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rosethornxs · 2 years

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Voyeur

Din Djarin x F!Reader

Here it is on AO3

Rated: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: Din fulfils one of your fantasies.

Warnings: SMUT, PWP (plot? what plot? idk her…), masturbation (m), voyeurism, dirty talk, praise, mentions of PIV, finger sucking, cum eating, brief oral (m & f receiving), overstimulation (m), fingering (f receiving), fluff (as always), ummmmm, I think that’s everything but lemme know if I missed anything.

A/N: Don’t look at me; this started as a simple drabble idea and very quickly got out of control. I had absolutely zero intention of writing over 2 thousand words about watching Din masturbate but here we are. I also wrote this almost entirely on my phone because I was on vacation last week. Please enjoy my filth.

He’d agreed, reluctantly, when you’d asked if you could watch him. He preferred your tight, hot cunt, or your plush mouth, even your soft hand over his own rough fist — but he wanted to make you happy, he wanted to do this for you.

“Can I watch you?” you’d asked, wrapped in his arms one night after he’d coaxed out your pleasure over and over with gentle touch and sweltering adoration.

“Watch me what, sweet girl?”

You’d been a little shy about it, chewing your lip, and avoiding the dark T of his visor. He’d found it endearing, until you told him what you wanted and all the blood in his brain rushed straight back to his cock, making him near dizzy at the prospect.

The words still echo in his mind now as you gaze at him, wide eyed, plush lips parted in awe at the sight of him.

“Can I watch you…um…touch yourself?”

He’d been silent for several moments and you‘d nearly begun to apologise for even asking before he finally spoke up again.

“You…you want that?” his thoughts had raced, shooting through the scenarios lightning quick. In all of them he wanted you to touch him — he wanted you to help him get off. “Are you sure?”

You’d nodded, heat blooming in your cheeks as your eyes tentatively met the void of his helmet, “Yes.”

He’d thought for another moment, searching your face — restrained eagerness brightening your expression. Any hesitation he’d had vanished there. He’d do this for you — he’d do anything for you.

And that was the start of it.

Several nights later, you’re perched in the copilot’s chair, wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a thin tank top. Din lounges back in the pilot’s chair facing you, naked as the day he was born except for the silvery Beskar helmet atop his head. His skin is illuminated by late night stars and the Crest’s colourful twinkling indicator lights. He’s so beautiful, and so real, relaxed muscles soft and showing their years of use. Your lips curl into a smile as you appraise his nude form, spread out before you.

You want to touch him like you normally do, feel the warmth of his skin with your fingertips, trace each scar with your lips — but that’s not what you’re here for now and there will be plenty of time for that later.

He feels awkward on display like this — it feels unnatural for him to be so bare, so vulnerable. But the look of wide eyed excitement on your face makes him shove those feelings back down.

He’s never done this with an audience and he’s not exactly sure where to begin.

“So…” he starts, and you can sense his uncertainty.

“Just do what you usually do…” you encourage, offering him a reassuring smile, “pretend I’m not even here.”

He chuckles, “That’s the opposite of what I usually do, sweet girl.”

Your stomach flips at his confession, your mind wandering to all the potential times he’d tugged on his cock with you on his mind. How many times had he done it? How many times had he come all over his fist with images of you dancing through his thoughts? You squeeze your thighs together at the mere suggestion of it, heat pooling in your core and soaking your panties.

Din shifts slightly, reclining in his chair and spreading his legs wider for you. Your eyes rake from his throat, down to the line of dark hair that trails from his belly button into a neat patch at the base of his hardening cock. Your mouth waters at the sight of it and your tongue darts out, slowly wetting your bottom lip.

“Could you help me out, mesh’la?” he asks, extending his arm to you.

It takes you a moment to realize what he wants but when you do, you shiver. You swirl your tongue around your mouth, collecting your saliva, then you lean forward and spit into his palm.

“Good girl,” he hums and you bite back a whimper at his husky praise.

He wraps his hand around his thick shaft, giving himself a few experimental strokes and smearing your spit over his velvety flesh. He stifles a low groan, gritting his teeth through the feeling of his rough hand gripping his cock. Maker, he wishes it was you so bad.

“Don’t hold back, Din,” you coo, “I wanna hear everything.”

You watch him, a tingling warmth flooding your nervous system, as he slowly strokes himself to full attention. You’d always thought his cock was beautiful — long and thick, curving upwards — deliciously filling, and he uses it well, fucking you to tears and then kissing them away in the dark. He fucks his hand now, the swollen rosy head of his cock disappearing into his fist with each tug. His thumb passes over the leaking tip, collecting the precum, using it to further slick his palm.

A low moan crackles through the modulator of his helmet, sending another swell of arousal straight to your aching centre. He hasn’t even touched you and you’re already drunk on it — warm, and flushed, and fidgety in the copilot’s chair as you watch him. This is what you wanted, right? To watch him make himself come? Now you’re not so sure — your body sings with need, begging for him to touch you.

The obscene, wet squelch of his fist moving over his cock makes your cheeks burn. Your gaze rakes over his body again — his muscles are pulled taut now, flexing as he brings himself closer to release. His bicep swells as he moves his fist up and down his length. Your name tumbles brokenly off his tongue and you whimper at the sound.

“What are you thinking about, Din?”

“You mesh’la,” he moans, “always you.”

He keeps talking as he fucks his fist, voice needy, exposing how desperate he is for you.

“Thinking about your perfect pussy…and how you always take me so fucking well…and, kriff, those pretty sounds you always make.”

His voice grows more ragged as he nears that white hot precipice of pleasure. You can tell he’s getting close by the way his legs tremble and his belly heaves. His grunts get louder, moans longer and breathier. Stars, he’s a sight.

“M’ so wet,” you whine, “you haven’t even touched me and I’ve already ruined my panties.”

A groan rips from his throat at that, “fuck, show— show me.”

You lean back and spread your legs for him, exposing the dark, soaked middle of your panties. He lets out a hoarse, broken cry, jerking himself harshly to the pretty picture in front of him. You wonder what he looks like under the helmet — how does the pleasure contort his mysterious features? Are his eyebrows drawn together? Does he bite his lip ‘til it nearly bleeds? Do his eyes roll back when he comes so hard it makes him see stars?

“After…after, m’gonna get on my knees…and m’gonna — maker, cyare — gonna fuck you with my tongue until my cock is ready for you again…and then m’gonna give you my cock until you forget your name.”

