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coffeeandmagicaltales · 7 months

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The Auror&The Devil part 2

The defender of Hogwarts, a fifth-year student, Morana, doesn't feel the taste of victory, but the pain of responsabilities tied to the ancient magic. After Professor Fig's death, prof. Sharp was supposed to take on the role of her mentor. Her sudden outburst of suppressed anger and grief, left him uncertain about Mora's future...

A story born in my head, about my OC character Morana and prof. Aesop Sharp. Sorry for my english, I'm from Poland.

(Student-teacher relationship platonic (for now), mentioned trauma, mentioned death, extensive use of the word f*ck, make some coffee/tea and enjoy)

"Here, this should help," Sharp said quietly, handing Morana a cup of effervescent liquid. "It tastes awful, but you won't catch a cold tomorrow.” Despite it scratching her throat, she downed it in one gulp without a word and handed the professor an empty vessel, wrapping herself in the blanket he had conjured especially for her.

She looked absolutely miserable; disheveled, huddled in the armchair, trembling. Emotions were just beginning to ebb from her, and adrenaline left her veins, leaving behind an intense coldness and a feeling of fatigue. She stared blankly ahead, desperately, without looking towards the part of Sharp's classroom, which her aggressive outburst had left in shambles, causing her embarrassment and guilt burning her cheeks. Piles of destroyed books and dozens of shattered vials containing Sharp's specimens were a pitiful monument to her tantrum.

The man watched her closely, leaning on the edge of the round table. Damn, she looked awful... She was a wreck of a person, and he couldn't fathom how someone could bring her to this state. His heart slowly filled with bitterness towards Professor Fig. Foolish man... he thought to himself, and made a silent tsk with his lips, when he was thinking about what might have happened if the fucking trials, Matilda told him about brought her death.

The silence was becoming irritating, so he crossed his arms over his chest, took a deep breath.

"Feeling better?" he asked with a hint of concern in his voice, eager to break the awkward silence. She responded with a nod and a sniffle. "Good," he replied and was about to say something when she interrupted him.

"I'm sorry for everything," she said in a voice so soft, filled with regret and shame... Merlin... His heart skipped a beat, and a tear welled up in his dark eye, which he quickly brushed away, pretending there was an itch under his eyelid. From the beginning, he had no intention of being angry with her. He knew what she felt all too well. She had suppressed her emotions for so long, and they had to find an outlet eventually. He was relieved it was happening now rather than letting the pressure build, leading to an explosive release. It could have ended differently. He had witnessed the suffering of others many times, especially when carrying out more challenging tasks for the Ministry, and their outcomes were far from happy. He often had to deliver news of a child's or a somebody loved one's death... He comforted others and had to be the voice of reason when others couldn't think rationally. Over the years, he had learned to keep his cool and suppress his emotions... Everyone considered him a man with nerves of steel, and maybe that was true, but only until the very threshold of his home. Once he crossed the magical boundary and entered his intimate, solitary space, he often collapsed on the floor and sobbed, feeling so vulnerable and fragile that he might shatter into pieces at any moment.

He wasn't heartless, quite the opposite. If the students found out who he really was... Sweet Salazar!... He was afraid he would completely lose control over them. He preferred to keep his distance and clearly define the boundaries between times of relaxed behavior in his presence and moments when seriousness and focus were required. Well, at least that's how it had worked until now... With Morana, those rules seemed to have no place, especially considering that just an hour ago, they were sipping tea together... well, to be honest, in the company of a stuffed Niffler and Mandrake... The memory made him feel embarrassed, but he wasn't sure whether he felt more awkward or scared of the prospect of gossip that would surely emerge if the girl accidentally told someone that the fearsome Professor Sharp once had worried about the fate of an abandoned toy.

"Why didn't you run away?" she asked with sadness in her voice, probably referring to the thunder of ancient magic she had unleashed on his illusion. Her big blue eyes, brimming with sorrow, were fixed on Sharp, who sent her a faint smile.

"Oh, if I weren't prepared for every eventuality, I would have nipped your aggression in the bud... And definitively, if I weren't in control, I wouldn't have allowed myself to make that highly cunning remark about goblins, for which I apologize."

„In a way, it was funny..." Morana sniffed, wiping a wet cheek, and confessed with a trembling voice: "I haven't been myself lately. I don't sleep well, I have no appetite... often, I feel like only my body is present... I constantly think about everything I did..."

"And what did you do, hmm?" Sharp asked gently, sensing that it was a good moment to learn more about her nighttime escapades.

"I tried to divert poachers from the creatures, and Ranrok's lackeys from people... Often on my own, less frequently with someone's help... I felt that the Aurors were doing nothing at all. I was furious. They weren't where someone needed help, so I decided to..." her voice broke.

"You decided to take matters into your own hands?" Sharp asked softly, and she nodded shyly in response. Lost in thought, he touched his lips with long fingers and then nodded. "I understand you."

"Hmm?" Morana mumbled, looking at him with slight disbelief.

"I understand you," he repeated and let out a sigh, sitting on the edge of the table as his leg began to painfully numb from standing too long in one position. He reached for the letters and put them in his jacket pocket so he wouldn't forget about them when he returned to his quarters, then mumbled to himself and unraveled his thoughts. "The world of Aurors is complicated, entangled in politics, rules, and orders that must be followed unconditionally. According to the myth, they are supposed to bring good, and sometimes, when requests for help are not heard, you can feel... hmm... left to fate. Trust me, many times I've been eager to take on a task, but I wasn't allowed to... I hate standing by idly, watching events unfold, not necessarily in a positive way, knowing that I could help resolve a case much more efficiently and better."

"I think I no longer want to be an Auror," Mora said quietly. Her disappointment audible in her voice, reminded him of his own words every time something in his former job didn't go as planned. Poor thing... he thought sympathetically, seeing her sad eyes and hearing the shatter of her Slytherin ambitions collided with hard reality.

"Well, not everyone has to be one. And certainly not to be content with life... That's what many students, especially those from Slytherin, confuse with the notion of achieving success," he explained, running his hand through his disheveled hair and then added in a more serious tone, hiding some deeply buried resentment, "... Some wizarding families exert tremendous pressure on my students, driven by this nonsense. I don't want that to happen to you."

"I don't know exactly where I come from," Morana explained. "It's just as likely that I was born into a Muggle family as it is that I was born into a pure-blood wizarding family."

"I know that the Dimm family adopted you... I also heard from Professor Weasley that you come from somewhere in the central part of the continent..."

"I was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, somewhere in Moravia. I spent most of my life in the local shelters, and then Mr. Dimm adopted me. He found me sleeping between bags of hops and grain, which he was transporting to the United Kingdom. There, new documents were made for me, and they estimated my age more or less..." Morana smiled fondly at the thought of the Dimms. "They are good to me. They knew that others called me a 'witch,' and yet they took me in. They always wanted to have a child, but the years passed, and there was no crying or laughter to be heard in the room they had prepared for their offspring... Then they got me. At first, I didn't know your language at all, and it took me a long time to learn it. We communicated through signs."

"Hmm," Sharp murmured. "You talk about them as if you didn't feel like their child.... And if they didn't care about you, I wouldn't have to brew an entire bathtub of Wiggenweld potion for Fig, who returned from the first conversation with them punctured with pitchforks..." he said in his usual sarcastic tone.

"Because I'm not their child," she cut in, and grumbled, "Mrs. Dimm asked me many times to call her 'mom' because it would make her happy, but I can't get those words out..."

"Well, yes, relationships with parents can be difficult," Sharp nodded understandingly, thinking of his own father. Then, noticing that it was already quite dark outside, he looked at his pocket watch and changed the subject. "It's getting late; you should get some rest. To finalize things... please tell me, what do you want to work on in the near future? The end of the year is just around the corner, and I think we'll take our work seriously in the next one..."

Morana paused for a moment. Sleep was pulling her more strongly in its direction; the warm blanket and the soothing bubbling of the cauldrons in the classroom didn't help. She stifled a yawn.

"I'd like to continue studying ancient magic... Maybe I'll consider becoming an Animagus... What do you think about that, sir?"

Sharp smiled indulgently. "I don't know why, but for some reason, I didn't expect you to mention additional lessons with Professor Binns, but planning to become an Animagus right away?" He laughed sincerely. Morana was surprised at how well the smile suited him. For a few moments, before he became serious again, he had become a completely different person from the one she had known until now; he leaned back amusingly, clasping his chest, and his eyes shone kindly. Despite his tall stature and the ominous scar, he appeared to her as the gentlest creature on Earth. She thought she'd rather die than ever disappoint him. "I think you should master more spells because you only know a handful of them. They're useful, yes, but they might not be enough when you run into more trouble, which I'm sure you will. 'Expecto Patronum' will be one of the priorities. Don't think that I'll let you off the hook with potions either. The cauldron and ladle are your best friends from now on, and I advise you to slowly get used to this idea. Understood?"

"Yes, Professor."

"Good," Sharp said, nodding his head and gestured with his hand toward the damaged part of the classroom. He smiled mysteriously, waiting for Morana's move. The girl gathered her courage and rose from the chair, leaving the blanket on it. She took a deep breath.

"Reparo!"

Her wand swished through the air, and the spell lifted all the shards of glass and scraps of paper into the air, swirling them together and returning them to their original form. Sharp looked at Morana's work without emotion, although he was secretly pleased with the results of her charms. He slid off the desk and limped toward her.

"Follow me, if you please, Miss Dimm," he ordered, passing by her. Morana walked very slowly, matching his pace, walking arm in arm with him. Sharp was not used to having someone walk beside him, and Morana could see the blush that appeared on his embarrassed face and the anxious glances he cast in her direction, as if he wanted to check if she was impatient with his slow walk. He was afraid he might be a burden to someone walking alongside him. Out of nervousness or cold, he rubbed his hands together and, not knowing what to do with them, held them closely to his chest. He had been talking quite a bit, confident in his words... Well, until now for he was compleately lost in thought, focusing on each step. Morana wasn't sure if she could say something that would convince him that she fully accepted the way he limped, that he didn't have to be so nervous around her. She looked at him with a gentle, cheerful smile, letting him know that she could easily adapt to his pace. In fact, she'd be happy to offer him her arm so he could lean on it because he must have been in a lot of pain. But seeing her sheepish smile, he seemed even more flustered.

"In ten minutes, I finish my 'shift.' The headmaster sometimes checks if we're at our post, and I don't want to disappoint him after the last 'incident.' Unfortunately, I won't be able to escort you to the dormitory, so I suggest you walk a bit faster later to avoid being catched by someone more competent in this regard than me." he said through clenched teeth, his voice filled with embarrassment as he glanced at his left knee.

Both of them stopped in front of the door leading to the dungeons.

"Is there something you wanted to show me, Professor?"

"Well, rather... I still have something to tell you..."

"AESOP SHARP!" The raised voice of the witch from the portrait shattered the silence in the castle, and Sharp rolled his eyes.

"For you, Professor Aesop Sharp, if you please," he mumbled without even looking at her.

Lethia Burbley let out an exclamation of indignation and waved her ladle at him.

"How very dare you! Well, let me tell you that the students are disappointed with the potions classes, and absolutely no one learned anything this year! They long for me to return! If only I were the one teaching these classes!"

"Well, maybe if you remembered the ingredients in your 'experiments,' then perhaps you would be still teaching them," Sharp retorted and before Lethia could make a sound, he raised his wand. "Nox!"

A thick darkness engulfed everything.

"Well, every shift is the same," Sharp sighed quietly. Morana heard him stow his wand in his sleeve. "I always have to choose between the light and Lethia's comments... it's not a fair choice, but between us, the Headmaster doesn't pay me enough to go any further than just a step outside the door." He grumbled under his breath and added in a whisper, his "What I wanted to tell you is not to cut yourself off from your friends, Miss Dimm. After my accident, I burned all the bridges, which was a big mistake, and I prefer that others know that loneliness is more painful than finding the courage to have an open and honest conversation with those close to you. Even though I treated everyone around me terribly, two of my colleagues didn't reject me at that time... for which I am eternally grateful to them... And now, go to the dormitory... Your first task from me for the foreseeable future will be to talk to others. It doesn't have to be tomorrow or right away; there's no need to rush, but please, do it."

"Lumos," Morana whispered, and in the faint light, she saw the professor looking at her expectantly, wanting to hear her assurance that she had taken his words to heart. "I promise."

"Good," he replied in a tone that was devoid of emotion, but his expression betrayed that he was pleased with Morana's response. As she started to walk back in her direction, Sharp approached a bit closer toward the light emanating from the tip of her wand and gazed directly into her eyes, gathering himself to say something more. In his mind, he carefully calculated every word. Morana was finally able to get a close look at his face. Typically, the potions classroom had a pale, greenish light that distorted reality, or she was simply too scared to look in his direction or stand closer to him. Unnecessarily so. There was nothing scary about him. In his dark eyes, where small glimmers of light danced like fireflies against the backdrop of a night sky, she only saw kindness... sensitivity... She felt safe in his presence, and the castle's cold walls became... cozy?

His narrow lips quivered. "Mora, even if you have doubts... even if you realize that your life is submerged in darkness... you can still walk through it guided by the light within you," he said softly and briefly, with just the tips of his fingers, touched her raised hand, which held the wand,. His cold, soft hands reassured Morana that she was in good hands and could count on him. She sniffled, feeling a bit moved by his words.

"Good night, Miss Dimm. Sleep well."

"Thank you, Professor Sharp... from the bottom of my heart."

"Well... ehm um," he stammered, only slightly turning his head in her direction, and then rolled his eyes. What am I going to do with you, girl? his expression seemed to say.

Morana watched him as he hobbled toward his chambers.

#aesop sharp #professor aesop sharp #hogwarts legacy #professor sharp #hogwarts legacy fanfic #hogwarts legacy oc

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duckiereads · 1 year

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9 Books I Saved from the Store at the Barnes and Noble 50% Hardcovers Sale

Can you believe that people were just going to leave these books at the store without homes? I simply couldn't bear it, so I picked them up and took them home so that they might have a good home in the new year.😂

As I write this, it is in fact the last day of the Barnes and Noble After Christmas 50% off Hardcover sale. Last year, I only brought home two books. This year, I took a few more than that.

As always: Summaries are from Publisher/Author sites.

If any of these interest you and if you are able, please support your favorite bookstores or local libraries when acquiring these and other books!

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest -- the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...

The Project by Courtney Summers

From Courtney Summers, the New York Times bestselling author of the 2019 Edgar Award Winner and breakout hit Sadie, comes her electrifying follow-up—a suspenseful, pulls-no-punches story about an aspiring young journalist determined to save her sister no matter the cost. Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died in a tragic car accident, her sister Bea joined the elusive community called The Unity Project, leaving Lo to fend for herself. Desperate not to lose the only family she has left, Lo has spent the last six years trying to reconnect with Bea, only to be met with radio silence. When Lo’s given the perfect opportunity to gain access to Bea’s reclusive life, she thinks they’re finally going to be reunited. But it’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, and as Lo delves deeper into The Project and its charismatic leader, she begins to realize that there’s more at risk than just her relationship with Bea: her very life might be in danger. As she uncovers more questions than answers at each turn, everything Lo thought she knew about herself, her sister, and the world is upended. One thing doesn’t change, though, and that’s what keeps her going: Bea needs her, and Lo will do anything to save her.

All Signs Point to Yes edited by G. Haron Davis, Cam Montgomery, and Adrianne White

A haunted Aquarius finds love behind the veil. An ambitious Aries will do anything to stay in the spotlight. A foodie Taurus discovers the best eats in town (with a side of romance). A witchy Cancer stumbles into a curious meet-cute. Whether it’s romantic, platonic, familial, or something else you can’t quite define, love is the thing that connects us. All Signs Point to Yes will take you on a journey from your own backyard to the world beyond the living as it settles us among the stars for thirteen stories of love and life. These stories will touch your heart, speak to your soul, and have you reaching for your horoscope forevermore.

A Show for Two by Tashi Bhyiuan

All Mina Rahman wants is to finally win the Golden Ivy student film competition, get into her dream school, and leave New York City behind for good. When indie film star Emmitt Ramos enrolls in her high school under a secret identity to research his next role, he agrees to star in her short film for the competition…if she acts as his NYC tour guide. As Mina ventures across the five boroughs with Emmitt, the city she grew up in starts to look more like home than it ever has before. Suddenly, Mina’s dreams—which once seemed impenetrable—begin to crumble, and she’s forced to ask herself: Is winning worth losing everything?

The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton

Eleven-year-old Ella Durand is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum Training Institute, a magic school in the clouds where Marvellers from around the world practice their cultural arts, like brewing Indian spice elixirs and bartering with pesky Irish pixies. Despite her excitement, Ella discovers that being the first isn’t easy—some Marvellers mistrust her magic, which they deem “bad and unnatural.” But eventually, she finds friends in elixirs teacher, Masterji Thakur, and fellow misfits Brigit, a girl who hates magic, and Jason, a boy with a fondness for magical creatures. When a dangerous criminal known as the Ace of Anarchy escapes prison, supposedly with a Conjuror’s aid, tensions grow in the Marvellian world and Ella becomes the target of suspicion. Worse, Masterji Thakur mysteriously disappears while away on a research trip. With the help of her friends and her own growing powers, Ella must find a way to clear her family’s name and track down her mentor before it’s too late.

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds’ Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding. Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever. When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

Note: Sequel to Legendborn

The shadows have risen, and the line is law. All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights—only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new: A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion. But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped. Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected. When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But enemies are everywhere, Bree’s powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can’t escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death. If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first—without losing herself in the process.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

Eros/Psyche by Maria Llovet

The Rose female boarding school is paradise for young girls...but only if you follow the rules. Because, if you disobey them, you can end up expelled, or even worse, dead. Sara and Silje are two students learning the rules of the school, which includes classes by day...and the casting of curses and spells by night. A love develops between the two, which is tender, but threatens to break under the weight of the dark secret society within The Rose. Acclaimed creator Maria Llovet (Faithless, Heartbeat, Loud) brings you a surreal, bewitching tale of love, magic, and tragedy in Eros/Psyche.

Did anybody else save some books from the shelves during the sale? What should I read first?

#booklr #book haul #books #the marvellers #carmilla #maria llovet #i'm glad my mom died #barnes and noble #legendborn #tracy deonn #sabaa tahir #national book award #courtney summers

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wtf-amiru · 1 year

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Ship asks: 2, 12, 13, and 46?

2. Who wakes up early/Who sleeps in late? I believe I've answered this before honestly, and I know I've talked about it but A'miru is NOT a morning person at all. I could see her a 10am wake up kind of person tho. G'raha is a morning person, perpetual student with perpetual student habits of being up early for class bc you know he's there because he wants to be. The only way you're getting Miru out of bed in the early am is with coffee lol

12. Do they have a difficult time when separated from each other, or are they fairly independent? I think they were both so solitary before each other that it's a weird mix of both. They're fine alone on their own and will get done what they need to do and do it without complaining or whining but gosh they miss each other. Miru misses not having to say anything to communicate how she feels and I think G'raha, honestly, misses her needing him for little things like waking up and when she forgets things. He enjoys coaxing her awake and being sort of the "organized one", and he enjoys the little things like joking around and being general cat clowns together, she brings out a lot of mischief in him, helps him let go after all he's had to sit through alone. So yeah, they're both incredibly independent but boy howdy they miss each other a ton. Don't bother them for a while after time away from each other, they're either gonna be gross or be menaces lmao.

13. How do they keep in contact when they’re apart? Do they write letters, talk on the phone, or simply wait out the time? Oh Tataru got them their own linkpearls. They're insufferable over a shared connection with other people. About 2 weeks after G'raha was back from the first Tataru gifted them their private linkpearl bc other scions were tired of hearing them chat about nothing for hours. Just like....I need you to picture being in a group chat with 2 gremlins in love. Literally the worst especially with traveling and mixed timezones. 2 am and hearing "found a bug that reminded me of you" and then hearing "A BUG?! Babe, c'mon, are you calling me a bug?" Like just....they're not incredibly sickly sweet @ each other, that's not why the scions wanted separate linkpearls for them, they're just stupid @ each other lol

46. Do they consider their relationship casual or serious? Is the answer different depending on who you ask? Why? They are that kind of casual you get when you know you're gonna be with that person for a good long while. Like yes they are "serious" but neither of them have grand plans or anything huge like that, they are not inherently serious people. They're both still in their mid to late 20's so they're not really thinking about buying houses and having kids kind of serious. So like....yes they both point at each other and go "that is my life partner" but also they're still very much.....i hesitate to say kids, but still figuring their shit out. Will they last forever? Well they sure hope so but understand life throws unimaginable curve balls at you (haaaaaave you played msq?) and recognize something could happen still to separate them, but have no plans themselves to spend their time with anyone else. And then after all this I have to try and explain how Estinien fits in. He fully has his own life and shit with Aymeric in my canon, him and a'miru just kinda have this closeness of comfort from when A'miru was dragging herself out of the depths of depression. So they have a weird little thing. They sleep together when they're on assignments together, they occasionally bang they have a non-committal relationship that the others involved understand and are fine with. He's her emotional support elf in extremely specific situations. G'raha -> words, comfort, home. Estinien -> stability, brick wall, blunt and not afraid to piss her off to tell her what needs to be said (he's the "you're being an incredible dumbass" one) Anyway I'm not sure this makes sense to anyone else but me but here ya go :3 lol

#ffxiv #askies #brainisafk #a'miru #a'miru headcanons #g'raha #estinien #i genuinely don't know how to make estinien make sense to anyone else but me #hopefully my ramblings are legible lol

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mt-musings · 1 year

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Bluebell

Chapter 49

After being abruptly transferred to the BAU at what she suspects was Gideon's request, Cassie Boann struggles to find her footing. Shy and solitary by nature, the transition is made all the more difficult when Dr. Spencer Reid seems to take an almost immediate dislike to her. Unfortunately for them both, their respective areas of expertise leave them paired off more often than not. But when Cassie's past literally starts hunting her, Spencer is forced to consider that he might, in fact, not hate her at all.

Quite the opposite, actually.

Spencer Reid x OC

Warnings: Canon typical violence, kidnapping, stalking, drug use, blood, injury, death, PTSD, eventual smut, more tags to be added

Series Masterlist

Read on AO3

49. Feel the Silence

“He’s targeting brunettes,” Spencer said as she poured over autopsy reports from the previous two victims.

“There’s an excess of rage in the attacks. In two out of three he’s broken the breastbone. That takes roughly nine-hundred and fifty pounds of pressure,” Cassie replied without looking up.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“He’s targeting brunettes. Doubtless they’ll be a run on the local beauty store.”

“Cass, I’m telling you, you need to be careful, you fit the profile.”

She looked up, biting off her quip that she fit the profile for about fifty-three percent of their victim types. “It’s fine, Spencer, you know I’m careful.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make it any less worrying. He killed the last girl in the ten minutes between shuttles.”

“Well, we better catch him fast then,” she said, turning back to the evidence. Spencer had begun to worry more since finding out about Hadeon, something that should have been endearing, but she found mildly irritating. She knew it wasn’t how he meant it, but it felt like he was questioning her capabilities as an agent, her ability to look after herself, and she’d worked extremely hard and continued to in order to keep in peak condition for the field. There was a reason she kept three guns on her at all times in the field, that she’s kept a knife lodged in her boot since everything had happened in Montana last year.

Nothing had changed since New York, since Frank, except for the fact that he now knew.

It didn’t help either that Gideon was off, had been since returning from bereavement. She didn’t say anything, knew it was perfectly understandable, all things considered, but she couldn’t help but feel if Spencer needed to worry about anyone, it should be Gideon.

She certainly was.

They hadn’t spoken, really, since she’d left his apartment. She’d tried a few times, but he’d always given her short, one word answers or declined her calls. She knew he needed time, knew it would be a while before the extent of the trauma he was working through even properly processed, never mind started to heal.

She wished she could do something to help.

She sighed and shut her files. “I’m going to see what Gideon and Hotch have working. Text me if you think of anything.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She shot him a look. “Spencer, I can walk to the other end of campus. You have interviews to get through with JJ. I’ll see you later.”

She left before he had a chance to argue. It took her ten minutes to cross the campus to where Hotch and Gideon were going over the school’s new security measures with the local detective.

“Have you gone over campus security personnel?” She asked by way of greeting.

“We have the Dean pulling files now, Prentiss and Morgan are conducting preliminary interviews,” Hotch replied.

“Who has access to the safety shuttle schedule?”

“It’s posted on the school’s website and hardcopies went out to staff and students.”

She made a face. That didn’t do much to narrow their pool then, though it was still most likely to be someone within the school community. Her money was still on someone within security—the timing was just too clean.

She glanced at Gideon as he surveyed the scene. He seemed out of it, almost distracted. It was disconcerting—he was always the first to say that the focus always had to be foremost on the case.

“What did you and Reid find out from the coroner?”

“Nothing that we didn’t already have an idea of. No particulates of use, nothing note-worthy as far as weapon, standard Bowie with an inch or so of serrated blade at the base. Spence and JJ are interviewing girls at the east dorm, where the latest victim lived.”

Hotch nodded. Cassie glanced at Gideon as the detective rattled off the plans for the new security camera, only half listening. She followed his gaze, finding nothing but a few gnarled trees. He looked away as if caught.

He avoided looking at her the rest of the day, avoided talking to her unless absolutely necessary—something that made the afternoon particularly difficult, considering she was supposed to help him interrogate their prime suspect. After all, he was a raging misogynist with a special hatred for brunettes—she was just the person to agitate him so Gideon could get him talking.

It didn’t work though, not really. They got about fifteen minutes in before he lawyered up. The way Gideon looked at her on their way out of the room made if feel like it was her fault.

She didn’t speak to Gideon the rest of the night. She didn’t try. She guessed it would only make it worse.

She stopped outside his hotel room on her way back from the vending machine. She knew he was hurting, knew he missed Sarah terribly, felt crushed by the guilt of her death. She wished she had the right thing to say, knew something to make it even a little more bearable.

She balanced a bag of peanut M&Ms on the handle without knocking.

When he’d first pulled her out of the woods in Montana she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t look at him. Until he’d come back to sit by her bed in the hospital with a bag from the vending machine. He’d sorted through it, filling a paper cup with just the blue ones. It was the first thing she ate in a week.

She doubted he even remembered it.

She turned toward her own door, looking forward to a few hours of fitful sleep. They’d caught the guy, at least. Now their only problem was going to be holding him.

She didn’t hear about the murder-suicide until after the ambulance had shown up. She’d been at the dorm with Spencer and JJ, going over Anna’s room.

She hated that she was glad she hadn’t been with Prentiss and Morgan, hated that she was glad she was spared the ten minutes of futilely trying to staunch the bleeding, of being soaked in the blood of two murderers.

She should have felt worse for the girl, Anna. She knew she should have—she was clearly ill, clearly suffering. It still didn’t change the fact that she’d killed a girl to see what it felt like, to try and get Tubbs to make her his next victim. A girl she’d claimed to like.

A girl who would never grow up and graduate, or start a career, or a family, a girl who’s family would spend the rest of their lives coping with her loss.

She wished she felt bad for Anna. She should, she knew. She was a troubled kid. Still, she only felt disgust.

She pushed it down, trying to ignore it.

She glanced over at the other side of the plane where Gideon sat, pretending to sleep. She knew by the set of his shoulders he was still awake, mind reeling.

“Cass?” Spencer asked softly, diverting her focus.

“Yeah?” she asked, voice equally as quiet, keen not to disturb the rest of the team that was either sleeping or reading.

He didn’t say anything else, just slipped his hand around hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. She squeezed his back.

It was the last shred of normalcy before everything fell apart.

First was the fact that Hotch was suspended for two weeks, the team grounded until he returned. They all knew it was a horseshit call, that Strauss had it out for him, but they couldn’t exactly do anything about it.

Gideon didn’t come in after the case. He didn’t answer her calls, either. He wasn’t at the apartment, or the hotel, and she checked with his friend Dr. Louis in the ornithology department at the Museum of Natural History—he hadn’t heard anything from him since everything had gone down with Frank.

So she called again. She called and called and called and called for days, and each day the dread in the pit of her stomach grew. No one else could get a hold of him either—he’d blown off his and Spencer’s weekly chess game without explanation and Spencer had slept the night in his office waiting for him to show. She knew Spencer didn't want her to know, but it was fairly glaring that he was in the same button up and trousers as the day before.

And now Prentiss a no-call-no-show.

She glanced at him across the table, brows furrowed, cataloguing the shadows under his eyes. He raised a brow and she looked away, towards the newest carnage on the screen.

She swore under her breath as JJ outlined the case, flipping through the coroner’s reports. The rib extraction was particularly brutal, completed antemortem and judging from the wreckage left behind, probably done with some sort of chisel. The marks were inconsistent with those that would have been left by a handsaw, too irregular to be done with a hobby saw.

Humans certainly were creative in the way they mutilated one another.

Her mood only soured further when she stepped on the plane to find Section Chief Strauss already aboard.

Cassie sat next to Spencer, spying on her behind their seats with one of the dental mirrors from her kit.

“You know, from this angle she almost looks human,” JJ said, voice too low to carry.

“That’s a stretch,” Cassie replied, sinking lower in her seat.

“Has anyone talked to Emily yet?” Spencer asked.

“She was gone before I heard the news.”

“Now we’re down two agents and Gideon’s MIA,” Morgan said.

“Doesn’t Strauss ever—“ Spencer began but Cassie elbowed him as she watched her stand and stride towards the group. She tucked the mirror out of sight before Strauss could see.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s protocol to brief everyone before we arrive at the crime scene,” she said. JJ smiled—the warm kind that didn’t even look fake.

“Yes Ma’am.” She listened to JJ run over the case with kid gloves, watching Strauss’s face. She wasn’t a field agent, after all—she was a pencil pusher, her only focus protecting the Bureau’s ass.

In other words, useless.

She watched her physically recoil from just one of the crime scene photos that Morgan dropped on the table, watched her try and play it off as if nothing happened. She met his eyes before he stalked off to the other side of the cabin, before opening her own files and splaying them over the entirety of the table. Spencer gave her a look, but didn’t say anything about it as she started rambling about suspected tool marks.

---

Milwaukee was going just about as well as she could have expected with Hotch, Gideon, and Prentiss gone.

Which was to say, shit.

She hadn’t been able to find anything on the latest body that proved useful until she had a weapon to match the wounds to and the lab, as usual, was backed up with samples from other cases and wouldn’t have any results back for at least two days. Strauss had already managed to insult the lead detective, who’d worked the Dahmer case, who actually knew his stuff, in less that ten minutes of meeting him.

Luckily for them, he had a longer fuse than she did.

She was about one moderate inconvenience away from telling Strauss exactly what she thought of her leadership and field capabilities, that she’d effectively hamstring the team and was too entrenched in her dumb little castle of Bureau regulation that she couldn’t even see that her obstinate rigidity and unwillingness to adapt to their given environment was costing them real, actual, human lives. A consequence she didn’t even have the stomach to look at properly.

Maybe Cassie would have been less likely to want to bite Strauss’s head off at any given moment if it hadn’t been her signature that had come on more than a handful of the denied requests to re-open her parents’ case on the grounds of it being ‘a poor use of resources.’ Maybe it would have been less likely if she hadn’t been the first one to deny the re-testing of evidence when Cassie had first started at the Bureau, that she didn’t consider the massive failings of the Lab division in the 80s and 90s a good enough reason to ‘waste money re-running samples on a case without leads.’

