#hi ferne this has been rattling around my skull | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

owillofthewisps · 4 years

Text

soak you to the bone

notes: @witchernonsense posted these prompts a while back and the ‘reader drunk and sobbing over loss, Geralt utterly unsure of how to approach’ caught me but i left it alone for a bit. and then i came back to it. and immediately deviated a bit.

title is from the amazing devil’s ‘welly boots’ (because leave it to me to be prompted by a specific lyric and then use another lyric from a different song)

please be a lil bit gentle with me on this one, folks.

rating: teen. (warnings: angst, grief/mourning, parental death, unhealthy coping mechanisms, reader being cruel while drunk, brief mention of vomiting, no happy ending)

pairing: geralt of rivia/reader

word count: 1.5k

sometimes, grief can make you cruel. sometimes, it’s easier to hurt instead of be hurt.

“You’re drunk,” Geralt says, softer than you’d like.

“Mhmm.”

The wine has left you hazy, flows tacky through your veins and burns warm beneath your skin. You tilt your head back, feel the faintest kiss of pain as the back of your skull hits the wall behind you. The sting of it is veiled, shrouded by the wine. It doesn’t matter. There’s pain anyway, growing like brambles around your ribs, sinking thorns deep between the gaps in the bones. It stings even through the cotton wrapped around you, bleeds through the bandage of the alcohol.

Geralt is at the threshold of your room. He hovers ghostlike, at the edge of your world and lost with no map. He’s wispy at the edges, the white of his hair like rolling fog, bleeding and blurring as you blink against the saltwater of your tears. A specter all your own.

Am I not haunted enough, you think, the thought rising from the murky deep. Your head feels like a stone dropped into a pond. Sinking, too heavy to keep up. There’s a hollow little thud, and you realize that you’ve banged your skull against the wall again. Your head spins, the world tilting, and you close your eyes, shut them tight against the whirl of it all.

Cloth rustles.

You open your eyes to meet Geralt’s gaze. His golden eyes flicker over you like sparks from a forge, pricking against you. He’s hunkered down in front of you. The space between the two of you is a chasm, the thin bridge of hard-won affection that crosses it wavering with uncertainty. Through the veil of the wine, you watch his hands flex into fists, knuckles whitening, and then relax again.

You know he wants to touch you. Have learned to recognize the hesitation that comes before his fingertip traces across your skin. He looks small like this, somehow, like a predator caught in a steel trap meant for something else, something bigger.

“What is it?” he asks, each word slow. You know what it has cost him to string even that simple question together.

It’s skin cooling against yours; the slack of her mouth; the way her fingers droop even with yours wound between them; it’s the sobbing swelling in you and the way ‘mother’ slips from your lips like a tide; how that tide of ‘mother’ crashes against her empty shore over and over, waves breaking upon the shell of her, like you can call her back and tuck her into her body again because you are still so young and you need the home of her; it’s the way something in you goes cold, cold, cold. It is all of those things and more, but you cannot find the words, cannot dredge them out of the sludge of wine, and so you don’t.

Instead -

“I saw her face in the mirror,” you tell him. You curl up like a fern, pull your knees to your chest. “Her face instead of mine, something hazy and sharp, pieces of her stitched together in my likeness, in my form. I have her mouth, you know.”

“I know,” Geralt says, and the unusual tenderness in him makes you wild inside, makes something mad in you throw itself against the jagged cliffs that rise high in your chest. There is heat streaking down your cheeks, and you realize that you are crying, tears trickling unsteadily against your skin.

“I want all of her, every piece I can have, want to swallow it down and build her again between my ribs,” you rasp, the words slurring together. “I want all of her. Even the pieces that were never mine to begin with. But I still want to be me, too. It hurts so terribly.”

Vaguely, you realize that the keening, animal whine that is filling the room is spilling from you. Geralt’s hands flutter just shy of your skin, like moths circling light. A sob claws its way out of your throat. It tears merciless from you, rasps against your throat and slides bitter against your tongue, and then you cannot stop it. You heave and shake apart into the wine’s tender, sour grasp, its fingers closing around your chest until you are drowning in your own tears.

Geralt does not touch you. You feel the gap between his hovering fingers and your skin like a void, a canyon yawning between you. You want to push into his touch; you’ve grown used to it. In the few months you’ve spent together, it’s become a common thing, the brush of his hand against yours, or the press of your lips against his collarbone. The Witcher has let you peek between the gaps in his shield. There is something delicate between you, each of you treading careful and slow in new territory.

“I know,” Geralt says again, but you can see the uncertainty. “It will pass, as all emotions do.”

Something ugly starts to unwind in you.

“What do you know of emotion, Witcher,” you snarl, the words ripping from somewhere deep inside you, from the feral little creature that’s been curled inside you with its teeth sunk deep, deep, deep, cracking the bones of your ribcage until it aches to take even the shallowest of breaths, “you have none.”

You are drunk, you know, but there is clarity in cruelty. Wine has always given you sharp teeth. And you have always known where to sink them in.

“Grief is just a word to you,” you hiss. “Just a word, a jumble of letters on a page that you pretend to understand.”

Geralt’s expression doesn’t change, but suddenly - suddenly he is closed off like a shuttered window, wood over delicate glass, solid instead of opaque, a void where the soft light used to spill from him.

He rises to his feet without a word. He lingers for a moment, stays in place near you, but you cannot find it in you to apologize, can feel the anger and the grief buzzing in you like a wasp’s nest and know you will only continue to sting.

The door clicks shut behind Geralt.

You rest your forehead against your knees and sob. You can taste the wine where it coats your tongue like oil, sweet and dry and roiling in your stomach. It will come up soon, you know, will spill from your mouth as bile, dark from the rot it absorbed in you.

That ugly thing purrs. It is satisfied now, free from where you’d trapped it when it first gnawed and snarled at the idea of caring for someone new.

Apologize in the morning, you think. Find words for the terror of letting him close, the terror of gaining someone else to lose.

Beneath the wine’s fog, some part of you whispers that there are things that apologies can’t heal.

You crawl to bed.

You wake in the morning with stones in your head, rumbling against each other every time you shift. It’s like a sword beating against a shield. By the time you stumble down the stairs of the inn, nausea brewing low in your stomach, breakfast is half-done. You glance around before you settle into a seat with a greasy sausage and a thick hunk of bread.

The bread settles your stomach, just slightly, and you stay seated, your bleary gaze wandering the room. You idly toy with a small dagger, sharply honed by Geralt’s steady hand, gouging the point into the thick wood of the table.

Finally, you find the courage to ask the innkeeper the question you already know the answer to. And you are right.

Geralt left in the night.

It’s fine, you think, packing up your saddlebags. If you unconsciously leave space for the few things Geralt has you carry, it’s not as if he will ever know. It’s fine, you think again, shouldering one of your bags and stepping out into the empty hallway.

“It’s fine,” you tell yourself as you push coin to the innkeeper, who raises a brow but keeps his mouth shut.

You step out of the inn and into the sunlight. The road is bustling, merchants with their full carts and children darting about between the houses that line the street. You turn to Geralt to point out the herbalist’s cart, piled high with herbs - you can just see a tuft of white flowers that you know he is running low on - and stop. You take a deep breath and turn away from the empty space behind you, and orient yourself towards your next destination. Each step makes something in you rattle.

The crowded main road has never felt so empty.

---

taglist: @writingstudent @hina-chans-stuff @1950schick @msgeorgiarae @nonamejustshame @stretchkingblog97 @fairytale07 @alwayshave-faith @sageandberries-png @tutuwho @beautifuluniversityhoagieslime @ayamenimthiriel @bumblingandblooming

#geralt x reader #geralt of rivia x reader #geralt imagine #the witcher x reader #the witcher imagine #the witcher fic #angst #does this?? even make sense to anyone but me??#lmao

215 notes · View notes

yourdeepestfathoms · 4 years

Text

Born a Rat, Burn a Rat

[2002]

Word count: 4561

Prompt: You need to stop making her laugh! You’re ruining her makeup!

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

“You need to stop making her laugh! You’re ruining her makeup!”

All the laughter that had once been rebounding through the locker room stopped abruptly. Everyone turned their heads slowly to face Carrie White, who was blinking innocently at them from her locker. She looked absolutely clueless, as she always did when she wasn’t dead-eyed or spazzing out. She didn’t seem to understand why she was being stared at.

“What did you just say?” Tina said.

“H-her makeup,” Carrie stammered, suddenly very uncomfortable under their gazes. “Chris’s. It’s--going to run. If she keeps laughing. I’m trying to save it.”

“Oh, so you think I’m ugly without any makeup on, huh? Is that it?” Chris strode up to her, eyes flashing like a hungry puma’s, and Carrie backed up against the lockers, blinking dumbly.

“What? No!” Carrie said. She gripped her fingers in the locker air holes tightly in some sort of scrabble for grounding.

“You hesitated,” Fern put in helpfully.

“I didn’t!” Carrie cried, eyes wide.

“Maybe I should try out some new makeup,” Chris mused. “Your blood will be a nice shade!” A second later, she raised her fist and sent it flying at Carrie’s face.

Carrie barely had time to react. She ducked and dove left, stumbling awkwardly through a pair of girls. There was a loud clang of metal from behind, followed by a shout of pain and a few gasps and snickers, and she spun around on her heels to see Chris rubbing her reddened knuckles tentatively with a look of murder on her face.

“You goddamn bitch.” She seethed.

Carrie tried to stutter out an apology, she really did, but then the entire left side of her face exploded into bright, colorful bursts of pain as a fist that seemed to be the size and solidity of a small boulder came smashing upwards and her whole body popped backwards in a fashion that was almost cartoonish. A near-perfect arc, like those old animated shorts she’d been deprived of as a little girl where Daffy Duck or Wile E. Coyote were getting nailed in the face with spring-loaded punching gloves left and right.

However, there was a very significant difference between those cartoons and real life, and the difference was that in real life, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

The punch had such force that Carrie thought for one petrified instant that she might do a full flip—but then her back met the floor with an unforgiving THUNK.

She barely had time to clap a hand to the smarting flesh on the side of her face, which she could already feel starting to get puffy, before she heard sneakers squeaking against tile and looked up to see that she was surrounded by all her gym classmates in various stages of dressed. She swallowed down a mouthful of blood thickly and awkwardly scooted backwards, only to have Chris reach down with alarming swiftness and wrap her perfectly manicured fingers into her shirt-collar, gathering a crimson-knuckled fistful of fabric and sending cuts scattered across the girl’s back alight with pain once more as they were exposed to the cool air when her lightweight body was effortlessly jerked to its feet.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your miserable little life, pig.” Chris spat.

“Chris,” Sue hissed cautiously. She cast an uneasy glance towards the front of the locker room, expecting Miss Desjardin to suddenly materialize inside and blow her ear-piercingly loud whistle before raining hellfire on them all.

“What?” Chris snapped. “She DESERVES this! If you’re that worried, then keep watch or lock the door or something!”

“Chris!” Sue said again, but this time as a much more alarmed warning. Because Carrie is tugging backwards and snapping at Chris’s hands around her collar like a contagious rat in the midst of the Black Plague.

“What the fuck!?” Chris yelled, startled.

Carrie’s hands shot up and they’re like the skeletal fingers of death around Chris’s wrists. She had exactly zero muscles in her arms, so it was pretty impressive that she was able to pry the grip off of her pale yellow sweater’s collar and totter backwards into safety.

And then there’s a hissing sound, like the warning of a rattlesnake.

Something splatters against Carrie’s face and neck and open mouth, and she flinched in surprise. She raised a hand to wipe her eyes, but it only got halfway up before it suddenly felt like she got a red hot fire poker jammed into her sockets.

Then, she screamed.

------

Rita Desjardin has heard screaming before. In her senior year of high school, she vividly remembers watching a school football game and one of the players from the other team, she believed they were the Pumas if her memory was correct, broke his arm so savagely it almost looked like it was on backwards. He had dropped to the ground in a blur of black and maroon, bellowing in agony, and at the time Rita had thought that it was the worst sound she would ever hear in her entire life.

And then she heard the ricochet of a cry rattle from the girl’s locker room, so loud that she could hear it from outside in the gym, and the first place spot for “Worst Noise She’s Ever Heard” was quickly snatched away from the football player.

He had screamed. But not like this.

This scream was piercing, bloodcurdling, and memory-haunting, and it only got worse when Rita charged into the locker room, leaving a gaggle of wide-eyed students already dressed out behind in startled shock.

Opening the door and passing through the doorway was like coming out of water in the midst of a war- the scream suddenly became ten times louder and much more ear-splitting. She actually had to clamp her hands over her ears and stop her forward stride to shudder in pain at the intensity of the noise that made her feel like she was going deaf. What could very possibly be 140 to 150 decibels of volume jammed its way directly into her eardrums, stabbing over and over and over again until a ringing was sent jangling through her skull like the aftermath of an explosion.

To be in the same room as such an outburst of agony, so close to the cause of deafening distress, was so much more bone-chilling than listening to it from stadium bleachers.

Rita staggered forward, pulling her hands away from her ears and crossing the corridor threshold into the open space of lockers. There, her current class was huddled in a group of abstract horror around one row, eyes so wide they were nearly popping out of sockets and shaking in abject pant-pissing fear. Rita wasn’t quite sure who looked more terrified: them, Helen Shyres holding a can of pepper spray, or Carrie White frenzying around with her hands over her face, screeching.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?” Rita roared over the commotion, and everyone except Carrie whirled around to face her with ogling bug eyes. They apparently hadn’t heard her come in over the noise. Carrie keened again, a loud, drawn-out sound like the cry of a crow being gutted alive.

“Sh-she--” One girl tried to say, but the words got stuck in her throat when she glanced back at Carrie writhing, slamming into the lockers, and scratching desperately at her face.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” Rita demanded.

“I--got startled.” Helen choked out.

“Is that PEPPER SPRAY?!” Rita shouted.

Helen looked down at the canister in her hand as if it were an active bomb and suddenly appeared very sick. She doesn’t answer- she can’t. She’s shocked into silence.

“WHY do you even HAVE IT at SCHOOL?!” Rita bellowed. Her eyes are wide now, too, as she put the pieces together.

“I’m sorry!” Helen said.

Carrie wailed tumultuously. She dropped to the ground, screaming helplessly at the ceiling and squirming like she was trying to wriggle out of her own skin. Her hands are still fervently clawing at her eyes as if she were trying to scoop them out of their sockets, and there’s spots of red mixed in with the translucent sheen of pepper spray spattered across her pale face. Rita quickly pushed Helen aside, practically throwing the other girls out of the way to get to the panicking student rolling on the floor.

“Carrie! Carrie!” Rita called over the screaming. Carrie doesn’t appear to hear her- she just continued to caterwaul and claw like a burning black cat. “Carietta White!” Not even that got through to her, and if it did, it only made her even more distressed. “Carrie!!”

Rita finally grabbed the girl by the wrists and yanked her hands away. Without the spindly fingers itching incessantly, she could see her reddened face, gashed skin, and eyes filled with blood.

“Oh my god,” Someone from behind, Sue Snell, maybe, muttered.

“IT HURTS!!” Carrie’s screams have finally morphed into words, and Rita isn’t sure which was worse because the screams may have been nightmare-inducing, but the words were like a punch to the stomach with a spiked iron gauntlet. They come out hoarse and high pitched, vowels stretched out in whines and keens of pain, and Rita’s heart clenched tightly in her chest when they reach her ears. “IT HURTS!! IT BURNS!!!!”

Carrie writhed beneath Rita, flailing her arms in the grip that holds them. Her dark eyes are upturned in their puckered sockets, saturating in blood, and the whites weren’t even white anymore, rather an awful crimson color with throbbing scarlet veins lacing through them like smoldering snakes. The shredded, bloody eyelids soon slam shut and remain shut, swelling so badly that Carrie was temporarily blinded, and that makes her panic even harder.

“It burns! It burns! IT BURNS!!!” Carrie screeched. Her voice became garbled after her final cry and she dissolved into body-breaking coughs that manage to rock Rita’s own frame from where she’s crouched over her.