He’s rambling, words nearing incoherent as he works himself up to release. Your own thoughts are beginning to turn fuzzy with need, every inch of your skin burning with arousal. You resist the urge dip your fingers beneath the waistband of your panties, down to rub your aching clit. You want to save that for him now — after he’s indulged you like this, it’s what he deserves.

The movement of his fist grows erratic — sloppy — and his legs begin to twitch. Your own breath catches in your throat as anticipation sinks a claw into your heart.

“Come for me, Din,” you urge, “come for me and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. You can have me any way you please.”

That’s enough for him and he comes with a raw, strangled moan, spilling down his shaft and onto his knuckles. His body tenses as he pumps himself through it, teasing that fine line between pleasure and overstimulation. Then he goes lax, chest heaving as his thoughts return through the haze.

You barely even give him a moment to recover before you’re on your knees between his legs. He quirks his helmet to the side in curiosity as you take his hand and then lets out a groan when you bring his cum covered fingers to your lips.

You suck two of his fingers into your plush, warm mouth, dragging your tongue across his skin to taste his salty release. His cock twitches at the sinful sight of you and the way your half-lidded eyes feel like they’re burning a hole through his helmet.

“Fuck, sweet girl,” he grits, cupping your cheek with his other hand. He strokes his thumb over your soft skin affectionately, “maker knows what I did to deserve you.”

His visor remains fixed on your face as you clean his fingers with your tongue, licking his pearly white cum off his knuckles. You hum softly and then release them, turning your attention to his spent cock.

He hisses, flinching as you lick a stripe up his shaft. You wrap your lips around his rosy head, groaning at the taste of him, not wanting anything to go to waste. His entire body tenses from overstimulation and his fist flies into your hair, gripping tightly at the roots but not pulling.

“Kriff, are you trying to kill me?” he groans. You can hear the smile pulling at his lips under the helmet.

You release him with a wet pop and press a kiss to his inner thigh, grinning mischievously, “I would never.”

He strokes across your cheekbone again, helmet tilting to the side in what can only be described as an affectionate gesture.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, beckoning you into his lap with a curl of his fingers.

You crawl into the pilot’s chair with him, situating yourself on his firm thighs. His hands skirt under your tank top and smooth up your back, taking in the warmth and softness of your skin. Your fingertips dance up his bare chest and you press your lips lightly to a scar on his collarbone.

You trace the edge of his helmet, eyes meeting that dark visor that gives away nothing, while his body language gives away everything. It’s a silent question you ask now, begging for his lips, begging for the last thing he can offer you. He nods, a quick tilt of his head and you squeeze your eyes shut. You feel him shift, arms rising to remove his helmet. Then you hear him place it on the console and his lips collide with yours.

Sometimes, kissing him is like a gentle breeze on a sunny day, comforting, with a hint of something sweet. Other times, like now, kissing him is like a hurricane — all teeth and desperation, something that consumes. He groans at the taste of himself that still lingers on your tongue as he licks into your mouth.

Your hands immediately find the soft curls at the nape of his neck, twirling them around your fingers as you pull yourself against him. Everything about him makes you dizzy — the way his skin feels, his scent, his touch, and the way he kisses you with a kind of ferocity. You feel like you’re orbiting a star.

You feel his hand move down between your thighs and gasp when you feel his fingers prod at your drenched panties. “So wet,” he hums.

He hooks a finger around the fabric and pulls it to the side before sinking two thick digits easily into your aching cunt.

“Din—” you whine, burying your face into his neck as he curls his fingers to stroke the spot that makes your legs shake.

He loves when you use his name. The sound of it falling from your lips in such reverence gives him a high better than the finest spice credits can buy.

“I can feel how close you are already, cyare,” he murmurs, using his thumb to slowly circle your clit, “all this just from watching me fuck my fist?”

You whimper and nod against his neck. He hums appreciatively as he continues to finger you, drawing you ever closer to ruin.

“It’s your turn, sweet girl, come for me now.”

You do, clinging to him as pleasure overflows from your core and floods your nervous system. Your lower half locks up, legs spasming as he works you over the waves. He coos soft praises into your ear and you still in his arms, panting at the strain of your orgasm.

He runs his hand up and down your back in a comforting motion, ensuring you feel safe here. You lift your head from his shoulder, eyes still closed, and press your lips to his once more. There’s that sweet, gentle breeze — the hazy post-orgasm kisses that warm you from the inside out.

“Keep your eyes closed for me,” he murmurs, shifting out of the pilot’s chair with you still wrapped around him. He reaches for his cape from the neat pile of his belongings in the corner and drapes it over the floor of the cockpit. Then he lays you down gently on top of it. You throw your arm over your eyes, sighing contently as he kisses down your sternum and belly. He taps the side of your thigh and you lift your bum so he can pull off your panties. Your legs fall open and he takes a moment to admire the mess he already made there, your inner thighs glistening with slick and your pretty pussy swollen and begging for more attention.

He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee, moving down and nipping at your soft flesh, before delving between your thighs like he’d promised.

Taglist: @holding-on-to-starwars @thesithformerlyknownaskenobi @zinzinina @keeper0fthestars @readsalot73 @adancedivasmom @saradika @dinsangelx @dance-dance-sage-revolution @dumplinshee @c4psicle @deadhumourist @littlemisspascal @spideysimpossiblegirl

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x yn #din djarin x you #din djarin x female reader #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x yn #the mandalorian x female reader #star wars fanfiction

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lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks · 2 years

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okay so I watched Morbius, Sonic 2, and Batman today with my irl pal @duran-duran-less-official and those last two were both great and there's not much else to say, everyone already knows that the Batman is excellent and you should watch it, and if you liked Sonic 1 you'll love Sonic 2 even more, if you didn't like Sonic 1 you probably won't care for Sonic 2

but if you're on the fence about going to see Morbius my recommendation is mmmaybe if you have like a coupon or something? (like I did, because that's the only way I could afford to see three movies in one day, triple feature day babyyy) or just wait to stream it because I assure you it really isn't worth the cinema price but also it wasn't terrible

Morbius spoilers ahead (not that there's a lot to spoil it's pretty basic)

at the very least, I was somewhat entertained, Jared Leto's acting was surprisingly fine if a bit uninteresting, the love interest is boring, has no backstory, no motivations other than being unexplainably ride and die for Morbius, and they have zero chemistry