She pushed into the empty conference room, the tang of blood still sharp in her nose, her throat raw from vomiting. It was getting harder to stomach the smell of it, since Sarah, since Rebecca. She’d have to consider the eucalyptus oil she kept in her bag if the bodies kept piling up, going full Silence of the Lambs like she’d advised Spencer to do nearly a year ago when he was struggling with the stench of decomp. She had to do something other than opt to carry around a miniature toothbrush to scrub out her mouth every time she was met with an eviscerated corpse.

She was losing her edge.

She dialed Gideon. It was almost a reflex at this point. She snapped her phone shut at the sound of his voicemail and swore, turning back to the map on the wall. She traced the radiuses Spencer had mapped out from each school to fit the timing of each disposal. Even operating under the smallest of possible radiuses left them with dozens of square miles to cover, with an unsub who’d already begun to observe their patrols and circumvent police presence.

It was still too much to cover. At least before the next woman’s heart was carved from her chest.

“Shouldn’t you be going over the newest body? That is your job, isn’t it, Agent Boann?” Strauss asked sharply as she entered the room. Cassie made a face, glad she was facing the board.

“It’s Dr. Boann,” she replied without turning around.

“That is your job Dr. Boann?”

“With all due respect, Section Chief, I know how to do my job, both theoretically and in practice. In fact, I’m good at it, so I suggest you leave me to it. Preliminary autopsy report is on the table, particulates should be back in 48 hours, which makes them fairly useless to us at the moment.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, instead stalking out of the conference room before she could dig a deeper hole. She spotted Morgan next to the door, no doubt just having listened to the whole exchange.

“You’re going to be the next one on leave if you keep it up,” he said, dropping a hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah, well, we need an actual Unit Chief to coordinate the search, but instead we’ve got the lion, the witch, and the sheer audacity of that b—“

“Watch it, Miss Morticia. I like having you on the team.”

“I don’t like her,” she said, with more venom than she intended. Morgan raised an eyebrow.

“I noticed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be mean on purpose. I thought she was going to throw up on the jet.”

“She’s a liability and detriment to the investigation, and somebody ought to tell her if she’s to arrogant to see it for herself,” she said, knowing she sounded defensive and probably childish. Still, she was nearly past the point of caring and knew he at least felt similar.

“I’m not saying, you’re wrong, I’m just saying keep your head down and your mouth shut and focus on the case. You wouldn’t be running your mouth off like this if you weren’t on edge because of Gideon.”

“Maybe I’m on edge because we have twelve hours before we find the next woman with her heart ripped out.”

Morgan didn’t contradict her, though he gave he gave he a look that told her he didn’t quite believe her. “Come on, we have about four thousand school records to comb through."

---

Spencer watched Cassie flip her phone over and over in her hands as she watched Emily in the back of the ambulance. It had become a nervous habit the last two weeks, ever since returning from Flagstaff. He’d looked at her call history the other day when she’d been in the shower, just to confirm his suspicions. She’d called Gideon an average of thirteen times a day for the past week. It had been less the week before, only four or five times.

None of them had been answered.

Spencer hadn’t been able to get a hold of him either, going so far as to sleep in his office to wait for Gideon to show for their usual chess match. He’d told JJ not to mention it to the others—he hadn’t told Cassie, hadn’t wanted her to worry even more.

She wouldn’t talk about it with him, brushed it off every time he brought it up—he was fine, he was grieving, no, of course she wasn’t worried. He knew it was a defense, knew she didn’t want to let on just how worried she was. She’d been spending more time at the lab, barely sleeping at his place, taking the first Metro in to Quantico, rather than meeting up and riding in with him as had become their habit. By the time he’d get in she was already working, hair damp from her post-workout shower, her lips pressed into a thin line, the shadows under her eyes growing darker by the day.

The part he hated most was how similar her behavior was shifting to her first few months with the BAU, though there was a ragged edge to her now that hadn’t been there before. He’d seen a hint of it in Chicago, when she’d returned to the precinct after discovering the shoddy CSU work, ready to rip Gordinski a new one. He’d seen it again on the plane with Strauss, how she purposely displayed the most disturbing autopsy images while going off, in detail, about the force and tools it would require to create the wounds, as well as the extent to which the victim would be conscious for it. They were things she usually kept to herself or skated over with just the bare relevant details, but something in the way Strauss had reacted to the first crime scene photo Morgan had tossed her had set her off.

He crossed to lean on the hood of the police car next to her, watching the local PD bustle in and out of the house.

“Prentiss should get an MRI,” she said finally, without looking away. “She took an NSAID earlier for a headache, with coffee, both of which are blood thinners and increase the chance of hemorrhaging.”

“You should tell her that.”

“She’s more likely to listen to you.”

He glanced at her, searching her face for an edge of hurt or bitterness at the statement. There was nothing, as if it were just a statement of fact. He moved his hand over next to hers, close enough that their pinkies barely touched. She gave him a small, sad sort of smile.

She nearly jumped as her phone rang and quickly turned it over to read the caller ID. He watched her shoulders slump as she read ‘Smthsn AnthLab X DrG.’

“Sorry,” she said as she a stood up.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, watching as she stepped away to the back of the car as she answered. He listened to her rattle off a litany of results and incoming remains off the top of her head, chat about a visiting specialist out of the Netherlands arriving next week. He hung back a moment before crossing to the ambulance and relaying what Cassie had told him about the MRI.

“I’m sure I’m fine, Reid, but thanks for checking in.”

“It was Cassie who brought it up, actually. She just, um,” he trailed off, unsure of what to say. Prentiss just smiled, furrowing her brows as she found Cassie in the crowd of officers still on the phone, one hand covering her eyes as she ran through something rapid-fire.

“I’m glad you’re not quitting,” he said, giving her a tight-lipped smile.

“Me too,” she replied. “I’m ready to head home, though.”

The plane ride back to Quantico was uneventful. Most everyone slept, except Cassie, who spent the flight glued to her laptop, a fresh set of remains on her screen. Spencer tried to make sense of what, exactly, she was trying to work out as she flipped through the images, but quickly gave up in favor of slouching in his seat and closing his eyes.

He woke just as the plane started its descent, face pressed into Cassie’s shoulder. She was still working, though she leaned her head on his affectionately as she felt him stir.

“I’m going to have to go to the lab tonight, Spence,” she murmured, voice low from lack of sleep. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s going to be late by the time we get back.”

“I know, but there’s a backlog of partials that came in from that nightclub bombing in Tampa and it’s all hands on deck.”

“Can you come over after? I don’t care if it’s late—“

“Spence—“

“I’ve seen you three times in the last two weeks.”

“You see me every day.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been crazy, and I’m still trying to find a balance,” she said. He knew it was half true. He’d overheard enough conversations between her and Dr. Garvey and Ayesh and the rest to know they were swamped. Still, he knew she was overloading herself to keep busy.

“I know. Just—I don’t care if it’s late, come over?”

She surveyed him a moment before smoothing out his sleep-rumpled hair. “Okay. I’ll try not to be too late, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” he said, giving her a bright smile.

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#spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds #long reads #slow burn

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cloud9in · 3 years

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You’re the only one who’s writing poppy x mc fics sooo, i have a request “ bea is a bad girl (like in a gang) in high school and also went jail couple of times for getting in trouble in high school senior year poppy was new transfer student and after 2 months bea join back school and met poppy bea and they just click yk like a connection slowly they started dating and in school everyone was shocked to see bea in a relationship ( bad girl and new girl) poppy is always worried about bea and few days before graduation bea got hurt really bad and poppy gives bea 2 options that she has to choose between her or her this (gang).. bea didn’t say anything to her so poppy left, after 2/3 years they met in college bea was a different person but so does poppy they become enemies (no one knows why they hate each other) one day they were arguing and poppy shout at her and says why you're back and bea put her hand on her cheek and smile and say i am here to win you back because i love you 😬

Promises (Poppy x MC)

Part 1/?

Can i just say I'm absolutely invested in this plot? You've got me hooked on my own story, as hectic as my life is, this is enjoyable to write. I hope you like it as well @iamsimpforpoppy

Word count: 1.8k (i got carried away)

“You know what to do Jackson, same old shit.”

“Yeah but it feels like a movie every damn time”, Bea responds confidently as she unbuckles her seatbelt. She sports a black mask with a yellow bandana, a vivacious color worn by only the Southside Spades, a notorious street gang who were known for robbery, and occasional blood.

Bea found herself wrapped up in the world of gangs when she turned sixteen. But before that the brunette would assist in transporting goods, also known as hardcore drugs. There was plenty enough to go around so Bea could indulge in any she wanted. Drugs didn’t give her the high she craved though, instead it was the thrilling game of cat and mouse with the cops.

Every now and then she’d get thrown in the slammer overnight. But this particular evening earns her one year in the NY State Penitentiary. See, the cops never gathered significant evidence to build a case against her, even though she was well aware of Detective Steinhelm who had some sick obsession with her. Following her everywhere, until Bea confronted her directly after noticing the same black sedan parked a street down from her house.

But she played the game right, and nothing ever led back to her. Until now.

“Where’s the money Bradley? I feel like I’ve been kissing your ass all week, the boss needs it now.”

A skinny blonde boy who looks like he had better days grunts in annoyance, “You’ll get your money...I’m just a little short right now.”

“Time’s up Ken doll, you know Carter will have your head for this.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have to know. Maybe this can be between us…”, Bradley strides carefully towards the blonde, a disturbing grin on his face which screams junkie. “Back the hell up now.”

Bea pulled her knife out with ease and pointed it towards him. She didn’t plan on actually using it. Murder was way out her budget for a simple money pickup but she knew that it would scare the boy easily. Except he kicked the blade out of her hold which prompted it to screech across the concrete before coming to a stop. Before Bea could think her fists reacted as she intercepted a punch that aimed straight for her jaw. She twists Bradley’s arm and he falls on his knees in pain. With his back to her, she kicks him down until he’s flat on his stomach.

“What is it exactly that you plan on doing now Bradley?” The blonde boy struggles under Bea’s foot but manages to reach around and slash at her ankle with a surprise shiv. Bea yelps in pain before kicking his head, rendering him unconscious.

“Stupid idiot. Had to make this harder than it should’ve been.”

Bea eventually finds the stash of money hidden under his mattress, an amateur hiding place at best. She congratulated herself for another job accomplished (kinda) and headed home. What the seventeen year old didn’t expect was the repulsive sound of a siren filling her ears as she stepped out onto her driveway. Her blood rushed to her head when she spotted Detective Steinhelm among the police officers surrounding her and retorts, “oh come on. I thought I told them about you harassing me. What do you want? Back here to strip search me again?”

The older woman only watches the blonde in eerie silence before smiling and gesturing to a police officer. “Beatriz Jackson you have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law-”

“What the actual fuck!” Bea yanks her arms out of the officers reach which initiates a struggle for dominance. This was nothing new to her, but it still felt sickening. Like she was some pet.

“You have the right to have a lawyer present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you if you so desire.” Detective Steinhelm finishes speaking and approaches the still scuffling blonde, “if you keep resisting I will tase you myself.”

Bea bites back the urge to headbutt the old hag right in her stupid face but she didn’t need any extra charges, for whatever the hell it was she was being charged for.

“Tell me why the fuck I am being arrested and I’ll calm down.”

That’s when Bea notices a familiar (bruised up) face from earlier. His smirk was enough to eat at her skin and she felt burning hot rage.

“Your blood was found at the scene of Mr. Denbroughs assault. You are being arrested in the case of second degree assault with intent to hurt someone with a deadly weapon.”

***

Bea only got one year in prison due to her kickass lawyer Ina Kingsley who played the minor card at every opportunity given. She also pointed out the fact that the knife wasn’t bloodstained, and Bradley never had any stab wounds so there is no proof the weapon was ever used against him. And it technically wasn’t. Good thing she didn’t bring a gun instead.

She did miss her 18th birthday though. And a few months of her senior year. But that’s what summer classes were for right?

All eyes were on the blonde when she returned, and whispers spread throughout the school about a certain new girl. Bea paid no mind to the fingers that pointed in her direction but the newcomer did manage to catch her attention, and pretty quick at that.

“Hey Jackson, how was solitary confinement?”

“I heard they make you use the bathroom right through the tiny food slot.”

Bea rolls her eyes and pelts a piece of not-so-fresh bread right at Ford’s head. The other people at the table join in on the laughter and Bea shakes her head and smiles, “it was Juvie you dumbass, and they made us sit in a circle together every Thursday like we were in an AA meeting.

“That’s jail for babies, goldilocks here wouldn’t last a minute in a real prison”, Carter joins them at the table with a cocky smirk, yet his eyes soften when landing on Bea. She shares a similar look with him knowing they’ll have a real conversation later. Because they definitely didn’t get to have that when Bea was getting dragged away to the police station in cuffs, and every event after that.

“It’s our girl’s first day out, we have to celebrate. And it’s not like she’s on probation...right Bea?”

“I do have a curfew, and I’m on juvenile probation so…when we partying?” The crew laughs as Bea shrugs. Her mother will deal with it. Zoey scoots in next to the blonde and wraps her arm around her shoulder in a side hug. “So glad to have you back Bea, and we are not risking you breaking parole so let’s just go to a sport’s bar tonight.”

Bea nods her head in agreement as the first warning bell goes off and everyone starts to clean up. Zoey taps on her arm and points towards one of the farther tables where a lone figure sits, wiping her hands with a napkin. All Bea saw were blonde tresses until she turned and they made brief eye contact.

“She’s the new girl, Poppy Min Sinclair. Rumor is she’s got a rich white daddy. You should totally invite her to the party.”

“And why would I do that?”

Zoey squints her eyes and leans in closer, her hands under chin in thought, “she seems like the broody type, you two would click.” She laughs at Bea’s comical expression but the blonde can’t bother to look in her direction, she’s way too wrapped up in what little the stranger a few tables away had to offer. She would sit on that thought, Bea was not one to shy away from anything.

***

The two became friends quicker than anyone could think.

One day after school, Poppy’s car wouldn’t start. It just didn’t comply. You would think she’d be poised and call her mechanic to come fix it, but instead the blonde slumped against the driver’s side window and let out a visibly frustrated, high-pitched yelp. Bea watched her pace around the car and even...kick?...the front bumper with her heels in efforts to wake it up.

“You know I may be wrong but I think that only makes it worse..” She approaches the helpless blonde with a small grin. Poppy’s persistence amazed her though, she’s never seen anyone determined to beat a car up. An expensive one at that.

“I hope you have some idea how to fix it, unless you’re here to waste my time and ask me on a date.”

Woah.

Okay that definitely threw Bea on a whim. She lets out a sharp laugh and bites her lips in amusement. She strolls towards the front of her car, holding Poppy’s gaze the whole way. She liked that the blonde didn’t avert her eyes. “And if I did? We couldn’t take your car of course, it’s obviously impaired.”

Poppy smiles and turns to look at Bea properly. She checks out every inch of her with no visible shame. An assessment so to say, and she likes what she sees.

“It’s your lucky day Poppy, I happen to know a thing or three about cars, and I desperately want to get this thing working so we can go on that date.” She winks playfully but god does she mean it. Bea silently prayed that the blonde wouldn’t take it the wrong way, but she knew she won when Poppy didn't protest, instead getting comfortable under some shade and holding her hand out, “the stage is all yours Jackson.”

***

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that I can’t jump over this obvious not-so-protected fence?”

“Judging by the sign right next to it that says...oh wow who would’ve thought, “DO NOT ENTER”, I don’t think so”, Poppy deadpans. It didn’t phase Bea of course because she was already halfway up the fence when the blonde turned away from the sign. The girl had a point to prove, maybe not a valid one, but still a point.

Poppy pinches her eyebrows in exasperation before looking back up to a nonchalant Bea swinging her legs from the top of the fence. She winks down at the blonde, “join me?”

Poppy didn’t expect to be climbing fences with a charismatic girl who had the same color hair as her when she moved schools, but she found herself embracing every moment of it. Although the trip up there was a struggle and some.

“I swear to god there’s a wire in my ass.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“And we’re both going to end up in the hospital. Get. me. Down.”

Bea tries to hold in her laughter the whole way down but lets it loose when she sees Poppy still up there, partly hovering in the air. “Pops...I’ll catch you, don't worry. Climb down slowly.” She doesn’t. But Bea had her feet planted and ready because any moment with the sassy blonde was unpredictable. And she loved it. Especially because she had Poppy engulfed in her arms and they were so close their noses touched.

Bea promised herself she’d kiss the girl next time.

***

“You’re...in a gang?”

Bea felt a clasp of cold air enter her lungs as she stared ahead. It wasn’t like she could hide it from Poppy. She has a reputation, and word has gotten around about the two getting close. This was just like that one time at the end of sophomore year where Bea met Kelly Hall, a beautiful girl with golden rimmed glasses. Unfortunately she only could imagine what could’ve been after whispers ended up right on the doorstep of Kelly’s parents, and she suddenly changed her number, and switched out of every class she had with Bea.

The blonde didn’t want to entertain the thought of Poppy doing the same, but this was a lifestyle she chose.

“I mean...how?”

Bea sighs and turns to look at her, “I fell into the wrong crowd. Or maybe it’s the right one because I never found a true home until I met them. They’re family, I wouldn’t expect you to get it though and I understand if you want to distance-”

“I of all people know what it’s like to not fit in Jackson. You’ve found people who make you feel safe. Maybe I don’t agree with the troubles that come with being in a gang but I don’t know the whole story.”

“Do you want to?”

Poppy wraps her arms around Bea’s and lays her head on her shoulder, “I want to know that you won’t get yourself hurt but I know that’s nearly impossible.”

Bea exhales slowly, not knowing what to say. She knew that this would upset Poppy but her acceptance meant more. She didn’t know what this would mean for the two of them, if there was a “them”, but she felt more encouraged to share more of her other life with the blonde.

“Just promise me one thing Jackson.”

“Yeah?”

Poppy’s voice comes out softer than expected, and Bea ingests every emotion that comes with it, “Promise me you won’t ever put yourself in a position where you have to choose between me or the gang.”

Bea finds her hand in the space where their thighs touched and latches onto it like a lifebuoy,

“I promise.”

***

“I just remembered something Poppy.”

“What, that you have half a brain cell? I thought that was established Jackson.”

Bea launches a pillow that (purposely) misses Poppy’s head by an inch. If she actually hit her and frizzed up her locks then she’d never hear, or see..or walk again.

“I’m being serious. I just remembered this too, we never went on that car date we talked about.”

Poppy squints her eyes in confusion, but was fully aware of what Bea was referring to. “You mean the first time we met?”

The blonde smiles to herself as she replayed that day in her head over and over again. She couldn’t decide if Bea’s openly flirty behavior is what drew her in or if it was her ability to fix any of her possessions with ease. And for free.

Bea pulls Poppy up by her hands until her back is against the lockers. Another perfect opportunity for the blonde to make do of that promise she made to herself, but something told her to wait just a bit longer. “So what do you say? Poppy Min Sinclair, will you go on a date with me?”

Poppy rolls her eyes playfully, pulling Bea in closer by the collar of her letterman, “now who’s being dramatic?”

“I didn’t hear a no”

“I think you know what the answer is.”

That night Zoey helped Bea prep for her first date with the girl that she could say she was almost in love with. The taller girl brushed some dust off of Bea’s jacket and planted her hands on her shoulders, “remember Jackson, give her the ride of her life. And I mean that in every way possible.”

Thanks Zoe.

Bea watched Poppy drive up in front of her house and something inside her mind couldn’t deny the pang her heart let out when she saw Poppy smile the way she did.

Bea took control of the driving and told Poppy to recline her seat and enjoy the ride, with her seatbelt on of course. Safe sacrifices. They cruised through an empty highway blasting Poppy’s spotify playlist named “Rich Bitch Songs” because that was their ideal perfect date. It’s amazing that the two could even come to an agreement, but here we are.

She watched the beautiful blonde sing her lungs out and couldn’t help but mirror her joy, taking her hands off the steering wheel. The pump of adrenaline prompts a new excitement in the air and Poppy wraps Bea into a secure hug, her hair flying wildly with the wind. Bea slows the car down but the rapid beating of her heart made it seem they were going 100 miles per second.

“I feel so alive Jackson.”

Bea stared at the girl in the passenger seat with a look that could only be described as love.

“You make me feel alive.”

Poppy kept talking and Bea found a way to focus on both the road and the blonde next to her. Because when you truly enjoy something, you’ll find a way to keep experiencing it. And Bea enjoyed hearing Poppy’s voice, she loved everything about her.

“I feel like kissing you.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“...Nothing. I should’ve done this a long time ago.”

They kiss when Bea pulls over. A hot feeling consumes them like fire when their tongues collide and Bea plants her hands around Poppy’s hips, pushing her back into her seat until she’s on top. The windows easily start to fog up in reaction to the heat, and not once did they take their hands off each other.

Promise 1/2 kept

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

End Note: This chapter was to build their relationship, more angst incoming. BIG THANKS to @somewillwin for letting me use Jackson <3333

Taglist: @samanthadalton @somewillwin @clowneryme @baexpoppy @poppysmc @doey-eyes8 @veenast @straightlikewetspaghetti @phoennixxsblog @a-ghost-girl

#poppy min sinclair #queen b #playchoices #mc x poppy #a huge bug flew onto my screen during the writing process #gave me motivation to HURRY MY AAAAAAASSS UP

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lumosinlove · 3 years

Text

Previously On Relic Keel:

Remus, Saint, Sirius, Leo, and Logan have woken Luke in the dead of night and convinced in to take them into his father’s study to look for the treasure map he had supposedly taken out on loan before he was sent to jail. They explain to Luke what they need, but Luke has no knowledge of it. Tensions are high when Saint finds a hidden safe behind a frame and opens it to reveal an envelope addressed to Luke in his father’s handwriting. They only get higher when Logan snatches it from Luke’s hands and uses it as leverage to convince Saint to help him break Finn out of Saint Clair. Saint agrees and Luke is left alone with his father’s letter, and the memories of talking about the treasure with his father before he was taken away.

We meet Remus the next morning on the docks, ready for his morning sail, only to find Sirius waiting there for him. Sirius agrees to go sailing with him. It’s a little awkward, and Remus can’t stop wondering about Sirius and Saint’s relationship. As they ride the wind and waves together, some of the wariness is relieved and Remus learns how Saint escaped from Saint Clair: an accident. Sirius doesn’t know how he plans to do it again.

And Saint won’t tell him. Sirius has to follow him to the orphanage in order to get Saint to let him help. It turns out Saint plans to climb down the chimney and then exit the doors from within, just like last time.

Before we can see if he pulls it off, we go to Marlene and Dorcas. Marlene finally tells Dorcas that she got into college, at Berkeley. Dorcas is supportive of her girlfriend, promising that they’ll figure this out.

We go back to Sirius and Saint who make it into Saint Clair safely. We learn that Saint didn’t let Logan come because, if it went wrong, they needed someone on the outside who knew Saint Clair well. Saint gets cut on his way down the chimney, but is otherwise okay—except for the memories. Saint Clair brings back feelings of the Crucio-ridden dreams, and feeling out of place. Saint has always felt out of place—In the world, in his own skin. He hopes to find files on his mother, but they are locked up. We learn Saint’s real name is Sebastian, and that he hates it. They find Finn in solitary and get him out safely, though he is weak from not eating and from Crucio.

Logan is waiting nervously with Leo. Leo wishes Logan would have told him he was going to threaten Luke like that. Logan feels guilty, but there’s a sadness of missing someone that they share, only Logan is getting the person he misses back. Leo says that they can stay with him, when Finn arrives, if they want to. Logan realizes that he thinks of Leo as home.

Luke is sitting alone, having opened his father’s letter. There are only two words, a name: Pascal Dumais. He’s surprised to find Saint resting on his window sill, having climbed to his room once again—and hurt. Luke cleans his wounds and asks Saint why he came here instead of going home to Sirius and his other friends. Saint says it’s because Sirius will just want to talk about what happened and because Luke is mean, because Luke is what he expects him to be. Luke also learns that Saint knows exactly who Pascal Dumais is.

***cw: mentions of drugs and addiction, mentions of drugs used medicinally, mentions of hurricanes, mentions of grief and death******

part viii

Lily knew she would probably miss dinners at Gryffindor Club when she went away to school. She knew that she would miss her family—even Petunia. She raised her iced tea to her mouth and looked around their small table, the one they almost always sat at. It was like each family had an assigned seat, just as each student did in class. This who island was one of assignments. Neighborhood. Job. Partner. Everyone seemed to expect her and James to be together.

She wanted that, too—quietly. But not like this. Not with an assigned table.

Not, when James and his parents walked through the clubhouse doors, she could have predicted it to the very second. Clockwork, she remembered saying to James. This island ran like clockwork, and sometimes she felt like she was skidding across the watch’s face.

The hostess greeted the Potters as everyone did on the island. A hug, a laugh. Everyone loved them. James looked flushed and fresh out of the shower, dark hair curling into its usual wild self as it dried, his button-down snug around his shoulders.

“You’re hopeless,” Petunia said from beside her.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Shush.”

James hadn’t quite seen her yet, but if she knew where to look, where his table was, he knew where her’s was, too. When their eyes met, a smile crossed James’ face like a race, like Lily had seen him fly up a lacrosse field—and then it tripped. He caught himself in his happiness, and Lily’s heart caught with him.

He sent her a small wave, and then turned and sat down between his parents, his back towards her. That wasn’t his fault, all the tables angled towards the ocean, but it felt like he was looking away from her.

She looked back down at her dinner and tried to focus on what her father was saying, but it was difficult. While their entrees were being taken away, James made his mother laugh. While they ate dessert, he got that exasperated set in his shoulders that he did when college came up and his father patted a soothing hand on his back. When Lily and her family’s chairs scraped as they got up to leave, James turned around and rose, too. There were pieces of cake in front of his parents, but nothing in front of him. He walked over to her and greeted her parents kindly, said hello to Petunia, and then looked at Lily. His hair was completely wild again, and his hands were in his pockets.

“Want to hang out?” he asked.

“Oh, is that what it’s called these days?” Petunia grumbled, and Lily’s mother sent her a look. Lily just nodded.

“Sure,” she turned to her parents. “See you guys at home.”

“Don’t be out too late,” her father said.

“Dad, it’s summer.”

“Still,” Mr. Evans laughed as he held the door open for his wife and daughter.

“Do you want to go to the field?” James asked as they turned the other way, towards the open balcony doors—the same direction Lily had lead them the night she’d refused him. “I bet we could sneak some wine from the cellar.”

Lily smiled. “You better choose a good one.”

Olli, working at the bar, turned a blind eye to their not so careful sneaking down and up the kitchen stairs. James hadn’t looked too carefully at what he chose, but Lily didn’t mind.

“Did Luke ever get his car back?” she asked as they walked across the grass, Hogwarts Academy looming up in the dark in front of them.

James turned to her. “Oh man, no one told you?”

“Told me what?”

James blew out a breath, laughing and raising the bottle. “We better open this first.”

They settled in the very middle of the lacrosse field, just over the Hogwarts Castles’ logo, and James pulled the cork. They traded the bottle back and forth as James told her about the Voldemort, a tale they’d grown up with, and about Saint Clair and the breakout, and about Luke and his father.

“Pascal Dumais,” Lily repeated. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Me neither,” James said, taking a sip. “But apparently Sirius and Saint know him. And Luke’s father, I guess.”

“How is Luke?” Lily asked. “Marls always says she can’t really tell. And then there’s the…”

James nodded and he swallowed, picking at the grass. “Crucio. I know. I tried to help, but I guess he’s still…He’s just so angry.”

“I don’t understand why though, with the Crucio, I mean. You know? Doesn’t it just…make you relive things? Why would you want to just keep reliving the same thing over and over again?”

James glanced at her, hazel eyes careful. “To change it? Or to hope that it might change?”

Lily felt herself flush, with the wine, and beneath his gaze. She hadn’t meant it like that, but she supposed that was what they were doing. Lily didn’t know what she would change, though. The island? James? Herself?

“Do you…” James began quietly, and when Lily looked over at him, he was still looking down. The high moon caught the curve of his jaw, the glint of his glasses. “Do you think about it?”

The question made Lily feel like all the field lights had come on at once, striking her and baring her to the world. He didn’t have to explain. Lily knew he was talking about that night. Their night. Lily looked back at the sky and closed her eyes. James’ hands had been warm, dipping between her legs, cupping the small of her back when she’d arched against him. He’d smiled into their kisses, like he couldn’t help it, until he couldn’t anymore, until her heat had made his mouth slip open, until she’d wrapped him up against her so tightly there was nothing to think about but never parting. It had been quick. Neither of them really knew what they were doing. But it had been perfect. Intoxicating.

“Of course I do,” Lily whispered.

“Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it,” James replied, and it brought a thrill to Lily’s fingertips, adrenaline to her gut.

She thought of him, alone at night in his bed, unable to stop thinking about it. She knew she couldn’t sometimes, either.

“Not it,” he added, eyes still raised towards the stars. “You.”

You, Lily’s mind repeated. Him. Those smiles. James’ smiles. The way he blatantly asked for what he wanted, asked what she wanted. The way he’d knock on her door and they’d spend entire days together—the way they’d been doing that since they were ten. James had tried to teach her lacrosse, she’d tried to teach him how to knit. James used to come on the floaty that trailed behind their speedboat with her, when she was younger and never wanted to go alone. It had been both expected and surprising the first time they’d kissed—sixteen and awkward. She’d laughed it off and cried about it to Marlene later, unsure why she was crying.

You. I can’t stop thinking about you.

“I thought you wanted to stay in…in whatever space we’re in,” Lily whispered back.

“I thought you didn’t like the space we’re in,” James replied. “I want…Fuck,” he laughed a little. “Isn’t the whole point not to know everything right now? Isn’t what you want not to know everything? To get outside of this circuit? So, can’t we just…”

“James, this circuit is your life.”

“Stop telling me that,” James urged. “I have…” he ran a hand over his face, and there was real distress there, way beyond the two of them. “I have no idea what my life is.”

Lily reached out, brows drawn together, and put a hand on his shoulder. He was warm through his shirt. “J…”

“I don’t need to know,” James said and when he looked up at her, he looked pained. He took his glasses off, rubbed at his eyes again. “I don’t need to know. Do I?”

“No, of course not, I’m sorry,” Lily whispered. Her hand moved to his neck, thumb stroking softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

He kept his head down and let Lily tangle her fingers in the soft hair at the base of his neck. Lily put her head on his shoulder. She felt James relax a little, felt his arm wind around her waist and his mouth press into her hair.

“Let’s just…not know for a little while?” he whispered, and she nodded, pressing closer.

Grimmauld place was wild and open, Logan thought, lying beside Finn. As he brushed Finn’s hair away from his face, he liked that the first thing Finn would feel when he woke up was the ocean breeze on his face, that the first thing he would smell was the salt and the sun.

Some books, piled up beside the bed, served as a place for a waiting glass of water and toast with butter and honey. Easy on his stomach, Leo had said when he’d dropped it off, along with some more filling foods for later, which were waiting in the refrigerator. Logan had wanted to ask him to stay, but Leo was going to work. Leo didn’t—Leo didn’t even know Finn. Logan didn’t know why he wanted Leo to stay.

Saint and Sirius had both come in at various moments in the early morning, as had Dorcas, but Logan was only dimly aware of their presence. Now, the sun was turning the morning warm, and Finn was beginning to stir beneath Logan’s touch. Logan propped himself up on his forearm, heart beating hard.

