herself.

“So—”

“Um—”

They start speaking in unison, and it’s so awkward and this entire situation is so uncomfortable and unexpected that it makes Beca laugh, and just like that, she can’t quite remember why it was she’d made an internal vow of silence to begin with.

After all, it is going to be a long flight.

“You go first,” Beca suggests.

“Oh, okay,” Chloe says, pushing a strand of hair that had escaped from her bun behind her ear. “H—How have you been?” she asks, her voice light and casual.

“Uh, good. Yeah. Busy.” Beca winces, slightly irritated by her own urge to stop talking. She’s given countless interviews on national television—it should be the easiest thing in the world to talk to Chloe. (She knows why it isn’t.) “The last few years were crazy, uh, tours and albums, and… well, we wrapped up this tour last week, and, you know, I’m taking some rest now before I start on the next album. Theo has been kinda… he’s fine, really, but. A vacation would be good,” she finishes with a huff.

She thinks that’s a decent amount of information, a coverage of the surface-level details Chloe should be privy to. It answers Chloe’s question, in a way, without detailing how truly exhausted she has been, how much this latest tour drained her of energy and happiness and how uncertain she is about her future with the label because she had never really wanted to sing, only produce, and her answer doesn’t even hint—doesn’t reveal so much as a single trace—of how honest-to-God lonely she is and how she puts out so much music in such a short time simply because she never wants to go home to her huge, magnificent, outstandingly empty house at the end of the day.

Chloe doesn’t need to know about any of that.

Chloe smiles. “That’s your third album?”

“Yep, third,” Beca nods. “It’s kinda crazy actually. Three albums in three years is kinda a lot.”

Oops. She wasn’t supposed to let that slip. She shifts in her seat, but if Chloe picks up on anything strange (Beca’s glaring need for rest, for instance), she doesn’t say. No; instead, she leans forward, all huge eyes and excited smile and practically oozes enthusiasm as she assures Beca, “They’re really good though! You’re doing amazing.”

Thrown by the sincerity shining from Chloe’s eyes, Beca stammers, “Th—thanks, that’s really—you listened to my albums?”

“Of course I did,” Chloe shakes her head, as though shocked that Beca would question that. “We all did.”

She’s telling the truth. Beca knows because Chloe’s tells—eyes begging Beca to believe her, lips parted and ready to fling another compliment, her upper body leaned toward Beca in earnest—are all in place. Chloe doesn’t lie about music, and certainly not about Beca’s. She never has.

Beca has to look away; her eyes drop to her hands, which fiddle with one another in her lap. “Yeah, I… thanks.”

She doesn’t need to clarify the “we all” part of Chloe’s statement. Beca has been better about keeping in contact with some of the Bellas than she was with Chloe, but still. She hasn’t seen most of them in quite some time. The most recent was Amy, and that had been before her five-month world tour.

Saving Beca from further awkwardness, the drink cart prattles up the aisle ahead of them, stopping first next to a businessman in a full suit. Unfortunately, the same sickly sweet flight attendant from before is one of the women distributing the drinks.

Beca groans softly in annoyance.

“Problem?” Chloe asks, following her line of sight.

“Just. That flight attendant is so fake-nice. You know?”

Chloe grins back at her playfully. “Maybe you’re too real-grumpy.”

“Whatever,” Beca huffs. “She’s paid to be nice to us. I want to know what she’s really thinking.”

“Well, Bec, she does have to deal with a ton of rude, smelly strangers on a flight.”

“Speak for yourself. I showered this morning.”

Looking surprised by Beca’s teasing, Chloe opens her mouth to fire right back, only for the drink cart to pull up next to her. The sugar-soaked voice asks for her drink order, and Beca’s.

They both come away from the encounter with glasses of white wine, complementary for first-class passengers. Beca sips hers, savoring the flavor as well as the feeling of it starting to roll through her limbs, calming her, and overall doing her best to avoid accidentally spilling it anywhere.

“So, how are you?” she asks after a moment, glancing over at Chloe. She isn’t sure how much she wants to hear, in all honesty, but it seems rude not to ask, and for whatever reason, she desperately wants the conversation to keep going.

“Oh, good, yeah,” Chloe replies, then stops.

It’s weird. Beca vaguely wonders if this is an episode of The Twilight Zone and they’d somehow flown into another dimension where Chloe stops speaking after only three relatively useless words.

So, Beca prods. “Vet school is still…?”

“Yeah, I graduate in December. A semester early, actually,” Chloe admits with a shrug and a pleased-looking smile.

“Dude, congrats! That’s a huge deal!”

“Thanks! It was because I did that internship, actually. I had a lot of the hours required, so. Early graduation.”

“Nice, nice, that’s… yeah. Great job.”

“Thanks,” Chloe repeats, then looks down with what might be a little shyness, or simply a desire to end the conversation.

Once again, Beca isn’t sure what to say. She knows she should ask more, like about Chloe’s classes, or maybe even use Chloe’s old internship as some kind of conversational spring-board to jump into reminiscing about the years spent living together in New York, but she doesn’t quite want to take a stroll down memory lane after all this time.

And Beca can’t ask about Chicago. She can’t.

So, she pretends to look out the window for several minutes, the silence hanging between them becoming steadily more uncomfortable as time passes. Beca has no idea if Chloe has dozed off or has started reading or what because she doesn’t want to look away from all the interesting… shapeless white mist outside, which is growing steadily darker as the plane carries them toward Europe and a different time zone.

It gets to the point where Beca is relieved to hear that increasingly-familiar-and-annoyingly sweet voice of the flight attendant, accompanied by the rattle of a rapidly approaching food cart.

“Sushi, chicken, or pasta?” the woman asks. “We also have a menu if you would prefer something else.”

“Uh, sushi’s fine,” Beca mumbles, accepting the tray of it from the attendant.

Chloe orders pasta, and takes the tray with a “Thank you.” She stares down at the plate for a moment as Beca eats, long enough that Beca starts to become concerned that there’s something wrong with it—maybe it’s grotesquely overcooked or contains an errant used Band-Aid—but then Chloe looks over at her, surprise written across her face.

“So… this is really nice, wow.”

Beca stops chewing. “Hmm?”

“The food. The wine. The… everything,” Chloe says with a grand gesture around the first-class cabin.

“Oh.” Beca swallows the bite of sushi and glances around the cabin. It is certainly nice, though nothing that she hasn’t experienced before. Her (Theo’s) private jet is really much nicer, excessively so. “Yeah, I suppose it is,” she says slowly, wondering for the first time why it’s Chloe sitting next to her rather than some snobby, stiff CEO with money to toss out the window. “Hey, why are you flying—”

“Are these mushrooms any good, you think?” Chloe muses as she peers suspiciously down at her pasta, poking her fork at the limp gray fungus mixed into the sauce.

Beca looks over her shoulder at the mushrooms. “They look okay,” she says with a shrug. “Gotta be safer than anything I’d make.”

Chloe pauses her prodding to grin at Beca. “You were a decent chef,” she says, the pitch of her voice raising rather obviously. Her eyes flick away and she takes a massive bite of her pasta. She always has been a bad liar.

Beca raises an eyebrow and tilts her head skeptically. She had tried cooking for Chloe and Amy a few times when they’d lived together in New York, yielding less than ideal results.

Chloe’s nose wrinkles guilty. “Okay, you weren’t great.”

“Chloe.” Beca stares. “I had the fire department come twice!”

“Yeah, okay, but the little sad face you made after was so cute.”

“Mmph.” Beca rolls her eyes, trying to ignore the tingling heat rising in her neck at Chloe calling her “cute.” She highly doubts that anyone at the fire department would have called her “cute” after almost burning down the apartment complex twice. “Still not as bad as the time Amy almost got arrested for assault when she punched the mailman.”

Chloe laughs, a real, full laugh that makes her eyes shine and brightens the air around her. At the sight of it—of Chloe’s sincere happiness—something trickles within Beca’s chest and clicks in her mind and it’s suddenly so wonderfully, unexpectedly, stupidly easy to sit next to Chloe again.

“God, what was it?” Chloe asks, her lips still twitching in amusement even as she continued eating her dinner. “He surprised her or something?”

Beca shakes her head with a smile she knows is bigger than the situation really warrants. “No, remember, she thought he was Bumper in disguise and she was mad at him.”

“Right, yeah. Those two were really… something.”

“May I take your trash?”

Beca looks up and directly into the eyes of her least favorite flight attendant. She’s steering a cart full of dirty dishes and trash and looking pointedly at their empty dinner plates.

“Uh…”

“Totes!” Chloe says happily, reaching for Beca’s plate to stack it on top of her own and hand them to the flight attendant. “Thanks!”

A moment later, the cart rattles away, and Beca’s eyes flick to the TV screen in front of her seat as she considers what to say now. The interruption had thrown off the progress they’d made—despite the ease with which she and Chloe seem to be able to fall into conversation again, three years is still a long time.

She glances at Chloe from the corner of her eye; she’s examining her nails, something she only does when she doesn’t know what to do or say next.

It’s probably a bad idea, but… “So, do you want to watch a movie or something?” Beca asks.

Chloe looks up, eyebrows lifted. “Beca Mitchell wants to watch a movie?”

“Shut up,” Beca groans. She thought she’d heard the last of that a long time ago, but apparently not. “You know I like movies. Just not boring ones.”

Chloe bumps her shoulder against Beca’s teasingly. “Okay, well, you pick a non-boring movie and we can watch it together.”

“Uh… right,” Beca mumbles, trying to scoot farther away from Chloe without her noticing. Yeah, the movie thing was her idea, but Chloe touching her brought back too many memories of Hood Nights and choreography and competition celebrations and—Beca swallows.

Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. She can’t forget that large, camouflage-wearing detail.

She taps the screen in front of her, waking it and wincing at its brightness. She turns it down, noticing that around them, several people have closed their window shades and have reclined, likely preparing to sleep for the majority of the rest of the flight.

Chloe, though, doesn’t look tired. And Beca is far too wound up to do anything other than search for the movie she had in mind. She makes the selection, ignoring Chloe’s look of deep skepticism, and pulls out a pair of earbuds, giving the left to Chloe and keeping the right for herself. Before Chloe has a chance to protest at her movie choice, Beca starts Booksmart, one of her favorites.

Less than two hours later, as the end credits roll, Chloe takes out her earbud with an expression that Beca can only describe as a mix of pity and regret.

“Good, huh?” she asks quietly, mindful of the few people dozing around them.

“Why is that on here?” Chloe replies after a moment.

Beca rolls her eyes. “It’s a cinematic masterpiece, Chloe.”

Chloe wrinkles her nose and lifts her shoulders. “I… it’s kinda lame.”

“What?” Beca gasps, deadly serious. “You’re kinda lame. You laughed during it!”

“Yeah, I did…” Chloe says carefully. “Some parts were good, and I liked, uh, the crazy girl.”

“Gigi.”

“Her,” Chloe nods. “But... the whole thing with the strawberries and the—the dolls? I dunno, that was kinda unnecessary.”

“Okay, yeah,” Beca admits. “But—”

“And that girl in the bathroom was so rude to Amy, like really, I didn’t like her at all.”

“I mean, fine, but the rest of it—”

“Was lame?”

“Was hilarious.”

Chloe purses her lips. “Mmm…”

Beca slaps her hand down on the wide armrest between herself and Chloe. “That’s it!” she says forcefully, and is rewarded with wide blue eyes and a slackened jaw. “Get off this plane!” She lets the corner of her mouth quirk upward just enough for Chloe’s expression to relax and a soft smile to light her face.

“What, am I supposed to just jump out?” Chloe fires back.

“Yep. See ya!” Beca gives a mock wave. “Don’t forget a parachute.”

“Shush,” Chloe says, and then time slows down. Beca can see it coming as if in slow motion, can track the exact movement of Chloe’s hand as it rises from her lap, arching through the air, then falling, falling to rest perfectly on top of her own. Chloe’s skin is soft and warm, but Beca feels as though she’s just plunged her entire arm into a bucket of ice water. It shocks her enough that she pulls away before her brain catches up, her body’s reflexive protective mechanisms taking over.

Hurt flares across Chloe’s face for an instant before her expression goes blank, but it still hits Beca like a truck when she snatches her own hand back as well. Shame rises in Beca’s neck—which is stupid because she has no reason to feel bad about this, about needing space, about protecting herself from the unexpected and… not entirely unwelcome touch. (She wants more than anything to put her hand back under Chloe’s.) But still.

At this point, she’s sitting next to a stranger, and her body knows that even if her brain refuses to believe it.

Which...

“So, you tried to change seats.” The words that leave Beca’s mouth surprise her just as much as they surprise Chloe, who pales and doesn’t quite meet Beca’s eyes.

“What?”

Beca half wants to take it back, but she knows Chloe heard her the first time. “Earlier,” she forces out. “When you got on. You... tried to change seats.” It comes out as more of a question, made worse by the way she lifts one shoulder.

Chloe’s eyebrows draw together and she looks down at her lap, twirling her thumb ring. Beca notices for the first time that there’s no wedding ring (the thought that she could have been sitting next to Chloe Walp rather than Chloe Beale turns her stomach), but before that information really sinks in, Chloe whispers, “Yeah, I… I did.”

Beca nods, lets that sit in the air before taking a breath. “I don’t blame you, you know. I probably would have done the same thing.”

“Beca…”

“I get it. Three years—”

“Three years...” Chloe cuts her off with a shaky breath. “Three years is a really long time. You just—you vanished. You know?” One of Chloe’s hands runs through her hair roughly. “After we knew you for seven years, Bec, you just—you signed with Khaled, and then you vanished.”

“Not completely,” Beca shrugs uncomfortably.

“No, not completely,” Chloe concedes with a single nod. “We got your cards, and Amy and Aubrey and Stacie always said you’d talked to them, but… you didn’t call me.”

“I did once.”