“What do we do?!” Another girl, Frieda Jason, yawped. She flinched backwards in fright into the arm-locked duo of Mary and Donna Thibodeau when Rita whipped her head around to her, icy blue eyes flashing like jagged glaciers in the arctic sunlight.

“NOW you care?” Rita snarled, loading her voice with as much venom as possible. “Now you care about her? When she’s been fucking pepper sprayed?”

All the girls flinch this time. It’s obvious that they’ve never been cussed at by a teacher before, and it gives Rita just a tiny swell of pleasure. But then Carrie sobs audibly again and it’s replaced with seething rage.

“It- it was an accident!” Ruth Gogan tried to defend. “R-really! Helen didn’t know!”

“Oh really?” Rita said. “I’m sure spraying a kid with fucking pepper spray, which shouldn’t even be brought to school, by the way, is really easy to do om accident!” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chris Hargensen clench her jaw and she rounded on her. “Do you have something you want to say, Hargensen?”

Chris opened her mouth as if to snark, took one look at Carrie’s bloody, burned face, and realized this was not something her father could fix with his lawyer status. Even if she told him that Carrie had snapped at her, he would have to agree that being pepper sprayed for it was much, much worse. She grit her teeth and looked away.

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” Carrie wept. Rita looked back down at her and felt a sharp stab of guilt when she realized how much time she had wasted scolding the other girls when she should have been treating Carrie.

“It’s okay, Carrie,” She told her softly, smoothing down the barbs and thorns in her voice until it’s more like warm honey or silken velvet. “It’s okay… You’re going to be okay.”

Carrie’s lolling head froze in its process of sweeping back and forth across the scuffed locker room tile. Her brow twitched and her eyelids flutter like she was trying to open them but can’t, and only bloody tears are able to squeeze their way out of the scrunched up sockets. She ‘looked’ in the direction of Rita’s voice, lips quivering.

“M-Miss Desjardin?” She whispered hoarsely.

“Yes, it’s me, Carrie. It’s just me.” Rita moved to hold both wrists in one hand and used the other to brush Carrie’s cheek tenderly--which was instantly the wrong thing to do because she grazed over a spatter of pepper spray and tiny burning teeth latched onto her fingers and began eating away at her flesh. She bit back a hiss of discomfort to avoid stressing out Carrie even more. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“It hurts,” Carrie sobbed. Her eyes screwed shut even tighter, like she thought that it may help block out the pain. “I-it hurts, Miss Desjardin. M-make it stop!”

“I will, Carrie, don’t worry,” Rita assured her. “Just take deep breaths for me. Can you do that? Deep breaths, sweetheart.” She swiveled her head around to the group of quavering onlookers. Helen backed up behind Tina Blake and Norma Watson when her glaring eyes skim by, still white-knuckling the canister of pepper spray. “Sue.”

Sue jolted, but raised her head in an obedient, listening way.

“Make yourself useful and get a bottle of water and a rag from the showers. Wet it.” Rita ordered.

Sue nodded, but didn’t dare speak up. She scurried off, clipping her shoulder on one of the lockers and tottering sideways for a moment before regaining her balance and continuing with her task. Rita can hear her tinker with the padlock of her locker in another row, open the door, pull something out, and then hurry into the bathroom area without fully closing the door. She stopped listening after hearing the running water of a sink to glower at the rest of the girls.

“Get to class.” She said coldly.

The girls exchanged glances. They seem surprised that they hadn’t been struck dead or something (although Rita really, REALLY wanted to do so). Then, they disperse without another warning, with Helen hightailing it out the door first. Sue returns shortly after with a folded, pulpy paper towel that drips water on the floor and a water bottle. She looked down at Carrie as she passed them over and Rita saw that she was genuinely worried.

“Is she...going to be okay?” She asked.

Rita was conflicted- she wanted to say yes to make them all feel better, but she really didn’t know. Carrie had rubbed her eyes viciously enough to smear the pepper spray further into her sockets and the open cuts she carved into her skin was probably exposed to any lingering residue, too, which would only deepen her anguish. But she didn’t want to say no either because that would just induce panic, so instead she just said, “I’ll take care of her.”

Sue seemed to catch her avoidance of the question by the pinch at her brow and frown on her lips, but she just nodded instead of pointing it out, much to Rita’s relief.

“Okay,” She said. She cast one more glance at Carrie, who appeared to be trying to figure out where she was, then turned around, gathered her belongings, and walked out.

“Okay, Carrie,” Rita looked down at her student. “I’m going to pour some water over your eyes, okay? Just keep breathing for me. You’re doing so good.”

Carrie whimpered. She jolted when the contents of the water bottle were poured over her face, crying out in shock and pain, and a light bulb overhead shattered in millions of burgeoning pieces. Rita jumped and looked up at it, then back down at Carrie, who was now panting and wheezing heavily.

“H-hurts to b-b--reathe,” She uttered.

“Oh, Carrie…” Rita murmured. She carefully wiped away the pepper spray residue on Carrie’s face with the paper towel, finding that the girl’s skin was suddenly very cold. Her breathing wasn’t normal anymore. She can feel her heartbeat thump heavily beneath her flesh; it’s too fast for even someone in the midst of a panic attack.

Something was sizzling in Carrie White’s skin, and it wasn’t just the pepper spray.

There’s a clamor from the front of the locker room- Rita’s next period class started to bustle inside to change out before their minimal time limit was up. Rita jumped up, causing Carrie to whimper in distress at the loss of her presence, and stormed to the entrance corridor. The girls inside stopped, easily picking up that she was on edge, and took a small step back in near-perfect synchronization.

“You don’t have to change out today.” Rita said hurriedly. “Or do anything. Just sit in the gym and do whatever. As long as you don’t kill each other or set something on fire, I really don’t care what you do.”

The girls blink and exchange looks.

“Everything okay?” One asked.

“Fine.” Rita said, squaring her shoulders and straightening her shoulders. Her posture nearly faltered and crumbled when she heard Carrie whimper again. “Go on. Out!”

The girls obey, quickly exiting in a flurry of binders and backpacks. Once they’re all gone, Rita hurried back to Carrie, who was trying to get up. She yelped and flinched so badly she knocked herself back over when Rita touched her shoulder, and another light in the first aisle of lockers popped and fizzed out.

“It’s just me, Carrie.” Rita said. “It’s Miss Desjardin.”

“Miss Desjardin,” Carrie repeated to herself in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“That’s right,” Rita nodded, although she knew Carrie couldn’t see it. “Carrie, I’m going to help you stand up and we’re going to walk over to the showers, okay? The water bottle isn’t working as well as I had hoped. Running water will help flush out your eyes better.” She gently touched Carrie’s face and she ‘looked’ up at her. “It’ll make it hurt less.”

Carrie nodded. She grit her teeth as she’s helped to her feet, staggering, but staying upright. A jewel of blood welled up from a scratch dividing her left eyebrow in two and lazily made its way down her face. She twitched when it tickled her skin and she reached up to swipe it away, but Rita snatched her hand before she could make contact. Carrie jumped and instantly tried to jerk away.

“Don’t touch your face.” Rita scolded lightly. “It’ll only make the burning worse.”

Carrie swallowed thickly, but didn’t say anything. She just nodded silently and obeyed.

The short walk to the bathroom and shower area was much clumsier than it should have been, with Carrie stumbling over her ankles and hitting every outcrop of lockers, even with Rita guiding her. Lack of sight was numbing her senses and making it hard to listen. Rita didn’t ever get mad at her, though; blindness, even temporary blindness, would make her a complete nervous, bumbling wreck, too.

“M-Miss Desjardin?” Carrie croaked as Rita cranked the nozzle to a middle-row shower. She turned her head in the direction of the sound of spraying water.

“Yes?” Rita gently touched her shoulder to let her know she was there. “I’m right here, honey.”

“I’m sorry,” Carrie whispered.

Rita’s heart sunk into her stomach. Oh, Carrie, please please don’t--

“I-I didn’t mean to.”

A wave of guilt slammed into Rita, alongside a rumbling riptide of pure rage that roiled through her insides like a storm at sea. She clenched her teeth until she thought they may shatter and wished that she had exacted punishment on all those girls, especially Helen, instead of sending them to their next class to deal with them later.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said again, this time much more choked up. Her skin was frigid cold. “M-Miss Desjardin?” She reached up a blind hand and lightly touched Rita’s, which she must have forgotten was on her shoulder. She grabbed it in a way that sent shockwaves of desperation up Rita’s arm. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize, Carrie.” Rita said firmly. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“Okay,” Carrie said, but Rita knew she didn’t believe it. She lowered her voice and rasped out, “It really, really hurts…”

“Come on,” Miss Desjardin lowered Carrie to her knees and tilted her into the warm rain of water shooting from the showerhead. She lifted her chin so the spray would directly hit her face. “There we go... Good girl.”

Carrie took a deep breath, spitting out water. Streams ran red when they touched her numerous cuts and the blood oozing from her tightly shut eyes turned into puffing clouds of crimson along her cheeks, but at least everything was getting flushed out.

Rita risked getting wet when she reached over and began to rub soothing circles against Carrie’s back. She swore the girl arched her spine into her touch, exhaling a soft sigh of relief--or maybe contentment. She wasn’t quite sure, but at least it wasn’t a sad or angry sigh, although Carrie had every reason to be sad and/or angry.

“It felt like a hot knife.”

Carrie’s rough, husky voice jarred Rita out of her thoughts. Silence had descended upon the two of them for about five minutes, the only sound being the hiss of the overhead faucet and the low creak of pipes. Rita blinked a haze of black spots out of her vision; her hand was still on Carrie’s back, no longer rubbing, but the fingers were still grazing up and down tenderly, with the thumb gliding in soothing strokes.

“Or a fire poker. Like the ones you use for fireplaces.”

“What?” Rita said.

Carrie craned her neck to look at her, and her eyes were open. They were reddish-brown jewels in a nest full of restless red snakes. Trails of water cascading over her face cause the dozens of cuts around the sockets to glow in hues of neon pink and burning scarlet. She tilted her head at Rita.

“When I got sprayed,” She specified. “And you know what I thought when it happened?”

“What?” Rita said again, this time with dread pooled in the pit of her stomach like a dark oil spill.

“‘Thank God,’” Carrie said. A small, weak smile twitched at the corner of her lips and she looked down at her hands, where bits of her flesh still clung beneath her nails. “I wasn’t angry. Or upset. It did hurt, though. Really badly. But after everything--after everything I’ve been through--” Her arms dropped limply to her sides and she turned her head back to Rita. “It felt good to not have to see.”

Rita was silent. Her breath is caught in her throat in horror.

How could a child think like that? How could they be treated so poorly that they have to think like that?

“I’ve never been blinded before,” Carrie went on, musing her words like she didn’t realize how traumatic they were. She lifted a hand and gently touched one eye, as if she were reminding herself that it was still there. “It was--scary. Really scary. I’m--used to darkness, but--that was different. It wasn’t black, but really, really bright. So bright my head started to hurt--still hurts--and there were these flashes of color and it all mixed together into this big mess. But still-” She shifted on her knees, sloshing water around her. “I thought that not seeing anymore would make things better. Somehow. Maybe then I would be pathetic enough for people to leave me alone.” Her eyes gleam; Carrie is crying. “But it wouldn’t end up being like that, would it? I’m never granted such mercy.” She flicked the water around her bitterly, then had to scrunch her eyes shut again when the pain registered again.

“Were you--” Carrie cocked her head in the direction of Rita’s head to let her know that she was listening. Rita’s hand on her back clenched a fistful of soggy pale yellow sweater. “Are you happy?”

“Now?”

“Ever.”

Carrie ‘looked’ up at the ceiling like she was deep in thought, and Rita already had her answer.

Fury bubbled in Rita’s stomach, while pity and grief squeezed her heart to the point of nearly bursting apart. It wasn’t fair. It was so unfair for a child to have to live like this.

Carrie had tipped her head down and apparently stopped thinking by the time Rita was finished stewing in anger and conflict. And that’s when Rita realized that Carrie didn’t look even a little angry or conflicted. Or upset or sorrowful or anguished or vengeful.

She just looked tired.

Not just tried, though- Jaded.

“How are your eyes?” Rita asked.

Carrie gently touched one. “They still burn. Badly. But not as bad as before.”

“Yeah, they’re probably going to hurt for awhile.” Rita frowned. She cupped Carrie’s cheeks, which felt so hollow and sunken beneath her fingers, and she cradled her head. “Can you open your eyes, honey? So I can see them?”

Carrie struggled, but managed to pry open her eyelids and keep them open for Rita to inspect. They were bloodshot and definitely looked like they were hurting, but at least they weren’t bleeding anymore. Rita gently stroked her thumb across her cheekbone.

“Maybe I’m not happy,” Carrie blurted.

Rita frowned at her. Carrie flicked her gaze to examine a cracked piece of tile flooring. She clenched her hands in the hem of her sweater.

“I don’t--blame you.” Rita said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Carrie just nodded silently. She’s crying again. Hot tears seep through Rita’s fingers.

“I’m sorry.” Rita said. “For everything you’ve been through. You don’t deserve any of that.” Carrie’s eyes went wide at that and she blinked at Rita in shock.

“You don’t...you don’t think I’m a freak? Or a pig? Or the devil’s child?”

“Oh no, honey, no.” Rita said. “Not at all. You’re a smart, wonderful girl.”

Carrie’s eyes are hungry, now. Rita has never seen that look before, but she instantly knows what it means: “Do you love me?”

Rita pulled Carrie against her and the girl began to openly weep into her chest. She rocked her back and forth in the shower stall, whispering sweet things in her ear and stroking her messy hair (which really needed to be brushed). And Carrie clung to her in return, blubbering and sniffling and whimpering until she’s exhausted and can only hiccup weakly. Rita smoothed down a stubborn cowlick on the top of her head.

“You’re going to be okay, sweetheart,” Rita cooed to the girl in her arms. “I’ve got you.”

Carrie nuzzled closer, curling her knees in until she was a soggy ball in Rita’s lap. She breathed out a sigh, and this time Rita knows it’s of contentment.

“Don’t let me go,” She whispered. “Please.”

“I won’t.” Rita promised.

But she did.

To move Carrie into her office, where she signed a pass for her to skip her remaining classes for ‘mandatory physical health workout’ and spent the rest of the school day brushing out her hair and letting her relax. It’s the first time she thinks she’s seen Carrie really smile, like she thought this was the most delightful thing in the entire world, and Rita’s heart melted.

“Thank you,” Carrie whispered. The tune of smooth jazz is playing from the small speaker on Rita’s desk. A dark purple brush glided through her long hair and she gave a soft coo of bliss at the sensation. “You’re--more of a mom than mine ever is.”

#carrie #carrie 2002 #carrie fanfiction #carrie white #rita desjardin #sue snell #chris hargensen #helen shyres #tina jason #norma watson #my writing #born a rat burn a rat #slasher #stephen king

24 notes · View notes

headfulloffantasies · 4 years

Text

Playing with Magic

For @bearholdingashark for the wondertrev gift exchange! Merry Christmas.

Diana and Steve run into Circe. The sorceress has devious plans for Steve.

Ao3 link

“If you ever see my Aunt Circe, run the other way,” Diana said over a candlelit dinner.

Steve paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Beg pardon?”

Diana waved a hand, “She’s not really my Aunt, but calling her that annoys her, so…”

Steve glanced around the crowded Italian restaurant. No one seemed to have noticed their conversation. He leaned across the table. “But Circe? Like the magician?”

“Sorceress,” Diana nodded, twirling her fork through her pasta. “She has sworn a blood oath against me. I expect that if she knows about you, she may try something devious.”

“Okay,” Steve gulped. Since returning to the land of the living he’d been rolling with the punches almost every day. Diana had lived a full life without him. She tended to drop random tidbits about her experiences into everyday conversations.

He took another bite of lasagna. “So, sorceress? What does she do?”