“Finn?” he whispered as Finn breathed in slowly—the easy, long breath of waking up.

“Finn,” Logan whispered again, palm on his cheek.

Finn turned into Logan’s hand and opened his eyes. Those brown eyes that Logan’s subconscious, that the Crucio, had never gotten quite right. Finn blinked heavily a few times and Logan held his breath, trying to reel the relief that welled in his chest. He wanted to throw himself onto Finn, crush them together—but Finn looked so fragile. Thin and confused.

His eyes cleared at the sight of Logan, though, and then filled with bright tears.

“Is this real,” he barely whispered the words, his voice hoarse from disuse, as if scared to break the spell. His hand twitched on the bed, as if to reach forward. But touching didn’t work with Crucio, and it would only hurt to know that they couldn’t touch—Logan knew that all too well.

Logan nodded, throat too tight to speak. He took Finn’s fingers in his own and kissed his palm before pressing it against his own cheek.

“I’m warm, aren’t I?” he managed.

Finn just stared at him, then past him at Grimmauld’s wooden ceilings, at the sunlight beginning to flood into the room.

“You’re out. You got out. You’re okay."

Finn found Logan again quickly, as if he couldn’t help it. His palm pressed against Logan’s cheek, sliding around to cup the back of his head.

“Come here,” Finn said the words like a breath of relief, like air, and Logan went.

He buried his face in Finn’s neck, let Finn pull as much of his weight on him as he wanted, and wedged one of his arms around Finn’s back, the other buried in the hair at the base of his neck, just like Finn’s was in his own.

They lay there, just breathing. Logan felt Finn’s chest rise when his own did. They pressed against each other, like their hearts were trying to get closer. Logan didn’t think he’d feel close enough to Finn ever again.

“Lo,” Finn whispered after a while, and Logan had thought that maybe he had fallen asleep again, was content to lay here and wait for him to wake again, but he looked up at his name on Finn’s lips.

Finn pulled him forward again and brushed their mouths together once, twice, and then smiled. A laugh spilled from him, eyes wet again.

“I missed you,” Logan felt his voice tremble beneath the words, and they felt too small. Words felt too small for Finn.

“You could have been caught,” Finn whispered, fingers combing Logan’s hair back from his forehead, as if re-memorizing the feeling. “God, I don’t remember…how?”

“I didn’t…I…Finn, I did some bad things to get you here,” Logan swallowed dryly, closing his eyes at the feeling of Finn touching him again. “And it’s really hard to be sorry about it right now, but…”

Finn made a soft sound, and Logan couldn’t help but smile when he felt Finn’s thumb brush just under his eye, a small warning, before they ever so lightly touched his eyelashes. They were long, and dark, and Finn had always loved them, had repeated that gesture a thousand and one times, even when they had been all of eight years old, whispering to each other and staying up past their curfew.

“You’re okay,” Finn said, and then, “God, I’m starving.”

There Logan was, being selfish again. He scrambled for the toast, cold now.

“Leo says to take it slow,” he said as he handed it over.

“Leo?” Finn asked as he pushed himself up to sit. He hummed gratefully when Logan handed him the glass of water, too, and took a small sip, then a bigger one.

“He’s—yeah, Leo. He—” Saved me. Helped me. Was kind. He’s what I think home feels like, but I need you there, I need you to tell me, to be sure.

“Oh,” came a voice from behind them, and Logan turned to see Sirius. “You’re awake. That’s good.”

Finn nodded, mouth full. He glanced at Logan. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Shit,” Sirius laughed a little. “I’m Sirius. Sorry. This is—uh,” he gestured around. “Well, I wouldn’t say my house. I live here? But welcome to Grimmauld, stay as long as you like.”

“He’s Saint’s friend,” Logan said, and then realized. He said quietly. “Bash.”

“Bash?” Finn’s eyes widened and Logan shook his head.

“He doesn’t like to be called that. I try not to slip. I’m getting better.”

“He never did,” Finn nodded, then said, with a small smile. “Saint, then. I…yeah, he…he was there. In solitary.” Finn shook his head. “I thought it was the drugs.”

Sirius shook his head. “No, we were there.”

Finn looked at Logan. “Lo?”

It wasn’t accusing. Just curious. But Logan heard the question anyway. Why weren’t you there?

“It’s not his fault,” came Saint’s voice as he emerged the same way that Sirius had come. His hair was a mess of curls on top of his head, his eyes a little puffy from a hard sleep, but focused clearly on Finn. “I told him not to come. He almost burned a house down to get you back.”

Logan flushed with guilt.

Saint walked over to sit beside Logan and smiled a tired smile. “Are you okay?”

Finn nodded. “Thanks to you. Saint.”

Saint’s eyebrow raised a little at the weight Finn put into the word. A pleased light flickered over his face.

“Eat something,” Saint said. “You look bad.”

Finn laughed a little as he took another bite of toast, and Saint rose, walking over to where Sirius was. Saint folded himself against Sirius’ chest and closed his eyes. Sirius was staring out the window towards the waves, but wrapped an arm around him, and tilted his temple to rest against Saint’s.

Finn’s eyes were questioning, but Logan just shrugged. He didn’t know if they were together or not. Sometimes it seemed like they were, sometimes it didn’t. Logan didn’t really care just then, he only wanted to reach out and run his fingers through Finn’s hair and watch him eat. He couldn’t wait until he had his strength back. He’d take him to Leo’s. They’d go swimming in the ocean for as long as they wanted and find work somehow. Somewhere safe.

Finn leaned into his palm as he ate, smiling at him in a way that made Logan have to scoot closer to him, their crossed knees touching.

“Leo makes good toast,” Finn said.

“Leo makes good everything,” Logan laughed. “Leo’s just—good.” Logan pressed his hands onto Finn’s thighs. He was still wearing the clothes from Saint Clair. They’d have to find him something else. Logan thought of the money in his bag, and where it came from, and the Crucio beside it. He swallowed, trying to keep the worry form his face, and rubbed a thumb over Finn’s knee. “You’ll see.”

A whistle came from down the hall, and Dorcas emerged, hair and mess and eyes on her phone. “Hurricane’s supposed to roll in in the next week. Fuck, it’s supposed to be really bad.”

Logan looked up. He could remember a few hurricanes while in Saint Clair. The rattling windows and the mess of fallen trees afterwards. “Have they named it yet?”

“Botilda,” Dorcas nodded. “Hurricane Botilda. Makes sense, after Albus last year.”

“We should start trying to board up now,” Sirius said. “Grimmauld barely made it last year.”

“We should try to be somewhere else when it hits,” Dorcas replied pointedly. “It wasn’t just the house that barely made it. And they’re saying it’s bad, Sirius. Really bad.”

Logan felt Finn scoot closer to him, and smiled when he felt a kiss pressed to his neck.

“Where will we go?” Finn whispered.

“If you suggest—” Sirius began, eyes dark and on Dorcas.

“James would let you two stay with him,” Dorcas said. “He would. And I could get away with staying with Marls.”

“No,” Sirius snapped. “We don’t need their help.”

“God, you’re so fucking proud,” Dorcas sighed.

“Interesting choice of words,” Saint laughed. “Gods, and their holy souls.”

Logan thought of Leo. Of his warm house, and his offer. They could stay with Leo…would Leo really want them to?

“Anyway. We’ll decide later,” Saint patted Sirius’ cheek and sauntered out of the room. “I have a lunch date.”

Luke had asked to meet him in Rowena, and Saint thought that felt neutral enough. Not the Hollow, not Godric. Although, if they were talking about Pascal Dumais, they might as well have gone to the Lion. Baby steps, Saint supposed. After all, he was already surprised that Luke had asked to meet up at all.

He was even more surprised every time he brushed against the bandage across his ribs. Had been surprised by Luke’s—touch, he guessed. He thought of his messy scrawl that filled the corners of the copy of Jane Eyre Saint had swiped, now sitting in Grimmauld. He had spent more time last night studying the formation of each written letter than actually reading.

Saint, standing on the sunny sidewalk, waiting, rolled his eyes at himself. Luke was an ass. Saint was, too. Luke liked books. Saint wondered if he liked to talk about them, wondered what he wanted to do with himself.

He probably wanted to leave here, just like Sirius did. Just like Marlene, and Dorcas, and Saint’s own fucking mother.

Saint wished he had tried harder to get into the files at Saint Clair. Maybe he could have known her name by now. He had tried so hard to remember, but the only thing that ever came up was maman. A hazy memory of crying, of reaching for her as arms carried him backwards, that he didn’t know if he made up or not.

Now, if felt like he never would.

“Sup.”

Saint turned to see Luke standing there, aviator sunglasses on and a white t-shirt.

Saint sent him a quietly disbelieving look. “You don’t actually talk like that, you know.”

Saint took his sunglasses off, folding them into his shirt as he led them towards the restaurant. “What?”

“Sup,” Saint parroted. “Dude. Hey, man.”

“How do you know how I talk?” Luke yanked open the door like he was fighting against it. It wasn’t the gentle touch Saint remembered across his skin, but Saint didn’t like it any less.

“Because I’ve read your writing now,” Saint replied, and walked through first, even though Luke hadn’t been holding the door for him.

“Hey,” said a boy at the counter. He had dark skin, and gold glinted in his ears. “Take a seat wherever.”

“No, you haven’t,” Luke snapped as he followed.

“Luke,” the boy laughed. “Chill, man.”

“Sup,” Saint said to the boy, then looked at Luke. “Deveaux, you picked the place, what should I have? Also, you’re paying.”

Luke shot him a look, but approached the counter. “Hi, Thomas. Two burgers. Also, are we scrimmaging later?”

“You know it, baby. Two coming up. How you like them, or…?” Thomas asked.

Luke looked at Saint. “Do you like pickles?”

“Nope.”

Luke grinned. “Yeah, how I like them.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes, but complied.

Dorcas ditched her bike in the grass outside of the building with the sign that read Blizzard’s. It was the most popular ice cream spot on the island.

The bell above the door rang out happily as she entered, the smell of sugar and sunscreen hitting her as she looked around at the bustling tables, painted bright colors. Natalie was behind the freezers, long blond hair scooped up into a messy bun as she handed out cone after cone. She winked at Dorcas when she saw her, and jerked her chin towards the back. Dorcas smiled back, and slid behind the counter and through the door into the back room.

“Meadowes,” Kasey looked up. “You’re early. Hear about the storm?”

“Yes. Kase, can I ask you something?”

Kasey smirked. “You’ve never asked to ask me anything before.”

Dorcas sent him a sarcastic glare, and leaned on the counter, feeling the weight of her pack shift against her back. “I’m thinking about getting out.”

Kasey paused for a long while, then sighed. “Yeah.” He looked back towards where Dorcas knew the greenhouse was, where the Crucio grew, hidden among the other plants. “Yeah, me too.”

“Seriously?”

“This was something I took up when I was younger, you know?” Kasey replied. “I wanted fast cash, and I was using Crucio myself at the time.” He rolled his eyes. “Felix. You know how it is. I was lost. This shit can pray on lost people. Now…now I want a different life. With Nat. I wanted it to be safe, you know? Crucio. I wanted it to be used correctly.”

Dorcas nodded. She knew that well, too. Kasey and herself had had countless discussions about the medicinal uses of Crucio. But it was a slippery slope. It could go wrong. It had gone wrong in the Carrows’ hands. They laced it with drugs that forced one to give up control of their memory, it allowed the reliving without the learning. It became a Pandora’s Box, a place where your greatest desires lived, as well as the addiction to desire. The Carrows put things in there that let the addiction out first, before any of the healing properties. Used correctly, the plant provided a safe place for grief, or hope, or longing. Used incorrectly, it created a false reality in which to live.

“That doesn’t sound like getting out of the game exactly,” Dorcas said.

“It’s getting out of the illegal part of it,” Kasey replied. “The dealing. I want to start a company. Therapy and classes. I want to help people, not give them a late night quick fix.” Kasey glanced up at her. “We were actually hoping you’d join in. But here you are, wanting out.”

Dorcas sighed and slid into one of the ragged leather chairs. “I like the sound of that. The only reason I agreed to work with you is because your aim wasn’t to take advantage. But I…”

“Marlene?” he asked.

Dorcas took her hat off, staring at the front, where Marlene had painted their initials, intertwined.

“She’s leaving,” Dorcas said. “For school. And I…I need to be able to go with her.”

“Do you have savings?”

“Some,” she nodded. “Enough for a plane ticket. I’ll have to get it in cash though, which always makes them think twice.”

Kasey laughed. “No bank account with drug money, I’m afraid.”

“Right,” Dorcas sighed, and let her head fall back. “God, Kase, what the fuck am I going to do? She’s going to meet some California chick at school and just…there are so many amazing people out there. And she deserves the best of them. Not some drop out.”

“If you drop out of one thing, you can drop into another,” Kasey replied. He pushed his chin length tawny hair out of his face. “Now, I’m tired of your feel-sorry-for-me bullshit. You’re smart and in love and one hell of a person.”

Dorcas let her head drift to one side to smile at him. “You too, Kase. You know that don’t you?”

“Oh, I tell him as much as I can,” came Natalie’s voice. She came around Dorcas’ chair and slid onto Kasey’s lap with a light kiss. “But he’s basically as stubborn as you are.”

Dorcas snorted, but then went quiet. She looked around at the back room. It was tidy chaos, the perfect environment for inspiration.

“You two could put the Carrows out of business,” she said. “You really could.”

“If we can get the funding up,” Kasey said. “Then, yeah,” he smiled at Natalie, stroking a hand over her bare shoulder. “We could.”

“Two burgers,” Thomas said, then laughed a little. “Extra pickles, no onions.”

Luke looked at Saint, who just sighed.

“You’re the picture of chivalry,” Saint said, but picked it up. “The very image.”

They took their first few bites in silence. Saint figured Luke would talk when he was ready, but when he just pulled out the letter his dad had left him, the single slip of paper with nothing but Pascal’s name on it, Saint guessed he’d have to take the first step once again.

“We should be meeting at the Lion, you know,” Saint broke the silence. “That’s where Dumo is.”

“Dumo?” Luke repeated.

“Pascal. Pascal Dumais. Everyone calls him Dumo.”

Luke nodded, as if taking this in. He was fidgety as hell. Saint had never seen him do anything with his hands except throw a punch or tuck them beneath his crossed arms. Or hold Saint steady. Now, he picked apart his fries, shredded the label on his soda and his paper napkin, and chewed slowly.

“I don’t want him there,” Luke finally said. “I want to know about him first. Tell me.”

Saint nodded. He could understand that.

Saint picked up his water, breaking the cap’s seal. “Me and Sirius have been…it’s just been the two of us for a long time. Most of our lives.”

“I remember when Sirius left school,” Luke said. “There were all kinds of rumors. Most kids thought he was, like, dead or something.”

“He sort of was,” Saint replied. “But, then again, so was I. We were free, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Dumo could see that we were on our own, of course.”

“Did he threaten you?” Luke asked. “With authorities, or whatever?”

“The opposite,” Saint said, twisting the cap this way and that. “He didn’t push. He made sure we had what we needed, but he didn’t push.” Saint smiled. “And I hate to be pushed.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve figured that out.”

“He said something recently, actually,” Saint continued. “About Leo’s father. And the treasure. They used to go out on Leo’s dad’s boat together.” Saint shrugged. “Maybe your dad went, too.”

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Luke said, staring down at his food.

“I think, more often than not, children don’t know half of what their parents are.”

“Or anything of them, right?” Luke said, then winced. Actually winced. “Sorry. I don’t…”

“Right,” Saint just sighed. “Or anything. Like me.”

“I guess you’re tired of the poor orphan boy thing,” Luke said. “But you can’t tell me you don’t play that card.”

“I’m tired of it in more ways than I can count,” Saint said, then laughed. “But, yes. It’s helpful, when I need some extra work. Sometimes. Some people feel bad. Some people don’t trust me. Like you.”

“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you.”

“And yet, here we are,” Saint waved a hand at the restaurant. “You want your father. And I want my gold. And Logan wants to be free of debt, and Finn wants Logan, and Sirius wants…” Saint swallowed. “And I don’t actually know what Lupin wants.”

“I don’t think Remus knows what Remus wants,” Luke leaned back in his chair, and Saint felt their sandaled feet brush beneath the table as Luke stretched his long legs out. He pulled them back. “Sorry.”

Saint briefly thought about hooking their ankles together, just to see what Luke would do, but instead tucked his feet beneath his chair, giving him room.

“So, tonight?” he said.

Luke shook his head, confused. “What?”

“We’ll talk to Dumo tonight. You’ll come to the Lion, his restaurant, tonight. In the Hollow.”

Luke looked away, towards the other customers, the busy lunch scene. “Who else will be there?”

“Sirius will want to know. Leo. Maybe no Logan just yet, he’ll be with Finn. Bring Lupin, if you want. What, you don’t like people?”

Luke narrowed his eyes. “You’re the one who came to me because I’m mean.”

Saint laughed. “I came to you because I don’t like surprises and you’re exactly what I expect you to be.”

“And that’s mean?”

Saint rose, crumpling his napkin and throwing it onto his empty plate. “Five o’clock tonight, before the dinner rush.”

Luke nodded and followed him out of the restaurant, waving to Thomas, and back into the heat of the day.

“Oh,” Luke called as they split ways, Luke towards his car, Saint towards the beach. Saint turned to see him squinting in the sunlight. “And whatever it is that you took from my room—and I know you took something—bring it tonight.”

Saint hummed, as if thinking. Then, he pulled Luke’s sunglasses from his pocket and put them on.

“No,” Saint chimed, and turned on his heel, smiling at the curse that followed him.

Remus ran into Sirius outside of the Lion, and almost laughed at the surprise that washed over Sirius’ face when Remus smiled and said hello. In a way, Sirius reminded Remus of Luke. Unassuming when it came to affection, but bright when they let themselves feel it, accept it.

“I keep thinking I’ll see you again,” Remus said. “Waiting for me on the dock.”

Sirius pushed his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He had a tank top on, and Remus’ eyes lingered over his tan arms.

“I didn’t know you wanted me there,” Sirius sounded almost bashful when he said it.

Remus’ smile was teasing, but his eyes were firm. “I think you should stop assuming things about me.”

Sirius blinked, and went to open his mouth to reply, but Remus only shrugged a shoulder and held the door open for him.

“Did they ask you to come, too?” Remus said. “Saint and Luke?”

“Yeah,” Sirius mumbled. “Well, Saint.”

Remus nodded thoughtfully. “Hey, did you hear about the hurricane coming? It’s supposed to be a heavy one.”

“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

Remus glanced back at him as they walked through. He didn’t see Luke or Saint yet. “What do you mean?”

Sirius pointed towards the coast as they slid into chairs. “We’re right off the point so, it’s a lot of nailing wood boards and sandbags and…you know.”

“The point,” Remus repeated, and Sirius nodded.

Remus stared at him. “You’re…not actually thinking of staying there.”

Sirius looked at him and Remus held up wary hands.

“That wasn’t a dig, calm down, I’m just saying—the storm.”

“We’re fine,” Sirius said. “We’ve always been fine.”

“You can’t be—it’s not safe.”

“Well, I’m sorry if not all of us can afford—”

“Stay with me,” Remus blurted, and it sent them both into silence.

Sirius shook his head. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know you a little,” Remus looked up as a waitress brought them ice water. “I knew you a little when we were eleven, before you disappeared.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t disappear. A God would think that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Once someone exits your little bubble, it’s easy to pretend they don’t exist.” Sirius scooted his chair to the side a little, defiantly, eyes on the door. “No. Thank you. We’ll be fine.”

Remus just stared at him. He was like two waring currents, Sirius Black. Hot and cold, mingling below the surface where Remus couldn’t see. They surprised him each time he brushed through a different one. He thought of the boat, and changing winds, and Sirius’ smile. There was no trace of it now.

“You’re going to risk your life to prove a point?”

“I’m not.”

“Which, risking your life, or proving a point?”

Sirius just scowled. “Thank you for your offer.”

Remus sat back in his chair, too, if only to mirror Sirius’ crossed arm position. They stared at each other.

“They say the winds are going to be up to—”

“Look,” Sirius sighed. “I—”

“You could really be hurt,” Remus said, and when Sirius opened his mouth again to respond, Remus cut him off again. “Or Saint could be.”

Remus watched the way Sirius’ eyes lightened at his name. He saw a crack in the surface, a shift, but before he could say more, there was a shuffle of feet and Luke was standing by their table.

“Luke,” Remus said, looking up at him. He didn’t look any better than he had the night they had gone to his house. Remus felt another wave of guilt about that. Luke had purple beneath his eyes and his sweatshirt was one that Remus knew well. It had been left at his own house for weeks, only for Luke to pick it up later. It was a little small, from before he had bulked up from lacrosse, but Luke still wore it, fraying edges and all.

“Hey,” Luke cleared his throat, pushed a hand through his hair, and sat down. “Yeah, hi.”

He was nervous, Remus realized.

“Where is Saint?” Luke asked.

Sirius raised an eyebrow, and Remus practically felt the cold current grow. “He’ll be here.”

Luke didn’t rise to the bait. He looked rattled. He pulled the sweatshirt off, his haste nearly taking his shirt with it. His cheeks had pink spots on them. Remus reached out to touch his arm.

“Luke,” he said. “Are you—”

“Yeah,” Luke cut him off, but then looked at Remus more softly. He nodded. “I’m okay, Re.”

Remus nodded, then looked back to Sirius in time to see his eyes dart from Remus to Luke and back, narrowed.

“What?” Luke snapped.

“Sup,” Saint’s voice came.

Remus looked at him as he sat down, then back at Sirius.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mumbled.

“You know, Deveaux,” Saint said instead, and smiled at Luke. “There’s a song that came on in your car. Been stuck in my head ever since.”

“Where’s Pascal Dumais?” Luke asked.

“Straight to the point, then,” Saint replied. “He should be here. Might be in the back.”

Sirius rose, palms flat on the table. He still looked exasperated. “I’ll go find him.”

That left Remus alone at the table with Luke and Saint. Luke still seemed rattled, and Saint was just looking between the two of them.

“Are you all right?” Remus leaned in to ask. “You look…”

Luke took a slow, uneasy breath and looked over at Remus. The green in his eye seemed to blend more with the brown, his pupils large.

“This guy could have information about my dad,” Luke began, and glanced behind him in the direction that Sirius had gone. “I’ll let you know how I am when we talk to him. I…” Luke hesitated.

“Three,” Saint said softly. “Two…one—”

Luke pushed his chair back, too, turning towards the counter and the kitchen doors. “I don’t want Black warning him off or something.”

“What?” Remus made to rise, too, but hesitated. “Luke—“

But Luke was already ducking beneath the counter and more or less blasting through the kitchen’s door. Remus saw Leo do a double take and take a step towards him, shouting a protest.

Saint called out to him, then rose. “It’s all right!”

Remus watched him walk away in that smooth way of his, and lean against the counter, clearly explaining to Leo.

Remus had no choice but to follow.

The kitchens smelled like spiced meat and fresh bread. It was steamy with boiling water and frying pans, cooks yelling to each other as they prepared for a full service.

Remus floundered for a moment before he found Sirius and Luke. Luke was easy to spot, taller than anyone else there. He was talking very quickly to a broad man with a dark beard and kind eyes. He had the sort of hands that Remus associated with his grandfather. Meant for making, strong and scarred. Remus stepped up beside Sirius, who was watching.

“Pascal Dumais,” Remus said softly to Sirius.

Sirius was gazing at Pascal with a look on his face that Remus had never seen before. Soft.

“Dumo,” he replied.

Pascal shuffled them all into a back office where he pulled extra chairs around a table, pointed some of them to a slightly scraggly couch, and pulled out a bottle of what looked like homemade wine. It was light orange in color, and he handed each of them a glass.

“One of my wife’s many talents,” he smiled. “It’s orange wine.”

“Tell us now,” Luke said. “Tell me why my father—”

They all looked up when the door opened, and Leo slipped inside. He looked around warily at them, then managed a slight smile at Pascal.

“I don’t know how to reach Logan,” he said. “I…”

Pascal shook his head. “Sit down, Leo. You’ll need to hear this, too.”

Saint scooted over, into Sirius’ side. It pushed Sirius closer to Remus, and Remus tried not to settle into the warmth that Sirius radiated against him. He looked around the office instead, jaw clenched. It was filled with family photos, but it wasn’t until Remus looked closer that he realized it wasn’t just three children that appeared beside their parents, three children who were nearly Pascal and his wife’s spitting image. He recognized a young Sirius, and beside him, a young Saint. They were smiling wildly. It brought Remus back all those years.

Sirius, there one day, gone the next.

Pascal took a sip of his wine, his eyes going somewhat sad. Remus found himself looking at his hands again. He missed his grandfather.

All us Lupins, Remus. We go mad. At least that’s what they say.

“We shared a love of history,” Pascal said to Leo. “Your dad and I. But, of course, we by no means had the funds to truly commit to such an,” he laughed lightly, a little sadly. ”A hunt.”

He looked at Luke. Pascal spoke with the heavy island accent.

“That is where your father came in.”

Luke hadn’t touched his cup. “He was your funding.”

Pascal nodded. “But I didn’t know that he was…I didn’t know where he was getting it from. I never dreamed that he was…well, I’m not sure what they took him for, in the end.”

“No one seems to be able to tell me,” Luke said lowly.

“You never said,” Leo whispered. His blue eyes weren’t betrayed exactly, but he looked shocked.

“No, Dumo, you really didn’t,” Saint said.

“What was there to say?” Pascal replied. “Do you know how many people look for that treasure? At first I thought Wyatt, Leo’s father, was mad.”

Remus stiffened.

“And then,” Pascal rose. “Then he brought us the map.”

“The map,” Leo repeated, and he stood. “The map to The Cradle?”

Pascal swallowed and nodded. “Yes. I don’t know where he got it, he wouldn’t say.”

Leo stared at him for a long moment, and shook his head. “Why…why was he out there alone? Why was he out there in that weather?”

“You need a storm,” Pascal sighed and rubbed his eyes. “At least that’s what he and Victor thought.”

“My dad was actually hunting with you?” Luke asked. He and Leo wore almost identical expressions.

Pascal nodded. “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? A Hollow, a Helga, and a God, working together.” His eyes flit around at them all.

“Why a storm?” Remus asked. “Like, for tides or something?”

“Exactly,” Pascal nodded. “There’s a current in The Cradle. They call it—”

“The Horcrux,” Remus said, and when Saint sent him a questioning look he spread his hands, drawing a circle in his palm. “It’s a killer. It’s why people are so wary of sailing near there. It’s strongest when the winds are high, and the island ring keeps it contained. And it’s so rocky that it…” he looked at Pascal, realizing. “My grandfather used to call it the ship-sinker.”

Pascal nodded. “He’s not the only one. I thought Wyatt was insane, but Victor didn’t.”

Leo took a step forward, and Remus watched his chest rise and fall, eyes turning angry. “Then why wasn’t Victor out there?” He turned on Luke.

“Come, Le,” Pascal shook his head. “It isn’t this boy’s fault. We all knew it was dangerous.”

“And what?” Leo said, voice raising. “And he was the only one who thought it was worth the risk?”

Pascal was quiet for a long moment after that. Remus heard Leo’s real question, too. He was the only one who didn’t think he was leaving something behind? Pascal seemed about to speak once or twice, and then shook his head.

“I don’t know,” Pascal whispered, voice pained. “I didn’t even know he was going.” He looked up at Leo. “I didn’t know he had gone until we heard—”

Leo turned his back, then, and pushed the door open, disappearing down the hall. He left silence behind him.

Luke stood in the middle of it, like the quiet didn’t weigh him down at all.

“And my dad’s letter?” he asked. “Your name.”

“Jesus, Deveaux,” Sirius snarled from beside Remus. “Give it a fucking minute.”

“He’s not the only one who has been waiting for answers,” Luke snapped back. “It isn’t my fault he didn’t like them.”

Pascal rose without a word and turned to the desk. He opened a deep filing cabinet drawer and, from the very back, slid a rolled piece of paper, tightly bound in a protective plastic.

“The map,” Luke said, eyes trained on it.

“This showed up a few days after your father’s arrest,” Pascal replied. “That’s all I know. I tried to get in contact with him. I really did.”

“But it went down with Leo’s father,” Saint said. “Why are there two?”

“There is never only one of anything,” Pascal said. “The world is too greedy.”

Luke reached for it, but Pascal held it back with a knowing expression. “Do I look stupid? I’m not giving you any clue as to where that gold might be. I don’t need anyone else getting—”

“Caught up?” Saint mumbled, and Remus felt the motion of Sirius slugging him.

“All fine,” Saint said with a smile, and stood. “Don’t worry about it, Dumo. We understand.”

Pascal let out a slight laugh. “Don’t think I don’t know about your slippery fingers.” He tapped the rolled map on his palm. “This won’t be in the same place twice.”

Saint pouted. Sirius stood, too, keeping close to Saint. It left Remus feeling cold on the couch.

“Why did you tell us, then?” Sirius asked.

“Sometimes there are things that people need to know,” Pascal said. “And sometimes there aren’t. You had my name. I did tell you why. But this. This is dangerous.”

“This is opportunity,” Saint shoved his way in front of Sirius.

“For what, wealth?” Pascal scoffed. “There are easier ways.”

“You don’t what to finish the job?” Saint shot back.

“I already lost one friend out of it,” Pascal said evenly. “I won’t lose a son, too.”

Saint froze and Remus saw Sirius freeze, too. Saint didn’t even look like he was breathing. His silence was equally as heavy as the one Leo had left behind.

“I’m not,” Saint’s voice barely came out, but it filled the small room. Remus thought his hands were shaking.

Pascal just nodded, eyes solemn.

Saint turned, shaking Sirius off when he tried to catch him, and then Luke, tried, too. Remus blinked and they were all tumbling out of the room, Luke on Sirius’ heels, Sirius on Saint’s.

“Stop,” Sirius shouted as they broke back out into the night. “Saint, it doesn’t matter—”

“Nothing does,” Saint yelled back without turning. “And so nothing turns into everything.”

Sirius stopped as Saint turned into shadows, as he got farther and farther away. Remus caught his breath beside him, but Luke kept going.

“What?” Sirius asked. “You’re going after him?”

“We need him,” Luke snapped over his shoulder, and disappeared, too, the white soles of his sneakers glinting like the moon rising.

“You’re not?” Remus asked, looking up at Sirius.

Sirius’ eyes looked far away. With Saint, Remus thought.

“Saint can’t be chased,” Sirius sighed. “He loses everyone. He comes back.”

They stayed there, though, just at the edge of The Hollow, looking into the dim night. Remus wondered what Luke thought Saint would give him.

“A storm,” Remus said. “The treasure needs a storm.”

“Botilda,” Sirius nodded. “I know.”

“Do you think he’ll…or Leo and Logan—”

“Maybe.”

Remus reached for him, put a hand on his shoulder. “You know where I live, right?”

Sirius made to pull away, but Remus held on. “Just answer.”

“Of course I know where you live,” Sirius sighed. “This island isn’t that big. Though some people might prefer if it was.”

Remus huffed out an annoyed breath, and let go. “There’s the tower. Round, a turret. There’s a door at the base of it. Go through it, up the stairs, and through the door to your left. My room’s just down the hall, and there’s a guest bedroom right across from it. I’ll leave the doors open.”

He left Sirius standing there, and with a strange pull in his chest.

