#handwritings and i was so emotional because... he existed right on this earth

[babymetaldoll]

DIWK - Chapter four: "Hurt"

Words count: 13,7K

The gif is mine ✨

Warnings: Hardcore Spencer trauma. Mention of drug abuse,  torture, Criminal Minds usual case triggers. Spoilers of Season 2 E14/15 Criminal Minds.

Summary: An unsub abducts Spencer, and reader blames JJ for it.

A/N: Have you ever wished you were there to save Spencer from Tobias Hankel? I know I have. I know reader wants to... I'm dying to know what you'll think of this chapter! Sorry if it's a little too graphic, writing Spencer's POV of this episode was really hard.

Series Masterlist

Chapter one | Chapter two | Chapter three | Chapter four | Chapter five | Chapter six | Chapter seven | Chapter eight | Chapter nine | Chapter ten | Chapter eleven | Chapter twelve | Chapter thirteen | Chapter fourteen | Chapter fifteen |

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

(Y/N)'s point of view

I remember the day Emily Prentiss arrived. We had a case in Saint Louis. Two serial killers, 'cos it couldn't just be one asshole making everyone miserable. And on top of all, Hotch was confused and upset 'cos he never signed Emily's transfer to the BAU. It was like someone was trying to force her into the team, and we all thought it was weird.

We left the bullpen off to the case and left Prentiss in the office, not knowing if she actually got the job or not. I know Elle and I weren't incredibly close, but it still felt weird to think someone might join the team and try to replace her. It didn't work that way in that job. It didn't feel right at the moment.

There is something I also distinctly remember about that day: Gideon talked to me. And not only that, but he actually trusted my knowledge. We hadn't been on the best terms for a few months, so that approach meant a lot to me.

We were at the police station. Reid and I had been analyzing the letters one of the killers had sent to a journalist to find something that might help us catch him before there were any more victims. That's when JJ and Jason walked in, and he asked about our progress.

- "He only sent this to an individual, which shows he is not confident enough to initiate contact with the masses."- Spencer explained as he projected an image of the letter on the wall.

- "Emotional indicators are analyzed through slants, and you can see the shooter maintains vertical, narrow letter writing, and both are signs of repression"- I said and pointed at the image on the wall- "And the pressure, if you look closely, it's excessively heavy, which shows that he's uptight and can easily overreact."

Gideon looked at me and nodded. It was my cue to keep on talking. For once in a long time, I was feeling approved by him.

- "You got all that from his handwriting?"- JJ asked me, surprised. Reid looked at me from the other side of the room, and I could feel his smile reflecting how proud he was of me.

- "Graphology is an effective and reliable indicator of personality and behavior."

- "But my writing is always different,"- she added, and I nodded. I was waiting for that comment.

- "Yes, because it represents your emotions at the moment, just like your facial expressions parallel the way you are feeling while you are speaking."

- "What else can we know about our unsub from this?"- Gideon asked me.

- "Well, our killer uses simple statements, all first person, like "I won't be ignored," which means he's obviously tired of feeling this way. He may have a job in solitude or one that he feels strips of his identity. His work might require him to wear a uniform, something that shows absolutely no individuality, or he may be overqualified for his menial job and feels that he doesn't get the respect that he necessarily deserves."

I made a pause and waited for his words. I was giving my best, and I swear I was still hoping I could ever get Jason Gideon's blessing.

- "I think we are ready to give a profile,"- he said and nodded.

And damn, that felt good.

When we were back in Quantico, Hotch had a long and clearly awkward conversation with the section chief, Erin Strauss. She was scary. She was clearly trying to get rid of Hotch, questioning his work daily, decisions, and how he managed the team. Why? I have no idea.

It felt she forced him to accept Prentiss into the team. We were one man down after Elle left. Ok, one awesome woman down, so we definitely needed some help. And Emily was a great addition from day one.

We clicked right away. Prentiss was funny, smart, but most of all, she constantly had to prove she deserved to be there. Just like me. Gideon gave her the cold shoulder from day one, and that I could relate. The only difference was that she won him over in a few days, though. I was still trying to win that battle.

Garcia decided we needed a girl's night, and she hosted the first of many "BAU Girl Power get together." Basically, it was us at Penelope's place drinking and talking.

That first night, we updated Prentiss with everything that had happened with Elle. She wanted to know everything about us, what we did, how long we've been on the team, and how we all got along. It was sweet and fresh. After that year in the BAU, I had already learned to enjoy the sweet things in life. Like getting drunk with my work girlfriends.

- "So, does Hotch ever smile?"- Emily asked, and we all laughed at the very same time. Yes, it was getting late, and we weren't as sober as we should have been.

- "He does! he does!"- JJ assured us- "You should see him with his baby."

- "He is a dad?"- Emily was shocked. I was surprised too when I found out Aaron was married and with a baby. The amount of time he spends at work always made me feel he had zero personal life.

- "And has a beautiful wife"- JJ added- "He is always laughing when he is with her and baby Jack."

- "I guess this job can drain the happiness from your day... "- I thought out loud, but before anyone could say anything about my dark and bitter comment, my cell phone rang.

- "Hey honey bunny, everything ok?"- I stood up and walked to the kitchen. I didn't want to interrupt the girl's conversations.

- "Yes, I just wanted to make sure you were drinking enough water between drinks"- I laughed and shook my head. Only Reid could call to say such a thing. He was the sweetest friend on earth.

- "Yes, I am, don't worry. I'm not going to be hungover or drunk tomorrow. I know you are excited about the new exposition."

- "You are gonna love it!"

- "I am sure I will"- and I wasn't kidding. I loved when he dragged me to the Smithsonian or any museum for some nerdy fun.

- "Have fun with the girls."

- "What are you doing, by the way?"

- "Just reading a little, you left your complete Sherlock Holmes collection here, so I'll be solving mysteries while you get drunk."

- "Don't have too much fun without me"- he chuckled and ended the call. I smiled and walked back to the girls looking at me with a funny grin on their faces.

- "Was that your boyfriend?"- Penelope asked me, and I frowned right away.

- "No, it was Reid. He just wanted to confirm we are going to the museum tomorrow."

- "Wait"- Prentiss narrowed her brows and looked at us confused- "Reid ain't your boyfriend?"

JJ and Garcia's laughter was epical, as well as my frown. They nearly gasped for air while Prentiss and I waited until they calmed down.

- "No"- I finally answered- "Reid is not my boyfriend."

- "He is more than that; he is her work husband,"- Penelope clarified, and I turned to her with my mouth wide open, shocked.

- "What the fuck? Reid ain't my work husband. He is my best friend!!"

- "Yes, and you happen to call your best friend "honey bunny," right?"- JJ questioned, just like she had a few months before when we were alone in our room away on a case.

- "Reid is my best friend, and yes, I call all my close friends by weird pet names. You will get one too if you are lucky."

- "But I thought"- Emily continued- "I mean, he looks at you like you are his sun."

- "No, Prentiss, the only coupe in this team is the one between "chocolate thunder" and "baby girl" right here"- I pointed at Garcia, and she just blushed and covered her face.

- "My love for Derek will burn forever with the intensity of a thousand suns. I mean, have you seen that man? he was made by the gods and sent to earth just to give my existence some sense"- we all laughed at those cheesy words, though Pen was serious about them.

- "But, have you ever...?- JJ looked at her and made a pause. We were all looking at every single facial movement or behavior she might show to read her body language."

- "My relationship with my loverman could never be tainted by something as mundane as sex."

- "Like you wouldn't lick honey from that six-pack and ride that thunder."

The words just left my lips, and I blame the buzz. BAU (Y/N) would have never said that. Drunk (Y/N) would, totally.

The girls laughed until tears fell from their eyes, and I just chuckled, honestly happy to make them laugh. I had been more of the real me than I had ever actually been around them in nearly a year.

- "Hello?"- my phone rang again when I was walking out of the bathroom. And this time, it was Paul.

- "Hey babe, what are you doing?"

- "Hey, I'm..."- I looked at the girls in front of me and sighed- "I'm stuck with paperwork"- and they turned to me immediately. I could read the "What the fuck" on their faces.

- "Well, I'm at Rob's in case you feel like dropping by. We are writing a few songs."

- "I'll text you if I finish with this early, but... have fun."

- "Ok, bye"- I hung up and sighed.

- "And that was..."- Prentiss asked, frowning.

- "My boyfriend,"- I explained and grabbed another beer

- "Sure, I could feel the passion,"- Garcia joked, but I just didn't think it was funny.

I knew my relationship with Paul wasn't alright. Actually, things with Paul weren't. Period. We were done, it was apparent, but still, neither of us had said it. That relationship was just a few phone calls every once in a while, only to make small talks. When we were together, we would just watch a movie, eat something, drink a few beers, and that was it. It had been a long time since we had sex or even made out. I don't know why I didn't end it sooner. I guess I was just afraid to do it.

But I let more months pass before I actually did something.

Spencer's point of view

I'm not proud of what happened that year after Prentiss joined the team. I think that year changed me profoundly, and a part of me never fully recovered afterward.

Maybe it had to be that way, and it was something I had to go through to grow up. I guess I'm still trying to make some sense of all the misery I put my friends through. Mostly (Y/N). She was in hell with me.

A few weeks after New Year, we started working on a case. Someone was killing wealthy people in their own homes. At first, we thought there were two unsubs, 'cos one of them called 911 after killing, and you could hear them struggling and arguing. But no, it was just one.

Tobias Hankel was a delusional serial killer. He had split personalities, not two but actually three. His father, the one who tortured me. The archangel Raphael, who was trying to make God's will, killing people. And himself, who wanted to save me, but instead, he nearly destroyed me.

What do I remember about the day he kidnapped me? I remember I was stupid enough to try to catch an unsub alone, just to prove I could take care of myself on the field. Hotch sent me and JJ to talk to Hankel at his house, 'cos apparently, he might have seen the unsub months earlier. But no, he was the unsub, and neither JJ nor me could stop him.

We hid in a barn, and I was so eager to prove I could catch him; I told JJ we had to split up to cover the place. I was counting on Hotch to get there with the team sooner than they did, and before I realized it, I was in the middle of a cornfield, and Hankel was pointing at me with my own gun.

I was sure I was going to die right there. All of Hankel's personalities were struggling inside of him. I couldn't stop thinking about why I thought I could do it on my own? Why had I been a reckless asshole? Was it because I wanted to prove I was an excellent SAA? Because I wanted to impress JJ? Maybe I tried to convince myself I could do the same job my team did. I knew I wasn't the most physical person, but I had a gun. I had been trained to capture killers.

Yes, I was an asshole that day, and I've regretted everything that happened that night many, many times in the following years.

When I woke up, I was tied to a chair, and the archangel Raphael had taken Hankel's mind completely. The room was dark, and it smelled awful. He was burning fish hearts and livers, 'cos he believed it kept the devil away.

I was confused and lost. My head was spinning, and my heart was about to burst into my chest. I knew I could die any second now. Raphael wasn't the one to show mercy. That's what I had learned from all the videos Hankel had uploaded to the web. He had shared with the world every murder they had committed to show the other sinners what was going to happen to them.

- "They believe you can see inside men's minds"- Raphael looked at me with dark eyes, implying he meant Tobias and his father

- "It's not true. I study human behavior."- my voice was shaking. I knew I had never been more scared in my entire life. He took out a gun and showed me one bullet.

- "Do you know what this is? It's God's will."

Things didn't look good for me. He put it in the cylinder of the revolver and spun it. He was going to let my life to luck.

- "You don't have to do this"- I tried to talk him out of it, though I knew it wasn't going to work.

- "No go, sinners, to your God."

And he pressed the trigger.

What went through my mind the seconds that passed between having the gun pointed to my face and realizing I had lived? My mom. All I could think of was how my mom would react to the news of my death. I could never bear to hurt her like that. I couldn't die. I couldn't leave her alone.

I sighed, relieved, and bit my lips not to cry. Raphael looked at me with a blank expression and walked out of the room. I had survived for now.

I struggled with my handcuff, but it was useless. My head was killing me. I could feel the open wound on my head, still dripping blood on my temple and head. I tried to focus on the pain for a few minutes, just to make sure I was awake. It was a nightmare, and keeping myself sane and conscious under those circumstances was nearly impossible.

How was I going to get out of there alive? Did the team know where I was? I had no idea where I had been taken. I had been unconscious the whole way. It was dark, and I couldn't see much around me. I wasn't afraid of that darkness. I was more fearful of the man that left me alone, 'cos he was armed and mentally unstable. Darkness had nothing on him.

I had to focus on the things that kept me sane. The things that made me want to get out of that room alive.

- "My name is Spencer Walter Reid. I'm twenty-five years old, my mother's name is Diana Reid, I was born in Las Vegas, October 28th, 1981."

I closed my eyes and tried to think of all the things that made me happy.

- "I work at the BAU, my best friend's name is (Y/N), and she sits at the desk in front of me. Derek Morgan is the closest I've got to an older brother."

He was. He still is. You have to be close to dead to start seeing things clearly sometimes. Derek was my brother. He treated me like a kid, but a kid brother. He was always teasing me, trying to teach me how to pick up girls, trying to drag me to the gym with him. Derek was a good friend, we were very different, and I knew if we had been classmates in high school, we would probably never have talked. He was a jock, and I was a nerd. But life had brought us together. And now I couldn't think of a better friend than him.

I tried to focus on my happiest memories. My birthday came to mind. The guys had planned a Halloween-themed birthday party at the conference room of the BAU. Of course, Garcia baked a cake and (Y/N) helped her decorate it. It was incredible, 'cos it was covered with tiny gourds and skulls.

- "Frank and Mikey sent you these,"- she announced after everybody had given me their presents. I wide opened my eyes in shock 'cos I had no idea her friends knew it was my birthday or even cared about it.

- "Why?"- I had to ask.

- "'Cos they think you are amazing. They actually wanted to come over to your house and have a few beers tonight."- I opened my mouth to say something, but Derek interrupted me.

- "Pretty boy is gonna get to work hungover again."

- "Shut up"- (Y/N) and I said at the same time, making everybody chuckle. I opened the present her friends had sent me and laughed right away.

- "Lucky Doc"- I read and took out of the bag a Sports Illustrated issue with Lila Archer on the cover. My cheeks turned red immediately.

- "Frank still hasn't overcome that story. I think he will hate you forever"- (Y/N) laughed (along with the rest of the team) and gave me another present.

- "They also sent you this. They said you were going to like the man in black"- it was a Johnny Cash's vinyl- "Frank picked it. He thinks he is some sort of musical psychic that can read people's taste in music."

- "We should get together and have a few beers one of these days. I need to thank them for these."

Gideon looked at me in silence as soon as I said those words. But I didn't care if he disapproved. I was going to be (Y/N)'s friend, whether he liked it or not.

He is the closest I've had to a dad in the latest years. He cares about me, and he tries to make the best of me that he can. Yes, he can be too apprehensive. I think that's a way to put it. But only because he wants me to be the best profiler I can be.

I never thought I would end up working at the BAU. I never thought I would love the job I do as much as I do. Back when I was in college, I thought I would dedicate my life to finding a cure for schizophrenia, but I ended up hunting serial killers across the country.

And though I was about to die, I didn't regret any of the decisions that led me there.

The morning found me shaking, cold, and scared. I was in a small cabin in the woods. Just like the worst and more cliché horror movie ever made. This was my own horror movie.

- "What are you staring at, boy?"- Tobias opened the front door carrying logs for the fire. His voice had changed yet again, so I knew it wasn't the same person I had talked to the night before.

- "You are not Raphael."- I whispered, looking at every movement he did.

- "Do I look like Raphael?"- had I insulted him? I couldn't tell. He turned to the fire, and I took a deep breath, doing my best to stay calm.

- "Thank you for burning those, for keeping us safe."- I said, looking at the fish hearts and livers he was preparing to put on the fire.

- "Don't try to trick me."

- "I would never try to trick you."

- "You are a liar."

- I'm not a liar."- it was hard to stay calm and not start screaming for help or mercy, but I knew that was going to take me nowhere with him.

- "Lying is a sin."

- "I'm not a liar."- he walked closer to me, and sat right in front of me, held my leg up, and grabbed my foot.

- "This will be over quickly if you just confess your sins."

- "I am not a sinner"- I whispered again. He took off my shoe.

- "We are all sinners."- it didn't look good for me, not at all, and I knew I had to talk to him with his words with his beliefs to save my life.

- "The Lord spake unto Moses saying "Speak unto all the congregation of the children of the lord" and say unto them, ye shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy."

Hankel, this time in the personality of his father, looked at me surprised. I might have done something right, 'cos he stopped moving, and for a second, I thought it was going to be ok.

- "You know Leviticus."

- "I know every word of the bible. I can recite it for you."- but his eyes turned dark again.

- "The devil knows how to read too."

- "I'm not a devil, I'm not a devil2- I repeated, and couldn't stop shaking, 'cos my life on the hands of a sociopath.

- "I'm a man, my name is Spencer Reid, and I have a mother, and I have a father just like you, and they taught me the bible, let me recite the bible."

My voice cracked at the knowledge of what he was going to do. He stood up, still holding my foot. He was going to torture me, he was going to try to break me, and I had to be strong. I didn't know how I would find the strength, but I had to be strong.

- "Time to confess, Spencer Reid"- and without further notice, he slapped a log against my foot, making me scream in pain. It hurt from the tip of my toes until the back of my skull. I hadn't felt that kind of pain, and it was worse knowing he was just getting started. Tears started falling down my cheeks in no time.

- "Confess!"

- "I don't have anything to confess."- I whimpered and closed my eyes, 'cos I knew he was going to continue his torture. And so he did. The pain was excruciating. I was sure I was going to pass out

I tried to go to a happy place in my head, somewhere when I could hide from all that pain. It was too hard, though. It hurt too much. I kept repeating over and over again I wasn't a sinner, begging Hankel for mercy, as he shouted I had to confess.

I made an effort to think about what he might want me to say. What did he want me to confess? Which sins was he talking about? But nothing came to my mind, nothing but the pain and the fear of dying.

(Y/N)'s point of view

The second we reached Hankel's cabin, I started looking for Spencer. I had a horrible feeling about it. Morgan and I headed it to a barn with Prentiss. There was no sign of anyone. It was dark and quiet. Never a good sign.

- "Shit!"- I whispered, staring at three dead dogs and a bath of blood in front of me. There laid the body of another victim that was missing from Hankel's last attack.

- "FBI!!"- JJ shouted suddenly. She was pointing his gun to us, clearly in shock- "Don't move!!"

- "JJ, it's Morgan, (Y/L/N), and Prentiss! Don't shoot"- Derek tried to calm her down, walking towards her- "Are you hurt?"- she lowered the gun and stared at us. You could read the fear and the trauma in her eyes.

- "Tobias Hankel is the unsub,"- she whispered as Prentiss rubbed her arm sweetly, trying to comfort her.

- "Yeah, we know"- I moved towards her too and put my gun back into the holster.

- "And we thought he was just a witness"- we looked around, and JJ pointed at the dead dogs.

- "JJ, where is Reid?"- Derek asked her, but she just continued talking.

- "They completely tore her apart"

- "JJ, look at me,"- I said and held her arm carefully- "Look at me, where's Reid?"- she was shaking, and her voice was cracking. I knew she was making her best effort to pull herself together.

- "We split up. He said he was going to go in the back."

And there it was. That was the reason why I had a bad feeling all along. Derek looked at me and nodded as we read each other's minds. The two of us turned around and ran outside, leaving JJ with Prentiss, waiting for the medical team and ambulance to check on her wounds.

Gideon and Hotch were inside the cabin, looking for Hankel, but there was no one there. And there was no sign of Reid behind the barn either, in the cornfield, or anywhere in the perimeter. Reid was nowhere to be found, and I started losing it little by little. I tried to repeat myself the words Hotch had said many times during my year in the BAU: "when you are out there with the team; your mind has to be one hundred percent on the case." But the case had never included my best friend missing before.

- "Hey, is there any sign of him yet?- I asked the police chief as I reached the ambulance. He was there talking with JJ, making sure she was ok.

- "We got every one of our units on the road. He won't make it far"- I nodded and watched him walk away. I knew he thought I was talking about Hankel, but I actually meant Reid.

I turned to JJ and moved a little closer to her. Her eyes open wide, staring back at me.

- "You can't find Reid?"- I just shook my head and tried to sound as casual as I could, not to freak her out. She was still in shock. I didn't want to make it worse.

- "Not yet"

- "(Y/N)"- Derek held my arm and forced me to walk away from the ambulance.- "Reid followed him into the cornfield. It looks like somebody got dragged."

My heart stopped. Did the psychopath hurt Spencer? Did he kill him? Did he torture him? Was he hurt? Was he alive? Where was he? Derek looked at me, and I nodded. I bit my lips and took a deep breath. Hotch's words were my mantra now: "your mind has to be one hundred percent on the case."

- "Are you sure?"- we turned to the police's chief, overhearing his conversation- "We are on our way now."

- "What's going on?"

- "The sheriff down two towns over, he just gave directions to a man who fit Hankel's descriptions. It's to a motor lodge in fort bend."

- "Let's get Hotch and Gideon"- Derek held my arm and walked with me to the cabin. We had to find Reid, and we had to do it fast.

That was the worst night of my life. The first worst night of my life, to be sincere. I didn't close an eye. I went through every paper, every note, every detail in that cabin, trying to find a clue that could lead us to where Tobias had taken Reid.

I felt someone had ripped my heart from my chest. I had to think straight, and to do it, I had to keep a cold head. But as the hours passed, it became a more demanding and more challenging task to complete. I knew the whole team was suffering, but that didn't ease my pain. And I knew JJ felt guilty, but that didn't stop me from blaming her in my mind. She left him alone. I would have never left Spencer alone on the field.

- "(Y/N), you should try to get some rest."

Derek whispered as he sat on the floor next to me, where I had been sitting for the last half hour, reading Tobias's old diaries. Nothing but fear of his father, mentions of Dilaudid use, and bible transcriptions.

- "I'm ok,"- I answered and didn't even take my eyes from the pages.

- "(Y/N), I mean it"

- "I'm not going to rest if he is out there in the hands of a psychopath, Derek"- I had to bite my lips and shut the fuck up, 'cos if I said one more word, I knew I was going to burst into tears.

Morgan just wrapped an arm around my shoulders and moved me closer to him. That was the first time I let him hug me, and it felt good to know I wasn't alone in my desperation. I knew he loved Reid like a brother, and neither of us was going to stop until we found him.

- "Welcome to our nightmare"- JJ's voice broke the silence we had been into for the last hour when Hotch walked into the cabin with Penelope.

It was morning already. There were still no signs of Reid. Prentiss, Gideon, JJ, and I had been sitting at the table, reading everything we could.

- "His computer is an extension of his brain. I need you to dissect it,"- Gideon whispered to García. You could feel the concern in his voice. She just nodded in shock and turned to Derek, who held her hand and helped her get set up in the computer room.

- "So, nothing new since I left?"- Hotch asked and looked at us. I just shook my head and continued reading.

- "Well, the good thing is the guy documented practically every second of his life"- Prentiss words took me from the pages I was reading. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. The concept of "good" was poorly used in that phrase.

- "The bad news is, we are still un-piling,"- she added and sighed.

- "From the looks of it, he hasn't left this place in years,"- JJ managed to say. She made her best effort to be useful, but she was in worse shape than everybody else. Yet, that didn't make me feel bad for her. I was mad at her and kept making my best to put it aside, 'cos my head had to be in the case.

- "He knew he could pretend to be looking for a motel and throw us off his trail,"- Emily inferred, but I shook my head as soon as I heard her.

- "No, no, no, it's more than that!"- I shook my head and took a deep breath- "Sheriff's office, 911 calls, every time he engages the police and gets away with it... he reassures himself, God's on his side. Not ours."- I added.

Gideon nodded, and we shared a moment of agreement. He was as worried as I was. I could feel it. I'm not saying the rest of the team wasn't, I'm saying Jason was as fucked up as I was, and I could sense he was having the same trouble I had making sure my head and not my sentiments were into the case.

But if anything happened to Reid, I didn't know what I was capable of doing.

At a certain point, I got sick of reading and not doing anything and decided to look around the house again if we had missed anything. Derek went along. One part of me felt he wanted to stay away from JJ too. Maybe he was as mad as I was about her leaving Reid alone. I know I couldn't blame her, but I did it anyway.

- "Guys!! I think I've got something!"- Derek yelled, and I ran over. He opened a door that led to a basement. I walked right behind him, pointing my gun and my flashlight all over. But there was no sign of Reid.

- "Tobias Hankel!!"- Morgan shouted. Someone was sitting in what looked to be a gigantic freezer- "Tobias!"- but we didn't get any response. I took a step closer and examined carefully.

- "Morgan, I think we just found Hankel's father."

Spencer's point of view

On my second night in that cabin, I met Tobias. The third personality of Hankel walked into the room, carrying what seemed to be a dead deer. He looked as frightened as I was.

- "You need to eat."

- "What's your name?"

- "Tobias."

- "Tobias, who was here before?"

- "Probably my father."

He looked at me up and down, and he immediately understood what he had done to me. It was scary how he could dissociate. Someone with multiple personality disorder is usually unaware of the other personality states and memories when an alter is dominant. In this case, Tobias knew the other personalities but considered them different persons. He didn't think they were all in his head.

- "I'm sorry if he hurt you."

He looked at me like he understood everything I had been going through. Maybe he had been through something similar when his father was alive. Perhaps he had been a victim of Hankel as well, and that's what triggered his psychopathic nature.

He walked over and took out his belt.

- "What are you doing?"- he wrapped it around my arm, and I started begging him to stop.

- "It helps"- he took out of his pocket a needle and a small bottle of what seemed to be some kind of drug.

- "Don't tell my father. He doesn't know they are here."

- "Please, I don't want it, I don't want it, please"- I cried and begged.

- "It helps. I know"- it was the last thing Tobias said before the needle found my vein.

And he was right. It helped. Every single amount of pain I was feeling disappeared. My brain shut down. Somehow, everything was ok. I never had in my entire life felt so good before.

My mind kept flashing memories of when I was a kid. I kept seeing images of the day my father left and how he called my mother crazy.

- "You are weak"- mom spit those words after he refused to take me with him. I know she said it not because she didn't want me with her, but because mom knew she was sick and wanted the best for me. And he refused.

- "I'm not weak."- I whispered as I looked at her smiling back at me.

- "I know, honey."

I don't know how long I was drugged, but when I woke up, Tobias wasn't there with me anymore. It was his father.

And the torture continued.

(Y/N)'s point of view

Gideon was trying to convince me to go out with Prentiss and JJ to see a Narcotics anonymous's contact that might give us more information about Tobias. Emily had found some flyers about it in his room, and it could be the only lead we had to find him and Reid.

- "You need to get out of this house for a while"- he whispered and tapped on my back.