MATT SMITH ON THE OTHER HAND

I'm partially convinced they cast Jared Leto as a desperate attempt to have his white hetero fuckboy energy drown out Milo's INCREDIBLY gay chemistry with Morbius (spoiler alert they failed), Matt Smith fuckin' carried this movie, the man was born to play a villain, and sony are cowards for trying to no homo them with the obligatory random hetero makeout sesh in act 3

he wanted them to elope together bruh 😩

also this movie had a lot of influences from other vampire movies which shouldn't be a bad thing but all it did was remind me that I could be watching a better vampire movie right now

like if this film came out at the same time as Underworld it probably would have hit better, it has a lot of the same Vibes and the poor cg would be excusable

and Milo constantly whispering Miiichaaeeel is a peak Lost Boys reference and also really doesn't make the gay subtext any less gay

the cg was terrible a lot but also some of the effects were really fun and the vampire face was hit and miss (I LOVED the parts where it came out for like a second when he was emotional, like just a flash of teeth and eyes before he got control again I could eat that shit up) I liked the whispy flying effects, they made no sense but looked super dope

also yeah the story is pretty meh, it's like they had all the pieces for a really cool movie and got a toddler to put them together, a lot of stuff just didn't really make sense, some scenes were kinda unclear, the fights had moments of cool interspersed between a fuckton of shaky cam and bad cg, and honestly there should have been way more focus on the vampire stuff, and Morbius and Milo's relationship, and less of the medical stuff and the shitty love interest, or at the very least they could make the medical stuff more interesting because the first act dragged so much, Milo's more consistent presence in the third act is what really made the movie worth seeing tbh

the whole bit where Morbius is testing his powers and timing how often he has to drink blood before he loses control should have been a lot more engaging like I WANTED to be invested, but it just felt super lazily done

also the love interest (if you're wondering why I'm not using her name it's because I don't remember it she made that little an impact) at one point gets knocked over by a thug, passes out, and then is taken to hospital and intubated?? she was definitely not injured enough for that to make sense, it would have been way more interesting if Morbius seriously wounded her by accident on his rampage, at least then it would add extra weight to the scene where he refuses to give the treatment to Milo because he doesn't want him to hurt someone he loves (perhaps insinuating he might kill their doctor/father figure by accident which would then make it hurt much more when Milo kills him deliberately later in the movie)

so tldr, don't pay cinema prices for this, but maybe check it out for Matt Smith's performance alone, he was a lot of fun

and I would absolutely read fanfic exploring Morbius and Milo's relationship more, I was left VERY unfulfilled

#lula's thoughts #morbius

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yandere-wishes · 3 years

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MONSTERS

👹 Yandere Ryomen Sukuna x Reader

👹Summary: Monsters aren’t born they're made, but Sukuna stumbles across the rare exception...

👹Warning: dehumanization, mention of gore, blood, slight dub-con mentioned in passing, death, past trauma, and abuse

👹 Edited: By the lovely @tealyjade-libran !

👹 Wordcount: 2,480

👹Alternative Tittle : If Roxanne ( from the Police song) lived in ancient Japan.

👹First Jujutsu kaisen fic! I hope you guys like it, please let me know your thoughts! Likes and reblogs appreciated!

Monsters were made.

Slowly created as once blazing ideals, withered and died under harsh strokes of reality. Stitched together with broken promises and the ashes of rotting memories.

Monsters were made

whisked into a role they once dreaded, once feared. Beaten into the role of the villain, the reprobate, the sinner.

If anyone ever asked Sukuna when was the exact moment he turned his back on the laws of "good" and "evil", shedding his human skin to regrow a pelt of hate and destruction,

He would simply answer, "Never".

Because skin is skin no matter how much it decays. Even if the epidermis turns into a rotting orange shade, littered with eyeballs and teeth that shouldn't grow there.Even if the blood from all those he's slain has finally stained his dermis, tainting it in a permanent crimson that all the waters of Lake Biwa could never wash off. Even if his hypodermis is no longer made of fatty tissue but rather spiritual energy sucked from the atmosphere. It's still skin, the same old skin he was born with.

Sukuna had never shed his skin, he'd only perfected it, enhanced it, molded it into its perfect form, until he was no longer held back by foolish human limitations.

He'd never been "reborn" only recreated; only perfected.

Spike, talon and teeth covered arms sprouting from oozing, bleeding scars, charred over by begriming infections that burned worse than the strikes he'd endured as a child. Knuckles and bones cracking over and over and over again until they grew as solid as the rocks that were thrown at him when he was all too little to understand the malice behind the insults and threats. Breaking until they could break no more, until they'd become strong enough to split a boulder with a mere flick.

There had come a time when he'd given up licking his wounds, leaving them to be kissed by the mold-covered worms who left an urticating sensation he'd soon come to associate with victory. Rotting flesh growing covered in thick layers of black tar tattoos that hid every cut he'd endured when he'd once been too weak.

Monsters were created from quarter truths buried neck-deep in fables that snipped like red-eyed scorpions.

Until the blood dancing through their veins was as black as the void they now called home.

Sukuna knew the exact moment he realized he was a monster. The day he realized he liked the crunch of skulls beneath his feet, the pitiful spark in mortified eyes staring at the heavens for a scrap of mercy. Mangled mouths barely held together by fractured jaw bones, uttering prayers and pleas that died in the scorching air.

Sukuna knew he was an abnormality, patched together by broken heirlooms and shattered family traditions. Sitting on a throne made from skulls of those who thought they could ever kill him.

You can't kill a monster, for you can not kill that which was never born.

You can't slay something made from good intentions with malevolent methods, something so vile that it might actually be pure. At the end of the day, no monster really admits that it is a monster, a nightmare that should have never existed.

Yet...

Tattered hearts and cruel orbs are never quite enough. No monster is complete until they dive off that last edge, plummet into the sea of nothingness, and finally, finally break their souls on the spiked soil. Monsters, spirits, curses any malicious being that had been mended together like a half-done ragdoll was not complete until they truly let go. Until they erased all the former humanity that they had been born with. Until their eyes reflected nothing, no emotions, no malice, no want, no need. Just the absolute emptiness.

The void in all its glory.

that was the symbol, the true markings of a real monstrosity. The void that took over their existence, that had replaced every inch of their former self. Only then could it be said that you were above all other beings, the true perfection of this world.