Finn couldn’t help but feel strange, walking up to Leo’s house, his hand in Logan’s. It was small but cozy, with warm light coming from inside the windows, and flowers growing in the small yard. He could see the workshop garage door that Logan had described. Someone had painted the metal as a sky full of stars.

“This is such a…” he began, then laughed, feeling almost giddy. “Such a house.”

Logan laughed, too. His smile hadn’t faded once since Finn had gotten back on his feet. He didn’t feel all the way there, the tiredness still lingered, but at least now he felt like he could eat an entire horse—and no longer in tiny bites.

“It is, I really like it inside,” Logan replied as they stopped at the door. He squeezed Finn’s hand, and kissed the back of his palm. “You’ll see.”

He raised his fist to knock, and they stood there for a long, quiet moment, Logan leaning his head on Finn’s shoulder, before the door opened. Finn let himself take Leo in. He was blond, and tall. Lean muscled and—and he looked unbearably sad. His eyes were red.

Leo looked at them and Finn almost could feel Logan’s smile fade.

“Leo?” he asked.

“I…” Leo began, but his breathing caught, his eyes falling shut as he tried to keep his tears at bay.

Finn didn’t really know what made him do it, but he reached forward and put a hand on his arm—at the same time that Logan placed on on Leo’s back.

“Leo, hey,” Logan said gently. “Hey… what is it?”

“Let’s sit,” Finn said. He caught a glimpse of the living room behind Leo and the two of them got the door closed and led Leo to the couch. He sagged into it.

“I’m sorry,” Leo choked out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Logan said, shooting a worried, confused look at Finn. “We…what…”

“What can we do?” Finn asked timidly. Leo didn’t even know him. He probably didn’t want to be crying in front of him.

Leo looked up at Logan and a strange story spilled out of him. A ship, Finn caught. Gold. A hurricane and a death. Logan seemed to understand every word of it, his eyes wide. Finn realized he still had a hand on Leo’s back, and pressed it back into his lap.

“I never really thought too much about…” Leo’s voice broke. “How. If it was terrifying or…”

Finn looked at Logan across Leo. He shook his head, showing he didn’t understand. Leo must have caught the gesture in the corner of his eye because he turned to Finn. Finn stared at him. Some people just looked gorgeous when they cried. Leo was one of them.

“I’m sorry,” Leo rasped. “This isn’t how I wanted to meet you, Finn.”

Finn just shook his head. “I…no, don’t…It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

“He just,” Leo’s breathing caught, and he looked back at Logan. “There’s a difference now. It wasn’t the storm. He chose to—he chose to go.”

Logan placed a soothing hand on Leo’s neck and leaned in so that their foreheads nearly touched. Finn leaned back a little, staring at the inch of space between them.

“We know how it feels to have someone choose to go, Leo,” Logan said softly. “We understand.”

Logan looked at Finn, and Finn didn’t know what else to do but nod. That he could understand.

“We do,” Finn said softly. “We understand.”

Leo wiped his eyes and looked at Finn. He tried for a shaky smile. “I guess we have some explaining to do.”

169 notes · View notes

warmau · 4 years

Text

slytherin!au san

*this post was commissioned | find other ateez aus here warnings: suggestive themes (no strings attached situation), hp themed au but we ignore jkrowling <3

something crawls across your desk

round and dark and you don’t have to look twice to know what it is

part of you wants to turn and look over your shoulder where you are painfully aware of the fact that san is eyeing you up

he’s always sat at the back of potions - while you sat diligently in the front and part of you suspects its a strategical ploy on his end

actually, you don’t expect, he has told you many times before that the view is just better from back there

it’s sleazy and you should scoff at the attempt of bad flirtation

but it’s hard for you to hate it as much as maybe the rest of your gryffindor housemates might

because

you like san

but

you aren’t about to let anyone in school know

so instead of looking behind you, you take your wand and flick the spider off the corner of your desk

it falls - disappearing in a little cloud of smoke midair

san’s always said he prefers them to snakes, he knows his whole houses deal with snakes slithers back to the ancestral wizards and bloodlines - but arachnids are so much cooler in his opinion

you don’t like bugs or snakes or anything that likes the cover of darkness

the only exception funny enough is ...... well......... san

“so did you get a date to the deathday party?”

you break from thought and turn to your friend

“huh - we don’t need a date for deathday parties. it’s just halloween basically.”

“but it’s so much more fun to have someone to cuddle up to while the ghosts do all their prancing around....like what if you get scared and your boyfriend just........”

she clasps her hands around herself

“holds you~”

you roll your eyes and close your textbook

you pull your worksheet out and get up to place it on the professors desk

they smile and wave their hand to let you know you’re free to go, you say bye to your friend who grumbles in response that you’re abandoning them

and as you walk down the rows of students - you reach the back of the room

you don’t pause when you reach out for the door, but you feel the same gaze that's been burning through you since san transferred here last year

you thought you’d be disgusted with it by now

but you’ve come to enjoy the slight, hot sting

“so, about that deathday party?”

you groan

you don’t want to talk about stupid trivial school events right now

with sans lips against your neck and your back against the cool walls of the greenery

instead of an answer you just tilt his head back up, gripping under his jaw and letting your mouth find his in an attempt to kiss him, of course, but to stop him from asking anymore questions

san kind of gets your point and his hands slip from under your robes lower

until they’re pressing into the skin of your hip and then

his teeth sink into your lower lip and you pull back

“hey - i said don’t do tha-”

“do you want to go to the deathday party with me?”

you give him a blank stare

you hope he gets the point of it too, but with the way he hasn’t gone back to touching you, it’s clear he’s waiting for an actual verbal response

“you know we can’t just show up to a party together.”

“why not?”

his hands leave your skin and your uniform falls back into place, he moves a little but still remains standing between your knees

the sudden retreat of full contact makes you upset and you hook your foot around his to tug him forward

instead of tipping over and into you, he puts a hand flat on your thigh

“seriously, why not? are you scared that people will be mad about it.”

“no - you know that isn’t the reason.”

“then what is?”

you sit up and want to tell him the real answer

the one that has been bubbling in the back of your mind these past couple of weeks

it had really just been for fun, a thrilling and almost wholly self-serving reason

when you let san, a slytherin who was barely managing to pass half his classes, and notoriously known for being quite uninterested in studies, magical morality, or any of the things you held so near and dear to your heart

corner you in the history section of the library

the books ruffling their pages on their own to hide the sound that came out of your mouth when he’d bit down into your skin for the first time

really you had just wanted to do something reckless

because you were well on your way to being perfectly clean cut in every other manner

but now - if you were to be completely truthful with him - you couldn’t just say

“the reason is because im just using you. you mean nothing to me.”

because through all the sneaking around in tight corners

using disappearing spells to hide from teaches and classmates

finding yourselves alone in that room of his

far down the twisting halls of the slytherin dungeon

you had fallen for all the charms of a person you had told yourself you should loathe

but san’s embarrassingly bad flirting, desperate manner of scratching to be as close as possible to you, loud and attention hungry attitude

had spun tight around you

because he was all those things, but through it all - through the bedroom eyes and lips on your thighs

he was one of the most gentle people who had ever laid hands on you

sure, you two could get caught up in a firestorm of young energy that would lead to both of you parting ways with evidence under the layers of your clothes that you’d admire in the mirror of your bathroom for days after

but that’s not what you meant when you described him as gentle

it was his soul, that was at the core, tender

little pretty whispers about your neck, your wrist, your eyes

sometimes when you were just talking there was the righteousness that people said he lacked laced through each, carefully chosen word

he could seem like a wreck of a person to everyone, even his own friends

but you’d somehow managed to catch the moments

of him that were most vulnerable

soft gaze that waits with manner to know if you are comfortable and safe with him, poetic words about the shadows of your bodies, there was even a mark of true faithfulness

when you two had almost gotten caught by a angry upperclassman

and san had let you escape before turning himself in and being slapped loud and hard and echoing

“who was with you?”

the angry voice had barked and san had stood with his hands clasped in each other, knuckles white

“no one. i was alone.”

so now when he asks you what the reason is that you don’t just want to let the world know

why you don’t want to make a statement

that this fling isn’t just that shallow pleasure seeking adventure you had intended it to start as and end as

but that it’s two people - that really fit each other like puzzle pieces

you can only think of the real answer

which is

“im scared. im scared that you don’t mean it as much as i do.”

you don’t mutter those words, you just keep quiet again instead and san finally slips completely away from you

he grabs his robe, hands curling around the green collar

“saying nothing is enough of an answer.”

you slide off the table and try to stop him

but your hand doesn’t leave your side and your knees are weak

and you’re worried that too much noise will make someone curious come looking

so you just watch him weave through the plants, until he’s gone.

he’s really gone.

the days seem to start going backwards ..... even though the dates get closer and closer to the end of the month

maybe its you that starts to function on some kind of made up timeline? because everywhere and everyone you look

is somehow san

the couples sitting in the courtyard sharing food, notes, kisses - they’re you and san

the solitary roaming owls circling the sky with letters in tow - all the letters you imagine rain down

and when you pick one up it says his name, written with the pen strokes that you’ve seen flipping through his textbooks

even the spells that leave your lips while you practice just turn to chants of his name

but he doesn’t .... come back like you wait for. he’s not in the classes you share. he’s not waiting in the secret corners you’ve both chosen.

he’s nowhere and yet everywhere for you.

the night of the deathday celebration - the entire school is buzzing

not only are the ghosts all out to chatter and reminisce about their time as the living

but the students are rushing up and down between the houses in costumes and masks

you shove your face into your pillow and snap your fingers, commanding the door to your room to shut

only to be knocked on a moment later

you shout your roommates name, telling them to get it

you’re in no mood to celebrate. you just want to fall deeper and deeper into your bed until you’ve completely disappeared from view

you hear the scurrying of footsteps, laughter, and conversation and then suddenly a hand grabs your shoulder and flips you over

“get up! we’re going to the party!”

your roommate gleams with a grin and you politely, but harshly refuse

“but your date will be so sad if you don’t show up!”

you spring up at the word date. a part of your stomach flips and you think - is there anyway it could be him?

your friend takes your shift in expression as a positive sign, whisking you up and out of bed - putting something that feels like a headband on your head - and pushing you toward the door

you haven’t seen san for a week

even though you feel as if the thought of him has more than tortured you every hour of every day

so even with the chances being slim, you feel your shoulders tense and a nervousness seep in through your veins

did he really come all the way to the gryffindor tower? is he finally coming back? did he tell my friends he-

but you look up when you get to the hall and instead of san you see

kim hongjoong

he’s standing beside mingi, who is twirling your roommate around and giggling in unison with them

“i-”

you start and hongjoong extends his hand

“your friend said you wanted to ask me to the party, but didn’t have the time. but ill gladly take you if you’d like.”

you stare at his palm

then back at him and the pretty prince’s costume he has on

he’s actually exactly what you should want

he’s in the top ten students of the ravenclaw house, he took OWLs early, he has been interning at the ministry of magic since he was a fourth year

he’s clean cut, gentlemanly, quiet spoken, and just - perfect

like you

but your stomach flips again, in a bad way, in a way that’s telling you

no you don’t want to go to this party with him, but to refuse him to his face is somehow even worse than just giving in

so you put your hand in his with a fabricated smile, that somehow is enough to convince everyone else.

until you hear mingi let out a sound of surprise, you turn and look at him - fully expecting him to read through your fake happiness

but instead he points the floor

“spider!”

you turn and see the spider

“sa-”

hongjoong crushes it with his shoe - hand still holding yours

“got it, should we head to the party?”

so you end up in a familiar place with an unfamiliar persons hands on your waist

dancing in the low light of the slytherin dungeons dorm

which has been transformed with pumpkin lighting and live music where every time the beat drops a bolt of electricity sparks from every corner

the ghosts, always fond of the cold and the dark, had chosen this as the venue for the deathday party

and although the headmaster and professors were looking grim about the prospect of the dorms being absolutely trashed

everyone else was having a blast

drinking spiked candy corn punch and pressing closer than mandated by the rules

prefects were running around casting spells to push people from each other, but they were just snapping back into each other like magnets

and in the shadows and heat of everyone else you can’t help but think about san again

you are looking at hongjoong, you are trying to focus on something he is saying about the music

but the wires of your mind are tangling and twisting and turning his hands on your waist into sans and his eyes into sans and his lips into sans-

it takes you a moment because you’re so dazed

to realize the lips you’re dreaming about aren’t kissing you, but hongjoong is

you pull back in horror and he mumbles an apology - but you turn, sensing something daunting

when you see - against the wall - staring right at you is the gaze that’s been on you for so long that you can never mistake it for another

“san!”

you gasp, and your hands drop from hongjoong’s shoulders, fast enough to watch san turn and disappear through the doors

“san?”

hongjoong repeats

“the slytherin? why are you-”

you rush toward him, pushing past the bodies that all seem to meld into one and other

the electricity zaps just as the door closes and it makes you jump and when you push it back open

the sound and the crowd shrinks

and you are looking down a dark, cold hall

you take your wand out and spark a small light from the tip - “san?” you call his name

legs shaking, voice a small tremble

there’s no answer

you keep going - subjecting yourself to the deeper parts of the dungeon until you think you’ve walked almost the entire hall and in front of you is a wall

something crawls up the side of your leg and you freeze

“san?”

you breathe again - but there’s no response and the feeling keeps coming up your skin, up your clothes, up and onto your neck and then

just as you think you can feel it begin to crawl up to your lips

it disappears and you turn because something like a flame starts to bloom from the center of your back

and when you do

it’s san

a spider crawls across his cheek, disappearing into smoke on him too

you don’t want to settle your breathing yet

you feel like you’ve been bounded to the spot you’re standing in

“you could have just told me there was someone else.”

“there isn’t.”

“i saw it - you can’t just -”

he starts, voice dropping until you think there’s only one thing you can say that would prove to him that it’s him

“i want to be with you.”

his eyes, long and overcasted with pain, widen

“being without you is like being without myself”

you stumble over the words - unfamiliar with this feeling of anxiety that has never grasped you so fully

“it’s stupid to be scared of you leaving me, but i am more terrified that i won’t have you at all to begin with.”

he is searing through you with the gaze

but the flame that used to burn hot with desire is now a cool, blue fire

that is scoping you out, weighing your words in his mind

until he presses his lips to yours and you lean back against the wall to let your hands find his neck

“i won’t leave you.”

he breathes into your skin

his scent floating around you and comforting you in the dark as you drop your wand and the only light you two had is gone

“you might even get sick of me and ask me too, but i won’t because i love you.”

you want to laugh at that

not because it is funny but because he must be insane

to think you’d ever get sick of him

even a week without him has left you suffering in withdrawl, for the first time it’s you who san can’t keep up with

as you kiss him back harder and lick into the roof of his mouth and pull your hands under his shirt

and he has to nearly stop you from undressing him there - because you just want to devour this moment over and over

until the taste of him is ingrained in your memory and you can recall what its like to have his pulse against your tongue even if a million miles separate you

san returns the sentiment, his hands itch too to find the places he adores most but even still

the entire school is a hallway away, so is the headmaster

so he lets you kiss him again, mark the side of his jawline and get your hands down to his belt before he mutters that he knows a shortcut to his room from here

you and san don’t return to the party

but the house ghosts saw you

and in the morning when san is walking down the gryffindor hall from your dorm

everyone knows very damn well why he’s there

the shock the questions the side eyes are all what you expected

but they don’t compare to the comfort that comes with having him beside you again

sitting with him at the top of the tower, legs swinging over the side, his smile in your neck

“i think its kinda cool that our anniversary is on halloween”

he comments one day as you’re sitting in his lap in slytherin commons

you turn to look at him

“wait, did you have a costume for the deathday part - what was it? i didn’t see.”

“oh you didn’t notice?”

you shake your head and san plays with your fingers before grinning up at you - long cheshire smile

“i was dressed as your boyfriend. fitting huh?”

you lean forward and he puckers his lips in anticipation, but then yelps when you flick his forehead

“i think you might have been right about that getting sick of you predication.”

#ateez scenarios #ateez imagines #ateez au #san scenarios #san imagines #san au #ateez #suggestive themes #members: ateez #choi san imagines #choi san au #writing commissions #hp!au

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wolvesandpetals · 3 years

Text

Postscript. Part 2 of 3.

Loki x Sylvie "Our divorce never went through" Modern AU. Angst, Rated T.

Masterlist of my fics here.

---

He meets her again next week, same place, same time. This time, he doesn't buy coffee, just donuts.

[[MORE]]

She sits down with a fond smile. "You've grown your hair out", she comments, remembering the short brown mop that is now long and black.

His smile is tight, and he doesn't speak. He digs into his briefcase and wordlessly pulls out the papers and a pen.

It hurts how he wouldn't even talk to her, but she knows it's what she deserves.

She picks up the pen, ready to sign and get it over with. The familiar proximity to him, combined with the unfamiliar coldness, makes her feel things she can't quite describe. She feels like she might break in his presence, and she needs to get out fast.

"Don't you want to at least read that first?" He asks, amused.

She shakes her head, and continues signing.

"How do you know I'm not making you sign your possessions away to me?"

"Enough!" She finally snaps. She closes her eyes, willing the tears back. "I was twenty-one, I was scared, and I was foolish. I made a huge mistake. Do you have to keep reminding me of that constantly?"

A solitary tear slips off her left eye, and Loki melts. He is defenseless against her tears, his carefully acquired armour insteantly falling away. He has never been able to see her cry and sit idly by. "I'm sorry." He says at once. He lets out a small, nervous laugh. "I guess I'm still a little bitter. I don't know why. It was so long ago."

She takes in deep breaths, trying to calm herself.

"Do you want something to drink?" He asks hurriedly.

She shakes her head. "That's not a good idea."

He pauses. It's a decision he has to make within the next ten seconds, and he does. He picks up the papers, and puts them back inside his briefcase. Sylvie stares at him, perplexed, as he orders two coffees for them.

He smiles softly. For the first time, she notices the wrinkles that are starting to form around his eyes. Time, it has been kind at least to his physical appearance. "How have you been?"

"I'm okay." She says quietly. "I've been... busy, I guess."

"Travelled the world?" He asks. That was one thing she wanted to do, one reason she wanted out. He told her he'd go with her. "You go, I go", he said. But she didn't believe him.

"Yes." She says sadly. "The world gets old quickly though."

"Really?" He asks, a little surprised.

She nods. "Everywhere I went, I just-" she hesitates. She really doesn't want to confess, it hurts her pride. But this might be the last time she's seeing him, and if she doesn't say it now, she will never get another chance. "I travelled from city to city, country to country, and the only place I wanted to be was back at our old apartment in The South Bank."

He's stunned by her unexpected confession. "I moved." He informs her. "I couldn't stand to be there after you left."

She nods again, forcing a smile on her face. "Did you ever go back?"

"I couldn't." He tells her honestly. "I dropped out of college, as you know, moved in with my brother, and started a business. I've been working on it since."

"What kind of business?" She asks curiosly.

He ignores his lawyer's voice in his head warning him not to disclose anything about his financial situation. "A bar."

She laughs. "You always did love your alcohol."

He chuckles, a hundred memories flashing back.

---

The very first night he saw her was at a bar. She was with her friends, and he was with his, and he asked for her number. He kept texting her right from the moment, until his friends teased him mercilessly and he had to pause for a while. They talked till 4 am that night, till his cell phone died.

Their first kiss was also at a bar. They were out with their friends, drunk out of their minds, and though they had both agreed to take it slow, she cornered him near the basins and pleaded. "I can't." And he understood. He felt it too, the need to crash his lips against hers.

"You're mine." He had told her one everning, while she rested her feet on his lap and leaned back against her chair. She had nodded, flushed. Right there in the open rooftop bar, she knew, she would never be the same again.

"I need you." And off to his dorm it was.

---

"What about you?" He asks.

"I am a stunt coordinator now." She says proudly.

It's his turn to laugh now. "You always did love your daggers."

There's a silence that's comfortable, and Loki takes a moment to steal a glance at her. She's still just as beautiful as he remembers, and it hurts.

"How are your parents?" He asks.

"Fine." She says with a smile. "How are yours?"

"Same." He doesn't elaborate. He always had a strained relationship with his father, and that hasn't changed.

Sylvie steadies herself before she asks the next question. "And is there a future Mrs Loki in the picture?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Really?" She asks, surprised. "I'd imagine there would be a line of men and women."

"Yes. There have been a few." He confesses, and she feels her heart sink, until he speaks again. "But nothing real."

She nods, knowing exactly what he means. "It's been the same for me." She tells him honestly.

The waitress calls his name, and he gets up to grab their coffees. Sylvie watches him leave, his silhouette the sole object of her focus as everything else fades away, and suddenly she realises exactly what has been missing from her life.

Loki hands her the coffee. Sylvie takes a sip, burning her tongue a little.

They used to do this every single morning in the campus. Meet for coffee, talk about everything and anything in the world. It was their thing. She hasn't been able to have a cup without thinking of him ever since.

"Thor's married now." He says, rekindling the conversation.

"Sif?"

He shakes his head. "Jane. He met her a few years ago."

Sylvie stares into the brown of her coffee, stirring it and watching it swirl, like the thoughts in her head. She never thought Thor would marry someone other than Sif, but she guesses people are replaceable.

She is irreplaceable.

One day soon, Loki would marry someone that isn't her. The thought hurts more than it should ten years later.

It hurts to look at him and feel the same surge of feelings that are supposed to have gone away. After all, it was her decision to end things, and she has no right to feel this way now.

She wonders if he-

"Do you remember Mobius?" He asks abruptly, before she has a chance to truly indulge in the thoughts in her head.

How can she forget? He was a senior, and one of Loki's best friend.

"You'll never guess what he does for a living." Loki says, grinning.

They used to play the guessing game, and she'd always lose, but she wants to try nevertheless. "FBI Agent?"

"No." He says, his grin widening.

"Boy band manager?" She tries again. Finally, her eyebrows rise in curiosity, signalling her defeat.

He looks excited as he says the words. "Jetsky salesman."

"No way!" She laughs. "Those things still exist?"

"According to him, they do." He joins her laughter. "According to him, they sell."

"I don't believe him." She says bluntly.

"Neither do I." He agrees.

She glances at him, then at the campus grounds outside the window. There are more trees now, and more students, and more shops with "Free WiFi" signs. "This place has changed quite a lot."

"Ten years." He whispers. "Everything changes. You've changed."

She knows she has. But she's curious to see the changes in the eyes of someone who once knew her best. "Me? How?"

He shrugs. "You're... less wild now."

She snorts. "I assure you, I'm not."

"Less headstrong then." He corrects. "Less impulsive."

She doesn't respond, doesn't tell him he's right. Instead, she says, "You've changed too. Less... mischievous."

She's right. When she left, she took that part of him with her. For the next few months, he was severely depressed, barely coping. Mischief was the last thing on his mind.

He takes the final sip from his cup, and hers is empty too. He picks them up and throws them in the nearby bin, and the dreaded moment arrives again. He pulls the papers out once more, and she steadies herself.

"Do you ever wonder..." She stares into the distance, unable to look him in the eyes. "What would have happened if we had met a few years later? When we were older and wiser?"

"All the time", he admits. He has pictured a hundred different scenarios in his head over the years, where they stumble upon each other, and their romance awakens one more time. He also pictures scenarios in which they meet differently, and at nights, while he locks up his bar, sometimes he can picture her walking in for one last drink.

"I'm sorry." She tells him sincerely. "I shouldn't have given up on us so quickly."

"We wouldn't have made it if we kept going." He counters. "It would be toxic. We would have resented each other more."

"Do you resent me any less, though?" Her voice is timid, young.

"I don't resent you, Sylvie." He clarifies. "I just... I just don't think I can relive that hurt again. It was the worst phase of my life."

She nods, and picks up the pen, ready to sign. He places a hand over hers, stopping her, and she knows he feels the familiar jolt of electricity too, but neither of them dare to comment on it. "I'm sorry too." He tells her sincerely. "We got married too young. I shouldn't have proposed so soon."

She gives him a tiny smile, and continues signing away. He looks at the menu on the wall, so that he isn't staring at her. He reads the name of each item but comprehends nothing at all, his mind focused on one thing and only one thing.

It takes less than ten minutes for her to sign all the papers and for him to put it away in his briefcase. They both get up, knowing it's time to go their separate ways again.

"Take care of yourself", she says, teary-eyed.

And he can't help it. He can't resist the temptation to hold her in his arms one last time. He hugs her, tentatively at first, then tighter when she reciprocates. It lasts longer than what is appropriate for two people who are now strangers. When they part, tears are falling down her cheeks and clouding up his eyes.

"Take care of yourself, too." He tells her, his voice hoarse with emotions he's struggling to hold back. He holds out the door for her this time, and walks her to her car, and for the second time in his life, watches her drive away from him forever.

(To be continued. Don't kill me.)

#fanfiction #sylki fanfic #sylki #pro sylki #loki disney+#loki x sylvie #sylvie x loki #lovedaggers

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isfjmel-phleg · 2 years

Text

And the concluding remarks! Full of spoilers!

There’s no evidence of Howl’s cold during his feats of magic (fighting the witch, working with Calcifer to move the castle), and he goes to bed afterward with “no groans, no shouts, and almost no coughing.” The illness is likely real enough, but its severity is a performance he can apparently abandon when necessary.

Sophie figures out Calcifer’s identity by what he reminds her of!

Howl caught Calcifer five years before, just after setting himself up as a wizard in Ingary, which means he’s been heartless since around age twenty-two. According to Jones, a spell from his studies for the doctoral thesis brought him to Ingary. That would make Howl quite a young doctoral student! Was he some sort of prodigy who breezed through his undergraduate and graduate degrees in no time?

“Howl only offered because he was sorry for me.” Sophie notes that that’s just like Michael--are Michael and Howl more alike than one might suspect? Not temperamentally, of course, but in their capacities for empathy.

“Lily Angorian has a heart like a boiled stone.” Exactly, because it belongs to the Witch of the Waste.

Howl denies accepting his “common” name when he uses it on the flower shop--it’s for disguise only, he still prefers Pendragon. But should we believe him? Although he still hasn’t resigned himself to the worth in things that are “natural” by the end of story, he might have been affected by Sophie’s preference and respect for his plain real name.

The Witch likes to think of herself as “A solitary orchid, blooming in the Waste.” She and Howl share a tendency for dramatic self-aggrandizing and a need to stand out.

“Only people who understood Calcifer were really welcome in Howl’s house.” On a practical level, this is because Calcifer is what keeps the house going. On the other hand, this probably has something to do with Calcifer’s being in possession of Howl’s heart.

“I could take any piece of you I wanted and leave the rest of you alive, if I went about it the right way.” An important ability to set up, although rather vague. What exactly is keeping Howl going physically, if he literally lacks a heart? How does this affect him physically? Is his blood just...aimlessly wandering his body with nowhere to go? Does he even still have blood? Etc.

“Sophie’s too kind herself to see how heartless Howl is!” As if Sophie has not spent the entire book calling Howl heartless, over and over again.

“I came to the conclusion that you liked being in disguise.” Like Howl himself!

“I did my best. Haven’t you noticed that your aches and pains have been better lately? Or do you enjoy having those too?” As we’ve seen early on in their relationship, Howl and Sophie both are keenly perceptive of the truths of each other’s characters, unflattering though it may be. And that’s why they’re perfect for each other. Howl sees Sophie as she is, stubbornly resigned to the self-fulfilling prophecy, and he’s not afraid to call her out on it (as she does with him).

“Howl showed his kindness rather strangely, but, considering all Sophie had done to annoy him, he had been very good to her indeed.” They have a weird relationship, but it is reciprocal, and both have proven in actions that they have each other’s best interests at heart. Just...unorthodox ways of expressing it--with green slime or weed killer.

“She had taken Martha’s view of Fanny, whole and entire, when she should have known Fanny better. She was ashamed.” While there was probably some truth to Martha’s assessment of her mother, it was not the “whole and entire” truth. Like everyone in the book, Fanny does not fit the role of the evil stepmother; although she’s not above being self-serving, whether consciously or not, she genuinely does care about Sophie.

“If this is the Waste, [...] then I feel sorry for the Witch having to live here.” This pity is a step forward for Sophie with her (well-justified) detestation of the Witch--not for the Witch’s benefit but for the sake of Sophie’s own character development.

“Howl had not bothered to shave or tidy his hair. His eyes were still red-rimmed and his black sleeves were torn in several places. There was not much to choose between Howl and the scarecrow. Oh dear! Sophie thought. He must love Miss Angorian very much.” SHE STILL CAN’T SEE IT.

Howl’s being honest about his cowardice is the last part of the curse but not really a curse in terms of character development.

And after Howl opens up about his faults, he dishes Sophie some more blunt truths when she falls back on her old mantra of “I’m the eldest! [...] I’m a failure!” He replies, “Garbage! [...] You just never stop to think!”

The first indication that the curse has broken is when Sophie gives Howl weird CPR to put his heart back and notes in passing that her hair is red again.

After getting his heart back, Howl’s “eyes seemed a deeper color--more like eyes and less like glass marbles.” He’s regained a part of his humanity--a part of his soul?--that he had lost in the deal with Calcifer.

“I’ve never seen why people put such value on things being natural,” Howl claims (he’s still in his dyed blond hair and artificially black suit--but a complete mess after skipping his usual preening), and “Sophie knew then that he was scarcely changed at all.” I think “scarcely” might be the operative word here. He’s still very much himself, but with some more complex views and new priorities.

“Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try.” And that’s the crux of their relationship. They go into it with full awareness of each other’s shortcomings and no romanticized notions, choosing to make it work because they also see the worth in each other.

The book ends with Calcifer voluntarily returning to the castle, because, as he claims, it’s raining. The real reason, of course, being that he’s attached to the residents of the castle and doesn’t want to abandon them even when he has nothing keeping him there anymore. Calcifer, after all, is not a purely exploitative being; he has (forgive the expression) a heart. Although he’s no longer tethered to Howl, their character development parallels.

#jellicoe-lodge #not tagging the book because I am talking to you all and not to The Fandom At Large

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boop-le-snoot · 3 years

Text

masterpost • main masterlist • taglist & faq

previously on...

Chapter 3 is finally here. Sorcerers need their shopping done, too. Beyonce/Wong platonic ship (joking)! And finally some action, more witchy stuff. Bucky whump because I have a saviour complex. Stucky cuteness moment. Some blood/gore in this chapter.

My insides clenched, seeing the yellow and blue notice taped to my door - the building manager rarely left notes, so whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good. I had managed to wind myself up into an anxious frenzy by the time I had gone inside and locked my door behind me, immediately thinking I would have to exhaust myself by turning to magic to keep a roof over my head.

For once, the news turned out to be positive: a neighbor was being evicted and turned in to the police for stealing packages. The building manager urged the tenants to report any missing items and apply for a refund when possible, apologizing for the inconvenience. I wondered what prompted this, basically unheard of in NYC, act of kindness as my altar stared at me with mocking amusement, pointing out the obvious by its mere presence.

Grinning to myself, I texted Odette - predictably, she was happy for me, happy that my protection spell had turned out strong and steady, and added a few tips of her own for my spell to stay that way. It felt like I'd grown invisible wings, those days, with all the possibilities open - and never once did I let myself entertain a thought of getting back at an enemy of the past for longer than five seconds.

Sure, it was perfectly human to consider making the cheating ex go bankrupt or make sure the college professor, that failed a couple of students each semester as a 'reality check', trips and face-plants at least once a day... I mean, who wouldn't experience a malicious sort of joy from petty revenge?