I knew he wasn't the one to be loving or physical with people, less with me. But that moved me. I turned to him and my eyes watered up. I was scared, and I couldn't hide it anymore. The more hours passed, the fewer the chances were to find Spencer safe. Alive.

I felt his arms around me suddenly, holding me tight, trying to keep the pieces of me together. We were alone on the porch, and though I didn't want to fall apart, I couldn't hold it anymore.

Jason didn't say a word. He just hugged me and let me cry for a few minutes. I didn't say anything either. I actually couldn't because I was overwhelmed with everything.

- "Are you ready, (Y/N)?"

Prentiss whispered as she walked over with JJ. I turned my back at them for a second to hide the tears that kept falling down my cheeks. I knew it was a shitty thing to do, 'cos it was obvious I had been sobbing, but they gave me the courtesy of not saying anything.

- "You go, I need (Y/N)'s assistance with some diary entries"- the two of them walked away quietly, and thankfully, didn't argue with Gideon.

- "Thank you,"- I whispered and felt his hand on my shoulder one more time.

- "You are doing a fantastic job,"- he said and turned around.

I wish I could tell you that made me feel better, but instead, I just thought I had the duty to bring my friend back home safe.

It had been at least an hour since the girls left. Morgan, Hotch, Gideon, and the police chief were in the living room with me, reading. I sipped my hundredth cup of coffee and re-read the same diary entry for the third time.

- "There's something weird going on here."- I thought out loud and walked towards Gideon

- "You think?"- the police chief turned to me and raised an eyebrow, ironically.

- "No, seriously, check this out. This journal is filled with religious ramblings. He notated hour by hour: "November 15th, 3:17, if ye offer a sacrifice of peace offering unto the Lord, ye shall offer it at your own will", and it goes on and on: 5:04, 7:41, 10:22, 1:42."

I made a short pause and looked at Gideon and Hotch. They didn't get where I was going.

- "But then, it goes blank for days."

- "Maybe he got sick of writing"- I seriously hated that police chief.

- "I think I got it"- Hotch whispered- "Journal entry: "December 6th. Father is sick. He wants me to put him down. I say thou shalt not kill. He said, honor thy father. Must pray for guidance."

- "So he kills his father as an act of mercy?"- Gideon asked, knowing the answer.

- "This is two months ago. Tobias Hankel's father had been dead for four months already."

- "That's exactly it"- I murmured, thinking Tobias Hankel was way more fucked up than we thought.

- "Look at the floor"- Derek pointed at a chair and moved it- "These scuffs marks are fresh. It's like two people were pushing the chairs constantly, trying to fight for control."

- "So?"- I swear to God, that chief was driving me insane.

- "This journal matches Charles Hankel's handwriting, but it was written after he died"- I explained. Still, it felt he wasn't following me.

- "What do you mean?"

- "Upstairs, Tobias' bedroom got junk piled from floor to ceiling, but the other bedroom could pass a military inspection."

- "So, are you telling me one of Tobias' personalities was his father?"

Apparently, I had to draw a picture so the chief would get it. Fortunately, Gideon continued explaining the whole problem before I lost what was left of my patience.

- "Well, Tobias was raised with a strict religious code, black and white, right and wrong. When his father asked Tobias to kill him, something had to give."

- "His brain couldn't handle the moral contradiction, so he split into two personalities to keep his father alive."

Hotch tried to put it most easy and simple words possible.

- "So, who is Raphael?"

- "My guess, he is a mediator between the two"- Gideon nodded at my words and sighed.

- "Angels have no human emotions, live or die. They don't care, as long it's God's will."

- "We need to start profiling Tobias' father. He may be the one who chose where to take Reid."

Finally, I felt we were going somewhere.

When Emily and JJ came back, they gave us the news. Tobias was addicted to Dilaudid, which explained the fracture in his mind, and how he lived with three distinct personalities.

The police chief announced a computer store robbery, giving us some hopes that Tobias would use them to track him down.

- "Guys!! Guys!! get in here!!- I heard Derek shouting and I ran to the computer room. I felt sick in the stomach in less than a second. There he was, Spencer. My Spencer Walter Reid, tied to a chair, bleeding, shoeless. Clearly tortured.

- "He's been beating,"- I whispered, feeling my eyes water up. I would have given anything to be there instead of him.

- "Can you track him?!"- JJ yelled by my side, and I nearly smacked her. That's how sensitive I was feeling.

- "Hankel's only streaming this to his home computer."- Garcia whispered. And my heart dropped with those words.

That wasn't what I was supposed to hear. We were supposed to find him and bring him back safe.

- "This is for us"- Gideon didn't take his eyes from the screen- "He knows we are here."

- "I'm gonna put this guy's head on a stick"- Morgan was so mad I believed him. I wanted to do the same, if worse.

- "I'm gonna kill him myself as soon as we find him,"- I said and felt Aaron's hand on my shoulder as he asked Garcia

- "Why can't you locate him?"

- "He's rerouting to a different IP address every 30 seconds. I can't track him."

It knew it had to be hard if Penelope couldn't find her, but that didn't help. If anything, it made everything worse. I felt powerless. Hankel couldn't be more intelligent than us.

Spencer's point of view

- "Are you ready, boy?"- Hankel pulled my hair and forced me to look at him. I was still as high as fuck, but knew I was about to be tortured again.

- "Ready for what?"

- "My weakling son thinks God gave you to him for a reason"- if the reason was to get me into drugs, then the answer was yes.

Hankel placed a video camera in front of me.

- "Can you really see inside men's minds?"- he asked me and made a pause, pointing to three screens- See these vermin?

It took me a second to realize he was showing me images of real people. He had put cameras in those people's houses. How? When? What kind of sick game did he want me to play with him?

- "Choose one to die. I let you choose one to live."

- "No"- I didn't even think about my answer.

- "I thought you wanted to be some kind of savior."

- "You are a sadist and a psychotic break. You won't stop killing. Your word is not true."

I don't know if it was because of the drugs or because I hadn't eaten or drank any water in too long, but I was somehow resigned and tired of fighting.

- "The other heathens are watching- Hankel announced and pointed at the camera in front of me."

My eyes fixated on the camera right away. My team was watching me. (Y/N) was watching me. I didn't want to make her worry even more. I needed her to know I was ok. I know I wasn't, but I didn't want her to worry about me.

- "Choose a sinner to die, and I'll say the name and address of the person to be saved"- Hankel was sick. It was all a game, and religion was just an excuse to kill.

- "I won't get to choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher."

Hankel didn't like my answer, 'cos he grabbed me and pulled me up, looking into my eyes, insulted, annoyed, losing his temper.

- "Can you really see into my mind, boy?"

He was honestly scary, and it petrified me to think he could execute me right there, in front of the team, and I could never tell them how much they mean.

- "Can you see I'm not a liar?!"- he insisted. I nearly whimpered but made my best not to break- "Choose one to die and save a life. Otherwise, they are all dead."

He dropped me on the chair and turned around. It was clear he wasn't joking. I took a deep breath and nodded.

- "Alright, I'll choose who lives."

- "They are all the same"

My eyes traveled across all the monitors. It was nearly impossible to pick one person to live, knowing all the other people there would die. Hankel was sick, and I had to set a plan to escape because otherwise, I would end up dead.

- "Far right screen,"- I whispered. He turned around and nodded.

Then, he recited the name and address of the woman on the screen. I prayed for the team to find her before Hankel came after her too.

No. It wasn't Hankel this time.

- "Raphael,"- I whispered, and he nodded. I looked at the screen again. The woman we were watching picked up the phone. She was in her kitchen. He walked around, frowned, and turned to her computer. In a second, she had turned it off. My team had reached her. She was safe, I hoped.

Hankel turned the camera off and looked at me.

- "You've done your part. Now it's my turn."

I knew what that meant. It wasn't good.

He left the cabin, and all I could see were the monitors in front of me. Those people were going to die. They were going to die because I didn't pick them. I killed them. You don't need to pull a trigger to kill someone. I could never forget those words. And this time, they meant more than anytime before. I didn't press a trigger, but I had killed two innocent people. And I actually had to watch them die.

When I saw Rapahel walk into the victims' house, I tried to close my eyes and think of anything else. A part of me kept thinking he wasn't going to kill them. He just wanted to threaten me.

But not. Raphael slaughtered them.

I found myself craving whatever it was that Tobias had given me the night before. The drug in my veins had given me a kind of peace I had never felt. And I never thought I'd have either. The type of peace that can be addictive, 'cos it turns your head off. And God knows, sometimes I needed to turn my head off.

Remembering everything that has ever happened to me, especially all the awful things, wasn't a gift. It was a burden. And whatever it was that Tobias had put in my veins, it had taken that burden from my shoulders, at least for a couple of hours.

Who wouldn't want some more of that peace?

- "Reid!"- Gideon's voice took me from my thoughts. He was sitting right in front of the camera in the victim's house. He was there with Hotch and the police, investigating the crime scene.

- "If you are watching this, you are not responsible for this. You understand me? he is perverting God to justify murder. You are stronger than him. He can not break you."

I know he meant it. But I couldn't believe any of that, not after watching a family get slaughter just because I didn't pick them.

(Y/N)'s point of view

- "I thought you were going to try and get some rest,"- I said as JJ walked to me in silence. I made myself my hundredth cup of coffee, and she just showed up next to me, trying to engage in conversation, I guess.

- "Everybody else is working. I should be too."

- "We can handle it,"- I whispered and refused to look at her. I swear I was trying not to hate her, but it was getting harder and harder with every hour that passed without finding Reid.

- "It's funny, I keep thinking the one thing we need to crack this case is... well... Reid"- she chuckled, nervously and I just looked at her and nodded. I didn't even smile. I didn't move a muscle.

I didn't want to be with her, or anyone, as a matter of fact. And I wasn't going to hide it anymore. So I tried to walk away.

- "You think Reid and I should have stayed together at the barn, don't you?"

I stopped walking and looked at her. You could tell she was having a hard time facing the whole situation, and most of all, you could tell she felt guilty.

That really didn't stop me from being mad at her. I was trying to be the better woman during the investigation, but the uncertainty was getting on my nerves.

- "JJ, go get some rest,"- I tried to answer calmly, but I knew I was looking at her like she was dead to me.

- "I can tell that's what you are thinking, so..."

- "I just wanna get Spencer home safe."

- "But... if I had his back like I was supposed to do, he'd be here now"- and that was enough.

- "JJ, what the fuck do you want from me?"

- "I just...."- she was about to cry, you could tell- "I want someone to tell me the truth."

- "You want the truth? Ok, there you go: I would have never left him alone. None of this would have happened if I had been the one with him out there! 'cos I would never let anyone or anything hurt him!!"

I shouted. All the anger I had been feeling those days was finally getting off my chest. And fuck, it felt good.

- "You fucked it up, JJ, and if something happens to Spencer, I am never going to forgive you, never!"

JJ bit her lips, trying her best not to cry. But I still couldn't feel sorry for her.

- "Is that the truth you were looking for?"

- "(Y/L/N)?"- Hotch stood next to me with the most annoyed look in his eyes.

I knew I was out of line, but this wasn't about work anymore. This was personal. This was Reid we were talking about, and JJ had fucked it up. There was nothing to discuss.

- "What? You sent him with her, now she is here, and he isn't. What else is there to say?"

- "(Y/N)!"- Hotch followed me as I stormed out of the kitchen and out of the cabin- "(Y/N)! stop!"

- "What?!"- and I simply snapped- "Are you gonna suspend me for telling her the truth? Are you going to fire me for losing my shit while working a case!? Fine! I don't care! I don't give a fuck! All I care about right now is that my best friend is missing, and a fucking psychopath has him! That's all I can think of. That's all I've been thinking about for the last two days!"

I was yelling at Hotch. I was yelling at my unit chief. I was fucked. I knew he was going to fire me after that. But I couldn't help it. I was going insane. Tears kept falling from my eyes as I held my cup of coffee tight, holding onto it with my life.

- "(Y/N), we are all worried about Reid."

- "I know you are all worried. I am too, and I'm also afraid and mad and going fucking insane knowing I am standing here not knowing what to do to save him."

- "That doesn't give you the right to treat JJ like this is her fault"- I don't know if he was talking like my unit chief or like a father figure trying to end a fight between two of his kids.

- "Did she stay with Reid?"- I simply replied and looked at Hotch in the eyes- "Did she?"

- "She is not the only one who feels guilty, so do I. And I know I won't forgive myself if anything happens to Reid."

Hotch made a pause and tried to find a way to say what he wanted to say. The door opened, and Gideon walked to us. He knew what was going on, and he didn't say a thing. I was sure he had already heard everything. We weren't actually arguing quietly.

- "We are not getting any closer,"- Aaron finally said.

- "Reid is brilliant. He'll figure out how to survive"- Gideon's words were way more hopeful than my thoughts. In my mind, Reid was too scared to think of a way to escape.

- "You know, I always take advantage of Reid for his brain. But I never actually teach him how to deal with things emotionally."

Hotch whispered, and his words were filled with regret. I was filled with anger and anxiety, and I know the two of them felt the same. But they way better at handling their feelings.

- "Lead by example,"- Jason answered, probably trying to make him feel better.

- "What kind of example is that?"- I simply replied, and both of them stayed in silence.

I don't think my words helped Hotch, but I wasn't trying to do that either. I was just honest. And Hotch's emotional assistance was shit on the field. Even Gideon was better.

- "He'll make it,"- Jason reassured us and nodded- "Now stop arguing and go back to work."

Spencer's point of view

I was glad when Tobias came to me that night with a needle in his hand and put the drug into my vein. I needed some release after watching a family die 'cos I didn't save them.

- "I'm sorry I had to leave"- he excused himself, preparing the drug next to me.

- "You can leave again, and you can take me with you,"- I begged in a soft voice.

- "My father would be angry,"- he replied and didn't even look at me. This time, I didn't even argue when he wrapped the belt around my arm. I was even a little eager he'd do it faster.

- "Not if he can't find us."

- "He always finds me."

- "If you tell me where we are, my friends will come, and they'll save us."

He gave me a look, mixed with horror and resignation. It broke my heart to think for a moment of all the horrors that lead Tobias to be as sick as he was.

- "We can't be saved,"- he simply replied.

- "We can, we can, I promise. If you tell me where we are, I'll save us both."

- "Listen to me. It's not worth fighting."

Somehow, I understood why he said that. I was afraid and shaking but still did my best not to think of all the pain I was in, of the terror that haunted me day and night.

- "Tell me it doesn't make it better- he said and showed me the needle."

I couldn't say no, 'cos he was right. It did. The drugs made his horrible situation bearable. I could understand why someone decided to use something to avoid the pain. I had faced all and each one of the pain and horrors in my life sober. It was time life was a little bit sweeter, in a sick way.

I remembered being twelve. Mom had had one of her episodes the day before, she was in bed, and I woke her up. I walked into her room and opened the curtains. It was already five in the afternoon, and she still refused to get out of bed.

- "The doctor says you need to get out of bed,"- I argued when she repeated she was just resting.

- "I've been reading"

- "He says you need exercise"- she sighed and tried to make a joke.

- "That's because his idea of good literature is Our bodies, ourselves."

- "Well, he is your doctor."

- "He is a neanderthal"- I gave up and started walking out of the room. She just laid in bed and looked at me.

- "Where are you going?"

- "I'm going to see if Jeff wants to play"- Jeff was our next-door neighbor and my only friend growing up.

- "Come here. Let me read to you."

I know Garcia made fun of me when I said my mother used to read me Valentine's sonnets when I was a kid. Most people think I have a weird relationship with mom, but they don't understand what it was like growing up with her. They don't know what it was like for a twelve-year-old boy to finish high school, facing bullies. Handling the pressure of being a kid genius and the fact I had to take care of a schizophrenic mother.

How come I didn't start using drugs earlier?

I remember that afternoon I sat next to my mother, and she made me pick one of the many books she had with her on the bed. I choose Proust. I knew she loved it. I loved it as well.

"For a long time, I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say, "I'm going to sleep."

I can still hear her voice, reading to me. Both of us avoided reality for a while, hiding in the books. I always do it regardless. I hide in the books to forget. I hide in knowledge to avoid acknowledging the real personal issues I have. I hide in my work saving people when no one ever saved me.

I work catching psychopaths when I know I might actually have a mental issue myself. I might end up just like mom, and it frightens me so much; there are many nights I can't even close an eye. If I get sick too, then no one will take care of her. I am the only one in her life. And she is the only one in mine.

She and (Y/N), but there is no way my best friend would ever take care of me if I got sick. Not because she wouldn't want to do it, but because I would never let her. I don't want to be a burden in her life. And she would hate me, I know. And I could never live in a world where (Y/N) hates me. Not then, not now.

(Y/N). She is the best thing that happened to me in the BAU. Yes, I had a family with my team, but she was different. She was my life. She was the reason why I smiled. She was the one person that made me feel I was important to someone. I knew the rest of my friend loved me, but I loved her.

That was it. I loved (Y/N). And I was scared I was never going to see her again.

(Y/N)'s point of view

I was standing next to Penelope. She kept trying to force me to eat. She knew I was living on coffee, but I just couldn't swallow anything. She held my hand as the two of us stared at the screens, hopefully waiting for Hankel to make contact again.

- "Any more signs of Reid?"- JJ walked over to us slowly and looked at me, afraid I might snap on her again. I just shook my head and sighed, doing my best to be nice to her.

- "He just posted the last murder online."

- "It had over 17 thousand hits in the first twenty minutes,"- Penelope added, and her voice was so full of revulsion. It was clear she couldn't handle the horror in the human mind.

- "I want to see it,"- JJ said, and I frowned, confused.

- "No, you don't,"- Garcia answered and looked at me- "Come on, munchkin, just eat one cookie, please."

- "Don't tell me what I want and don't want!"- JJ's tone shocked us both. She was severe and angry. She was rude at Penelope, and for a second, I almost snapped again.

- "If I can't watch this..."- JJ whispered and glued her eyes on the screen- "I have no business being in the field."

She looked at me when she was done talking, and for once during those awful days, I felt some kind of compassion for her. She had to be feeling like shit, no doubt, and no matter how mad I was at her, she was still my friend, and I didn't want her to suffer either.

- "JJ, it's not a competition,"- I tried to say in the softest voice possible.

- "I... I need to see it."

- "If you stop being affected by things, you lose parts of yourself, you know."

It was somehow ironic that I was the one saying those things. Me of all people in that team. Me, the one who was afraid the most of losing herself in work.

- "Show me"- she finally looked at Garcia, ignoring my words, and Penelope pleased her. She pushed play and simply said

- "I won't watch this with you."

García held my hand, walking me out of the room, leaving JJ alone in the room. She sighed and wiped the tears that started falling down her eyes.

- "I don't know how you do it either"- she whispered- "I don't know how you watch those things every day and don't go insane."

- "If it makes you feel better, I don't know how I do either, and it scared me to think my heart might be numbing with each case we solve. With every psychopath we catch."

- "We are gonna find him"- she assured me and held my hands tight- "We are bringing him home safe, I swear."

- "Let's go find Gideon,"- I said, nodding at her words- "He needs to know Tobias posted the last murder."

Jason was mad, beyond furious. He was losing it. Derek and Prentiss kept trying to crack Hankel and discover where he had taken Reid. Meanwhile, Garcia, Gideon, and I made our best to take the video of the murder from the web.

- "I have a list of everyone from the file-sharing chain. I could send out a mass warning that the video is actually a virus,"- Garcia said and started typing as fast as possible. I just stared at the screen, waiting for something, anything to happen.

But I wasn't waiting for what came next.

- "Confess your sins"- Hankel's voice made me jump, and the sight of Reid, still tied to that chair, bleeding, and being tortured, broke my heart again.

- "Confess!!"- that sick psychopath shouted and hit him.

- "I haven't done anything,"- Spencer sobbed, but it was useless. Hankel kept punching him, over and over again, even when my best friend begged for mercy.

I felt Jason hold my hand as I was holding Garcia's. The three of us felt powerless, useless, angry, and scared, all at the same time. I couldn't bear to watch Reid being tortured, but at the same time, I was so glad he was still alive.

That until Hankel beat him so hard, he pushed him back in the chair, and Reid started convulsing.

- "He is killing him,"- Penelope cried, and I closed my eyes, biting my lips. Spencer was choking, and that mother fucker just stood there, watching him die.

- "That's the devil vacating your body"- he spit those words as Reid simply passed out. I didn't know if he was dead. I didn't know if he was going to make it. Shit! I didn't know anything.

I let go of Jason and Penelope and stormed out of the room. I was unprofessional, and I knew it, but I knew I would quit if anything happened to Reid. I wasn't going to stay working at the BAU if Spencer died.

- "Are you ok?"- Derek grabbed my arm. I just broke into tears and held him tight. He wrapped his arms around me and let me cry.

- "He's dying! We can't find him!!"- I sobbed against his chest.

- "(Y/N)! (Y/N)!"- I heard Penelope yelling as we all rushed back to the computer room. Hankel was giving CPR to Reid, trying to bring him back to life.

- "Come on, come on, please,"- I begged as I watched him pushing his chest over and over again until Spencer woke up, gasping for air.

- "Thank God!"- Hotch sighed and rubbed his hands against his face. The whole team let out a breath of relief simultaneously, and I kept watching Reid. His opened eyes gave me hope.

- "Wait,"- Prentiss said suddenly- "When was the video of the last murder posted?"

- "Nine thirty"- Penelope answered

- "And when was the time of death?"

- "The 911 call came in at 9:04, and the murder must have been moments later."- Hotch added and didn't even turn to look at Prentiss. We were all still shocked looking at the screen.

- "That's just a 19 minutes difference,"- I said and turned to García- "How long would it take to post that file?"

- "Two or three minutes."

- "Let's call it two,"- I said, getting excited- "You figure a maximum of 60 miles an hour in a residential area. That means Hankel has to be within a 17-mile radius of the crime scene."

For a second, I felt I was rambling facts just like Reid would. It made me miss him even more.

- "García, can we see it on the map?"- Aaron whispered. He was clearly affected, and it also made me feel selfish, knowing I had made a tantrum with the whole team, forgetting they were suffering as well.

- "Call chief Farraday"- Jason commanded as soon as we saw the map of the area on the screen- "I want that area locked down like it's martial law."

JJ stood up and grabbed her phone but didn't make the call. García warned us something was going on with Reid and all of us stared at the screen in silence.

Spencer was on his back on the floor, still tied to a chair. It was clear he wasn't fully conscious of what was happening.

- "You came back to life,"- mother fucker Hankel said, spitting the words in anger.

- "Raphael,"- Reid whispered, recognizing one of his personalities.

- "There can be only one of two reasons."

- "I was given CPR,"- my friend whispered, but it was clear that wasn't one of the psycho's options.

- "There are no accidents. How many members of our team are watching us right now?"

- "Seven."

- "The seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first sounding followed hail, and they were thrown to the earth."

- "He thinks it's the revelations"- Hotch explained- "The seven archangels versus the seven angels of death."

I didn't know much about religion, but it didn't take a genius to figure out he didn't believe we were the good guys.

- "Tell me who you serve."

- "I serve you,"- Reid answered right away. His voice was a whisper. He had to be exhausted.

- "Then choose one to die"

- "What?!"

- "Your team members, choose one to die"- I knew what he was going to answer at that, and I didn't want to hear it.

- "Kill me,"- he replied immediately, and I closed my eyes, unable to watch what would happen next.

- "You said you weren't one of them."

- "I lied."

- "Your team has seven other members. Tell me who dies."

- "No"- Penelope gasped, and Prentiss cursed. I opened my eyes and nearly fainted. Hankel had a gun pointed against Reid's forehead.

The silence amongst the team was unbearable. Neither of us knew what to do. We were all panicking, praying, desperate.

- "Choose and prove you'll do God's will."

- "No."

Neither of us moved. Neither of us breathed until Hakel pulled the trigger, and no bullet came out. I nearly sigh, but it wasn't over.

- "Choose"- he repeated

- "I won't do it"- Hankel didn't even wait. He just pulled the trigger, and we all jumped at the same time. He was safe again.

- "Life is a choice."

- "No,"- Reid repeated once again. And Hankel pulled the trigger for the third time.

- "Choose"- and for the first time, Spencer made a pause. Was going to pick one of us to die?

- "I choose"- the whispered- "Aaron Hotchner."

Derek and I looked at him, and his pale face didn't move a muscle.

- "He's the classic narcissist. He thinks he's better than everyone else on the team. Genesis 23:4 "Let him not deceive himself, and trust in emptiness, vanity falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense."

Hotch stormed out of the room as Hankel pulled the trigger one more time and shot the wall.

I felt I was going to puke. If Reid hadn't picked one of us, he would be dead.

- "For God's will,"- the mother fuck said, as he put another bullet in the gun after removing the casing.

I couldn't look anymore. I followed Gideon and Derek to find Aaron going through all Tobias's diaries on the table.

- "I'm not a narcissist,"- he said as soon as he saw us.

- "Come on. Look, you can't think anything from that"- Jason tried to calm him down, in case he was somehow affected by what Reid had just said on camera- "He is not in his right mind, Hotch."

- "No, stop, stop. Alright, everybody, right now: what's my worst quality?"

He had to be kidding. We all stared at him, muted, lost in that conversation. What was his point? Neither of us said a word. We just looked at each other, confused and awkward.

- "Ok, I'll start. I have no sense of humor."

- "You are a bully,"- JJ added.

- "You can be a drill sergeant sometimes,"- I said, and he nodded.

- "Right."

- "You don't trust women as much as men"- you could feel it in Prentiss's voice. That one was personal.

- "Ok, good. I'm all these things, but none of you said that I ever put myself above the team because I don't, ever. Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, and he knew that I would remember that. He also quoted Genesis chapter 23, verse 4. Read it."

Hotch gave me the book. He wasn't even breathing as she spoke. He was in a hurry. We were all.

- "I'm a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead of my sight."

- "He wouldn't get it wrong unless it were on purpose."

- "He is in a cemetery."- I said and looked at him. He nodded, and I swear to God, I saw a slight smile on his lips. That smile was hope. We were getting closer.

Spencer's point of view

I took a sip of water. I hadn't drunk in days, and my throat burned. I was still a little lost, still a little off.

- "Tobias, is that you?"- I saw him nod, sitting next to me. He moved the cup of water closer so that I could drink some more.

- "Thank you,"- I whispered and looked at him- You saved my life- he stared down at the ground and finally whispered

- "I'm sorry."

- "Why?"

- "He'll win in the end."

It was sad to see Tobias Hankel's good person locked inside a sick mind that also held a psychopath like his father.

- "Tobias, I need to know something. It's important. Are we in a cemetery?"- and he nodded. I smiled at him and sighed, relieved. Help was coming. My team was coming.

- "I used to come here to get high."

- "I was right."

- "No one bothers you here. I never told anyone about it."