She did, about two months after she and the Bellas had their huge hug-a-thon on stage in front of hundreds of members of the U.S. Armed Forces. She’d called Chloe from her contemporary, freshly-painted, excessively huge studio office in L.A. She called because Chloe was still in New York but living alone since Amy and her newfound millions had moved out of that cramped apartment three days after Beca had, and Beca had known how lonely Chloe would be. So, shoving aside thoughts of a certain soldier with a stupid name, Beca had called. Only for Chloe to talk all about Chicago, telling her all the dates he’d taken her on when she’d stayed in Europe an extra two weeks to be with him, and how he calls as often as he can and how he writes to her and how it’s just like old time love stories and how he did this and that and on and on and on.

Beca hadn’t really felt the need to call after that.

“Yeah,” Chloe says, likely remembering that call. Her eyebrows draw together, but she doesn’t say anything else.

“I mean… you didn’t call me, either,” Beca mutters, glancing out her window at the now black sky.

“I… no. I didn’t.”

“It’s both of us, Chlo.”

“What happened?” Chloe asks, looking for all the world as if she has no possible clue as to why they’d let their friendship grow stale.

Beca almost wants to laugh at her. Or maybe scream. Instead, she says, “We got busy. Things just changed. It happens.”

“But we always said—”

“What can I get you ladies to drink?”

Beca could hug the flight attendant. Neither she nor Chloe orders anything to drink, but the interruption still ends the line of conversation that Beca had been trying so hard to avoid for the past three years.

Deciding that an uncomfortable silence is the best option at the moment, Beca uses her screen to check how much time remains in their flight: about four hours. Unease rolls through her stomach. She just isn’t sure if it’s because the number is too big or too small. She reaches to close the tab on the screen, wanting to power it off.

“I missed you, you know.”

It’s soft, barely a whisper, and clearly said so that Beca could easily ignore it if she wanted to. Beca pauses, her hand hovering in front of the screen. Slowly, her fingers curl, rolling inward to her palm, forming a tight fist that she lets fall to her lap. She really shouldn’t—but then she looks over and Chloe’s watching her, her face open and honest and so unassuming that Beca knows she could never say another word back in response and Chloe wouldn’t blame her.

“I missed you, too,” she says instead, and Chloe swallows.

“Don’t… let’s not do that again. Promise?”

“I…” Beca doesn’t want to make a promise that she’ll inevitably have to break (she can’t bear seeing Chloe with anyone that isn’t her) and she knows how selfish that makes her, but she also can’t bear finding out whether Chloe’s disappointment looks the same as it had years ago. She clears her throat. “Promise,” she says, and if Chloe knows she’s lying, it doesn’t show.

Instead, Chloe smiles and takes a breath. “So, what are these other people doing in first class? Are they all famous singers, too?”

“Oh, um,” Beca has to take a moment to catch up to the change in topic.

“That guy is a master animal trainer,” Chloe whispers with conviction, pointing subtly to the man seated in front of Beca, wearing a suit. “He’s headed to Rome to meet a caravan of lions being transported to a nearby zoo, where they’ll perform tricks for the kids.”

“Mmm.”

“And the woman in the gray sweater? You see her?”

Beca follows Chloe’s gaze diagonally across the aisle to a row ahead of them, where an older woman wearing a gray turtleneck leans heavily against her window, mouth hanging wide as she sleeps through the duration of their flight. She looks so peaceful that Beca’s actually mildly concerned until she sees the steady movement of the woman’s shoulders as she breathes.

“She’s an assassin.”

Beca snorts loudly enough to make the man in front of her jolt in his sleep.

“Quiet!” Chloe chastises, though her own twitching lips betray her. “She’s only stopping in Rome for five hours, during which she has to arrange the deaths of three high-profile members of the French government.”

Across the aisle, the woman twitches and begins to snore softly.

Beca hums and plays along. “Why are three high-profile members of the French government in Rome?”

“Because they thought they’d be safe there. Little did they know that The Black Widow—”

“Is that her?”

“Yes. Little did they know that The Black Widow has been tracking their every movement and is going to take them down.”

“Clearly they were wrong about the safety thing.”

Chloe nods seriously.

Beca makes a show of looking over at the snoring woman. “Well, someone should tell The Black Widow that the guy in front of her was once a knife-thrower in a circus.”

The beaming smile of delighted surprise that Chloe sends her more than makes up for any residual awkwardness from their earlier conversation.

It’s easy. It’s so easy for Beca to lose herself talking to Chloe like this. In fact, she’s 98.3% positive that even if it had been more than three years since they’d seen one another—if it had been five, ten, twenty, even fifty years—they’d still be able to talk like this. Because it’s Chloe. She’s always been able to be like this with Chloe. She could talk like this with Chloe all night.

But. Maybe it’s not a good idea.

Next to her, Chloe stifles a yawn into the back of her hand, but seems to shake herself out of it, trying to stay awake, presumably to continue talking. And if Chloe wants to stay up, that’s fine with Beca.

In search of their next conversation topic, Beca reaches for one of the magazines in front of her, hoping to find some article in there they can talk about or make fun of. She pulls one out of the slot and is horrified to see her own face—in a somewhat unflattering photo—gracing the cover of one of those trashy tabloids.

“Oh god,” she mutters, trying to shove away the magazine before Chloe can see it, but before she can, it’s snatched out of her hand.

“Did you plant this?” Chloe asks as she scrutinizes the cover and headline, which Beca hadn’t had a chance to read.

“I didn’t, I swear!”

Chloe only grins in that teasing way she has. Her eyes drop to the cover and she reads aloud, “‘Pop star Beca Mitchell seen leaving grocery store in a rage: Her secret war with record label over diet.’”

Beca huffs and rolls her eyes. “That’s the best they could do?”

Chloe gasps sharply and she clutches the tabloid to her chest in mock scandal. “You mean these rags don’t always report the truth? No. Way.”

With another eye roll, Beca plucks the magazine from Chloe’s hands and stuffs it back in the slot it came from. “Honestly, I’m still amazed that they can get away with this. It’s false reporting.”

“Come on, at least some have to be true,” Chloe insists, batting her eyes (rather unnecessarily, in Beca’s opinion).

“Well…”

“I mean, not all of the ones about you dating having to be true, but some, right?”

Beca shrugs, trying to look as unassuming as she can while wondering why, of all the ridiculous things the tabloids had written about her, Chloe would choose to ask about that.

“Oh come on, there’s no way you’re single,” Chloe insists with maybe too much enthusiasm, her voice a tad brighter, somehow, than it is normally. “There’s no way!”

“I—uh… first of all, I am single,” Beca says slowly, her eyes flicking to the back of the seat in front of her even as her neck warms. “But not all of the rumors were false, no.”

“Which ones?”

“Um—did you know these seats, like, recline into beds?” Beca asks quickly. “Here, let me…” she fumbles for the button on the side of her seat, pushing back with enough enthusiasm she’s surprised she doesn’t launch herself to the back of the plane. Her seat smoothly reclines into what is basically a soft, slightly-smaller-than-twin-sized bed, and she lies back, staring at the ceiling of the cabin.

Of course, she should have known better—maybe should have faked a bathroom emergency or something instead—because approximately one-sixteenth of a second later, Chloe is reclining in her own seat-bed right next to her and poking her in the shoulder.

“Which rumors are true, then?” Chloe asks persistently. “I’m not leaving until you tell me, so.”

And that doesn’t help anything at all because Beca’s traitorous mind immediately flings itself to a dorm shower, bright eyes, perfect pitch, and rising steam. She shuts that down as well as she can, turning her neck to meet those same bright eyes, sparkling with amusement and maybe something else that Beca can’t identify.

Beca sighs dramatically and flops her arm over her eyes. “Um… I’m definitely not having an affair with Liam Hemsworth,” she says, sliding her arm to her forehead to peek at Chloe.

“Oh, I knew that one was fake,” Chloe dismisses with a wave. “You wouldn’t do that to Miley.”

Beca pauses. “Right.”

“But other ones?”

Beca really doesn’t know why Chloe’s so invested in this.

“I… fine,” she mutters, flopping her hands down to her stomach and lacing her fingers together. “I did go on a date with Kristen Stewart.” She looks sideways, trying to gauge Chloe’s reaction.

Chloe’s eyebrows raise, but she doesn’t look nearly as surprised as Beca had expected. Maybe a slight downturn of the mouth, but that could mean anything; maybe she just doesn’t like supernatural romance movies or something. Before Beca has a chance to decipher the look, Chloe’s plowing on.

“How was that?” she asks, fully rolling to her side facing Beca and sliding a hand under her head to act as a cushion.

Mirroring her, Beca also rolls to her side. “It was good! She’s really great.”

“And pretty.”

“Yeah, and pretty. But I think we were better as friends, you know?”

“Yeah, I… that’s a trend.”

“Hm?”

“Any other girls?”

“Um, not really.” Beca raises a hand to her nose, rubbing it absentmindedly. “With the albums, you know, my label kinda… Well, Theo thought it might be better for my ‘image’—she uses her hands to make air quotes—“or whatever to not really date until I’m more established. And to date more guys than girls,” she adds.

Chloe frowns. “That’s not… it’s your life.”

Beca can’t stop herself from laughing. “Not really. Not when I’m signed to a label.”

Chloe’s frown deepens, but she doesn’t say anything. Beca could kick herself; she really hadn’t meant to say anything like that. Before she can make up for it, though, Chloe leans forward.

“So, do you… prefer girls?” she asks, her eyes flicking away and back. “You never really said.”

Beca swallows. “Oh, I… is it a problem?”

Chloe’s eyes fly wide and her hand flutters toward Beca as if to rest on her arm. “Bec, of course not! I mean, you know I dabble in the lady pond.” She says this at normal volume and with no trace of shyness. Beca kind of admires her for it. “Come on, it’s totally fine.”

Beca nods, smiling to herself a little. “I tried telling you guys first, you know.”

“Hm?”

Beca lets herself smile properly now as she remembers a European stage filled with all of her best friends. “Come on, Chlo,” she urges gently. “I sang ‘Freedom ‘90.’”

“Oh, right...” Chloe breathes, her eyes again flicking away as she bites her lower lip.

Beca’s stomach drops as she remembers what else happened that night. She thinks Chloe might be remembering, too, now, as her eyes take on some faraway place and time. Beca blinks and behind her eyelids she sees it all again, the way Chloe had strutted to Chicago, pulled him into a kiss that had made the earth crumble from beneath Beca’s feet.

She knows Chloe’s thinking of that, too. She can see it in the way she won’t make eye contact and her teeth toy with her lip.

Reality crashes into Beca, stealing the breath from her lungs and making her feel like the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. She knew this was a bad idea, knew she should never have talked to Chloe like this, because when they leave this plane, it’s going to hurt more than ever.

She might as well kick-start the ending now.

“So,” she starts, not recognizing the sound of her own voice. “How’s, um, Chicago? Are—-are you meeting him in Rome, or…”

A shadow crosses Chloe’s face and she shifts, rolling onto her back again to stare at the ceiling. When she still doesn’t answer, Beca begins to worry that she’d somehow put her foot in her mouth.

“Chlo, I—”

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Chloe breathes, still watching the ceiling.

Oh.

Beca rolls to her back as well, unable to look at Chloe directly. She doesn’t want to hear about how Chicago is Chloe’s “soulmate” or whatever is about to happen. She doesn’t want to hear about the white picket fence house and their eventual two-point-five kids or how they’ll renew their wedding vows every ten years or something ridiculously cheesy like that. She doesn’t want to hear how Chloe is going to dedicate her life to a man who absolutely does not deserve her—though, Beca can’t be sure because she never really even talked to him—and doesn’t want to hear how he’s her “better half” or whatever the hell goes with having a soulmate.

Beca wants to throw herself out of the plane, sans parachute, for being the one to even ask about Chicago in the first place.

“I… don’t know,” she says eventually, risking a glance over.

Chloe’s lips press together and she takes a deep breath through her nose. Beca looks back at the ceiling, unable to face Chloe’s disappointment.

“Well, I do,” Chloe says. “I think there can be different kinds of soulmates.” She pushes herself back on her side facing Beca, but Beca doesn’t move. “I think anyone you connect with—boyfriend, girlfriend, family, friends—anyone who just gets you, and you get them, I think that’s a soulmate. And I think you can have more than one soulmate.”

“You think so? More than one?” Beca asks, feeling Chloe’s eyes on the side of her face.

“I hope so. Not sure though. Maybe you only get one soulmate of each kind, you know? But you can have multiple kinds.”

Beca tries her hardest to control her expression. She clears her suddenly dry throat and asks the ceiling, “What... happens if you think someone is your soulmate, like you really, really think so, and then… they’re not?”

Chloe takes another deep breath, one that Beca can hear is jagged around the edges. “Which kind of soulmate are we talking? Because maybe they’re just—maybe they’re just not the kind you thought they were.”

Beca can’t find her voice. She must have lost it somewhere along the line, it having fallen from her throat to bounce around the inside of the plane and slip out a crack in a door seal to disperse among the clouds.

It’s so quiet in the plane, save for the humming white noise of the engine, that Beca’s sure Chloe could hear how hard her heart was beating if only she listened closely enough.

“You know?” Chloe prompts, sounding so small and needy that it snatches Beca’s voice right out of the air to shove it back into place in her throat.

“So, Chicago is your… soulmate.”

Even as Beca’s heart clenches around the word, Chloe starts to laugh, a surprised bubbling noise that makes Beca finally turn to her in shock.

Chloe shakes her head and stops laughing, though a smile still graces her face. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to… no. Chicago isn’t my soulmate. We broke up eight months ago.”

Oh.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Chloe sighs. “To answer your question, I’m going to Rome, alone, on a first-class plane ticket because I’m treating myself, Beca. I… this was a long time coming.”

Beca’s heart is in her throat now, she’s sure. She knows she’s probably supposed to say something like, “I’m sorry,” in response to the news about Chicago, but she can’t quite manage to lie to Chloe yet again.

Chloe’s eyes drop. “I thought Chicago was my soulmate. I told myself he was. I needed him to be.”

Beca wants to ask the question that dangles there on the tip of her tongue, but she’s too afraid. Afraid of the answer, afraid she knows what Chloe is going to say, afraid that it’s too late. Afraid that she’s wrong.