But I found my powers were best applied with a positive result in mind. My friend's cat was the first test rat- I mean, living creature I had practiced my healing spells on. The eleven year old kitty was struggling and both me and my friend loved the critter dearly - so the short, but tiring spell I performed yielded exactly the results I was expecting. Odette said something about genuine love backing up the magic, and- well, Dumbledore much?

On humans, it turned out, it wasn't nearly as simple. I didn't know what I had expected would happen after performing nothing short of a whole improv-performace type of ritual right in front of my very puzzled but hopeful friend with chronic asthma, but it wasn't the sheer exhaustion that ran bone-deep and left me bedridden for a whole day.

Odette visited my dingy apartment with her signature enormous purse full of vials she spoon-fed me and trinkets she strategically placed in and around my immediate sleeping area. "There, there," the woman patted my head as I pitifully moaned at the ear-splitting headache. "The first one is always the most challenging. After all, if it would be easy, everyone would do it."

I understood that. But at the same time, it felt unfair that no good deed went unpunished. I told Odette so, raising my voice to the best of my ability as she rummaged around my kitchen.

"Nothing in this world comes out of thin air, whatever you decide to give has to be taken from somewhere," she explained patiently. "People like us are considered hedge witches. We do solitary work and draw most of our energy from the Earth, from mother Nature. We cannot perform miracles, however, the cost of our spells are very low," I felt an immediate peak of interest at the simple yet effective explaination she gave me. "We remain mostly human. Gaia* is kind and generous to the ones who pay respect," Odette continued over the clatter of pans and pots. "There are other kinds of witches - who take from other people, who take from the dead. But taking something by force always leaves scars and taking something from the dead means bringing a piece of them back to places it should not be."

I pondered the words as Odette brought the kettle to a boil, the whistling shriek piercing through my skull like a sharp projectile. "What about Voodoo practitioners?" I couldn't hold back my curiosity.

Odette cleared her throat. "What is left of them is mostly not human. Their gifts are great but the costs are greater. They can live far, far longer than the average witch but their souls will know no peace, just like the souls of the dead they anchor to themselves over time," Odette entered the room with a bowl of tangy, creamy liquid that smelled like pumpkin soup. "We do not bestow any judgement upon our brothers and sisters but it is our duty to inform the young." She cast a pointed glance towards me, passing me the soup and a wooden spoon I didn't know I had. "This should help you recover. Take tomorrow off if needs be."

She left shortly afterwards and I hadn't much strength than to use the bathroom, wash the rune-engraved spoon and curl up in my bed, only waking up when the meager light shone over my face from the window. Sleepy and fog-tinted, the early morning NYC was damp and windy as I stuck my head out of the window to soak my sleep-heated head in the cool air.

As uneventful as the day at the café was, I still wasn't up to 100% energy-wise, but the long walk from Jeremy's to Odette's was pleasantly invigorating. I didn't find the cold autumn moisture displeasing; the small raindrops kept me awake and alert. Odette nodded in muted pleasure as I clocked in and returned the special spoon back to her. The runes on it were interesting; I had taken a picture of them for research purposes, fully intending to craft myself something similar.

"Odette has taken on an apprentice," Wong's voice had me take in several deep breaths in preparation for the inevitable fuck-fest on my patience. "She has been avoiding me. And the girl is painfully slow."

I didn't hear the answer of Wong's companion over the rustling of the boxes I was hastily shoving in their places before the Asian man's temper grew foul. More foul. Ugh. The sharp ding of the bell had me yelling a, "Just a second please, I'll be right with you," while trying to keep my tone polite.

Wong's sour face and a list of items required greeted me as I flew out of the backrooms, noticing the locked doors of Odette's office on my way out. Wong's companion stood at the far end of the store - his robes quite different from the ones I'd seen people of their kind wear, his lithe, tall figure seeming strangely familiar. I squinted my eyes at his back. "Is this all you need?" I waved the list around, increasing the volume of my voice.

The tall man turned around and I could only gape. He, in turn, also froze, the stern, unfriendly expression losing heat and giving way to perplexed wonder. "I had placed an order, for sorcerer Strange," Tony's boyfriend eyed me somewhat sheepishly under Wong's concerned gaze.

I nodded, eyeing Wong in turn, letting satisfaction nestle a warm ball in my chest. Stephen's look of displeasure had turned onto his... Colleague. By the time I finished retrieving Strange's order and packing up the items on Wong's list, the Asian man had left, leaving Stephen to sheepishly pretend to examine the books on the furthest shelf. I waved the paper bags as he took long strides towards me, his fancy, large necklace glimmering under the lights.

"So, how long have you been working here?" Sorcerer Strange asked after I told him the total.

The cash register beeped loudly, coins clattering on the desk as I counted out his change. "Some time now," I shrugged noncommittally. I felt his magnetic eyes gloss over my adornments, the star necklace, the various rings; I could practically feel him coming to his own conclusions. "Long enough for your colleague to get an attitude with me," I had to make sure he knew I would be taking no bullshit from him - or anyone else, for that matter. Odette's opinion on his kind was firm and I was heavily inclined to agree.

"Hmm, I see," Strange was equally as keen on hiding his curiosity. It was a funny thing, really, that we, being adults that we were, treated this encounter like some sort of a dirty secret. "Don't take it personally. Wong is like that with everyone," The man briefly scratched his beard with a gloved hand before pocketing his change and picking up the bags. "Except Beyoncè, maybe," the wink he threw me was positively mischievous as it caught me off-guard, giving him a fox-like appearance.

I sighed as the door shut behind him. Pretty white boys - the ultimate human disasters.

I had no time to dwell on them, however, as something - or someone, hit downtown with all the malicious intentions to wreak havoc on the innocent civilians calmly going about their day. Mutants and people who knew Odette came in hordes, scrapes and bruises and strange wounds that required imminent healing.

My boss was no rookie, she dutifully accepted each and every single soul, looking worse for wear with each minute. Not being able to withstand seeing her drain herself, I simply took over the simplest tasks - and she said nothing, just gave me a nod, instructed to use whatever I needed and write it down somewhere along with the name of the person who required the healing.

As the battle raged, the crowds thinned but the ones who managed to come to Odette's spouted more serious wounds, obviously a result of them fighting back. Mutants covered head to toe with coats and hats and robes, for me to swallow my shock when they undressed - horns, tails and weird skin textures were on the far end of the normal. I dutifully extracted small pieces of information from each and every person I treated.

Yes, the Avengers were winning. No, there aren't many people hurt, most of the damage is cosmetic. Yes, the villain of the week is as stupid as usual. It was like a mantra. Odette poked her head into the spare room every now and then, her eagle eyes briefly scanning over me to make sure I wasn't exterting myself.

As I applied the healing salve to a tiny, pink-skinned woman, bandaging up her hands, my boss entered and closed the door behind her, setting down on the creaky chair with a loud thud. "Just got the news, the Avengers apprehended the terrorist," she sighed long and slow. "We've done all we could, the next few days I'll be handling house calls so you'll be here on your own. I'll probably see you in a few days, don't hesitate to give me a call if something comes up," Odette seemed to be barely standing up, yet when she tore off a few pieces of her jewelry and chucked them into a big tin can under the sink, the glossy sheen in her eyes melted away.

"Okay," I mumbled under the watchful eyes of the mutant woman. "Will there be more people coming in today?"

"No," the woman in front of me snorted. "SHIELD is prowling the streets. They are not fond of us, they always say we intervene unnecessarily even though we willingly do their dirty work so our children could be safe," the bitter, harsh tone took me off-guard.

I had to admit, there was reason behind her words. "Will you be able to get home safely? I have a puffy coat and a hat you can borrow." Figuring an expensive taxi ride would be a better alternative to something terrible happening to the woman, I offered her my winter clothes.

She smiled at me, razor blade teeth and large, red eyes the kindest I'd ever seen on a person. In the end, she took the clothes, promising to bring them back in a few days and Odette gave me a parka that was too small for her frame - despite it smelling like someone's grandma's attic, I found it to be quite lovely vintage. The puffy knitted scarf she added felt like warmth and safety - she had to have knitted it herself, for I knew, handmade items carried a significant amount of energy in them.

The shop was eerily quiet as I cleaned and scrubbed the stained, dirty floors and disposed of the bloody clothes and bandages in the tiny, odd fireplace in Odette's office - that was a thing most peculiar, it burned everything I put in it, but had no chimney, no place for the smoke to exit. Magic.

Something banged loudly against the entrance door. I let out a startled shriek, broomstick falling out of my hand and adding to the sudden cacophony of noise as the figure behind the stained glass slowly slid down the door, a deep, male voice groaning something incomprehensible loud enough for me to hear.

Grabbing a large serrated knife we used for mincing the bones of small animals, I made quiet steps towards the door, seeing a large, obviously humanoid figure helplessly lean on the door. The man's arm glinted chrome black and gunmetal grey in the low light. "Sargent Barnes? Bucky?" I whisper-shouted, carefully plying open the door.

He lifted his head, blood dripping down from it, his face looked like someone went to town on it with a meat mullet, his eyes were unfocused and couldn't keep a straight line. His flesh arm leaned heavily on the door frame, the prosthetic hanging limply, dragging his whole body to its side. It must've weigh a ton.

"Я должен найти капитана Роджерса," he whispered.

I didn't understand Russian at all but I could make out the name of his boyfriend. Which made sense. Bucky looked severely concussed - I idly wondered what exactly they had been fighting, what could have given a freaking super-soldier such a brain-leaking injury. "Sargent Barnes, follow me," I put on my big girl shoes and used my momma bear voice, towing the man behind me.

He, too, weighed a ton, as I stumbled, helping him into the chair in the spare room that became my healing station for today. The longer I looked at Bucky, the less lucid he grew, eyes falling shut as he murmured something in jagged Russian, slurring his words.

There was no time to think about the consequences of exposure of my witchcraft; mortar and pestle, herbs and salves flying everywhere, I assembled a healing spell and memorized the according ritual in what felt like record time. He was bleeding all over the chair, fresh crimson blood pouring out of his nose and mouth and it was all I could see.

I hadn't known true terror until the blood that poured out turned black. Whatever it was in him, it was poisonous - my protection charms grew hot, scalding as they left marks on my skin; powering through the pain and unable to turn my eyes off the convulsing Barnes, I finished the chant just as the flow of vile, tar-like liquid suddenly ceased. It pooled around his feet, dripped down the armrests and matted his long hair. It reeked, too, of copper and putrid meat.

Bucky had passed out somewhere mid-spell, the slow, steady breathing bringing me my own sense of calm. To say that I was drained would be an understatement - my vision swam and my world spun on it's axis as I unlocked Odette's office to messily rummage through a cabinet for the emergency tonic I knew she kept there. I chugged the vial, an avalanche of almost anxious, jittery energy hit me like a freight train - exactly what I needed.

I bought myself a couple hours of time. Cleaning up the sludge around Bucky's feet and removing the outer parts of his gear was easy as he remained as relaxed as a cooked spaghetti noodle. The amount of weapons he had on him was impressive, but those weren't what I was looking for - his phone. It was dead, so I plugged it in, waiting for the 5% to show and bringing it to his fingertips, hoping he used the print recognition instead of the password option... And I lucked out.

"Hello, this is Star, I found a Bucky. Tell Dr. Strange to come get him, he knows where I am." I texted the "Stevie ❤️" contact, my inner fangirl self squealing at the dorky name of his boyfriend's contact in Bucky's phone. Shortly afterwards, I went ahead and snapped a picture of myself next to sleeping Bucky, figuring out some actual proof wouldn't do any harm in this bizarre situation.

The answer didn't let me wait long. "10 minutes" came the first text, and shortly afterwards - "Is Bucky okay??????". I had to snort at the amount of question marks before honestly replying "He will be ☺️" and putting the phone back in Bucky's pocket. I cleaned up and attempted to lift Bucky up, succeeding in waking him up into a half-lucid state, probably courtesy of decades of training and whatnot, to at least drag him to the front of the store. I wasn't particularly comfortable with strangers seeing the backrooms.

Bucky leaned with his back against the counter, ass flat on the floor and a towel with a cold compress pressed to his head when the doors all but flew open, revealing Captain Rogers, still in uniform and Stephen Strange, arguing with his boyfriend, both still suited up and bloody and grimy.

"Uhh," I blinked owlishly, causing the men to stop bickering and stare first at me, then at Bucky. "I think he hit his head," I offered weakly, backing up slightly at the amount of burning eyes staring at me.

"Shortcake, that you?" Tony's eyebrows rose as he surveyed the bodega, the items on the shelves, the black and red blood stains on my previously pristine, yellow shirt.

"Now is not the time, Tony. Go with Rogers, make sure the medical is prepared for Barnes and disable his arm," Strange barked out authoritatively, shooting me a puzzled but compassionate look. "The portal is open. I'll talk to Star, find out what happened." He advanced towards me as Captain picked up Bucky bridal-style as tenderly as he could while making sure the compress stayed on.

"Keep that tone fo the bedroom," Tony's voice was more than displeased as he shot me and Strange a hurt look, but followed Steve into the golden circle right outside the door before it sparked shut.

"Now, now, what happened here?" The sorcerer's voice lowered into a soothing drawl as I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. My shoulders sagged, fingers twitching with anxious energy. The man extended a gloved hand, briefly squeezing my shoulder. "It's alright, take your time."

Damn, did I look that bad?

Taglist: @couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites

#bun writes #practical alchemy #tony stark x reader x stephen strange #tony stark x reader #Stephen Strange x reader

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willakin · 2 years

Note

OC asks - Ida, 2, 9, 17, and 25. And for Frank, 13, 10, 3, and 6.

2. What were they like as a child? Were they quiet and reserved, outgoing, or a bit of both?

Ida was a confident child. Her older sister took on the nurturing role after their mother died, leaving Ida to be the more outgoing of the two. She was the kind of child who craved adult attention and liked to show off her talents.

9. What was their first kiss like?

Her first kiss was with the man who would become her husband, the tea planter Jonathan King. While Ida was always flirtatious and enjoyed male attention, she had to ensure there would never be any question about her virtue. The kiss was unremarkable, but triumphant.

17. Do they consider themselves to be romantic? Why or why not?

Ida doesn’t think she has the luxury of being a romantic. She comes from a modest family background (a clergyman father does not give one high status in British India) and has her entire life planned for what will keep herself and her children safe, comfortable and happy.

25. What events changed them as a child?

Her childhood in Bombay (now Mumbai) was unremarkable, but a few experiences left their mark on her. Her mother died when she was about five, leaving her father and elder sister as the two strongest influences on her life. Her father, hapless but well-meaning, wanted his daughters to be as accomplished as possible despite his limited means, and Ida learnt that she could better her lot through her accomplishments. She saw how her missionary father was treated by fellow Englishmen and learnt that she would, under no circumstances, marry a clergyman.

13. What special abilities or talents do they possess? Did they develop through training or were they born with them?

Frank is particularly talented at two things: learning languages, and practising medicine. The medicine was developed through training, of course, and he’s very studious, putting in hours of study while his fellow students went out and had fun. His knack for picking up languages is more innate - he just has an ear for them. He learnt German by himself in preparation for doing his medical degree in Germany, and he picks up languages in India just by exposure. In a similar vein, he can memorise passages of poetry quite easily.

10. Favourite place? Do they go there often?

He has fond memories of the attic of his family home, where he would hide for hours to read or simply keep away from people. Unfortunately, after breaking with his family he has not been there since before going to medical school. In Simla, his favourite place is Ida’s parlour...

3. Are they an early bird or night owl?

An early bird! He can do all-nighters when he has to, but definitely prefers to go to bed at a sensible time and wake up early.

6. On an average day, what can they be found doing after dinner?

Frank is both an introvert and very private, so after dinner he could be found reading or doing some other kind of solitary activity. Any attendance at dinner parties or the Club in Simla is done with gritted teeth.

#my writing #frank and ida #queer period drama co-star

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antidotenurse · 3 years

Text

Zexal III - Black Mist’s Return

Here’s a little fic that I wrote about Kanna and Black Mist’s first meeting and alliance! 3.3k words! Enjoy! ~ Sasstral

The first thing he became aware of was his sudden sense of freedom, like severing his arms from puppet strings. In an instant, he was falling to whatever ground there was below, and it must have been a long way away because he felt as if he was falling for eternity.

Wherever he was, it was far away from where he was going to end up.

He crawled, his form resembling that of liquid, across the cold ground, desperately searching for sanctuary in the unknown world he found himself in.

His powers already growing too weak for him to continue on, he found the asylum he had so yearned for in the form of a mansion. It held a certain energy within it, one that willed him forward with its strong presence.

The unbearable weakness he felt before began to melt away once he entered the very room all the chaos was flowing rampantly through.

He slid into the deck resting against a nightstand, curling up within it, he let himself lose consciousness, a form of stasis as he embraced the feeling of being safe.

A card appeared within the deck as the creature settled, it was Number 96: Black Mist.

…

Kanna Hino woke up before her alarm every morning. One of the first lessons her parents ever taught her was that tardiness was unacceptable and unprofessional, whether for school or ballet practice. She made it a goal of hers to avoid being tardy and to be as professional as one girl could possibly be.

She stretched every morning, starting from her arms and then down to her legs, keeping up good form was also important and very professional.

Every morning she’d sort through her deck, sometimes changing out cards with new ones so her moves never become too predictable, another very professional quirk of hers that she congratulates herself for.

She sat down in the chair by her vanity dresser and began sorting through them. Everything was just as she organized it the day before until she came across a card she didn’t recognize.

She held it up closer and muttered to herself quietly, “What is this?”

Suddenly, a cloud of black smoke emerged from the card and formed into a person, floating just above the floor in her room.

She sat there frozen until the being looked right at her, one eye gold and the other completely black.

Kanna let out a shrill scream, fell backward off her chair, stumbled upwards and began throwing whatever was on her dresser at the figure who stood there unfazed as the objects quite literally phased right through it.

“Are you done yet?” It asked her as it saw her running out of items to toss.

“What are you?” Kanna finally asked, gathering her calmness back and presenting herself as confident once more.

“I am not quite sure myself.” It admitted to her, it picked up the number card from the floor and mysteriously enough it was the only thing that it could touch, “I believe this is part of me.”

“Oh, so you’re a freaky card spirit.” Kanna concluded, it was the only logical explanation she could gather out of such a bizarre moment, and that was a stretch as it is. “What are you doing here anyway? I didn’t pick up your stupid card and I don’t want to be haunted.”

“I am not sure about that either.” The spirit answered, it’s eyes gazing around the room as if it had just noticed where it was.

“You have no idea how you got here?,” Kanna asked, “Into my room?”

“I remember sensations and emotions but that is all. I believe I may have unconsciously sought your room out due to its intense levels of negative energy.” The spirit said, not paying much attention to her angered expression, “It helped rebuilt my body, but unfortunately I am still incomplete.”

“Yeah, well, that sure is unfortunate but I can’t help you with that. You can take all the negative energy in this room with you when you leave.” Kanna scoffed angrily, picking her hairbrush up from off the floor and running it through her hair.

She didn’t expect to hear soft laughter following her response, still, she refused to look at the being.

“I see, so all the negative energy is coming from you.” The being pointed out.

Kanna stopped what she was doing and took a deep breath, “Why won’t you just leave already? I don’t have time to waste on you.”

“I cannot, you and I are bound together until I restore my memory and gain the ability to leave this world.” The being said.

“Hey, that isn’t fair! I didn’t even agree to help you, why should I?” Kanna questioned him.

“So long as you are the holder of my number, I am yours, if you do not like that arrangement perhaps I could make it the other way around. How about having you belong to me?” The being sneered at her, but Kanna quickly took charge.

“I’m in charge here, no freaky amnesiac card spirit is going to take control of me!” Kanna spoke with strength, the being looked as though he saw it admirable, “So once you get your memories back, you leave my life for good. I want to get back to normalcy as soon as possible.”

“Sounds like a wonderful deal to me.” The being agreed.

“So, do you remember your name?” Kanna asked after a moment of silence.

“I am Number 96: Black Mist.”

“That sounds like a mouthful…How about I just call you Mist.”

“If that is what you desire.”

“What I desire is for you to leave my room so I can get dressed.”

Black Mist stared blankly at her for a moment after she said that, “What difference does it make?”

Kanna stood and pointed towards the door, “Out.” She insisted.

Black Mist complied and left the room, only to poke his head through moments later. Kanna screamed at him and launched another item towards where his body had phased halfway through the door. He pulled back as the object hit the door with a loud thud.

Below the hallway banister, Black Mist witnessed an elderly woman look right through him.

“Kanna, darling, are you alright?” The woman asked.

Kanna opened her bedroom door, now fully clothed in her high school uniform with her hair braided, and shouted, “I’m fine, Grammy!”

The grandma walked back to whatever room she was previously in within the big mansion.

“You.” Kanna pointed at him accusingly, “Behave yourself while I’m at school. I’m a member of student council, they rely on me to be there. They wouldn’t be able to function if I weren’t at the top of my game.”

“If by games you mean dueling then perhaps my assistance would help you gain the respect of your peers.” Black Mist offered.

“It’s a figure of speech, I wasn’t talking about- Wait, you duel?” Kanna asked.

“Yes. In fact, I’m quite good. My dueling skills are the clearest memory I have.” Black Mist answered.

“Good to know. Well, see you later then.” Kanna said as she walked down the many flights of stairs she had within the big empty mansion she lived in.

That was the first thing Black Mist observed, how empty the whole place was.

What could one girl and one elderly lady possibly need such a large living space for? Neither of them seemed to interact much, having huge corners of the house to themselves and only ever meeting in the middle for mere seconds until Kanna escaped to solitary once more.

Kanna’s grandmother wished her a good day at whatever this ‘school’ was and then the woman and Kanna went their separate ways.

Once out the door, Black Mist got a good view of just how big her house really was, and how small the other houses were in the other neighborhoods they passed.

“Why are you following me?” Kanna asked, looking back at how Black Mist floated behind her.

“I told you, we are bound together. Wherever you go I have to follow. I am not doing this by choice.” Black Mist explained, “I do hope something interesting will happen at this school of yours.”

“Hey Kanna!” A fellow classmate called out to her on the school grounds.

Kanna scrambled to cover up Black Mist, hoping that just by standing in front of him would shield him from their view.

“Uh, are you alright?” The classmate asked.

Kanna looked back at Black Mist.

“Are you looking for something?” The classmate’s expression showed concern.

“You don’t see anything behind me?” Kanna asked, the classmate tilted their head and then shook it to answer ‘no’

“I don’t see anything, should I?” They asked.

“No, you’re right, there isn’t anything there. I just thought I was being followed.” Kanna used this opportunity to glare at Black Mist, causing him to smirk.

The classmate bid her goodbye and ran ahead.

“Well, now that is something, you seem to be the only one able to see me.” Black Mist pointed out

“Yeah, lucky me.” Kanna spoke with sarcasm, “It’s probably for the best. I don’t know if I’d even be able to explain why you’re stuck with me to begin with.”

Upon arriving at the school, many more students greeted Kanna, so it appeared she was decently well respected from her peers. However, the true judge of her respect would be this ‘council’ she was a part of.

Black Mist was dragged into Kanna’s student council meeting. While Black Mist expected Kanna’s hierarchy to be high in the group of students, he was a bit disappointed to see another boy sitting at the desk he expected Kanna to be in.

A ragtag group of kids had entered the room in hopes of making some sort of deal, Black Mist was interested and listening closely from the corner he floated in.

“So, you want me to make your club official.” The boy in charge said, “And, can you repeat the name to me? I don’t think I got it the first time.”

“It’s called the numbers club, Mr. President.” One of the boys explained, “Tetsuo made us badges and-“

“Yes, but what does your club do?” The president asked.

“We, uh, we do community service and…Solve problems!” The kid explained.

The president raised his eyebrows, “Hm, alright. Well, Takashi, you are a council member and I suppose I can trust your judgement.”

“President,” Kanna sprung into action and leaned over him, “are you serious about this? You should really reconsider! Look who is in that group! That troublemaker Tokunosuke, that dunce Yuma, and that freaky cat girl.”

Kanna spoke in a hushed whisper, it made Black Mist wonder why she didn’t speak her mind out louder because her statements seemed to all be true.

“If they say they’re going to be solving problems and all then I’m sure they’ll be able to keep people like Tokunosuke out of trouble. It could be a good thing.” The President assured her.

“Mamoru!” She tried again, this time on first-name basis. The boy named Mamoru didn’t budge. He instead ignored her and turned back to the kids.

“Get yourself a willing supervisor and consider yourselves an official club.” Mamoru told them, cheers erupted within the group of kids.

“Mr. President, I can’t thank you enough!” The boy who did most of the talking cheered, his friend behind him then jumped in.

“Yeah! You rock!” Another boy added.

As the kids were leaving, one of the boys looked back, his eyes squinted in Black Mist’s direction.

Black Mist stayed perfectly still, waiting to see if that boy really could see him. In the boy’s red eyes, he swore, he could have seen some recognition until one of the girl’s tried pulling him away.

“Come on, Yuma, what are you waiting for?” She asked.

“Oh, sorry Kotori! I thought I saw something.” Yuma dismissed quickly and followed the girl out with the rest.

“How could you let a club that vague become official?” Kanna questioned Mamoru, who shrugged off her statement.

“There’s no need to be so strict about clubs, it sounded harmless enough. One of our own is part of it.” Mamoru explained.

“But-“

“I don’t want to hear any more of it, Kanna.”

She exited the meeting room, arms crossed, expression blank but her frustration was evident. That much was as clear as day to Black Mist.

“Well, it seems like they do not rely on you as much as you previously stated.” Black Mist sneered.

“Just be quiet.” She said in a low voice, not at all matching the reaction to Black Mist’s comments she had before.

“You cannot combat the ignorance of others by speaking quietly. I am surprised you did not take action.” Black Mist told her.

“What could I have even done? He’s the student council president, I’m just a member.” Kanna argued.

“If you want people to listen to you and respect you then you must express your authority through power.” Black Mist advised her, “You have a lot of power within you, strong enough that even I sensed it in a delirious and desperate state. Why keep it under lock and chain?”

“How are you so sure of this?” Kanna asked him, her hands clenched up into fists, “You don’t even know who you are or where you came from and you’re telling me I’ve got some weird negative powers? I’ve always been just a human, Mist!”

“Even humans are capable of such things.” Black Mist assured her, “I have some advice if you would like to hear it.”

Kanna thought about it for a moment, looking around her to see if anyone was there to watch her talk to him.

“Go ahead.” She agreed.

“Defeat the most powerful duelist here and win the respect of your peers.” Black Mist said.

“That won’t be so easy.” Kanna added in, “There are duelists here who have competed in tournaments, I’ve never made it to that level.”

“Then let me help you. Dueling is engraved within my mind. My skills can be very useful.” Black Mist offered, his arm outstretched, “You are already inclined to help me retrieve my memories, Why not accept some help from me?”

Kanna went to shake his hand but her own phased right through, she let her hand hover above his own to show that their alliance was now formed.

She made a deal with him, a deal with the devil.

…

Shark was initially on his way to eat lunch with Yuma and the others on the rooftop out of some sort of ‘celebration’ of their club becoming official. He had no idea why he of all people was invited, after all he didn’t know Yuma’s friends all too well, but his sister was off eating lunch with some other girls and Shark weighed both options. Yuma and his friends wouldn’t tease him over embarrassing stuff, so eating lunch with them seemed like the better option.

On the way to Yuma’s usual spot, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. A card lay untouched on the ground of the school roof top, and it seemed far too suspicious to be something some kid dropped by accident.

Shark picked it and let out a gasp at the title of the card.

-32

“A negative number?” Shark questioned out loud in shock, he got out his d-gazer and began to call Yuma. Something was definitely amiss.

Just then, someone else arrived in though the sliding doors. It was Kanna who stood before him and she wasn’t just simply passing by.

“Ryoga Kamishiro, You not only made it into the National Duel Circuit and the World Duel Carnival, but you are known as one of the most powerful duelists in this school.” Kanna announced to him, “I want you to duel me.”

Shark was about to tell her to just go away and that he wasn’t dueling anybody until he saw a figure appear from behind her, one that was eerily familiar.

“Shark, what is it? What’s wrong?” Yuma frantically asked him through his d-gazer that was now held loosely in his hand against his side.

“It’s you.” Shark spoke in shock, “Number 96, how are you back?”

“Number 96?” Yuma gasped over the video call, “Shark, hold on! I’m coming over!”

“Wait, Yuma-“ Shark tried to respond but Kanna interrupted him.

“Number 96?” She questioned, then she turned to Black Mist, “Mist, he knows you.”

“He also has one of my memories.” Black Mist pointed to the card in Shark’s hand, “That card, it contains a piece of my fragmented memory, I can sense it.”

“I see,” Kanna said understandingly, “guess we’re going to kill two birds with one stone today.”

“What are you doing with that girl, number 96?” Shark questioned Black Mist, looking past Kanna.

“You should be more concerned about the duel we’re about to have over who gets to keep that card!” Kanna attached her duel disk to her arm, taking out her d-gazer and watching as the augmented reality field began to set in, “You will play for it, won’t you?”

Shark seemed reluctant but he too got set for the duel. Yuma and the other members of the numbers club climbed down from where they were sitting and met them in the middle.

Black Mist observed their expressions. Seeing them looking around frantically and in fear, questioning if 96 was really there filled Black Mist’s mind with thoughts. Has he been here before? Do these people truly fear him?

“Is Number 96 really here?” Kotori asked Yuma, “How come I don’t see him anywhere.”

Yuma gasped as it seemed his vision finally cleared while meeting Black Mist’s gaze.

“He is back…But how? How did I not see him before!” Yuma said in distress, “Shark!”

“Just sit tight, Yuma. I’ll handle this.” Shark assured him, “I didn’t see him either, until I picked up this negative number.”

“Negative number.” Yuma questioned.

“It seems like it’s his.” Shark replied.

“He has his own numbers…That must mean…Has he lost his memories just like Astral?” Yuma came to a shocking conclusion, his friends beside him gasped and Shark nodded in agreement.

“Enough talking!” Kanna shouted, everyone was immediately silenced, “I’ll be starting this duel off by summoning my Sugarplum Ballerina Mint!”

She set her card down and her monster appeared to perform a pirouette on the field.

“Next I play the field spell Land of Sweets!” Kanna announced, the area of the school transformed into a land of snow, gumdrops and candy canes stood tall around them, “As long as there’s one Sugarplum Ballerina on the field I can summon another Sugarplum Ballerina so come on out Sugarplum Ballerina Ice!”

“Sugarplum Ballerina’s special ability enables me to draw one more card, so say hello to Sugarplum Ballerina Pepper!” Kanna placed down her last Ballerina, the three of them standing tall on the tips of their toes.

Her field full of 3 level 2 monsters filled everyone with dread and Black Mist with joy.

Black Mist’s card within her deck box began to glow and Black Mist willed her to wield it. The two exchanged a malicious smiled and Kanna held Black Mist’s number up proudly.

“With 3 level 2 monsters on the field I can built the overlay network!” She announced, “I XYZ summon Number 96: Black Mist!”

Black Mist laughed out loud as he saw his avatar appear on the field before him. Just the sight of it almost brought his missing memories back to him without the Negative Number, but the nostalgic feeling wouldn’t suffice.

“It really is him…” Yuma exclaimed.

Black Mist had returned, meaning the merging of Astral and Barian World was about to bring out even greater evil.