He wrapped his belt around my arm, and I turned to him, still smiling. I didn't know if I were happy I was right or glad I would get high again. Maybe both. Maybe the second 'cos the minute that needle got to my vein, that sweet, sweet release felt like a bath of joy that washed away any pain, regret, or guilt I could have ever felt.

Guilt. I've had my share of that. I remember the day I had my mom admitted to the hospital. She hadn't eaten in days. She wouldn't take care of herself, and they're just so much I could do. I wasn't able to keep her safe from herself, from her mind.

- "What are these men doing here?"- she asked me as I walked with two nurses into the study. She was writing and reading. It was all she did, preparing lectures for classes she didn't have to give, in imaginary campuses.

I stood in front of her and hesitated for a second. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, telling mom I was taking her away from her own house.

- "They are from the hospital. They are here to help,"- I whispered and looked at my mother's confused expression. She was so thin. She looked so sick. I felt so guilty I couldn't do better for her.

- "I don't need help, and you can't be here without permission, tell them, Spencer."

She looked down at her books again and tried to continue writing. I took a deep breath, I knew I would break her heart, but there was nothing else I could do.

- "I called them"- she looked at me in pain. Deep, honest pain. Like I had just shattered her heart. Which I had done.

- "Spencer"- she simply whispered and stared into my eyes, begging for an explanation. I was trying my best not to cry. I had a whole speech prepared. I was going to tell her how much I loved her. I was going to explain to her how good it was for her to be in a place where someone could continuously take care of her. I had facts and statistics, but all I managed to say was:

- "I'm doing this for you."

And I felt like a liar. 'Cos, there was a part of me that was doing it for myself too.

- "This isn't legal"- she shook her head in shock and kept trying to find a good explanation to what was going on.

- "Your son is eighteen, ma'am. He can act in your welfare,"- one of the make nurses explained to her.

- "You need help,"- I said and prayed she could understand. But she just burst into tears and begged.

- "I wanna stay here!"

- "I'm... sorry, mom."

- "Please, these are my things, this is my life..."

Those men took her. They took her from her house and put her in a hospital. No. I put her there. I put my mom in a hospital so I could live my life, 'cos I am selfish and couldn't take care of her anymore.

- "Spencer, please, don't do this to me."

Those were the words that haunted me day and night. And my mother's crying face, begging me not to take her from her own house.

What kind of a son am I? I did that to her. I put her in a mental place 'cos I couldn't deal with her disease anymore. 'Cos I didn't know how to take care of her.

- "What are you sorry for, boy?"- I heard Hankel ask when I woke up. I was muttering, "Sorry" as I came back from my trip.

- "I sent her away."

- "Who."

- "My mom. I couldn't help her."

- "Is that a confession?"- I nodded and looked around, confused. Lost. High- "You know the bible. Exodus 21:17"

- "And he that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death,"- I whispered, scared and full of regret.

I heard him walk towards me. He kneeled and uncuffed me. I didn't know what was happening. Honestly, I was still too high to get what was going on around me.

- "Grab a shovel,"- he commanded and walked outside.

I was too weak to dig fast. I don't know how I was actually moving, but I was digging my own grave. I never thought I would ever end up doing such a thing. It's not something you think about, actually. Not unless you work in the BAU. Here, you start analyzing and considering the way you'll die: 'Cos you could, every day.

- "I ought to bury you alive in there, give you some time to think about what you've done,"- Hankel said and looked at me while I worked, playing with a knife.

- "I know what I've done."

- "Don't talk back to me! Dig!"

I pant and kept moving, very slowly, trying to buy myself some time too. I was sure the team was coming to get me any minute now. I was counting on them, though the more I thought about it, the less worthy of salvation I felt. Maybe I deserved to die after all.

I was almost certain I had seen some lights moving in the back. Flashlights. But it could be my mind playing tricks on me. I was too tired. And still too high, too.

- "Dig faster!"- he commanded me as I moved, losing my breath.

- "I'm not strong enough"- I cried, 'cos I felt like that. Like a failure, a child that aimed to be a grown-up and failed miserably. A bad son. The worst agent. A fake that deserved to die.

- "You are all weak!! Get out of there!"

Hankel took off his coat and left it on the ground. I slowly moved so he could dig for me, but the lights in the back took my attention, and he noticed. As soon as he turned around, I quickly grabbed his coat and reached out for the gun.

- "You've only got one bullet, son,"- he said as he looked at me. And I just pulled the trigger.

I shot him. I killed him. Hankel. Raphael. Tobias. I freed Tobias. Or at least, that is what I wanted to think.

- "Reid!!"- I heard (Y/N) yelling as I crawled to Tobia's body. He was still awake. He was himself.

- "You killed him"- he said, and he was relieved- "Do you think I'll get to see my mom again?"

- "I'm sorry,"- I whispered, and he was gone.

- "Reid!!"

(Y/N) yelled and ran over. She kneeled next to me and held me in her arms. I couldn't move, because for a few seconds, I couldn't believe she was real. She was there.

- "Honey, honey, are you ok? Can you hear me?"- she said, and tears started falling from her eyes- "Honey, it's me."

I just looked at her and hugged her. I hugged her as my life depended on it. There she was, next to me, finally.

- "I thought I was never going to see you again,"- I whispered and sobbed.

The urge to kiss her filled my whole body. I needed to taste her. I needed to show her how much I had needed her those days. But I knew I couldn't.

I didn't want to let her go. I didn't for a few minutes. I just hold onto her for my sanity. She kissed my forehead, cupping my face with both hands.

- "I'm so happy to see you. I'm glad you are ok... let's go to the ambulance, ok?"- I nodded but didn't let her go. I felt I could hold her forever. I wanted to keep her close for as long as I lived.

But the rest of the team gathered around us, and I wanted to thank them too. I needed to thank Hotch. So as soon as I let (Y/N) go, I wrapped my arms around him.

- "You alright?"- he asked me.

- "I knew you'd understand,"- I managed to say with tears falling from my eyes and a knot in my throat.

For a moment, I thought I was never going to see the team again. My family.

JJ held me close and apologized. I knew she felt guilty for leaving me alone, but I was the only one culpable for what had happened. I wanted to prove myself, and all I managed to do was prove I was a fool. A useless SSA.

- "It's alright, it wasn't your fault,"- I said and did my best to smile at her. But I know I failed. Gideon grabbed my arm and nodded.

- "Let's get you out of here."

- "Please,"- I whispered before we started walking- "Can I have a second alone?"- he looked at me and nodded, looking at Tobias' body lying by our side. He walked away, and I kneeled next to my capturer.

But instead of paying my respects, instead of cursing. Instead of anything, I took the Dilaudid bottles from his pocket and put them into mine.

And that's how the real hell started.

--

DIWK Taglist:

@all-tings-diego @big-galaxy-chaos @svveet-peas @muffin-cup @shilohpug

Spencer taglist

@calm-and-doctor

General Taglist

@spenxerslut @ash19871962

–

Do you want to be on the taglist or ramble about this chapter with me? Just send me a message here.

Next update: May 5th, 2021

#Spencer Reid #criminal minds #spencer reid fanfic #babymetaldoll writes #cm fanfic #criminal minds fanfic #Emily prentiss #Aaron Hotchner #jennifer jareau #derek morgan #penelope garcia #emily prentiss #babymetaldoll edits #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfiction

[mitsukui]

blessed be the mystery of love. | f.w.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x reader.

Summary: Fred Weasley seems to be a new boy: he has fallen in love, and a couple of unexpected things have come along with it. Apparently, his recently discovered romantic interest has never heard of him, and he is now someone who...writes...love letters?! Well, that is surely weird...

Word Count: 2k.

Warnings: none!

Disclaimer: none of the pictures used in the edit below belong to me; I simply put them together.

A/N: this is probably my favorite so far! I’ve been working on it for such a long time, so I hope you all enjoy it! I’m honestly such a sucker for soft Fred...Please, leave me some feedback if you feel like it! My askbox is open for your opinions, thoughts and requests. Thank you so much for your time and attention ❤

Masterlist!

Dark brown eyes studied your silhouette surreptitiously, which was utterly uncommon for their owner. One who once was daring now hid behind heart-felt walls that looked like you. A flirtatious behavior had been replaced by occasional stuttering and disinterest in other romantic affairs.

People around him could effortlessly notice the situation was taking its toll on him. However, they seemed too dumbfounded by it to say something – words were long gone from their lips, and from his own as well.

Fred Weasley had fallen desperately in love, but you were unaware of his existence.

Somehow, it sounded ironic: how could you not know about him?! Every single soul in Hogwarts knew who he and his twin were, and he enjoyed such a thing. Unlike his slightly younger identical brother, Fred was one to enjoy popularity and attention. He sought fame and recognition, and he would never complain if a few hookups came along with that.

And, yet, there you were – iridescent and untouchable. You were forcefully popping novel thoughts into his mind. Would you ever lay eyes on him? And if you ever did, what would you think and feel?

It was high time you noticed him, and he could only count on himself to make it happen.

Fred desired to make a different approach, one you had not yet seen. His eyes had captured a few other admirers here and there trying to get your heart, but none of them had achieved success. He ought to be the one to do that.

And love letters would most certainly help him get there.

Writing letters was an arduous task, and it consumed all of his energy. His quill scribbled fiercely against fragments of parchment, heavy sighs filled the silence around him, and every inch of his skin burned in longing and embarrassment. George could be easily found doing something like that; but not Fred. He could be found causing mischief or attaching his lips to someone else’s.

Nevertheless, there he was, combining words and allowing the dark paint to splash against the paper in order to pour his heart out.

His first letter was short – hesitant, almost; after all, it was impossible for him to know how you would react to the approach he had chosen. He had put so much effort into it, despite the small number of words and expressed feelings. It was crystal clear you deserved bigger things; even so, that scenario was entirely atypical to him.

He was just as disoriented as you were when a barn owl dropped an almost unimportant-considered envelope right in front of you, interrupting your breakfast in the Great Hall one morning.

He had been eyeing the owl entrances for a little while when he finally was able to spot the one he had previously picked for you. His lips trembled nervously, and his fingers traveled straight up. Lately, he had been developing a habit of biting his fingernails whenever he was anxious, and anxiety was the only emotion possible for that morning.

What if you ended up not liking the note? Maybe you would think he could be a creep or something similar to that. It was unknown whether you had a significant other or not. Were his words good enough? Would you ever look at him like he so lovingly looked at you?

One of your hands curiously reached out for the envelope while the other one briefly fed the owl. You furrowed your eyebrows together as your eyes ran through the lines: it was a tad difficult to read whatever was written on the parchment, given the handwriting was not one of the best. However, you managed to decode the message, and a smile soon spread across your lips. Despite the distance Fred watched you from, the boy could swear that even a small giggle spilled out from your lips.

The small note read something along the lines of:

“To the one who is now devouring my heart.

I mean no harm. My feelings are of pure admiration.

You are gold.

I hold you in my thoughts.

- W.”

The words he had previously written rang in his brain, and he felt ridiculous. He had never had a good relationship with words, writing, or anything related to that. Why on Earth had he chosen to write you a love letter? You were probably laughing at the stupidity that the note was drenched in.

You allowed both your curiosity to dwell in your core and your eyes to analyze the people who crowded the Great Hall that morning. You studied all the possibilities, and you did not notice Fred Weasley. He felt invisible and, for the first time, he enjoyed it.

After that, a second love letter was written. And then a third one, and even a fourth one, too! He grew bold once again, and his secret passion became stronger.

One day, dizzy due to his recently rediscovered boldness, he allowed his quill to dance against the parchment as he wrote you a fifth letter. This one was different from all the previous ones; he still offered you his heart and tried making you realize how much he secretly admired you. But there was something more to it – he sent you something else other than the letter alone.

The arrival of the usual owl in another freezing morning in Hogwarts quickly muffled the chatting and cutlery noises that hovered over every person in the Great Hall. It barely took you one second to smile at the sight, which caused Fred to smile himself – he absolutely adored your smile.

Those anonymous letters had become part of your daily routine, and they were something you eagerly waited for. Being both a Hogwarts student and a teenager at the same time was no easy duty. Your spirit tended to get overwhelmed from time to time, and you found yourself turning to the anonymous letters for an escape from the reality that surrounded you.

However, as soon as you brushed your fingertips against the envelope, you felt an additional weight to it, something that had never been there before. Attempting to waste no time, you reached for the letter, and a smile did not fail to paint your face; it was so easy for him to make you smile, even though you still did not know who he was.

“I must know whatever fills your heart once your eyes reach the very last word in each of my letters.

Would you mind wearing this little thing if you are not bothered by me and my confessions?

It is small and simple, but it is given to you with love.

As always, I hold you in my thoughts.

- W.”

And then, you finally saw it: a tiny decorative pin, which you figured it out as to be put on your robes. It was shaped as a white envelope sealed with a red heart. You disagreed with the words written on the letter, once you did not see it as something simple. It was beautiful. It was your new favorite thing. It was attached to your robes in the flash of an eye. And how it could not be?!

You profoundly enjoyed his secretive actions. For you, it was extremely sweet that someone admired you so much that they chose to sit down and write you comforting and loving words. A pure energy radiated from every single thing he had sent you, and you wished for an identity reveal. You wished to discover whoever your secret admirer was only to confess you also admired them, mostly because of the sweetness existing in their personality.

It was high time you solved this mystery, and you could only count on yourself to make it happen.

When his sixth letter arrived, you had one of your own as well. You did not bother reading his words right away; after all, you had more important things to do. The barn owl was distracted by one of your hands, offering it small pieces of buttered toast, while the other tied the words you had previously written up its leg.

“Can you do this for me?” You whispered gently to the animal standing close to you. As funny as it sounded, you had grown fond of that owl in a way, too. “Take this back to the one who’s been sending you to me, alright? I promise you I won’t peek! I’m asking them to meet me tonight, in Classroom Eleven. Do you think they will come?” An airy chuckle left your lips and you swore your heart was melting at how much attention the owl seemed to be paying to your words. Before it took off, the animal playfully nibbled your fingers and your smile grew wider.

Like promised, you did not allow yourself to look wherever the owl was going to. All of your curiosity was being saved for later that night. There was no way for you to know if he would ever show up, and that hurt your insides a bit. What if it had all been a cruel joke?

The same wonders that once had haunted his brain now haunted yours.

But the night did not cease to fall, and the moon did not cease to shine. It was terribly cold, but your feet still automatically took you to Classroom Eleven, one of the classrooms that were hardly ever used for classes or any other purposes. It was a risky place, given the fact that it was of so easy access. However, you thought the possibility of getting caught was rather exciting. So you entered the classroom, as quietly as you could manage, and you waited.

Fred, on the other hand, could feel his stomach being punched repeatedly by a thousand of invisible hands. He was painfully apprehensive, and one of the signs that revealed that was his constant pacing in a deserted hallway.

He obviously would never stand you up, but the thought of running away popped up in his brain a few times. This was an extremely ridiculous behavior for someone like him. And even though he knew he had to get it done, he was still so intimidated by it all.

“Just rip it off like a band-aid.” The boy whispered to himself, his steps finding a slower pace and his hands being shoved into his pockets. Deep breaths were taken and he was finally able to gather all the courage he needed to walk towards and enter the classroom.

Your body was resting against an empty desk, which it seemed like it had not been used in years. Staring out the window, you secretly wished you had worn something better for that moment; perhaps, your pajamas and a long knitted cardigan over them had not been the best choice.

When you were about to start your seventh mental curse about your idiot choices, hesitant knocks on the door made a mess out of your line of thoughts. They came as a warning that things were about to either go very well or terribly bad.

And, then, a long silence followed. Both of you panicked, each one on a different side of the wooden door. You wondered if you should answer something to the knocks, he wondered if he should have said something. Your body was straightened up, and you suddenly realized your hands were getting slightly sweaty.

He opened the heavy door so slowly that, as you watched it, you could see your life flashing right in front of your eyes.

Finally, you spotted something in the dark. Peeking through the door, your eyes captured the sight of locks of an orange marmalade shaded hair entering the classroom. Right then and there, you felt like everything had just gained a new and brighter light.

You were breathless. The boy timidly standing there, still a bit far away from you, was the most stunning human you had ever seen.

His dark eyes observed you, both curiosity and fear being expressed wordlessly. He attempted to aim a small smile at you, which you gladly accepted and offered him another smile back.

After a few moments of intense stares and exchanged grins, your voice finally cut the comfortable silence that had been set between the two of you.

“The wonders are finally ceased.”

Tag list! ❤️  @efyra​ @writingsomewrongs​ @pineapplesandpinas​ @ronweaselysslut​ @fiction-is-the-new-reality @amourtentiaa​ @emmaev​

#fred weasly x reader #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley fluff #fred weasley #harry potter #harry potter imagine

[forthehpfanboys]

History

Pair: Hermione Granger x Reader; he/him.

Summary: Hermione swore she would hate Slytherins since Draco Malfoys blonde self rolled into town, but your relentless flirting and charming smile causes her to feel stuff.

Warnings: Swears, bad flirting.

Notes: Slytherin!Reader, cute request. Probably super late and probably super crummy-

~DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE~

-

"Hello, Granger!” You flashed her your best smile, your arms crossing over the table. She turned to you with a raised eyebrow, lacking all hint of the grin she held just moments before you sat beside you. “What? Did I interrupt something important?”  You knew you interrupted her read, of course you did. This was the only time she was ever away from Strawberry Shortcake and Boy Wonder. Maybe they were allergic to studying?

“What are you doing here, (L/n)?” Your last name rolled off her tongue with grace, making your heart skip a beat or two. She turned back to her book, her now dull eyes trailing down the page at an impressive rate. Her voice was colder than a Dementors heart, but that didn’t kill your mood a lick.

“Well, I just wanted to chat! See how your day is going, maybe ask if you need help with whatever you're currently studying.” You slid the book closer to you, effectively causing her to lose her place. You lifted one end to check the cover. “Muggle history, huh? Didn’t take you for the type.” 

“First of all, it’s none of your business what I’m studying or how my day went. Second, don’t touch my book,” she yanked it back and held it to her chest before standing up, “and finally, leave me alone.” She pushed her seat in, giving you the cold shoulder as she walked toward the exit of the library. 

“Alrighty then, Granger! I’ll just see ya tomorrow!” Your cheery voice made her groan in dread. You weren’t going to get all gloomy just because she didn’t want to see you right away. You knew you would have to warm her up and you kept to your word, sitting next to her the next day at the library. She was only closed off toward you because some idiots can’t keep their bloody mouths shut. That, and you were a pure-blood that wore the green and silver tie.

Slytherins got hate, more than other houses. They always got a bad wrap because someone had to open their mouth and say some of the dumbest stuff imaginable that gave perfectly normal and rational people bad reputations. That someone was named Draco Malfoy. It wasn’t like they could lock him up and pretend he was in literally any other house, they tried. It didn’t work. Maybe if Draco kept his mouth shut, you wouldn’t stay up so late at night, cursing the color of your tie. Scratch that, you probably could’ve been the golden Trios friend, maybe just Hermione’s.

The brunette had caught your eye. She was rather pretty. And rather smart. And sassy. And strong. And- Ok, so she was a lot of things and you liked her and that’s fine! Perfectly fine. You'd accepted how you felt about the witch a while ago. Only problem was the way she viewed the house you were sorted into. You were a Slytherin, which explained all the tension. But you didn’t want it there.

Over time, you longed to be near her. You wanted to hold wants with her and make her laugh and watch her eyes sparkle with emotions reserved for only you. So, you decided you'd try to change her perception on the green and silver themed house and the people who were sorted into it, which led you to now. You’d been doing this for a few days now, just saying hi to her, her friends and just trying to be polite. 

You left the library, quickly finding no other reason to stay there. Walking down the bustling halls, you ignored the glares you got from all around you. People would always look at others and see the color of their robes before the person themselves and it was beyond frustrating, but you managed to win a few over, like Cedric and Cho and, somehow, Harry Potter himself. That’s how you knew you’d win her over. Once people got to know you, they learned you were very down to earth, very not stereotypical Slytherin, and most found you charming with a splash of witty. 

So, you kept up the routine of seeing her every day at the library, trying your best to make small talk and change her mind. What Hermione kept to herself was that she promised to do anything but fall for you. She tried her hardest not to let you in. She tried her best to not blush over your cheesy flirts and genuine compliments. Her and Ron thought you were a spy for Draco- Harry knew better. 

It had been a week since that encounter with muggle history and pure sass and she was starting to open up to you. It was evident by how her eyes would shimmer at you too, instead of just her friends, but now you. You’d managed to turn her a soft pink with a simple wink. It was so refreshing to see her smile everyday, which led you to actively seeking her out in the hallways. You didn’t find her in the hallways, though. She was outside, in the courtyard sitting between Harry and Ron, no surprise there. You scurried over, waving enthusiastically to the trio, to which you received two waves and a simple nod- Ron still didn’t trust you.

“Hello, boys! Hermione. How are you doing this evening?” You asked, a smile spreading across your face as Hermione’s cheeks turned pink, like usual nowadays. You sat down on the ground in front of them, not worrying about the dirt that would cover your dark uniform.

“Hi, (Y/n).” Harry spoke up first, reaching around Hermione to nudge Ron when he remained silent. 

“Hi.” Oh, his voice just held excitement, didn’t it?

“Hello, (Y/n)! Are you here to return my textbook or do I have to pry it from your hands?” The brunette witch held her hand out, a cheeky smile across her lips. You ducked your head down, gazing at the cover of the muggle history textbook tucked under your arm and took in a breath through your breath.

“Ooh, I’m not sure, Granger. Might have to take it from me.” You smirked at her, enjoying how her cheeks turned a brighter red. You let out a chuckle when she looked at you with a playful glare and handed the book over to her. “Alright, alright. I got the hint, love, relax.” You laughed a little harder when Ron dramatically rolled his eyes.

“Why did he have your book?” Harry turned to Hermione, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. She pulled the cover of the book to her chest. 

"Well, he ruined his after the potions fiasco last week-" 

"Hey!" you tried to cut her off, embarrassment quickly setting in. 

"-when his potion turned green and literally climbed out of the cauldron."

"He gave me bad instructions!" your voice kept falling on deaf ears as the trio snickered. 

"Oh, right! I remember that!" Ron spoke up, snickering as your cheeks turned red. 

"Didn’t it slide right off the table and fall into his bag and literally ate his muggle history book?" Harry covered his mouth as they all snickered at the event. You crossed your arms over your chest. 

"It didn't eat my book!" You grumbled out as you looked down at the dirt. You used your finger to draw in the loose dirt as you pouted. "It burned right through it. Cost me a few galleons and a detention."

Hermione let out another giggle and rolled her eyes. She slipped a piece of her hair behind her ear and chewed on her lip. 

"I know, which is why I let you borrow mine. Aw, come on! Don’t be like that, we’re just teasing. It’s what friends do.” She smiled at you again, but instead of smiling back, you just felt cold.

A shiver wracked down your spine as a freezing cold sensation spreading across your chest. The word ‘friend’ literally echoed in your head while the trio talked like you didn’t exist. She thought of you as a friend. The words made your heart physically ache and suddenly, you were worried you’d throw up, or scream. You watched the brunette nudge Ron on the shoulder, almost shoving him off the ledge of his seat and your head started hurting. 

Why would she like you when she was surrounded by chivalrous Gryffindors who’d gladly take her anywhere she wanted to go. You were just a Slytherin. It probably didn’t matter how hard you tried, how nice you were, how many friends you had, you were still a Slytherin. 

You looked down at your tie, chewing on your lip. Your eyes stung as your brain went on the tangent. Your brain stopped when you remembered what exactly was inside the book. The coldness in your chest seemed to triple. Your mind flickered to the night before, when you were studying in the library and decided enough was enough and wrote the female a poem that put Romeo and Juliet to shame. It may, or may not have even hinted at your feelings.

You felt a physical itch to get it back. You wanted to wipe the parchment clean, give it to your owl and send it to the ocean to drop it in, maybe even feed it to Scabbers- anything to get it out of her hands.

“Hermione!” Your loud shout interrupted the jokes flying back and forth between the friends, and, honestly, interrupted most of the conversations scattered across the courtyard. Your cold chest quickly flipped to burning hot as embarrassment set in. “Um.. I think I left some notes in your book.”

“Oh, did you?” She looked down at it, laying it cover side up on her lap before opening the cover.

“Yeah, but uh, don’t trouble yourself with finding it! I um- I can do it.” You reached for it, but she shifted the book so she was holding it by the spine.  

“No, no, I got it.” The brunette witch dragged her thumb along the edge of the pages, allowing them to fall until she spotted the brownish parchment separating the gray faded pages. “Is this it?” She picked it up delicately, smiling at you. She noticed how your ears were bright red, how your hand was twitching just a few inches away from the book and how your eyes held dread- borderline panic within them. 

“Uh, yeah, yeah, that’s.. That.” You chewed on your lip, refusing to meet her eyes. Hermione’s smile dropped a little. She wasn’t dumb, she knew what was going on. She looked down at the paper, noticing the semi-messy handwriting and a few doodles that had her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Her eyes skimmed across the pages of where said paper was trapped and noticed it was wedged between a few pages of a specific romantic drama.

“We went over Romeo and Juliet ages ago, (Y/n). Why are you re-reading it?” Her words had your entire face practically turning red and even Harry seemed to pick up on a clue. He stood up and grabbed Ron by the hood of the robes, literally dragging the now shouting red-head away to give you some speckle of privacy.

While you stammered out a response, her eyes flicked down to the brown parchment again. You panicked. You grabbed her wrist and tried to take it from her before she could read it, but you ended up, pushing her off her seat and landing on the floor with a thud. You fell on top of her, your hand pinning her wrist with the parchment beside her head while you basically straddled over her waist.

“Oh, bollocks. Sorry, I’m sorry.” You stammered, letting go of her wrist. “I am so sorry. I just- I didn’t want you to read the poem and think I’m some idiot and like, slap me?” Your eyes looked into hers and that was when you noticed how bright her face. It was a stark contrast against her tie, but not by much. Her cheeks were a bright pink and her lips were hanging open ever so slightly. You got lost in her eyes for a brief moment. 

Once you snapped out of it, you practically jumped off the young witch and helped her up. You brushed off her robes and fixed her tie that became crooked and flashed her an awkward, but apologetic smile.

“It’s ok.” Her voice was softer than a whisper. Her hand rubbed the wrist that still held the poem, her eyes casting down to it before looking back up in confusion again. “Wait, you said poem.”

“I did?”

“You told me they were notes, (L/n).”

You swallowed thickly at the mention of your last name. It’d been a good few weeks since she called you that and you were worried you were back at square one. You let out a shaky sigh, nodding your head. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I just..” Your sentence trailed off. She was reading over the poem now, so you found explaining it useless. You fiddled with your own robes, dusting them off while she read. 