There are worse things created than monsters, things that are made from nothing and everything. Things above "Yin" and "Yang". Things that have no scrap of humanity, monstrosity, or anything in them.

Things that are just empty.

So maybe -just maybe- that's why when Sukuna's rotting orange eyes landed on the epitome of emptiness, a...girl, whose face was sculpted to disreflect emotions and intents. Someone who was the void of darkness itself. The true personification of nothingness.

His heart -for the first time in countless centuries- began to throb.

a truly dead face swarmed by a sea of buzzing ants, chasing their routine happiness. Smiles of delight and carelessness carved on their aging faces with sunlight knives and the melody of golden coins. The lust for life leaking from every pore of their bodies.

With every face being a carbon copy of each other it was no wonder yours stood out.

There was a silver chain of attraction, dragging Sukuna towards the village girl. Not love, never love, the king of curses was beyond certain, that neither you nor he could feel such a honey-laced sensation. It was more like....something. Something paranormal, inexpiable. Some magnetic force outside of everything's control.

It was easy enough to explain why he liked you. Why you stood out from the other insects of this middle-of-nowhere-village.

You had dark matter for blood and dead seas for brains.

Your eyes radiated an endless abyss. Making others shy away from your lifeless gaze. Scared to look into the void in fear that it may respond.

You were a thrown away doll,

A living dead,

A dying star,

You were the daughter of the number zero,

The monster that had no maker nor mother.

Something not born nor created.

Just an entity that roamed the earth, with no desire nor hope, no wish nor dream. Not leaving, not dying, just existing in the space between today and tomorrow.

There'd been no need for pleasantries, for hiding behind ghostly tree branches and frozen windows. There'd been no need to kill or ravage for you. No competition to eliminate, because no one ever came near you. Humans don't like what they can't explain, Sukuna knew that all too well.

Sukuna watched from a close enough distance to almost touch. Lingering around like a phantom begging to be noticed. Orbs trailing over you, but never approaching. Until one day he'd just stood still. Waited for you to turn your head just a fraction to the left, just to see him in all his menacing terror. To finally notice the clawing, crawling sensation that had been creeping up your spine like a hoard of spiders.

And when your dead eyes did finally land on him. Sukuna could swear that his breath hitched in his throat for the first time in his seemingly endless life.

You weren't human. Humans didn't have hollow faces or marbles for lips.

You weren't a curse. Curses didn't lack venom dripping from their souls.

You were something better than a monster. You were the divinity of monstrosity, the void itself. Black holes for eyes, answerless paradoxes for hands, and an endless maze where your torso should have been.

Exploding suns danced around you, burning, burning, till they died out, leaving behind no trace that they once lit up the universe.

The space after the end, that's what you were.

Perfect, to Sukuna you were perfect.

You hadn't run, hadn't screamed, hadn't even bothered to talk. You didn't care about him, couldn't care about him. That's what made him want you, made his mouth salivate with the thought of your flesh between his teeth.

That night the world stood still, as Sukuna's claws penetrated your flesh like twirling needles. You were as light as a feather. You weighed nothing, were nothing. All so easy to pluck and throw about. You never made a noise when your body collided with the bamboo walls, just letting gravity and Sukuna play a twisted ball game with your lump of a body.

You hadn't protested when he violated you. As his lips bit every inch of your body raw. For some unearthly reason that even the gods couldn't understand, would never want to understand, you had found the Curse's violent actions rather...adoring. Taking every slap and slash with the earnest pride of a small child getting praised for a day of relentless chores. letting the dawn-tinted-haired monster adorn your body in blue and purple jewels. It felt right, in a pathetically, nauseating, twisted way...it just felt right.

It was disastrous, sure, but it was right. Like two universes crashing. Destroying each other with every kiss and every bruise.

But...

For the first time in your meaningless life, you had truly understood what "happiness" felt like.

For the first time in his endless life, Sukuna had truly understood what "intimacy" felt like.

///

Was it wrong to kiss you? For a fraction of a second Sukuna hesitated, blood tinged lips hovering millimeters away from your own stone-set ones. The moon's cursed rays acting like an unnoticed barrier, keeping two things out of each other's grasp. His lips curled back revealing two rows of knife-like teeth. The last resort, a final hope that you'd run away, that you'd act somewhat normal. The king of curses, the evil among men, didn't mind your lack of regularity. He didn't mind how you leaned into every bitter strike, every painful display of fading affection . He adored how you merely giggled as he slashed open your uncharged skin, creating slits for your blood to spill through, onto his waiting tongue. He admired your lifelessness, the way you radiated death.

Oh, how you filled him with a startling aftershock every time he touched you. Every time his tongue lapped at your bleeding skin he'd feel the sort of electric shocks that came after the storms had passed. Your body had no shape, it molded to his touch, turning his favorite shades of red, with just a little pressure.

But sometimes, in fleeting, endless seconds. He wished he had a name for what you two were. You weren't his per se, you could never be his. Being his would indicate that he cared about you, or heck even loved you and that could never be true. The king of curses did not love, nor care. He merely tolerated you; you fascinated him, that's all.

It had been many moons since he first found you in that no-name village. Months upon months since you'd been by his side. You'd watched as he'd destroyed cities, helped him even. Eyes never shedding a single tear. Mouth never uttering a single protest.

The two of you had become the best, the King of curses and the Queen of nothingness. With the dying speed of laboring bees, Sukuna had carved himself inside of you. Twisted emptiness into flower-covered destruction. Into molten gold lava.

Leaving you with wounds that were stuck in a cycle of healing and opening. Until they began to harden like his. Until the need for spilled blood lingered on your tongue like the burn of boiled tea. Until under your nails were coated in a decaying crust of dried blood. Sukuna hadn't turned you into a monster, he'd simply showed you the powers that came with your apathy. With a heart as torn and cold as yours, it was a shame to let it go to waste.

"You're not half bad," his tone is never approving. It's always laced with a strictness that keeps you nailed into place. His words are oxymorons sounding like praise, but once you peel back the lather layers they're just taunts in disguise.

You don't answer, words die on your tongue as quickly as they are born. Sukuna can't even remember what your voice sounds like outside of small whispers in heat filled nights.

However, to the two of you, things like that didn't matter. Your lack of being even semi-alive and Sukuna's endless abuse had become a norm for the two of you. Where else were a two-faced monster and a lifeless girl going to find love anyway?