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chatonne-rousse · 3 years

Text

Zibeline

Happy birthday, @tsuki-chibi! This one’s for you. 😘

A Christmas gift exchange story with unintended (though not unwelcome) consequences.

Read it on Ao3.

This is not the first time it’s happened. It is, in fact, not even the fourth or fifth. It’s like he has a sixth sense or the fine-tuned hearing of a fellow feline, that leads him straight to them.

Often, it’s just one cat, skin and bones and scrounging in an alley for restaurant scraps. Sometimes it’s an entire litter, abandoned and alone, mewing frantically in search of a savior. Once in a while, he finds their mom there, too, ragged and worn and tired from life on the streets.

It always ends the same way.

Chat Noir knows the location of every animal refuge in Paris, their hours, and the names of each employee and volunteer he’s met so far. Several have even set up crates in a secure area for the cats he brings after closing. It’s amazing that it hasn’t made the news in all these years, but somehow, Paris’s own black cat has humbly and quietly saved the lives of dozens of the city's neediest felines.

Tonight, Ladybug accompanies Chat Noir to the SPA to drop off a one-eyed senior tomcat they came across on patrol. His solitary eye is cloudy with age, one ear torn from a long-ago fight, but he purrs contentedly in Chat’s arms, his demeanor as gentle as the hands that hold him close.

Once the cat who’d been affectionately dubbed Pirate upon his discovery is safe and secure in the little pen, Chat sends the rescue a quick email from his communicator to let them know about who they’ll find the next morning. Baton returned to his back, he crouches down for one more scritch behind the old grey tabby’s ears.

Ladybug is used to this, well aware after several years of partnership that her own kitty’s heart is a fathomless well of kindness, but it never stops warming her heart to see it. Without thinking, her movement mirrors his, reaching out to scratch behind his leather ears, her gloved fingers tousling his hair. His faux cat ears twitch, and he glances up at her, grin radiant even in the dim light of the refuge foyer.

“Okay, cat whisperer, let’s go. It’s almost midnight.”

He nods, still grinning, and turns back to tell his new friend goodbye.

“They’ll take good care of you here, Meow-seur Pirate, I purr-omise. Cat’s honor.”

Pirate meows his appreciation as Ladybug fondly rolls her eyes.

One hand kiss, one ‘sweet dreams, Buginette,’ and one chilly swing across rooftops in the crisp December air, and Marinette can finally crawl into the warmth of her bed and curl up against her cat pillow to go to sleep. The feline theme suddenly seems so prevalent in her life that she can’t help the snort of laughter she muffles behind its ears.

Tikki zips over to hover in the air above the bed. “What is it, Marinette?”

“Cats, Tikki. Everywhere. Cats.”

They share a giggle as the kwami settles down on the pillow to rest.

“You like cats, don’t you?” she asks. “I’ve seen a cat in some of your family portrait sketches.”

Marinette can feel her face heat up. “Tikki!” she admonishes, before trailing off into laughter again. “I love all animals! Well, almost all of them. But no one loves cats like Chat Noir.” She sighs in mock exasperation. “Give a guy fake ears and a tail and suddenly he’s a magnet for strays.”

Silence falls in the darkness of the loft, sleepy and comfortable, before it’s broken by Tikki’s tiny voice.

“You know, I think it has less to do with his miraculous and more to do with his heart.”

Marinette smiles against the pillow. “I think you might be right, Tik.”

********

Even if Père Noël no longer visits, Christmas is still exciting when you’re a teenager. If nothing else, there’s a two-week break from school to look forward to, and Marinette is counting down the days until she can shelve at least one of her many commitments, albeit temporarily. Alya, on the other hand, is living for the class gift exchange.

“I hope I get Nino this year,” she whispers excitedly, dumping her bookbag on the table and sliding into the seat beside her best friend.

Marinette’s brows furrow in confusion. “Why?”

“So I can give him something awesome and win Christmas, obviously.”

“But...if you give him a gift in class, what will you have for him on the actual holiday?”

Alya wiggles her eyebrows suggestively and gives her a sly smile.

Marinette laughs and elbows her, ears burning, just as the boys walk into the room. Nino gives a quick wave and Adrien settles into his seat with a soft smile toward the girls behind them.

“Damn, Sunshine. I hope you spend the holiday break sleeping. You look like you need it.”

Adrien leans back toward Alya, blond hair brushing Marinette’s desk. (This does not go unnoticed.)

“I think we all know that’s not going to happen,” he replies with a wry smile.

Alya pats his shoulder consolingly. “Truth.”

********

The morning slides by, and Ms. Bustier ends the lecture early before they break for lunch. She leans against her desk, holding a bowl in her hand and shaking it gently. It takes a long moment and a deliberate clearing of her throat for the students to focus on her instead of packing up their bags. She smiles kindly at them once she has their attention again.

“I’d have done this at the end of the day, but not every student will be with us in class then, so we’ll choose our gift exchange recipients now.” Adrien ducks his head. He hates when people make concessions for him, but at least Ms. Bustier is thoughtful enough not to draw further attention.

She starts up the stairs, shaking the bowl again, beginning in the back row this year. “You decided by class consensus earlier this week that your gifts would be €20 or less and no bigger than a shoebox.” Nathaniel takes a slip first, his face unreadable as he folds the paper again and lays one hand atop it. Shake, shake. “We’ll have the exchange on December 21st, during our holiday party in the afternoon. You may bring your gift in the morning and I’ll keep them all in a safe place until it’s time for the exchange.” Rose chooses, followed by Juleka. Both seem pleased.

As more and more students choose a slip from the bowl, the room buzzes louder with whispers and murmuring among friends.

Ms. Bustier’s voice cuts through the chatter again. “This is a secret gift exchange, so remember, do not share your recipient’s name. No trading. We’re all friends here.” If she glances quickly at the back of Chloé’s head as she says this, no one says a word.

Marinette waits her turn quietly. In three class gift exchanges, she has never pulled Adrien’s name, nor has he chosen hers. So much for ladybug luck. All she really hopes for at this point is to not choose Lila. She doesn’t want to break Ms. Bustier’s rules, but if that happens, she’s totally trading with Alya.

The bowl shakes near her ear, and she reaches up to blindly choose a slip. Slowly, carefully, she opens the folded paper, and suddenly all she can hear is her pulse roaring in her ears. Because there, in Adrien’s familiar script, is the name she’d given up hoping to receive.

She looks up just in time to see Adrien’s ears pinken and his shoulders scrunch as he hastily refolds his own paper slip. Marinette wonders for just a moment who he’d chosen before her brain kicks into holiday overthinking mode.

She’d rethought many of the gifts for his next several dozen birthdays, repurposed them for other friends or dismantled them to their raw materials and created something new. But a portion of the chest in her room still holds gifts meant just for him. She could choose one of those, or she could make something new. She could create a gift or purchase an item somewhere. Perhaps she could knit a hat or gloves to match his birthday scarf. Oh, the possibilities are endless!

A nudge in her side shakes her from her swirling thoughts and returns her to the din of the steadily-emptying classroom.

“Ready for lunch, Mari?” Alya asks. Nino and Adrien are looking at her expectantly, too.

“Oh. Sure! Yes! Ready for anything. Soup?”

A beat of silence.

“You heard the girl!” Nino says, slapping one hand on the table and standing up. “Let’s go get some soup.”

Alya just pats her on the back and shakes her head as they pack up their bags.

********

Soup actually turns out to be a good idea today, even if Marinette has no idea why she said that. The four friends huddle around a table in the warmth of a nearby cafe, full and relaxed and reluctant to return to afternoon classes. Adrien startles suddenly when a calico cat jumps into his lap and meows loudly, demanding pets.

Nino backs away a bit, but Adrien simply melts.

“Hello there, pretty girl!” he coos. “Do you want scritches? I can do that.” The cat twists her head, showing him exactly where she wants to be scratched, and he happily complies. Marinette can hear the cat’s contented purr from across the table. “Oh, you like that, don’t you? Yes, you do.”

Alya has her phone out and recording, but Adrien doesn’t even notice. This is the first time they’ve seen this cat at this particular restaurant, but she's definitely not the first resident feline to find them while they ate. Or shopped. Or hung out at the park. Adrien attracts cats like Chat Noir, and loves every moment of it.

“And here we see the Cat Whisperer in his natural habitat, among his harem,” Alya narrates the video as though it’s a nature documentary, and Adrien snorts with laughter before looking up, a sheepish half-smile lighting up his face.

“I just really like cats,” he says, and looks back down at the kitty. She abruptly headbutts his chin, making his teeth knock together with an audible clack. He stares at her for a moment before throwing his head back and laughing, rich and joyful, but loud enough to scare the cat from his lap. She trots over to the counter and stops to groom herself.

Adrien, still chuckling, brushes fur from his pants and shakes his head in fond amusement. “Cats.”

The proverbial lightbulb flashes on above Marinette’s head, the stirrings of an idea so crazy it just might work.

She has an executive assistant to email.

********

It’s shockingly easy to get permission for something so important.

“Do you think Nathalie even asked Mr. Agreste?” Marinette wonders aloud to Tikki above the whir of the sewing machine. “I can’t imagine she didn’t, but…” she trails off, shaking her head. Adrien’s household is a web of very strange relationships she has never quite understood.

Tikki hums and shrugs a tiny shoulder. “If Nathalie said yes, I guess the answer is yes.” She flies from her perch on Marinette’s shoulder to sit on top of the sewing machine; Marinette promptly releases the pedal and meets her kwami’s gaze.

“I’m glad she did, but the longer I think about it, the more I wonder if this is a terrible idea.”

“You still have a few days to decide,” Tikki reminds her.

Marinette nods before she catches a glimpse of the clock on her computer and jumps up in alarm.

“Gah! I’m late for patrol! Again!”

********

Chat Noir is waiting quietly at their appointed meeting spot, knees pulled up to his chest and tail dangling down the opposite side of the pitched roof. He unfurls like a night-blooming flower when he hears her land nearby, legs flopping to the roof, arm raised to wave at his partner, tail animated and alert. His bright smile makes Ladybug smile in return as she plops down next to him.

“Sorry I’m late, kitty. I lost track of time.”

“It’s okay, Bugaboo.” He bumps her shoulder with his own. “I knew you didn’t forget me.”

“As if I could!” she laughs, bumping him back.

He’s still smiling, but silence descends over the pair after a moment.

“You okay, Chaton?”

“Yeah, just thinking. Our class is doing a gift exchange for Christmas and I’m having trouble deciding what to get for my...my person.” He glances at his partner, but she only nods in response. “I got one of my friends this year. Not that they’re not all my friends, but...she’s special.”

“Special, huh?” Ladybug asks, a teasing lilt coloring her voice.

“It’s not like that,” Chat rebuts. He breathes a laugh, but his smile turns impossibly soft as he looks out over the lights of the city. “We’re friends, but she’s...I don’t know. There’s no one like her. She deserves a gift as beautiful as she is.”

Ladybug blinks once, twice, caught off guard by the tenderness in his voice. If she didn’t know any better, she might think the feeling in her chest was jealousy, but that can’t possibly be right.

His words catch up to him when he looks back at her again and frantically waves his hands between the two of them. “Oh! Not like that!” he repeats. “I mean, like, beautiful on the inside. Her heart.” He holds a clawed hand to his chest, and Ladybug quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay, she’s beautiful on the outside, too. But it’s...really, it’s not like that. She doesn’t like me that way, and I…” he trails off. “You know.”

Ladybug takes pity on him and tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow, patting his forearm indulgently as the inexplicable knot in her chest loosens a little. “Yeah, kitty. I know. Maybe I can help. What does she like?”

Patrol is forgotten for the evening as two superheroes take the time to simply be two friends chatting about Christmas above the city they protect.

Some of his ideas need to be reined in.

(“It’s just a skein of wool!” he gripes.

“One of the most expensive in the world, Chat! Don’t you have a spending limit?!”)

Others are nixed immediately.

(“You are not buying her an embroidery machine!”)

Finally, he decides on a pool of several items that might work - he's leaning toward tickets to a fashion show, and Ladybug is only a little bit envious of Chat's 'very special classmate' - and settles back on his hands, relieved.

“What about you, Bug? Your class does this every year, too, right?”

She nods in assent. “Yep. But I already know what I’m getting him.”

Maybe he hears it in her voice, or maybe he’s just returning her earlier tease in kind. “Ooooh, him? Did you draw Mr. Mystery Crush’s name this year?”

Ladybug doesn’t answer, but her blushing cheeks do.

“Well.” Chat clears his throat and starts over. “Well, what is this lucky guy getting for Christmas from Paris’s favorite bug?”

She turns to him with a grin. “A cat.”

It’s his turn to be left speechless with his own twinge of jealousy.

“Before you ask, I already got permission from his family. Sort of. Well, I...the bottom line is that I got permission. I’m going tomorrow to the SPA to choose one for him. I’ve already called and made sure that I can bring it back without a problem if he doesn’t like it, but I can’t imagine that happening. Chaton, I’ve never met anyone else whose love of cats rivals yours. It’ll be perfect.”

After a long moment of silence, Chat seems to come to a decision before he stands and bows gallantly to his partner. “It would be my honor to accompany you to the shelter tomorrow to choose a feline fur-ever friend for your friend. I am the chief cat-bassador of Paris, after all.”

Ladybug looks up at him and thinks of how he cradled Pirate in his arms the other night on the way to the refuge, the calm, gentle way he whispers to tired mother cats, his delight in being approached by the everyday cats of Paris out for their evening strolls before returning home for the night. It has less to do with his miraculous and more to do with his heart, she hears Tikki whisper from the back of her mind.

She takes his hand and lets him pull her up before wrapping her partner in a hug.

“It would be my honor, kitty.”

********

And that’s how Marinette finds herself at the SPA just before closing on a Saturday afternoon, suited up as Ladybug and accompanied by Chat Noir, to adopt a cat for her friend Adrien, who happens to be a teen supermodel.

She thinks distantly of how she once said she was an ordinary girl with an ordinary life and wonders what in the world she was thinking.

The staff at the shelter are friendly and positively bubbling over with excitement to have Ladybug and Chat Noir in the facility to adopt a cat instead of simply dropping off rescues. Chat is eating it up, and Ladybug can’t help but smile with pride. He’s ridiculous, but in a dozen lifetimes, she could never find a better partner.

They make their way to the cat room amidst the distant sound of barking dogs from the other side of the shelter. She knew to expect it, but the look of absolute delight that crosses Chat Noir's face as he walks in the room is like the first rays of sun after a week of rain - brilliant, bright, and beautiful.

A cacophony of cat vocalization fills the room as they walk the rows of cage enclosures, from tiny mews to hearty meows. Little paws extend through the bars when they approach, and Chat tickles their toe beans or brushes their soft fur with his own clawed fingers. It's all a bit of sensory and emotional overload, so Ladybug purposefully brings her mind back to the task at hand, turning toward a shelter employee.

"I'm thinking of a relatively young cat, but not a kitten. Calm and friendly."

The employee nods. "We have a few that I think would be perfect for you." She smiles warmly toward Chat Noir, who is currently holding a giant ginger tabby who'd been roaming free in the room. "He's rescued several of the cats housed in this room right now. We're so grateful for him." She leads Ladybug to a bank of cages to the left, swinging open the door of an enclosure at eye level. "I've been calling this fellow Sable, but your partner was a bit more creative with naming when he brought him to us."

The label on the cage reads: My name is Zibeline. I'm super happy to be here instead of on the street! I was brought to the SPA on 14 December. I am about 8 months old, fixed and up to date on my shots. I'm a little shy, but I love treats and cuddling and I'm good with kids. I get along well with other cats after proper introduction. Are you ready to take me to my forever home?

Ladybug's heart twists. She can't choose the very first cat she sees, can she?

"Oh, you found my Zibby Bear! Hi, buddy!"

Chat Noir resituates the ginger tabby cozied up in his arms and reaches out a hand over Ladybug's shoulder to scratch Zibeline under the chin. The cat extends his neck and purrs happily.

He turns to the staff member. "He looks amazing. I knew there was a gorgeous coat under all that matted fur."

"It's true. He's like a brand-new cat."

A few moments later, Ladybug finds herself sitting cross-legged on the floor, dangling a little mouse with a bell in it over the head of a deep brown Burmese mix, falling more and more in love every time the cat turns his big yellow eyes toward her. He's active and alert but still mellow and sweet. As soon as she tucks the little toy behind her back, he climbs into the space between her crossed legs and settles his front paws on her knee. She looks up at Chat Noir helplessly, and he and the employee both laugh.

"Well, that was easy," he says. "Is The Zibster the one?"

She nods, running her gloved fingers gently through the cat's thick sable fur. She can't wait to pet him with her bare hands when they get home.

The staff member leads them to the front desk while another volunteer prepares the impending adoptee for his freedom ride. As they walk, Ladybug notices a large posterboard full of photos on the wall just outside the cat room door. "Thank You, Chat Noir!" is spelled out in die-cut letters across the top. Some photos are of cats looking out from their enclosures, some include Chat Noir himself holding either cat or crate. She does a quick count by fives and is astonished at the number she comes up with.

"Chaton, you've rescued 32 cats?"

His cheeks heat up, but his smile is soft. "At this shelter, yes."

Ladybug swallows quickly around the lump in her throat, changing tack to cover her sudden surge of emotion. "And do you give all of them ridiculous names?"

"Hey, I'm an excellent cat namer, thank you very much."

"What does Zibe-whatever even mean?"

He laughs. "It means sable - it's a little animal like a mink. My mother had a long sable coat that I remember her wearing to big, fancy events when I was little. Zibby's fur reminded me of that when I found him. Er, well...I thought it would once he was cleaned up."

"Why not name him Sable?"

Chat spreads his hands out in a grand gesture. "Well, I'm a learned gentlecat who speaks four languages, Buginette. Also, I already named one Sable last year."

Ladybug just shakes her head and laughs. This dork is truly one of the best people she's ever known. Perhaps she's luckier than she thought.

********

Monday morning dawns bright and lovely, a cold, crisp Winter Solstice to mark their last day of school before the long holiday. Marinette wakes to a shaft of sunlight across her bed from the skylight above, illuminating the deep chestnut fur of her temporary companion purring against her side. She can't resist reaching down to pet him, rousing him from sleep. He lifts his head with a questioning "mrrr?" before he closes his eyes again.

"Do we have to give him to Adrien, Marinette? I want to keep him." Tikki looks up at her with huge blue eyes, and she almost, almost decides to just give Adrien the forest green beanie she knitted for his 28th birthday. But she doesn't have time for a pet, her parents are busy with the bakery, and, well...this is already Adrien's cat, even if he doesn't know it yet, and she can't take that away from him.

"Sorry, Tik," she says with a yawn, sitting up and scooping the cat into her arms to help him down the ladder to her room. "We'll just have to swing over and visit him at Adrien's sometime." Her cheeks flush at the thought.

She preps a small gift bag with the supplies she purchased with her €20 - a little bag of catnip-infused toys, a shaker container of treats, and a bell collar embroidered with brightly-colored fish. Adrien doesn't need to know that the shelter waived the usual €150 adoption fee, nor that the neon green litter pan and carrier were thrown in for free as well. She has a feeling those were a donation by a certain masked black cat, but no one mentioned it outright and she didn't ask.

She kisses the little cat on the nose with a reminder that she'll be back for him later, opens her purse for Tikki, and sets off for school.

********

The class is abuzz with excitement. They've slogged through a morning of last-minute assignments and a pop quiz that brought groans from the students until the teacher said they could use their notes. Lunch was spent trying to get each other to give up the secret of who their giftee was, but none of them would budge. Marinette had made a quick trip across the street to "pick up something she forgot" just before the lunch break ended.

Finally, finally, it's time to return to homeroom for their Christmas party. Nino's phone plays a curated playlist of holiday music that provides a cheery background the students' chatter. Ms. Bustier's desk and a little table set up next to it are filled with snacks and treats. Red and green macarons decorate a silver tray, and a bowl filled with berry punch sits next to it, little splashes marring the smooth surface of several adjacent cookies. Marinette snags those for her own plate and slides the tray a few inches away before going back to her seat.

When everyone's plates are left with only crumbs, the teacher finally gets their attention. Nino turns the music down but not off, and everyone scrambles to get their gifts for the exchange.

Marinette sends a quick text to her mom before setting her phone on the desk beside the little gift bag. Adrien, she notices, holds a simple envelope in his hand, tapping it nervously against the desk.

Gifts are given to squeals of delight, oohs and aahs and one "whoa, rad!" from Alix.

When Sabine Cheng peeks in just as Nino is digging into his gift bag, Marinette excuses herself for a moment before returning with a carefully-ventilated shoebox. Okay, it held a pair of her father's giant shoes, but Marinette still followed the gift-giving guidelines. Sort of. She settles back in her seat, the contents of the box making a loud scrabbling sound, followed by a plaintive meow.

Every eye in the classroom is suddenly on the second row.

"Why don't you give your gift next, Marinette?" Mrs. Bustier says, eyes focused on the now-wriggling box.

Marinette slides the box forward on the desk toward Adrien, who is already turned in his seat, eyes wide. His gaze flickers to hers, to the meowing box, and back to her.

"Joyeux Noël, Adrien."

Chloé huffs at the look of wonder on his face as he brings the box into his lap, but no one else makes a sound.

Slowly, reverently, he begins to lift the lid. After just a few centimeters, a tiny black nose nudges into the open space, followed by one little paw covered in deep brown fur, then a second, before the cat pushes the lid up and off and climbs Adrien's t-shirt like a tree. His hands wrap gently around the cat's body and hold him close to his shoulder. Oblivious to the class going crazy, Alya filming the moment in shocked glee, and Ms. Bustier remarking to no one in particular that she thought they'd been told not to give living creatures as gifts, Adrien simply buries his face in the cat's fur.

"I thought you'd like, crochet a blanket or something, Mari," comes from somewhere behind her. Across the aisle, she hears, "Or bring a cake or madeleines or, I don't know, not a cat!" And, predictably, "Giving a cat as a gift is utterly ridiculous." But none of that matters. The world narrows to Adrien's shaking shoulders and the beautiful chestnut cat sniffing at the hair above his ears, making no move to wriggle free of the hands that hold him firmly but gently in place. For several frantic moments, Marinette is gripped with the fear that she has made a horrible mistake here.

When he finally raises his head, Nino surreptitiously passes him a tissue and pats him on the back while he reluctantly hands the cat to a squealing Rose, the first of many in a long line of cuddles in the cat's immediate future.

Marinette couldn't have said whether she was breathing or not before Adrien's eyes meet hers, but she's distinctly aware of the moment her breath catches. Where she thought she'd see the same joy he'd displayed during his many feline encounters over the course of their friendship, she finds something different. Gratitude mixes with a tinge of sadness, but behind it is something profound that makes her feel exposed and comforted all at once.

He blinks, his brow furrows, and the moment is gone.

"Marinette, I...well, my father..."

"Oh!" she exclaims. "I got permission. I can show you Nathalie's email if you'd like." She reaches for her phone, but Adrien stops her with a hand over hers.

"You're amazing, Marinette," he says, voice painted with the same wonder that shines in his eyes.

Alya is making a sound like a whistling tea kettle behind her still-recording phone. It takes Nino asking, “So, mec, what are you going to name your new little dude?" to truly bring them all back to the moment. The three sets of eyes in Nino's immediate vicinity snap to him, but the rest of the class looks to Adrien for his answer.

He rubs his neck and glances at the floor before answering. "His name is, um...Zibeline."

"Ziba-what now?" Kim asks, and half the class laughs.

"It means sable," he says quietly. "His fur reminds me of a coat my mom had that she'd wear to fancy events when I was little."

Max pipes up, “Adrien is correct. The sable is a type of marten found in the forests of Central Asia." He looks down at his phone for more info. "In fact, its scientific name is Martes zibellina. Zibeline is a little-known term in both French and English used to describe the sable or an item with sable-like qualities."

"Well, it's a very fitting name, Adrien. I do hope you enjoy your new pet." Ms. Bustier gives Mylène a pointed look, gesturing toward Adrien with her head, and the cat is reluctantly returned to his new owner. "Next year, please, no live animals in the gift exchange."

Alya nudges a malfunctioning Marinette, who nods absently. "Got it, Miss," Alya answers for her.

Marinette hears none of this. Her heart pounds in her ears, drowning out the class, their teacher, Alya. She stares, transfixed, at Adrien's bare hands holding Zibeline, trying and failing to reconcile that those same hands, previously gloved in black, had scratched the cat's chin two days before at the shelter. It can't be true that the same doofus who makes incessant cat puns and throws himself toward danger with a smile, who finds and saves the most vulnerable cats and kittens in Paris and has loved her for literal years is sitting in front of her now, cradling the cat they adopted together and looking back at her with those big green eyes she's seen in her dreams since she was thirteen. Right? Right?

Except...he can. He is. She sees it with perfect clarity as soon as she allows herself to truly believe it.

Less about his miraculous and more about his heart, indeed.

She's brought back to the moment when a crisp white envelope slides across her desk.

"For you, Marinette."

(Oh, even his voice is the same. How did she never realize?)

Inside are two tickets to a fall preview fashion show in early January, just as she knew there would be, just as she and her partner had discussed at their chilly rooftop meeting point on Friday night.

"Thank you," she whispers, finally meeting his eyes and finding a guarded hope that makes her heart ache.

Well, that won't do, she thinks.

Ms. Bustier wraps up the gift exchange, thanking the students for their participation and wishing them a very happy holiday. The class moves around them, students getting more snacks and punch, Christmas music turned up again to party volume for the last few minutes of the day. Alya and Nino get up together to refill their drinks, leaving their two seatmates and one cat.

There's a beat of silence between them.

"Beautiful on the inside, huh?"

Adrien's eyes widen in relief and he hides a laugh in Zibeline's fur. "I'm pretty sure I said inside and out."

Marinette giggles helplessly as a giddy glee spreads through her. "You did. And then you picked out your own Christmas gift." She reaches out to pet the cat but Adrien goes one step further and presses Zibeline into her arms. The cat settles happily, propping his paws on her forearm before laying his head on top of them.

"I love him, Marinette. Thank you."

Her breath catches in her throat again. Ostensibly, he’s talking about the cat, but his eyes speak something slightly different, with a weight that compels her to respond in kind.

“You’re welcome. I...I love him, too.”

His answering smile is pure, radiant joy. It makes her heart beat a little out of rhythm, and she clutches Zibeline just a bit closer, grounding herself in the feel of his thick fur. For a moment, Marinette is stunned by the wave of emotion that rises in her chest, a sudden vision of limitless possibility that makes her feel as powerful and determined as she does wearing her spots.

As he slides from his seat to refill his plate with likely-forbidden snacks, Adrien gives her a cheeky wink and leans in close enough that she can smell his familiar cologne. “That embroidery machine is still on the table, by the way. Seems like a super gift for a girlfriend who’s beautiful inside and out, doesn’t it?”

Marinette sputters as he saunters away, her ears and cheeks burning.

“Well, well, well,” Alya drawls as she sets down her drink. “Three years and two dozen failed schemes, and it turned out all it took to make something happen between you two was a cat.” She pops an entire macaron in her mouth and chews thoughtfully. "You won Christmas, by the way."

"I thought the competition was between you and Nino?"

Alya shrugs and points at Zibeline. "No one can beat that." After a long swig of punch, she reaches over to scratch the cat behind the ears. “Girl, I hope you like cats, because in a few years, this one’s going to be yours, too.”

Marinette looks down at the cat in her arms, then back at her best friend, and all she can do is laugh.

“Don’t worry, Alya. I love them. I always have.”

#miraculous ladybug #fan fiction #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #I'm trash for reveals #happy birthday chibi!#my writing #of course there are cats involved

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alarawriting · 3 years

Text

52 Project #42: Lineage

The air outside Jiangpao International Airport was hot and humid. Karula had always found her home too cold except in midsummer, so it felt good to her, the hot air against her skin making her finally feel almost warm enough. Taxi drivers called out to her urgently, aggressively marketing their services.

“Lady! I can take you to Jiangpao, very cheaply! I have the best rates of anyone here!”

“Younger sister, I’ve got a luxury car! I can take you to Jiangpao in the greatest comfort! You want to hire me!”

“My car’s the fastest, lady!”

One of the taxi drivers – a young man, maybe her own age, maybe even younger – with a mop of unruly black hair, slightly overlong for Senchai men’s fashion, came over to her and gestured at her large, heavy suitcase. “Elder sister, can I take your bag? All these drivers yelling at you probably don’t realize you want some peace and quiet after your long flight.”

Karula smiled. “I’m not going to Jiangpao, though. I’m headed to Nandijao.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I can take you there, sure,” he said. “My rates are very good.”

“Well, you’re the only one who decided not to yell at me from your car, so sure. Take my bag.”

“Your Senchai’sho is very good,” he said as he loaded the suitcase in the trunk of his taxi. “I can barely tell you have an accent. Where are you from?”

“Foirais,” Karula said, “but both my mother and father came from here.”

“Ah. I think everyone seeing a woman who looks Senchai’in, dressed in Southern clothing and too young to be a business executive, probably assumed you were from the South; that’s why they were yelling. But most of them probably thought you were one of the Given-Away Girls, not your mother.”

“Is that what you’re calling them over here?” She dug the disused seat belt out of the crevice of the taxi’s seat. “Given-Away Girls?”

“Well, they were given away,” the taxi driver said apologetically. “It’s not a slur or anything like that.”

He pulled out of the taxi roundabout and gently followed the flow of traffic toward the highway. “So what brings you to Senchai?”

“I’m researching my past, and I’m an anthropology student doing graduate work on Senchai’a folklore,” she said. “So I’ll be going to the Great Library.”

“Oh!” The taxi driver glanced back at her, sounding genuinely impressed. “You got your approval papers? They don’t usually let foreigners into the Great Library.”

“Of course.” She’d hardly have flown all the way from Foirais if she didn’t have all her permits in order to do what she’d come to do. “My cousin is a physics professor at Nandijao University, so she pulled some strings.”

“But you said you were researching your past?”

“My mother’s heritage,” Karula said. “My father—” was a philosophy student at the University who became a dissident, and had to flee to Foirais to stay out of prison—“grew up in Nandijao. But my mother was, as you say, a Given-Away Girl, so we don’t have any idea who her relatives are. All we know is what town she was born in.”

“Well, if it’s a small town and you know her birthdate, the records at the Great Library might help you narrow it down, but I don’t envy you. It’s got to be like looking for a single worm in an entire barrel of rice.”

It would be. The Given-Away Girls – she’d never heard the term before, but it seemed so perfect, she wondered why not – had birth certificates that showed their actual town of birth and birth date, but their parents’ names had been replaced by their adoptive parents. Girls had traditionally been seen as a burden in Senchai – parents had to raise a dowry for them, and then the girls ended up caring for their in-laws once they were elderly, not their own parents. When demographics in the wealthy nations of the South, like Foirais, had shifted so that there were far fewer children available for adoption, parents in Senchai had learned that if they gave away their daughters at birth, they would receive large sums of money.

Fueled by the promise of riches and the desire to send their daughters to a place where girls were valuable enough that adoptive parents would pay large sums to have a daughter, a place where their girls might grow up to be wealthy and secure, many, many parents gave up their daughters for adoption… to the point where the female population dropped low enough that the government of Senchai outlawed dowry, and made such adoptions require permits that were rarely given. But by the time the government took action, over a hundred thousand daughters of Senchai had been adopted out to other nations, the history of the families they came from lost to them forever.