She feels the moment fading, knows that with every passing second the window gets smaller and smaller, until before long, it’s going to close entirely and she’ll spend the rest of her life wishing she’d said something, wishing she’d had the courage to ask the question and hear the answer that will change everything.

She knows she’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t say something, so she takes a breath that churns her stomach and opens her mouth.

Chloe snores softly, nothing more than a nasally inhale, but her eyes are closed and she looks more relaxed in sleep than Beca can remember her looking in a long time.

Her window of opportunity closes with a bang and Beca settles back and closes her eyes, mentally berating herself, hoping against hope that all of this had just been a horrible nightmare from which she won’t ever recover.

She is so, so stupid for doing this to herself.

*****************

The next time Beca opens her eyes, the cabin is brightly lit, a result of both the interior lights and unfiltered sunlight streaming through the one or two windows with shades lifted partway. A blueberry muffin, a slice of banana bread, and a Styrofoam cup of black coffee rest on her tray, the airplane’s offered breakfast.

Frowning at the items, she wonders if the flight attendant had just placed them there or if someone had ordered—Beca whips her face to the side so quickly it makes her neck crack. The seat next to her is upright and empty.

Beca fumbles for the lever on the side of her own seat, sitting up and pushing the recliner back to seat form. Her eyes roam the cabin, searching, both hoping and dreading that everything had actually been a result of her imagination. Then, at the front of the cabin, a light near the ceiling flickers off, and Chloe steps out of the restroom, looking exhausted.

Relief tinged with pain rolls through Beca; trying to hide her reaction, she rubs her eyes then focuses on unwrapping the muffin.

“Morning,” Chloe says lightly as she sits down. “So those restrooms are still really tiny.”

“They are,” Beca agrees around a yawn. She hates changing time zones like this. A glance at her watch tells her she got about two hours of sleep. “Did you order this stuff for me?” she asks, gesturing to her breakfast.

Chloe nods. “I hope that’s okay? The cart went by and I didn’t want you to miss the breakfast.”

“It’s good. Thanks.”

“Totes. Um, I think they said before I went to the bathroom that we would be landing in, like, twenty minutes or so, so…”

“Right.” The breakfast on her tray doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. Still, she picks at it, even if it’s just something to do with her hands. Chloe reaches for one of the magazines in front of them and starts to read. Thankfully, Beca isn’t on the cover of this one.

Beca takes a sip of her coffee. Chloe turns a page. Beca finishes off the muffin and starts on the bread. Chloe raises a hand to rub at her cheek as she reads.

Beca’s mind races, but is simultaneously quiet. It’s a weird state, and she blames it on the lack of sleep, time change, and the presence of Chloe. She knows she could—maybe should—say something about Chloe’s whole “soulmate” thing, but now in the relative daylight, it seems too far away to bring up again.

So, they sit in silence, listening to the engine noises grow louder as their altitude drops. Beca pops her ears several times, the plane rocks back and forth unsteadily (Chloe takes several deep breaths and grips the armrests), and, after only a few moments where Beca is positive the plane is going to crash, they touch down on the tarmac with a small bump and the sudden slowing brought on by strong brakes.

Next to her, Chloe relaxes with a sigh.

Beca pushes her window shade up and looks out at what she can see of the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, trying to shove down the rising unease in her stomach.

She knew this would happen. She did this to herself, which probably makes her some sort of sick masochist who gets off on things like falling in love for the second time with the same person only to have her walk away without a backward glance. Again, for the second time.

Beca’s problem isn’t that she never loved Chloe back (she likes to think Chloe was in love with her, too, once). Her problem is that she absolutely, totally, utterly sucks at the timing of these things.

The plane comes to a stop that jerks Beca to the present. The stale air fills with the metallic clink of unbuckling seat belts and melodic chimes as people check their phones and take them off airplane mode.

Beside her, Chloe unbuckles and stands with a stretch, reaching into the overhead bin.

Panic rises inside Beca’s chest, making her fumble with her own seat belt before finally undoing and standing with screaming, sore muscles, having to bend her neck awkwardly to avoid bumping her head on the overhead.

“Well, uh, have fun in Rome,” she says, rubbing at the back of her neck.

“Thanks, you too.” Chloe gets her bag down and rests it on the seat, sparing Beca a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Stay in touch?”

“For sure.” Liar.

The falsely-sugary flight attendant opens the door, and immediately passengers in first-class begin to walk out. Chloe’s eyes flick to the queue, then back to Beca.

“Bye, then,” she says, too brightly.

“Bye.”

With only a second’s hesitation—one that might even have been a figment of Beca’s hopeful imagination—Chloe picks up her duffle bag and takes her place in line. She takes a step forward, and Beca reaches out to catch her shoulder.

“Wait, Chlo—” Chloe stops instantly, her eyes wide and maybe a little hopeful. Behind her, the line stalls. “Why were you talking about soulmates?” Beca asks in a rush, desperation driving her voice to a higher pitch than normal.

Chloe’s eyes flick to the growing line behind her, many heads peering around to see what the hold-up is. Her mouth opens, then closes again.

“Please,” Beca whispers, her grip on Chloe’s arm never loosening. “Please.”

Chloe’s eyes finally meet hers. Beca’s stunned to see they’re swimming. “I was trying to tell you,” Chloe breathes. “Chicago wasn’t my soulmate because I’d already found mine wandering around an Activities Fair.”

Surely, the plane can’t have landed. It was impossible for the plane to have landed, because Beca’s still 30,000 feet in the air and falling, falling fast, the floor having dropped out from under her feet.

She recoils, reclaiming her arm, shaking her head, because she’d heard wrong, she had to have, or she’d misunderstood, because there’s no possible way Chloe had said those words.

Beca doesn’t get a chance to ask her to repeat it, though, because as soon as she takes her hand from Chloe’s arm, Chloe’s moving, walking down the aisle to exit the plane and leave Beca behind. Immediately, the passengers that had formed a line behind her press forward, filling the aisle and lengthening the distance between her and Beca by the second.

Beca doesn’t blame her one bit. If their positions were reversed and she had been the one to drop a confession like that, she’d be running away as fast as she could, too.

She has to catch up.

“Chloe, wait!” she calls, but either Chloe doesn’t hear her or purposefully ignores her, because Beca is forced to watch the back of her head as she rounds the corner of the aisle ahead to step out of the plane.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit…” Beca chants under her breath. She shoves her way into the aisle, ignoring the sounds of protest emitted by the passengers that had technically been in line—which, they’d totally butted in front of her to begin with, rude—and whirls, snatching her back from the overhead. It takes everything in her not to rush forward and send people stumbling, shoving her way out of the plane, but she knows that would more than likely just get her in trouble with customs or something.

So she’s forced to wait, to inch her way forward with the rest of them, while knowing that with every moment that passes, Chloe is only getting farther and farther away.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

With one last parting wave and a “Thank you for choosing us,” from Beca’s least-favorite flight attendant, Beca’s free, bursting forward from the plane with so much enthusiasm she almost topples over and into the tunnel connecting the plane and their gate.

“Chloe!” she calls out desperately, but there’s no sign of her.

Beca hates cardio.

She might make an exception, though, just this once. With more agility than she knew she still had in her exhausted body, Beca surges forward, her bag clutched close to her chest, and ducks and weaves around other passengers, trying desperately to get to the end of the tunnel and to Chloe. She’d chase her through the entire airport and across all of Rome if she had to.

She stalls behind a slow-moving couple, tottering along as if this connecting tunnel is their favorite place on earth. “Move!” she shouts at the back of their heads, and the man starts and flings himself to the side, creating enough space for Beca to squeeze through and then she’s running again and there’s the end of the tunnel and now she’s at the gate and—and there’s the red hair.

“CHLOE!” she nearly screams it, and by some miracle, Chloe stops and whirls, her eyes flying wide when Beca doesn’t stop, only runs to her and throws her bag to the ground and reaches forward, her hands cupping Chloe’s cheeks and pulling her into a kiss that Beca knows will change everything.

There’s a beat where Chloe doesn’t respond and fear explodes in Beca’s mind.

But then Chloe’s arms wrap around her waist and the lips under Beca’s soften until Chloe’s kissing her back, and the fear is replaced by exaltation so strong that Beca can’t be sure it doesn’t lift her off her feet.

Minutes, hours, days later, they finally separate, and Beca’s eyes flutter open to take in Chloe’s flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and gleaming eyes.

“I…” Beca has to take a deep breath. “Is that what you meant?”

Chloe’s face breaks into a huge smile and she nods frantically. “Yes, I—yes, I meant you.”

“Good,” Beca smiles. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop smiling now. “Because I—you—the whole thing—you’re my, uh, you know—”

Chloe stops her babbling by pressing a quick kiss to her lips, one that still makes Beca’s knees weaken. “I know,” she says, then laughs. “So, you ran up that tunnel, huh?”

“Yep, and I’d do it again,” Beca says proudly, standing as tall as she can.

Chloe’s eyes sparkle. “You know you would have caught up with me at customs, right? Or baggage claim? You didn’t have to run.”

Beca blinks. “Uh.”

“It’s okay,” Chloe grins, lacing their fingers together. “I’m glad you did.”

#bechloe #bechloe fic #my writing #beca mitchell #chloe beale #bechloe week 2019 #i'd suggest reading on ao3 or ffn cuz formatting

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keeroo92 · 5 years

Note

Can we get a cute fic with a smaller, timid male finally confessing his feelings to Dante and Dante just being completely smitten? I need the fluffiest fluff for my fragile heart

Eek, how sweet! Thank you for this, I had a ton of fun writing this! There’s a lil bit of angst, my bad... Hope you enjoy!

Word count - 1,608

________

For years, you harbored your feelings in silence. Any time you came close to spilling the beans, you reminded yourself of the myriad of reasons Dante could never be yours.

Chief among them was that you were pretty damn sure he wasn’t gay.

The rest were circumstantial, debatable and easy enough to talk yourself out of caring about, but that one cruel fact remained. You simply weren’t his type, through no fault of your own.

It still hurt, though.

Little things made it worse, like when he called someone ‘babe’ or teased about the noises Nero and Kyrie made over the weekend in the spare room. Anytime he patted you on the back, making a crack about whatever was going on around you. The worst was how amazing his mouth looked when he ate pizza, slurping away at the warm cheese and moaning at the flavor…

You wondered if anyone else got jealous of food.

Regardless. Everything changed six months ago when he brought a guy home. Some tall asshole with ear gauges and black jeans, basically the opposite of your small self. You were heartbroken, knowing the context of the new face and realizing how wrong you were about Dante’s preferences.

At least the guy hadn’t stuck around long. Small mercies.

Once he was gone, things settled down for a while. Dante made his usual jokes, munching away on pizza and driving you nuts with every bite. He patted your back and made fun of Vergil when he misplaced a book. Nero stormed off in a huff whenever the man in red quipped something about selling tickets.

The knowledge that Dante was, at the very least, open to being with a man made it more and more difficult to talk yourself out of confessing. You struggled every day to hold back, biting your lips and muttering excuses so you could retreat until the urge faded. The others gave you some funny looks, but Dante didn’t seem to notice your strange behavior. Another reason to keep it hidden – he didn’t care enough to pay attention to your quirks.

Little did you know how wrong you were.

Dante knew something was up. At first, he assumed you’d deal with it on your own and he didn’t need to worry, but as the weeks dragged on his concern grew. You could barely look him in the eyes sometimes. You flinched when he touched you. You even stopped coming to his weekly movie night.

It hurt. You were his friend and he wanted you to be happy. If something was up, he wanted to help you fix it. Seeing you in pain, day after day was more agonizing than the time Vergil stabbed him as a teenager.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and he pulled you aside, muscles already tensed to fight off the source. You looked confused and maybe a little scared as he dragged you to the kitchen and sat you down at the cracked plastic countertop. To help ease the tension, he poured two shots of whiskey and forced one into your hand, clinking his own glass against it and downing it in one gulp.

“So. What’s been bugging ya?” he asked, slamming the shot glass on the counter.

You froze. Who told him? Why now? Did it even matter?

Probably not. You licked your lips and replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dante snorted and gestured at the still-full shot glass in your hand. “Drink up. I’m not taking any more bullshit.”

Shit.

The man was legendary for sniffing out half-truths and lies. It was a goddamned miracle he hadn’t figured you out yet. You raised the glass and cringed as the amber fluid slid down your throat, coughing as you set the glass down again. A firm hand smacked your spine in a rough approximation of helping.

“Better out than in, right?”

You glared at him and he chuckled, reaching for the bottle to pour another round. He downed half a shot and raised an eyebrow at you, blatantly ignoring your shaking head as he poured a matching amount in your glass.

“Come on, Y/N. How bad could it be? Let me help you sort it out.”

He’s not going to let this go. I’m a goner.

You held your breath and emptied your glass. This time you managed to maintain a shred of composure, only clearing your throat to ease the alcohol’s passage.

“You can’t help me with this,” you said.

“Why the fuck not?”

You bit your lip, eyes darting around in search of a safe escape. After this long, even to think of telling him had you in a cold sweat.

“Hey, look at me.” His hand grasped your chin and forced you to meet his stern gaze. “Why. The fuck. Not?”

The calloused fingers on your chin were too much. Even that small contact felt so damned good, and you closed your eyes as your lips parted.

“Because you’re the issue!”

He chuckled and lowered his hand. Your soul cried out at the loss.

“Me? What did I do? Tell me and I’ll make it right.”

He poured another round of shots and grinned. You didn’t bother protesting and followed his lead to slam the drink with a shudder.

“The problem isn’t something you did, its something you’ll never do,” you whispered. The tile floor was suddenly fascinating; you couldn’t tear your eyes off the grimy grey surface.

“Well, I definitely won’t do it if you can’t even tell me what it is,” he replied sardonically.

He has a point. Damnit.

You really couldn’t expect anything to change if you refused to tell him and holding onto the pain was too painful to bear. It begged to be spoken, the confession waiting on your tongue. Every nerve screamed at you to do it, to just open your mouth and say the damned words, but something still held you back. He didn’t want you; it was lunacy to pretend otherwise.