Sukuna was all you had, all you ever had. You'd die for him, kill for him, turn into anything for him. Because he gave you life.

A purpose to life, made out of raging fires and endless screams. A life fabricated from the pain and suffering of others. That was what the king of curses had given you, all wrapped in a human skin parchment. Maybe that's why all logic withered away the first night he kissed you, maybe from the first second that you sensed his presence you had finally gained a reason to be alive.

///

Whoever said the end of the world was beautiful? Whoever said the final days would be bright and glowing and pure?

It's just a blaze of stray flames and red crystal droplets that may or may not be your blood. Funny, Sukuna had always thought that your blood would be as black as the moonless sky, not a mundane red like everyone else's. He'd expected a grander death from you. Some sort of black hole opening to swallow the world whole. Not just another corpse motionless in a pool of their own blood.

Although he's not one to talk. His own 'death' is lingering on the horizon. Sukuna's head tilts back looking for the flashing jujutsu sorcerers.

"S-sukun-a..."

He smirks, fangs sticking out at odd angles. Your voice is sweet, for the first time in forever he'd even dare say it held some semblance of emotion.

What that emotion is, he doubts he knows or even really cares. He'd long since stopped trying to identify all those "feelings" and their associated names.

His orange eyes lock with your fading orbs, one last time. No, not the last time, just the final time in this lifetime. He's sure he's going to see you again. In any other life, Sukuna knows he'll be able to recognize you despite whatever flesh suit you'd be wearing.

"Shh little one," he's halfway gone before he finishes his sentence, leaving you to relish in his memory in your final moments. "We'll see each other once more, someday in another life..."

His four eyes lock on the approaching sorcerers. He finds it humorous how desperate they look. How alive and ready they seem, such a stark contrast to your ever lifeless face and dead eyes, it repulses him.

"Or maybe in one of the circles of hell."

The flames encircling his fingers remind him of the heat your body radiated in the dead of night. The crack from bones hum as they meet his knuckles, flash memories of your days wasted together doing nothing and everything.

The two of you will meet once more, he's sure of it. After all...

Monsters never die.

How could something that was never even born in the first place, ever die?

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blossom-hwa · 3 years

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Time and Time Again - CHANGBIN

I cannot believe this is finished??? I feel like I say this every time but genuinely I didn’t think this would get done until maybe bin’s birthday in August but I somehow finished it the second day of January?? Anyway, I really loved this (the concept LITERALLY came to me in a dream), and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it :)

(The idea that prompted this response to a @quillstarters challenge is the same one that inspired this story :D)

Pairing: Changbin x gender neutral!reader

Genre: fluff, angst, reincarnation!au, soulmate!au

Triggers: death, mentions of suicide, blood (nothing graphic)

Word Count: 10.8k

A vengeful god curses one hundred lifetimes of your love.

SKZ Masterlist

In your first life, the life that starts it all, your mother knows magic.

She’s a healer, one whose patients come from all walks of life, all over the world. From that first lifetime, you remember the heavy, comforting smell of dried herbs, the softness of her hair tickling your face, the shimmers of magic emanating from her practiced fingers into bubbling pots.

You sort of remember a father, hazy memories of a smiling man who wasn’t home very often but when he was, liked to pick you up and swing you around the room. He isn’t around by the time you’re six, maybe seven, though.

You know not to ask about it. The first time you did, your mother’s face just turned sad, an awful sort of sad that looked more like regret and repentance and anger and desolation. It takes a few more slip ups, but eventually you learn to ignore your curiosities. For though your mother never outright dismisses them, they upset her, and you never get a straight response.

Until the god arrives.

They appear in a shower of blinding light. Cold, white sparks burst into brilliant rainbows that fade in the air. You watch, mesmerized, even as your mother drags you away.

The god is beautiful. Fine, androgynous features, red eyes as soulful as song, lush locks of hair that tumble around their shoulders. But it is the severity in their face, as well as the bloodred bow and the bone-tipped arrow nocked in their hands that tell you who they are.

“You hid yourself well, disciple of Hekate.” Cupid’s beautiful lips curl in a mocking smile that doesn’t even attempt to disguise the anger in their eyes. “Eight years. I applaud you.”

Three slow, ominous claps echo loudly in the room.

You look up at your mother, heart about to leap out of your chest. Her face has gone pale, devoid of color. It only scares you more.

Cupid’s eyes flicker to you, clutching your mother’s skirts like a toddler. They freeze you in place. “So she never told you.”

Told me what?

“You never wondered where your father was, child?”

All the breath stops in your throat.

My father?

The god shakes his head disapprovingly. “It’s the least you could have done, sorceress.”

“What would you have me do?” Your mother’s voice brims with desperation and anger – though aimed at whom, you aren’t sure. “How could a child ever understand?”

“You should never have made the mistake in the first place.”

Understood what? Your eyes flit between the god and your mother. “Mother?” you whisper, tugging at her sleeve. “Mother, what do they mean?”

The story spills out in broken fragments. Your father had a liaison with your mother and she found she was pregnant with you. She loved him, but he didn’t want to stay. So she dabbled in forbidden magic. Gave a love potion to a man who did not care for her.

You were born. He realized, eventually, what she had done. Then he left, leaving you without a father.

You can’t even try to speak when the story is over. It feels as though you can’t breathe, can’t feel, can’t see anything beyond the god’s blood red eyes. Fingers cling to your mother’s skirts numbly as you attempt to process the flow of words that just passed through your ears.

Dimly, you register your mother pulling free from your hands to kneel on the floor. “Do with me as you see fit,” she whispers.

“With you?” Cupid laughs. The sound tears at the silence in the room. “What use would that be? No, I think your child will pay for your crimes.” They pin you under their gaze. “Yes, I see many lifetimes of pain in these eyes that would suffice.”

You don’t understand. You can’t understand. What does the god want with you? What have you done to anger them? It was your mother who committed the error, not you. Why must you pay for it? Your heart pounds faster and faster as their eyes refuse to waver.

“Yes.” They nod, finally satisfied. “A heart broken one hundred times will pay for your crime.” Cupid lifts their bow and arrow, aiming at your heart.

Your mother’s head snaps up. “You would condemn my child’s love to centuries of turmoil?” Her voice shakes with barely controlled anger. “You would punish my child for my mistakes? Take me instead!”