Diana grimaced, “She worships the goddess Hecate. There is a prophesy that Hecate will be reborn, and Circe believes I will be Hecate’s vessel. It has been… a source of conflict.” She sighed, “I don’t want to talk about it. Just remember her name. She’s dangerous.”

Steve reached across the table and took Diana’s hand. “Hey, do you want to get out of here?”

Diana glanced at her mostly finished plate. “Yes, please.”

Steve got the waiter’s attention and paid for their meal. Diana wrapped herself in a long wool coat and took Steve’s arm.

He led her out of the romantic lighting of the restaurant and into the chilly wind. Darkness fell early when the sun vanished behind city skyscrapers. Steve pulled Diana closer as they walked down the street. His breath fogged in front of him.

They turned down a side street, heading uptown to their apartment. They slid around the back of a block of office buildings. The brick walls closed in on both sides, protecting them from the wind. Overhead, the streetlight suddenly went out with a pop. A shiver ran down Steve’s spine. His hand tightened around Diana’s arm.

“Steve-,” Diana broke off.

A cackle startled both of them. It echoed up the walls around them, rising into a shrieking wail. Diana shoved Steve behind her, backing him into the rough brick wall. Steve cast eyes around wildly for the source of the laughter.

“Diana, darling,” an invisible voice purred. It sounded like it had exhaled from the bricks behind Steve. “Who is your little friend?”

“Circe,” Diana hissed. “Show yourself!” She unleashed her lasso from the hidden depths of her coat. It’s glow filled the street, illuminating the figure standing between two buildings. The stranger stepped closer, revealing a tall woman wearing a green sheath of a dress. Gold jewelry dripped from her neck and wrists. Her eyes glittered even in the dark.

“Diana,” Circe tossed russet curls over her bare shoulder.

“Aunty,” Diana sneered.

Circe’s face twisted into a snarl. “Your time has come, Amazon.”

Diana didn’t wait for Circe to make the first move. Her lasso lashed out, arching at the sorceress. Circe lazily raised a hand and deflected the blow. The lasso clanged of one of the many bangles on Circe’s wrist.

Diana charged. Circe laughed, crouching to intercept Diana. Diana crashed into her. The sorceress dissolved into purple smoke. Steve blinked in surprise. She’d vanished! He swiveled, searching desperately for the villain.

“Next time, darling,” Circe’s voice cackled invisibly.

A shadow fell over them. Steve looked up and ducked. A griffin, with the head of a lion and the wings of an eagle, swooped down between the buildings. Its talons snatched Diana around the waist and lifted her off her feet.

“Diana!” Steve grabbed for her hand and missed. The griffin flapped its golden wings, knocking Steve down. It rocketed up into the sky, Diana in its clutches. Steve made to chase, but a cloud of noxious purple smoke burst around him. Steve choked on rancid cloves. He threw his hands over his face.

The smoke intensified from a cloud into a burning light. Steve shouted. The world spun around and around. Everything shot up, growing a hundred times its size. Steve’s bones cracked. His spine rippled. A nauseating shift of his stomach lurched all his organs dizzyingly. He tried to scream, but nothing came out.

He flopped on the sidewalk, breathless as the violet cloud dissipated. His heart raced. Nothing felt right. He was going to be sick.

A net of acid violet rope fell over him.

Steve tried to yell. A strangled croak warbled from his throat.

The air rippled like a curtain parting and Circe stepped out. She reached out and tied up the ends of the net. “Steve Trevor. You make a lovely little pet.”

Steve struggled. His body felt wrong. He twisted his neck to look down at himself.

Oh hell no. Feathers. He had sprouted feathers. And wings.

“What a beautiful little bird,” Circe crooned. “You know, I think I was mesmerized by your eyes. Your feathers are the same shade of blue.”

Steve’s tongue would not cooperate with his mind. He tried to say “You’re a crazy evil witch”, but what came out was “Witch”.

Circe laughed. “Indeed, my parrot friend.” She scooped up the net, sending Steve tumbling. “Let’s be off. Diana won’t be far behind.” The cloud of purple surrounded Steve again.

When it vanished, they were no longer in the street. A lavish garden, rolling with green fig trees, lush ferns, and an array of flowers greeted Steve. For a second he blinked in the sudden midday sun. Circe moved, jostling the net again. Steve flailed indignant wings. Circe skipped over to a particularly large mossy rock carved in the shape of a throne. She threw herself down, tossing Steve at her feet. He landed in a heap, hopelessly tangled in the net.

Steve tried to protest, a squawk tearing from his throat.

Circe threw back her head and laughed as if he’d made some hilarious joke. “Precious, come here,” she leaned down and waved her hand. The net evaporated. Steve strained his wings, visions of flight and escape running through his mind. He wobbled, uncoordinated. Circe’s hands caught him, pinning his wings to his sides. He cawed and tried to peck her.

Circe tsked. “Behave little parrot, or I’ll turn you into a pig.”

“Oink,” Steve managed to snap.

Circe giggled. “I see why Diana likes you.” She leaned back on her throne, petting one hand over Steve’s head. “Do you like my tropical paradise? It’s not real, you know. All illusions. This is really some abandoned theatre I stumbled across. The irony of disguising the stage was too good to pass up.”

Circe stroked one dagger sharp fingernail over Steve’s throat. His feathers ruffled in annoyance.

“Diana will come find you. She’ll walk right into my trap for you.” Circe lifted Steve to eye level. “Because Diana believes in love,” she spat. “She thinks you pathetic humans are worth her heart. You’re not.” She gave Steve a shake. His brain rattled in his tiny skull. “You’re no better than animals.”

Circe suddenly let go. Steve freefell into her lap and bounced onto the floor. He flapped and flopped upright.

He turned one glaring eye on Circe. He wanted to tirade against her. Yell, scream, rant. Diana wasn’t wong. Humanity didn’t deserve Wonder Woman, but it wasn’t about deserving. She chose to help those who couldn’t help themselves. That made her better than all of them. She could have abandoned humanity. She almost had, after Steve’s death. Persevering, doing the right thing, made his sacrifice worth something. She’d made him proud.

Steve’s feathers puffed. If he had his voice, he’d tear Circe a new one. He cocked his head. “Hero.”

Circe stiffened.

“She is, isn’t she?” Circe said so quietly Steve almost missed it.

The garden all around them was silent. Even the breeze that occasionally ruffled the ferns didn’t whisper in Steve’s ear.

The shimmering blue sky suddenly shattered into pieces of topaz raining down. Diana fell through the opening, landing in the center of the tropical garden. She’d shed her evening gown and wool coat for her armor and diadem. The lasso at her hip glowed in the sunlight.

Circe screeched, leaping to her feet. “You found me at last, princess.”

“Give me Steve Trevor, Aunty.” Diana advanced slowly, a menacing slink in her step.

Circe snapped her fingers. Steve gasped as chains snaked over his body, pinning him in place at the foot of the throne.

“Do you like the improvements I made to your little friend?” Circe laughed. “He already follows your every move, now he can really parrot you. You might not even notice the difference.”

“Change him back,” Diana demanded.

“Make me,” Circe growled.

The lasso arced overhead. Circe dodged and deflected its spinning lashes. She struck out, a wave of violet fire racing across the ground. Diana leapt, sidestepping the attack. Burning foliage smoked in the space between them.

Steve cawed, anxiety tearing his chest to ribbons. His struggles against the bonds only made them cling tighter.

Diana snapped the lasso. A glowing blow flashed across Circe’s cheek like the lash of a whip. Circe shouted. She stumbled and fell at the base of her throne. Her razor nails touched the red welt on her face. It had already begun to fade.

“Give up, Circe,” Diana towered over her.

“Never,” Circe struggled to her feet. Bolts of violet energy engulfed her hands. Crackles of light lanced from her fingertips. Circe lifted her hands over her head. Diana braced for impact. Circe brought her hands down. A flash brighter than the sun erupted in a thunderclap.

Steve’s vision swam. When he blinked the negative away Circe was gone. The lush garden faded, leaving a grey stage. Ragged theatre seats lined up at Diana’s back. Where the throne had sat, a shredded curtain hung limp and dusty.

“Distractions and illusions, Aunty. Will we never learn?” Diana muttered. Her shoulders slumped.

“Diana,” Steve croaked.

She turned, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “Steve,” she dropped to her knees, gently pulling at the chains. He held still as the bonds crumbled in her hands like peanut shells.

“Are you alright?”

Steve gave her a look that said “I’m a bird, how alright can I be?” Possibly it didn’t convey the same thing with a beak, as Diana sighed in relief.

“I am glad you are unharmed.”

Unharmed? Steve flapped his wings indignantly. “Bird,” he croaked.

“Yes, I can help,” Diana stood. She unwrapped her lasso from her belt. She leaned down to Steve and hesitated. “This will hurt. Are you sure?”

“Bird,” Steve snapped.

Diana nodded. She gently wrapped a coil of the lasso around Steve’s middle. She straightened, grasping her end of the glowing coil with both hands.

The lasso burned.

“Remember who you are,” Diana commanded.

Fire raced through Steve’s bones. His joints ground against each other. He squeezed his eyes shut as everything spun. His insides heaved and his skull groaned. Then it was over. Steve opened his eyes. His hands splayed over grey floorboards. He tried wiggling his fingers. The ten fingers in his field of view wiggled back. A relieved laugh escaped in a huff.

Diana dropped to her knees beside him and crushed him in a hug. He circled his arms around her, incredibly aware of the difference between arms and wings.

“No bird jokes,” he said as Diana helped him to his feet.

“Not even one?” She circled an arm around his waist.

“No,” they stepped off the stage and made their way down the aisle between theatre seats.

“Just a little one? One wing joke,” Diana opened the front door.

Steve started at the drifting snowflakes blowing through the empty street. “No.”

“Someone’s feathers are ruffled.”

“Stop.”

Diana’s fingers laced through Steve’s. They walked hand in hand all the way home.

“Thanks for the rescue,” Steve said as they reached their apartment building.

“Anytime,” Diana squeezed his hand.

#Wonder Woman #wondertrevsecretsanta #wondertrev #circe #magic #@bearholdingashark #fanfiction #fanfic #steve trevor #diana prince #diana of themyscira #christmas gift exchange

19 notes · View notes

gold-from-straw · 5 years

Text

Frozen Heart

Loki's Jotun roots show themselves at the worst possible time - in the middle of Thor's coronation. Odin's last act before falling into the Odinsleep is to hurl Loki to Midgard, deactivating the Bifrost in the process. Panicking and alone, Loki hides in a mountain cave, his powers out of control.

That's where Tony Stark finds him.

Based on an anonymous prompt on @frost-iron

Read on AO3 if you prefer! Updates every week ^_^

Loki was still simmering when he walked out into the coronation crowd, his head held high, step sure and confident, nothing like the petulant rejection he felt inside. Thor could never know how his words hurt - how they always hurt. He’d be doing so well, and then bang, Thor would say something like that.

Others just do tricks indeed. He’d like to see how the five idiots survived on their suicide missions without him and his tricks. Maybe next time he’d stay home. Maybe next time he’d refuse to accompany them.

Maybe next time they’d ask in the first place.

As he reached the dais, bowed to his father and stepped aside to stand with Mother, he knew it was all irrelevant. There would be no more spur of the moment trips to Nornheim, no glorious quests to a distant Vanir village to battle a dragon. Thor hadn’t accepted it himself, yet, but as King, even if only temporarily while Father slept, he would be tied to the palace.

Loki shifted imperceptibly under the weight of his helmet. The blasted thing was so heavy, and his formal armour was so hot. Usually he could handle it, but he’d also had a migraine creeping up on him, the bright light reflecting off the gold piercing into his eyes and stabbing against his brain. His back ached. He took a deep breath and held it, tightening up sore muscles.

Perhaps he was coming down with something. Just typical. Right when he was about to get front row tickets to Thor failing at something, he was going to get one of his hateful illnesses and be trapped in the healing wards for weeks on end.

Thor came in and Loki maintained his perfect posture, a nice counterpoint to his stupid brother’s showboating and arrogance. He saw his mother’s lips tighten in disapproval - yes, Thor was definitely going to fail at this. And for once Loki wouldn’t even have to do anything to make his brother look like an oaf. Sure, he could have staged a disruption. He could even now trip Thor up on his own robes, make him a laughing stock. He’d even, for a short while after he found that pathway between the realms, considered letting the Jotnar into the palace. That would have been sure to show everyone how spoilt and overdramatic Thor was. But the first time he’d ventured through, he’d been attacked by a great beast of some sort and nearly lost an arm. By the time he’d recovered, he’d lost his nerve.

Thor knelt at the foot of the dais and grinned up at Father, completely oblivious to the irritation rolling off Father’s shoulders. Thor had never cared a whit what Father thought of him. That had always been Loki’s job. But then again, Loki had always been the one to attract Father’s disapproval.

Loki cleared his throat, a wheezing breath rattling in his lungs and making that momentary panic flare when he couldn’t quite get enough oxygen. The air felt thick and overheated, and he closed his eyes, trying to gather his composure.

Thor was repeating the oath after Father, and Loki slowly drew his breath in, trying to suppress the panic rising in his throat. His head ached so much, he could feel himself sweating, trembling under the weight of the armour, the world going red behind his closed eyelids…

He heard a gasp rippling out from the dais and struggled to hold in his nausea, to stay poised, but he was on his knees, oh Norns, how embarrassing! What was wrong with him? He could hear his family calling his name, Thor would be furious, he would think it was a trick. His hands seemed to be burning against the usually cold stone floor, and he retched violently, bringing nothing up. What was wrong with him?

He pulled his helmet off and almost instantly groaned in relief as his skull stopped feeling like it was splitting in two.

But then the screams started. He raised his head, where was the danger? Was mother protected?

There was ice across the floor, frost blossoming into strangely beautiful fractals and ferns and radiating out in a circle from… from him. The crowd were staring in horror at him.

He glanced down at himself, at his hands - blue, with white raised lines, and “what trickery is this?” he asked, his voice hoarse. A small hysterical part of him laughed to hear his brother’s words, so oft used against Loki’s magic, from his own lips. “What… what’s happening?” he cried, turning imploringly to Mother and Father.

“A Frost Giant,” someone said from the crowd, a hushed voice. Then someone else said it, louder, and another and another, until the crowd rang out as one voice, “Frost Giant, disguised as the prince, kill it!”

Loki looked to Thor at once, terrified, reaching out. Thor flinched back, and then so did Loki to see his own black-clawed hands. “Mother? Father?” he said, his voice young and small.

“Kill it!” roared the crowd, and Thor turned to snarl our at them, fisting Mjolnir. Loki caught a flash of motion from the corner of his eyes and turning in instinctive defence, he threw his hand out.

The crowd screamed and roared and weapons appeared in every hand. Because a ring of razor sharp ice spikes appeared around Loki at the arc of his hand.

He stumbled back, breathing fast, the air still hot and thick in his lungs. He stared at his hands in rising sickness. What had happened to him?! He’d never been any good at elemental magic, what was this?

“Enough!” roared Father, the hilt of Gungnir thundering against the floor. The room stilled, and Loki turned to him in terror, because what if he was blamed for this? Father would be furious, he wouldn’t believe -

“Loki, with me,” he said, his deep voice reverberating around the room with absolute authority.

“But sire, the Frost Giant—“

Odin roared at the guard, silencing him with his wordless fury. “Everyone, leave!” he shouted. “Out, now! Loki, with me.”

Loki followed without thought, his legs obeying his father’s command even as his mind screamed disorder and panic. He was still staring at the palms of his blue hands as he heard the door to Father’s office slam shut behind him.

“Am I cursed?” he asked, his voice a croak.

Father didn’t reply, pacing up and down, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Father…” Loki started.

“You are not cursed, Loki.”

“Then what…”

“In the last days of the war with the Frost Giants, I came upon a temple. There I found a baby, a tiny one, just a runt. He had clearly been left to die for his small size.” Father sighed heavily and sat at last in his chair. “My hands were stained with the blood of hundreds, but when I picked you up--”

Loki’s ears filled with a high pitched ringing sound. It couldn’t be true, he couldn’t be… he couldn’t be one of them, he was too small, he was… he was Aesir. He started to breathe fast, his chest heaving, his head pounding once more.