“A night in the star freckled skies or a day below the deep blue lakes, cannot hold a twinkling diamond nor elegant magpies toward your beauty that overtakes.” She read out loud while you cringed. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t the best, but you tried. “What’s this all about?” You expected her to glare at you that promised hexing, but you were met with a look one could almost confuse with love sickness. 

“Ah, well.. I.. Kinda.. I fancy you.” You squeezed your eyes tight, waiting for the stinging of a slap to meet your cheek, instead you were met with a bunch of giggles. You slowly opened your eyes to look at her. She was covering her face with the paper. “Hermione?” You whispered. Was she laughing at you?

“It’s about time you realized that!” She moved the paper, folding it perfectly and sliding it into her robe pocket. Your jaw dropped to the floor, a clear expression of confusion across your still warm face. “It’s been so obvious!” She was giggling again.

“Wait, so you knew?!” You screeched out, your voice vanishing in the middle. It wasn’t like you didn't know since the bloody beginning that you liked the witch, you just had no idea it was so obvious.

“Of course I did! The winks, the cute nicknames, the obvious attempts to be near me- oh and Harry told me.” She counted on her fingers. The witch looked up when you didn’t respond and stepped forward. “Don’t worry, (Y/n). I fancy you too.” Hermione cupped your cheek with her free hand and landed a kiss to the other one. 

“Was it the poem?” You squeaked out, quickly bending down on one knee to pick up the abandoned textbook before standing back up. You winced at the floor as your voice echoed in the now empty courtyard, but smiled a little when Hermione let out a snort.

“It was the flirting, the kindness, the poem and then some.”

“Oh.. So, date? This Friday? I could take you to the Quidditch game?” You rubbed the back of your neck, holding the history book out for her. Your smile turned into a wider on filled with hope as she contemplated her answer.

“You do know the game is Gryffindor vs Slytherin, right?”

“Of course I know. I’m not a dummy.” You held your arm out for her. Your heart skipped a beat when her arm wrapped around yours. You began leading her down the hallway, straight to the library. 

“Then yes, I’d love to go.” Hermione leaned into you, her own captivating grin clear as day. The two of you ignored the puzzled glanced from across the student filled corridors as you passed. It was strange to see a Gryffindor and a Slytherin so close to each other.

“It’s a date then! I can’t wait.” You spoke as you separated from her. You hurried to the library door, holding the entrance open and letting the brunette witch go in first. You trailed after her, grinning as you hurried back to her side. “I bet the fist fight with Malfoy really did it.” 

“I will not confirm that.”

“I knew it!”

“Hush!”

“Sorry, love. Just excited we got the history out of the way.”

#hp x male reader #hp imagine #hermione granger x male reader #hermione granger imagine #hermione granger #x male reader #male reader #ron weasley #harry potter #Ronny Writes #fic #hp male fic #hp fic

[fezcosbitch]

JJ Maybank imagine:

Passion and wild regret

Summary: The pogues think you’re a bad influence on JJ.

I’ve been away for a couple of days so I hope this is ok! 💙

All feedbacks welcome as long as it’s not rude or mean ❤️

Warnings: angst, drug use (kind of, they aren’t taken I also do NOT condone drug use, unless it’s for medical reasons).

And yeah, let’s get into to it...

——————————————————————————

You were a bit of a party girl, a wildcard, some would say. ‘Some’ being everyone except for you, who thought you were completely casual.

You were on the beach, at another summer kegger, where, to be fair, you may have a had a bit too much to drink, which of course, normally leads to JJ watching over you like a hawk. You had just downed your 15th (?) beer of the night, and decided to join in on truth or dare with the tourons, with a few pogues and kooks scattered about in the circle. “Y/n, truth or dare?” A random touron asked you. “Easy, dare” you responded, a grin on your face. The touron smirked, clearly having his dare planned out. “I dare you to take this” he said while holding up a clear baggie which looked to have a couple pills in it. “What is it?” You questioned, if you were going to take something you wanted to know what it was. “Only Molly” he said with a sly smirk on his face, looking you in the eye, testing you. The circle went silent, watching for your reaction, and looking at the touron to see if he was serious. “Ok, give it over” you replied, not ever being one to back down from a challenge, maintaining eye contact with him the whole time.

By now, JJ had heard of what you had been dared to do, as well as the rest of the pogues, and they were running to you right now, to stop you from making one of the biggest mistakes of your life. JJ caught you just in time, and slapped the pill out of your hand. “Jesus Christ you really are pissed, come on” J said, grabbing your arm and pulling you up, away from the rest of the group and into the chateau. Laying you down on his bed and waiting for you to fall asleep before going back to the beach to meet back with the pogues at the kegger.

JJs POV:

“What she do over there then JJ” Kie questioned me because they didn’t hear the whole story before we rushed over. “Just y/n being y/n I guess” I chuckled. The rest of the pogues frowned at me, leaving me confused “what” I asked, looking around until one of them spoke up. All three pogues looked at eachother, before John B started speaking “we just- we don’t think she’s a good influence on you man, I mean look at this, look at earlier, she shouldn’t be your responsibility bro, you’re not her parent why should you have to be stressed all evening just waiting for her to do something that you need to rescue her from, why do you have to look after her because she’s so stupid that she can’t control herself, I mean, fuck! Bro she almost took a class A drug today, the only reason she didn’t is because you stopped her. What happens when you’re not there bro? Or what if she somehow convinced you to do it? To join her? I don’t want that for you, none of us do, ok J. She ain’t good for you, it’s about time you realise.” John B ranted. “Shut up, John B, you don’t know what your talking about” I argued back, biting my tongue, not being in the mood for John Bs interference. “I- I don’t know what I’m talking about? Huh J, l-” JB started before Interrupted “NO! Ok you don’t know what your talking about! You’re mackin’ a kook, who’s had everything handed to her her whole life, she’s got everything she’d ever want at her finger tips. She wants a holiday? She gets a holiday. She wants a burger? She gets a burger. She’s not had to deal with the same struggle I have, or y/n has ok, so don’t you dare, stand there and compare you, and your fucking life with your perfect girlfriend and her perfect money, to me, and my girlfriend, who have to take any happiness they can get, so if she wants to get drunk, she’ll get drunk. Of course there’s a limit, I’m not gonna allow her to take that mdma shit, alright, but who can blame her? With the shit that’s happened to her who blames her?” I finally let out, absolutely fuming at John B, how dare he say that shit about her. “SHES A BURDEN JJ, Y/Ns A BURDEN! SHE ACTS LIKE A CHILD! You don’t have to look after her, you deserve more then that” Kiara then burst out, getting involved aswell. I looked between the two of them outraged at how they were acting. “I KNOW OK! I know I look after her, but did you ever once think that maybe I enjoy it? That I like the idea of looking after her? Maybe that’s what I want to do, do you guys EVER consider other peoples emotions? Jesus Christ, fuck you guys” I turned around and stormed off towards the chateau, completely mad at them for what they said. How dare they.

Y/ns POV:

I woke up 5 minutes ago, and immediately started walking to where I knew the pogues would be. As my feet touched the beach I could hear them shouting, so I stopped and listened in, curious, and not wanting to interrupt their seemingly important conversation. “She’s a burden JJ” Who? You were drawn in, who on earth where they talking about like that? “Y/ns a burden” kiara continued.... oh shit. That was great, you guess. Your own friends consider you a burden to your boyfriend, how... joyous. “I know ok” you heard jj shout back. Oh fuck, even better, your own boyfriend agrees. You turned around and ran back to the chateau and into JJs room immediately, not wanting to hear the other harsh words they supposedly say when you’re not around. Taking off the necklace he gave you on the day he asked you out (which you haven’t taken off since) and started writing a note. When you were done, you left them both on his bed side table, side by side so he wouldn’t miss them, and sprinted back home.

How dare he, you thought. How dare he act as if he enjoyed going out with you, and wanted to be with you, when apparently, all this time he, and all his friends thought you were a burden, what even is this? Who says that about the ones they love? Yeah, you might not have had the best upbringing and yeah, you may be a bit (quite a lot) rough around the edges, but so’s JJ, and you don’t judge him or love him any less for that. You don’t see him as a burden. What is is about you? That just, makes people want to leave you behind, I mean should it even be surprising anymore? Your mom took off a while ago and your dad.... well, he stayed but let’s not get into that but, why did she leave you? Along with your brother, and nan and grandad, they all seemed to disappear, forgetting you ever existed. What was it about you. You got home and raced upstairs, trying your hardest not to wake your dad up, and went to bed, tears flowing down your face and thoughts running wild in your mind. Goddamn JJ, why couldn’t he just tell you he didn’t want to be with you anymore? Why’s it always your heart getting broken? But oh well, right? He’s probably happier now he doesn’t have to deal with you and your problems.

JJs POV:

I slammed the door to my room open and just, screamed. Why do they think they can say that to me? Who do they think they are?

I look over to my left, wanting to just crawl into bed with y/n and forget the whole thing, but there’s one problem...I can’t. She’s not there. FUCK. Where did she go? There’s no way she could’ve heard. I look down and see a very familiar necklace, and a note next to it. I pick up the necklace, running my fingers over it, eyebrows furrowing, why’d she take it off? She never takes it off? My heart starts to race as I imagine every possibility, has she been kidnapped? Taken away? Has DCS finally got her? What happened. I then decided to open the note, eyes focusing on her neat handwriting, almost mocking me in a way, the pretty, pristine handwriting and the beautiful words almost making me forget the main message, that were done.

𝒥𝒿,

𝐼 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝓎𝑜𝓊’𝓋𝑒 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝐼 𝒶𝓂 𝓃𝑜𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓁𝑒𝒻𝓉 𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓊𝓈𝑒, 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓈𝑒𝑒, 𝒶𝓅𝓅𝒶𝓇𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓁𝓎 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓇𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓅 𝒶𝓇𝑒𝓃’𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝐼 𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓌𝑒 𝓁𝑒𝒻𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂 𝑒𝒾𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇, 𝒾 𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝒥𝒿, 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝒹𝑒𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝑜𝓌 𝒾𝓇𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓅𝑜𝓃𝓈𝒾𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀 𝐼 𝒶𝓂, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊’𝓇𝑒 𝓇𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉, 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝑜𝓃’𝓉 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓅𝓊𝓉 𝓊𝓅 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒾𝓉, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝐼, 𝒾𝓃 𝒶 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝐼 𝑔𝓊𝑒𝓈𝓈, 𝒶𝓂 𝓂𝒶𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓉 𝑒𝒶𝓈𝒾𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒥, 𝓂𝓎 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒. 𝒜𝓁𝓁 𝐼 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉—𝒽𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝒢𝑜𝒹—𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝐼 𝒹𝑜𝓃’𝓉 𝓂𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝓌𝒽𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊’𝓁𝓁 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓅𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽. 𝐼 𝓂𝑒𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝓈 𝓁𝑜𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓈 𝓈𝒽𝑒’𝓈 𝒶 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹𝓁𝓎 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓃𝒾𝒸𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓀𝒾𝓃𝒹. 𝐼𝒻 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝑜𝑒𝓈𝓃’𝓉 𝐼’𝓁𝓁 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝓉 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒶 𝒽𝒶𝓂𝓂𝑒𝓇. 𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝑒𝓎𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝓎 𝒷𝑒 𝑜𝓃 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝑒𝓁𝓈𝑒, 𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝒻𝑒𝓈𝓉𝓎𝓁𝑒, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓂𝓎 𝑒𝓎𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒶𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎𝓈 𝒷𝑒 𝑜𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊, 𝒥. 𝐼’𝓁𝓁 𝒩𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓈𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓃𝑔𝑒 𝓋𝒾𝓇𝓉𝓊𝑒𝓈. 𝒩𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓃𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒸𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝒻 𝓇𝒶𝓊𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓈 𝓁𝒶𝓃𝑔𝓊𝒶𝑔𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝓊𝓉𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝒷𝑒𝒽𝒶𝓋𝒾𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒾𝓈 𝒶 𝓇𝑒𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓀𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓅𝓊𝓇𝒾𝓉𝒶𝓃𝒾𝒸𝒶𝓁 𝓂𝒶𝓃. 𝐼 𝒶𝓂 𝒶 𝒾𝓃𝒸𝓇𝑒𝒹𝒾𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝒹𝑒𝓃, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶 𝓁𝑜𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝓉𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝒽𝑜𝓁𝒹 𝑜𝒻, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒽𝓎 𝓎𝑜𝓊’𝓋𝑒 𝓈𝓉𝓊𝒸𝓀 𝒷𝓎 𝓂𝑒 𝓈𝑜 𝓁𝑜𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓃 𝒾𝓃𝒹𝒾𝒸𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓁𝑜𝓎𝒶𝓁𝓉𝓎. 𝐼 𝓈𝒽𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓂𝒾𝓈𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝒹 𝓇𝑒𝑔𝓇𝑒𝓉. 𝒜𝓁𝓁 𝓂𝓎 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒, 𝒶𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎𝓈, 𝓎/n

Tears where streaming down my face, she left me, all because she over heard kie and the pogues sprouting absolute bullshit about our relationship. She actually left, oh fuck, why does it hurt so much. I’ll go after her tomorrow, we can sort it out, we’ll talk it through tomorrow when she’s not drunk and the pogues will have no influence. I walked out to the hammock and layed down, looking out to the stars, hoping that she’d listen to my explanation and praying that hopefully, she’ll take me back. And that the pogues didn’t ruin everything for us. I’ll wait until I can have her in my arms again, whether she takes me back or not, I’ll wait for her, in life, and until death.

——————————————————————————

How was it? I feel like it was really bad but idk?

All feed backs welcome as long as it’s not rude or mean❤️

Part 2 idk is that needed? If you want one, ask! 💙

But uh yeah, that was that oops.

Also that letter wasn’t mine, it was the letter from Richard burton to Elizabeth Taylor, I just made some adaptions! X

But yeah, cya

Part 2^

#jj maybank x reader #jj maybank #jj #jj maybank angst #obx #jj maybank x kook!reader #jj maybank x oc #jj maybank x y/n #jj maybank x you #john b #rudy pankow imagine #obx2 #kiarra carrera #jj maybank x kiara carrera #sarah cameron #angst #rafe Cameron #topper thornton #pogues #pogues x reader #jj Maybank x sad reader #JJ Maybank #Jjmaybank #JJ Maybank x reader #Jj Maybank x reader #JJ maybank #Jj maybank #Outerbanks x reader #Outerbanks

[jenomark]

127 reaction to seeing u walk down the aisle/wedding vows pls 🥺

*  assuming this is not a traditional Korean, Chinese or Japanese wedding.

Taeil: His best man wouldn’t let him turn around yet. “Do you want to know how she looks?” he asked. Taeil shook his head no. He was nervous, and he couldn’t stop playing with his fingers, but he didn’t want to ruin the surprise. He had waited his whole life for this. So, Taeil kept his head down and focused on the music carrying you forward. His memories were all about you, about the first day he knew he wanted to marry you, and how you looked the night before last: happy, scared of the unknown, complete. When it was time for Taeil to turn around, he had to suck in a quick breath to keep from crying. “Wow.” he said. He felt like he blinked and suddenly his whole life was right in front of him. Taeil was speechless as he removed your veil and looked at your smiling face, the same face he would spend the rest of his life with. 

Johnny: “I normally have so much to say, don’t I?” Johnny asked. You nodded frantically, drawing a laugh from the crowd of your family and friends. In his suit and tie, Johnny looked handsome. You couldn’t wait to call him your husband. You watched him flipping through a small stack of cards in his shaking hands, watched as one of the cards did a little back flip before it hit the ground. He took a deep breath and looked you in the eyes, but still, none of the words came out. He dropped his arms by his side.  “I love you,” he said. “I had so much written down, but it’s all a mess. I can’t read my own handwriting. I can’t keep my hands still. I love you so much. Every day I think I can’t love you more, and then you do something that makes me feel like it’s the first time I’m seeing you. You’re my best friend. I wouldn’t know what I’d do without you. I’m sure that if you wrote your vows on a card, you would have made everything perfect. Every day, I hope to be- not perfect, but I hope I try. For you. For us.” 

Taeyong: Before you walked down the aisle, Taeyong looked at all of his friends and family. Everyone was there to celebrate your love, and it made him the happiest man on earth. When the music started, Taeyong straightened his tie and inhaled. He didn’t exhale until he saw you at the start of the aisle, your dress beautiful, and your skin glowing. “My love,” he said softly. “At last.” Taeyong watched you walk towards him. As much as he tried to hold back the tears, they ran down his cheek unbridled. He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief until you were in front of him, and he could do the same for you. “I can’t believe we’re getting married,” he whispered. “Do you still want to marry me?” You laughed and held his hands. “Taeyong,” you said. “I will always want to marry you. “ 

Yuta: He was emotional before he started. Yuta let himself cry freely. Occasionally, he would look into your eyes to make sure you were okay, and he would squeeze your hand. “I prefer to talk about my feelings openly,” Yuta said. “You and I are good at communicating. You and I are good at a lot of things. I am good on my own, too. My favorite thing I’m good at is being someone who can love and support you. I know my new favorite thing would be being your husband. You already know I love you. I tell you I love you every day, and if you let me, I will tell you every hour for the rest of our lives. Thank you to our friends and family for joining us on this day when we share our love. I’ve never been happier. “ 

Doyoung: Seeing you walking towards him made a nervous laugh escape from Doyoung’s lips. He smiled from ear-to-ear, his eyes unblinking and wide. You returned his excitement, your laughter filling the area around you. He gripped onto the arm of his best man and looked at you with tears forming in his eyes. He didn’t like crying, but he couldn’t stop them as they fell down his cheek and onto the front of his tie. As soon as you reached him, Doyoung whispered to you how beautiful you looked. You made eye contact until Doyoung could no longer hold it. He looked down and smiled at the floor, his face switching between seriousness and awe. All throughout the ceremony, Doyoung stole looks at you, the outside world slipping away and making it feel like only the two of you were in the room. 

Jaehyun:  “I’ve wanted to get married all my life,” Jaehyun began. “I used to dream of it when I was a little boy. When I imagined my wife, I never had a clear view of her face, and I believe it’s because she was always you. I believe I was waiting for you all my life.” Jaehyun held your hand and smiled. As he continued, his voice became a little choked up, “ I want to make you happy. I want to grow old with you, be the father of your children, and cook you breakfast when you’re tired. Not in that order, of course.” You laughed and searched his face. He continued, “ I tell you a lot that you made me the man I am today, and I mean it. I am kinder, wiser, and funnier. I am patient and honest, and I’ve never realized how often I don’t hang up my towel after I’m done using it.” The crowd laughed. You did, too. “But seriously,” Jaehyun said. “I’m me because of you. I love you, baby.” 

WinWin: As soon as he saw you, WinWin used his hand to block his face from crying. He crouched down and put his head in his hands. His emotional reaction caused the crowd of your family and friends to call out various ‘oooh’s’ and ‘aww’s’. When you reached him at the altar, WinWin stood up. He was hysterically crying, and his face was red and splotchy. You used your hand to dry his tears. You kissed him before you were supposed to, but you didn’t care. “Are you okay?” you asked. “Let’s get married, Sicheng.” WinWin nodded and smiled, drawing in a long breath as a motion to continue. You moved a little closer to him and looked into his eyes. “I love you.” he said. Lets be husband and wife.”

Jungwoo: He kept the mic too close to his lips. Between the static, your family and friends could hear the strain in his voice well, and could hear how hard it was for him to form a complete sentence. You took the mic and moved it back from his mouth so that he could continue. “Thank you,” Jungwoo said. “I don’t know what I  would do without you. You’re my everything. I wake up happy every day knowing that you’ll be there when I open my eyes. I’m a lucky man.” Jungwoo cleared his throat. He wanted to memorize his vows, but he knew he would never be able to look you in the eyes and say how he felt. It was easier to read from the crumpled paper in his suit pocket than to blubber all over you, snot running down his nose, and his cheeks red. Still, you could see him losing a bit of himself as he read the paper. Jungwoo continued, “ Don’t leave me, okay? Life would never be the same. I love you. There isn’t an existence where I will stop loving you.” 

Mark: He told himself he wouldn’t cry. Usually, when Mark felt emotional, he would look up to the sky so that his tears wouldn’t fall. If he did that now, he wouldn’t be able to watch you walking towards him, and he wouldn’t miss that for the world. So, Mark lets his tears fall down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away, didn’t care that anyone was watching him. “Hi.” he said, as soon as you could hear him. “Hi.” you said back, holding out your hand so that he could take it. Your smile was big, your heart growing bigger. Mark leaned in to kiss you until he realized that he couldn’t just yet. He laughed off the blunder and took a step back, his hands still in yours. You looked at the tears glistening on his cheek. They matched your own tears. “I love you.” you mouthed. Mark smiled, squeezing out the last of his tears. 

Haechan: “If you’re expecting me to be funny,” Haechan began. “You would guess wrong. I had a lot of jokes in my vows. I planned on embarrassing you in front of your family, but I think I’ll embarrass myself instead. Every day with you feels like heaven. With you, I’m a changed man. I cry when I think about leaving you. I miss you terribly when you’re gone. I talk to all my friends about you, even though it annoys them. Sometimes, when I wish things on my birthday, it’s a wish for you and our forever. I bet you weren’t expecting me to say any of this. I am a funny man, and you’ll see that up until we’re old and ugly. Until then, all I am is your man, and you’ve make me the luckiest man. I love you.” 

#Anonymous #nct #nct 127 #nct reactions #nct 127 reactions #taeil #johnny #taeyong #yuta #doyoung #jaehyun #winwin #jungwoo #mark #haechan #I loved writing this #sorry it took so long #and sorry not all of them are both aisle and vow #had to break it up to save my sanity

[masquerade-story]

Chapter 4 - Memories

Lillian awoke late into the evening, after everyone collectively agreed to take a nap and process everything Crystal told them. Her throat was dry and scratchy, so she carefully rolled out of bed to avoid disturbing Grey, who'd crawled into her bed for comfort like he always did when he was upset, and padded quietly out of the bedroom.

Since there wasn't going to be any sort of heating bill, they'd left the mysteriously working heater on to combat the unexpectedly cold weather. Lillian stopped by a window to peek outside, and was momentarily startled when she could pick out individual leaves on distant trees.

"Right, our vision got all fancy." Lillian laughed softly at herself, turning her gaze from the trees to the starry sky.

An unfamiliar sky.

Three moons scattered across the horizon, a couple of planets close enough for their rings to be distinct to the naked eye, and a brilliant aurora ribbon streaming across more stars than Lillian ever remembered seeing when she looked up back on Earth.

"There's no North Star," she whispered to herself, her warm breath briefly melting some frost on the window glass. "Different constellations, different horoscopes... I wonder how long a year is here? Or a season? Can we... Even communicate with people to find out?"

An oppressive sense of loneliness settled in her chest. Lillian blinked back a few tears and turned away from the window, resuming her earlier mission of a glass of juice. She slipped downstairs into the kitchen, drank an entire glass, and went to bring her second cup upstairs in case she woke up again, when a soft sound caused her to pause mid-step toward the stairs.

Sobbing. Wretched, mournful sobbing, from the living room which currently had no light on.

Lillian felt her heart clench in sympathy, and changed route.

Rayne sat on the couch, curled into the corner with a blanket around her shoulders and a phone in her hands. She glanced up when Lillian approached, hurriedly dashing her tears with the corner of the blanket. "H-hey, what's up?"

Lillian had the sense to put her juice cup down on an end table before sitting heavily on the couch, encroaching on Rayne's personal space with reckless abandon. "I was gonna ask you the same thing. Why are you down here alone in the dark?"

"Oh, I..." Rayne muttered, her gaze flicking back to the phone. Lillian glanced down, and saw a photo of Rayne and her boyfriend trying on mouse hats during their trip to Disneyworld. His expression was exasperated, but his affectionate gaze was fixed on Rayne's laughing face.

Rayne locked her screen and set the phone down, but it was too late and she knew it. She retreated further into the warmth of her blanket, faking a shiver to cover the fact she was trying to hide her face.

Neither Rayne nor Crystal appreciated it when other people saw them cry, but Lillian knew that it was sometimes exactly what someone needed, whether they wanted it or not. So she leaned on Rayne's shoulder, resting a gentle hand on the other woman's knee.

"You know," Lillian said softly, closing her eyes. "There's three moons."

Rayne was quiet for a moment. Then she sniffled, before whispering: "Really?"

"Yeah. And some ringed planets, and an aurora. Wanna see?"

The bundle of blanket shook in a hesitant nod, and both Lillian and Rayne moved to sit on the window seat overlooking the front yard, keeping throw pillows between them and the frozen glass to seal in their bodily warmth.

Silence stretched on between them as they stared together at the foreign night sky. Whenever Rayne gave a soft cry or pained whimper, Lillian reached over to squeeze her hand without turning to look at her, giving the other woman a measure of privacy while still providing comfort until she was ready to talk.

"It's unfair," Rayne whispered finally, reaching out of the blanket to draw a frowning face on the frosty glass.

Lillian nodded. "It ate our bonds so they all forgot us, but we still have to remember them? It's totally unfair."

"Actually..." Rayne looked over, locking gazes with Lillian, her dark brow furrowed. "That's the thing. Lils, do you remember your parents?"

"Of course. Robin and Larry-"

"Their faces, Lils."

Lillian opened her mouth, then immediately shut it. Her curious expression turned to one of realization, then panic suffused with horror. "No, I... What...?"

"I don't remember his face if I'm not looking at the photo," Rayne said, crossing her arms tightly under the blanket. "I don't remember his voice anymore. I did at first, but... Every passing moment, it's harder to remember the times we shared. The bad, the good. Even while looking at the photos! And I just... I felt like I should have a good cry, while I still felt enough lingering emotion for him to do it."

Lillian felt as though her heart was caught in her throat. She swallowed, swallowed again, then wheezed as she tried to remember how to breathe. Rayne hurriedly wrapped her arms around Lillian's shoulder, squeezing tight in a hug that contained all her comfort and sympathy.

"We'll do everything we can to remember, them, okay?" Rayne whispered, her voice shaking with emotion. "Let's go wake Grey and Crystal, then we can all start writing stuff down. Alright?"

Nodding, Lillian clung desperately to Rayne's hand as they both hurried upstairs, rolling their respective siblings out of bed for an emergency meeting. Grey's horror was contrasted starkly by Crystal's numb nodding, as she apologized for not realizing it would happen. They dug into the boxes of personal belongings, finding some notebooks and pens, and sat together in the master bedrooms writing down everything they remembered about Earth and their loved ones until well into the next morning.

"On the one hand it's a mercy," Grey said sleepily, as he doodled another picture of his parents in the margins of his notebook. "So we won't be grieving our loss very long, I guess? But it still feels..."

"Wrong," Lillian mumbled, looking through her phone for a picture of her cat to use as a reference.

"It's not like the time was wasted," Rayne said, adding another bullet point to the list she was writing. "Our experiences shaped who we are whether we remember them or not. It does feel pretty crappy, though..."

"I wonder, will they forget us like this?" Lillian asked, unable to stop the words in her heart from escaping. Her hand paused above the page, the pen in her hand shaking violently. "Will they just... Slowly forget us? Or was it sudden and merciful? Because this... This is cruel."