A warm weight rested on your shoulder and your eyes lifted to find his staring at you. A gloved hand gripped you and you reached for another drink. Haze clouded your thoughts, but one urgent need shone through the fog.

Don’t say it.

Don’t you fucking say it, Y/N.

“I want you, Dante. I have for a long time,” your traitorous lips said.

God damnit. This is why I don’t drink. Fucking stupid.

A soft hum rumbled in his chest as his eyes lit up. Was that humor? If he started laughing you might have to run, hide somewhere and sleep off the buzz. Go home and never come back.

“Uh, I… I don’t really know what to say.”

You dropped your eyes back to the floor. “It’s okay. I know I’m not your type.”

He sighed and another warm weight dropped onto your knee. “That’s not what I meant. I’m pretty crap at this stuff, you know. Just… give me a sec, yeah?”

You focused on a crack in the tile. It surprised you that you weren’t crying. Maybe after so long, you just didn’t have it in you? Or maybe the drinks were messing with you. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

His thumb rubbed a tiny circle on your knee. An intimate gesture, one you’d never seen the mighty devil hunter perform before. It felt really, really good and you bit your lip to restrain the pleased hum rising in your body.

“Okay… so I gotta set you straight here. I don’t… I don’t have a type. If it feels right, who gives a shit what people look like?”

That made sense, in a Dante sort of way.

“And… look, I suck at this. But, you know what? You’ve always felt right to me.”

The hand on your shoulder drifted inward to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your lower lip as it twisted into a smile. His touch was like acid, burning through all the layers of doubt and fear to reveal the truth you’d kept hidden for so long. You had to be dreaming, nothing else made any sense.

And if this is a dream, I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Part of you wanted nothing more than to tackle him and fulfill your wildest fantasies, but a more rational voice overpowered the urge. There were too many other things that needed to be said first.

“So, wait… why didn’t you say anything?” you asked, squinting.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was scared?”

Dante?! Scared?! You gotta be shitting me.

Laughter bubbled out of your mouth, gaining strength the longer his sheepish expression stared at you. It was unbelievable, the man who charged into demon infested hellscapes on a regular basis, cracking jokes as he demolished the hordes, scared?

“Quit laughing, I know it’s dumb.”

You gathered your wits, choking back the last few peals of mirth as you reached out to feel his coarse stubble. It wasn’t as rough as you imagined. What would it feel like to have it pressed against your face, his lips locked on yours?

You longed to find out. “I would… very much like to kiss you now.”

Dante leaned closer, pulling your head to rest on his chest with a goofy smile. “How ‘bout we wait till morning? I’d hate to not remember our first kiss.”

He’s got a good point.

“One condition – I’m sleeping next to you. No more waiting,” you replied. “I want that kiss first thing in the morning, got it?”

He chuckled and helped you to your feet, already pulling you in the direction of his bedroom. “You got it, babe.”

#fanfic #ask response #dante x reader #reader insert #devil may cry #fluff #my writing

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turtle-steverogers · 5 years

Text

Step Up (1/6)

hey guys so this is gonna be a fun little six part story while Light the Fire Bright gets planned! The AU was loosely inspired by SomedayonBroadway's stories about deployed!jack on ao3 so go check those out

warnings: none in this chapter

ships: all the bois are cute brothers! sprace later on

editing: no

word count: 2215

“Enough about me, though, kid. How are you doing?”

Race huffed out a humorless laugh, leaning forward on his elbows as he scrubbed a hand down his face. That was a loaded question that he wasn’t entirely equipped to answer. Of course, he’d been expecting it, but giving it any thought beforehand had been entirely daunting.

All things considered, he was okay. Honestly, he was. Things had been...harder since Jack had left to go overseas three months ago, but that was to be expected. He’d kept his grades halfway decent, though that had been an adjustment. Jack was usually the one who kept him on track while doing schoolwork, so when he first left, Race’s grades tanked. Davey had tried to help, but his patience was a lot thinner than Jack’s, especially when he lacked an extensive understanding for Race’s way of thinking. After about a month of nightly arguments over themes present in Othello, many of which ended in frustrated tears from one or both parties, Katherine had taken initiative and stepped in to help.

She was a lot more tolerant of Race’s impaired focus and had been present for enough of Jack and his study sessions to have an idea of how to keep him on task. Race was beyond grateful for her help and more than relieved to see his grades raise back to his average, but it still wasn’t the same.

Nothing was really the same. Race had taken on Jack’s role in the Lodging House since his departure, stepping up to care for their younger brothers and sisters. He thought he was equipped for it, and he mostly was, but he could feel himself slowly wilting under the pressure. Katherine and Davey tried to help out as often as they could and Kloppman, the technical owner of the foster home, still pulled his weight regarding finances. But neither of those factors took away from the fact that Race was drowning in his new responsibilities. On top of that, guilt had started to weigh him down. If this is how Jack had felt for the past ten or so years- juggling everyone else’s shit as well as trying to wade through his own, the need for a shoulder to lean on or someone to unload to, the constant stress of getting enough food on the table for everyone while, even if it meant that he didn’t eat- then Race really should have stepped up sooner.

Other than those minor setbacks, though, Race was fine. He was great even! Absolutely thriving.

“I’m good, Jackie,” Race said, though his tone was tired, “I miss you,” he added in a small moment of vulnerability.

Jack’s expression softened and Race’s stomach clenched. He missed those kind eyes staring into his own as he worked through his homework. He missed Jack’s easy demeanor, bleeding safety into Race’s own soul as he ruffled his hair, praising him for a job well done. He missed him. His smell, his hugs, even his cooking! Which, as awful as it was, had become an ironic source of comfort.

“I miss you too, Tony,” Jack sighed, “Only nine more months!” He tried to sound cheerful, but both of them sagged slightly, the air gaining even more weight. Nine months seemed like a millenium given how long three months had felt.

“Only nine,” Race echoed, propping his chin on his palm, “Wish you didn’t hafta go at all.”

Jack grimaced, “It was bound-”

“To happen, I know,” Race finished for him, “It just sucks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Jack mumbled. It was tense for a moment, neither one of them meeting the other’s gaze. Then Jack cleared his throat, attempting to shift the conversation, “How’re Kath and Davey doing? Anything new with Crutch and them?”

“Oh, uh,” Race shook his head, willing his own disposition to brighten, “They’re all good. Uh, Kath’s been making sure I don’t fail outta senior year. Davey and Les hang around sometimes, but not as much as they use to. Think it’s something to do with Davey’s new job. Uhhh, let’s see..”

As he rattled off updates about their siblings, Race felt his mood lift. It all felt familiar- calming. He found joy in making Jack laugh with his various stories about the antics that plagued their home.

“And then,” Race wheezed, trying to get words out around his laughter, “And then Albert fucking closed his eyes and Davey started screaming at him and holding the, uh, the ‘oh shit handle’ like some kind of mom! It was fucking golden, I don’t even know who allowed this kid to get his permit.”

Jack had his head in his arms, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. After a moment, he sat up, wiping tears from underneath his eyes, “God, I wish I coulda seen that. Albert driving? Who’da thought.”

“Wouldn’t really call it driving,” Race reasoned, “More like, swerving and cursing and narrowly avoiding death.”

“Sounds about right,” Jack said, leaning onto the wall behind his cot.

They fell into a comfortable silence, lost in separate fond memories. But the calm was quickly demolished when shouts sounded directly outside the door to Race’s bedroom. Well, technically it was Jack’s, but Race had taken advantage of his temporary absence to gain his own, private space.

Race groaned, dropping his head forward onto the keyboard. Maybe, if he ignored them, his brothers would sort out their shit themselves.

“RAAAAAAACE!”

Or not.

Race lifted his head slowly, whining as he stretched his back.

“Gotta go take care of that?” Jack asked, raising his eyebrows understandingly, “Who is that- Romeo? It sounded like Romeo.”

“Think so,” Race said as his name was called again, except louder, “I should go, yeah.”

“Okay,” Jack said, “I’ll talk to you soon, Racer. I love you.”

“Love you, too. Talk to you later,” He gave Jack one last little wave, then ended the video call.

He stared at the now blank screen, bracing himself for whatever stupid situation he’d find his brothers in. With another groan, he shut the laptop. Reluctantly, he pushed himself away from Jack’s desk and crossed the room.

He opened the door to find Romeo and Elmer on the ground, face’s red as they wrestled. Elmer had Romeo’s head trapped between his knees. His own arms were being twisted at odd angles by Romeo, who despite his position, had surprising leverage. Race’s gaze traveled from their jumbled form to Romeo’s DS, which lay haphazardly on the ground several feet away, still open and displaying some Pokemon game.

“Okay, knock it off you two,” Race demanded, bending down and grasping each of his brother’s biceps, effectively pulling their upper halves apart. Both boys continued to struggle, Elmer refusing to release Romeo from between his legs, “Elmer, let him go.”

“Yeah, lemme go!” Romeo shouted, his words muffled.

Finally, Elmer let up his grip on Romeo, allowing Race to wrangle him away from the other boy and set him on the floor opposite of him.

“No more touching each other,” Race scolded, crossing his arms, “Now, what happened.”

Immediately, both boys began bickering again, words drowning out one another’s as they tried to get their side of the story heard.

“He took my-”

“I did not-”

“Race, I promise I-”

“He’s lying, he’s just being a dick-”

“Hey, that’s enough!” Race bellowed, silencing his brothers instantaneously. He rarely raised his voice in the house, well aware of how that could be perceived or what kind of memories shouting could resurface, but sometimes, desperate measures were required, “Now one at a time, tell me what happened.” He looked down at Romeo, whose arms were crossed at his chest, an impressive pout on his face.

“Elmer took my DS after I told him he couldn’t have it and he messed up all my progress on Pokemon Sun! I was about to beat the Professor, too!”

Race raised his eyebrows, looking down at Elmer, who, despite the anger radiating off of him, looked fairly guilty, “Elmer, did you really take his DS without his permission?”

Elmer huffed, “He was being unfair, I-”

“Elmer,” Race warned.

Elmer hung his head, deflating, “Yeah, I did, okay? Happy?”

“Attitude isn’t getting you anywhere, dude,” Race said, “If Romeo toldya you couldn’t play with his DS, you shoulda respected that,” he bent down so he was level with Elmer, “Apologize to your brother.”

Elmer glared at Race for a long moment before peering around him at Romeo, “I’m sorry I messed up your game, Rome,” he grumbled, “I can help ya get back to where you were.”

“I don’t want your help, stupidhead” Romeo snapped, “All ya do is mess things up.”

“Hey,” Race chided, turning to look at Romeo instead, “I know you’re mad at him, but that doesn’t give you a pass to say ugly things. Say you’re sorry.”

Romeo defiantly mimed zipping his mouth shut and Race resisted the urge to throw both of them out the nearest window.

“Right now.” Race said, firmly.

“Fiiiiine,” Romeo groused, “I’m sorry, El.”

“Thank you,” Race said, “Now, go cool off. Both of you. Elmer, you can go to y’alls room and Romeo you can stick in the guest room for a moment until you’re ready to be around each other again, okay?”

Elmer and Romeo nodded, dragging their feet in opposite directions. A moment later, Race heard two door slams.

He ran a hand through his hair, taking a moment to rub his eyes before strolling out to the living room. Crutchie was seated on the couch, crutch propped bluntly on the armrest next to him. He was reading a book, diligently annotating it using sticky notes as he progressed.

“Heya, Crutch,” Race greeted, leaning back against the couch.

Crutchie bent his head back to smile up at him, “Hi.”

“Doing your homework?” Race asked, gesturing to Crutchie’s copy of The Outsiders.

“Yeah,” Crutchie scrunched his nose, looking back down at his book, “S’not too bad.”

“I’m glad,” Race said, ruffling his hair, “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Will do,” Crutchie said, distractedly, already absorbed in his work once more.

Race watched him fondly for another moment. He’d always admired Crutchie’s work ethic. He wasn’t the strongest in any one subject, but he worked hard and always managed to get good grades. It was refreshing to see.

“Race?”

A meek voice pulled Race from his thoughts and he turned to see Elmer standing in the doorway. His face was streaked with tears and he was twisting his fingers nervously in front of him.

Race frowned, hurrying to kneel in front of him, “Hey, hey, hey buddy, what’s wrong?”

Elmer shook his head, choking on a sob as he buried his face in the crook of Race’s neck. Race wrapped his arms around his younger brother’s trembling form, a lump forming in his own throat as he shushed him. He hated seeing his siblings so torn up.

When Elmer’s sobs didn’t slow, Race pulled back slightly, tapping his chin, “Wanna go to my room?”

Elmer sniffed, nodding weakly.

“Alright, dude,” Race said, carefully picking him up and carrying him down the hall. He shut Jack’s door quietly behind them and set Elmer on the bed, squatting next to him. Elmer tugged on his sleeve, coaxing him onto the bed, where he once more curled into his side.

“What’s gotcha hurting?” Race pushed gently, running a hand through Elmer’s hair.

“D-do I,” Elmer hiccuped, struggling to get words out around his cries, “Do I really mess everything up?”

Race’s heart broke and he silently cursed Romeo for saying that. There were a few unspoken boundaries in the Lodging House that everyone knew not to cross and it was always stressed to choose your words wisely. No matter how mad you are, there were some things you just don’t say.

“Of course you don’t, buddy,” Race soothed, “Romeo was just very upset and he wanted you to be upset, too. You don’t mess anything up, you hear?”

“I-I didn’t mean to mess up his progress,” Elmer whimpered, looking up at Race with large, teary eyes, “I just wanted to play his game.” “I know,” Race said, “And I think he knows that, too. He just wasn’t thinking very clearly.” “I’m sorry,” Elmer gripped Race’s shirt tightly, curling further into him.

“It’s okay, bud,” Race rubbed his back, “And I’m sure Romeo will appreciate another apology once you both are ready, but I swear to you that you don’t mess anything up.”

“Promise promise?” Elmer asked, sobs ebbing away slowly.