With a father who had family back in Senchai, Karula Lefaire – her mother’s name, which was traditional in Foirais for women – had more resources to research the issue than most of the Given-Away Girls or their children did. And she also had more reason to.

“It’ll be difficult, but I’ll enjoy the challenge,” Karula said. “And it gives me a good excuse to do research for my thesis.”

***

From Jiangpao International Airport, it was an hour and a half to her cousin Ren Seiri’s house. Small talk with the taxi driver passed some of the time, but Karula was very relieved when she arrived. She was by nature too solitary to truly enjoy being locked in a small metal box with another person for an hour unless they were a good friend.

Ren Seiri greeted her at the door. “Younger cousin! Come in, come in! I’ll have my son take your bag—”

“Don’t trouble him, I can carry it. I’m stronger than I look.”

“Nonsense, you’re a guest and you’re family from a long way away. Jai! Come help our cousin with her bag!”

Jai, who more or less bounced into the room, turned out to be around 14, taller than Karula but skinnier, and she was herself a thin woman. “Elder cousin, no, don’t burden your son! I can carry it!”

“No, no, elder cousin!” Jai said. “I’ve been lifting weights! Look!” He grunted as he lifted the suitcase over his head. It had wheels, but plainly he didn’t want to use them on the lacquered bamboo floor.

“Oh, well, that is impressive,” Karula said.

“Let me show you to your room, and then you must come have some tea. Perhaps some sweet bean buns. Or some real food. I have barbeque pork rolls and cold eel dumplings.” Seiri’s doctorate and professorship apparently didn’t stop her from behaving exactly like any stereotypical Senchai’in mother.

Ren Seiri was the daughter of Karula’s father’s significantly older brother. She was not quite twice Karula’s age, but she was plainly getting there. She was wearing a dress of Southern styling, but beautiful silk dyed in a very Senchai’a pattern, and elegant soft house slippers. Karula replaced her own shoes with house slippers before following Seiri and her son.

She finally got some time to herself by insisting she needed a shower and a change of clothes. It was an excuse, but a good one. Most people would, in fact, need a shower and change of clothes after so much time in the Senchai’a heat. Karula, unlike most people, hadn’t sweated into her clothes at all, and she found the air conditioning oppressive enough that she turned it off in her bedroom and then opened all the windows, letting the heat in. She ran her shower as hot as she could stand it, and pinned her long hair up while it was still fairly wet because the wet hair was chilly on her neck. The traditional Senchai’a gown and robe she dressed in were silk, but heavy enough to keep the heat in… not generally something a Senchai’in, or in fact anybody, would wear in high summer, but it would keep the bugs off, and it looked lighter and cooler than it was.

After her shower, her cousin insisted on feeding her tea, hot pork buns, cold eel dumplings, and pastries full of warm bean custard, plainly purchased fresh at a bakery less than an hour ago. Seiri had probably ordered them while Karula was in the shower. Karula didn’t eat the dumplings. Seiri said that it made sense that a woman raised in Foirais wouldn’t have a taste for eel, and Karula didn’t correct her.

Then Seiri bustled around the kitchen, making dinner, continuing to bring Karula cups of tea and prattle on about family members Karula had obviously never met, telling stories about Karula’s father’s childhood that she’d heard from her own grandparents. Karula appreciated the hospitality but this was driving her insane. This was much too much social interaction, but she couldn’t politely extricate herself from it. She eventually managed to turn the conversation to teaching Jai some Foiraisse and telling him about the city she grew up in.

Dinner was Seiri, Jai, Seiri’s husband Shaon, Seiri’s sister Leirin, and Leirin’s boyfriend, who was apparently only allowed to see Leirin when Leirin was at Seiri’s house because their parents disapproved of him and it would be absolutely scandalous for her to be alone with her boyfriend without being chaperoned by family. Seiri assured Karula that she would be meeting her grandparents tomorrow, but they had to travel from Jiangpao. She said this in a slightly derisive tone, not the mockery of a person looking down on a lower status person, but the mockery of a person who believes someone of the same status is putting on airs. So apparently living in Jiangpao was considered higher status, at least for well-to-do people, than living in a college town, and Seiri disapproved of this. Then they all spent the entire meal continuing to tell Karula all about the lives of people she’d never met.

Afterward Seiri showed Karula the photo album. She was very interested in the pictures her father had sent back to his family of himself, his wife and daughter; Karula had almost no pictures of her mother as an adult, as everything her parents had owned when her mother had been alive had burned in the fire. It was astonishing how much her mother had looked like her. They could be twins, if they hadn’t been a generation apart. But then Seiri insisted on showing her all the other pictures, of the cousins, and the cousins’ cousins, and the great-grandparents, and everyone’s in-laws, and by the time she was done with just one photo album Karula’s eyes were glazed over and she had to plead exhaustion in order to escape to her room.

Karula’s long-lost family were so friendly, so welcoming. Such nice people.

She was so looking forward to spending tomorrow in the Great Library’s archive, not talking to anyone at all.

***

Senchai was famous – or perhaps infamous – for its bureaucracy and record-keeping. The country had started keeping detailed records of its citizens on papyrus, nearly three thousand years ago, when the country had only been the city of Jiangpao and the immediate province around it. Twenty-four hundred years ago, the empire had expanded to the point where local provinces were storing all of their own records. Emperor Nan had decreed that every record should have two copies made, and the second copy should be stored in an archive in the newly founded city of Nandijao, “Nan’s Treasure”.

Since then, through dynasties, foreign occupations, and revolutions, through the expansion and contraction of Senchai as wars moved the borders this way and that, every citizen of Senchai had had all of their important records – birth, marriage, any certificates they’d earned for the right to practice certain professions like medicine or accounting, and death – stored as copies in the Archives. The Great Library of Nandijao had grown up around the Archives, and the University of Nandijao, Senchai’s greatest and most nationally renowned university, had been founded there for proximity to the Great Library.

A famous story was told of conquerors who’d come in and tried to burn the Archives, who had been driven back by librarians, professors, and students from the University, wielding nothing but sticks and their own belts with rocks or heavy bars of soap tied to the end. This story was held in some skepticism by many scholars, since the only records of the incident were held in the Archives, and the librarians were no more immune than anyone else to self-aggrandizing stories. On the other hand, it was also true that, had it happened, it wasn’t likely that records about it would have gone anywhere but the Archives. It was, after all, where copies of all records in the nation ended up; it sent records nowhere itself.

There was currently a major project underway to digitize the Archives. The digitization had gotten back only two hundred fifty years so far, but that was probably far enough for Karula’s needs. Probably. So she didn’t spend any time sifting through papers centuries old; she spent the day scrolling through digitized documents. It was still as quiet and undisturbed as she’d hoped. If only she could do this outside where it was warm, rather than in the air conditioning, it would be ideal.

It was lengthy work. There was a difference between a record of birth and a birth certificate. The record of birth stated that a certain mother had given live birth within a certain week, and the gender of the baby, but the father’s name and the child’s name were not recorded. It was done for the census, not to track the lives of citizens. The birth certificates were amended on adoption, and if the original certificate still existed in the Archives anywhere, it was probably in a file cabinet for inactive documents, older documents that had revised versions. So there was no record of Karula’s mother, specifically, but there were records of all the women who had given birth in the city of Chofu, in that week. Unfortunately, Chofu, while nowhere near the size of Jiangpao or even Nandijao, was still large enough to support thirty-one births of girls in the week of Karula’s mother’s birthday. And Chofu, being a port town, had been a major destination for pregnant women who planned to sell any daughter they might have to pale-skinned Southerners. Ten of the women who were recorded as giving birth that week did not appear on any birth certificates, and ten of the birth certificates were girls with Southerner names for parents.

This meant Karula had to trace back the family histories and origin provinces of ten women, any of whom might have been her grandmother. And then track back their families, though thankfully that went back to before the era of Given-Away Girls. And then compare to records of birth to make sure no daughters were adopted out to other families, because the fact that they’d have names in Senchai’sho would make it non-obvious that an adoption had happened. And then cross correlate that to whatever news had made it on paper to the Archives… because news was not a governmental record and there was no guarantee a newspaper would have been sent to the Archives in the first place.

She’d spend the first half of her days doing her genealogical research in the Archives, and the other half in the Library proper, reading folklore accounts, particularly the stories told in various regions. During the Revolution at the beginning of the century, the new leadership of Senchai had decided that folklore was ancient superstition that needed to be discarded as Senchai entered the New Century, but fortunately that had only lasted until the original dictator had died. The new government had decided instead that folklore was part of the rich cultural history of Senchai and should definitely be preserved, and they’d even sent people around to record the stories the locals would tell, and then take them back to the Library. It had been a spasm of nationalism that had resulted in Senchai joining in on the wrong side of a terrible war, but the effect, the attempt to preserve Senchai’s ancient culture, had continued onward even after the war.

After her work, she’d go walking in Nandijao. Senchai was the first place she’d ever been where everyone looked like her. In Foirais, where most of the citizens were pale people with round eyes and a wild variety of hair colors, Karula had had very few people she could look to who were similar to her. Here in Senchai, her accent made her an outsider, but she at least looked like the folks here. Mostly. There was the fact that they all had black or brown eyes, and hers were only brown at a distance; when she looked closely in a mirror, they appeared a tawny amber. But since she hadn’t run around looking deep into most people’s eyes here in Senchai, she assumed it was a normal variation.

It was a little bit sad that no matter where she went, she was an outsider. In Foirais, her eyes and skin marked her as “not Foiraise” to many of her fellow citizens even though she’d grown up there. In Senchai, she looked like the people, but the moment she opened her mouth, she revealed herself as foreign. So she tried to get by in talking as little as possible. It felt better, somehow, to be thought of a mute or selectively non-verbal Senchai’in than a foreigner. She explored the city, bought food, newspapers, occasionally tiny memorabilia – nothing large enough that it wouldn’t fit in her suitcase.

And then she’d go to her aunt’s house and spend the evening having to listen to her cousin and her husband talk, endlessly. At one point she’d gotten her cousin onto the topic of physics, in desperation. Cousin Seiri had been happy to talk about her own research, but then had drifted into the topic of her own doctorate, and then her college days, and then she’d monopolized the conversation talking about her youth for an hour. Finally, Karula had taken to cultivating a relationship with Jai, in self defense. He let her get a word in edgewise sometimes, and Cousin Seiri wouldn’t interrupt Karula and tell her about people she had never met and never would.

He was a good kid. Karula had always had a soft spot for kids. He liked playing football – the challenge of never using your hands, the excitement of making your body into the thing to hit the ball with rather than a stick or the parts of your body designed to hit things with – and he enjoyed making and flying kites. His father, also a physics professor, had taught him about aerodynamics when he was young, and they used to make kites together. He was also willing to talk for long periods of time about his favorite comic books, and science fiction, and he thought her researches into folklore were cool. Especially the part about creatures who appeared in many, many different countries’ legends. Dragons, phoenixes, the qilin and its resemblance to Southern unicorns, the different types of undead around the world.

She tried to pull her own weight by helping around the house – sweeping, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen counter. At first Seiri insisted that she shouldn’t do any such thing, because she was a guest, but Karula had responded by pointing out that she was family, and she wanted to feel like family. After that, Seiri let her do chores… as long as they didn’t involve going near the burner on the stove.

The first time she’d done that, and the only, had been when she’d tried to put on hot water for tea. At home in Foirais, she’d had an electric stove, and in her dorm at university, there had been no stove at all – you used the cafeteria, or you heated food in a microwave. Cousin Seiri’s stove had a gas range. Karula had turned on the burner… and then stared, mesmerized, at the flames, the tea kettle still in her hand. Slowly she’d reached toward the flame with her free hand.

Seiri had seen her do it and pulled her away as she was about to touch the beautiful flame. “Oh, no, no! You can’t be doing things with fire!” She’d put the kettle on the burner herself and then pulled Karula away from the stove entirely by both hands, walking backwards, pulling Karula toward the family dining table. “I’m so sorry. After what happened to your mother…! I didn’t even think! Of course you shouldn’t have to do anything with fire!”

That night Karula dreamed. In real life, Father had held her, both of them screaming, begging for Mother to stop, as Mother had run back into their burning house, and Karula had struggled in Father’s arms to follow her, to pull her back. In the dream, Father wasn’t even there, and Karula ran through the burning hallways, opening doors into rooms her house had not actually had, looking for Mother. And then she’d found her, wreathed in fire, her eyes golden and glowing… and Karula had walked toward the fire, intent on immolating herself as well.

She didn’t normally remember her dreams, but she woke the moment she touched the flame, shaken, tears on her face.

***

After twenty-three days of running into the dead end of “there are no records of this at the Archives”, Karula decided to go to Chofu for herself.

“You make sure to get a good hotel,” Cousin Seiri insisted. “If I were you I’d get a Southern-style hotel. I know there’s a Hillain and a Morenta in Chofu, and they get good reviews.”

“I can stay in a Southern-style hotel anywhere near home,” Karula said. “I’m looking for something Senchai’a, but nice. Do you know any?”

“Oh, of course! But the truth is, Chofu’s just a small town in comparison to Nandijao, so I don’t know how many options you’ll have.”

The truth was, Cousin Seiri had never been to Chofu and needed time to contact her network of friends and family to find out what was good there. Karula trusted Cousin Seiri’s network better than she trusted official reviews, so she waited, and eventually booked a room in a Chofu inn called the Soaring Fish. It was a traditional inn, so a dinner buffet was served nightly, large platters of fried rice and stir-fried meats in various sauces, and the guests were expected to take whatever portions they wanted. Karula, arriving on a late train, was grateful. It was the first time she had stayed at a traditional Senchai’a inn; she’d stayed in many Southern-style hotels with restaurants attached, and in many of them the hotel served breakfast, but she’d never before been somewhere that the hotel itself served dinner. She was always happy to warm up with a hot meal.

The next day she went to Chofu’s Children’s Peace and Health Center… a euphemism for the place where parents could abandon children, no questions asked. Since the revolution Senchai had been torn between the modern ways they wanted to adopt and the traditional mores most of the country held. In past times, the traditions demanded total obedience from children to their parents, but nowadays children had rights, and parents had obligations to them. It was also a tradition for parents in dire poverty to sell their daughters as servants, but nowadays that meant the sex trade, so it was extremely illegal. The society’s safety valve was the Children’s Peace and Health Center, where runaways would be sheltered, and children even as old as adolescents could be dropped off by parents.

Orphans were sent there as well. Some of those were adopted out quickly; the Children’s Peace and Health Centers mediated almost all the adoptions in Senchai. Those who weren’t ended up in orphanages, but the Peace and Health Center that had brought them in would continue to look for adoptive or foster parents for them.

Karula had visited the center in Nandijao; it was elaborately hidden. A shrubbery maze, a basement level of tunnels, and a network of walkways above formed a labyrinth with many, many exits – at a park for children, at an office building for doctors, at a shopping center… and the Children’s Peace and Health Center. This ensured that it was almost impossible to tell whether a given person with a child was taking the child to the Center, or to a doctor’s appointment, or a play date.

Chofu wasn’t nearly so wealthy a city, nor nearly as invested in appearances. The Children’s Peace and Health Center was simply there, on a street near one of the bus stops. It was a Southern-style rectangular blocky building, built back when Senchai perceived the South as more medically advanced and progressive. Thus it was out of place, and very ugly. On her way to the front door, Karula passed a strange version of a revolving door. It was only half a person’s height, and instead of being a glass door, it was a crib and an opaque partition. Experimentally, Karula pushed the empty crib slightly, noting where it would enter the building.

It was at this Center that her mother had been presented to her future parents, had been adopted and taken away from her homeland. Had her biological grandmother laid her mother down in that crib and spun it to push her baby into the Center, to be taken by employees, never to be seen by Karula’s grandmother anymore?

Inside, it looked just like a Southern-style medical office, with a receptionist behind a clear partition. “Hello!” the receptionist said. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to research my mother’s history.”

“Oh, well, you must understand that we keep very little information on birth parents.”

“That’s all right,” Karula said. “I’ll take what I can get. How would I look her up?”

“Do you have the names of your open-hearted grandparents?”

Karula blinked. “Open-hearted?”

“Oh, we don’t like to use the term ‘adoptive parent’ here. It sounds like they’re lesser than birth parents somehow. Anyone who’d take a child into their heart and adopt them is open-hearted and generous, so we call them ‘open-hearted parents’.”

Ah. A euphemism. “I do. My mother’s mother was Charlée Lefaire, and her husband was Gantoise Lefaire.”

“And your name is?”

“Karula Lefaire.”

The receptionist’s eyebrow went up. “Your mother didn’t marry?”

“In Foirais, children take the mother’s family name, not the father’s.”

“Oh! Of course! Pardon me for prying, I’ve never met anyone from Foirais before. Most of the Given-Away Girls or their families come from Anacrisia or Southland.”

“Well, I’ve never been to Senchai before, so now we’re matched.” Karula smiled at her. “Do you have any record of either of my open-hearted grandparents?”

The receptionist typed, her long lacquered nails clacking against her keyboard. “Yes. Charlée Lefaire, and there’s Gantoise Lefaire. Oh, interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“Your mother would have been Jirène Lefaire?”

“Yes. Do you have any record of her birth name?”

“No, we don’t keep that. But she was adopted at 16 months, not infancy. And this says she entered the center only two weeks before her adoption. So she wasn’t an infant surrender.” More clacking. “I might be able to get some more detail. Prospective parents like to know if there was any family history of violence or drug abuse or anything like that which they might need to know about their new child.”

Karula suspected that children with problems like that in their past were probably the last to be adopted. Or second last, after disabled children. “So what kind of information would be kept?”

“It’ll tell me if she was a legal surrender – meaning, she was taken away from incompetent birth parents for legal reasons – or… oh. Oh, that’s different. I don’t see that often.”

“What are you seeing?”

“She was surrendered by the fire department. That only happens if the child is rescued from a fire and the parents are dead or can’t be found, usually. Fire department personnel do general rescues, so it could have been a flood or an earthquake…”

“No,” Karula said. “Fire does sound likely.”

“Did she have burn scars?”

“Nothing like that, but she had a… strange relationship with fire.” She didn’t want to talk about that. “The birth date on her birth certificate is 13 Sanwa. Is that the birth date you have also?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“But you don’t have her birth name?”

“No. As I said, we don’t keep that.”

What she’d said was that information wasn’t kept on the birth parents, but Karula said nothing. “Do you have her adoption date?”

“22 Ren.”

“That gives me a lot to go on. Thanks.”

***

The Archives back in Nandijao didn’t have perfect records of newspapers… but the Library itself kept copies of newspapers going back sixty years, all the way back to the Revolution. Karula’s mother would have been 45 now, and Chofu was a large enough city that newspapers would probably be kept from it.

On 4 Ren that year, a house fire claimed the lives of Bai Ji-Wen, 25 years old, and her husband, Bai Sanli, 30. They were survived by their infant child, who wasn’t named, but Karula could guess. Named after her mother, perhaps, Ji-Wen, or maybe Ji-Len. “Songbird”, and if it had changed to Ji-Len, “Little Bird.” Ji-Wen or Ji-Len becoming the Foiraise name Jirène made perfect sense.

Bai Sanli, born 30 years earlier, had married Tenra Ji-Wen when he was 26, whereupon she’d taken his family name. Tenra Ji-Wen, who’d have been 21 at the time, had been born in a fishing town thirty kilometers up the coast from Chofu, called Bangji. That was Karula’s next destination.

“Where are you going to stay?” Cousin Seiri was, in Karula’s opinion, overly worried about this. “That’s so far away! You’ll be out in the middle of nowhere!”

“It’s all right,” Karula reassured her. “I’m good at finding my own way.”

“But you’ll be a young woman all alone! Don’t you know what can happen to young women in the forest when nobody’s around?”

“I’ll be fine, Elder Cousin,” Karula said. “I’ll call and let you know how I’m doing.”

“But will they even have service out there?”

Karula raised an eyebrow. “Elder Cousin… the entire country was wired for land lines a generation ago. If I have no cell signal, I’ll just call from one of those.”

In addition to landlines and electricity, the government a generation ago had made certain there were train lines all over Senchai, so Karula didn’t have too much difficulty getting to Bangji. Once she got there, there was exactly one taxi at the train station, and the very bored taxi driver seemed very surprised to see her. “Oh! You’re a visitor!”

“I guess you don’t get many in Bangji?”

“I come out here every day and wait at the train station,” the old man said. “I’m supposed to be retired, but who can live off the government stipend? So I drive my taxi. But only two or three times a week am I needed, and usually it’s university students coming home to visit. Who are you here to see?”

“I’m a researcher from Foirais,” Karula said. “I’m here to collect stories from people. Is there anywhere I can stay?”

“Well, the Wangs run a bed and breakfast, but I don’t know if their room is available. I haven’t picked anyone up at the train station, though, so… probably.”

***

Mrs. Wang was also elderly, a small woman whose white hair was collected in a traditional Senchai’a bun. Karula had wondered how Bangji could support even one bed and breakfast, if they had so few visitors. Presumably the Wangs were also on retirement stipend. Strictly speaking, retirees on the stipend weren’t supposed to work; in theory, the government could reduce their stipend by the amount they made from side jobs. In practice, the government might possibly care about people in a retirement community, or in some areas of big cities where a lot of government ministers lived, but no one was ever going to come to Bangji and find out that old people had side businesses.

“Mr. Jo tells me you’re looking for a place to stay?” Mrs. Wang had come out to speak to the taxi driver, and then went around to the passenger side to talk to Karula. “I do have a room if you’d like!”

“That would be wonderful,” Karula said.

The room turned out to be small but very clean, decorated with rustic wooden sculptures of sea dragons, turtles whose shells glittered with stars, and giant fish-birds. This was perfect. It was legends of creatures like that that had brought Karula to Senchai, and out here to Bangji. A mandala made of sea shells decorated the wall above the bed, which was a mattress on the floor, covered in sheets in the traditional dark blues and purples of the squid ink the locals harvested and sold for textile pigment. A feather-filled silk comforter in a paler blue color was folded at the foot of the bed. The walls were thin bamboo, but solid enough for her purposes. There was one long, low piece of furniture with drawers running alongside one wall.

“This is beautiful. I would be pleased to rent from you.”

Mrs. Wang nodded. “We make our own breakfast at 6 am, but if you come down to the kitchen before 9 am, I’ll make you something. Typically our breakfast is rice porridge with smoked fish and fried dough twists, but if there’s something specific you want, I could make you anything. I used to be a cook at a local restaurant, before I retired.”

“Whatever you’re making for yourself is fine, as long as it’s hot. I can come down early.” Karula usually woke at sunrise, or just before it, the imminent appearance of the sun filling her with restless energy.

“Early is best,” Mrs. Wang agreed. “Our daughter sleeps late, and it’s best not to be at breakfast at the same time she is. So much energy!” She smiled.

“I don’t mind children, or their energy, but if you prefer that I avoid your daughter—”

“No, no! If she approaches you, feel free to be Elder Sister or Auntie, as you please. There aren’t a lot of children in Bangji… not anymore, anyway.”

“Because most of the town has become venerable, I imagine?”

“That, yes, but… well, there have been some tragedies. Several children have disappeared. The police weren’t able to find any common factor, and every home here’s been searched thoroughly, and there are no strangers in Bangji most of the time. So we think perhaps they were taken by wild animals, but no one’s found animal spoor, either.”

“That’s terrible!”

“We try to watch over Lai-Mei all the time, but she’s so young and energetic, and she behaves as if there’s no danger at all. We try to tell her, but she doesn’t always listen.”

“Well, if I run into her, I will surely try to caution her. Perhaps I can use my youth and energy to counter hers, and keep her safe.”

***

Mr. Wang was equally friendly and equally garrulous, talking to Karula about his garden, which was indeed beautiful.

“In my younger days I traveled all over Senchai,” he said. “I gathered up plants from all sorts of places. Back then we didn’t really think about things like invasive species.” He smiled wryly. “Nowadays I try to grow local plants only, but some of these are just too beautiful to do without even if they came from halfway across the country. Like these.” He showed her flowers with purple and pink bells. Another had clusters of tiny orange and red flowers making patterns that looked like larger flowers.

“You’ve lived here a long time,” Karula said. “I’m trying to track down my mother’s family. Do you remember anything about a family named Tenra?”

“Tenra? Can’t say I do. Mrs. Wang might know, though. As I said, I traveled, but she’s lived here her whole life.”

***

Karula spent the day gathering stories from people about legends in the area. People in Bangji were full of such stories, and they all claimed that this had really happened, to a friend of a friend. Stories of dragons who almost managed to barbeque the friend of a friend. Stories of the great bird-fish surfacing less than an hour’s sail away from the shore. Qilin in the forest at the base of the mountain to the west of Bangji. Malevolent demons. Witches who had certainly cast baleful spells and hexes on innocent people, oh, around 30 years ago.

She asked several people about the Tenra family. No one remembered them. This seemed strange to Karula; Tenra Ji-Wen had married at the age of 21, 50 years ago. Had she had no family by then? Had her family been transplants from somewhere else? Had they moved on? Surely one of the elderly residents of Bangji would remember. But none did.

When she returned to the Wangs’ bed and breakfast, she almost tripped over a little girl, perhaps 9 or so. “Well, hello.”

The girl looked her up and down, an almost insolent expression on her face. “Where did you come from?”

“Foirais, but my mother was born in Chofu, and her mother was born in Bangji, according to the records. Are you Wang Lai-Mei?”

“That isn’t a real person,” the girl said. “I’m Lun Lai-Mei.”

A child old enough to keep her original family name when she was adopted was probably one of the Thrown-Away Girls, a darker and sadder term for the abandoned girls who were surrendered to the Children’s Center as toddlers or older. “Ah. Well, Lun Lai-Mei, I’m Karula Lefaire.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Lai-Mei said. “I’ll just call you Elder Sister anyway.”

“Yes, but it’s polite to share my name with you, since you shared yours. I’m staying with your parents while I research my family.”

“I figured that. You definitely aren’t from Senchai, so why would you be here unless you’re a guest?”

“My accent makes it that obvious?”

“I could just look at your face, Elder Sister. You don’t look Senchai’in.”

Karula blinked. Both her parents were Senchai’in born in Senchai; how could she look anything else? “Why not?”

Lai-Mei smiled. “You’re too tall.”

Karula was a little on the tall side for a Senchai’in woman, but not to the point where she stood out. “I’ve met many Senchai’in women who are taller than me.”

“Well, it’s something,” Lai-Mei said. “I don’t know what.”

Lai-Mei herself didn’t quite look fully Senchai’in. She was beautiful, tiny for her apparent age, long straight hair pinned up with hairpins in the back that had seashells on them. In all respects but one she was the perfect picture of a Senchai’in girl… but her eyes were bright, vivid green. Perhaps her mother had had an affair with a foreigner, and that was why she’d been given away. Or perhaps it was a natural variation. Karula hadn’t met any Senchai’in with eye colors other than black or brown, aside from herself… and her own eye color was subtle enough that neither Cousin Seiri, nor Jai, nor anyone else who’d seen her up close in good lighting had remarked on it. But there were a billion people in Senchai, and many distinct ethnic groups, so perhaps green eyes was a rare but known phenomenon. Like red-haired people in Foirais.

“Lai-Mei!” Mrs. Wang called from the door. “Don’t bother the honored guest!”

“She’s not bothering me!” Karula called back. To Lai-Mei she said, “I might see you tomorrow if I’m not too tired when I come home.”

“This isn’t home for you, though, Elder Sister,” Lai-Mei said.

“This is my current base of operations, and that’s good enough.”

By Senchai’a standards, the child was extremely rude, but Karula found it a refreshing change, actually. All the children she’d met so far had had mostly perfect manners – Seiri might think Jai’s desire to monopolize a conversation talking about his interests was a flaw, but Karula, here to learn from Senchai’in people, didn’t see it that way. Lai-Mei was blunt. By Foiraise standards, she was actually fairly normal. Children were children all around the world, after all.

***

Elderly Mrs. Jin, 98 years old, was mentioned in a discussion in town of who might remember the Tenra family. So Karula went to her house. It was in better repair than she expected for a 98-year-old woman, and Karula could see why; two shirtless young men were working on the property, one clipping the hedges and one repairing a shutter.

“Is Mrs. Jin home?” she asked one of them.

The young man laughed. “Grandmother never goes anywhere anymore. What you want to ask is, is Mrs. Jin awake, and the answer is, probably not but she loves visitors, so go in and wake her up if you like.”

Inside, a middle-aged woman was pureeing rice and some sort of vegetable in a blender. “Hello! Are you here to see Grandmother?”

The term was a generic one of respect for the elderly, but Karula thought perhaps this woman was really Mrs. Jin’s granddaughter. “I’m doing some research to track down my mother’s family,” she said, “and Mrs. Jin was referred to me as someone who might remember my grandmother here as a child.”

“Oh, she loves it when people want to ask her about the past! Let me go see if she wants to wake up to see you.”

She ducked behind a sliding bamboo partition, and was gone for a couple of minutes. When she returned she said, “Come this way. Grandmother would be happy to talk with you!”

The old woman was reclining on a couch that was absolutely drowning in pillows. “This is the guest, Grandmother!” the woman yelled. “She’s staying at the Wangs’ bed and breakfast!”

“Glad to see they’ve got some custom,” Mrs. Jin said in a surprisingly strong voice for such an old woman. She was very small, with gray hair cropped in a modern short haircut, and Karula would have guessed her to be in her 70’s or 80’s. Then again, Karula had hardly met enough nonagenarians to have any idea how to tell a 90-something from a younger but still elderly person. “Come close, girl, and sit down on these floor pillows. Neither my eyesight nor my hearing’s the best anymore.”

“We keep trying to get her to go to the doctor to be fitted for hearing aids,” the middle-aged woman said.

“And I keep saying no! Because at my age, why should I travel? If the doctor wants my money, he should come here.”

“The national health ministry would pay the doctor, not you,” the woman sighed.

Karula took the offered seat, right in front of the old woman. “My mother was a Given-Away girl, but I managed to track down the identity of her mother. A woman named Tenra Ji-Wen was born here… maybe around 70 years ago?”

“Oh. Oh, I remember that. The Tenra family. Such a shame what happened to them.”

“What happened to them?”

“The father was in logging, if I remember right. Cut down trees, bring them to the city to sell to the middlemen who make logs into wood for carpenters. There’s a lot of forest around here, but in those days there was almost nothing else; you could barely get to Bangji except by water. There was a road, but it was packed dirt and full of ruts from the carts. Well, you know how it is. Every time it rained the whole thing turned into mud and we were trapped here.” Mrs. Jin nodded slightly to herself, her eyes – focused and bright a moment ago, unfocusing. Karula wondered if she was falling asleep, but it seemed she was just collecting her thoughts.

“I think it was… 40 years ago they paved the road? They were having a revolution, outside of Bangji, but it never came here. They came from the government to tell us how to run our lives, and we smiled and nodded and did just what we pleased as soon as they were gone. Found out later, they’d never returned! Bandits or wild animals or something. They disappeared without a trace. We didn’t learn until two or three groups from the government came through and then left. They were all vanishing. So the soldiers came, you know, because they thought we were killing these people, but we told them our protector spirit must be getting overly aggressive, and we hadn’t known it was killing. We laid down a lovely large tuna at the shrine and prayed for the protector not to kill the government workers anymore, and that did the trick. Soldiers were still suspicious, though. They quartered here for a few years, but eventually they realized, Bangji may hold to a lot of the old ways, but a lot of the newfangled stuff they wanted to bring in? We were already doing it.”