Cupid’s cruel eyes flicker between you and her. “Love is hardly fair, as you should well know,” they snarl. “By meddling in my affairs, you have secured your child’s fate.”

Their gaze fixes on you with the intensity of a thousand suns. You shrink under their glare, even as their eyes gain some semblance of softness. For a moment, it seems as though the god will take pity on you.

Then the arrow sinks into your chest, exploding into a shower of the god’s cold sparks. No blood flows but your chest throbs.

Through a dim haze of pain, as though they speak through water, you hear the god speak their final words.

“A hundred lifetimes will pass before I will allow your love to rest.”

. . . . .

It takes years, really, for the information to sink in. You don’t fault your mother entirely for her actions – raising a child alone is hard, you come to know as you grow older. But at the same time, you can’t find respect for a man who would abandon a woman he had a relationship with over the birth of a child. You can’t understand why your mother would love such a person, can’t quite understand love in general. You know you love your mother, of course, but what does such an emotion really mean?

You learn the meaning at age twenty in your first life when you meet Seo Changbin.

Your mother rushes into the house that day, almost collapsing under his unconscious weight. You immediately zero in on the huge gash on his leg that’s still leaking blood, despite the makeshift bandage, and start pulling down the necessary salves and potions.

He doesn’t wake up for a week. Other patients filter in and out of the little hut as the days go by and you dutifully do your best to treat them all, gently treating scrapes and brewing tonics. There’s something about the man lying unconscious and feverish at the back of the hut, though, that draws you in like a moth to a flame. Day by day, you sit by him when you can, wiping the sweat off of his forehead with cool cloths, forcing brews down his throat and dabbing creams onto his leg to fight the infection.

He doesn’t look like one of the gentlemen that sometimes come to town. He doesn’t seem like he has the stately grace of Hwang Hyunjin, the lord’s heir, nor does he exude the cold elegance of Choi Chanhee, the magistrate’s son.

So this man is probably a commoner, if your deductions are correct. But you know almost everyone in the village – they’ve all come to the healer’s hut at some point and met you – and this boy’s face is new. You don’t recognize him, not at all.

You wake up to a soft crash in the middle of the night, then the sound of a loud curse. For a moment, you lie back down on your pillow. Probably Mother.

Then you sit bolt upright. That was a man’s voice. Not your mother’s.

Thieves?

Then you realize.

He’s woken up!

Large, terrified eyes glow in the flickering light of your candle when you enter the healing ward, carefully holding your hands in a purposeful gesture of surrender. “Hello,” you say, trying not to fixate on the beauty of the boy’s eyes. “My name is Y/N. My mother found you in the forest with an infected wound and brought you to our home for treatment.”

He glares at you, still distrustful, but speaks. “How long have I been here?”

“Almost a week.”

The boy visibly tenses. “One week?”

“Yes.” You step forward. “And I would advise you not to leave for at least another two, given the condition of your leg. Wherever you’re going, if you go now, the infection will kill you before you get far.”

“How long will I have?” he asks.

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you suicidal?”

For several tense seconds, you stare at each other, neither backing down. Finally, the boy lowers his gaze. “Fine,” he says, the fight leaving his voice. He smiles a little, apologetically. “I’ll stay. Thank you for treating me.”

“You’re welcome.” You help him back onto the cot. “Now try to sleep. I’ll come back to check on you in the morning.”

Just before you fall asleep, you think of large, brown eyes and petulant lips. For some reason, they make you smile.

. . .

His name is Changbin, you come to learn after several days of pained grunts, spilled salve, and muted conversation. He won’t tell you where he comes from, but a name is far better than nothing. At least you have confirmation that he isn’t a local, and he smiles too much for you to suspect him as a murderer.

That would be unpleasant.

And Changbin is the opposite of unpleasant. He has this smile, a smile that no matter how small, is bright enough to light up the room. He’s so smart when it comes to life but he’s also a little dumb, really, telling bad jokes that make you roll your eyes but laugh anyway. He snorts when you tell your own stupid stories and insulting jokes and as a result, you think of more and more for him, more tall tales and bad puns just so you can hear that beautiful laugh that sounds like a cross between wedding bells and a pig’s snort.

He stays for your recommended two weeks, then another, and another. Your mother doesn’t mind, only smiles at him like he was her own son. Changbin isn’t useless, after all – he helps you tend to the herb garden, chops wood for the fire, and is receptive to the eventual lessons you give him on the basics of healing.

(And if you stare at his muscles when he lifts heavy pots over the fire, what of it?)

The boy your mother found so many weeks ago in the woods lights up your life in a way you’ve never experienced before. Even though it makes you feel guilty, sometimes you’re glad that Changbin injured himself in the forest. Otherwise, you might never have met the boy who sits with you shoulder to shoulder on the bank of the river that runs through the woods, laughs ringing through the trees.

“Y/N,” he says on one of those quiet days by the river. When you look up from your feet dangling feet in the swift current and when you look up, you find Changbin staring at you with something so soft, so deep in his gaze that you can’t decipher it.

(It makes your heart thump.)

“Hm?” You pull your feet out of the water, feeling almost shy as you meet his eyes.

“Have you ever been kissed?”

When Changbin kisses you that afternoon under a green canopy of leaves, golden light showering his dark hair and tanned skin, you can’t think. There are no thoughts of anything in your head (and certainly none of Cupid’s curse) except the euphoria of his lips against yours. With his mouth pressed softly to yours, you feel like you’re flying, drifting on the breeze without a care in the world. It’s bliss, pure bliss.

Your mother knows when you walk back into the hut, suppressing an uncontrollable smile. Her gaze remains carefully neutral for the rest of the day, but when Changbin has gone outside to chop wood, she speaks. “You know about the curse.”

Dread mixes with the bliss in your heart. Your head hangs over the herbs you’re grinding. “Yes, Mother.”

“Darling, look at me.” She turns you around, and you see the tears building in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

There’s bitterness in your chest and mouth, tingeing the tip of your tongue, but this is your mother, the woman who bore you and cared for you alone for so much of your life. Though angry words rise in your throat, they never make it past your lips.

“It’s okay, Mother.” You brush the tears away, valiantly holding your own back. “I can’t blame you for a mistake you made in the name of love.” Blind, blind hope rises in your chest. “Maybe the god forgot. Maybe they will have mercy.”