“Loki. Loki!”

His head snapped up. Father was standing close, his hand outstretched but not touching him. Not touching him, because he couldn’t. Why would he want to? “I’m… I’m the monster people tell their children about at night.”

“No, no--”

“Why did you take me?”

Odin closed his eye, pain lining his face. “I thought… I thought we could make peace, I thought--”

“So I am just another stolen relic?” His voice raised high at the end, childish and petulant and risible.

“Loki--”

“And now… now I am to be paraded on the streets, a curiosity under guard every moment lest someone lose their head and destroy-- oh, Norns, Thor… Thor has sworn - did he know?”

“Loki…”

“Tell me!” Loki screamed, the pain in his heart making him almost double over. “Tell me who knew! Who has hated me from my infancy because they knew-- Mother! Was she--”

“We do not have time for this,” Odin snapped. “You will no longer be safe in Asgard, we must send you away--”

“No! You cannot send me back there, you cannot send me to Jotunheim, I will not--”

Odin roared at him, and it was so normal that something which would usually set his heart beating in shame and panic and rejection was actually a sanctuary he clung to. “Be silent, boy,” Odin said. “Let me think.” He pressed his hands to his head. “Somewhere they will not find you, yes… yes, it must be.”

He turned to him, drawing himself up to his full height. “I shall send you to Midgard. This is for your own safety. You must stay, until… until…”

“What? No! You cannot… Father, please, just take this skin from me! You did it once before, you turned me to Aesir once, please, I can keep it a secret, I’ll… I’ll go…” He breathed fast once more, because where would he go? It was no longer a secret, how could he… “I’ll tell them it was an illusion… to disrupt the ceremony.”

“I’m sorry, Loki.” Odin shook his head.

“No! No, Father… Allfather, please!”

Loki could feel the power gathering, pooling from the direction of the Bifrost towards Gungnir, and in his panic he threw out his hands in front of him. The last thing he saw before the stars warped in front of his eyes was his father falling to the ground.

Thank you so much to STARSdidathing for helping me with the plot and @rabentochter for beta-ing!! @aurora-nerin, @victoriagreenleaf and @nivael I promised to tag you ^_^ I will update every Monday on AO3 and on here!

#My writing #Frozen Heart #frozen AU #frostiron #tony x loki

25 notes · View notes

grailacademy · 5 years

Photo

Welcome To Grail Academy - Chapter Nineteen: Cry Baby

“Papa, are we done yet?” A little girl with blond hair done up in pigtails with a pair of sparkly green scrunchies inquired, her arms out at 90 degree angles from her sides, standing on a little pedestal. Surrounded by a wall of mirrors and coat hangers, an old woman in a checkered smock and a pin cushion on her wrist knelt beside the girl, wrapping a yellow measuring tape around the child’s waist. Under the measuring tape was a polkadot dress, green and white with lace trim around the edge. “Patience. This dinner has to be perfect if we’re going to gain the Viridian account. No complaining.” A man stood by the curtained door to the room, rubbing his chin in his olive suit. His hair was the same as the girl’s, pulled back in an elegant ponytail. The seamstress tacked a pin into the back of the dress and made a quick series of stitches. Then she bit the thread and tied a knot, and patted the girl on the shoulder. The girl did an excited twirl in front of the mirror before she jumped off the stand and ran out of the room past her father. “Esmerelda, be careful!” He yelled at her, but once he turned around, she was already in her mother’s arms. The woman’s greying hair blended in with the black and grey ears on top of her head. The two of them giggled, and the man folded his arms. “Rose just fixed your dress, I don’t want to see any more scuffs or holes in it. Am I clear?” The little girl looked down at her shiny black shoes solemnly, nodding.

“Yes, papa.”

“Oh, Ardan, relax.” The woman turned her daughter around and stood up. “She’ll be careful!”

“That’s what she said the first time she ripped it.” He grumbled.

Esmerelda never enjoyed when her parents talked about her in the third person, like she wasn’t in the room. But she kept quiet until her father walked away towards his office in the magnificent shining mansion that the three of them called their home. When she looked up from her shoes, she was facing a dark shadow of a creature. The muzzle of the beowolf reached forward, revealing its glowing red eyes. Esmerelda folded her coat neatly and placed it on the floor of the dock. Kismet wasn’t lying when he said the beacons were guarded. Brandishing her sleek claws, she rushed into a sprint towards the beast.

Nico swam for a boey he saw bopping on the horizon. The sun was beginning to set, turning the sky a shade of orange and pink that reflected on the water of the lake that he paddled across. As he got closer, he could see that the boey was tied to a small wooden pole stuck on the side of a marshy island. The edges of it surrounded by weeds and cattails, Nico’s arm was taken hold of and he was pulled on shore. The sand stuck to the back of his clothes when he sat up, but he was relieved to see Iris had helped him on land. “Thanks!”, he chirped. The girl was still extremely on edge, but she nodded with a smile. After five minutes, the two of them had roamed around the perimeter of the island, searching for a beacon and passing the time with conversation.

“So, you and Bernard, huh?” Nico was drawing doodles in the sand with his bow staff.

“Me and….who?” Iris raised a brow at his question, she was rummaging in a bushel of fern leaves, tapping the ground in hopes that she would hit something metal.

“Bernie! You guys are dating, right? Weren’t you two going to Prom together?”

“....Bernard! Yes, he was taking me to Prom. I was really nervous to go alone, it was my first school dance.” She laughed nervously, “But we’re not….haha, we’re not a thing.”

“....Huh.” Nico smiled for a moment.

Iris’s cheeks turned pink, which was a regular occurance for her when she and Nico talked. She was easily flustered. As she stammered on about her relationship status, Nico gently tapped her shoulder. “Hey, uh….Iris?” He was trying to get her attention to turn to the three giant ursa he was staring at, a few yards away. “We got company.”

“I told you this would happen, Hollyanne!”

“It’s not my fault they didn’t want to buy! They weren’t interested, it couldn’t be helped.”

“It could be helped! The whole point of you coming to the dinner was to HELP!”

“I’m sorry!” The yelling of her parents was muffled on the other side of her bedroom door. Esmerelda didn’t like hearing them fight, she always ended up blaming herself for their altercations. Her worries temporarily subsided when her mother came into the bedroom and kissed her goodnight, but when the door closed and she was left alone with her thoughts, she was back to thinking about what she could have done wrong. Laying there in the canopy bed, she clutched her stuffed bunny rabbit close to her.

With a harsh jerk of her arm, Esmerelda dug her palms into the chin and nose of the beowolf as it lunged at her, mouth agape. Prying it’s jaws apart while it gnashed at her, she had a clear view of its sharp teeth, slimy tongue, and the back of its throat where the uvula waggled when it roared in her face. Looking down the metaphorical barrel of the gun reminded her not to space out during a fight, and she snapped into action as a few drops of spittle slicked onto her cheek. She grunted and flipped around, throwing herself under the belly of the monster. Sliding across the dock, her claws slashed deep along its stomach and it let out a pained howl. She sprung to her feet and inspected her handiwork. She had carved the beowolf from its stomach like a pig gutted for the roast, she was proud of herself. Its carcass slowly deteriorated, and Esmerelda walked back to her coat, which had dried off by now. Her victory was, however, short lived, as she saw Rowan scrambling out of the water onto the dock once she pulled the fur on. He gave her a sly smile and held his scroll up to the beacon. The technology recognized his ID before Esmerelda could stop him, and the flaps opened up to release a beam of red light into the dim sky.

“That’s cheating!” She yelled and pointed a clawed finger at him.

“No rules against letting someone else do the work for you.” Rowan smirked, and wiggled his fingers at her sarcastically. She wanted to stay and fight HIM for the searchlight, but she knew there were only so many left. Huffing, she turned and ran to search for another one.

A pained death rattle erupted from one of the creatures as Nico ripped the spikes of his bat out of its skull. Iris pressed both feet onto the belly of the other grimm, tugging with all her might to try and dislodge the giant battle axe from its neck. Her blade was stuck in there deep, it was like pulling teeth. From behind, the final Ursa bounded towards them and slammed its giant paw onto Nico’s chest, trapping him on the ground and roaring. The wind was completely knocked out of the boy, and he wheezed loudly as he tried to hold the grimm’s claws away from him. “Oof--not the face, not the face!” As he writhed around in the sand, Iris shouted from behind. “Hold on, Nico!” She pulled her weapon out of the monster’s carcass finally, and flipped the locking mechanism on its shell. All at once, a purple electric guitar with a metal side unfolded in her hands, and she plucked a string to make sure it was working. “Time to bring the noise.”

In a dramatic sweeping motion, Iris strummed all the chords on her guitar, the metal wires vibrating as she send out a wave of noise to disrupt the ursa’s senses. Even the pebbles and blades of grass shook with the force of her music. The monster whimpered and lifted its paw up to scratch at its ear, giving Nico a window to free himself. He jumped up and cracked the monster across the back with his bat when it turned in the direction of the song. The chords still echoed loudly when Iris rushed the other side and transformed her weapon into a long battle axe, slicing their prey on one of its front legs. It lowered itself halfway to the ground in an attempt to relieve the pressure on its wounds, almost bowing its head down as if it were accepting the execution. Nico looked over the ursa’s back and cheered for Iris, “Dude, that is so metal!” Iris became flushed again, and she smiled nervously. “Oh, uh. Thanks!” In unison, the two of them raised their weapons high over their heads and crushed the beast onto the ground, obliterating the cleaved corpse. After they caught their breath and recovered from the battle, Nico and Iris gave each other a small high-five. The moment their hands clapped together, the small pitter patter of rain drops hitting water sounded.

Esmerelda felt a drop of water splash on her head. As she trekked from one dock to another, she held her hand out to the sky to feel the cold wet land in her palm. The sound of rain bouncing against umbrella fabric was all she could think about.

Esmerelda and her father stood under two separate black umbrellas, Ardan reading the text on the block of stone in front of him again and again as the funeral guests dispersed. Esmerelda could only bare to look at the white lilies wrapped neatly in a bouquet on top of it. Somewhere in her mind, Esmerelda knew that if she read the words, it would mean she was really gone. Forever. “Papa….is mama happy, Wherever she is?” The little girl wrung her hands around the handle of the umbrella and looked up at her father, but he was already walking away, headed towards the black limousine parked on the pathway next to the tombstone. She felt like crying. She wanted to cry, so bad. But her eyes were dry. She tried to force the tears out, but it was as if they were frozen icicles. Turning away, she slowly followed her father into the car.

Nico waved goodbye to Iris, watching as she was lifted up into the airship once it reached the purple stream of light glowing from the beacon they had found. She waved back timidly and turned around to sit next to her partner, Rowan. The vehicle rose off the ground and chopped away. On his own, Nico strolled to the edge of the island on the dock, and narrowed his eyes. It could have been the light playing tricks on him, but it looked like there was some kind of tall structure mounted on the edge of a hilly landmass, on the other side of the lake. Looks like he would have to go for another swim.

Bernard was a bit lost, grasping at straws when he navigated the terrain of the island he had landed on. It seemed….larger than the others. Easier to lose yourself on. He knelt down and examined a set of animal tracks. Too big to be a rabbit or a dog, probably a beowolf roving for scraps. He only counted the one set of tracks, so he felt confident. He could handle one measly grimm, even in his sleep. He could hear gunshots ring out over the rain, too far away to be on the island. The other students were running into trouble of their own. Looking up into the lavender sky, he saw the handful of multicolored beacons shining their lights. The airship hovered over the lake, leisurely making its way to each checkpoint to pick up the hunters waiting at their rescue lights. He was running out of time. He started to jog through the underbrush, zipping past the half-evaporated body of an already-defeated beowolf, ducking under tree branches and hopping over roots sprouting out of the dirt.

Esmerelda was almost knocked to the ground when she lost her footing, something big and heavy colliding with her back. She opened her mouth to berade whoever it was about personal space, but she quickly closed it as she turned around to see Bernard standing there, just as disoriented as she was. The awkward silence between them hung in the air, they hadn’t talked much since their fight in the training hall. “....There aren’t many beacons left. We have to hurry”, Bernard said, apparently inviting Esmerelda to join him on the journey. It wasn’t long before they found a clearing on the island, by the open shoreline. Beau was pacing back and forth across the island, holding her scroll out in front of her and low to the ground like it was a metal detector. Vert gazed at her odd performance of determination, commenting “You know that’s not going to work, right?”

“It’s worth a shot!” She quipped back. Nico was wading in the water, hiking his knees up to get out of the lake faster. Bernard and Esmerelda entered the scene with confused looks on their faces. Were they the only ones who hadn’t found beacons yet? Esmerelda called out, “Maybe you should check in there”, and pointed towards the tall figure of the lighthouse, nestled on a hill that connected to the shore. The light was currently off, making their dark environment much more eery with their only way to see coming from the slowly setting sun. “....Ohhh….” Beau cooed, following Esmerelda’s finger to the monument. “Yeah, that makes way more sense.”

10 notes · View notes

glowwormsmith · 5 years

Note

Joseph seed fanfic please?

Sorry,this is late anon! I wish I could write faster, but I hope you like thisregardless.

So,since you didn’t specify what type of story you wanted anon (except to have itfocus on Joseph, hooray), I just went self-indulgent as hell and did aplatonic, semi-AU with my OCs that may lead to a fix-it fic of ND, oops.

Imay continue this, depends if you all like it or if I have any motivation/timeto do so (motivation what motivation? Also, I’m a grad student, there is notime anymore). Hope you guys enjoy!

Warnings:Some language, some gore/violence, child endangerment

Everythingthat had led up to this point was a blur. The only clear memory was the finalstand between him and the Deputy, where he had fallen. The day was beautifuland clear, the air still. No wind, no animal cries. And then the sirens wailedand the bombs fell. He knew The Collapse had arrived in all its fury andrighteous fire, and only he knew of it. There was panicking, disbelief, cryingfrom all around him, except from him.

Hehad been shoved into a car, everything was red and ash and heat. He was betweenthe two girls, the younger one trembling like a leaf and the older screaming,eyes widened in shock as her shouts ranged from how they would all die toyelling for her aunt to keep driving. The Deputy was in the driver’s seat,driving erratically, the only sound from her were erratic mumbling of how hewas right and heavy breathing. Her superior was in the passenger, givingfrantic directions to the bunker.

Andthen they crashed. He awoke and let out a cough, the environment making itharder to breathe, his thoughts jumbled but forming faster as he looked around.The old sheriff had gone through the windshield, half his body still inside andthe rest on the hood, his skull split open and eyes glazed over. The driver’sseat was empty, the door open. He looked over. The older girl was unconscious,but alive, head bleeding and breathing slow. He heard a whimper to his rightand saw the little one curled up, eyes wide and form trembling hard as sheregarded him.

Therewas no sign of the Deputy, corpse or otherwise.

“Areyou alright, child?” he said, his voice soft and raspy from the ash. She didnot respond and he offered a weak smile. He saw the bunker in front of them. Heturned back. “We will head there. I will carry your sister and you’ll ride my back.We cannot stay out here long. Alright, Fern?”

Hespeaks gently to her. He knows she is the soft-spoken one, the one who will bemore likely to trust him. She nods, but does not speak. He crawls to the frontand exits the driver’s door. The world is on fire and the air is toxic. Itstings, the sky is black and it hurts to even look around. He has no time towaste.

Heopens her side and lifts the older girl—he remembers her name, Hazel—up withease, putting his weight to carrying her limp form. He goes to the other sideand Fern opens the door. He leans down, prepares his weight and she climbs ontohim, wrapping her arms around his neck. She dangles like a rag doll, but herlegs are useless and he struggles. He marches on. He wonders where the Deputyhas gone. Perhaps she has already entered the bunker, but it didn’t feellikely. She would have brought her nieces in and left him outside if that werethe case.