"Cruelty implies intention," Crystal said softly, her voice shaking almost as much as Lillian's pen. "That... Thing. The Eater. It didn't have any malice, it was just hungry. But I dunno if that makes things better or worse..."

"I dunno man, you ever seen a cat catching prey? Pretty sure eating something alive has some inherent malice in it." Grey grumbled, trying to force his chicken scratch handwriting into something legible.

Crystal, who'd already given up on her own handwriting and embraced the chaotic glyphic nature of her lettering, nodded sagely in agreement. "That's true. I got the impression the Eater wasn't exactly sentient or sapient though. More like a force than a being, if that makes sense? Or maybe I just can't conceive of it, since that thing exists outside our dimensions of understanding."

"You say that so easily, do you even know how wild that whole statement was?"

"Do you even know how wild this whole situation is?"

"Look, we've passed absurdity at this point. Now I'm just down with whatever weirdness comes our way."

"We don't have to pay bills anymore," Rayne said slowly, staring at her paper. Her handwriting was the neatest by far, and she'd finished writing down most important events she could think of, but she kept having a nagging feeling she'd left something out so she kept reading the pages over and over hoping to trigger another memory. "We won't have to buy groceries unless there's things we want specifically that wasn't in our house to begin with. The electricity will never go out, damage to the property will be repaired, and even though we're in a new world with unknown levels of development and technology, we will never have to worry about toilet paper. In exchange for a very comfortable standard of living, we lost our connection to our home and families."

"Personally speaking I think it's fair," Crystal said with a scoff. "But that's because our family sucks so I'll be glad to forget them. All my most important people are here with me! I know Robin and Larry will take good care of all our cats, my exes all sucked, and my other friends will get along just fine without me. I don't have anyone to worry about, just regrets for stuff I never got to do. Like visiting the Grand Canyon, or going on a long cruise."

"I wanted to hike around Europe someday..." Rayne said wistfully.

"I wanted to vacation in the tropics. Or maybe Spain? For like, two years. With some hot guys and infinite fruity alcohols." Grey said, staring off into space with a dreamy look in his eyes.

"I wanted to be famous enough for us to visit the space station," Lillian sighed. Grey snorted, and everyone started laughing in a combination of absurdity and delirium from lack of sleep. They started listing everything they could think of, starting with shopping sprees and game show appearances, and ending with complex bank and casino heists to dismantle capitalism.

When Crystal started dozing off while sitting up, they all agreed to get some sleep for real. The notebooks were stacked lovingly on one of the end tables, which reminded Lillian to run downstairs and chug her long-forgotten cup of juice in the living room before trudging back upstairs into bed.

------

"We can't just stay in the house forever, right?" Grey muttered as he stared out the living room window later that night, curled up on the window seat with his knees hugged to his chest.

"Technically we could," Rayne said, drumming her fingers against the recliner arm as she waited for her laptop to boot. "Infinite food and basic supplies, stuff for our hobbies... We have our instruments, we have our computers and game consoles and several external drives worth of movies and books and music since you and Crystal obsessively insist on collecting or hoarding anything of interest for later use."

"Hey, hey." Grey wagged a finger and feigned an offended scowl. "Look at our situation. How bored would we be if the two of us didn't hoard everything? In fact, maybe our desire to hoard entertainment was preparing for this day!"

"Damn psychics always preparing for everything they couldn't possibly know about," Rayne muttered rebelliously, and Crystal laughed. She'd stretched out on half of the corner couch taking up an entire section of the living room by itself, looking cozy with a pile of blankets and her special edition Switch.

"It's only gonna get worse from here, Ray."

"Open your town, I need to sell my oranges," Lillian interrupted, nudging Crystal's feet from her spot on the other side of the corner couch.

"Alright, lemme finish making this waterfall first."

"Your villagers are never gonna have scurvy again for like, three generations."

"That many oranges? Isn't that a bit overkill?"

"If they don't want an entire island nation's agricultural sector's worth of citrus they should learn to adjust their economy for inflation."

"You know the shop is run by literal children, right?"

"It's good to learn early that nepotism leads to ruin. The business world is harsh and so am I."

Rayne chuckled at the sound of Lillian's low, malicious cackling, but her expression swiftly turned serious. "What do you mean it's gonna get worse, Coco?"

"All four of us have abilities for real, right? Being in this world is gonna make them grow exponentially, whether we try to train them or not. New ones will pop up too, or existing ones will change a little as they grow. Okay Lils, gate's open." Crystal spoke nonchalantly, but every word drained a bit more color from Rayne's face. Meanwhile, Grey turned away from the window with an excited glint in his eyes.

"So psychic powers can get real strong in this world?"

"Yeah. The impression I got when we were coming over was... Magic exists here, and it's something anyone can learn to use with practice. But abilities like ours, psychic powers? Those you have to be born with, and it's rare. That's about as much as I know about it though," Crystal sighed and shrugged.

"Can you list everything you know about our situation?" Rayne said, opening a new document on her computer and typing away with her nose inches from the laptop screen. "I wanna write it all down. I got the thing about our bonds and memories, and the house being indestructible-"

"It's not indestructible, just protected." Crystal seemed startled as soon as the words left her mouth, as though the information was somehow new. She furrowed her brow, nose wrinkling as she carefully examined her thought process. "I see, protected... Like a barrier, almost? It'll always rebuild itself and restock supplies overnight no matter what happens, even if it's all burnt to ash, but the property itself is also shielded unless we draw attention from a big threat."

"A big threat? Like what?"

"I don't know. Big animals like those Nessies on the beach yesterday. Or monsters like the Eater, maybe?"

"Monsters?!" Lillian sat up straight, pulling her feet under her body. "There's monsters!?"

"There's magic, why wouldn't there be monsters too?" Grey pointed out, but his twin just stuck her tongue out at him.

"It's just an assumption," Crystal hurriedly explained. "For my power to work, I'd have to come into contact with stuff related to what I want to know about in order to get more information, I can't just pull stuff out of the ether whenever I have questions!"

"Then how do you know what you know already?"

"Well, we were in contact with the house. The house is made with really powerful magic, so I learned magic exists, and that it was used to make the house echo and ensure our supplies remain the same. I think I also learned about the barrier then, but didn't think about it or really absorb the info cuz I was thinking about other things, so it only just popped up." Crystal shrugged and let out a half-hearted laugh.

"What about the Eater?"

"The Eater was menacing us directly and I looked at it so I was able to get some info on it and the bond-eating shenanigan, but not much else because it's way stronger than me, I think? And my power activated as soon as we started our... Transfer, I guess? Away from Earth. And you all were in the room with me, so I knew you all had powers as well as myself, got the basic gist of how mine work, and that we'd all get much stronger whether we wanted to or not. That's really about it for what I know. I told you it wasn't much."

"Why the house though?" Rayne muttered. "It just wanted to eat our bonds and it did that. So why did it drop us on another planet, and why give us this cushy house echo thing?"

Crystal shrugged again. "I honestly have no idea. I think I could know if I got a lot stronger, but... That won't be any time soon. I can tell there's a reason, though. I just dunno what."

"Maybe it's compensation?" Grey said, his expression hopeful.

"Or bait, like a beacon, so it can find us again..." Lillian whispered with a shiver, and everyone's faces fell. Seeing their reactions, she hurriedly straightened her spine and forced a smile to her face. "But it didn't hurt us, and we're all still together. Imagine if we'd been flung to different planets instead of staying together!"

"That'd really suck," Grey agreed. "So like, Crystal, your power activates if you come into contact with stuff?"

"I think so. I'd have to test it to get the hang of how things work, precisely."

Grey chuckled, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. His expression made the three women exchange worried glances, especially once he started rubbing his hands together like a two-bit cartoon villain. "Looks like we got ourselves an excuse to head to that town for some reconnaissance!"

"In the snow?" Rayne asked, raising her eyebrows.

"With only summer clothes in our wardrobes," Crystal pointed out.

"We wore hiking boots for the walk up here so that'd be fine, but the warmest clothes we have right now are..." Lillian trailed off, then suddenly doubled over and started giggling.

Realization dawned on the others soon after, and Rayne covered her face with her hands. "Oh no."

"Oh yes!" Grey hissed, pumping his fist into the air. "That'll make one heck of an entrance, wouldn't it?"

"Our music video costumes? In PUBLIC!?" Rayne wailed while the others laughed.

"That might not be what we want to do though," Crystal said after her moment of laughter had subsided. "We don't know what kind of world this is. If they'll be friendly to strangers, especially ones who can't speak their language - or any language on this world. They won't know English, you know."

"But do we really have a choice?" Lillian asked, putting down her console and staring up at the ceiling. "We don't know anything about this world. About magic, except that it exists. About the people. And hiding here in our safe cozy house will be fine short term, but what about long term? Are we gonna spend our whole lives holed up in here?"

"I, for one, embrace the forest witch hermit lifestyle," Grey said. "And I know Crystal does too."

"Sure do. Cottage life."

Rayne sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I don't wanna be caught completely off guard by whatever nonsense comes our way. We know it's winter, but we don't know what the other seasons are like yet. What if they have a raining magma and diamonds from the sky season? We can't apply Earth logic here! Or if we can, we don't know to what extent! There were dinosaurs on the beach!"

"That's a fair point. There were indeed dinosaurs on the beach. Counter points?"

"There were dinosaurs on the beach."

"A fair counter point as well. I do want to see the dinosaurs up close."

"From a safe distance."

"Up close from a safe distance, of course."

"Plus, we don't know what's gonna happen with our powers. You said they'll get stronger, what does that mean?"

"I don't know. More powers will manifest, I think? And the ones we have already will be more potent. But I don't know how potent, or what exactly will happen."

"Exactly! You psychically downloaded only a little info about our situation and it gave you a nasty seizure! Right?"

"Pretty much."

"So what if something worse happens? A big huge infodump? If you can't control your powers, or shut it off when needed or whatever, what if..." Rayne's shoulders sagged.

"What if I have a big seizure every time I use my powers now?" Crystal finished, a wry smile on her face. "Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Honestly, everything about our situation has me so terrified I've circled back around to just feeling numb about it all."

"That's a hell of a mood," Grey sighed, stretching out on the window seat and propping his feet up against the wall. "Everything's happening so much, am I right? It's hard to be freaked out about everything simultaneously. It's easier to just phase out of existence, mentally speaking."

"I... Have an idea."

Everyone turned to look at Lillian, who sat perched on the edge of the couch. She glanced at all their faces, then offered a shy smile.

"Well? What's your idea, sis?" Grey encouraged, when his sister kept fidgeting in place instead of finishing her thought.

"Well, those warmer clothes we have... They're our costumes, right? And Crystal said we dunno how people would react to that sort of outfit, or to strangers in general, but what if... I mean... We have our instruments? What if... We pretended to be minstrels?"

#writing #chapter #original #original story #masquerade #fantasy #isekai

[anystalker707]

Cardboard Boxes

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader Genre: Angst/Comfort Word count: 1 814 Summary: Gerard and (y/n) are organizing their things when they find not just their things, but also memories

"I told you! I knew that we had more CDs than the ones in the shelves!" I grin pulling some CDs from a cardboard box and inspecting them. "KISS, Led Zeppelin, my Rolling Stones one..." I mutter, setting them back inside the box after checking at least half of them. "We gotta place them back with the others."

"How did they get in here?" Gerard asks and I shrug, placing the box away and grabbing a black folder that lays aside. I swear I've gone through five folders already and none of them have useful contents, all they've got inside are useless papers that I don't even remember why did we keep it.

This one, however, is different. My face lightens up as soon as I see what's inside. "Hey, look at that!" I say getting the papers in hands and foiling it. He shoots me a questioning look before walking over and sitting next to me on the floor. From the papers, I get a picture we took when we had just started the band; there stands Mikey with his bass; Ray, Frank and I with our guitars, Gerard with a mic in hands and Matt with his drumsticks.

When Gerard's eyes land over the picture, they widen and his lips curl open into a grin; he takes it from me. "I didn't even remember we had this!" He brings it closer to his face, analyzing it. "Plain 2002."

"Right?" I ask with a chuckle, moving my attention back to the papers. "A shame we didn't write the date in everything." I comment getting another photo in hands. "Nowadays, we take a step and write down the date and time." He laughs at my comment, handing me back the pic and I give him the one I got. "Look, this one is from when we presented in New York for the first time."

"Why are those here?" He asks, looking at the paper.

"No clue." I say and grab a what seems like to be a page ripped from a notebook or something. It's blank- wait, no, it's just the wrong side. Turning it around, it's seen one of Gerard's drawings. "January 6 2003." I read the date out loud, getting Gerard's attention.

"What? What's this?" He leans a bit towards me, placing his chin over my shoulder.

"Drawing of me." I turn it a bit towards his direction.

"Cringy." He comments, wrinkling his nose lightly.

"It isn't!" I raise my eyebrows at him. "It's precious! Gonna post in Instagram later." I return it to the folder and continue looking through its contents.

"Will you really?" He asks and, without looking up at him, I nod. He whines quietly, leaning his head against mine for a moment before moving away. "Look," He says, holding up a book. "this book Ray gave you in 2015."

"I was thinking about it some days ago!" I exclaim, immediately getting the object in hands and grinning as I foil it. In one of the first pages, there's a dedication Ray wrote. Really cute. Gerard chuckles quietly at my desperate manner, but I just shake my head lightly. "Do you think he remembers about this?" I ask, placing the book over the CDs box.

"Maybe." He tilts his head. "Take a photo of that later and ask him." In response, I raise my eyebrows lightly, nodding.

"Look here," I say handing him another picture. "I couldn't stop laughing while took that one." A chuckle leaves my lips at the memory. "2004 were wild times." I comment and he nods when seeing the picture, chuckling too. There's Frank with his face white because of purposely passing too much powder on his face as a way to mock Gerard in the Bullets tour. He sits with his legs crossed and his hands above his knee, shooting the camera a smug look.

"I can't even find it weird," Gerard comments, "that's basically Frank being himself."

"Yeah!" I agree and get another photo, smiling, "I also took this one that's Mikey trying to look like Doyle Wolfgang. And," My smile grins when I get a photo of Gerard, "you." In the image, he grins as having his hair all over his face. "We could barely see you under all that hair, but you never changed until The Black Parade."

His eyebrows furrow lightly and he pouts as looking at the picture then at me. "It was nice." Raising an eyebrow, I narrow my eyes at him. "At least I liked it." He justifies and I shrug, tilting my head. "Sometimes I kind of miss the white hair, but I then I remember why I hated it."

"Y'know, I can't choose a hairstyle I like the most," I smile, putting on a defeated look, "all of them are awesome and you're always cute." His cheeks redden lightly at my comment and I wink. He rolls his eyes in response. There's a moment of silence as I look through the folder's papers again and Gerard does something himself.

"Do you remember we always watched this?" Gerard hands me a VHS tape box. The Man Who Fell to Earth, it says. "Like, we watched it so frequently that it doesn't even play anymore. We didn't have anything to do? Okay, let's watch the movie again."

"True!" I comment, turning the object on my hands. "We should watch it again. Do you think we can find a DVD or maybe in the internet?" I raise an eyebrow, setting it next to the book Ray gave me.

"Maybe, but I bet it'll be difficult. Or not, nowadays you can find anything." He shoots me a wondering look.

"Not everything; I couldn't find The Anvil by Visage anymore, plus that movie is older than us." I say and he mutters an agreement.

"1998!" Gerard exclaims in a tone that makes me immediately look at him, confused.

"What?" I ask through a laugh.

"This!" He shows me a photo of us together. "When we were in arts college yet." He holds it in front of me and I narrow my eyes, analyzing it.

"Cute!" I smile, noticing we were clearly awkward when it was taken. "Why do we have so much important stuff kept here like this?" I ask as carefully grabbing the photo and placing it between the things I'm not placing back inside the cardboard boxes neither throwing away.

"You get it that we don't touch those boxes since 2013, right?" He asks quietly and I silently agree, getting what he means and not wanting to go further in the subject.

"Smol us in a Metallica concert." I say handing him a picture of Gerard and I in a concert I practically dragged him to. "Here, Frank and I." I give him yet another, where Frank and I stand next to each other and he still had those dreads. "Ray and you." The photo shows Gerard and Ray behind the glass of a studio, both with thumbs up; probably from summer of 2003.

"Do we have this many frames?" Gerard says through a hopeless laugh.

"Damn, I don't know!" Desperation present in my voice as I breathe a laugh too. "No way I'm keeping such important pictures hidden!" I put everything back inside the folder before setting it next to the CDs box. Standing up, I carefully step between all the books and objects thrown on the floor and the open cardboard boxes. One of the boxes has just books and folders inside it, I bend down to take it away from there.

"Look at what I found!" Gerard exclaims and I immediately approach, kneeling behind him and placing my hands on his shoulders. I ask what's it and he simply smiles as showing me a paper with some sloppy handwriting all over it and some small heart drawings here and there.

Furrowing my eyebrows, I take the paper in hands and bring it closer to read what's written, sitting back on my legs in the process. My eyes slowly widen as I understand what's it. "It still exists..." I groan playfully, hiding my face on Gerard's shoulder; I can feel it moving as he quietly laughs. "So cringy..." I sigh, smiling, as reading the paper again. It's a letter, one of the really cheesy ones I wrote Gerard when we were dating. It's not like we lived far from each other or couldn't speak frequently, we were just two idiots in love. Shit, we still are.

"I loved those. Love those." He comments and I smile even more, placing a kiss to the side of his neck and looking over his shoulder, seeing he has a folder in hands now. It's one from when I worked in a instruments store and used to keep the store registers in there plus that's also why it's full of instruments brands stickers. I kept it because of the rare stickers and emotional attachment.

"And yours? Are they there too?" I say in a slightly teasing voice, reaching for the folder. Gerard, however, is faster and moves it away.

"Nuh huh." He looks back at me, twisting his mouth lightly. "If yours are cringy, mine are ten times worse!" His tone is playfully.

"Who cares, Gerard?" I laugh, setting the paper I have in hands aside and reaching for the folder. His crossed legs position is of course a disadvantage to him and I'm able to successfully get the folder in hands, sitting down next to him when doing so. I notice it's kinda heavy when placing it over my lap. Gerard's gaze doesn't leave me the whole time as I grab the letters in hands. I hold up a specific one. "You say it's cringy," I shoot him a bored look, "but those are fucking awesome. Cheesy and cliche as fuck? Sometimes, obviously; but it's so deep and inspiring that they make me want to write too!" His face reddens as his lips curl up into a sheepish smile.

"I tried to write something to match your amazingness." He says flirty, winking.

Not answering at first, I stare at him and finally crack a grin, "Oh my God, now you were cringy!" I exclaim, laughing, "I don't think that exists!"

"I know!" He starts to laugh too and buries his face on his hands.

"God, so cute!" I say placing the folder on the floor and moving closer to him - Gerard's red face comes into view as I pull his hands away. He looks at me with a small smile and I internally melt at the sight. We just look at each other smiling in silence until he leans his forehead against mine and the both of us close our eyes, sharing a silent 'I love you'.

#x reader #gerard way #gerard way imagine #gerard way x reader #gerard x reader #mcr imagine #mcr #my chemical romance #imagine #angst #comfort #my post

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

I have a silly Napoleon ask for you: if he suddenly woke up in the present day what do you think he would a)like most about it b) like least about it c)get unreasonably addicted to d)decide to do for a living

hahah I’ve answered a similar one before here and here. 

Most Like About It: A lot, I think. Central heating. Guys, he’d fucking love central heating.

In general, he’d love most technological advances. Cars, planes, trains etc. like he’d be very into that. “Bertrand we’re going to ride the TGV all day every day. Look at how fast we are going! This is genius.” 

“Bertrand WE ARE IN THE SKY. This is AMAZING. We are going from Paris to Rome in a matter of HOURS. HOURS BERTRAND. WE DON’T HAVE TO CROSS MOUNTAINS.” (sorry just assuming this is exile Napoleon who woke up in modern day.) 

Public transit in general - the metro, buses - anything that makes life more efficient for people. Dishwasher, washers/dryers, modern electricity, laptops, printers, ball point pens etc. 

I suspect he’d be a big supporter of public health care and all the advances made on vaccines and medicine in general. 100% would hate anti-vaxxers. Pro-modern glasses (he’d get himself a pair asap. Then they’d explain contacts to him and I think he’d be like “WAIT NO, I WANT THOSE.” He would not be into lasik, I suspect). 

Modern hygiene! Razors, tooth brushes, floss, moisturizer - general daily body care he’d probably be keen on. (All that stuff we take for granted.) Though maybe not all of it, he was quite traditional in certain things (his penchant for older fashion, par exemple). Maybe he’d keep the old straight razor shaving approach. But modern dentistry would be a huge improvement and I can’t see him being against it. Especially as someone who had a tooth extracted in the early 19th century. 

‘Oh they give you pain killers now? Fantastic.’ 

‘Sir, we just numb the area where we are doing the work.’ 

‘So it doesn’t impede my awareness? Amazing. Please, fix all my teeth right now.’ 

He’d also support the greater access to education that exists, especially compared to his day. Also, streaming services. He would binge so many things. ‘Bertrand we are watching every thing this very soothing sounding British naturalist made about planet earth. Holy shit look at that they’re under water! They’re at the bottom of the ocean! Bertrand look at this. if only Josephine were here. She’d be so excited.’ 

Pro-zoom/Microsoft teams/facetime etc. 100%. ‘If I had this instead of people relying on my bad handwriting ...’ 

Oh, he’d like the EU as a concept. Except he would be very disappointed that France wasn’t at the helm. I think France’s position globally would disappoint him, overall. But yeah, the broad principles espoused by the concept of the European Union would appeal to him. 

Brexit though. Lol. I think he’d enjoy watching England shoot itself in the foot. But if you asked him for his opinion, as in “do you think the UK should do this” he would answer no. They should remain. 

He would like globalization, trade agreements, things like NAFTA, CETA etc. Supporter of big government. Reduction of religion in public sphere. Though would he be pro-banning visual manifestations of faith? (i.e. Hijab etc.) I don’t know. I doubt it. Simply because he was very focused on religion in government, so if churches aren’t involved in decision making, what citizens get up to on their own is their business (so long as you don’t cause problems). But I don’t know, he might be pro-it, because he was also into assimilation and creating a broad sense of a French culture. I could see him really going either way on it. It’d probably come down to whatever he thought would garner the most public support as a political move (since a lot of his more liberal moves as a leader were tied to understanding that marginalized communities would gun hard for him if he helped them). 

He would be pro-mask wearing for COVID because he wasn’t a fucking idiot and lived in a time when pandemics were still a real going concern. 

He would also probably like how comfortable modern clothing is. I don’t think he’d like how cheap and made-to-wear-out that most brands are, but he’d like the over all philosophy. Like Napoleon would dig t-shirts. Lounge wear. The fact that jeans have some stretch in them. That sort of thing. 

-- 

Least Like: I think he’d be very wary of the internet. For many reasons. For the lack of government control (Napoleon “What is a free press? never heard of her” Bonaparte). But also, because of the misinformation problems. The side effects many of us are now bearing witness to, and experiencing the ramifications of. 

He would dislike the whole fake news nonsense. Oh this man was a master spin-doctor, very good at twisting a narrative around to suit him, but he still did have respect for and a firm belief in basic facts. Especially fake news that usurped the sound advise of scientists and doctors (i.e. COVID nonsense). 

Free press, I think he would be wary of it. Mostly from a government control perspective. Like as a day-to-day citizen, since he wouldn’t be anyone in power in this hypothetical, I think he’d value it. He would do that disassocative thing he did when he talked about things in the abstract. That cold, calculating way he would position himself in a situation and be like “Ah yes, these are the things that need to be tamped down if you want control of a populace as a monarch”. Then he had his more liberal, call-back-to-that-misspent-jacobin-youth moments where his views shifted. 

I suppose it would also depend what age this hypothetical Napoleon is. He softened a lot in retirement exile. Napoleon at the height of his power, thirty-odd years old, different man to fifty year old Napoleon. 

Would not be into women in politics. He’d be like ‘Why is there a woman in charge of Germany? Also what happened to the Habsburgs? Where’s Prussia? Silesia? What the FuCk is happening in the Balkans? I’m very confused about Europe’s current geographic layout. ...Corsica...still doing you, I see.’ 

He’d dislike Trump and his cronies. As I wrote before: “ I think Napoleon would find Trump disgusting on a personal level. Uneducated, incapable of holding a real conversation, gauche, anti-intellectual, anti-fact-based discussion, anti-science, anti-art etc. He’d also feel that Trump is disgracing the position of President and that he is unworthy of leadership. Napoleon would also find Trump physically repulsive as he could be a wee bit shallow in some of his assessments (though, very early modern to 19th century to assume your physical appearance is a manifestation of your interiority).” 

Steve Bannon’s fiddling with finances? Napoleon would find that repulsive. Mitch Mcconnell disgracing his office by fucking around with constitutional loop holes? Napoleon would think it a disgrace. 

He had a lot of respect for America’s experiment with democracy. Like, quite a lot of respect. So I think he’d be vastly disappointed in not only the person occupying the white house, but also a lot of the apathy in voting that is going around. (Yes, this coming from a [mostly] absolutest monarch, too.) But Napoleon valued and respected the notion of civic duty. If you live in a democracy, you have a duty to participate. To opt out is to shirk that duty which he would find insulting and distasteful. Because, I would argue, he was very much a believer in people doing right by their fellow citizens. 

--

Get unreasonably addicted to: MODERN BATHS. HE WOULD NEVER LEAVE THE BATHTUB. THEY CAN HAVE JETS AND EVERYTHING BERTRAND THIS IS GREAT. 

Also central heating. Saunas. Jacuzzis. He was like a wee lizard seeking warmth at all times. 

I think he’d be into driving. I don’t know if he would be good at it. Don’t let Napoleon take the wheel, guys. But if someone else was driving he’d be that person “go faster. you’re driving like my grandmother.” And gods, he’d do dumb shit like drive like a maniac around the arc de triumph six times in a row because he’s an adrenaline junkie and a risk-taker (it’s that bored ADD brain of his). The autobahn would be his dream. 

I think he’d be super into epic fantasy series. Like the big sweeping ones like Lord of the Rings. I think less so GRRM because GRRM is unrealistic and Napoleon is pedantic. Especially about politics and war. Exhibit A: consider Napoleon’s very detailed nitpicking of Virgil on his inaccurate rendition of Troy from a military perspective. Therefore, I suspect GRRM’s lack of accuracy in how society works, how war works, how politics works, all the plot holes and illogical character decisions, would drive him up the wall. Napoleon liked Homer because he could tell Homer had been to war. And you can tell Tolkien has been to war. Also LOTR hits all those notes of high-hearted emotion and big sweeping scenes that Napoleon so liked in Ossian and the Illiad etc.