Your mother just looks at you with dreadful eyes, eyes haunted by the knowledge that your words will prove false. But Changbin’s already coming back inside and the fluttering happiness in your heart from seeing him expels all negative thoughts from your mind.

One year passes in domestic bliss. Your mother never brings up the curse again, and you push any thought of it to the back of your mind. Changbin’s kisses do much to dispel any worries of yours, anyway.

Late one night, curled in a blanket next to the fire, Changbin tells you the reason he came. “I left because of a family dispute,” he says, almost ashamedly, staring into the flickering flames. “I had a falling out with my father, and he told me to leave. Even though I knew he really didn’t mean it, even though my mother pleaded with me to stay, I… I left anyway.”

You hold him closer under the blanket, comforting him with your warmth. In the light of the fire, his eyes look ghostly against the dark.

“I’m telling you this now because I want to go back.”

Your heart freezes.

Back? He wants to go back to his village, go back home… and leave you behind?

But Changbin’s smiling now, slightly. It settles your heart a little – he couldn’t speak of leaving you forever and smile in the same sentence, could he? You look at him, eyes pleading with him to continue.

“I want to go back to apologize,” he says, squeezing your hand. “I want to go back to make amends. But I’ll come back to the home I have here.”

“Can I come with you?” you can’t help but ask, even though you’re sure you know the answer.

He shakes his head, and your heart sinks. “No, I think this is something I have to do myself. But I won’t stay, I promise you that. I’ll come back home.”

“Promise?” you ask, voice barely a whisper over the crackling flames. Your fingers clutch his desperately. He has to come back, or you’ll go with him.

“I promise.” He lifts a thin silver chain from his neck, a necklace he’s never taken off since he arrived, and loops it around your throat. “That’s my promise, all right? I’m leaving this with you because I know I’ll return. And when I do…” He sweeps one of your hands out of the blanket and places a gentle kiss on it. “I’m going to marry you.” A note of uncertainty enters his gaze. “Unless you… uh, unless you don’t want to?”

You tug your hand out of his and punch him in the arm. “Are you stupid, Seo Changbin?” you ask over his yelps of mock pain. Eyes turning shy, you smile. “Of course I do.”

Your heart explodes in bliss when he kisses you, the fire’s warmth dancing on his lips.

. . .

“No more than two months,” he promises you the day he leaves. “I’ll come home.”

He keeps looking back and you keep waving as he starts out into the forest, green leaves beginning to shroud his path. The last you see of him is his bright smile as he disappears between the trees, the gentle pressure of his lips still a memory against yours.

One month passes, then two. You wait outside the hut eagerly every day, waiting for a sign of his returns.

Then another month goes by. And another. Winter settles in, heavy snow coating the forest in cold, white blankets.

“Perhaps he was held up,” your mother says, guiding your shivering body back inside the house. “He couldn’t travel in the winter, so he’s probably staying somewhere for the time being.”

You want to believe her. You really do, with all your heart and soul. But Cupid’s curse remains in the back of your mind, twisting and turning in its depths, whispering to you that Changbin is gone, that he will never return.

Winter has passed and a month of spring gone by before you decide to find Changbin’s family yourself. It takes several months because really, you don’t have any guide other than the name of his old village, but eventually, exhausted and almost losing hope, you find them.

A stooped woman answers the door with a confused smile on her lips. “Hello.”

“Um, hello.” You swallow. “Is this the Seo residence?”

“Yes, can I help you with anything?”

You pull the necklace from under the collar of your shirt. “Did Changbin come visit some months ago?”

For a single moment charged with hope, you see the widening of the woman’s eyes and believe that she will say yes, that Changbin came and is just having a hard time returning.

Then she shakes her head, and the world begins to crumble at the edges.

. . .

You stay just long enough to tell Changbin’s family who you are and what he set out to do, then flee back home as fast as you can. Tears stain the forest floor and when your mother opens the door to the hut so many months later, it only takes one look for her to fold you into her arms as you begin to cry on her shoulder.

He could be alive, you desperately hope. He could be somewhere, lost, unable to find his way back home. You know your Changbin would never break a promise to you, not if he could help it.

One year. Two years. Then three. The months pass with no sign of his return.

And you know, dead or not, he isn’t coming back.

It hurts. Everything reminds you of him, of Changbin, of what could have been and what should have been. You curse Cupid, cry for the god to come down so you can scream obscenities at them face to face, but they never answer your pleas.

The silver chain Changbin left you burns around your neck, but you can’t bring yourself to take it off. It’s the last thing you have of him, the only thing you have of him. You clutch it on your worst days, imprinting the tiny chain links into your palm when you fall sick, wasting away without a desire to live.

This is what it feels like, you think, delirious with fever, to have lost your entire world.

Your crying mother stays by your side as you wither, sponging your forehead, feeding you soup, whispering apologies into the blankets she covers you with. In moments of lucidity, you clutch her hand and tell her it’s not her fault. That you understand, now, what it means to love someone with the force of the universe.

Weeks pass in a feverish daze until winter seizes control of the earth. Numb with cold and sweating with warmth, you pray to the heavens above to release you from this pain.

The day you drift away is bitterly cold. You’re wrapped in at least five blankets, your mother shivering beside you as she grips your hands, trying desperately to warm them.

There is one brief moment of absolute clarity. You sit up, eyes wide, and cup your mother’s cheeks between cold, cold hands. “I love you, Mother.”

She kisses your forehead. “I love you too, my darling child.”

Her tears drip onto your cheeks. You don’t remember anything more.

In your first life, in the dead of winter, you die of a broken heart.

. . . . .

Your second life begins in a poor family, though happy. Sixteen years of life pass in ignorant bliss, with no knowledge of soulmates or vengeful gods. A week after your birthday, hope filling every step, you set off for the nearby village to try your skills at sewing. Luck paves your path and you find a kind mistress who values your quick fingers and eye for color. The village is bright and cheerful, you’re making money to send back to your family, and life is peaceful.

Then the dreams come.

The first vision is barely there, just a quick glimpse of green trees and a disappearing smile wedged between the scenes of your mind’s musings. You wake up, an uneasy feeling in your chest, but the image is already fading. You shake the discomfort away and get to work.

The second dream is longer, more vivid. You hear a voice, feel a gentle touch, see a mop of dark hair and a pair of gleaming eyes. In the moment, you feel happy, so happy in a way you’ve never felt before. It’s pure, this happiness, something so deep that your entire body feels warm when you wake, even as a chilling breeze seeps in through a crack in the window.