“Promise promise,” Race said, confidently, “Now why dontcha rest in here a bit. I’ll let you play on my phone.” Elmer’s eyes lit up, “Really?”

“Sure thing,” Race said, easily, fishing his phone out of his back pocket and unlocking it, “Just make sure to come get me if Jack texts, okay?”

“Okay,” Elmer said, eagerly taking Race’s phone from him and clicking into his app folder. He didn’t look up at Race as he crawled away from him, sinking into the pillows on Jack’s bed.

Race pat his leg, squeezing reassuringly before standing and slipping out of the room. He was still getting used to being the rock in the family, but if you asked him, he was doing pretty damn decent.

race is tryin his best

thanks for reading, chiefs

hmu to be added to my tag

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#newsies #newsies fic #racetrack higgins #jack kelly #crutchie morris #elmer kasprzak #romeo newsies #yeehaw #step up

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slashed-dreamzzz · 6 years

Note

Hey i really love your writing and what would be the slashers reaction that their s/o was goddess of war?

Hmmm….Okay

Jason would be utterly shell-shocked once you had decided to reluctantly tell him the truth of your long, long past as a once revered deity of war. He had always known something about you was more….venerating than everyone else. Even before you had revealed your secret as a goddess gone into hiding, Jason had always treated you as someone he would gladly worship at your feet, a byproduct of his undying devotion to you. But this puts everything into a whole new perspective. Jason would bow his head in reverence and kneel at your feet, feeling more than humbled in your divine presence. You can’t help a slight chuckle at this act of submission from this hulk of a man, and slowly cross your arms in amusement. “You may rise, Jason. I don’t expect anyone to kneel before me anymore.” His head rises to meet your eyes, and he stands to his full height with an air of awe. You approach him with grace and proceed to wrap your arms around his wide torso. “I’m still just me, Jason. I don’t want any special treatment.” You give another chuckle. “I’ve had enough of that to last me the rest of my eternal lifetime.” It takes him a minute to get over the shock until he finally reciprocates your gesture, thinking how truly lucky he is such a divine being such as yourself sees him worthy of your affections.

Freddy wouldn’t even believe you at first, thinking it was just another one of your shitty jokes or pranks you tended to subject him to. He quickly changed his mind once you summoned a legion of swords in a divine light and pointed the tips right at his scarred face, giving a slight smirk at the absolutely dumbfounded look he was sporting. It’s the first time you recall Freddy actually acting nervous. You can’t help but feel smug at your ability to make even the most hard headed of mortals cower in awe. He too was once a mortal, as much as he vehemently denies his human past, and such concepts about gods have not completely left him, it seems. Freddy’s first thought is how he suddenly regrets giving you so much shit about about your poor sense of humor. How the hell was he to know you were a fucking goddess? Apparently a kick-ass one at that too! Once you decide to stop holding the swords over his head ready to impale at your command, Freddy’s a bit unsure with how to proceed. You being a divine being and all that is going to make him question whether it’s worth it for you to hang around a demon such as himself. You keenly observe his inner turmoil, and decide to solve it the best way you know how ( going to war over petty grievances had stopped being appealing centuries ago). Clearing your throat, you begin with a slight grin. “What do you call a fake noodle?” Freddy shuts his eyes and groans. Your smile grew even wider. “No, don’t even-” You giggle in delight.“An impasta!” Another groan, this time louder. “Are you gonna smite me if I don’t laugh at that thing you call a sense of humor?” “I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to.” “Goddammit.”

Michael would simply stare at you, thinking you were just referring to what you wanted to be for Halloween next year. He would quietly agree that yes, being a goddess of war could definitely be an acceptable costume. While not the scariest per say, he would go along with it since you seemed so adamant about it. You could see that your words weren’t quite getting through to Michael, as he seems to be nodding at something only he can see. You give a small sigh and drop your head. With a slight wave of your hand, a bright light begins to shine throughout the room, and before Michael can pull out his knife in self defense a magnificent sword is resting in your palms, worn yet still sturdy even after centuries of use. Knife now raised in mid air, Michael gapes at the unearthly display before him. Apparently being a goddess of war was more than just a costume for you. You let Michael carefully observe the sword for a few more moments before speaking. “Sometimes, Michael, I forget how many lives I’ve taken. Far more than you’ll ever be able to conceive. Perhaps it’s for that reason why I find the two of us so alike at times.” You gaze absentmindedly at the weapon in your hand, memories flooding forth in waves. Michael looks up from the sword to your face and notices how your eyes have glazed over slightly, lost in a time he was never meant to bear witness to. From now on, Michael is more wary of you, still unable to accept the idea of a divine being truly being on earth. His stalking only increases as he struggles to process your true identity.

Leatherface would gaze in astonishment at your revelation, it only serving to make you even more beautiful and powerful in his eyes. While your summoning sword trick is incredibly neat, he can’t help but feel intimidated now. A strong goddess such as yourself shouldn’t settle for someone….like him. Bubba thought you were totally beyond his reach as a human, but now that he knows you are an eternal being, one fully capable of demolishing entire continents if need be, his inferiority fears are brought once again to the surface. In the back of his mind he knows you do love him….it’s just the reason why he can’t figure out now. You’ll notice how Bubba seems to be retreating from your company bit by bit, too overwhelmed by what you truly are to be in your presence. Every time you try to approach him with a warm smile, he visibly tenses up. Your face falls, and a sharp feeling of despair pierces your immortal soul. All you had wanted was to share an important part of yourself with the one you love. All it did was push him away. In your melancholy you berate your rush to reveal such an overwhelming aspect of who you are. Bubba is a sensitive soul, you know should have taken that into more consideration in the first place. To regain the normality of before, you begin to leave him small offerings of sweets around the Sawyer house and his basement, more than willing to wait for him to feel comfortable again. Eventually Bubba comes around to who you really are, but not without weeks of questioning both himself and you.

#jason vorhees #friday the 13th #freddy krueger #a nightmare on elm street #michael myers #halloween #leatherface #texas chainsaw massacre #slasher imagines #my writing

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captainatin · 6 years

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Magician’s Resolve chapter 18: One Last Time

“What the hell were you thinking?” Tiergan shouted as he fought back the dragon’s control as he placed his hands on Lailani’s shoulders and held her tightly. “Why did you reset? What the hell made you think that was a good idea?” His eyes twitched, his pupils rapidly turning into slits and turning back to normal as he shuddered and gritted his teeth.

“I-I’m sorry, I just wanted to bring you back! I-I didn’t know what to do!” The girl’s desperate expression pierced the boy’s heart. He froze and took a step back as he stared into her eyes that looked like the sun itself was growing darker. “I’m sorry, okay?” She shuddered and looked down at her feet before swallowing the lump in her throat as she tried to hide her face from her friend.

“You really are a pillock!” Telos growled harshly as he gritted his teeth, usurping Tiergan’s control of his human body and forcing the mist to slowly release from his eyes and mouth. “Thanks to you, I live once more!” The mist quickly threw the boy’s body to the ground as it started to take the shape of the same mighty dragon that the girl had seen in her previous life. Blood started to drip from Tiergan’s eyes as he was left convulsing on the ground, his jaw hung open as if to scream in agony but no sound was made aside from his constant squirming in the dirt.

“Tiergan! Oh god no, Tiergan please!” Lailani fell on her knees and clawed at the boy’s shirt as she dragged him into her arms. “No, not this time, not this time please!” No, no, not again! Not again! She buried her face in his hair and slowly rocked back and forth. His hair was soft and the thin strands weaved in the gentle gusts of wind. The boy became like a doll as he fell limp in her grip, the shuddering slowly becoming sudden pulses rather than constant groveling. Twinges of pain caused her wrist to twitch as she clenched his tunic; her hands turning white from the strain. Why me? Why him? Why can’t I change it? The blue of her veins grew more prevalent as her head grew more clouded. She remained oblivious to the sounds of footsteps and blasts of magic being released.

Aren’t you determined to save him? A voice chimed in her head, a voice that she had never heard before in her life, yet somehow she knew that they were important. Come on, answer me kiddo. The voice was distinctly male and he chuckled gruffly. He sounded like he was a young man, no older than Desmond or Caolos-Tonn.

Who the hell are you? I just want Tiergan back! Just give me Tiergan back for god’s sake! She whimpered as she continued to cradle the boy’s lifeless body. Purple sparks glittered as they subtly popped off of his chest, slowly fizzling out of existence with a crackling sound. Her head twitched slightly as she heard the young man sigh and grunt to clear his throat.

Uh, look, it’s not really easy for me to explain these kinda things…. His voice trailed off and echoed for a moment before he released another sigh. I guess I’ll have to introduce myself, the name’s Agsuil, pleasure to make your acquaintance. You probably know my sis, Hardwin. The deafened world around them swirled with noise that was eclipsed by the weight of the spirit’s oddly casual voice.

“She really misses you.” Lailani sniffled as she found the courage to look up, her eyes widening in horror as she watched the five great mages struggle to hold their own against the gargantuan creature she had released. Her eyes locked on Hardwin’s movement, the tall woman was appearing and disappearing all over the place as she distorted space to dodge massive talons that threatened to tear her to shreds. The woman had a strange aura of desperation, one that she had never displayed before with such intensity. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t fun. The thrill was gone. “I can tell she’s been looking for something for a long time.”

I’ve always been with her, just like Tiergan will be with you if you simply let go of him. Please, let his soul be at peace. She felt a shiver run down her spine as a hand clasped her shoulder, she practically jumped out of her skin but when her head whipped around to look at him she saw nothing but a small figure in the distance. Please let him go. You can’t get a grip of yourself if you’re holding on to someone else now can ya?

“No, I can’t accept that!” Her grip clenched around the boy’s shoulders before she slipped her arms under his and hugged the lifeless body as tightly as she could. “Just shut up and stop preaching to me! I’m just trying to do the right thing. Trying to help everyone survive. Monsters should get to live too, shouldn’t they?” As she buried her face while she whimpered she noticed the scent of the boy’s hair was sweet; it smelled like lavender. “Is it too much to ask?”

The power to reset doesn’t make you a god, neither does the ability to see the future. Agsuil sighed as his spirit manifested into physical form and patted the frightened child’s head with a transparent hand. You’re looking to the past for answers and he looked to the future for purpose. Do you see where the issue is there?

“No, I don’t get it. Why do I have this power if I can’t save anyone with it?” Her tears glistening as they slid down her cheeks, transforming from clear to red as they dropped off of her face. “What’s the goddamn point?” She sniffled and hid the red marks on her skin.

I asked myself that same question. Why is my spirit still here? The young man slowly lifted the girl’s face and stared into her eyes, his entire body becoming as full as a regular person. The crimson tears splattered against him. It might have been because of her, it might have been because of Emp. But what I found is that as long as I’m here, here in the now, I can change something. He smiled warmly and glanced back at Hardwin who had frozen in place as she stared at him. “There are some things you can’t change. If you want to stay sane you’ll have to accept that. If you can change then you’ll need to be brave and have the resolve to make that change. Ya know?” He stretched out his arm and patted the girl’s head with a small chuckle finding its way out. “You can do it kid.” His form vanished in an instant as it was swept away by the wind. A glowing orange shard was the only thing left to prove that he had ever existed, it fell out of the air and clattered against the dead boy’s chest.

“I still don’t get it!” Lailani shuddered as she slowly stood up and laid Tiergan’s corpse on the ground. Purple embers sparked up and latched onto the orange shard as the boy’s eyes started to open.

“Hey, uh, miss?” The raspy voice of a teenage boy drew closer along with the footsteps that were very distinctly high-heeled shoes. “I-I think your friend there, is, uhm, not entirely gone yet.” A woman in a green dress knelt down on the ground and slowly wrapped her slender fingers around the soul shard and took a deep breath as the purple flames ran up her arm and disappeared inside her veins.

Lailani turned around, her jaw hanging open as she realized who the woman was and noted the speaker as a hazy phantom with poofy hair and a floating soul that was colored like a rusty blade. “Sloigh? W-What are you doing he-”

“Shhhh!” The ghost child chuckled as he pressed a finger against the girl’s lips, his entire body rippling as if he were made of water. “She’s trying to focus, just let her work please.” A gray finger pointed past her and started wiggling as the boy bobbed up and down in the air. “Think about how she feels, then look at what she’s fighting. If she can keep going without the better part of herself, why can’t you?” He smiled warmly as he nodded to Hardwin, clapping as she turned around as if he was the sole audience member of a gladiatorial match. The rust colored soul soon shimmered a cherry red as his body started to fill in.

“But I-”

“No.” The wraith cut her off and poked her nose. “Hardwin, Desmond, Kairim, don’t you love them too?” His body became fully physical as he planted his feet on the ground and popped his neck. “Shall we?” Amidst the sound of fire and clattering metal he boy still chimed melodically as he offered her his hand with a soft smile on his face that could melt even the coldest of hearts.

“S-Sure.” Lailani swallowed the lump in her throat as she looked back to Sloigh who was seemingly lost in thought as she stared at her wrist that pulsed with purple energy with golden specks mixing in. The power of the soul mimicking the blood that coursed through her veins. “Let’s go.” She took the strange boy’s hand and started walking towards the dragon that was still thrashing around in hopes of decimating his tiny foes.

“Ya just couldn’t let em die could ya?” Caolos-Tonn grunted as he threw up a glyph shield and was smacked across the ground by the beast’s powerful claws. “Look, I don’t know what ya did but I really don’t appreciate havin’ to kill this thing again!” He glared at the red hooded girl before his eyes opened wide as he realized who was accompanying her. “Emp, I know I’m not crazy. You ain’t suppos’ ta be ‘ere.” He gritted his teeth before he looked back to the rest of the magicians.

“So all of you remember the previous timeline.” Metal from various doors, nails, and other portions of the demolished houses around them started to flatten and mold together as they started swirling around the girl. “I-I’m sorry about that.” She formed a gargantuan spear that was coated in a pulsing red energy. All eyes turned to her, including those that belonged to the dragon towering over all of them.