Hewas able to make it to the doors despite his struggle with the two bodies he wastransporting. He briefly put Hazel down and opened the bunker doors, slowly asthey creaked open. He could already hear the old man who had hidden away herecalling up from within. He helped the girls into the top steps and closed thedoors shut, muting the destruction outside and putting things in the dark.

Heturned to Fern, huddling close to her sister. “I’ll be right back, my child.Keep close to your sister.” It hurt his heart to see her timidly nod andshuffle closer to her sister, but it was better that she didn’t see what he wasabout to do.

Therehad been a struggle, but the old man had gone down quickly, even with hiscurrent state. All it took was a distraction from Fern’s cries to turn hisback, and Joseph swung a wrench down on his head, bringing it down a few moretimes.

It was for the best…he would nothave let me stayed otherwise. He looked around thesmall bedroom for anything useful. Among the supplies he found were a pair ofhandcuffs and the tattered remains of the Deputy’s worn uniform in a pile. Hegrabbed the cuffs and pocketed them as he moved.

Hesaw Fern stroking her sister’s hair as Hazel was coming to, emitting low groansand head lolling, but not regaining full consciousness.

Hepicked up Fern first, who let out a few cries of confusion and she begins toflail in his arms.

“It’salright. I’m taking you to a room where you will be more comfortable. I’llbring your sister soon.”

Shegave him a troubled stare but didn’t struggle as he brought her to the infirmaryand placed her on a cot. “Would you like a blanket? Some water? I could grabyou a book, though I’m not sure there’s much here that you would like.”

Shestayed quiet, but shook her head. She used her upper body to pull herself upand drew her legs to her, huddled close as her eyes looked around. “Where’sUncle Dutch?”

“Hewasn’t here.” She gives him a hard look before looking away, downward. He letout a soft sigh and began to head out. “I’ll be right back with your sister.”

Hethen went back to Hazel, lifted her up and checked her vitals. She had a minorhead wound and small lacerations from the crash, but nothing he couldn’t treat.He walked to the infirmary and placed her on a cot. After securing her wristswith the cuffs to the bed post, he treated her wounds.

“Why’dyou put handcuffs on her?” Fern said, an edge in her tone.

“Theminute she wakes up, she will no doubt attack me. I need her to listen firstand when I feel she won’t harm herself or me, then I’ll remove them. I won’t doanything to hurt you or her, I promise.”

Hethen left the room briefly to handle the old man, disposing of the body bybriefly opening the doors and then immediately throwing it out. He glancedbriefly outside, at the world he knew was coming, that the Lamb of God hadwrought…who had seemingly vanished into the flames.

Heshut the doors and headed for the small bedroom where a radio sat on a table.He observed it and began to see if there was anyone out there. Once the sevenyears were over, there would be no need for these machines, but for now he hadto make sure some members of his flock were safe. He had very few things leftand to think on it anymore would drive him mad.

Heheard the emergency broadcast system, but nothing else.

Itwas when he heard the distant rattling of the cuffs and Fern’s voice to hersister that he headed for the infirmary. He saw a struggling Hazel shiftingupward as she pulled on the cuffs and she turned to glare at Joseph. “Where’sAunt Layla and Dutch, you sonuvabitch!? Where are they?!”

“I’mglad you are awake, my child. We have much to discuss, the three of us.” Hepulled a chair forward and sat facing the girls, worry and fury on twoindividual faces. “The Collapse has come. The world as we know it is over. Weshall reside in this bunker for seven years and then step into the New Eden,the Paradise I had prepared my family for, and start again.”

“Saveyour fuckin’ prattling for your braindead sheep, I don’t give a fuck if youwere right!” Hazel shouted, eyes ablaze. “Where’s Dutch and Sheriff Whitehorseand Aunt Layla!?”

Josephclosed his eyes and swallowed his ire. These were children, confused and hurt.They needed guidance and care, otherwise he’d never reach them.

“SheriffWhitehorse was already dead in the car crash. Your friend Dutch…would nothave let me stay otherwise, so I removed him. As for the Deputy…Layla…Idon’t know what has happened to her.”

“Bullshit!Just a few hours ago, you held us hostage and fought with everyone! You killedDutch; who’s to say you didn’t kill the sheriff and Aunt Layla, too!” Hazelscreamed, tears brimming on her eyes as she fought against the cuffs, making anawful clamor.

“He’snot lying, Hazel.” Both Joseph and Hazel’s eyes turned to Fern, small and meek,looking at the sheets and picking her nails. “I woke first. Things were blurryand my eyes stung, but I saw Mr. Whitehorse…through the windshield. Josephand you were unconscious, I tried waking you, I thought you were all dead. ThenI saw Aunt Layla wake up…I called out to her and tried to reach for her. She,she just stared at me, didn’t say aword, and we stayed like this for what felt like forever…and then she ran outof the car and, and I couldn’t see where she went! She…I screamed for her!”Her strained voice suddenly began to break into a hysterical high-pitchedvoice, tears and sobbing threatening to spill over, “then Joseph came to a fewminutes after that. She…she just…”

Theair was heavy with tension with only Fern’s sobbing breaths the only noise asshe struggled to gain it under control. Hazel had stopped moving, and Josephcould have sworn she stopped breathing or blinking with how still she became.The fire in her eyes were extinguished, her very soul crumbling as her facefell with the realization that she may not trust Joseph’s word, but she couldtrust her sister’s. Any excuse or explanation would fall flat at this point andthere was only one thing to accept: Layla Rook had abandoned her nieces, notcaring if they were alive or not.

Josephstared at these lost lambs, realizing that everything that had unfolded waseverything that the Voice had told him would happen and yet he could feel thesame emptiness that these children felt now. He had waited so long for theprophecy that God told him would be fulfilled. He had prepared his family forthis and now his brothers, his Faith, and perhaps all of his flock were ash. Hefelt no victory or self-righteous over this, even if he did how could he gloatto these girls? They had lost their mother, a man—his older brother—whom theymight have called father, they had been thrown into senseless bloodshed, theirentire world had been cleansed by God’s fury, and now their aunt has abandonedthem, to her sworn enemy.

Itwas then that he saw a new purpose laid out of him, right in front of his eyes,now that the Voice had gone quiet with the prophecy fulfilled, as he awaitedthese seven years to leave the bunker and into New Eden. He knew God always hada plan; he had sacrificed his own daughter so many years ago to prove hisloyalty to God and to reward him, God had come full circle to give him thisgift, to begin anew.

Hisstoic face became warm, a soft smile gracing it as he drew closer to them.Hazel did not notice, too lost in her own thoughts, head bowed as herdisheveled light brown hair covered her face. Fern had settled down to noticethe change in him and her gaze looked warily on.

“Thereis no need to fear now. I am not going to hurt you. The sins of your aunt andof the Resistance against my family have nothing to do with you. You’re all Ihave left now. You’re my family. And when this world is ready to be borne anew,we will step into the light.”

Fern’sgaze widened with horror and realization while Hazel barely looked at him, hairrevealing her dark eyes as she gave him a tired, despair-ridden glare. Bloodwas drawn from her mouth as she bit into her lip and her fists were heldtightly together. Fern was trembling again, soft hiccups coming from her mouth.It would take much work to get them to trust and love him like a father, butJoseph Seed did not become the Father without putting any work into it. Heleaned back in his chair with a content smile, a newfound peace settling overhim after all the angry and despair the recent events had brought him.

“Iam your Father…and you are my children. And together, we will march to Eden’sGate.”

#far cry 5 #fc5 #joseph seed #my ocs #will there be a part 2? maybe #who knows #if this needs any other warnings or a read more or tags #let me know #now time to work on my birthday bash fic

2 notes · View notes

smilodonfatalis · 5 years

Text

Burnt

a tragedy in five parts

I have lived here all my nights, feet pressed into the soft earth. Spine, stretched and oaken. I am a small thing. Small body. I lick the salt as it drips down the cracked stones of my bedposts. I let my whistle-stop heart speak of things in the dark that quicken my steps back to this hovel as the sun buries itself under the distant hills.

ii.

Now, this night is starless but something glows up into the leaves like the first tilting of the autumn sun. The air has become bitter and stings my tiny, twitching nose and somewhere, in the distance, I can hear the unbroken roar of an unfamiliar predator. The woods know this beast.

Deer and coyotes run past me, their pelts all melted into caramel and smeared across the bubbling trees. Elk bugle out their death rattles and it sounds like the clang and twist of metal on metal. Fire on fur. Be with me on this, our last night on this earth. Only here. Only safe. Alone, I do not run. I close my eyes.

iii.

I open my eyes to him. He is black- haired and diamond-gazed and says, “Rabbit, I can help you.” My furious heart snaps against itself. No. “Trouble is coming.” He says, and lifts his lips to show the tartar hewn canines stashed beneath. “These flames will not stop until they have turned your pretty little body into ash. Let me have you instead.” I say I am content to die inside the oven of my home, but the air has started to curl the tips of my hair into wires and I am frightened. “How?” I ask and the wolf sniffs the air deliciously. “One bite,” he says, “and it will all become quiet and cold. One bite and no fire will touch you.” The air pushes against my face. It is too hot in my lungs. I will die anyway. “Will it hurt?” “No,” says my wolf, and wraps his teeth around my skull to show me. Gentle. “I know my body. I know my jaw. One bite and I will be satisfied and you will be dead and these woods will return to blackened soil and, someday, maybe, the soft heads of bracken ferns.”

iv.

The fire is close now and fat, angry tears stand, vigilant, along my eyelashes. I want to be capable of destroying him back. Him, king cobra. Me, python. Venom-racked but crushing until I have broken every rib of him and we are both left breathless and silent, coldly embracing on our shared burial mound. But I am only a rabbit and he is a wolf and the fire sneaks still closer. I consent to his teeth.

He knew, all along, it would never be one bite. He pulls my skin into him and chomps and I feel a little give of me under his molar. Secodont and skull case. Again he bites down and I try not to shake. Again, and with frustration. I do not let out the death scream that I have been saving for such a special occasion, but relax my neck so that it may more easily be broken. As the blood snuggles into my eyes to blind me, I look up at my wolf. His face is dark with the joy of fresh kill. Paws deep in the earth of my home, the fire is just starting to singe his skin. He will die here, too.

And I will live here all my nights.

#poem #poetry

4 notes · View notes

frozs · 7 years

Text

the fic where kakuzu is a commbank manager and hidan is like on centrelink

Unedited and don’t care, so heres 3, 900 words about Hidan and Kakuzu being serial killers and dumping bodies in the Australian outback

@tozettewrites @ thriceandonce @ rhyperographer

Warning: I made this as Australian as possible and I may have to post translations later

“What do you want this time? Another loan?”

“No,” said Hidan. “I may have… accidentally killed someone.”

“Accidentally,” Kakuzu deadpanned, looking up from his CommBank tablet that all the employees of Commonwealth Bank seem to carry around with them.

“I need to borrow your ute.”

Kakuzu growled and Hidan stepped right in front of him.

“Please help me, Kakuzu.” Hidan was wearing a bintang singlet, as if he’d been to Bali, which he hadn’t, and Target shorts. The Australia-Day thongs he was wearing must have purchased for a dollar from Cheap as Chips after the 26th of January. He looked very different to Kakuzu in his yellow tie and black and white suit.

“I’m at work.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Hidan looked around and looked at the unhappy queue behind him. They didn’t seem to give any facial expressions away at Hidan casually announcing that he had killed someone. “Come on, buddy. I will personally, in fact, go with you to like, Ladbrokes and you can use my money for betting, or I’ll buy you Oz Lotto tickets for your birthday-”

“You don’t have any money.”

“I know, that’s why - that's why I'm here. I need petrol money, and your ute. And maybe a big fat fucking loan.”

Kakuzu sighed and pointed at little office on the opposite side of the teller que. “Get in.”

“Commonwealth Bank employees can help anyone. So you gotta help me! But what’s the quote? Say the quote. Y’know, the one from the advert.” Hidan badgered on, opening the door that had Kakuzu - Bank Manager written on a nice little clean plaque.

“...CommBank can.” said Kakuzu grudgingly. Hidan sat down on the waterproof blue chairs that seem to appear in every bank. Kakuzu sat on the opposite side of the desk purchased from Ikea and probably assembled by him, and Hidan stared at the mouse Kakuzu was using which was one of those weird-ass ones that was just a rotating ball, clicking away every so often. Hidan then took the platypus that was for kids to put their pocket money in and shook it, then looked disappointed as he couldn’t hear any coins that he could scab.

Kakuzu made himself busy in case the IT people would snoop into his history, and then went into Hidan’s bank account, which he knew the numbers off by heart and the pin and the three security questions (Which all seem to have the answer ‘fuck off’). His bank balance was negative $135.68, and looking at the transactions it seemed Hidan had fucked off to Mitre 10 yesterday probably to buy a hammer to smash this new person’s head in.

“Who did you kill this time?”

“A dickhead pedo. Can you find out if he has any savings in his bank account? I’m kinda sick of eating mi goreng and those cheese and bacon buns from Coles.” Hidan looked at the computer expectedly. He then started this long-ass explanation about this man, who got arrested the other day for doing ‘pedo things’ and he wasn’t on the ‘pedo register’. The reason for this was because Deidara told him about it.

“So where’s the body?” Kakuzu grunted.

Hidan grinned. “In the bin.”

“Which bin?”

“The blue lidded one because it’s the rubbish one, and he’s trash.”

“How MANY times do I have to tell you to not put dead bodies in council bins!?”

Hidan rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Like… twelve times? Like I fucking care. Anyway, so I was at Centrelink with Deidara yesterday because he had to claim some Medicare stuff back and while we were waiting he was on Facebook and the Popo updated their Facebook status and it said that the guy, I forget his name but he’s still a pedo, lived on the street behind us, but they let him go because he was a fucking nutcase. He still lives there and apparently he’s put an electric fence up so the Today Tonight reporters can’t get in. Then someone mentioned in the comments what his car rego was on it because they caught him after he was on the run. What a cunt.”

“Yep.”

“So yeah, after going to Centrelink I walked home, fed your dog for you-”

“I hope you didn’t feed him this man you are going on about.”

“No.” There was a pause. “Just kibble.”

“Good.” Kakuzu resumed typing.

“And went to Mitre 10, brought a hammer and some tarp. So last night I got a bucket of water, and broke into his house.”

“Why did you have a bucket of water?”

Hidan frowned. “I wasn’t going to kill him inside.”

“Right… keep going.” Kakuzu was now pressing denied on a housing application loan on Hidan’s account, so it seemed like Hidan had come in to ask Kakuzu about getting a mortgage.

“Anywaaaaaaaaaaaay, Pedo-man ran out the house and he tried to jump up the fence, but it’s electric right? So as soon as he got shocked I threw the entire bucket with water in it, and he… yeah, died. Dropped to the floor smoking and he shat himself.”

“So you put the body in his blue bin.”

“Well you can’t reuse him so I couldn't put it in the red bin. So I took the bin home, gave my prayers to Lord Jashin, washed him in human fat soap for Jashin’s blessings and now he’s in your backyard. I think I saw you drive off to work when I turned up with the bin. So Pedo-man is clean, but he’s also a bit grotty from being dead.” Hidan made a flap with his hand, as if the body was with him right now and was stinking out the room.

Kakuzu looked up with his mouth open. “Why is the man in my backyard?”

Hidan shrugged. “I thought if I borrow your ute, then we don’t have to take it to mine and then take it to the cemetery. So can I borrow your ute? When’s your next day off?”

“...Tomorrow.”

Hidan clapped his hands. “We’ll go then.”

Kakuzu rolled his eyes. “Are you done?”

“Yes,” said Hidan. He then got up, and said loudly enough so the queue outside could hear him, “Thank you very much, Mr Kakuzu! I’m sure my wife will be very happy with your decision.”

“You don’t have a wife.” Kakuzu pressed a thumb and forefinger to his head in exasperation. “Get out.”

“Whoops, I’m late for a job interview.” Hidan checked his fitbit by tapping it several times to display the time. (It was actually Kakuzu’s old one). Kakuzu moved him out the office. He noticed the queue hadn’t moved, but this was normal for lunchtime.