All this to say, overall, as a genre, I think those big, sweeping fantasies with lots of plot, politics, intrigue, soaring battles, great heights of emotion - he’d love that. It would hit all of his buttons for what he liked in fiction. Lots of emotion, lots of action, lots of big scenes, lots of crazy shenanigans. This can also be applied to Sci-fi. I think he’d be a big nerd on that too. But the science would have to make sense. 

I think he’d be into Star Trek, particularly Picard, if only for the philosophical aspects of it. He liked those sorts of questions and hypotheticals. So I think he’d binge all of The Next Generation (among other seasons). 

--

Do for a living: Teach? God knows. This is Napoleon from 18-something who just woke up? He could be paid for consultant work for historians and film crews and the like, I guess. Just to tell them how accurate stuff is. Of course, be wary, this is Napoleon I Am A Spin Doctor Bonaparte. 

I think he could lean into writing histories - particularly the classics, early French and European history - that sort of thing, where he already has a strong background in it and it wouldn’t require him basically learning an entirely new trade. Like, will Napoleon ever fully be a natural with computers and cell phones? Probably not. Could he be like your old school Professor emeritus who still churns out papers and does 90% of it the old fashioned by-hand way? Yes. And Napoleon had a bunch of histories planned on St. Helena that he wanted to write, so I think he could do that. 

As this is literally Napoleon Bonaparte he’d get a book deal in seconds. There’d be a bidding war over it. 

--

Thank you for the ask! This was very amusing :D 

#napoleon #napoleon was his own shitpost #napoleon bonaparte #napoleonic #napoleon in the modern day #ask #reply #anon

[have-each-others-six]

time will tell, she’ll see us through (pt. four)

***

part one

part two

part three

***

“It looks smaller on our days off,” Cathy comments, looking up at the marquee of the theater and stepping back to take in the building. “Doesn’t it look smaller now than it does on show days?”

Aragon shrugs, laughing a little bit at the intense concentration in Cathy’s squint as she tries to compare the theater’s appearance to the last time she saw it. “It looks the same to me. Maybe I’m just not observant enough,” she says, looking up at the way the sun is peeking out over the top of the building.

After another few minutes, Aragon nudges Cathy lightly. “Come on, weren’t you just saying how we absolutely need to find your manuscript? Let’s go inside.”

“You’re right,” Cathy says, swallowing hard and coming out of her reverie with a quick shake of the head. “You’re… you’re right. Let’s go in.”

The theater doesn’t feel like a theater without all the people inside of it. The startling silence, in combination with Cathy’s dread about the loss of her one testament to her legacy, makes the entire space feel ghostly. They see a few of the janitorial staff that make the rounds on days off, but the energy of everybody bustling around, shouting out requests for food and info on mic changes and the time till shows, is jarringly absent.

One of the staff lets her into the greenroom after she confirms it’s nowhere among the rows of seats, and her heart starts to beat faster in her chest and in her ears because this is her last chance to find it- this is the last possible place it could be.

She feels desperation through her whole body, tugging her in all different directions as she runs through the dressing rooms, looking and looking and hoping against hope that it’ll be leaned up against something or on a side table or next to a pile of scripts, her mind inventing new places one after the other, but each one is refuted.

Eventually, when all of the possibilities have been exhausted, Cathy ends up in the middle of the stage, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her eyes darting everywhere like maybe if she looks away and looks back the manuscript will reappear.

She’s lost without that manuscript. She had told Aragon earlier today that it was everything, and that isn’t far from the truth. This story is a part of her- or maybe all of her at this point. 

This is all she is, all she knows how to be, because for such a long time it was her sole purpose. She was the only one with the means to do it, one of the few women with the ability to read and write and the platform to make her ideas heard, so she vowed to write something powerful that would change the world. If the manuscript is gone, it means that power is gone too.

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder, and it nearly makes her jump out of her skin.

“It’s not here,” she says softly without turning around to face her godmother, and she hates, hates, hates crying in front of people but now she’s hiccuping through her sobs, feeling snot and tears on her face and not much caring because she doesn’t know if there’s any care left in her. “It’s not here, it’s not here, it’s not here, and if it’s not here it’s not anywhere- there’s nowhere else it could be. It’s lost, Catherine, it’s lost.”

“Come here,” Aragon says, and it isn’t soft and overly sweet, which Cathy would’ve hated right now, instead it’s gentle and it’s sincere, and when she collapses into Aragon’s arms and cries so hard her chest hurts the queen just rubs her back in a slow, steady motion.

“It’s lost,” Cathy repeats thickly. “It’s lost…”

“Listen to me,” Aragon tells her quietly, and her voice is a murmur but somehow cuts through the blaring, screechy panic in Cathy’s ears. “You will come back from this,” she promises.

“No, I won’t,” Cathy spits, even though it isn’t Aragon she’s angry at. She doesn’t know who she’s angry at, actually. It might be herself, for ever letting that stack of paper out of her sight. Or maybe she’s angry at God, the prick. God took Mary from her, has He now seen fit to take her manuscript as well, her only connection to her fragile little baby girl? 

“I’ll never be able to write again,” she says bitterly, pushing away out of Aragon’s hold. “I won’t trust it- my writing’s going to be awful for the rest of my life, because I won’t be able to invest any sort of hope in it. I poured everything into this manuscript, this curation of my memory, and I lost it. Who’s to say I won’t lose everything I ever write?” She swallows hard. “Who’s to say I won’t lose all of my memories?”

“That won’t-”

“It happened to Henry, near the end,” Cathy interrupts. “I watched it happen. He started to call me the names of all of you- of his other wives- when he was speaking to me. Once, he thought I was Anne, and he flew into a rage- called me a witch, a harlot, a useless hag, over and over until his face was purple. He forgot the names of his favorite lords, he forgot what he believed in… he forgot until he wasn’t himself anymore, but a shell of who he once was.” She looks at Catherine with a glassy fear in her eyes. “I can’t become like that.”

“You won’t,” Aragon tells her gently. “You’ll have us- we’ll remind you every day of who you are if we have to.”

“But what if I forget who you are?” Cathy asks, in a voice so soft and terrified it’s clear where her worries lie, and it also helps Aragon to finally fully understand why the manuscript is so important to her and why she’s so broken because it’s gone.

She sits down on the steps of the stage, Cathy sitting next to her, and as Aragon puts her arm around her they can hear the muffled noises of the city though the walls of the theater in their silence.

“You still have that last page of your manuscript, right?” she asks quietly, indicating Cathy’s pocket, where the folded piece of notebook paper is.

“Right,” Cathy answers sort of thickly, a little confused as to what Aragon’s getting at.

“Read it to me, will you?”

“It’s incomplete, though,” Cathy tells her. “It’s just the last page, there’s nothing else lef-” her voice cracks. “If the rest of it is lost, what’s the point of the last page?”

“I want to hear it,” Aragon replies gently. “It’s still the last page of something you worked very hard on- it’s the culmination of your story, of all of our stories, and you might’ve lost most of it, but you still have this page and I would like to hear what you wrote.”

Cathy pulls the piece of paper out of her pocket, and it seems too neatly and nicely folded for everything it holds. “It’s not very long,” she says softly.

She leans against Aragon as she flattens out the last page on her knee, and she feels like it’s been a hundred years since she finished writing it yesterday, sitting in almost the exact same spot. She can see the whole auditorium from here- the dim lighting that they turn on to clean the aisles illuminates it just enough that she can see how big the theater really is. 

Suddenly, she feels very small.

“Our lives are not limited to the scope of Henry’s reign,” she reads quietly. “They never should  have been. Placing us in a miniscule box of marriage and labeling us with words from a rhyme does not allow us our humanity- to have feeling, to have depth, to be complex and mutlilayered like every person on this earth deserves to be. We have had the extraordinary, improbable privilege of getting a second chance at life, and the gift of being allowed to tell our stories on the stage, but we have to look at other lives the way people are learning to look at ours- as something whole, not as something incomplete.”

She looks over at Aragon, taking herself out of reading her own words for a moment, and the woman’s eyes are closed. She’s genuinely listening.

“History is complicated. History is not just looking at people through the lens of what is told about them, it is searching for the truth in their existences. We often ignore either the good or bad in people to paint them as one simple thing, but everyone is human, and we need to appreciate people in their entirety.” 

Her handwriting got messy here. It’s hard to read as it slopes and scrawls, like it’s bending under the weight of the emotion in the words- her words. She thinks she might be crying- these are her words, this is the end of her story. This is the end.

 “Our opportunity will not be wasted. We don’t know how long we have, but we know that we have a story to tell, and we will tell it in its complete and true nature for as long as we can.” She swallows, hard. She doesn’t need to look at the paper for the last two sentences, because those aren’t just on the page- they’re in her heart, her lungs, in every breath she takes. She feels these last words in her chest every time she puts her pen to paper. “We should all be given the chance to share our story. I am grateful to have been given the chance to share mine with the people I love.” Her next breath shudders when she exhales it out of her lungs, and when she looks over at her godmother again the woman’s eyes are open and flooded with tears. “You are brilliant,” she whispers, smiling, and cups Cathy’s cheek in her hand. “You are brilliant.” “Well, that’s all there is,” Cathy says in a weak sort of voice, and gives a watery laugh, one that doesn’t have a whole lot of humor in it. “The rest is gone.” Aragon rubs her thumb over Cathy’s cheek and looks her in the eye, sincerity and pride evident in her gaze. “Your brilliancy isn’t dependent on the manuscript, darling. You have always been a writer, and you have always had your words. The words in your manuscript may have been lost, but you have so much more in you,” she says, and a tiny smile flickers over her face, her joy showing itself in the small action. “This is not the only story you have to tell, I can feel it.”

“I don’t know if I have any stories left in me,” Cathy says quietly, sincerely, and her voice is fraying at the edges. “What do you mean?” Aragon asks gently, her eyes soft. “Of course you have stories left in you. The historians might say this is the most important one- this is the one that talks about what happened from the perspective of people who actually experienced it, it talks about our feelings on being left out of history from our very unique position of having been reincarnated- it’s a good story to tell, and I think you should try to write it again. But it is not your only story.”

“How do you know?” Cathy demands, still shaking. “How can you say that if you don’t know?”

“You love to write,” Aragon says simply. “You are made of stories, my dear. Every writer is. The way they see the world is through a lens of words. You could write an absolutely incredible story about something as simple as the way the stage looks in the lights right now because of that.” She looks over at Cathy after a few minutes of quiet. “You’ll find a new story.”

“I wish I was as sure as you are,” Cathy mutters. “You don’t have to be. Just don’t give up.” Cathy goes back to leaning against Aragon’s shoulder, and they stay like that for a long while, the smaller woman curled into her godmother’s side, but eventually, in silence, the two of them stand up, leave the theater, and get in the car, Aragon driving them home to the house.

Before they open the door, Cathy has to breathe in and lean against it. She has to acknowledge the piece of her heart that’s been lost along with her manuscript for a moment before she goes back to her family- before she has to really face what’s happened and let it sink in.

She really, really doesn’t want to go inside. But she turns the doorknob anyway.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Jane says, visibly relieved when they walk in the front door, getting to her feet. She checks over Cathy first, then Aragon, looking them up and down with quiet worry in her eyes. “Can you tell me what’s going on yet?” she asks softly once she’s done making sure they’re both all right, and Cathy hates herself for being the reason that there’s that anxious crease between her eyebrows.

She looks over at Aragon and then back to Jane, who always pokes her head in and checks up on Cathy if she’s been upstairs too long, who makes her tea or coffee when she stays up late with a story, who offers up synonyms when she’s scared she’s using a word too many times. “I don’t know how to tell you,” Cathy murmurs, because that’s the truth. She’s fairly sure Aragon means what she says about not feeling let down by the loss of the manuscript, but she’s not sure that Jane will- Jane’s put so much hope into this, both out of love for Cathy and out of a wish that people will read her story.

Jane nods, chewing on the inside of her cheek and crossing her arms tightly over her chest- a sign that she’s nervous, trying to protect herself. “Are you… can you at least promise me that you’re safe? That you aren’t in danger?” “I’m not in danger,” Cathy answers sincerely, holding Jane’s worried gaze. “Really, I’m not.” “You’d- you’d tell me if you were?” Jane asks. Her eyes are soft and gray and fragile. “I would.”

“All right,” Jane replies, and she looks conflicted as she watches Cathy turn to head upstairs. “I… I think it’s really wonderful that you’ve let Kat write some pieces of your manuscript,” she tells her quietly. “It’s good that you’re giving yourself a bit of a rest.” Cathy turns back around, confusion apparent in her expression, but it’s Aragon who speaks. “What? Do you mean the interview? Katherine didn’t write anything for that, she just answered Cathy’s questions.” “Oh,” Jane says, brow furrowing. “I must’ve heard her wrong, then- this morning, when I went into her room, she had your manuscript, Cathy, and she said she was just checking her edits over when I asked her why she had it.” Aragon realizes what that means at the same time Cathy does, and Cathy grips her godmother’s arm. “This morning? Are you absolutely certain it was this morning?” the last queen asks. “Yes, just after you left,” Jane replies, confused. “Why?”

Cathy feels too many different emotions flood her system, and her heartbeat sounds too loud in her ears. 

“Excuse me,” she hears herself say in a voice that doesn’t quite sound like her own, and she turns around and strides towards Kit’s bedroom.

Her mind is always filled with thoughts- Aragon was right, she does experience the world through words, and her brain is usually crowded with perceptions, but this is different than her normal, slightly helter-skelter stream of consciousness. 

She is being bombarded with feelings of betrayal, the dizzy realization that her manuscript might not be lost, and the no, no, no, it can’t be my Kit thoughts all at the same time, because it can’t be her Kit who would cause her this much pain. 

The girl was there when Cathy woke up from that nightmare this morning, she knows how important the manuscript is. She would never intentionally cause Cathy pain, and especially not by targeting her writing.

Right?

As she walks slowly down the hallway, she feels like she did when she was a child taking deportment classes and balancing books on her head, only instead of books it’s the weight of trust and loss and fear, and if she loses her balance she might lose her mind.

Aragon and Jane are staring after the sixth queen in a sort of shock, and Jane looks to Aragon in fear and confusion.

“What’s going on?” she asks worriedly. “Is Katherine in trouble?”

“If Cathy’s right,” Aragon starts, not elaborating on what that means, “she’s going to be.”

***

taglist: @thenicestnonbinary, @soultastic

#the angst is strong with this one #and it will only get stronger #six #six the musical fanfiction #time will tell she'll see us through #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #jane seymour #anna of cleves #katherine howard #catherine parr #six the musical fanfic

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.7.4 “Forms Assumed By Suffering During Sleep”

Oh man this one’s long too, I’m sorry. I accidentally found a secondary source and now I have even more to say. I did have a lot of fun with this chapter though.

While looking up Antoine Albin de Romainville from the last chapter to see if that was a reference to something (it’s not), I accidentally found this essay, Jean Valjean’s Nightmare: Rehabilitation and Redemption in Les Miserables by professor Michael H. Hoffheimer. I’m going to write my own thoughts/impressions of the nightmare but I’ll also add in stuff that I think is cool/important from the essay. I’m just going to pick and choose bits because this essay has a lot of really cool things in it but I don’t really want to just summarize the whole thing in this post.

“This dream, like most dreams, bore no relation to the situation beyond its mournful poignant character, but it made an impression on him.” This sentence reminds me of Hugo’s tendency to say “this is not that important” or “we won’t spend long on this,” before spending a long time on something. Basically, Hugo says it bore no relation to the situation, which is a big alarm saying “but it’s very important to the establishment of what’s going on in Valjean’s subconscious!”

“It is one of the papers in his own handwriting that he left behind. We think we should copy it here word for word.” Again, another weird signal. Hugo doesn’t really break the fourth wall very much in this way. I often forget that he’s writing like a sort of historian of these characters rather than a regular narrator, and then a passage like this pops up. So I think this being written in Valjean’s own hand is important in a similar way.

Hoffheimer points out that written text documents in Les Miserables often signal an important change of events. He also points out that this is the only document in the entire novel that is written by Jean Valjean himself. He says “Transcribing the document reduces the narrator to the role of passive compiler who sheds omniscient access to Jean Valjean’s thoughts and acquires understanding of the dream’s content only by virtue of possessing Jean Valjean’s papers.“ Which I both agree and disagree with. I think that Hugo’s narration of Valjean is different from all other characters in the novel. Despite Valjean essentially being the true “main character,” Hugo often stays distant from Valjean’s true feelings. He will either tell us what Valjean is thinking but not what he’s feeling, or vice versa. It’s only in moments of intense distress, like these past 5 hours of pacing, that he allows us and himself access to both Valjean’s thoughts and intense emotions at the same time. Even when he tells us what Valjean is feeling, it seems a little more objective. I think what really makes me think this is Valjean’s monologues to Marius alone and then to Marius and Cosette at the end of the novel. Narrator-Hugo venerates Valjean, in a way, so that even when he’s describing how Valjean feels about himself, there’s a degree of sympathy and respect in the words. This is contrasted quite intensely with Valjean’s verbal descriptions of his own feelings about himself and his past, which are full of a level of guilt and self-loathing and negativity that we don’t get from Hugo’s narration of the same events. So I disagree (mildly) that the document places Hugo into the role of passive compiler without omniscience, because I think narrator-Hugo does that to himself throughout the entire novel. The description of Javert’s mental turmoil at the end of the novel is far more intense and viscerally described even than the turmoil we just witnessed Valjean going through. We know that Hugo has the capacity to delve deeply into Valjean’s psyche, to show us how he truly thinks of himself, but there’s always that moment of pulling back, of respect due to Valjean’s Goodness that Javert is not afforded in the end, and that is only exposed when Valjean gets the chance to talk about himself to others.

Something I’ve realized, after having read Les Mis and now also having read Last Day Of A Condemned Man, is that Hugo is incredibly good at writing nightmares. He should have written a dreamlike horror novel because every time he writes a character having a dream, it’s so intense. I’d love to see a short film portrayal of this dream.

This is the first time we learn Valjean had a brother. We know about his sister, with whom he lived. But when he was introduced back in 1.2.6, there is only mention of his parents and his older sister. This phantom-brother that we know nothing about and Valjean doesn’t elaborate on kind of reminds me of the way that religious figures call others “brother,” so I wonder if this brother is a kind of everyman for Valjean, either Champmathieu or the population of M-sur-M or both. This would make sense later on, when the brother disappears when Valjean steps into the weird empty road (which Hapgood translates creepily as a “hollow road”), since no matter what action Valjean takes, either Champmathieu or M-sur-M is going to vanish. Hoffheimer mentions that one of his other sources (Jean Gaudon) thinks that this dream-brother refers to Hugo’s life rather than Jean Valjean. Hugo’s brother Eugene was schizophrenic and spent most of his adult life in a mental institution. Hoffheimer also points out that a) Valjean could be interpreting Champmathieu as a lost dream-brother due to their resemblance both physically and geographically, and b) that long-lost-siblings are a theme in the Brick, with Gavroche unknowingly taking in his two brothers, as well as, in my opinion, Eponine and Cosette (who you could interpret as foster-siblings in childhood) encountering each other briefly in 3.8.8. Hoffheimer posits that the forgotten brother is another shade of a larger theme within the novel of child abandonment.

“Even while we talked, we felt cold because of that open window.” This is such an interesting passage because Valjean and his brother are presumably outside, walking, and yet it is because of the open window and not the wind or outdoors itself that they feel cold. It isn’t even necessarily the window itself that’s making them cold, but the thought of the window.

“He was entirely naked, ashen-colored, riding a horse the color of earth. The man was hairless; we saw his skull and the veins in his skull. He was holding a stick that was limber, like a twig of grape vine, and heavy as iron.” All of the other men that Valjean sees in this dream are earthen-colored, except this naked man who is the color of ash. He’s also the only one who has visible veins, a sign of life. He’s also the only one seen using a non-pedestrian mode of transportation, but the horse is still earthen-colored. I have no idea if this interpretation is anything at all, but I’ve just had a flash of a thought. It makes me wonder if this is actually Valjean, as he, like Dante, is the only living being in this dream. Here, he’s a living being stripped of both of his identities (he is not Valjean right now because Champmathieu is Valjean, and he can’t fully be Madeleine right now because of his awareness of what will happen to him morally if he decides to turn his back on Champmathieu), ashen-colored to match the items and identity he burned in the fire, being borne by a horse (Scaufflaire’s horse and tilbury and/or the potential death of another victim of society), holding a baton-like weapon of authority that exists in a liminal space of usefulness. It’s heavy like iron, but supple and limp and you wouldn’t really be able to beat someone with it. The only authority Valjean will have in the court at Arras is his word; even his word exists in a liminal space, since he has power and authority speaking as Madeleine but none while speaking as Valjean, and his identity in between falling asleep and arriving at Arras is trapped in this liminal existence of being neither person.

Hoffheimer says that one of his sources (Anne Ubersfeld) interprets the open window and the naked rider holding a limp-but-heavy stick as vaginal and phallic symbolism, respectively. He doesn’t really go beyond mentioning the existence of that interpretation, but honestly the pairing of the two made me go in a totally different direction. This open window could easily by a metaphor for the prospect of freedom, while the stick, heavy but limp like a chain, is a metaphor for its opposite: prison, the chain gang, labor for life.

“All was earth colored, even the sky.” This specifically reminded me of 1.2.8, when Hugo describes the “two infinities together, the ocean and the sky, the one a tomb, the other a shroud.” The sea and the sky are blended together into one singular color, one singular entity in that chapter. Here, it is the earth and the sky that are blended together. Hoffheimer points out that everything and everyone in this dream is earth-colored and lifeless, and at the end of the dream, it is revealed to be the world of the dead. This is so weirdly different from the dynamic nature of the sea-night world of prison that Hugo describes in 1.2.8. It’s weird choice because Hugo usually goes to water for imagery of both death and society (the sea-night of prison in 1.2.8, imagery from the Waterloo digression, the sewers, Javert’s suicide leap into the Seine). What’s interesting to me is that the water-imagery is all “real life,” even the imagery in 1.2.8, to some extent, since the prison is a galley ship. But Valjean’s unreal dream death-world isn’t water but its opposite, a totally hollow, silent earth. (Also, it reminds me of Hugo’s description of the dirt-covered cart in front of the Thenardier inn in 1.4.1.)

Valjean enters the village and assumes it’s Romainville. This seems to be real life details bleeding into his subconscious. But what’s interesting to me is that the only details that are identifiable as “from real life” are two people who are likely nearly vanished from Valjean’s memory: his brother and the neighbor woman, and the name of a town outside Paris that he has only vague knowledge of. None of these things seem immediately significant in any way to Valjean’s current dilemma. (The Hoffheimer essay also has a footnote that says that Romainville is mentioned later in the novel in 3.1.5 as one of the towns just outside of Paris where the universe stops existing for the Paris gamin population.)

(The Hoffheimer essay basically stops here and doesn’t really go into the nitty gritty of the rest of the dream.)

His entrance into the village, deserted but with open doors, feels to me like a twisted, surrealist dream-interpretation of Valjean’s entrance into Digne. Except when Valjean entered Digne, the town was “deserted” to him because no one would take him in, despite their being someone behind each door to answer when he knocked at them. In the dream, he’s able to enter any house, since all the doors are open, but there is still a man behind each one, though they do not interact or seem dangerous until Valjean leaves the town.

The layout of the house reminds me of the layout of Valjean’s experience of the Bishop’s house after he wakes in the middle of the night. The oratory where Valjean slept, the bishop’s room, and the garden. After waking, Valjean never enters the dining room. He goes from the oratory into the bishop’s room, and then back into the oratory and out the window into the garden.

It’s interesting to note that the first room Valjean enters is deserted, but after that, “behind every turn of a wall, behind every door, behind everything, there was a man standing in silence.”

“Only one could ever be seen at a time.” This again seems to reflect his identity dilemma: he cannot be both Valjean and Madeleine at the same time. He--and society--can only see one man at a time. There’s no way to reconcile between the two because they are in such drastically different places in society.

“They did not seem to be hurrying, and yet they walked faster than I. They made no sound as they walked. Suddenly, this crowd came up and surrounded me.” My immediate thought was that this crowd is society, catching up to and surrounding Valjean the same way that the ocean is a “populace of waves” aka society overtaking the drowning man in 1.2.8. But I wonder if instead, this is not society, but Life Sentence. Valjean knows that if he reveals his identity, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. "The sea is the inexorable night into which the penal code casts its victims.” But this earthen, deadened, strange-headed crowd and the silent dirt-colored earth and sky, aren’t able to be fought like drowning. When you get a Life Sentence, you know that there is absolutely zero chance of returning to society, returning to the world, and having someone remember you. You are dead as soon as the sentence is pronounced. There is zero hope, zero chances, no chance that your memory will live on, there’s just emptiness. Every person in prison has different sentence lengths, they’re all trying to keep treading water until their sentence runs out or they can somehow thrash their way to the shore and escape. But everyone with a life sentence knows how long they’re gonna be there. The crowd isn’t society or the penal code drowning Valjean, the crowd is all the other life sentence prisoners, telling Valjean what he knows already. That as soon as that sentence is pronounced, he’s already dead.

“Where are you going? Don’t you know you’ve been dead for a long time?” Valjean, upon burning his passport and becoming Father Madeleine, essentially buried Jean Valjean. As long as he was living as Madeleine, he was also dead as Jean Valjean (and later, after the Orion, he will again be dead as Jean Valjean) which means that allowing Champmathieu to take his punishment for him isn’t re-killing Valjean, who is already a dead man, but killing a different human being. Valjean sheds and creates so many different identities throughout the book, but the only one he ever drags along with him is the carcass of his original self, Jean Valjean.

My mental image of this dream passage is so vivid, I wish I could somehow create it in real life. I imagine the entire thing is silent and muffled except the sound of Valjean’s weird dream-footsteps. And for some reason, of all the lines, “their heads were strange” is the one that’s most unsettling to me. Everything else is described in a fairly detailed way, but “their heads were strange” is so hauntingly vague.

(Side note: I don’t know who else doing Brick Club has read House Of Leaves, but this entire dream-passage reminds me of House Of Leaves. Especially the “Why Romainville?” aside, which is probably the most unusual phrase in the entire book, since Hugo doesn’t really use unanswered annotative asides like this anywhere else. That and the strange heads are the most unsettling parts for me, like the moment in HoL when Johnny finds the braille papers in the fridge.)

Also, I find it interesting that Valjean writes this dream down, but neither he nor narrator-Hugo actually attempt to dissect it or interpret it. Valjean writes his dream down, keeps the paper with him his whole life, and yet we don’t get him or Hugo telling us what they think it means. (I was really excited when I read the Hoffheimer essay and he pointed this out too!) The dream just floats there in the middle of the chapter as this moment of totally different, surrealist imagery, without heavy-handed metaphor. Because we always joke about how Hugo writes this brilliant and beautiful (if heavy-handed) metaphorical passages, and then supplements them with a giant blinking neon sign saying “Explanation Below!” But this is a metaphorical passage that doesn’t get that treatment.