“You hunted my kind to extinction! I refuse to die here! I will be remembered! I will not fall now!” Telos roared as he flapped his wings and soared into the air, quickly ascending higher and higher. His body got smaller and smaller the further he went from the girl’s eyesight but she pointed the spear skyward nonetheless. “Metal will melt under my breath of calamity, stop trying!” He reared his head back and released a stream of fire as the massive slab of metal hurtled towards him at high-speeds. Smoke clouded the sky and obscured the view of what had happened. After a long moment of shock and silence there was a deafening shriek released from the monstrosity as it began to fall towards the ground with a massive hole drilled through its right wing.

“Duck!” Kairim and Desmond shouted in unison as they tackled their nearest friend to the ground as they cleared out of the way of the beast that crashed into the dirt with such force that the mountains themselves quivered. When the dust and dirt settled everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Empneo was returned to a spectral form but he was still somehow holding up the massive claws that hovered over Kairim who was sprawled across the ground, her legs bleeding as they had been pierced by the talons when they first fell to the ground.

“Kai!” Hardwin shouted as she disappeared with a swipe of her right hand before she appeared alongside Empneo and aided in the struggle to prevent the claws from falling again and finishing the job. “Emp, you better try yer damndest, okay?” She grunted as her knees buckled under the immense weight, grinning widely as she watched the boy nod with a great effort not to lose his grip.

“Kairim, I’m so sorry!” Lailani clawed against the dirt as she quickly wobbled onto her feet and skid towards her aunt. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t leave him behind and now this happens and I-”

“I understand.” The red robed woman smiled warmly as she nodded slowly. “I’d do the same for Desmond. But he’s safe now, that’s what’s important. The here and the now.” Her face was covered in dirt and when she wiped her cheek on her sleeve it merely smeared a mixture of blood and dust acrossed herself.

“But you’re going to die if you don’t get help soon.” The younger girl tugged on her senior’s arm and whimpered as she barely managed to pull her a foot forward. “I don’t want that, please don’t leave me!” Her throat burned as she inhaled another breath of dust into her lungs, coughing as she struggled to continue to move forward. “It’s all my fault, all my fault! I just couldn’t let him go and now I’m going to lose you instead!” She coughed and fell on her knees from the intense fit that had overtaken her.

“Alright Emp, one more heave?” Hardwin growled as she glanced down at the ground at saw the hole that was in the shape of her feet as she dug into the ground for traction.

“Three...” The ghost-like form was starting to take shape around the boy.

“Two...” Hardwin closed her eyes tightly as she continued to strain.

“One!” They shouted in unison as they threw the talon upward a few inches before they ducked to either side of the claw to avoid being crushed by the tremendous weight.

“No, I shall not die like this! You worms shouldn’t be able to do this! I’m going to crush each of you, that is your fate.” Telos struggled around with groans of pain as he tried to stand on his forearms that had been busted up by the fall, his wings flapped rapidly and tossed droplets of ebony colored blood that burned whatever they touched. White bones protruded from the massive hole in the beast’s wing as he scrambled to his feet, limping down as he tried to stand up straight. “Lailani, Kairim is going to die, do you really want that? Sloigh is the only one of you that can fix her, but she’s too busy with Tiergan.” The dragon called out as he took a step forward and almost crumbled just from that effort.

“I, uh, you’re right.” The crimson clad girl looked down at her aunt who was shuddering in her arms, the blood seeping out of the woman’s legs. Her clothing was saturated with the red splotches that continued to run down her legs and onto the grass underneath. “K-Kai, what do you think?” The girl sniffled as she felt a vile sensation take control of her own legs as she found herself unable to stand up. Her head whipped around as she heard Desmond’s sandals rapidly clap against the ground as he sprinted towards them and threw up a barrier to block a swing from the beast’s claws, the shield throwing the dragon off balance and forcing him to fall to the side.

“Kai, Kairim, don’t just lay there!” Desmond growled as he kneeled down and picked up Kairim in his arms, the woman’s arms hung limp at her side and she was breathing rapidly as her eyes rapidly twitched in response to the sheer amount of pain she was experiencing. The young man buried his head in her shoulder as he slowly turned around and looked down at Lailani. “You.” His eyes twitched a black and white haze flickered again, the cyan heart that had bobbed up and down in front of him in the previous timeline was no longer there; neither was the gray heart that cracked and shuddered under the intensity of the void in his soul. “You selfish, ignorant, irrational, idiotic little brat!” His hands clenched tightly around his best friend’s shivering limbs as he stared into the soul of the little girl who stared back with terror written across her face. “You did this to her, I want you to remember that.” His eyes slowly closed as his signature blue mist poured out as he took deep breaths and exhaled. The mist weaved and danced in the air before it entered Kairim’s lungs and forced her to doze off. “That will at least slow the bleeding, and put her at peace.” A whistling wind picked up as he opened his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat as he breathed out another cloud of mist as if it were cold outside. He gently lowered Kairim’s body to the ground and set her down, stepping over her to approach the cowering little girl. Staring into the soul of his former student sent a shiver down his spine as he felt his anger build. “Now for you-”

“Dez, wait!” Hardwin shouted out as she quickly disappeared only to appear between the two of them, her right arm hanging limp as she tried her best to lower into a battle stance. “I saw Agsuil, you can’t hurt her if he’s in there.” She gritted her teeth and her metal boots dug into the dirt as she clenched her left fist, her right being unable to curl up with how damaged it was.

“You’re delusional.” The cyan robed mage snarled as he bore his teeth and prepared another cloud of dust only to have it vanish in an instant as Hardwin pounded her fist against her chest and released a shock-wave that nullified the spell. “Hardwin, you know how serious this is; she’s also the human traitor. There is no way in hell she can be spared!” He swallowed the lump in his throat as he popped his knuckles and lowered in preparation for a fist fight.

“I saw him Desmond! He was there, I saw Agsuil and I know that I’m not insane.” The towering woman gritted her teeth as her right arm dangled to her side. “You can’t do this to me, please let me see if I can find him….” Her voice trailed off as she looked to her feet and fought back the tears that started to well up. ��I miss him so much, please let me bring him back.”

“Are you really going to be this stupid?” Desmond growled as he took a few steps forward and delivered a right hook to the woman’s jaw, his eyes shrank as no reaction came from his rival. A rasp escaped his throat as he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, knowing that she allowed herself to be hit. “Sloigh couldn’t salvage his soul, he’s gone forever! Kairim can still live, we need to get her to Sloigh, she’s the most proficient in healing magic.”

“Uh, sorry but, uh, she’s a bit busy now.” The phantasm of Empneo wobbled slightly as he floated between them and put his hands to both sides. “It’s Kairim or Tiergan, she can’t save both.”

“Then what good is she?” The cyan mage shouted as he reached forward, his hand passing through the body of the spirit. “What good is she if she can’t save those who are dear to her?” Sweat poured down his face as he batted at the air, flailing as if he could actually touch the boy in front of him.

“You’re not talking about Sloigh at this point.” The wraith stared with a frigid aura as his gaze pierced into the soul of the sleep mage. “You would threaten to kill your own student out of blind rage. I’m disappointed, I don’t remember much from before I died, but I thought you were better than this.”

“No….Not again.” The young man’s hands trembled as he stared at them blankly. His shivering blue heart appeared again, the black and white mist didn’t resurface in spite of the apparent cracks that were running through it. “I don’t remember who you are but you better get out of my way.” His fists clenched tightly as he stared through the phantom and locked eyes with Hardwin. Throbbing pain surged through his chest as he felt his heart thrash inside of him, his gaze unable to break away from the woman in front of him. “I won’t let her take away those who are important to me. Yesterday, it’s only been one stupid day since I lost my mother. I can’t let everything slip away!” Tears started to pour down his face, the floating heart in front of him cracked even more and its hue started to fade slightly.

“Think of how I feel!” Hardwin barked as she took a step forward and grabbed the man’s collar with one hand, the raw strength coursing through her veins was enough to lift him into the air for a moment before she set him back down. “The monsters took my brother, they took my brothers best friend, they took Sloigh’s peace!” Her eyes twitched and she shuddered as she swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “Focus, it is the fault of the monsters, that’s why I want to eradicate them! They will all die, between you and I there is nothing stopping us from wiping them off this plain of existence!”

“G-Guys….” Hafika finally spoke up as she helped Caolos-Tonn to his feet and helped him hobble forward. “Just a little bit more conviction….” She muttered to herself as a yellow spark touched the side of the her comrade’s head. Her hand stretched out and pointed towards the enemy that they had all but forgotten in their squabbling. The massive beast had slowly lifted his head and stood on his feet, the massive hole in his wing was starting to fill in as the power of its soul melded to meet its need. “We should rea-” Suddenly a silence swept over everything as an immense surge of power erupted from the smith.

“We got bigger lizards to fry!” The soot covered boy shouted as he shrugged off the girl’s arm and limped forward. “This is why I hate humans, so fixated on their emotions that they can’t see the big picture right in front of their faces!” A deep navy blue flame burst out of his chest as a heart bobbed up and down in front of him. The surrounding battlefield was covered by a dark blue dome that started slowly closing in as only the sound of his voice and his feet on the grass could be heard. “All of ya can shut yer traps while we do our job, there’s more ta this fight than just you and your selfishness. I didn’t want to be a fighter, I just wanted to do what I loved. But I stopped and realized that what I loved was worth fighting for, if not physically, than mentally.” Several glyphs appeared around him with different words written in his native tongue. “It’s more than me, more than you. We all want something, and that’s fine. But you can’t compromise yer family for something so small can ya?” The dragon in front of him was clearly trying to say something but the deafened world could not hear. The young man who was covered in dirt and grime was the only one who could speak. “What was that? Yer lookin’ to say something?” One of the glyphs suddenly vanished as a high pitched noise resounded through the razed landscape and caused his foe to tremble. “Yer tempting them with lots of things. Love, friends, family….You make me sick, ya know that, right?” Caolos-Tonn flashed a wide grin as he watched the beast try to speak again. “No! It’s my turn to speak!” His eyes flickered with sound-waves, pulsing each time he took another step forward. “I’ve kept my mouth shut for a long time and let all of you just get away with whatever the hell you said but I’m sick of it!” He shot a glare at Hardwin, picking her out of the group with his intense stare. “You know I love you, you’re like an older sister to me, but for the love of god you need to let go of your past! You can’t change it just by wanting to! I’ve just sat back and watched you tear yourself apart because you couldn’t save him. Is that really doing any good for you right now? Is wanting to change that going to bring him back?” He let the question hang in the air for a long moment, his teeth gritted together as he maintained his sharp gaze. In the corner of his eye the flickering of a fireball glittered for a brief moment before he released a shockwave that sounded like the sobbing of a young woman. When the attacks met there was a noiseless explosion that kicked up more dust and caused his already messy hair to poke out in all directions. “You!” The wave in his eyes pulsed again and released a beeping sound; his heart was running thousands of miles an hour but he refused to slow down. “So much for the magician of patience! Ya seem to got it in yer head that since the whole waitin’ thing didn’t work out that now ya gotta do the opposite and forsake everythin’ Percy tried to teach us! You’re pathetic.” He spat on the ground and brushed his mouth with his sleeve. “Yer love is an obsession, you’ve twisted it into something no one wants to see. I don’t care if yer still mournin’ the loss of yer mum. She was a great woman that did everything she could for you, it was important to her that you grew up to be a good man. You didn’t have to grow up to be a fighter. You didn’t have to grow up to be a magician. She just wanted you to grow up to be a good person, something you seem to be failing at.” When another sphere of heat came his way he launched several shockwaves that played the sound of a heart beating. “And for you, impatient snake!” He called out to the drake and flicked his wrists to command the glyphs to start circling the beast. “I’d suggest that ya run.” In the matter of an instant the strange symbols released a symphony of different sounds that felt like they would tear through ear-drums. Heartbeats, sobbing, hammers against metal, an apology, all played together in an unending rhythm that battered the beast as the dome around them shrunk and quickly vanished. Everything was still dead silent. The deafening zone had vanished but their slacked jaws remained voiceless.

“This is not the end.” Telos stared at his claws that he had dug deep into the ground from tensing up in pain. With a flap of his leathery wings he launched himself into the air and bobbed up and down. A tan colored haze washed over the group of humans as dust was tossed up into the air from the beast’s sudden departure.

“Agsuil!” Hardwin’s attention was instantly ripped away from their foe, instead offering it to the fleeting possibility she had been told to abandon just moments ago. Her metal boots sent shocks up her legs as she sprinted towards the woman who was on her knees; cradling the young man whose soul still throbbed outside of his body.

“W-Where’s Lailani?” Tiergan leaned up from Sloigh’s arms and grunted as he hastily tried to stand to his feet. “Where is she!” He shouted as his teeth gritted together. Orange sparks flew out like a fountain as his soul slowly detached from the fist-sized shard.

“She must’ve slipped away during all the commotion, calm down, be still.” The emerald clad woman stroked the boy’s hair slowly, her fingers weaving through the blonde strands as she started to hum gently. “Everything’s going to be okay. It doesn’t belong to you; just let it go.” A few purple strands of energy remained latched onto the orange shard before it suddenly snapped free and spiraled through the air.

“Let….go?” Tiergan’s head rolled slowly as a soothing haze washed over him, his eyes widening as he saw letters floating in front of him.

*Would you like to save your progress?

(Authors note: I need to get this stuff posted so I can force myself to keep working. I honestly think this was one of my weakest and most cliche chapters and for that I apologize.)

#Magician's resolve #The Magicians #determination #perseverance #but it refused #Integrity

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imagine-that-one-thing · 7 years

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Say You Do. || Chapter Six.

Harry:

There was a time we would share stolen kisses in the density of the night while in my car, parked outside her family house. There was a time we were so carefree, so in love that we were just falling deeper in love with each other, but now, now I am unsure of where we stand with what we have. There are no more shared kisses or glances, there is no more depth to a love that was once felt between the two of us.