“You? Job interview?” Kakuzu didn’t believe it at all. Hidan wasn’t a liar, but he was a Newstart Piece of Shit, which Kakuzu hating dealing with Centrelink dole bludgers like him who refused to be employed.

“Yeah. The job agency told me to apply for something. So I’ve applied to stand in the mall with the Jehovahs and those stands and smile and give out things.”

“You don’t get paid for that.”

“No, no no no no no you don’t understand,” said Hidan, holding his pendant and kissing it. “They’ve got these pamphlets, about like, Watchtowers. So I will give them my Jashin ones instead when I see people. Anyway, I plenty of shit about Jehovahs. They do like, church and things and no blood transfusions and that’s what I know.”

The only thing Hidan seemed to know about - as a university drop out of Religion Studies – was what he knew about religion. Unfortunately the one he practised was the most fucked up one in the world and involved human sacrifices, which was why Hidan seemed to borrow Kakuzu’s ute for things like this.

Hidan waved at him and raced off, not exactly dressed for a job interview.

That night Kakuzu took the S87X bus home, because parking in the city everyday would cost $28.95 and he was a bit too stingy for that. Kakuzu lived on the edge of a middle class suburb where kids were most likely not vaccinated and mothers jogged with prams every morning and night. The suburb on the other side of the road was the derro ghetto where Hidan and his housemates lived. He lived in a sharehouse with nine other people but spent most of his time bumming around at Kakuzu’s place.

The light was on, and Kakuzu knew Hidan was inside. He rattled his keys and felt the blast of the air conditioner once he opened it. He put the keys down on his side table purchased from Oxfam and went into the living room. There, Hidan was sitting with the dog Taki, a labradoodle that was purchased because Hidan bought him off Gumtree for $20 before he found out he wasn’t allowed pets at his sharehouse. Also, labradoodles were hypoallergenic and didn’t shed much, so he was allowed on Kakuzu’s couch.Hidan was patting the dog absent-mindedly while watching the Kangaroos lose to the Pies spectacularly at the MCG.

“Turn that shit off,” said Kakuzu. Taki barked and went to Kakuzu happily, greeting his owner. Kakuzu could smell yoghurt, and it seemed that Hidan had been feeding him Fruche from the fridge.

“No.” Hidan got up and padded down the hallway, beckoning Kakuzu to come along - giving him orders in his own fucking house. Kakuzu made Taki stay in the lounge while both of them went out to the neat courtyard with its fake fern plants and the three legged Kmart barbeque Kakuzu never used.

The council bin was placed with the other ones that Kakuzu used himself. He knew which one wasn't his, because there was soapy sediment around the edges.

“Wanna look?”

Hidan opened the bin for less than second, and then the smell hit both of them hard, and Kakuzu banged it shut. “For fucks sake, Hidan!” He looked around as if his nosy neighbours would look over the tin fence.

“Hey! At least he isn’t alive anymore.” Hidan went back inside and grabbed some lynx deodorant, and then proceeded to spray the entire can into the bin, but opened the bin only a crack so it wouldn’t smell. “So when are we leaving?”

Kakuzu sighed. “Tomorrow. I’m not dealing with this shit now.” He opened the flyscreen and went back inside, while Hidan shook the can, and realised it had run out. He shrugged and put the entire can in the bin as well. Kakuzu heard the clonk as it hit the man’s skull.

Hidan the mooch slept on the couch with Taki that night. He fell asleep to Rage on ABC with the dog next to him. When Kakuzu woke up the next morning, it seemed that Hidan had turned the air conditioner on in all the rooms sometime last night. He stomped downstairs (as he was not a morning person) and thumped him on the head.

“What the fuck, man!?” He yelped, grabbing a pillow to cover his face.

“My electricity bill will go through the roof.” Kakuzu growled.

“Get solar panels instead of being with Origin you fucking dickhead.”

Kakuzu ignored him and went into the kitchen to make vegemite and cheese sandwiches for him and Hidan, as they were going on a long trip. Hidan went to check if the lynx spray had worked on the council bin (It hadn’t). Then, he put on Sunrise to check the weather, as for some reason all Australians are obsessed with knowing the weather even though it was February and fucking hot every day.

“Forty-three fucking degrees today,” Hidan called to Kakuzu in the kitchen. “I’m gonna slip slop slap so I don’t end up like a leather handbag with skin cancer like you.”

Taki barked in agreement. Kakuzu didn’t reply, because if he did then Hidan would snarl something back.

But then they got into a fight anyway over Hidan tripping over the TV cable and pulling the TV out. Kakuzu punched Hidan so hard he fell into the TV with a crack.

“At least I know what the weather is today, you fucking idiot.”

The TV was in pieces, so Kakuzu would have to go off to JB Hi-Fi to get a new one later. Hidan offered to put the TV in the bin, but then he put the barbeque in the bin too (“You aren’t fucking using it!”). Kakuzu didn’t even care at this point, as it was seven in the morning on a fucking Saturday and he was supposed to go out into the middle of nowhere to shove another one of Hidan’s dead bodies into a grave.

He remembered the first time he’d met Hidan, which was only a few years ago. Kakuzu had gotten a bit pissed at an antique book dealer for giving him a second edition instead of a first of Banjo Patterson’s collection of poems and verses, so he dug a grave at the local cemetery. Then he killed the dealer, but he turned up to cemetery at three in the morning to find that some other fucker was also depositing a body into the same grave. Kakuzu had pushed Hidan into the shallow grave in anger, but then he jumped out and slashed him in the face with a knife, which required Kakuzu to get stitches on his cheeks. He still had the scars to this day.

And that’s how they became “friends”.

(Or murder buddies, as Hidan happily called them).

The sandwiches were now glad-wrapped and put in the esky, several cans of soft drink were put in ice and Hidan had gone to the BP on the corner and bought two packets of Twisties which were on special for two for $2.50 and they were all set to go.

Kakuzu opened up his shed to set up his ute by checking the oil and water, while Hidan bounced away into the courtyard to sort out the bin. Kakuzu only had this ute for depositing bodies. Putting tarp on the tray, Hidan came into the shed with the council bin, which he had duck taped (“It’s duct-tape, not duck tape, you moron…”) the lid all over so fluids and the body wouldn’t come out. They put a few things around the bin, which was camping gear that they never used but had it just in case they got pulled over, and then put more tarp over it. Hidan swung down from the tray using the bars on top of the ute and roped it down. “Excellent.”

They left Taki with a neighbour with unvaccinated kids, and hopped into the ute and left. They barely got past the BP when Hidan suddenly asked, “Are we there yet?”

Kakuzu smacked him.

Hidan wiped his bloody nose on his bintang singlet and then reached over and wiped it on Kakuzu. Kakuzu didn’t even hit him back for it. Hidan laughed with that crazy shrieking sound he did, rolling down the windows. Kakuzu pulled the Garmin GPS off the window.

“Put the directions in for me.”

Hidan for once, actually did what he was told, then put on the radio, shouting ‘WHAT ABOUT MEEEEEEEEE….” out the window to Shannon Noll’s cover of Moving Pictures. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH AND I WANT MY SHARE, CAN’T YOU SEEEEEEE?????????”

Kakuzu turned the radio off.

“Wanna play iSpy?”

“No. We have five hours to go,” Kakuzu changed gears and they got onto the expressway up North, revving up to 100km/hr and hearing the tarp rattle away behind them.

“No, four hours and thirty minutes,” Hidan pointed at the GPS which displayed the arrival time of the cemetery. “iSpy with my little eye, something beginning with C.”

“Cunt.”

Hidan pretended to look shocked. “How did you know?”

Kakuzu smirked. “I know these things.”

Within the hour Hidan had already eaten all the sandwiches and a packet of Twisties. He offered to pay for Maccas but in fact that meant Kakuzu had to do that because Hidan had minus $138.68 in his account. The radio had to be turned off because Hidan kept switching stations and making racist comments. They left the city now and were in farmland, where it was nothing but fields, the occasional emu herd clogging up the road and locust plagues. It was getting hot. Too hot. The air conditioner was on full blast, although of course this wouldn’t make the dead body any cooler, so when Kakuzu needed petrol Hidan jumped out and got a jerry can full from Shell while Kakuzu drove around waiting.

Back in the ute, they drove a few more hours.

Then something shitty happened.

Hidan was telling Kakuzu about how he believed that the judges on X Factor were secretly Jashinists because they were connected to a set of disappearances ten years ago (he had photos to prove it) when Kakuzu had to put the GPS back in after it accidentally disconnected. Hidan suddenly shrieked and Kakuzu looked up quickly to see a Kangaroo jump in front of the ute and collide with them. There was a loud bang and crunch of metal and Kakuzu swerved onto the other side of the road and barely went into the creek, but into the reeds. The ute shook violently.

Hidan was sprouting a torrent of swearing, saying he wasn’t prepared to die just yet because Jashin told him not to. Kakuzu shut the engine off, and pulled the door open, going into the reeds and hoping there was no snakes in them. He got prickles stuck into his socks. Hidan jumped out the other side and inspected the front. There were bits of fur sticking out the vents, blood wiped over the lights.

“Fuuuuuuuuuccccck,” said Hidan loudly. He looked over at the dead kangaroo on the other side of the dirt road. The head was hanging off an angle and blood was mixing in with the dirt and rocks. “You should have been paying attention.”

“Just shut up, shut up,” Kakuzu went to the back and got the esky out. He threw the soft drinks at Hidan and poured the cooling ice - now water - over the front. It didn’t do much, but he managed to get most of the blood off and wipe off the fur.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Hidan breathed. “Do you want me to drive?”

Kakuzu had been driving for four hours now. He knew where they were, just out of a small country town. He nodded.

Hidan jumped into the driver’s seat, but the engine wouldn’t turn on. “You gotta be fucking KIDDING me,” Hidan lost his temper and hit the horn, which beeped back at him. At least that was working. If he’d hit it any harder the airbag would have come out and suffocated him. He turned to Kakuzu. “You gotta call the RAE.”

“No.”

“Why not!?” Hidan snapped.

“Because we have a dead body in the tray!” Kakuzu hissed. “The RAE could look, and they’ll want to know what that smell is-”

“We can’t dump him here, we gotta get to the fucking cemetery, Jesus fucking Christ on a bike…” Hidan whipped out his phone (also Kakuzu’s old mobile) and squinted at the screen. “Fucking Vodafone…”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kakuzu badgered him out of the car and he opened the seat behind him. “At least Telstra has signal.” He threw his phone at Hidan, who promptly called the RAE. “Next time get a plan where you can get signal in the country.”

“We have half an hour,” said Hidan. He hung up, and gave him back his phone.

The RAE man came around in his yellow van forty-five minutes later.

“Have you got any food?” Hidan asked. “We’ve been driving for days. Like, four hours.”

The man laughed. “Sorry mate, ain’t got no snags and no nothin’ for smoko.” Hidan slightly cringed at the country bogan, because he was a city man through and through and didn’t like anything that was different to what he was used to. The RAE man was very chatty, fiddling around with the front of Kakuzu’s ute.

“So what’ya up to, ‘round these areas?”

“...Camping,” said Kakuzu, feeling sweat trickle down his neck. It was getting hotter and hotter and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

“Fuckin’ great. In the arvo they’re opening up the caravan park, but that’s on the town over, it’s not too far, only four hundred kilometres away,” said the RAE man.

Hidan cringed even more. Ew.

“Yes, that is where we are going,” said Kakuzu. He didn’t say any more, because Kakuzu wasn’t a sociable person. Hidan talked to the man about God for a bit, which Kakuzu ignored because well, religion, and then the man argued with Hidan about calling people drongos as apparently it was a shitty word and Hidan wouldn’t use it, because he preferred to use the word cunt instead. Before he left, Hidan offered him the last twisties. He went back into the driver’s seat.

“He didn’t even fucking talk about the dead body smell.”

Kakuzu shrugged. “Might have not noticed it.”

They finally reached the cemetery when it was one thirty. Gumtrees surrounded the cemetery, and galahs were shrieking away. Bull ants went crazy as the ute approached. It was an abandoned cemetery which Hidan used to put his sacrifices. It was a pretty good tactic, because nobody ever came here and nobody checked cemeteries for missing people. The gate was rusty and hot to the touch, and Hidan wanted to run it over because it would just crack but Kakuzu reminded him that it was his ute and his insurance.

Hidan purposely drove over a few graves and then he stopped in the corner, where there was an unidentified grave with a broken angel statue hovering over it. The very occasional rain had washed the names of the people on the headstone away; and left no marks. This grave was their current dumping ground.

About a year ago they’d used a saw to carefully break away the mound then dug a few metres using a small tractor Hidan had stolen from a farm one night. Currently, there were four bodies dumped in here, three of them were Hidan’s sacrifices and one of them was a hitchhiker Kakuzu had run over when he was mad once. On top of the bodies was a small tank so the dirt wouldn’t cave in.

They removed the mound carefully, as it hadn’t rained since the last time they’d been here so the dirt was rock solid. Kakuzu grunted as he managed to get the tank out while Hidan crawled over the tarp on the ute to get hold of the council bin that Pedo-man was in. He peered down to see four skeletons all dumped into one hole, one and a half hours from the nearest town. He didn’t feel anything for them.

Because he didn’t fucking care.

Hidan got the heavy bin down, and got his army knife out of his shorts. He was sweating in the sun, because forty-three fucking degrees was hot. “That soap and lynx must be working,” he mumbled, grinning like a fucking nutcase serial killer (which he was). The knife cut easily into the duct tape and he ripped it off. Hidan hummed loudly. The cicadas were going crazy and all Kakuzu could smell was the thick scent of dust and eucalyptus.

“In you go,” said Hidan cheerfully, pushing the bin down so that the body could slide out and dump itself onto the four skeletons below.

However, Kakuzu flew into a rage as he saw his TV and his barbecue fall out the bin.

“YOU BROUGHT THE WRONG BIN.”

“I-I-I... FUCK.”

- End -

#fic #kakuzu #hidan #my fic #i have literally done nothing but this fic #type type type

120 notes · View notes

punishandenslavesuckers · 7 years

Photo

She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She'll never have any peace now. (ao3)

(chapter 1)

Their first bit of weirdness occurs just before dawn four days later.

Zelda’s been awake for a few hours (as per routine), stoking the fire back to life and unpacking breakfast accoutrements when Draga tenses suddenly. He’s on the other side of the campfire, scanning the trees when his lazy crouch takes on a sudden predatory purposefulness. His eyes widen, his breathing going soft. To her horror – he’s looking over her shoulder at Link’s sleeping cot. Frightened, Zelda spins to look for whatever danger he’s surely spotted – Yiga, Bokokin, something else?! – but… no, Link is dozing peacefully. He’s curled up on his cot, head pillowed on his arm, face serene as sunshine, cheekbones hazarded charmingly by small blonde flyaways.

There are, however, three Koroks crowded by his head.

Now, Koroks are gentle little things: Small bi-pedal creatures, doll-like and doll-sized, with bodies like flexible wood and strange little leaf-masks affixed to their faces. They’re all twittering, a soft rattling sound, like seeds in an empty husk but… musical and fae. They appear to be engrossed in the activity of piling leaves and flowers on Link’s head for their amusement which, in context, is adorable… but from Draga’s perspective is a bunch of fucking devilry and a likely motive for decapitation.

Zelda just barely lunges across the camp to latch onto his elbow.

“No!” she whisper-screams, yanking at his enormous bicep. “No! They’re harmless!”

“What?” Draga hisses.

He raises his arm, standing so her feet leave the ground. She hangs gamely on.

“They’re forest spirits!” She swings a foot ineffectively at Draga’s giant flank. “Link is friends with them! Don’t!”