This was fascinating but had nothing to do with the Tenra family that Karula could see. For a moment impatience warred with her scholar’s curiosity. The scholar won. “Your protector spirit? Can you tell me about that?”

“No one who has ill intent toward Bangji can come here, and anyone who develops ill intent while they’re here, they never leave. The government people wanted to take away everyone’s land and make it the property of the state and then give it back to us to work on it. Well, that’s just stupid. We already live as a community; everyone takes care of everyone else. You know, everyone in the town calls me Grandmother and they all come by to take care of me, feed me, help me to the bathroom… I can’t walk on my own anymore. It bothered me at first, that everyone came, because I always used to do for myself. I took care of my kids and all their friends, and all my grandkids, and all their friends, and I was the one who did for people, and it was hard to get my head around being the one they were doing for, but you know what? I thought about it, and I earned it. I worked hard to take care of all those kids and now they all take care of me, and that’s the way life’s supposed to be, right?”

“What is the protector spirit?” Karula asked again.

Mrs. Jin cackled. “A dragon, of course! A sea dragon, what else would a fishing town have? We’re not large enough for the fish-bird to honor us with its presence, nor holy enough for qilins, but there’s so many dragons. The sea is full of them. The land too.” Her eyes went unfocused again. “It’s the land dragons you have to watch out for. So many of them died in the purges out there. So many. The children don’t even know who they are.”

“What’s the difference between a land dragon and a sea dragon?”

“Well, what do you think? One lives on the earth and one lives in the water! Land dragons have earth and fire and air in their souls. A lot of them breathe fire like the Southern ones. Sea dragons have water and air, no fire or earth, but they’re more magical.”

“And what is the protector spirit?”

Mrs. Jin went unfocused again. “I wish I knew anymore, young lady. Back in those days the protector was definitely a sea dragon, but the soldiers… I worry about the soldiers. For a while it was gone. Then it came back, but I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know if it’s the same one. I don’t know if the price is worth paying anymore.”

“Why wouldn’t the price be worth paying?”

Mrs. Jin shrugged. “You didn’t come here to listen to me ramble about everything and anything, though. You said Tenra Ji-Wen?”

“Yes.”

“I could tell,” Mrs. Jin nodded. “You look exactly like her. Exactly. We weren’t close; I didn’t have kids yet when she was born. She must have left, what, maybe she was seventeen? eighteen? How old are you, granddaughter?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Close enough. I knew her but we were out of sync; she was too young to be my playmate and too old to be my kids’ friend. But we all knew her. So hard she worked, since she was so small. She couldn’t even go to school. Someone had to take care of her father. She cooked and cleaned for him.”

“Wait, what happened to her mother?”

“Oh, I didn’t say? Such a tragedy, she burned. Whole house went up in flames when Ji-Wen was little. 2, 3? Something like that. The father was out, he was a logger. I mentioned that, right?”

Karula held herself very still, showing nothing of her reaction on her face. “You certainly did, Grandmother.”

“It was a miracle. Something preserved that little girl. They found her in the ashes, crying. Her mother must have gotten her into a cellar or something so the fire wouldn’t get her.”

“She didn’t have any siblings?”

“No, she was her mother’s first, and her poor mother never lived long enough to have another. The father didn’t even remarry until she was, I don’t know, 14 or 15? And the stepmother was respectful to the daughter, of course, we wouldn’t have stood for it otherwise, but Ji-Wen wanted to get away anyway. I think she probably wanted to get away the whole time, but she needed to take care of her father. So she left, a few years later. We never saw her again. Whatever did happen to her?”

“I’m not sure,” Karula lied. “I need to do some more research. I believe she’s dead, but the details…?” She shrugged. “It’ll come together from my research, eventually. Do you know where her mother came from? The one who died?”

“No. Sad to say I wasn’t the gossip back then that I became! Oh, I cared so much about what the kids my own age were doing, but nothing about the old people. That’s the problem with humans, you know. The young ones don’t think the old ones are people.”

“I certainly think older people are people,” Karula said, startled.

“I don’t exactly mean that. Like… we’re just here. We have our own lives, but the kids don’t care. Whereas we care about the kids, because we remember being them, but they don’t remember us unless they can remember past lives!” She chuckled. “You’re different, though. Most people who come to me with a question, they don’t have any patience for how my mind wanders. It’s been doing that since my 50’s, you know. Amazing when you think about it, I’ve been old for almost as long as I was young. If you count 50 as old. Most of the 50 year olds don’t, but the young ones like you do.”

“Your stories are fascinating. But I’m a student of folklore, and to a lesser extent history, and it amazes me to talk to someone as venerable as you, Grandmother. To be alive from before the revolution! The things you must have seen… Is there anyone coming to you to write down these stories?”

“Write them down?”

“Someone should, if no one is. Would you mind if scholars from Nandijao came here to write down the story of your life? You could tell them anything you’d like. Grandmother, you are living history and we should all learn from you.” Karula stood up. “I must go now, if there’s nothing you’d like me to do for you, but I would love to come back soon.”

“Yes, you do that! I’ll have Izhen make you tea. We still do it the old way, you know. I’ve got one of those new-fangled gas stoves for heating water, but we do it in the fireplace, just like when I was a girl.” She gestured at the fireplace, which, thankfully, was dark at the moment.

Karula bowed hastily, dragging her eyes away. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be back!”

Her hands didn’t shake until she was back in her room, safe from anyone’s eyes. The Wangs’ house also had a fireplace. But they hadn’t lit it since she’d arrived. It was summertime; they didn’t need to.

Karula had planned to take this trip on summer break because it made the most sense with her schedule. She was beginning to realize there was another reason why it had been a very good idea to do it now, as well.

***

No one but Mrs. Jin even remembered the Tenra family… which made sense, if they’d kept to themselves after tragedy struck. Mrs. Jin would have been a young woman when it had happened, but most of the town elderly were in their 70’s or 80’s; they’d have been children. It didn’t seem that there was anyone as old as Mrs. Jin, or even close.

If she wanted more detail on Ji-Wen’s mother and father—particularly mother – she’d have to go back to the Archives. But she wasn’t lying to flatter the old woman; Mrs. Jin’s stories were a national treasure and should be preserved at all cost. She wanted to stay here and listen to more of them. And she wanted to know more about this protector spirit. Would she be able to find independent corroboration in the death records of the government agents disappearing? That too was a question for the Archives, but to ask it, Karula needed more of the details.

***

Mrs. Wang wasn’t originally from Bangji, and Mr. Wang waxed garrulous about all the things he’d seen in his travels, but wasn’t nearly as talkative about anything local. It took conversing with six retired people before she found someone who could give her more information about the protector spirit.

Mr. Sho was in his 70’s, but still quite vigorous. “It’s all the fish!” he boasted. “Here in Bangji, we eat nothing but fish, and it keeps us healthy and strong!”

“I can see that,” Karula said. “I’m surprised no one but Mrs. Wang seems to be in their 90’s. All of you retired people seem so healthy!”

“Good health is a treasure,” Mr. Sho agreed. “But we do our duty. Jin Tai-Lee is the town grandmother, you know. We all love her.”

“Yes, she seems so.”

“So we don’t let her go to the temple. Better we go, before our health starts to fail us.”

Karula blinked. When had they gotten onto the subject of attending the temple? “Which temple?”

“There’s only one,” Mr. Sho said. “The shrine of the protector spirit. Where we sacrifice part of what we catch. Large fish, when we bring them in. Many fish, when we can’t get a big one. One time we gave a bucket of crabs!” He laughed.

“And the elder people in the village do this?”

Mr. Sho nodded. “Sometimes the protector doesn’t like the offering. Well, gods and spirits and demons, they all must get bored with the same food every day.”

“What happens if the protector doesn’t like the offering?”

Mr. Sho leaned forward, his expression very serious. “It’s absolutely vital to do, you know. No one comes to Bangji anymore. There used to be bandits and pirates, and the protector spirit would save us. Then there were people from the government, who wanted us to live the way they were trying to force the rest of the country. But nowadays there’s nobody. We drive trucks full of fish down the road, now it’s paved, and we drive on back. No one for the spirit to protect us from.”

“So without anyone for the spirit to protect you from, I guess you’re afraid it’ll be angry and bored if you don’t give it good offerings?”

“If it doesn’t like the offering… it would be very bad for it to come back to the village to find one it prefers,” Mr. Sho said somberly. “So we old people bring it, and that way, if it doesn’t like the offering we provided, well…”

“Wait. Are you telling me the protector spirit – the protector spirit takes elderly people as a sacrifice?”

Mr. Sho nodded. Karula couldn’t see any sign on his face or in his voice that he was joking.

“Is there a specific time it’s done? Would it be safe for me to go up to the shrine, or would the spirit assume I’m a sacrifice?”

“Nobody knows anymore,” Mr. Sho said, sadly. “We do what we can, but the spirit… well, we don’t speak ill of it. It might be listening.”

“It’s not protecting you?”

“We don’t know if it is or not,” Mr. Sho said. “All we know is what we have lost.”

***

“I’m probably going to return to the Archives for a while,” Karula said, as Mrs. Wang served dinner. It was a bed-and-breakfast, not a bed-and-breakfast-and-dinner, but Mrs. Wang was treating Karula more like an actual houseguest than a paying guest. “But I’ll be back.”

“I wanted you to play with me!” Lai-Mei said angrily. “You’ve only been here a few days!”

Karula smiled indulgently. “Maybe I could find time to play with you tomorrow. My train won’t leave until afternoon.”

“Lai-Mei, this is a guest. Behave yourself!” Mrs. Wang scolded.

“It’s all right,” Karula said.

“There aren’t any children around here for her to play with,” Mr. Wang said apologetically.

Karula remembered Mrs. Wang telling her that there weren’t many children here because some of them had disappeared, possibly taken by wild animals. She’d wondered, then, why the police hadn’t been called, why there hadn’t been extensive searches. Yes, this was far out into the countryside, but how could anyone do nothing when children were disappearing?

But Mr. Sho had implied, very strongly, that the protector spirit needed to be appeased with the lives of the elderly citizens who brought the sacrifices, from time to time. And that if they didn’t, the spirit would come to the village to find something to take.

Modern Senchai’a scholarship followed the same line as the South. There was no such thing as spirits. Nothing supernatural in the world. No dragons, no fish-birds, no qilin. Everything could be explained as fossils that ancient people had found and speculated on, or mistakes humans had made long in the past that had been carried forward in legend. Karula hadn’t truly expected to find any evidence that any of the stories she collected had any reality to them.

And yet… it didn’t surprise her. Somehow. She considered it a genuinely reasonable theory that a protector spirit turned malevolent might have taken children – to eat? What did the protector spirit do with the sacrifices? – because it wasn’t pleased with the quality of what had been provided to it.

Was she being too credulous? Probably. Was this most likely the nonsense of peasants without any modern education? That could well be. But what if it was real?

She needed to see the death certificates. She needed to see how many children had been born here, and how many had died. She needed to return to the Archives.

But first, she wanted to see the shrine.

***

The sun had just come up the next morning when, fortified with one of Mrs. Wang’s hot breakfasts, Karula headed for the cliff where the shrine to the protector was.

Bangji was a tiny bump of a peninsula, bounded on one side by the start of the Mingshen Mountains and on the other side by thick forest, which climbed up the mountains to the extent that it could. The shrine looked out over the cliffside that faced the ocean, looking toward the east and the sunrise. There was a winding path up the side of the cliff, with steps.

It took her an hour to make it all the way up. She was young and healthy, her legs strong; she wondered how long it took elderly people to get up here, carrying a big fish. How did they get a tuna up these steps? A large tuna would need two people to carry it at the best of times. She tried to imagine two old men, trying to tandem-carry a gigantic slippery fish, up a mountainside staircase that took a young healthy person an hour. Then she imagined that those two old men knew that if their protector spirit didn’t like the tuna, they themselves might be eaten.

After all that, the shrine itself was an anticlimax. Throughout most of Senchai, temples were large, elaborate things, or at least as large and elaborate as poverty-stricken locals had been able to build. During the revolution many of them had been destroyed, but when the new leadership came in after the revolutionary leader had died, their push to restore Senchai’s lost traditions in the name of nationalism had gotten most of those rebuilt with modern materials and architecture. They were also, generally, shrines to ancestors. The spirit worship thing was more like you’d find in Niyong, to the east. Which was not that shocking; much of Senchai’s eastern coast had a lot of Niyong’s culture, customs and food intermixed with their own. And with Bangji being relatively isolated from the mainland, it was even more likely.

But Karula had never seen any evidence that Niyong’s spirits were real, let alone that they’d travel to Senchai for worship.

An actual Niyong shrine would generally be made of wood. Bangji’s was made of stone instead; there was plenty of easily accessible stone nearby, as the cliff face was a plateau, with another cliff a short distance inland, on top of it. It was a simple rectangular building with terra cotta tiles for a roof and white and gray stones mortared together for its walls. Inside, a candle burned in front of a tapestry showing Bangji, from the perspective of the shrine on the cliff, so the individual buildings were embroidered too small to make out much detail about them. There was no representation of the protector spirit itself anywhere, but there were some smashed pieces of terra cotta that might have once been statues.

Outside, facing the ocean, there was a very large stone circle with a very small stone wall ringed around it, and a pedestal about twice as high as the tiny wall in its center. Stains on the pedestal and a slightly fishy smell suggested that here was the place they sacrificed to their protector.

There was no evidence of a real protector spirit here. There was no evidence of human blood, but there was probably a lot more fish sacrificed than people, so that proved little. None of it told Karula anything except that Bangji had borrowed some customs from Niyong, which was hardly a surprise.

Two-thirds of the way down the steps, she was met by Lai-Mei. “Elder Sister! I thought you’d gone back to Nandijao and forgotten your promise!” the little girl said indignantly.

There was either a protector spirit, a wild animal, or an evil human being taking children from the town and killing or kidnapping them. Karula felt cold. Had the Wangs never told Lai-Mei the danger, or was she just that headstrong and self-confident? “Why aren’t you home? Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?”

“I wanted to find you. I was afraid you left.”

“I told you I wasn’t leaving until afternoon, and it’s dangerous out here. Lai-Mei, the reason you don’t have playmates your own age is that children have died. Or vanished. It’s not safe for you.”

“But it’s safe for you?”

“I haven’t heard of young adults disappearing.”

“It happens sometimes,” Lai-Mei said vaguely. “But we can be careful. I want to play a game of hide and seek with you!”

“I was going to go back to the house and change clothes. I’ve been up the mountain and I’m all sweaty.”

“What’s the point to that? If you play with me you’ll just get sweaty again, right?”

The child had a fair point. “…all right. But why don’t we go down to the base of the cliff? I don’t feel like this is a safe place for hide-and-seek.”

“Okay!” Lai-Mei began skipping down the stairs. Even with longer legs, Karula had to rush to keep up. She smiled indulgently. She could see where the Wangs’ complaint about Lai-Mei’s energy levels came from.

The base of the staircase was an area Karula had explored fairly extensively since coming to Bangji, though obviously she couldn’t know it as well as a child who’d lived here for years. Lai-Mei turned and looked up at her as Karula stepped off the stairs. "Now let’s play Hide-and-Seek," she said, a bright smile on her face. "And if I find you and catch you, I'll turn into a dragon and eat you up."

Karula grinned. Children's sense of the fantastic always delighted her. "And after you eat me up, then I'll chase you?"

She laughed. "You won't be doing anything. You'll be eaten."

"Oh, of course," Karula said, still smiling. "All right, I'll go and hide, and you count to a hundred."

"To ten."

"Oh, no, it has to be a hundred. I'm a stranger to this area-- you need to give me time to find a good hiding spot." Karula took games very seriously, and had no intention of losing to Lai-Mei. She thought it was wrong, in general, to throw competitions to make kids feel better; adults who deliberately lost to children gave them an inflated sense of their own ability. And in some senses, her mother’s death by fire when she was a young child had aged her, made her too burdened to easily make friends with the carefree innocents most children were. She had missed out on a lot of this kind of simple play when she’d been a child herself. Maybe she was enough of a child to want to win the game for its own sake.

"That's fair. To a hundred, then." Her smile showed tiny white teeth.

Lai-Mei covered her face with her hands to count. Karula ran through the woods. She could think of several places she’d found in her explorations that would make good hiding places.

It was a forest. At the base of a cliff. There were plenty of large rocks jutting out of the ground, and plenty of tree coverage and brush. Karula found a spot behind one of the large rocks, where a scrubby bush had grown because a tree couldn’t take root near such a large rock. She was able to climb over the rock and carefully lower herself into the spot where the bush met the rock, shoving parts of it out of the way. Lai-Mei would be too short to see that the top had been disturbed, and from the front of the bush, there’d be no disturbance visible.

She was alone with her breathing for all of two minutes. Then a shriek split the air. “Found you!”

Karula looked up, expecting to congratulate the girl on her expert finding skills.

Lai-Mei was standing on the rock… looming. There was no other way to describe it. Like a tiny nine-year-old girl suddenly had enormous invisible mass, ready to reach down and crush. And her pupils had turned to slits, like a cat’s.

"I see you," Lai-Mei caroled. "And now I'm going to eat you up."

It made no sense why Karula suddenly felt fear. This was still a nine year old girl. Lai-Mei’s smile was full of sharp teeth now, tearing carnivore teeth, and her pupils were slits, but she was a child. Still, Karula rolled herself sideways along the rock to get out of the brush, and started running as soon as she was out.

Lai-Mei leapt down from the rock, over the bush, which should not have been possible for a child her age, and landed. Karula knew this, not because she was watching – her eyes were focused in front because she was running – but because she heard the thump of the child’s landing, a short distance behind her, and no sound of rustling branches or leaves. She glanced behind herself, once, very quickly. Lai-Mei was there, grinning hugely now, her mouth all teeth, and her skin had started to take on the mottled pattern of scales.

Karula kept running.

Around trees, rocks, bushes. Through all kinds of cover. Dodging this way and that. And behind her, Lai-Mei never faltered, never stumbled. She laughed, the high-pitched laugh of a little girl playing a fun game, as she chased after Karula, and the sound of the laughter was never cut off by heavy breathing. This was easy for her. Fun. She was playing cat and mouse, dragging out the game.

“Do the Wangs know?” Karula screamed back over her shoulder when Lai-Mei was entirely too close.

That sobered the girl slightly. She stopped shrieking and giggling. “No, they don’t, and I don’t want them to. They’re my parents! I’m here to keep them safe.” Then she giggled again. “I get really hungry, though…”

Karula was rapidly running out of breath herself. She used her adult height to grab a tree branch that was too tall for Lai-Mei – too tall for herself, really, but amazing how high a person can jump when their life depends on it – and pulled herself, with arm strength and then support from her legs walking up the tree, onto the branch. Lai-Mei looked up at her. “Do you think that’s going to stop me?” she giggled.

“I want to know why,” Karula said. “Why me?”

“You’re an outsider. I can’t eat any more children. People with children are moving out of the town. They’ve been here, their families, for hundreds of years and they’re running away because of me. I have to protect Bangji, and that means I can’t have people just running away and moving out. If they keep doing that there won’t be a town.”

“Have you considered maybe eating the fish they bring you?”

Lai-Mei made a face. “I ate fish. I ate a lot of fish. Fish is boring all the time! And the old people who bring it are crunchy, like I burned them. They don’t taste burnt, but they haven’t got any more juice in them than if I did. I want prey who’ll run away from me and get their blood pumping, and I don’t want it to be anyone who lives in Bangji. That means you.”

“You’re not the original protector spirit, are you. What happened to it?” The longer she could keep the girl talking, the more of her breath and strength she could get back. Also, the scholar in her wanted to know, even if she was about to die.

Lai-Mei shrugged. “Dunno. Probably got killed in the revolution or the purges or something. A lot of dragons died that way. My parents probably did too. I didn’t even know I was a dragon until I came here and went to school and then I saw pictures.”

“You’re a fire-breather? So, a land dragon?”

“I don’t know. I just told you, all I know about dragons is what I’ve read! It’s not like anyone ever came along to take me to dragon school or something.”

Dragons taking human form. The massive upheavals of the revolution, and the rebellions, the counter-revolutions, the purges. A quarter century or more of violence. Things in Senchai were peaceful now, but hadn’t been as little as ten years ago. Nandijao and Jiangpao had been peaceful enough, civilized, calm, but her father had had to flee or else he’d have been taken in the night like his friends were, and out in the countryside, government officials had still been bringing down soldiers on the heads of small towns like Bangji, because they weren’t “modernizing” fast enough. Maybe they still were.

Karula thought of a dragon in human form killed by gunfire, or a bomb, a level of violence that even a fantastic, magical creature had never evolved to deal with. She thought of an egg left behind, of a baby born able to shapeshift, and humans taking in a wandering child. Senchai’a dragons were supposed to be ancient and wise, but how would you ever get to be ancient and wise if you were young, and untaught by any of your own kind? “Why do you have a last name, then?”

Lai-Mei giggled. “Haven’t you figured it out?” She traced a character in the air with her finger. “Lun!” And the character she traced, the word she spoke, was the word they’d both just been using. Dragon.

“The Children’s Center taught me how to read and write when I was very little, and I learned to hide myself. I could only eat the other children if it was safe to. I wanted to go someplace where there would be more to eat, so I ran away and I found the Wangs, and Bangji. I found that they feed dragons here, as long as the dragon protects them. So I told them my name was Lun Lai-Mei. But I never told them the characters.” She sketched her true name in the air. Dragon Pursue Fierce.

“You have the order wrong,” Karula said. “You should have been Lun Mei-Lai. ‘The fierce dragon is coming?’ The way you have it, it sounds like ‘the dragon pursues ferocity’.”

“I’m going to kill and eat you, and you’re correcting my grammar? I was three! Or four, I don’t remember exactly.”

She changed, unfolding from a girl-child to a small dragon. A land dragon, with the serpentine body of a Senchai’a dragon, and wings, and nostrils that snorted puffs of sulfur. She was no bigger than a minivan and no longer than a hearse, and her head was just slightly larger than an adult’s proportions would be, but she was definitely a dragon.

"You see, Elder Sister?" she laughed. "I've caught you now, and become a dragon. And now I'll eat you up."

I’m going to die here, Karula thought. She could jump out of the tree and keep running, but she had no advantages against Lai-Mei anymore; the dragon was bigger than her, and could fly, and her serpentine body could probably twist through the trees. There was no way she was going to get out of this one.

Not like this. Not without… not without the fire.

It had started when she was a teenager. A candle, a gas burner, a fireplace… any fire mesmerized her, and she’d had intrusive thoughts about self-immolation. Like her mother, who’d run back into their burning home. As she’d gotten older it had only gotten worse. Her food had to be hot, but she couldn’t cook it herself if there was a flame involved, or she’d put her hand in it, try to immolate herself. She’d come here hoping to find out why, if there was a connection of some kind between the things she felt and the way her mother had died… and she’d found evidence that her grandmother and her great-grandmother had died the same way.

She’d wanted to find something to save herself. But if she was going to die anyway… she wanted to taste the fire.

“Are you sure you’re a dragon there?” Karula taunted her. “You look to me more like a big dog.”

“…What did you just say to me?”

“You heard me.” Karula grinned, as insolently as she could manage. “You call yourself a dragon? Maybe a lion.”

Lai-Mei lunged at her with a shriek, but Karula dropped to the ground, dodging the large mouth. “Oh, yes, use your teeth!” she yelled mockingly. “Dragons are supposed to be ancient and wise, not brute beasts! But sure, you’re totally a dragon!”

“Nothing you say will matter when I tear you apart!” Lai-Mei growled.

“Oh, but you’ll remember it. You want to think of yourself as a big strong dragon because you managed to terrorize some children and some superstitious old people, but I know the truth! If you were a dragon, you’d be able to flame me to death, but you haven’t even tried! You don’t even have any flame!”

“I’ll show you flame!” Lai-Mei snarled, and breathed a blast at Karula.

Karula screamed.

It burned, it was agony, but it was a cleansing agony, like the feeling of ripping off a scab or drenching a cut in rubbing alcohol, times a thousand. It was agony, but it felt right, it felt like she had been waiting for this all her life. She fell backward into light so blinding and red it was the same as darkness, as her flesh charred away. But her scream never stopped, growing higher in pitch and harsher, more tinny, and wings unfolded from somewhere as their prison of human flesh burned away, and her scream was the shriek of a giant bird. And her eyes opened.

Lai-Mei slithered backward a few steps and reared her head back, startled. “What—”

And Karula knew, now.

The memories of her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, ancestor after ancestor going back thousands of years. Give birth to an egg and set yourself aflame so the baby bird will carry all your memories, all that you are. Learn to take human form. Branch out, have more children. Boys who will carry the trait into the human population, so there will be more of your kind, eventually, more lineages. Girls who will become you as soon as they die in fire.

Karula was the Phoenix, and had always been, as her mother before her, and her mother’s mother, and backward to the dawn of time. And the Phoenix didn’t die in the flames. The flames burned and purified, took away the human shell if the Phoenix was born in one. The ancients had had it wrong. There was more than one Phoenix and there had been for thousands of years, but within a single lineage, the daughters all carried the memories of the mothers and all the ancestors backward through time.

She spread her wings and shrieked again.

Lai-Mei screamed. "What-- what are you? You-- you were human--!!"

"No more human than you, little dragon," Karula called to her, with a voice that was the song of a bird. "I am the Phoenix. I was your guest, and you tried to kill me."

She rose into the air, wings flapping, and then dove at the dragon with a predatory screech. Lai-Mei breathed another blast of fire at Karula, but the flames that seared her strengthened her, so soon after her rebirth. She raked at the dragon’s eyes with her talons.

Screaming, Lai-Mei took wing herself, flying like an awkward chick. She wasn’t used to flight, not combat flight, not against an equal opponent. Karula was smaller than the dragon, but not by much; the part of her that was still Karula the human scholar wondered how she could possibly be flying at the size she was, and how Lai-Mei could possibly be flying, when both of them were far too large for their wingspans. The part of her that was the immortal Phoenix knew that the physics of the human world didn’t apply here. Karula flew ahead of her, almost effortlessly, still mocking her. She had never flown before, but she was the Phoenix and had flown a thousand thousand times, and in that she had far more experience than the nine-year-old dragon.

Though Lai-Mei ripped at Karula and blasted flame, the bird’s greater knowledge of flight made her more maneuverable. She dodged each time, easily, taunting the dragon-child with challenges that were fierce bird cries. Karula’s beak and talons were less deadly-- she scored the dragon many times, drawing blood, but there was no hope of defeating her that way. Instead, she maddened the child, so that when Karula winged away from her, Lai-Mei followed, coming after her as the name she’d chosen suggested.

Karula flew and flew, and Lai-Mei followed and followed, always to the east. They closed with each other more than once, Lai-Mei’s teeth closing on fiery feathers, Karula’s talons slicing a leathery wing – but Karula would always break free, climb and head east, and Lai-Mei followed in her rage. And thenthey were over the deep ocean.

Karula climbed steeply, straight toward the sun. As the sunbird, the Phoenix, the bird of fire, she could look straight into the sun without penalty. It was not the same for the dragon. Land dragons were creatures of caves and mountains, with no more resistance to the light of the sun than a human would have. Lai-Mei tried to pursue upward, but was blinded. She leveled off, looking around herself for the phoenix, glancing upward sometimes… but never far enough upward. It wasn’t noon yet, but it was close enough that aiming straight at the sun brought Karula almost directly to the top of the sky.

She dove then, landing hard at the scruff of the dragon’s neck, and dug in with her talons, pinching off the nerves to the wings and paralyzing them, as her weight drove them both downward. Lai-Mei screamed and struggled, her wings beating feebly and erratically. The pressure points to fully paralyze her wings weren’t accessible to a phoenix’s talons, but near-paralysis and weakness would do the job as well. She twisted her serpentine body and tried to bite Karula, but the bird was in exactly the position that the dragon couldn’t reach her from, and Karula’s enormous wings drove both of them down toward the ocean.

When Lai-Mei hit the ocean, she sizzled and steamed. The sea dragon who’d been Bangji’s protector spirit, long before Lai-Mei’s birth, would have thrived in the ocean… but that dragon wouldn’t have breathed fire. And wouldn’t have eaten the children in the town she was supposedly protecting.

Karula took care not to touch the water herself as she submerged the thrashing baby dragon, and with the power of her wings she held her there, Lai-Mei’s head thrust down by the bite of Karula’s talons in just the right places, until her struggles weakened.

She turned into a human girl again, causing Karula to reflexively let go of her as the feeling of thick scale under her talons changed to soft human flesh. Lai-Mei bobbed to the surface, gasping, and looked up at Karula pleadingly through the waves. "I'll be good!" she wheezed, struggling to stay afloat and to get enough air. "Please, let me go, Karula! I'll never hurt anyone ever again!"

Karula hesitated. Could the little dragon truly be blamed for knowing nothing of what it meant to be a dragon, of having the morality of a beast, when she had lost her dragon parents and mentors before she even hatched? And it would break the Wangs’ heart when Lai-Mei never returned.

As it had broken the hearts of the parents of Bangji when their own children had never come home.

There was no blame here. No moral culpability. Lai-Mei had become a monster. It didn’t matter whose fault it was that she had done so. It was tragic how the dragons had failed her, how the people of Senchai and their violence had failed the dragons. But she had eaten human flesh. The human Karula Lefaire might have wanted to take pity on a little girl… but the Phoenix knew that, to protect the dragons and the phoenixes, all the wild magical creatures of the world, and to protect the humans as well, a magical beast who’d eaten human flesh couldn’t be allowed to live.

She landed on the child, letting her weight push the girl underwater. Lai-Mei thrashed and struggled, and tried to pull Karula down into the water with her, where her own magic would fizzle and be extinguished. But Karula had wings, and they were stronger than anything a human child’s strength could bring to bear.

In the water, a human could live longer than a land dragon, whose fire was part of their life force. But humans couldn’t breathe water either. Karula held Lai-Mei under until she stopped moving and air stopped bubbling out of her mouth.

The “protector” of Bangji was dead. She had never been an adequate protector – the price she’d taken from the village for her protection had been far, far too high. But the village expected a protector, and in a nation where bureaucratic zeal was fond of stomping out dissidence, variance, and any deviance from the One True Approved Way, a tiny village that held to the old ways in so many things was in danger, without a protector.

Karula climbed toward the sun again, and then banked, turning toward the village. Someday perhaps she would be human again; someday she might bear a daughter to be the Phoenix after her. And having already undergone her transformation and mastered her relationship with fire, she wouldn’t be compelled to immolate herself before the daughter was old enough to understand. She’d be able to teach her child before once again becoming the bird of fire. Someday. Perhaps.

But right now, there was a village whose only protection from a harsh central government that demanded obedience and order… was floating dead in the waves, with the marks of Karula’s talons in her flesh. And that meant Karula had an obligation.

She swept over the town, once, her fiery wings making a contrail in the air as she passed. The villagers looked up at her in amazement. And then she turned, and climbed again, and landed at the shrine.

On the land she could hunt for herself, but she could not dive into the sea to catch fish. There were no large wild animals around here, and people needed their goats and pigs to survive. She would not take from humans what they needed to live any more than she would take their lives.

But she hoped they would bring the next offering soon. She was hungry. And she hoped it would be hot.

***

Sorry, apparently 11 am on Monday is the new best time for posting my 52 Project fics? Still gonna try to get the next one out by Friday, though.

#52 project #fantasy #china but not really

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