I spent my life anticipating for a girl that would fill the void inside my heart, someone that would ignite a flame within my soul, someone that would make me feel things I had never grasped before. Here she is, sitting beside me, her head resting on my shoulder with a blanket draped over her, but I am not sure I know who she is anymore. Emily used to be so full of life, and her presence always poised everyone, but now I perceive a woman that doesn't even see herself the same way she used to. The eyes I fell in love with don't shine the same radiant shade they used to, the fingertips that used to grace my skin are now cold to the touch, part of me feels as if I have lost the best thing that has happened to me despite her being right beside me, curled up in the chair, her hair falling around her face, as her eyes dream tightly.

I have no idea where we went wrong, where I went wrong, I have always done my best to give her my world, to keep her comfortable and happy, but somewhere down the line, I managed to fail. Failure being something that does not settle well with me.

Every time I fool myself into thinking things will be okay, that we would be okay, there is always a downfall that screws up my train of thought and the hope casted in my mind. For every good moment, we can manage to muster up, there are at least four downfalls to soon follow.

I am at a loss. Either way, I lose.

When we first started to hit our rough patch, I thought it was just that, a rough patch, but here I am, with the love of my life beside me— the woman who I thought would love me through everything— who I am pretty sure, no longer loves me.

It is a daunting feeling to have the mental object of not being loved travelling through the mind, it emotionally drains me, and physically... well, I physically have no idea what the fuck I am doing. I fell in love with a beautiful young lady who made the gloomiest of days lucent— a woman who fell in love with me for my terrible jokes, and for everything that makes me the person I am away from the media and the fans.

Now, I don't even know how to pull the two of us from the morose sinkhole we keep sinking into. It is suffocating us both, limb by limb, breath by breath.

This journey to New York was meant to spark my career further and our relationship; I thought time in a city we both love would be enough to get us out of the woods, even if it is just an inch. I was wrong, so wrong.

All that New York managed to bring was more chaos and a furtherly more enraged Emily— who I am pretty sure is ready to sign those papers at the house— the papers that will demolish our marriage and family. I don't think there's any escaping the danger now, the damage just keeps burning radically.

I love her, I do, but I don't think either of us has the strength to continue to combat the conflicts. Moreover, I don't think she has the energy to do it anymore.

I have watched her deteriorate gradually, her smile was the first to fade, then it was the glow in her eyes that had the ability to light up a room, it was all downhill once she lost the glow in her eyes.

The first time I watched the luminosity in her eyes vanish was when she had Sophia. She had a relatively smooth pregnancy, in fact, she barely had morning sickness, thank God for that— she didn't really seem any different the first trimester— she was her usual, blissful, go-go-go self. Everything was fine until she reached the third trimester, that is when things started to get a bit iffy with her.

She was fatigued all the time, she refused to eat half the things she would make me go get at ungodly hours. Emily was always achy— no remedy would help her with the aches and pains, not to mention the only way I could get her to fall asleep was to rub her back every night and let her fall asleep on my chest.

When Emily finally had Sophia, it was a relief— she was no longer in pain and cursing me out when she had had enough of incubating our baby.

After the first few days of having our newborn home, it was then that I noticed Emily wasn't back to her normal self, she was quiet, heavy hearted, and didn't want to hold our baby much. She would crawl up in bed and not move for hours, then when she would finally move, she was still exhausted. It was back then when her eyes washed-out for the first time.

It took a while for her to regain the beautiful colour and the smile. I think for the first year Emily struggled a lot; I held the weight of her and our newborn— it was something I had to do. I made it my mission to see Emily smile again, to make our family whole, and that I managed.

Well, I thought I did.

It was whole up until two years ago.

It was nothing that either of us did, specifically. It just occurred, without much of an explanation— I started to perceive her deteriorating once again, something wasn’t right, and I didn’t have it in me to try to fix it, to mend her once more. I shrugged things off, we both did, I guess.

Our hugs and kisses got further apart, the family outings became minimal; both of us would come up with different excuses on why the other could not make the gathering at the park. Mainly, it was me making up excuses for Emily on why she could not attend the park picnic or why Emily was not able to make it to the celebratory dinner when my sister's first article became published in a magazine.

Maybe I am to blame for things; I started to put my mind towards my writing and the music I wanted to produce once I could get my solo career going.

I found my own escape, but for Emily, she struggled to find her safe haven. I was— I am— her safe haven.

We shifted away from who we were, we neglected each other. Sometimes I would take the longer route home just to take a few extra minutes to breathe. The further we drifted the more we fell into the natural depression of destruction— the further we conceded our love to wither to nothing.

Every bone in my body advised me that we needed to come back together and not ignore what was going on between us, through the smiles and the faked laughter, we were lost in our own demented version of love. But, we let ourselves glide through the cracks, we made excuses. We still, to this day, make self-justification for ourselves. perhaps that is why Emily has irrevocably given up on me, on us. perchance I am to blame.

If I had of been a better husband, perhaps things would be altered, perchance if I listened to her more, understood her more. possibly if I didn't have the career I do, things would be easier.

We are hopeless hearts passing through and I no longer know what to do.

I should have been there more, considered Emily a lot more than what I did, and do.

I love her, I do. But we proceed to spiral down a valley of devastation, one that is not healthy for either of us, particularly our child. Our little girl, who brought us so much love and hope, now has to go through such desolation.

If things continue how they are, we will have to justify to her why Mummy and Daddy are no longer living together, and why she can't have the both of us at the same time. We will have to explain that late at night when all she wants is her Mummy to hold her, she will be stuck with me because Mummy is at the other house. We will have to demonstrate that she will have to have two sets of clothes and split holidays with us. My heart breaks at the cognitive content of her going through the same heartache I once did growing up. I had my sister to rely on and to comfort me, Sophia only has Emily and I. Her only consolation in the world are about to crumble her division to pieces.

I never expected my life would turn out the way it is visioned. I thought Emily was the one, the one that would spend the rest of my life, but after today, I don't think she can even bare to look at me.

I drag myself away from my deranged thoughts as I feel the slight drop of the jet, a heavy sigh escaping my lips as I glance beside me and see Emily beginning to wake up. I can only assume the sudden inclination managed to jerk her away from her slumberous dreams. Her eyes make contact with me before they promptly flicker away, her hand pressing to the armrest as the jet dips again, a small air pocket being nothing that worries me, but for her, it is like her world is crashing around her with every decline she feels on an aeroplane.

"It is okay," I find the words mumbling from my dry lips, my hand reaching for hers but she pulls away, not wanting my touch on hers.

"Don't touch me." Her voice is sharp like a sword, slicing my heart into diminutive pieces. I groan, my eyes dropping to stare at my lap as I push the blanket off of me and I stand to my feet, my legs needing to be stretched. I stretch my arms out, the jet again drops, my hand instantly presses to my seat to keep me balanced, a heavy gasp escaping from Emily.

I catch a glimpse of her eyes, the eyes that are stone cold and full of anxiousness. I want to reassure her, I do, but it would be pointless.

"Emily, you're okay."

"Mhm, just like our marriage, huh?" She throws our marriage at me as she wearily laments, her hand tapping against the armrest, a motion she does when she is nervous.

I gulp, not sure what to say to her. I don’t want to set her off, but I don’t want her to continue in an anxious state while mid air.

"You are fine on this jet, I'd never let anything happen to you," I assure her with a dry voice, my words wanting to choke up in my throat.

She gives me a shrug. Part of me wonders if she doubts the words that I just said. I don't know what runs through that beautiful mind of hers, but I do know that we are both far from who we used to be, especially her.

The journey home was nothing short of silence; Emily refuses to say more than two words to me. The best I can do, to keep myself from snapping, is to shrug it off as her being exhausted from the flights.

The moment I step into the house, I am filled with a sense of clarity and calmness, the scent of the house fills my lungs, the character of Gemma and Sophia giggling somewhere is like a harmony to my ears. Emily follows, closing the door behind her while I make my way down the hallway and to the living room,

"Daddy!" Sophia screeches merrily, scrambling from her position on the couch and leaping straight towards me.

I engulf her in my arms, picking her up as her little arms wrap around me, "Hey Angel," I grin as she nestles into me, a sigh of relief escaping my lips. “Why aren’t you in bed?” I hum, holding her close to me while her body is clothed in her favourite onesie that she’d wear every night if we’d let her.

There is nothing better than to have my daughter in my arms and delighted to see me.

"Mummy, Mummy." Her eyes get a glimpse of Emily as she steps in, Sophia instantly wiggling against me until I put her down, allowing her to run straight to Emily without a struggle.

"Careful, Soph," I warn her, knowing she will want to bounce right into Emily, but I am not sure if Emily even has it in her to be jumped on.

I turn to my sister, walking closer to her as she gives me a faint smile, her arms extending out to me for a hug.

"Everything okay?" She whispers while I wrap my arms around her, her own arms hugging me a little tighter than usual.

With a heavy sigh, I come to terms with the fact that everything is not okay.

"No," I whisper, my voice sounding vulnerable as I try my hardest not to let it crack.

When I step back into the living room after escorting my sister to the door, I am surprised to find Sophia on the couch with a blanket, her wide eyes gleaming up at me, a quirky smile printed across her lips.

"It's past your bedtime, missy." I gently poke her side and she instantly giggles, standing to her feet, "And you know mummy doesn't like you standing on the couch." I chuckle as I wrap my arm around her and draw her off the couch, her little legs wrapping around me as I hold her.

"Sorry," She whispers, "Can it be our secret?" Her beautiful eyes gleaming up at me in such a captivating way that I could never tell her no.

I nod, agreeing to keep her secret, "We gotta get you in bed," I kiss her cheek, commencing to walk towards the staircase as she fills me in on her adventures while we have been gone.

I am glad to see someone had a good time recently because I sure have not.

I place Sophia in her bed, wasting no time in stretching her comforter over her figure as she wiggles within the sheets, her hand clutching her teddy bear.

"Can I have a story?" She questions as I turn her nightlight on, getting ready to kiss her and leave.

"Which one?" I glance towards her several story books systematically placed in her room; I am pretty sure I have read every one of them to her at least twice.

"The one about you and mummy." Her little voice requests.

I sigh at the concept of telling her another story, a romance that appears to have a tragic ending. For a moment, I contemplate telling her, no, but I don't have the heart to turn down such a simple request. She does not know what is going on with Emily and me.

I nod before I sit on the edge of the bed, my mind racing to find the right story to tell her, a happy story.

"Hmm, okay." ... "Well, a few years ago, I asked your Mum to marry me." I begin...

The box has been nestled among my clothes in my suitcase for most the tour, travelling from continent to continent, waiting for the right time to make the move from suitcase to my pocket. The boys' laughed at me every time they'd find the box while searching for clean clothes to wear.

Twelve weeks and five days— that is how long it had been since I last saw Emily, the last time I had the privilege to hold her in my arms, the last time I looked into her deep, vibrant eyes and felt home.

Today, today everything changed. I had been counting down the days until she could join me, and today I was finally graced with her in my arms.

The day was nothing unusual, filled with the typical tour activities; sleeping, eating, cuddling, and giggling at the random, absurd circumstances.

I had it planned. I was going to take her to dinner at the restaurant on the corner by the hotel, her favourite foods were on the menu, and I knew it was the right place to take her on such a day. After that, I had a show, and that—that was where I was going to ask what felt like the most prominent question of my life. I was going to wait for Madison Square Garden to clear out before having her wander back out on the stage with me. Most would think it is an unromantic and ludicrous idea, but they don't comprehend the significance. A year ago, I was sitting backstage at the venue with my ideas scribbled into my journal, my thoughts turned into a song— they turned into her song. It was the right place to sing her the song I wrote for her a year ago.

My plan did not go as directed, I couldn't wait, I was far too eager.

I sat in front of Emily, my eyes fascinated by the way she was radiating in the dim illumination, and the way everything about her was flawless—from the way she walked and talked, to the way she smiled and could irradiate a room. I was so in love with the woman in front of me that I was full of reverence and love.

She was the one for me.

The whole meal, I couldn't take my eyes off her, she was so beautiful and captivating—she was all I wanted— she was the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

I take a breath and extract myself away from my memory of the night that I proposed to Emily. A memory that was once filled with such love and hope, is now tugging at my heartstrings, threatening to pull tears from my eyes.

I look down at Sophia, grateful when I see her eyes are closed and that she is asleep. I don't think I had it in me to continue the story and keep dry eyes.

I lean down and kiss Sophia's cheeks, adjusting the comforter to her liking before I carefully leave her room.

I follow the dim light down the hallway towards our bedroom where I find Emily on the bed with a book in her hand.

"Em... can we talk for a moment?" I break the silence, luring her away from the book as her eyes gaze up to glance at me.

"I have nothing to say," Her voice is hushed and dismissive.

I know she doesn't want to talk to me, but I need to say a few things.

"I will do the talking," I lament, walking closer to the bed and sitting on the edge, keeping distance between us as her eyes narrow down on me, "I fell in love with you years ago, I fell in love with a woman that was so full of life, someone that looked at me with lustrous eyes and love, love that I didn't deserve at the time. Now, I am in still in love with you, but your eyes don't shine, you don't look at me with the love you used to, you—you don't even laugh and smile. Emily, talk to me. What is going on? I've been through this with you before, but if you don't talk to me... we have no hope. I love you, I do, but you can't push me away and do this alone." the words leave my lips without much thought, I mean every word. "You might have given up, but I haven't. I'm not going to walk away because it is easier, I don't believe in walking out of a marriage and divorcing unless it is the last resort... I love you, I probably always will no matter what happens... Just keep that in mind." my words come out as a horsed whisper towards the end, emotions beginning to play on me.

I glance at Emily, her own gaze staring at me with a dismal appearance. I give her a petite smile, not knowing what more to do, or to say in this moment.

All I can see in her eyes is sorrow and it breaks my heart; I don't see a light, I don't see that glimmer that I grew so used to viewing.

I stand back to my feet and step to leave the bedroom, the only thing being heard—the footsteps against the wooden flooring. I reach the door and step out into the hallway, pausing instantly when I overhear the same sweet voice call my name—calling me back.

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miragerules · 5 years

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I suppose it is a both good and bad that Tumblr had so many fandoms and Shippers on its site. People find other people who love a show, character or a couple as much as they do, and then they can talk, share fan art/fanfiction, and support one another. That is the good part of Tumblr.