The entire exchange between the old woman and Valjean about the tilbury reminds me so much of the exchange between Valjean and Petite Gervais. In both instances, Valjean and the other character are separated, by bushes and by the door, respectively. In both instances, Valjean is in a sort of strange trance, and the conversation is stilted and weird because of this. We get the parallel “What is your name?”/“Who is it?” question, followed by a moment of confusion. With Petit Gervais, the confusion and trance are manifested in Valjean’s silence and fixed stare at the ground. With the old concierge, it’s manifested by questions about the tilbury that he should know the answer to, but the trance means that he’s not remembering the instructions he had given just a few hours prior. Then comes a moment of realization, “Ah! You’re still here!” in reaction to coming back to awareness in the Petit Gervais scene and “Oh, yes! Monsieur Scaufflaire!” in the scene with the concierge. Petit Gervais can see Valjean, and his countenance scares him; the concierge cannot see him because they’re separated by a door, but Hugo says that “if the old woman had seen him at that moment she would have been frightened.” But Valjean makes different choices at this point in the paralleling scenes. Valjean tells Petit Gervais “You’d better get moving!” and stands up, frightening him so he runs away. After the realization of what he’s done, he runs after Petit Gervais, but it’s far too late. Here, Valjean seems close to sending the tilbury away, but instead he says “Say I’m coming down.” This time, it won’t be too late to right a wrong done.

And, more Dante references, although honestly they probably belonged back in the Scaufflaire chapter, but I didn’t notice until now. I wondered if the “two stars” thing might have a parallel in Canto III, so I looked, and it doesn’t, but I found something else instead. In 1.7.2, Scaufflaire says that in order for his horse to travel 60 miles in a day, Valjean cannot take a chaise, which would be too heavy; he must take a lighter tilbury. In Canto III, Charon looks at Dante, who is the only living being on the shores of Acheron, and says “By other windings and by other steerage/shall you cross to that other shore! Not here! Not here!/A lighter craft than mine must give you passage.” These are not direct parallels, but I think that it’s an interesting similarity, the insistence on lightness of craft. Scaufflaire is only Acheron insofar as he gives Valjean the tilbury in order to go to Arras, but I think it still fits.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.7.4 #les mis #les mis meta

[squitayumin]

Taiora Week 2020 - Day 7: Future

She feels her world crumble around her.

She enters her forties newly divorced. Her industry is small, and it seems everyone is gossiping about it. Her traditional parents are ashamed of her, her children won’t stop crying, and neither can she whenever she can get a moment alone. She isn’t sure whether she deserves to cry though, since she is the one who ultimately chose this.

She feels a mental breakdown the way she had when her crest wouldn’t glow or when Piyomon left, and she questions again whether she’s capable of just about anything. It’s ironic because she doesn’t have any other divorced friends. It is only her who has failed at love.

Taichi reaches out to her first and ends up coming over while her children are with their father. He’s already helped her through so much of the separation, so she doesn’t mind crying in front of him anymore. As she does, she’s hit with the revelation that they’ve been friends for 34 years. He is non-judgmental and listens to her. Her crying becomes more agonising, and he holds her again like he did when she thought she had lost Piyomon.

Back then, she had been too distraught to think very much into it, but nobody has disappeared from the earth this time, so she is more aware.

She’s spent the majority of her life deflecting questions about their relationship, insisting they’re only friends and blatantly lying when anyone would ask whether they’ve ever hooked up.

She remembers her first clumsy kiss and the drunk night they had sex, and she wonders if he ever thinks about them too when they’re together.

Just like last time, his legs are on either side of her. He doesn’t hold her as tightly because she isn’t as hysterical this time, one hand stroking her spine as he tells her it will be all right into her ear.

As children, it was cute. As young adults, there was an undertone that neither would act on. Now, given where both of them are in their lives, it feels all sorts of wrong. He is surely more uncomfortable than her, though he isn’t making it obvious.

He tells her not to care what everyone is saying, that her parents still love her, that her children still love her too, that she isn’t a bad mother or a failure at life. He tells her that he still thinks she is so great, and she is so moved that she almost kisses him.

She doesn’t, because she knows she’s only being reactive to her own confused emotions. She doesn’t, because she knows there is a chance he will run away and never come back.

The instant she gains some composure, he breaks his hold of her. He is probably relieved as he scoots back a couple of times to put some distance between them.

Instead, they talk. They talk about being six, then eight, then eleven, then fourteen, then seventeen, then twenty-two, all the way to now. She is made aware that he’s been a stability in her life. He makes her laugh, and he also makes her cry. He brings up a frustrating memory that makes her lose her temper and cry again. He makes fun of her crying face, which only makes it worse, though it feels nice to cry about anything other than the divorce.

With some hesitation, she finally admits to him that she didn’t like how he reacted to them sleeping together. He apologises. He says he regrets it too, and at first she misinterprets it as having ever slept with her, but he clarifies that he means the way he handled it. She forgives him without asking him for further explanation.

He gets up and makes them something to eat. It’s only instant ramen, but she’s grateful and eats it anyway. When he says he ought to leave, she practically begs him to stay. She knows she shouldn’t and that it puts him in an awkward situation. He looks conflicted, hand on the door, also needing to get back to his own family.

She tells him she doesn’t want to be alone, and she thinks she sounds like the devil itself. The notion that she can be so malevolent makes her tear up again, but he thinks she’s crying for the first reason and stays.

They only continue talking, revisiting memories again and again. Whenever she gets teary, he hugs her until it passes, and at some point she wonders if she’s purposely trying to make herself weep so that he’ll hold her one more time. It’s because the second she stops, he always lets go.

They eventually start getting drowsy, but she keeps trying to think of talking points because she doesn’t want the moment to end. They aren’t doing anything, but she imagines the shock and horror if anyone were to see. He probably feels the same sense of immorality, but he’ll never say anything while she’s so vulnerable.

She purposely makes him miss the last train and tells him he can sleep on her bed, while she can sleep in her daughter’s room. He is uncomfortable and requests the couch instead. She hugs him goodnight, lingers longer than she needs to, presses her lips to his cheek because that’s considered more innocent. She feels his arms flex around her as he tries not to react. To make it less tense, she thanks him for helping her through the day and every day before this one.

She gazes into his eyes, and he does too before breaking contact.

He finally tells her he can’t. She’s just emotional right now. It’ll cause too much of a mess. He’s just trying to be a friend. This isn’t his intention.

She’s embarrassed and insists it isn’t her intention either, even though it is, and she falls asleep feeling lonely while he sleeps just one wall away, probably regretting ever reaching out.

When she wakes up the next morning, he is already gone, though he has the decency of scribbling a note to her in his indecipherable handwriting that she can somehow read.

Sora,

Good morning! I have to run, but I hope you feel better. Don’t be a stranger if you ever need to talk again.

Taichi

She does need to talk again, but she finds other avenues, because she hears from Hikari that he and his wife got into a big fight. She doesn’t need anyone’s confirmation to know that it’s her fault. She avoids him out of shame for as long as she can, but when she does see him again, he insists it was nothing and won’t accept her apology.

Same as all her other losses in life, she is sure the pain will gradually fade, but she wonders whether there is any part of him, however small, that imagines the same alternative reality that she does, an illustrious, lovely world that seems to exist only in her imagination.

#taioraweek #taioraweek2020 #digimon #taichi yagami #sora takenouchi #taiora

[dobriking]

Bend Into A Break (1)

Summary: Not one, but two vlog-squads came with the death of Vine. And the rumored beef between you two is absolutely true! So, you and David (begrudgingly) set up a month long-retreat among your groups to film team challenges and go against each other. Y’know. For views. Pairing: David Dobrik x Readers, Enemies to Lovers, living together. Warnings: Profanity

1 | 2 | 3

“Y/n…I, I don’t know about this.” David sighs and pushes back your iPad.

And you grit your teeth, stomping gently and saying “David!” With a whine. Your emotional tactics (no matter how playful) have never had any impact on him. He simply shrugs, and with the reminder that your fluttering eyes and pouty frown do nothing to affect his decisions, you straighten out and go back to your less inviting face. One of anger, disdain.

“David come on, you know this would be great for the both of us.”

“Well,” he fills his cheeks with air before quickly letting out, “ I know. It’s just…”

“There’s the fans, the views. I know you just love selling 40$ T-Shirts. Think of the merch! Contrasting team colors. We could recreate every piece of clothing we wear in our videos. Wear nothing but that for the few vlogs — you get an average of a couple million views a video, right?” He nods. Likewise, you point to yourself. “Th-this is a good idea. It’s great marketing! Nothing gets people more riled up than picking sides but if we play it off as a fun little Youtube thing then there’s no bad press. Only fan publicity.” He opens his mouth but — “Even if nobody gets along behind the scenes it’s what we get on camera that matters and you know just as much as me that when our groups hang with each other it’s actually fun.”

It pains him being opposed to something so genius.

Though he scoffs at himself for pairing together you and the word ‘genius.’ You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?

The problem is if you’ll be able to get both of your squads to agree on not just this as a whole but a tiny, single thing.

Red for his team.

Blue for yours.

You could have bandanas, knee-high socks, and shorts for the more athletic challenges your two groups decide to participate in. If you go far enough you can even sell thermoses and Tupperware if you went ahead with color-coordinated eating.

Minus the formalities and getting ready for this event, the event itself would be fun.

He just wonders if he’ll be able to get through the initial torment of having to be around each other.

He rubs his eye and holds out his hand. He beckons the iPad and you slide it over. He’s yawning and couldn't look any more bored as he swipes through the presentation you put together for him. He almost looks a little too disinterested and bothered by it. You think to question but “I mean…yeah?”

He picks at his lips, puffing his cheeks up in ‘boredom’ but subsequently rubbing his palms all over them to hide their puffiness. “Gonna need to make some changes,” he murmurs.

And throwing your hands to the table you shout, “Well of course!”

His eyes jump to yours. He has his lips pursed, cheeks collapsed now which sharpens his jaw and cheekbones. His thick brows furrow too, and overall it is quite the good look. But enough about him — you’re genuinely happy you’ve come to some agreement, and he can’t deny it's a nice change in pace. Finally, you give him something real. For once.

You take your iPad from him and place it between you.

The presentation explains as follows: Over the course of one month, his vlogs would consist of at least one challenge per vlog (spliced between other daily shenanigans) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Your channel too would consist of at least one challenge per vlog on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Somewhere in there you propose a live-stream or something your two channels could share on Sundays to aid the constant stream of content.

His team would dawn red clothes, and your team blue. You would be your team leader and he would be his team’s leader.

You had a photographer queued up (given David agreed) to take team-photos; a group photo for each, separate photos for each member, photos of each group’s corresponding members together, and an ultimate team versus team photo. So far the theme you had in mind for the photoshoot was sports (hence the idea for athletic shorts and sports T-shirts for merch). Your mind lingered over the possibility of a “War of the Roses” type situation but Zane Hijazi (who irks you purely because his jokes manage to bite so hard yet so effortlessly) organized the royalty-themed photoshoot for his 200th video.

Of course you guys watch each other. It’s the only way to keep your head in the game.

David picks at his lips again, imagining headbands, bandanas, knee-high socks, 70s shorts, even leg warmers. He isn’t focused entirely on the march or financial benefits of the event but he can’t deny both would wind up being fantastic in design and outcome.

“Uhm wh-what uh,” You dig through your bag and take out a notepad and pen, “changes did you have in mind?”

He reaches and makes an effort to sigh as obnoxiously as he can while scribbling some of his ideas down. Your brows twitch when you come across words you can’t comprehend, his handwriting so jumbled with how fast he wrote so he could get the hell out of here and think this over.

And you find his main idea quite…odd.

“An uh…?” Why on Earth would he want this?

He’s amused.

“You want us all to…what—a boarding school scenario?”

He blinks, previously lost in thought. “Yeah! Uh yeah just,” he takes the notepad and reads what he wrote over. Seems right. He slides it back and folds his arms over the table. His cheeks make even the slightest of smiles so incredibly poignant. It’s hard for you to tell if he’s casually smiling, grinning at your expense, or plain existing.

You admit it’s a good idea — two teams so notorious for being pitted against each other in the realm of Youtube not only performing casual competitions and questionable stunts for a minimum of two minutes a vlog each but in an environment where content is inevitable. Non-competition related stunts and shenanigans will still have a competitive spirit, and with you able to get content of the other’s team in a casual setting it’s going to be a lot harder to manipulate someone’s behavior through editing. Teams so notorious for being pitted against each other in the realm of Youtube living with each other, sure to hate one another’s guts for the entirety.

In this case, that entirety would be a month.

A month of shared living spaces.

A month of side-by-side editing.

A month of competing, a month of interacting.

David shrugs, shaking his head. “I dunno. We could find a place. I mean, we have what it takes.”

“Suppose we could, huh?”

He nods and writes more ideas down. You watch, fighting a smile seeing his little tongue poke past his lips.

He hums then leaves you in silence while collecting his thoughts.

Is this a good idea?

You know it is financially, career-wise. But like David, you wonder if the absolute torment your group will have to deal with at the hands of his own is worth any of this.

David gets up and hovers above his seat to collect his things. His eyes flicker and catch your confused face. He blinks rapidly, scrunching his face up and going “Oh yeah, uh,” before pulling out his phone and sending you a text.

Yes, you have each other’s numbers.

It’s a location (his home), time (1:30), and date (tomorrow).

“Bring your group.”

You stand with him. “oh no no no they uh — they have no idea about this.”

He shrugs and you swear he chuckles. “Well, neither will mine, so.”

David walks off but before he leaves he holds onto the shop’s doorframe. He turns and lazily gestures you and your space. “Good job by the way on all of this. Uh, actually a really good idea.”

Huh. “Thanks.”

#David Dobrik x Reader #David Dobrik imagine #David Dobrik imagines #vlogsquad imagine #vlogsquad imagines #1.3k #imagine

[grind-pantera]

Imaginw Bernie walking reader home after they met up with Elton working on some music and he lends her his jacket because it's chilly!! That brown leather one of his

A/N- Hi HI. Thank you guys for reading !!!! I appreciate it lots. And I saw Rocketman and fell in love with this man automatically so catch me writing more for him now that I’ve got this oneshot done! reblogs and likes are appreciated!!! Thanks ! - Miss. Em.

Title: Sound Bite.

Fandom/Movie: Rocketman.

Pairing: Bernie Taupin x Fem! Reader.

Words: 2,738.

Rating: K. ( Super fluffy, no warnings other than some language adkfmsdlkm ).

Big noises didn’t seem to exist. The squealing of a front door of the flat that Bernie shared with Elton and a handful of other people, the small ‘goodbye’ he had given the group who initially shouted a ‘goodbye’ to the two of you, the wave you gave them as you stepped out of the flat onto the small landing in front of the building, the slamming of the screen door as it shut behind the two of you, the rumbling of a car passing by on the street, music playing from inside. It felt as if your ears were left ringing sensationally, drowning you and keeping you under the water until it clogged your ears and you were left with a vague sense of sound. You had just met Elton John, hearing his voice sing along effortlessly to Bernie’s flawless lyrics. You could have stayed the entire night listening, having a lovely chat with their roommates about anything, the existence of the universe, if love was a real thing, any strange conspiracies you could come up. You were welcomed, it felt, something you were initially worried about when Bernie suggested you come over tonight just to hang out.

But, hang out was such a broad term. Hanging out for the two of you was popping into the small cafe down the street on your way to classes in the afternoon and bumping into each other, saying hello, chattering to one another as your eyes peeped at his lips and his own trailed down your body and then snapped back to captivate your attention. Flirtatious, but Bernie was naturally shy and tried to cover up the fact that he had been looking at you like that by bringing a hand through his soft hair, de-tangling some, but messing up other strands. The sun seeping into the cafe window hit the two of you, giving off the impression that his hair was almost honey colored with dark highlights. You felt mesmerized for a second, realizing that you hadn’t managed to murmur any response to his offer of hanging out outside of your normal routine in the cafe, midday, every Wednesday and Friday. He was there often, using the cafe as a muse of some sort as he often wrote lyrics there. You wondered for the first few times what he was doing, slanted handwriting scattering along sheets of paper, scratched out words, words written over others, notes in the columns. Bernie explained your second week of talking.

“I write lyrics for a friend.”

“Anyone I would know or have heard?”

The smile he gave you was confident in nature, contradicting the shy and cute grin he’d often have for you when he first spotted your face walking into the cafe. There was a fazed out expression on his face. He knew something you didn’t and it no doubt intrigued you to the ends of the Earth. “Not yet, but you’ll know him soon enough. Everyone will.”

You weren’t sure what to say when he asked you to come over, so, you stumbled out a tiny ‘yes’ in reply, earning yourself that small charming smile from Bernie that he always seemed to have tucked away for you and that always made you feel breathless as if you were going to be knocked out from how pretty it was. How handsome he was. He’d jotted his address down on a napkin, handed it to you with slightly shaky hands and told you, “I’ll be home around 7 if you just want to pop by. I’ll be waiting out front for you so you don’t have to knock. My roommates… They’re well…” He shrugged softly, the bag on his shoulder shifting with that movement as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “They like to pry and I’d rather not put you in danger by knocking on the front door and having one of them answer before I do. Believe me, I won’t see you tonight if that happens.”

Sound began registering again as your feet tapped down the steps before the two of you hooked a right so you could venture home. A fifteen minute walk or so from where you were and Bernie offered to walk you rather than have you go on the train by yourself. With sound returning, the knowledge that Bernie’s fingers, his hand, was sliding against yours by your side, almost teasing in nature. Arms rubbed and pried one another, giving you shock waves of his warmth from under his brown leather jacket. God, Bernie wanted to grab you, wanted to hold your hand and tug you towards him but there was an invisible force that was stopping him. This was putting Bernie to the test to see if he could be as smooth as he once imagined he was, and God knew you were making it hard for him. For a split moment as the two of you cross the street and he peered down at you in the lamp light, he wondered if you were aware that you were like the wind to him. Come up, swirling around him, taking him up, up, and up and wrapping yourself into him. He could act on it, but, Bernie refrained and drew his bottom lip in as you finally brought yourself to speak.

“That was fun.” You were disappointed in yourself that the only adjective you could fathom at the moment was ‘fun’ when in reality, you hadn’t had a good time like that in a long time. It was great, lively, boisterous. But, it was fun. The sound of piano notes, the gentle nature that Elton would press against them one moment and then the vicious way he’d bang the next, playing with such crystal clear emotion that it tore you apart to look into Bernie’s eyes as Elton sang, wanting to muster enough courage to kiss Bernie for the sake of feeling the pressure of his lips against yours, to grab his arm and lean forward, closer and closer. Closer and closer, you thought to yourself and wrapped your arms around yourself as a breeze shot between the two of you. “Your lyrics— they’re amazing, Bernie.”

“Are they?” The smile on his face was soft, the creases around his mouth evident as the expression grew into sincere fondness. “It’s the strangest thing, I’ve never thought they were amazing until I met Elton. He’s ability to turn my lyrics into… Into works of art is uncanny. It’s like the world bursts into color when I hear him sing my songs, when I feel the vibrations of the piano notes in my ears. There’s nothing quite like it.”

“Give yourself more credit,” You said clearly, your fingers tangling into his by your side momentarily before you flattened your hand, “I love Elton and the music, but your lyrics are so… You.” Bernie gave you a strange look at that with a faux scoff. He knew what you meant. “I could sit and listen to you read your lyrics to me all night, you know.”

“You don’t want to hear my voice all night, believe me. You’d get quite tired of it by morning.”

“I wouldn’t mind.” It was your turn to smile and it mimicked the one that Bernie had previously given you. It was full of fondness, something that was so soft that Bernie himself felt his feet slow down and he lingered a few paces behind you now, wondering if it was normal to feel this breathless at such a simple statement. Such a simple compliment. Clearing his throat, he caught up to you, each step feeling lighter and lighter as he chewed his bottom lip tentatively. Looking up at Bernie, there was something swirling in your eyes. Something that told him you knew something he didn’t know. Or maybe, he did know and he was worried that it wasn’t reciprocated.

“Are you cold?” Bernie asked, panic evident in his voice as he watched you shudder as the breeze hit your skin. You were wearing a jumper, but it wasn’t enough fabric to keep yourself toasty but it was giving you means to lean into him every other step to feel his warm body against yours, even if it was for a second.

“I-I’m okay, Bernie. We’re almost to my—”

Blinking, it took the brunette next to you only a moment to slip his brown leather jacket off his small shoulders before the clothing was placed onto you gentle, your walking pace slowing down so he could properly adjust it onto your shoulders. It smelled like him– musky, his after-shave that reminded you of a sandalwood candle. Soothing, and the heat of his body rolled against your body from the fabric of the jacket and caused you to smile to yourself as Bernie hummed in a reassuring tone, “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Well, no-now you’re going to get cold.” You whispered softly to him, tucking back a piece of your hair before grasping the front of his jacket to keep it on your shoulders so it didn’t fall to the ground. “Bernie–”

“I’ll be fine, (Name).” He laughed, letting you slip your arms through the arm holes of his jacket. It was long for you, but it was comfortable and you found yourself nuzzling the side of your face into the collar to linger in the smell of Bernie that clung to the fabric. “I wouldn’t object to you… Wrapping your arm around me, if you want. For the sake of keeping me warm, of course.” Smooth, Bernie thought to himself and let his eyes pour into yours as you felt heat on the tip of your ears at the suggestion.

“Of course,” If you were nervous, you weren’t showing it to him but inside it felt as if you were rioting. You did what he suggested and let your arm snake around his waist and hook around. The pace of walking was slower, turning the fifteen minute walk into twenty-five minutes at the very least. “Just to keep you warm, though. No funny business, Taupin.”

“No funny business.” He reassured as you tucked your free hand into the pocket of his jacket, feeling a piece of paper slip between your fingers.

“What’s this?” You inquired, slipping the paper out of his pocket and holding it up in the passing light of the streetlamps.

“Ah,” He snatched it comically out of your hand and chuckled deeply inside of his chest and from the closeness of your two bodies, you could feel it against you. It rattled you and brought you some comfort as you tilted your head upwards and waited for an answer. “Just some shitty lyric that made no sense. Must have shoved it in my jacket for a reason.”

“What does it say?”

“Oh, come on, (Name). They’re shitty, you don’t want to—”

“I do, Bernie.”

There was silence between the two of you for a split second, the only sound coming from Bernie as he unfolded the piece of paper hesitantly, re-reading what he had once written and shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t know why you’re so adamant—”

“Please, I– I want you to read them to me. Let me be the judge.”

“But I remain silent,” Bernie whispered, half under his breath giving off the impression that the words were being sung to you in some silent song. “Oh, I won’t say a word…” That was breathless to the point where it left a shudder stringing down your spine, “I leave you to realize… I’m the light of your world.” Laughing slightly, he re-folded the piece of paper and slipped it into his back pocket with shrugging shoulders as you heard his voice echoing deep inside of your mind. His voice was soothing, you realized. More so than you thought before and there was no doubt in your mind that you wanted to hear it speak in your ear, against your skin, against your lips… Anywhere. “See? It’s really nothing— Sort of just scrambled words put together—” His words came to a shocked stop as you turned to face him and placed your hands flat onto his chest, successfully getting Bernie to stop walking as well with a slightly straggled laugh. “What are you—”

For a second, he thought you were going to kiss him. You were going to take that one step and finally close the gap between the two of you and you thought you’d do the same thing. You imagined it, of course. Feeling your hands flatten completely against his chest, his heart beating heavily against your hands. The feeling of his hot mouth conforming against yours out of desperation for it was pent up want that the two of you wanted to release. Bernie nearly puckered his mouth in anticipation but found it forming into a tiny grin at your voice, “How do you think those lyrics are shitty? They’re so—… So…” You swallowed and realized what word you needed to use. “Romantic, Bernie. So, shut your mouth about them being shitty and put them in a song.”

His mouth popped open at your last statement and he found himself throwing his head back in a cackle. “I can’t just put them in a song! That’s not how it works! They’re detached! I need to write a song around them in order to get them to work.”

“Then do that.”

“You know, for my muse, you’re pretty pushy.”

Your lips parted as you took a step back to look up at him properly. What he had just implied was something unknown to both of you, or at least that’s what you got from the surprised look on his face as the words came tumbling out, freeform into the air around the two of you. “I’m your muse?”

He smacked his lips and tilted his head to the side in a silly fashion. “I suppose. Is that what I just said?”

Hitting his chest playfully, you gasped as he grabbed your wrist and pulled you close to him, instinctively your hands came up to rest on his shoulders to keep yourself steady against the slightly wet pavement under your feet. “Of course, that’s what you—”

“Then, I meant it. You’re my muse.”

“Is that a pickup line, Taupin?” You smiled and cautiously wrapped your arms around his neck to hike yourself against him. The fabric of the leather jacket bunched around your wrists, Bernie’s hands resting on your waist, close enough to your hips to know that this was something he wanted and has indeed thought about. He kept his distance though, not letting his fingers wander downwards or upwards. It was a comfortable spot for both of you and you found yourself happily moving against him and rolling onto your toes as he whispered to you, your right hand reaching up and tucking your fingers through his silky, light brown hair.

“This is my first time using it, did it work?” You nodded and he laughed. “If it worked, may I… May I kiss you?” You nodded once again only this time, your tongue peeped out of your mouth to wet your lips as Bernie laughed breathlessly, lifting one of his hands and cupping the side of your face tenderly. “I’m going to kiss you, okay?” You licked your lips once again and giggled breathlessly, almost going cross-eyed as Bernie dipped his head and hovered his face in front of yours, only two centimeters away from yours and with a surge of what you’d consider to be confidence, he closed that lingering gap and you found yourself gasping into the kiss, eyes immediately falling shut as Bernie’s lips pushed a bit harder. He tasted like beer, something you didn’t like but Bernie somehow made it feel tasteful.

You pulled away with a hushed huff and swallowed. “Do— You should come inside. You should come inside and have some tea and warm yourself up and-and…”

“If you want me to come inside and read you more lyrics, you just need to ask.” He chuckled, kissing your lips slowly this time and letting the feeling sink into the both of you as if it was bubbling from your feet all the way to your head, your fingertips… You felt bubbly. Like a champagne bottle that had just been cracked open. “You don’t need to tempt me anymore than you already have…”

#bernie taupin #elton john #rocketman #bernie taupin x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #emmy writes

[save-the-spiral]

InkWizTober Day Twenty-Four: Dizzy + Round Table

Welcome to day Twenty Four! Wrote about Avalon! Warnings for traitors, blood, graphic depictions of violence, death, suicide mention, swearing, and dying thoughts of main character.

(link to prompt lists) (link to inktober tag)

The young wizard stumbles as they race down the dirt road, a hand pressed to their side. Things in Avalon were going bad. 

Like bad bad. 