Draga looks appalled. The Koroks, oblivious to their mortal shenanigans, are twittering and tapping Link gently with sap-soft twigs and flower stems, unaware of the awkward aborted murder wrestling match by the campfire. Link stirs slowly, blinking and humming in a lazy, comfortably way as he opens his eyes. He rolls over and registers the trio of weird little leaf-faces peering down at him. This must be familiar territory for him because he chuckles and rubs his face with one hand, brushing flower petals and leaves from his hair. There’s baby’s breath braided into part of his ponytail. The Koroks twee in delight, hopping from foot to nubby foot.

“Mornin’,” he mumbles, picking flowers from his bangs.

“Hello, Mr. Hero!” one of them enthuses. “We saw you and Ms. Princess and Mr. Scary passing through. You have flowers in your hair now! You look silly!”

“I look great,” he yawns, stretching like a cat and sitting up.

It’s about then he catches sight of his travel partners in the middle of an angry swing-dance and frowns at Zelda who still has two arms around Draga’s elbow and a boot braced against Draga’s thigh.

Link says nothing, just kind of looks at them and the look says, “…?”

“What the devil are those things?!” Draga snaps, pointing at the Koroks.

Link stares. “You can see them?”

Draga looks annoyed and swings Zelda back to the ground. “Of course we see them. Explain them.”

“They’re forest spirits,” he says slowly, surprise writ in every word. Link helps one of the Koroks climb over his knee, letting them roll into his lap with a tiny ‘oof’ of effort. “The Koroks are children of the forest gods, keepers of green things, family to the Deku Tree.” He clears his throat a little, unused to the prolonged use but hands too occupied for sign. “They’re everywhere, but most people can’t see them…”

A second Korok has invited itself to Link’s lap so there are two of them on his knee now while the third wanders around his sleeping cot. Zelda catches herself exchanging a quick look with Draga – eyebrows up, intrigued, but… wanting for more information. The air has a soft musicality now, a floral scent. There are small mouths of color blooming in the grass where Link’s sitting, tiny coiled ferns unwinding green fronds beneath his palm. Everything the Koroks touch slowly buds and sprouts in their presence. Link seems… strangely at-home in the soft riot of greenery.

The third Korok toddles toward Zelda with a daisy in hand. Zelda kneels to take it. She knows Koroks by sight but… never had the occasion to speak with one directly.

“Thank you, little one. Are you Link’s friend?”

“Yes,” beams the Korok. He or she has a high, child’s voice. Hollow somehow, fluting. “We’ve been helping Mr. Hero. We made a leaf bed hotel and a mushroom mart and, uh, a gen-er-al store.” They seem particularly proud of that last bit. “We asked him to live with us forever now that’s he’s done saving the world.” They whistle sadly. “But he said ‘no’ and the Deku Tree said ‘no’.” They brighten up. “So, will you live in the forest with us, Ms. Princess? It’ll be so fun! We promise!”

Link has a sharp warning look on his face.

Zelda maintains her warm tone. “I’m afraid not. Link and I are very busy.”

“Aw, okay.” The Korok leans to look at Draga. “What about Mr. Scary? He’s big, but he’s very pretty like you, Ms. Princess. Do you think he would like to live in the forest with us?”

“What,” Draga says dangerously

“I don’t think so,” Zelda cuts in. “He’s helping us and he lives in the desert so I don’t think that would work.”

“Awww, but he can see us! Can’t any of you play with us?”

“No.” Link picks one of the Koroks up and sets them on their feet, tone slightly admonishing. “Ask Hestu. Go home.”

“Okaaaay.”

The trio seems to take that as their cue to go. The first two simply turn and dash into the trees, popping out of existence with a whisper of grass and a whorl of petals. The third one takes special care to tuck a small blue flower in Link’s hand and pat his elbow fondly before waddling toward the trees. They stop a moment to wave.

“See you later Mr. Hero! Ms. Princess! Mr. Scary!”

Link waves back. Zelda waves back. Draga glares. Zelda swats him in the arm so he kind of… vaguely raises a hand.

And then they’re all gone.

Link stands up, swiping leaves off his shirt. “Sorry.” He clears his throat and finger-combs his hair a little. “I didn’t know you could… see them.”

Draga folds his arms and kind of roams nearer, inspecting the newly bloomed plants and some of the vines in Link’s hair which appear to still be actively blooming even without the presence of the forest fae. He eyes the tree line, then with a pragmatic mien reaches over and tugs a difficult twine of fern from Link’s bangs. The smaller swordsman scowls and rubs his scalp. Zelda joins them and promptly hooks a finger under Link’s chin, turning his face toward her so she can look him over. He lets her do it, blinking curiously.

“Fairy lights,” she murmurs.

Link tugs his chin away. “Huh?”

“In your eyes. Did you know you get them after looking at fairies and spirits?” She watches the faint glow, there in his retinas like the shine from the eyes of an animal. Makes the familiar geography of his face… alien but not unknowable. She shrugs. “It’s not harmful, just… some people can take it as a curse if you come back into a village before it wears off. Others view it as good luck to meet the little people.”

Draga tilts his head. “You two see spirits so easily?”

Zelda glances at Link who seems hushed.

“Yes, though I admit, Link is quicker to it than I.” She lifts her chin a little. “It’s only recently I’ve managed the sight.”

“In my culture,” says Draga, “those who see spirits are more inclined to madness. It’s one several signs that portent possession or spiritual corruption.” Then he seems to realize what he just said to them and clears his throat. “Ah, but that is in my culture and we do not have the sorts of… little flower spirits that gift daisies and such.” He’s still holding the bit of fern he pulled from Link’s hair, looking at it with a kind of muted thoughtfulness. “The spirits of the desert are angrier by far.”

Zelda frowns. “Draga, you’ve never seen spirits before?”

“No. This is… a new development for me.”

Zelda can tell, though he hides it fairly well, that the notion troubles him somewhat. “Hmm, well, that’s not too unusual,” she says, adopting a high, almost pedantic tone. She gestures, like she’s conducting a tiny classroom, earning herself a confused stare from Draga. “You see, Koroks hide themselves all over the realm. Old tales say if you could find one, they would gift you things – seeds, mushrooms, that kind of thing. Unlike skull-children who are tricksters by nature, Koroks tend to be helpful but you have to find them to get their aid. So, because of your connection to the arcane, I’m sure you would have seen Hylian forest spirits before, except they were hiding. Therefore, it’s nothing strange. No need to take it as… uh, a sign or anything. Very common in this realm, actually.”

If Draga is comforted by this notion, he doesn’t show it. He just asks, “Why did they call you, ‘Princess’?”

She almost freezes. Almost.

“One of Link’s jokes,” she says, recruiting him to her lie by instinct. She can feel him side-eye her immediately. “They call him ‘hero’ because he helps people. That’s all. Forest spirits are funny that way and, really, its best if they don’t get too familiar with your real name.”

“Interesting,” Draga says.

“There are other kinds of spirits,” Link cuts in, surprising her.

Draga and Zelda look at him.

Link smiles. There’s something wolfish in it, fanged and friendly. He’s looking at Draga like he knows it’s for him when he says, “I could show you dragons sometime.”

She catches Link and Draga squaring off a few days later.

Finding the Lynel is taking longer than expected, so this not entirely unexpected, but that doesn’t mean it’s not stupid.

She walks into the clearing just in time to stop them from launching at one another. Link, who moved quicker, skids to a stop and, no joke, tries to hide the blade that seals evil behind his back. Zelda just gives Link a look. It’s her ‘stop-showing-off-you-have-a-magic-sword-you-cheater’ look and he sheathes the divine blade and stands there, arms crossed in an attitude of minding his own business. Draga does not put away what appears to be a Goron-smithed broadsword the size of Link’s entire body – more a machete than a scimitar, squared off with a sharp cross section rather than pointed. He’s got it braced against his shoulder, unapologetic.

“Just sparring,” he insists in his careful Hylian.

“Right,” Zelda says, “the night before we reach the Lynel den. Beat the snot out of each other later.”

Link looks sidelong at Draga.

“I saw that. Don’t even think about it. I’m not healing you if you get clobbered. Either of you.”

Draga shrugs. “Fine. Later.” He looks at Link. “And I am not scared of your tricks.”

Link grins, sees Zelda glaring, and stops grinning.

“Reckless,” she says.

Draga heads back toward camp, calling over his shoulder: “You will both tell me what forged that blade one day.”

Zelda glares at Link more intensely, waiting until Draga is out of earshot, then swats his arm. “Why are you so brazen with that? You draw too much attention.”

“You said we’re not hiding,” Link says, surprising her somewhat. If he’s talking, then he was likely previously warmed to it. He shrugs, “So what if Draga knows?”

“He thinks I’m some road witch, Link. It’s not the same thing.”

“I think more people should know who you are.”

“I know what you think, but it will just cause trouble.”

He sighs. “But you saved them.”

“You saved them.”

He looks away, uncomfortable.

“See, you don’t like it either, when I lay it all at your feet.” And when he doesn’t answer, Zelda regrets her tone a little. “I only mean… neither of us did it on our own. I don’t feel it’s fair to ask people for their loyalty based on a mess we couldn’t prevent one hundred years ago.”

“No one thinks like that,” he murmurs.

“When they talk about a myth they don’t, but a real person? Asking for allegiance? Asking for… I don’t know, taxes and governmental reform? They will change their tone. I can’t do that, Link. Please stop asking me to. You of all people.”

His expression loses its edges. She knew it would.

“Okay.”

“Does he pray at every alter?”

It’s raining. The summer heat makes a swelter out of the downpour, turning the road into a muddy soup. Zelda glances at Draga who, seated astride his massive horse and cloaked in his large rain-wicking black cloak, looks precisely like a mountain god of some kind. He’s got his hood up, so she can’t see his face, just the soft neutral set of his mouth, head turned toward the side of the road. Link is on the side of road, kneeling by a trio of round wind-worn forest shrines. They are very old. Carved like short, benevolent toads with shallow bowls at their feet filled with small tokens – food, ribbon, flowers, sticks of doused incense. Link’s placed a whole apple at the feet of the third empty shine and presently has one hand on the statue’s smooth stone forehead. His head is bowed. Rain drips from the edge of his hood.

Zelda sighs and tugs her horse around a little bit. “Yes, mostly.”

Draga eyes her. “You don’t?”

“Those are shrines to the forest and mountain gods,” she says, as if that explains it.

“So?”

“It’s not praying exactly. More like bartering for luck. A good habit for travelers and the like, but… fae are capricious. I don’t much bother with it.”

Draga’s looking at her now so she can see him frowning.

She laughs. “What?”

“That sounded a little judgmental.”

She stops laughing. “What? I… that’s not how I meant it.”

“You said these are shrines to mountain and forest gods.” Draga arches a brow, clearly gauging her response. “If Link is offering to them, then he must believe…”

Zelda cuts him off. “It’s not about belief, Draga. I believe. My own power is… divinely sourced. We spoke to Koroks just days ago. Trust me, I believe, so I have no criticisms of Link.” She sighs, a little too hard, shaking her head. “I just don’t do that as much anymore. I prayed plenty when I was younger.”

Draga’s frown turns to curiosity. “Ah, you reject the gods then.”

She turns a bit red, furtively glancing in Link’s direction, but he’s still engaged in the small road-side ritual.

“I do not reject them I just… I don’t have as casual a rapport with the spirits as Link does.” A beat of inadequate silence follows. “It’s just easier for him,” she blurts. “That’s all.”

Draga nods. “Ah. I see.”

“Please don’t mention it. I’m just… it’s silly.”

“Don’t mind me, little sister. All of my gods are gods of war.” Draga swaps to Gerudo, gently kicking his horse into a trot. “None of my prayers are kind.”

Then he’s gone, already moved past her before she can respond. The rain’s letting up though and Link’s on his feet, heading back to join them. Zelda can hear Draga singing to himself in the distance – deep, lazy notes that boom and carry back to her as he rides on. Link mounts up next to her, intrigued and looks at her through the rain, clearly asking her to translate.

“It’s an old language,” Zelda says. “The song appeals to Din – the tri-goddess aspect of war, earth, and regeneration. She who honors great works and holds all graves in her palm. Din of fire and change. Mother of all treasure.” She glances at Link. “It’s a prayer for power in the face of your enemies.”

He shrugs. “Lynels are pretty tough.”

Zelda looks at him. “Link, can I ask you what you think of him?” She jerks her chin. “Draga, I mean. Do you… do you feel comfortable with him?”

Link gives her surprised look. “Yes.” He signs quickly, ‘Did he say something to you?’

“No! No, nothing like that! I like him. I… I do actually.” She exhales. “It’s nice, having another person with us. I just wanted to make sure you felt the same. I know I kind of invited him along without discussing it. That’s my fault. I just… get excited and he’s traveling on Pilgrimage and his area of study is ancient ruins and the Gerudo culture is even more ancient than the Sheikah technology we ourselves are investigating. It just seemed to make sense and since he'll need to return home in the next six months it just…”

She’s babbling. Great. Link knows all this. He’s giving her that look.

She sighs. “You know, you can tell me at any time if I’m making you uncomfortable. We’re partners now.”

Link gives her a lopsided smile. ‘I know.’

“I’m just… making sure. We don’t have a lot of practice at this.”

Link frowns, then signs, ‘Practice? At what?’

“At this.” She gestures to the plains of grass around them, the overcast skies, the muddy road. “We don’t have a destiny anymore.” She pulls her hood down so he can see her eyes. “I’ve never been without a destiny, you know. And I suppose for all my… my training, all my prayer, all my study… I never imagined just this: just a road and anywhere in the world to go in it.” She inhales, then exhales but the exhalation is relief. “There were times that I thought I would be fighting forever. For a thousand years. For ten thousand years.” She can feel Link’s worry without seeing it. “I’m just… I don’t know what to do with all this…”

“Are you happy?”

She looks up, surprised.

Link’s just looking at her with one of those earnest neutral faces he does.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you happy?” he repeats.

“Didn’t I say that?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m happy,” she says. Then, because it didn’t sound right, “I am very happy.”

Link tilts his head, then signs, ‘Me too.’

The rain stops a few minutes later and Draga circles back to admonish their slowness, but Zelda keeps thinking about Link’s hand forming the simple reciprocation sign, me too. She is happy. He is happy. Me too. She’s gripping the reins too tightly. She is happy. She is free. Time is linear. She can see the ruins of a house overgrown with moss and wisteria by the side of the road – the is roof collapsed in, the walls knocked down, stones flung across the field in such a way that she knows this house was not simply abandoned but obliterated. Her nails dig into her palms.

She is happy.

Now, Link’s sarcasm aside, Lynels are pretty tough.

Not tough enough to actually warrant the intercession of the gods. (At least, in Zelda’s opinion.) But when the sword ignites in Link’s grip, it's clear to Zelda that they are dealing with something else entirely. Even at the distance she can smell the rot, putrid and chemical. The Lynel wasn’t hard to find once they caught its trail but now, wounded, it’s begun to seize from the inside, twitching and spasming like something is clawing out from the musculature. She thinks she knows what’s coming. Link, seeing the blade’s new tell-tale shine, must know as well.

Besides her, Draga flinches forward. His hand goes to the long sword in the grass beside him but Zelda seizes his arm at the elbow, yanking him back down with her. They are hunkered in the tree line on the hill above the clearing. Draga looks sharply at her.

“There is something wrong with that Lynel,” he snaps, starting to stand again.

Once more, Zelda yanks him down. “Do not get in Link’s way.”

“Did you not hear me?”

“I heard you. Trust him. Trust me.”

And that’s when the Lynel charges. It roars and fire erupts from its lion-head jaws. It screams blue flame in a cyclone of silver heat as it bears down, forcing Link into a full body dive-roll, just barely missing the spine-crushing gallop of hooves and the sweep of terrible flame. He does not miss its attempt to cleave him in half with a sword, however.

The strike only glances, but the shield on his arm shrieks and buckles, hooking on the blade and throwing Link into a rag-doll roll.

He comes up immediately, glares at the twisted metal, then hurls it off his arm and takes the blade in a reckless a two-fisted grip. Blood runs from a small gash in his arm, dripping in the grass. Zelda can’t explain how, but there’s an awareness of the wound in her own blood, making her entire body ache. Her teeth hurt. Her palms burn. She stays where she is, watching, waiting. Draga is cursing softly, through his teeth, but he holds position.