However the unfortunate bad part of Tumblr is this rabbid fandom sometimes leads to blind hate if thing don't go your way on a show or in a film. I am not going to get in all the ways fandoms can be bad. You can just look around on Facebook, Twitter and here on Tumblr.

One way upset fandoms try to destroy a show when a show or ship does not govthe way you want is to blame the writers saying the writing is terrible even though the writing was really good, and has been good if not excellent for 8 seasons. That is apparently what is happening inside the Game of Thrones fandom with fans of certain characters or ships. I am a fan and a shipper. I do ship or have shipped Root/Shaw (Person of Interest), Jason/Elizabeth (General Hospital), Katniss/Peeta (Hunger Games), Geralt/Triss (Witcher games), Bruce/Natasha or Matt Murdock/Natasha (Marvel Films/Marvel Comics) to name a few and I love tones of characters like Tyrion, Jamie, Davros, Arya, and Jon on Game of Thrones.

However I don't let that love of a ship or character ruin my love of a show or film just because said film or series does not go the way I want it to especially if show or film is still good if not excellent like Game of Thrones. One example is Bruce/Nat. Bruce and especially Nats story arcs throughout the Marvel films were not handled that well, but that disappointment does not blind me to how pretty good to great Endgame was and the Marvel films were. As for the Game of Thrones fandom I guess people have not truly read the books or have really watched deeply into each episode of Game of Thrones or cetain Game of Thrones fans would not be complaining nearly as much. Of course I am not happy with everything on Game of Thrones. Many times in season 7 and 8 the writing felt rushed like the writers decided how can they end the show as quickly as possible. HBO could have drawn the series out for a 9th or 10th season to make itva fuller fleshed out experience to reach the point we are, but that complaint does not change the fact the producers, directors, and writers still have consistently done a good job with the series. Do not let you fandom and shipper disappointment blind you to that fact.

Wow I talked for a long time when all I wanted to do was share a link/review by the A.V. Club that does an excellent job of getting into last nights episode of Game of Thrones. Still it felt good venting a little bit.

Any way below is the full review of "The Bells" I copy and pasted from the link above. Hopefully the fans who are blindly bashing last nights episode will have a better understanding of the episode and series in general.

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Westeros faces a disastrous final battle on the penultimate Game of Thrones

By Alex McLevy

Yesterday 9:20pm

Well, this all seems...horrible.

It’s not that Tyrion’s plan worked, exactly. Jaime didn’t make it to Cersei in time, didn’t give the order to ring the bells and surrender the city. But his hopes nevertheless came to fruition; the soldiers of King’s Landing surrendered, throwing down their swords, the bells rang out, and all was won. Or so it seemed. Immediately thereafter, Daenerys Targaryen ignored the sound of supplication and laid waste to the city, burning innocents by the thousands, bringing half the buildings crumbling to the ground, all while Grey Worm led a bloodthirsty slaughter of the populace, far beyond the soldiers forced to abruptly pick their swords back up and defend themselves. It was cruel, capricious, and wholly avoidable. Varys, sad to say, was right.

GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8

A-

"The Bells"

EPISODE

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” goes the famous paraphrasing of John Donne’s sermon. “It tolls for thee.” The bitter truth of this aphorism—that the loss of any life is a loss for all—gets a brutal workout in the aptly named “The Bells,” arguably the best representation of George R.R. Martin’s deconstruction of fantasy tropes we’ve seen in several seasons. The bells of King’s Landing, it turns out, don’t toll for the loss of Cersei’s authority. They toll for the loss of everyone in the city, quite literally. This story began as a way to invert the cliched stereotypes of the hero’s journey, to twist the traditional narrative of swords and sorcery in a radical way and rethink how such epics are delivered. This episode brings that philosophy home. There are no good wars; any battle that begins with hearty cheering should end with somber melancholy; it doesn’t matter who the good guys and bad guys are in the face of death; nobody wants to die; the chaos of war makes villains and victims of us all.

The simplest rejoinder to all of Daenerys’ justifications is that this bloodshed could have been avoided. She was given a moment to choose, and she chose blind vengeance, the kind that eliminates any benevolence she hoped to bring to the seven kingdoms by burning it right out of the minds of anyone who saw her astride Drogon, mowing down men, women, and children with abandon. It gives the lie to her name for this fight, “The Last War.” There will be another, of course—maybe it will be led by the child who watched as her mother’s throat was cut in the streets by the so-called liberators of King’s Landing. Violence begets violence, and the only people still remaining will do the very thing that the living were fighting to preserve during the battle against the Night King: They’ll remember, and keep the memory of this bloodbath alive.

The progression from exhilarating hope to tragic denouement was skillfully executed by director Miguel Sapochnik, demonstrating a much better command of large-scale choreography here than we got to see in “The Long Night.” Honestly, the pivot from “fuck yeah!” (Daenerys laying waste to the Iron Fleet, then blasting the front gate of the city open from the inside, demolishing the lion’s share of the Golden Company in the process) to “Oh, dear god, no” (Dany and Grey Worm laying waste to everything after) was as solid a rug pull as could be hoped for. The build-up to Daenerys’ heel-turn this season hasn’t been as effective as it should have been given the way its foundation was laid during the mess in Meereen in previous seasons, and it was a bit simplistic to see her pin her sole hopes for optimism on the idea that Jon Snow still wanted to get it on with her (really? “Fear it is, then” because your nephew doesn’t have sex with you any more?), but Emilia Clarke sells the desperation. The younger Targaryen feels as though she’s lost any intimacy that tethered her to compassion and humanity, and so all that remains is the imperious need to rule that has driven her all these years, now bereft of the warmth that previously tempered her. When she hands Grey Worm Missandei’s old collar and he tosses it into the fire, Dany’s last thread of empathy burns as well, snuffed out even before Jon rejects her and ends her last-ditch plea for affection.

Varys would hate to have been proven right, but probably not as much as Tyrion hates himself right about now. After the Master Of Whisperers starts composing his written testimony about Jon being the rightful heir to the throne, Tyrion turns on his old friend and offers him up to Dany. It’s unsettling to see the presumable queen’s first assumption be that someone has betrayed her, but it’s even more telling that her first guess as to the betrayer’s identity is Jon. Varys even leans on Jon to assume the Iron Throne, which means he very well knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer, if he’s openly advocating others commit treason as well. But Tyrion can’t let Varys die thinking it was anything but their conversation, admitting to the spymaster that he turned him in. The moment when Tyrion firmly grabs his friend’s arm just before Dany utters the cue for Drogon to burn the eunuch alive is affecting, because it conveys both how much Tyrion cares for his friend, and also how much this is costing him. He’s pinning everything on his new queen, in hopes she’ll do exactly the opposite of what she does. (“I hope I deserve this, I truly do,” Varys even offers.) Whoops. The best of intentions, and all that.

Instead, Tyrion’s last genuine connection turns out to be his final conversation with his brother. Peter Dinklage and Nicolaj Coster-Waldeau have always had good chemistry, and Tyrion springing his brother free in what turns out to be a futile hope of preventing bloodshed and saving his sibling’s life is affecting in a way that Dany and Jon’s exchange lacks. “Cersei once called me the stupidest Lannister,” Jaime admits, and his world-weary resignation pairs well with Tyrion’s frantic hope for keeping his older brother alive. Commanding Jaime to try and escape with Cersei through the underground tunnels in order to escape to Pentos and start a new life—while ringing the bells of surrender on their way out, of course—gives the two one final chance to embrace. Tyrion’s tears contain the symbolic weight of his whole life; he wouldn’t be here if not for Jaime, as he admits, and his last hope is to give the man who risked everything to help him survive the same chance. Tyrion knows it’s a death sentence from Daenerys to betray her in this way, but he no longer cares.

And Jamie’s arc takes him from the heart of our heroes’ campaign to the arms of Cersei Lannister, with a brief stop along the way to put an end to Euron Greyjoy. The gleefully sadistic killer pushes Jaime into a fight, telling him that he slept with Cersei, and after a protracted struggle, even sinks his blade into Jaime’s side. But it turns out that a metal hand can be valuable in battle, after all, and Jaime uses it to help sink his own sword into Euron’s stomach. The irony of the manic Greyjoy’s final thoughts—“I’m the man who killed Jaime Lannister”—isn’t just that no one is around to bear witness. It’s that Jaime doesn’t die by his hand, but rather the crumbling bricks of the Red Keep.

Those final minutes with Cersei and Jaime are strong, mostly for how they upend the expected revelry of seeing one of the show’s true villains get her comeuppance. Stripped of all bravado, Cersei breaks, and shows the very scared, vulnerable woman who has kept her emotions at bay. “I don’t want to die,” she whimpers, “Not like this.” It’s all the more moving for coming from a character who built her identity on steely resolve and contempt for such hoary conceits as fear. The staging of their reunion is superb: Cersei standing on the map she created of Westeros, reeling as the citadel comes falling down around her, while the one man who actually still cares for her helps her sink beneath the surface of the city for a few moments of closeness before death. The odds were never good she was going to survive, but in being buried under the rubble of her failed ambition, she achieves a kind of pathetic grace in her downfall.

But enough pathos. On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum: CLEGANEBOWL! It’s the match the show has been teasing almost from the beginning, and overall, it didn’t disappoint. The Mountain versus the Hound played out entertainingly, with the elder Clegane still outmatching his younger brother pound for pound and blow for blow. Being turned into a walking zombie of sorts didn’t just amplify his strength; it essentially obviated the need to parry blows, as even Sandor sinking his sword deep into his undead brother didn’t seem to slow him down in the slightest. There’s a tense, horrifying moment when it looks like we’re going to get a replay of the Viper’s fate, as the Mountain starts to push his thumbs into Sandor’s eyes, and I cringed, awaiting the head crunch. But Sandor shoves his knife through his brother’s head, and when that doesn’t stop him, he sacrifices himself to kill his sibling, knocking them from the tower and plunging into the blazing fire below. R.I.P., Sandor Clegane and your malevolent brother.

Better still, all that time spent with Arya and Sandor Clegane pays off in an unexpected manner, as the Hound warns the youngest Stark off her single-minded devotion to her kill list. Rather than heading up to kill Cersei, he brings Arya up short with a pointed question: “Do you want to be like me?” In that moment, he reminds her of everything she still has that he doesn’t: Family. Friends. A purpose beyond murderous retribution. He brings her back to a moment akin to her disavowal of the House Of Black And White (“A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and I’m going home.”), pushing her to realize she still has reason to live. It’s in keeping with her character: Arya has always been the one to learn lessons where others might stubbornly plunge ahead (and she paid a serious price when she didn’t), employing boldness and caution in equal measure. Clegane gives her one last gift: Cersei is going to die regardless. No reason Arya should die with her.

Besides, Arya had one more, vital role to serve this episode. She becomes the audience stand-in to bear witness to the horrors of war. For those of us who haven’t read A Song Of Ice And Fire, this nonetheless feels like the most vivid display of the philosophy Martin has been playing with since the start. Death, in the early seasons, was always harsh and brutal and often unfair. For the first time in a long time, it was again. Everywhere she turns, Arya sees scared families, dying in awful ways. The woman who helps her survive, pulling her to her feet, dies screaming, holding her daughter as Dany burns them alive. A more evocative demonstration of the cost of the North’s fealty couldn’t be imagined.

Jon, watching the chaos unfold, is in shock. A Stark in spirit if not blood, he comes to the aid of a woman before she’s raped by a fellow soldier, but mostly, he’s struck dumb by the needless violence playing out around him, eventually able to do little more than exhort everyone to fall back and flee the city. Arya, conversely, springs into action on a smaller scale, as she always has. She tries to save people, even if it’s just those who helped her. As the show nicely mirrors the beats of Sandor and Arya’s struggles, cutting between them as if one body, the difference comes in Arya’s moment of aid: the woman’s hand reaching out to pull her up. Arya Stark is saved by a random woman who then dies horribly at the hand of the woman to whom her brother has pledged allegiance.

As she rides a horse out of the city, Game Of Thrones only has one episode remaining, but the hopes of the future ride away with Arya as well. Daenerys has become the person it was believed she wouldn’t be, and both Jon and Arya observe the terrible results of that transformation. By the end, Arya, half-blind and coughing up the dust of the city’s remains (and the remains of the bodies all around her), gets a front row seat to the carnage wrought by Daenerys Targaryen. Riding her dragon and leveling fire at friend and foe alike, regardless of intent, the Mother of Dragons comes across for all the world like a vengeful deity, a god of death reigning down fire upon the world. And what does Arya Stark say to the god of death?

Stray observations

R.I.P. Qyburn. The most loyal confidante of Cersei Lannister receives the ignoble death of being thrown headfirst into rubble by a grouchy Mountain, annoyed at being told to obey his queen.

It’s a gorgeous shot of Tyron entering the city, the camera registering a static image from behind him as he stands in the blown-out rubble of the city wall, watching the devastation unfold.

Again, Sapochnik’s direction was so much more assured and elegant here. His depiction of the spatial geography of King’s Landing was excellent, ably showing the massive distance between where Jon, Davos, and Grey Worm confronted the surrendering soldiers and the Red Keep far in the distance. Touches like that help to convey the scale and layout of the conflict in a more emotionally satisfying manner.

I quite liked Jaime being denied entrance to the Keep as Arya and Sandor passed through just ahead. Forcing him to go all the way around, essentially missing everything and receiving a mortal blow by coincidence from the unexpected appearance of Euron, helped keep a sense of frustrated expectations to the goings-on—sometimes, things just don’t go your way.

Dany’s words to Tyrion turn out to be far too prophetic: “It doesn’t matter now.”

What do you think the favor was that Tyrion asked for from Davos? My first guess was the orchestration of men sneaking into the city to ring the bells, but I’m far from confident about that.

I’m very pleased to report that I have very little clue what’s going to happen in next week’s series finale. I have some guesses about what could happen, but this episode was a refreshing tonic to the sometimes conservative mode of traditional heroics Benioff and Weiss have been dishing up this season.

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