The wizard trips over themself as they whip around the cobblestone hut by the roadside. Their scraped palms burn on the stones as they squeeze between the cut cliff of earth and the home. Small bursts of colors in the blackness of their desperately closed eyes were their only company as they tried to calm racing pulse and breath.

The young wizard listens as what sounds like the entirety of the Knights of the Silver Rose passes by, Queen Gwendolyn barking orders.

“Fucking cheater.” They find themself whispering once they’re sure their only company is the multitude of gross bugs they likely just shacked up with for the sake of a hiding place.

Sliding out of their hiding spot, the wizard takes off in the opposite direction, trying to stay on top of the large swath of tracks the knights left. The bright blue sky of Avalon was mocking them, and they wanted to stop to appreciate the juxtaposition, but they didn’t have time. Staying on the tracks, they went back to Abbey Road, quickly hiding outside the wall to shed their armor and cloak, leaving them in stained casual clothes that one would expect from a Ravenwood student.

Cursing, the wizard grimaces, moving their hand off of their side, and defacing their shirt with blood to make it unrecognizable, as well as coating their face and running their hand through their hair for good measure. It was a lot of blood, and they sway on the spot at the thought, but stumble and continue to move.

When they enter Abbey Road a few merchants shriek, though Prospector Zeke and his companion don’t spare a glance.

Barely having to fake their cries to disguise their voice the wizard speaks to the nearest merchant. “Please, the knights-”

The fox points them towards where they knew the knights’ headquarters are with no hesitation. “Most left- a hunt- but-”

The young wizard sprints, almost blacking out at the pain racing them up their side, ripping at the seams of their stab wound. They vault over the ruin of a wall, fuzziness crawling in their vision.

Doors still wide open to the headquarters, the wizard closes them, gasping in pain.

“Fuckin- Fucking traitor.” They bite out, grinding their teeth to prevent the groan of pain that tries to escape them.

They fumble around the table, before grabbing the parchment and quill Queen Gwendolyn had previously used to write out supply lists and battle plans. The young wizard begins to write, clumsy as their vision dims more and more.

They try not to fall asleep, and it reminds them of back on Earth, of babysitting young children who never wanted to nap, of arguing with their young siblings they practically raised themselves, who are going to miss them, miss their bedtime stories-

The Knights of the Silver Rose do not return to their headquarters until far after nightfall, the full moon lighting their way, though a few pyromancers light torches anyway. Their chainmail and plate armor betray their approach, loud alongside their conversations.

Their faces, the ones not hidden by helmets, are grim. A determination is set into every wrinkle, every haunted eye. A bad hunt always meant bad luck was on the horizon, and this one was no different. 

When a scout races in the darkness towards them, panting hard, out of shape from their retirement, everyone else stands at attention. Still breathing hard, the scout simply waves a hand for the rest to follow. 

They do, and are shocked by the find.

“They returned?” Sir Pike Del Lago asks incredulously. 

“It appears so.” Queen Gwendolyn says dryly, her disdain clear enough to make some of the weaker willed knights shiver.

“They were bleeding, how did we not know-?” Sir Perry Gilliam sniffs the air, grayed jowls shifting. 

“It matters not. Let us hope to find merely their corpse in the Abbey, and hope they did not sabotage our equipment.” The Queen replies, tone sharp as her blade.

A chorus of “Yes my Queen.” makes Queen Gwendolyn sigh and remember why things were much simpler in Dun Dara.

The merchants appear to have gone to bed, leaving only a few lit torches. The knights follow their queen, silent and tense. 

The doors to the headquarters are closed, but unlocked, which leads Queen Gwendolyn to send back a glare to those in charge of staying back to guard the headquarters, the badgers in question whimpering slightly. The queen just huffs in disappointment, before pushing the doors open herself. She is glad that the room is not in disarray, but still finds herself dreading what lies before her.

The room is lit only by the full moon streaming in through the stained glass window, illuminating the slumped form of a small human in softly colored shapes. The queen steps forward, crossing the room swiftly to check the pulse of the poor creature.

Finding the human dead, Queen Gwendolyn sighs, but isn’t surprised. The amount of blood dripping off of their new round table is too much for the human to have been alive. At that point it was a blessing for them to have died. 

In the middle of the Round Table, however, right at the base of the silver rose’s bloom, was a torn sheet of parchment, held in place by an athame with a bloodied handle. With the human’s hand clenched and reaching, it seemed to have been their last action.

Gingerly, the queen lifts the parchment up, letting the top of the page tear more once they recognize the handwriting.

My dearest Queen Gwendolyn,

You have a traitor in your midst. And no, it was not me.

She inhales, glancing back at the blood smeared human’s face and recognizing it.

Whether you believe this or not, do not betray emotion while reading it, for your own safety. He has been waiting for years, and was in on it with the late Sir Malory, having worked to orchestrate your husband’s death. I know it may be hard to realize, but he has been a traitor since he was given his title. 

I don’t know the depth of his plans now, but they fully intended to kill your husband and usurp his thrown if the plan had not worked. He challenged me to a duel when I confronted him, and I couldn’t resist. I suppose my heroics are my end, as you warned me they would be. 

He cheated. He betrayed even the sanctity of the battlefield, revealing how little honor he has. A coward- when I had the upper hand he even tried to bring me in on it, telling me he’d forgive me if I murdered you, my queen. He is the type to monologue, like most villains.

I’m sorry I was too brash. I insulted Pike Del Lago, and died for it, I suppose. I died for the cause. I died for nothing, because no one else will save Avalon if I do not, I died for nothing and I will be known as the second coming of Sir Malory. I’m dying right now and all I can think about is my little siblings, how I promised I’d come back, and now they’re going to be sitting up at night waiting for bedtime stories like I promised, 

Im sorry my queen   Im a coward a fool a dea d wizar d please forgive me and take my quest, save the spira l         lik e I  did, kill morganthe     be the hero please plaese plese ple s pl

Queen Gwendolyn is breathing raggedly, blinking back tears. She is royalty, born and raised, and will not cry at the fact that a person’s last words are lost in the stain of their own blood. Back straight, she folds the paper neatly, slipping it into a breast pocket.

Turning around, she walks through the crowd of her knights. Once she has cleared them, she whips back around. “Well? Are you not coming? I will not hold a meeting over the corpse of a traitorous wretch.” 

She leads them out into the grass, under the light of the moon. She remembers how the young wizard once pleaded with her to return to the war, how they did anything to please her. 

“I cannot do this alone.” She repeats their words to her under her breath. Gwendolyn finds her paw reaching for her sword as the memory almost overtakes her, though the pleading face is replaced by one pressed into the very Round Table the wizard fought for, blood smeared and too rounded with baby fat to be that calm in death.

Gwendolyn wants to believe the wizard so badly. Wants to blame a man instead of a child. But she doesn’t know the full truth yet. She sees Pike Del Lago standing tall, laughing at the side of one of the younger recruits.

Pike had revealed the wizard as a traitor to the knights, had said they would be running away. He was the one who sent a mob after the wizard.

She doesn’t want either to be right, but only one can be. Either that, or both are traitors, and her heart cannot take that.

“My Queen, if I may, what was in that note?” Sir Guy Gascoigne asks, still hesitant to look her in the eye after all these years.

“It was a suicide note.” Gwendolyn responds, tone clipped. She settles on a ruin of a wall, idly noting the small bloodstain on it. 

A few of the knights jeer at the fact, and Gwendolyn wonders just how jaded they have become after war. Or are they naturally cruel, as too many men seem to be? Do they, too, exist to cause pain, only to find it so much easier under the guise of lawfulness?

How many men here have the potential to stab her in the back and spit on her corpse as they spit on the corpse of the one wizard who saved them, gathered them?

“A shame, really. The wizard was skilled in battle.” Gwendolyn begins, “I doubt any of us could have truly beaten them in a fair fight.” She examines her claws, picking at some fur.

The knights silence at that makes her heart race. Will the plan work? Is there really the traitor right in front of her?

“Imagine- the one who defeated them in combat would have been a true hero, if the wizard were not such a coward. I would have likely given the one who bested them anything they asked- if I had not gotten the honor myself. Though, the wizard was a savior of worlds. I doubt we as an army could have taken them on, not without cheating. It is truly a shame they decided our world was not worth saving-”

“My Queen-” Sir Pike starts, his voice failing him.

“Sir Pike.” Queen Gwendolyn stood, approaching him, grabbing one claw in her delicate paws. “Truly, you have my thanks for outing the traitor in our midst, though I’m sorry to say that even you could not have fought them- they were-”

“I DID, my Queen!” Sir Pike begins to look almost excited, a cruel gleam to his eyes that she had never seen before shining in the moonlight. “I fought them- it was how I could warn the rest of their actions-!”

“Oh, Sir Pike!” Queen Gwendolyn feels dread and rage fill her system, pour down her spine. “What did they say when you battled?” She bats her eyes, riling the man up.

“They tried to stop me- told me I could never follow up Sir Malory-” Sir Pike trails off, stepping back.

Gwendolyn unsheathes her sword, then promptly resheathes it in between the plates of the knight’s armor and shell. 

“That was for the young wizard.” She snarls, blood splattering her fur. Pulling out the sword, she finds the rage overtakes her, and she does not stabbing for a while yet.

It takes her knights pulling her off of the desecrated corpse of Pike Del Lago, her screaming about his cowardice, that she stops stabbing him.

#Wiztober2019 #Wiztober #Inktober #Inktober2019 #Wizard101 #Writing #Gwendolyn #Queen Gwendolyn #Sir Pike Del Lago #sorry i used you bud but yknow. real coinkydink you were challengin artorius to a duel that same day #wizzy101 #wiz101 #w101

[uniqueharreh]

The Night We Met

Summary: Harry loses his spouse to a terrible car accident, left with anger, sadness and loneliness, he finds a diary she kept writing for years. 

Warning: TW - depression, mention of a car accident -- if you lost someone and reading about it makes you feel uneasy, please don’t torture yourself like this. Otherwise, a lot of one-sided fluff to a sad person. 

Word Count: 2.2k 

Song Recommendation for this piece is Lord Huron - The Night We Met.

Sitting in our bedroom, without you. I never thought I would. I knew we were meant to be, you inspired a lot of art, a lot of songs that meant a lot to other people. You were my muse for all these years, and now, you weren’t here. 

And I couldn’t bring you back. I couldn’t. Your phone number was never going to be yours again, and you would never reply. 

And I couldn’t just go to your parents, ask if you were home. Because you weren’t, your address wasn’t on the Earth anymore. And, I thought many, many times of reuniting with you. To just stop the years of waiting until I can meet you, hug you and kiss you again. 

I canceled the rest of the tour, the second I found out what happened. And I still blamed myself for it. Not the drunk driver, or your impulsiveness behind the wheel. I always said you are going to have a car accident if you don’t keep both of your hands on the wheel, and both of your eyes on the road. 

You were just always the kind of person, who needed to talk and throw their hands around. Who bent half in their waist when they laughed. And you used to tell me that I was too serious and needed to live a little. 

I sent my driver for you, to bring you to the airport. We were supposed to meet in Japan, and you would continue the rest of the tour with me. I always felt much calmer, when I had you by my side. But you were a strong-willed woman, you needed to have your own business, and sometimes our ways just parted. 

And I admired you how patient you were with me, and my fans, and people around me. And I still remember the day I asked you to come to one of my shows, it was kind of narcissistic. But it was probably one of the best shows I have ever done. 

I could feel you in this room more than anywhere else. You taught me how to open up and talk about my emotions, which led to loads of fights at first, but then, you also taught me how to relax, how to sleep in. You changed me into a much more relaxed man. 

I also remember how my best friend and also a manager was watching the show, from his usual place. Jeff looked devastated, I was in the middle of the show and couldn’t be happier to see you tomorrow when you land. 

I had last two songs to perform, but I felt like something was wrong, and a single look at Jefferey was enough. I knew something bad happened. I walked over to him, leaned a bit lower so I could hear him. The fans were screaming loud, and his, Y/N had an accident, but she’s alright, scared me. But I knew that it’s last two songs and I can worry then. 

I was never the type of musician who would cancel a show in the middle of a set. I thought it was unprofessional, but the creeping emotion in the back of the spine, just made the entire ending uncomfortable. 

You died. You were in an accident, that took your life. There was nothing the responders could do for you. Jeff knew I would collapse on the stage if he told me the truth. Because that’s what happened backstage, I had to be taken to a hospital and to be given IRV. I remember calling your phone so many times, not being able to cope with the fact you were gone.

A quiet buzzing interrupted me from rethinking the night all over and over again. 

Mitch

Are you okay? Just landed in LA with Sarah, can come to meet you if you want.

I gave him a quick call, just to assure him I was doing well. He always texted me, asked me how I was doing. He spent days with me in hospital, taking care of me, trying to make me talk. But I couldn’t even open my eyes without crying. 

I walked around the room frantically, trying to calm myself down. I shouldn’t come to our house so soon. I wasn’t ready yet. But then I noticed a black leather notebook. I remember you to have the notebook with you everywhere, and you would never tell me what you were using it for. You said it’s a top secret and no one can know. 

It opened directly on one certain page, it seems like you used to reread that part, there was lots of heart painted there. And I felt my eyes getting watery at the sight of your handwriting. It was so polished, so beautiful. You could illustrate books, or create all these motivational quotes for online businesses. 

I sat down and started reading, wiping tears that escaped my eyes.

3rd April 2014

Dear diary, 

I met a lovely guy. He is a bit younger than me but so persistent. It was kind of a gimmick. It was like all these young adult books stories. Where the girl spills coffee on the guy and he turns out to be a vampire or something and they fall in love deeply. I was in my usual rush, carrying my laptop, handbag, books, and coffee in one hand while calling my boss. He was yelling at me, as usual, and all of sudden I ran into someone. Of course, I spilled my coffee all over his white t-shirts, my laptop fell on the ground and my screen is bit cracked, but it’s still working quite alright and everything just fell out of my handbag. 

Instead of yelling at me, he started picking my stuff and handing me the books I dropped, making sure my laptop wasn’t broken. He even apologized, and I lost it when I made a proper look at him. He was so beautiful. I never believed in love at first sight, but he looked like someone I would walk to at our wedding. His beautiful green eyes were looking down at me, he was speaking and I wasn’t sure if I heard him. I was just losing myself in the beautiful eyes. And his soothing, low and a bit raspy voice. 

And then he invited me out. That’s when I snapped out of it. And said no. 

What is actually wrong with me. 

Dear diary, it’s 25th of September 2016 and I just married this guy who happens to be my anchor. Just thought of an update. xoxo

I started crying, literal sobs were coming out of my throat. I always knew how much you meant to me, how much of a better person you were making me, Y/N. But I never understood what you saw in me. Even the point of us running into each other was different in my view. I was fighting with my sister over little things through texts. I wasn’t looking where I was going and all of sudden I had the warm black stain on my T-shirt. It was a natural habitat to apologize because it was my fault. 

24th April 2012, 

Dear Diary, 

I’ve been a bit busy lately. But apparently, he got my business card and texted me nonstop. I mean Harry. The guy that I spilled my coffee at. Tonight, we were supposed to meet. Well, he invited me to his show. Or his band’s, actually. Told me to meet him backstage and stuff. 

I must admit he is talented, quite the package. And after his security guard led me to the backstage, he introduced me to everyone in the room. I was nervous, my friends told me who he was, and how successful his band was starting to get. 

After he took a quick shower, we agreed to go somewhere to eat. Harry actually let me choose where. And we went to Mel’s diner. Apparently, they already had a thing called The Harry Special, and I just wanted to make him uncomfortable. To mock him for it even. 

And he seemed to be amused when he heard the diner’s name. I don’t know if he knew I knew. But I definitely knew he knew, that everyone else knew. 

When I ordered the special, he nearly choked on the water he just tried to swallow. 

I think he got me right there. Without us actually talking properly yet. He had a good sense of humor, and he made sure I was feeling comfortable. 

He walked me back home, lending me his cardigan. We talked about our families, and he seemed to be fond and privileged to have such a beautiful family around him. 

He was everything I looked for in a man. 

But I thought those existed only in fictions. 

And he waited if I wanted to give him a kiss, he didn’t make the first move, he didn’t pressure me. And he made sure I was safe home until he walked into a car arriving. 

Dear diary, I think I have a sweet spot for that guy. 

Yeah, you love him, fool.

I was crying. I always thought that our first date was a disaster. Not that inviting your potential date to your work, that is a literally a show of what you can do to thousands of people, is a bad idea. It was an asshole idea. We used to laugh so many times about it. Always asked me if I tried to make sure you wanted to date me, by telling you I was famous. 

And I always mocked you for thinking I needed to show off my wealth to have you. I remember when we first kissed, it took me five dates to finally make the first move. And I think you were enjoying how unsure I was about myself around you. I was stepping on my own foot way too often and always tripped. I sometimes stuttered even. I think you must have thought I didn’t even make it past an elementary school at that point. 

And I would always remember when I was sick and was on voice rest. And everyone tried to make me talk, and make fun of me that I couldn’t. And you bought me that board, that I could write on. You always made sure, that I was happy. 

It was always me, who was cooking. You would never, not that you wouldn’t like to be all domestic together. But you were a terrible cook. 

I remember when you tried to make me homemade pasta for our first anniversary because you knew how much I loved Italy and their cuisine. But you messed up. And I wasn’t even sure how. But it was terrible, but I still ate the entire thing. Because you seemed so excited that you at least tried for me.

And when you decided to open your business, I had your back. I supported you. I tried to help you with everything and even offered to invest in you. But you denied my offer. Always said you need to make it by yourself. 

And I remember when we tried to have a baby together, but then you found out you couldn’t and you felt so sorry, you cried a lot that month. Blaming yourself and telling me, that we can break up, that she’s going to be alright. 

And I remember that you cried, even more, when I offered that we can adopt sometimes later when you’d be ready to become a mother. 

And I remember how you walked the altar, everyone had eyes only for you. You were so beautiful. And it was the first time I properly cried on the public. 

You said yes, and you were mine, and I was yours. 

But now I’m here, crying over the happiest memories. Because I won’t be able to share them with you. Not again. I won’t be able to have a child with you and become a father. 

I won’t be able to sing about you either. Because every memory of you was too painful. 

You had a wonderful funeral, and I tried to sing your favorite song. But just broke into pieces. I shattered. I met my lowest and nothing could make the pain to go away. 

I tried it all, alcohol, drugs, Xanax, antidepressants. But you were still standing there, in your wedding dress, in my mind. 

And I knew you would hate to see me like this. Hiding from all my friends. 

You would kick my ass if you knew that I haven’t talked to my mom or my sister for months. 

That I stopped living, and just lived in the memory of you. 

I wish you could take us to the night we made love for the first time, to take us to the first night of our honeymoon when you expressed how much you loved me and made me cry like a little boy. 

I wish you would take me with you. 

Because the world is a very dull place without you. 

#harry styles #harry styles fluff #harry styles sad #harry styles angst #harry styles one shot #harry styles oneshot #harry styles oneshots #harry styles one shots #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles writing #harry styles romance #harry styles ftdt #emotional piece #tw #writing

[redactedfing-blog]

Megamind Modern Cowboy AU (Part 1)

@all-these-trees-stealing-mah-o2 cheers for the motivation I did the thing:

NOTE: It was heavily inspired off of a post by the aforementioned person and in the film, it sounds like Megamind is called “Lee”, so I used it as his name. I also found out cowboys still exist in America so there’s that too.

--------

Usually, it was said that the city was more predictable than the country.

So when Warden John Taylor heard a loud crash coming from the prison courtyard one Christmas morning, he was perplexed. Three prisoners huddled around the foreign object, gawking at whatever was inside.

He expected it to be a bomb, or some failed attempt to smuggle contraband into the prison by some gang member who still had contacts on the outside. Most unexpectedly, though, it turned out to be a rather frightened, and equally confused baby. The shock made him see past the infant’s cerulean blue skin, wide emerald eyes and abnormally large head almost immediately. Why would a child end up here of all places? Not even his brother Shaun, a prison guard, could believe his eyes. Both of them thought they had seen everything down where they grew up in Louisiana, but they were wrong, it so seemed.

The blue infant had a fish, which looked unnervingly like a piranha. Any hand going towards the infant was met with a stern, toothy glare. There was also some sort of pacifier, which glowed with hues of electric blue. John thought it might have been toxic, the way it was glowing, but the infant seemed unharmed when they had it.

Speaking of unharmed, the kid hadn’t managed to come here without a few bruises, much to both John and Shaun’s anger. The infant couldn’t have been more than just a week old, but despite the fact the child appeared bright and well, both feared that they may have suffered some brain damage on their journey here. A long wait in the prison infirmary negated these worries, as well as giving new ones. The infant, (now confirmed to be male), had a strong immune system to the most bizarre of diseases Earth could offer. The more common ones, however, did serious harm. One dose of the common cold wiped him out, leaving John unsure if the kid would even make it to a year old. Luckily, it appeared he would.

Sure enough, John adopted the infant and was very quick to let Shaun know of his new position, which was now Uncle Shaun. The infant, now named Lee, began to grow up into a happy (though not very tall) young boy. For the first four years of his life, he went between staying in the prison and traveling down to the family ranch in Louisiana. John saw it fit that he could grow up alongside the rest of the family, and adopted or not, they were quick to like him. Grandma and Grandpa Taylor were happy to have another grandchild to spoil with treats, and Rodney, his cousin, became his best friend (second to Minion, of course).

There were times where Rodney and Lee could pick up an ice pop, run into the valley and now return for hours, insisting that they were playing cowboys and that they had to go and hunt the thieves. Brandishing their ice pop packets and folding the top, claiming they were ‘guns’. They would dash through the marshes, squealing and laughing as they hid behind trees, clamber up hills, and even go far enough to pet some of the cattle. They would return hours later covered in sweat, boots and their kerchiefs covered in dirt, grinning with traces of sugar around their mouths. They never went very far, only how far their short legs would take them, and Uncle Boe always kept an eye out while they were adventuring.

Lee always began crying when they had to go back to Michigan for the other part of the year.

When they lived at the prison, back in Metro City, John could see that his son was easily influenced by the other prisoners. Most of their “advice” wasn’t too bad, but John didn’t see the need to be telling a young child to hit anyone who got in their face, especially without reason. At least John could be assured that Lee wouldn’t be hurt, given that the prisoners closest to where the kid was were moderately harmless in nature. He didn’t bat an eye when Lee was enrolled in kindergarten the following month and didn’t really think about how the other children would react to his appearance. Not only was he blue, but he had a rather solid Cajun accent, which would be enough to make anyone raise their eyebrows. Now, John himself had that same accent, and he was quite proud of it, but young kids rarely understand how differences work, and this was one of those times they didn’t.

The school was a disaster. Every day John watched his son return to the prison with bruises or cuts, and every dad he came back quieter and quieter. It was odd, really, considering the fact that he had a reputation for being a rowdy child back home. Seeing him barricade himself in his room, without a word to anyone, was incredibly worrying. What was even more worrying, however, was when he returned without the invention he had made that morning, or when a note saying “space-freak cowboy” was taped to his back in what John couldn’t shake looked like the teachers handwriting. Whatever the prisoners had taught him to suddenly came to light, when he was sent home early for punching (or at least trying to) another kid. John was aghast at Lee’s hand because it seemed that his hand had suffered more damage than the other student. The bones were shattered, with multiple breaks and fractures from his wrist to his knuckles. It was almost as if he had punched a brick wall.

The school fiasco went on for four months, with complaints from a parent that Lee was trying to ‘attack’ their child. The complaints only came from one person, and whenever John, or whoever was investigating, asked for proof - the parent never delivered any. They always claimed that it was the ‘emotional’ damage done to her son, who John found out was named Wayne, and not the physical damage, despite teachers reports and the parent originally claiming that Lee had physically attacked him. Whenever John went to speak to his son about this Wayne kid, all he could see was that Lee began to physically tremble, followed by him seething with anger and crying about how horrible Wayne was, but that nobody wanted to see it.

It wasn’t until one day, where Lee set off a blue paint bomb in the school, that John found out everything that had happened. He had been expelled, and through a stream of tears, Lee recited everything that was said and done to him throughout the past number of weeks. This time, it was John, and by extension, Uncle Shaun, who were seething with anger, and remarks that the parents of these monsters of kids were entitled and ignorant. One call back home to the rest of the Taylors sealed it, and a month after his fifth birthday, Lee was told that he, along with Uncle Shaun and his dad, were moving to the Louisiana ranch permanently. John remarked that he had never seen Lee look so eager to go somewhere following going to school, and the sluggish, unwilling attitude that the school had given him had turned into one of excitement. Shaun was worried the kid would fall out of his car seat should he become even more eager.

Once everything was settled, all of Lee’s aunts and uncles were quick to tell him about how he didn’t need to be worried about the ‘dirty rats’ that were the children and teacher of the Lil’ Gifted school, and that the ranch was going to be far more fun. Like Rodney, Lee began to be homeschooled, though his family remarked that they needn’t be bothered given that Lee was exceptional at learning, and could already breeze through physics textbooks intended for college students. This didn’t stop him from teaching Rodney, however, and they would always rush around the ranch afterward. In between the horses, the metalshop, the kitchen, the garage, there weren’t many places where they wouldn’t go.

Rodney, to Lee’s description, looked vaguely similar to Wayne. Though he had more freckles, dotted across his face and arms, and his hair was more wavy and poofy, in comparison to Wayne having rather flat, combed, (“dumb”, as Lee put it) hair. Rodney was two years older than Lee, unlike Wayne only being one year older, and Lee was quick to mention that Rodney was obviously, much cooler and nicer than Wayne could ever be. Rodney took pride in this and said that if he ever saw Wayne, he would deliver him a smack in the face. Lee never mentioned that Wayne was invulnerable, partially because he really did want to see him get slapped across his smug, entitled face, and partially because he didn’t want to bring up what happened to his hand months prior.

As far as Lee was concerned, whatever happened, had happened. It didn’t matter because now he got to stay at the ranch forever and he didn’t have to see his stupid classmates or the loud city or that ugly superman-imitating Wayne again. Still, he missed some of the prison ‘uncles’, and he didn't want to remember how much weight the words that the teacher had said to him held. He wasn’t a monster, nor was he very evil, despite what she insisted. His dad had reassuringly told him that she would lose her ability to teach, and wouldn’t be able to teach anywhere ever again. It had still hurt him, though. Still wounded whatever pride he had. It was the one thing he never mentioned to his dad, even during his outburst. However, that didn’t matter right now. He could do something about that later.

For now, he was going to settle down in front of the (only) television and chow down on the apple pie his grandparents had lovingly made beside Rodney, and watch Tom and Jerry until he could put Minion in his tank, go to his new room and go to bed. As far as he should be concerned, everything was going to be great.

#megamind #megamind fanfic #megamind modern cowboy au #megamind au #cant believe i wrote something #i hope yall like it #cowboy