The Lynel’s coming back around, it’s breath expended, but the blade in its monstrous grip swallows the light around it. She can feel ancient deaths in the metal. The beast charges Link, mad with corruption. The grass dies where it runs.

“Don’t let it touch you,” she whispers.

Link closes his eyes.

The long grass ripples and time itself… bends. Zelda feels it ebb, like a tide moving in time to Link’s breathing and the sword becomes a burning edge of molecular blue in his hand. He opens his eyes. Then the world snaps forward. Link snaps forward. The blade finds the bloody home a dozen times in the chimera’s ribs and two of its thick equine legs end suddenly in spraying stumps. Link skids to a stop ten meters beyond the beast, swinging through the final blow that throws blood into the trees and buffets the canopy. The monster, mortally mauled behind him, staggers blind.

“Thank goodness,” Zelda whispers at the exact moment Draga hisses, “Yes!”

Link swings his sword down, once, whipping off the last of the blood, then turns to watch the Lynel fall.

It hits the ground dead. On impact, it splits open along the seam Link put in its belly, meat putrefying instantly, liquifying off the bones. The ground steams where it touches, then begins to eat through the dirt like acid. It shouldn’t do that. Link covers his nose and mouth with one hand and backs away. As he does, the beast’s entire skull torques suddenly on a spine twisting like a cobra to face him. Its jaw dislocates and in final retching burst it vomits a wide-spray of calamitous oil, a geyser of it so wide that Link’s fast-twitch flinch isn’t enough to get clear – a ribbon of liquid douses his off-arm from shoulder to wrist.

Zelda feels the scream before Link manages it.

He drops the sword and hits his knees holding the infected limb away from his body as the oil eats through his shirt, then the mail beneath, and finally into the minor protection wards Zelda put directly into his skin. By the sound of it – the wards are not holding.

Zelda’s already sprinting down the hill, hands golden and glowing.

“Draga! Don’t breathe it in!” she shouts, launching herself from the tree line, over a log, directly into the fumes. She races through the poison, her skin shelled in sunlight and the miasma catches fire like a chemical reaction. The world becomes flame. “I’ll clear it! Help Link!”

She finds the corpse in the inferno. It’s burning a hole into the ground and that hole wells full of black ooze, bio-organic, like rotten blood. It has a pulse. Sinews in the liquid taking on an internal glow and, within the fleshy pond, a single slitted yellow eye blinks open, swivels, then fixes directly on her. Zelda does not hesitate. She plunges her hand directly into the organ and rips it from the wound like a weed by the root and when it writhes in her fist she puts fire through its core. She atomizes it and ignites the rest.

When she’s done, there’s nothing but a scorched pit. In her fist – a crushed husk, hissing as it dies.

“Just… stop,” she whispers. She crushes it. “Just…”

“ZELDA!”

Draga’s shout snaps her out of it. She pivots and sees it: the second silver Lynel – Had it always been there? Waiting? Had she missed it? A monster the size of shed, holding a two-handed broadsword? – bearing down on her with a stallion’s gallop. The flesh is peeling from its skull, blighted fumes pouring from its jaws and glowing in its throat. It’s thirty meters away. Twenty. She raises one hand. Ten meters. Gold gathers in her palm…

Something hits her from the side.

“Wha-!”

It’s over before she can fully register, an arm around her waist, the controlled impact and suddenly she’s rolling in the grass, Draga kneeling over her like a roof over a house. Then he’s gone. For a breathless second, she can’t process what’s happening. She rolls on her stomach, turning and there through the smoke: Draga stepping through the fumes, one arm over his nose and mouth, one hand gripping the massive blade on his shoulder. The Lynel, lungs heaving with oil and flame, is retching poison and circling.

“Draga! Draga, no!”

The Lynel charges. Draga breaks into a run, winding up the sword. The Lynel raises its blade –

Draga’s broadsword slams home in the monster’s belly – faster than she can see and with more force than she can conceive – cleaves through muscle and bone, blows through the spine to send an eruption of blood and viscera into the clearing. The lower half of the monster runs on for about three steps, then falls. The top half folds into the grass. Draga turns, the dull edge of the blade dripping black into the grass. She thinks, for a moment, his eyes glow in the dark -- lit internally like a coal in a dark hearth. Zelda levers up on one arm. Her heart is in her throat. He steps toward her. Why is that familiar?

“Zelda,” he says, “are you injured?”

“I’m fine. I –”

Something darts out of the long grass, past Draga, lunges up and – “Link?!” – slams the divine blade half to the hilt in the ground. Draga jerks back, stunned, as Link reels back from his target: a thrashing writhe of limbs in the grass. His left arm’s black, tacky, rigored into a right-angle and shaking. Draga drops his sword and catches Link at the waist when he starts to fall. Zelda stands up in time to see what it was Link killed – the second lynel’s autonomous upper torso, still switching, claws raking the earth with killing intent as the ribcage dissolves. It had been, she suspects, crawling toward Draga for a final blow.

“Good eye,” Draga says softly.

Link manages to grimace a smile, then just grimaces as his knees go out.

“Zelda!”

“I’m here!”

Link’s curled in the grass, fighting not to clutch the poisonous arm. She can hear him growling in agony, panting. He’s fumbling for a fairy tonic in his belt. Draga is already pouring an entire water canteen over his blistered arm to no effect, washing rusted armor flakes off in chunks. He grabs the bottle from Link’s hip, uncorks it with his teeth and dumps it on his arm, partially pinning him chest-down as he does it. Understandable. The liquid steams on contact and Link howls.

“Sorry, little brother.” Draga speaks through his teeth, holding the smaller swordsman down while he finishes. Link just shoves his forehead into the grass, choking, his other hand clawing the dirt until his fingers pull up mud. Again, Draga says, “I’m sorry.” Then, “Zelda, can you purify this? It’s blight. If we don’t…”

“I know.” Zelda hits her knees next to Link. “We’ve seen this stuff before. Link? Can you hear me?”

He moans and nods. She catches a glimpse of his eyes behind his hair.

“Okay. I’m going to do it. Ready?”

He makes a noise that might be ‘no’ but she can’t wait. She grabs his arm at the shoulder just above the infection and at the wrist just below, then then drags her hands down his arm from both directions, gripping tight so her fists meet in the middle of his elbow. Link doesn’t scream – somehow it’s worse, because his entire throat and face works like he is screaming but the sound isn’t coming up. Her palms sizzle like a hot pan, cauterizing every inch of skin. Draga, kneeling over him, just watches Zelda’s hands – the light off her fingers taking all the shadows from his face.

She finishes and wipes her hands off on her trousers.

“Stupid,” she murmurs. She kneels and takes Link’s face in her hands, wiping dirt and grass from his sweaty forehead. “Link? Hey. Are you alright?”

“Ow,” he says, not opening his eyes.

She exhales loudly and pats his cheek. “You’re okay.”

He opens his eyes and reiterates, “Ow,” with some offense.

“I know for a fact you used to do this stuff solo. It’s much better with a partner, yes?”

Link sits up, rubbing his newly healed arm, still pink with regeneration. “Thanks,” he says, first to her, then to Draga who’s looking at the two of them like he’s just realizes they’re insane. Link clears his throat. “She’s right. It’s not that bad.”

“Your entire arm could have rotted to the marrow and fallen off,” Draga says tonelessly.

Link nervously flexes his hand. “But it didn’t.”

Draga looks at Zelda. “Blighted monsters don’t concern you?”

“Well it concerns us, but we have the tools to deal with it.” And when Draga keeps giving her this terribly irritated look, she adds, “Honestly, we’ve had much worse. And blighted creatures are much rarer as the last of Calamity’s hold wanes in this world. As I said before, we specialize in this kind of work. It’s really not that impressive, you know, I just –”

Draga literally puts his hand over her mouth.

“I believe you." He drops his hand. "Stop explaining.” He looks at Link. “Can you walk?”

Link nods, pushing himself to his feet and rotating his shoulder like it’s just stiff rather thans touched by Malice. He sighs, then signs something in Zelda’s general direction about needing another shirt. Zelda, warily, gauges Draga’s reaction. The huge Gerudo can’t seem to decide if he’s more angry with them than impressed and seems to be taking Link’s lackadaisical approach to almost dying as a personal offense.

“You’re both mad,” he says.

Link heaves the biggest most unconcerned shrug that is physically possible and grabs the divine blade from the grass. While he sheathes it, Draga moves so he’s standing over him, glaring down from his mountainous height. Link just hooks his thumbs in his belt and leans back to maintain eye contact. Standing like this, there is a certain dynamic opposition – Link small and pale where Draga is massive and dark. Zelda feels something, an unidentifiable jolt of de-ja-vu.

“That blade,” Draga says, “cut through the corruption like nothing. Split the darkness apart.” He leans down slightly. “If you were less of an incorrigible fool, I would accuse you of being the Hylian Champion.”

“There is nothing in the history books,” says Link, “to suggest he wasn’t a fool.”

Which is the longest sentence he’s said in a while and of course it would be a self-deprecating insinuation to him being a 100-year-old legend. Zelda drops her face into one hand and drags it all the way down. Draga’s glaring at the both of them now. It’s possible Link’s chattiness is directly tied to a post-regenerative high, but he seems pretty pleased with himself so she doubts it. Draga looks at the sword, then at her, then back at Link. He starts to open his mouth.

Zelda holds up two hands. “Wait. Draga…”

“You’re them. You’re the Princess. The one that fought Calamity one hundred years ago and that’s the sword that seals the darkness.”

“That’s absurd,” Zelda starts to say.

“Eh,” Link says, wobbling his hand to indicate only moderate absurdity.

Zelda hits him in the shoulder.

Draga is not distracted. “Link does not seem to have a problem admitting it. Why do you?”

“It just… look, you don’t quite understand. It’s complicated.”

“Your circumstances are complicated. Your identity is not. Are you Zelda Bosphoramus or not?”

She maintains a panic for a half second then gives it up. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Excellent. And him? He’s the same chosen knight or he’s a successor who’s found the sword?”

“Same guy,” Link says, shrugging again.

“That’s…” Draga sighs and palms the back of his neck in one giant hand. “Never mind. Tell me your story when we’re back at camp. No.” He points at Zelda, silencing the beginning of another explanation. He waits, making sure she’s done, then, “Now... we’re going to eat and congratulate ourselves on this victory. I am going to drink. Then you can tell me your impossible story, you tiny, mad, Hylians.”

Zelda feels something unwind in her chest. Like a breath she’s been holding.

“I suppose…” she says, glancing at Link, “it would be nice to tell someone. The whole story. Just this once.”

Link always wakes up last and the next morning is no different.

Zelda and Draga stoke the fire quietly while he dozes, eating fruit and bread from their provisions and eyeing each other. Sunlight bleeds through the canopy, riddling the ground in yellow patchwork and Zelda watches the colors move across the roots and thin grass beneath the boughs. The silence holds, among other things, the entirety of the one-hundred-year campaign against the Calamity, the failed assault before that, the assembly of the Champions, her role as goddess-blood princess and Link the soul-bound hero. A history summarized to its most basic painful components and laid out in order.

“I can heat some water,” Zelda says, breaking the silence finally. “If you would like some tea, I mean, or… whatever you prefer…”

“Thank you, but don’t trouble yourself.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“I would rather we just… sit for a moment.”

Presently, she cannot imagine a worse option. She eats a bite of apple, staring into the fire, as if it will offer up a topic of conversation that isn’t blurting at him, again, the very essential need for his secrecy and silence on this topic while Link is unconscious and unable to level looks of disappointment at her. Draga’s not looking at her. He’s pondering the canopy, eyes visibly working through some private process while she sits here, sweating, a knot in her belly that she can’t quite explain.

“Did you know,” says Draga suddenly, “that any child born to a Gerudo woman will always be Gerudo, no matter the ethnicity of their father?”

Zelda blinks.

Draga is still looking at the canopy.

“I… I did know that, actually. Gerudo blood is stronger than any other. Closer to the goddess than any other or so they say.”

“Except maybe you,” says Draga, looking at her.

When she looks away, he goes on. “They say Din carved the first Gerudo from the red earth, seven of them in her likeness.” Draga pulls a piece of bread from the day-old loaf in his hands. The soft brown inside splits warm and steaming as though fresh from an oven and he goes on. “When the goddess saw the good she had done, she carved an eighth heroine and to this sister she gifted magic. She made her most like a god – taking many forms, possessing power and sight.”

Zelda sneezes and rubs her nose on her sleeve to relieve the sudden itchiness. Draga tosses her the rest of the warm loaf, which cools quickly in her palm.

“I confess,” Zelda says, “I have never heard of the Eighth Heroine.”

“Because she was hated by her sisters,” Draga says. He’s looking into the fire now, the glow of it putting warm light into his skin. “She was forgotten. Erased from history. Her children live on in every Gerudo child born with magic in their blood but the cost lives in every daughter who dies in fear, having never mastered it.” He continues to look into the fire when he says, "I lost two sisters to that fear. Their deaths... are why I'm out here."

"Why are you telling me?" Zelda murmurs.

Draga looks up at her. “You and your knight… you know that being closer to the gods is dangerous. Hylia’s Gift… it’s not really a gift.”

Zelda closes her eyes. “If it was a real gift it would not cost us so much."

Draga waits.

“I am still… I am so angry,” she says. “Even now, a century later, I blame the Goddess for not answering my call, for not… just giving me the strength I needed when I needed it in time to save the people I loved.” She shakes her head. “Why did we have to lose so much? Why did we have to give one-hundred years just to survive what we could have defeated?” She’s crushing the bread in her fist, speaking softly, but through locked jaw. “Link says the people would love me if I revealed myself. I do not believe that.”

Draga leans forward a little, his eyes on her, and says, in Gerudo, “I wasn’t there one-hundred years ago, so I don’t much care for details but know this: You are a warrior, little sister. You more than any. The girl who fought for one-hundred years and if the world knew what you did, they should be grateful to follow you into anything.” He leans back and switches to Hylian. “Be it peace or war, I say that you have earned that if you want it.”

Zelda rubs her eyes. “You sound like Link.”

“I happen to agree with Link.”

“Heh, do you want to know something strange?”

He snorts, pulling a small knife from his pocket. “What about you two isn’t strange?” He picks up an apple and begins to cut wedges from it. “But tell me. What is strange?”

“Link trusts you,” Zelda says. “He trusted you. Instantly even, and that’s strange. He seems trusting, but he’s not. If he gives you his back, it’s only because he’s confident he can kill you if you try to betray him.”

Draga’s eyebrows arch significantly.

“But this is different!” She pauses. “It sounds silly, but he gave you a horse.”

“And that’s significant.”

“For Link? Yes. And it’s probably apparent to you, but I don’t trust people with my secrets but you… it’s… like you knew them anyway so it was no effort to tell you. So tell me this, Draga: How many people of your home tribe know you by your new name?”

Draga looks up from the apple he’s cutting. She does not flinch from his stare – cool and green and fathoms deep. Eventually, he says, “I have a cousin, very young but close to me. She is the only one who knows that I will return under a new name to declare my practice. I don’t know why I told you that I have the gift. I’ve never told anyone outside my family.” He shakes his head, once. "I thought I was being... sentimental. But now, knowing what you are, it could be something else."

“Then we agree, there is something odd about our meeting,” Zelda says. “We acknowledge it together?”

“Yes. It’s strange. Agreed.”

There’s a beat, the two of them staring at one another across the fire, the dappled sunlight shifting lazily across their shoulders.

“I’m going to pack up,” Zelda says, standing up a little too quickly.

Draga eyes her, like he might not let her change tack so easily. Then, after a moment, says, “Does Link always oversleep or…?”

“Yes. Always.”

go to part 3

#botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda #legend of zelda breath of the wild #link #zelda #ganondorf #zelda/link/ganon #kinda #I guess #platonic until its not #no one told them about how fast #that cycle restarts #because Demise is a fucking asshole #these kids are so messed up

86 notes · View notes