The dreams continue for several days, and each morning, you only grow more curious about the strange man who keeps wandering into your mind. Who is this man? you wonder as you sew, poking your fingers with the needle more times than you’d like to admit. Who is he, and why does he make me so happy?

Why does it feel like I should know him?

After a week of lovely, warm, but deeply unsettling dreams, it hits you all at once.

Needle in hand, you’re about to push the sliver of metal through a silk shirt, ready to begin embroidering the next leaf on a flowering vine. Taking a second glance at the embroidery you’ve already done, you blink in confusion.

This kind of vine doesn’t exist in your little village. In fact, you’ve never seen it before. But each leaf, each flower is so perfectly stitched that it doesn’t seem possible that you just made this up on the spot.

Oh.

Green leaves, sturdy trunks, water rushing down a river. Firm muscle, a flowering vine curled into a crown, fingers placing the circlet upon your head. A brilliant smile, bright as the sun, and a peal of snorting laughter that sounds like wedding bells.

One name hurtles through your mind, the name of the dark-haired, lovely-eyed boy who, by now, is a frequent visitor in your dreams.

Seo Changbin.

The needle embeds itself in your palm.

. . .

It’s hard to explain away your frazzled state when your mistress comes into the room to see you staring at the embroidered silk, palm dripping blood onto your clothes. Voice trembling only slightly (and you’re proud of yourself for that), you tell her that you just made a mistake, really.

Never mind the fact that the needle stuck itself far enough into your hand that you really have to pull it out, releasing a small spurt of blood that raises your mistress’s eyebrows so far they look like they’re about to jump off her forehead.

Shakily, you get back to work. Years of practice have steadied your fingers so that the stitches remain even, but as you sew, your mind races with memories. Memories of a trembling mother, a red-eyed god, a gaping leg wound festering on an apothecary table. Memories of boys you’ve never met in this life, a Hwang Hyunjin and a Choi Chanhee, but most importantly, a strong young man with sweet lips and a raspy, whining voice named Seo Changbin.

“Seo Changbin,” you murmur, testing the words between your lips. Just saying his name sends a rush of warmth through your chest and brings a small smile to your face.

The smile disappears, though, when you remember how the story ends.

Night brings dreams again, full, vivid scenes that begin with joy and happiness and warmth. You see your mother from another life, smell the comforting scent of herbs wafting through the air in the hut. You see your love, Changbin, feel his arms wrapped around your body, see the flush in his cheeks when you press your lips to his in a kiss.

The day he leaves is vivid, too. Sharp greens against a bright blue sky devoid of clouds, his smile disappearing into the forest as he begins his journey home.

A journey that you know he will never finish.

You know what will happen next and you don’t want to see it. You beg yourself to wake up, to stop these visions before your heart breaks, but sleep pins down your limbs and forces you to watch, to experience, to live the turmoil of emotions that flooded your heart those last few years of your life.

The next morning, you look so ill that your mistress forces you to take the day off, despite your pleas that you can work, you really can. The last thing you need is more sleep, after all, more time for vengeful gods to replay past lives for their leisure.

So after sixteen years of blissful ignorance, you know. You know of your love, you know of the curse, you know of the life that began it all. Sick emotions mix in your heart, syrupy and viscous and heavy, hope for a love as deep as your life before and terror for the heartbreak that will inevitably come.

And this time, you don’t have a loving mother who knows of your predicament.

You imagine Cupid laughing in the heavens as you face his wrath once more.

. . .

It happens by chance, purely by chance. On your days off, you sometimes like to visit the marketplace, see if you can find some fun trinket to send back to your family or to keep for yourself. Today is no exception.

Something makes you pause in front of a jewelry stand, a stand you don’t usually visit because your apprentice’s pay, though enough to support your family, doesn’t allow for expenses on jewels. However, a thin chain necklace catches your eye as you walk past.

It’s silver, shiny, not a hint of rust on the metal. A small black stone hangs as a pendant and you’ve never seen it before, but you can’t shake the suspicion that this is a necklace you wore in a past life.

A necklace Changbin gave you in a past life.

Uneasiness grows in your mind the longer you look at the chain. How did the jeweler even get this chain? Who took it away? You’re pretty sure you wore it until your death, and you don’t believe your previous mother, based on your dreams, would have taken it away.

You think you want it back.

Pointing at the chain, you look up at the jeweler. “How much is this?”

“Eight gold pieces.”

Your heart sinks. A day’s work gives you five silver pieces, and there are twenty silvers to a gold. Most of your money goes back home, leaving you with only a little pocket money of your own – certainly not enough for a piece of jewelry worth eight golds. Lips pressed thinly together, you nod before beginning to walk away.

A voice stops you, a familiar voice you’ve never heard before. Not in this life, at least.

“Wait!”

You turn around, slowly, slowly, as Changbin’s voice asks the jeweler, “Eight gold pieces, you said?”

It’s him, you think faintly. It’s really him. Different hair, skin a shade lighter, but his eyes… his eyes are the same. The absolute same.

He doesn’t look at you with any recognition, though, and he’s dressed in silk, indicating high status – at least, higher than yours. So you politely avert your gaze, trying to calm the pounding in your heart.

Eight golds appear on the counter, exchanged for a small silk pouch with the necklace inside. You’re about to walk away – why did Changbin stop you, anyway? There’s not a single chance he would give it to you – when the pouch appears in your line of vision, held by a familiar hand.

You blink once, twice, then look up from the pouch to the man holding it in his palm.

Only one thought runs through your mind.

There is no way, in two consecutive lives, that Seo Changbin would offer me the same necklace.

Your confusion must show, because he laughs. “It’s for you,” he says (and oh, gods, his voice makes you want to just sit and listen to it forever). “It looked like you wanted it, no?”

Thankfully, your vocal cords remember how to speak, even if your mind doesn’t. “I couldn’t possibly take such a gift, sir,” you say, stepping backward slightly. “You paid for it – it’s yours.”

“Then it is also mine to give. And I believe you would appreciate this much more than I.” He unstrings the pouch, slips the chain into his fingers. “May I?”

For any other person, you would have said a polite no before speed walking into the crowd, hoping to disappear between the stalls. Now, though, you stay in place, rooted to the ground under Changbin’s steady gaze.

You nod.

His hands are gentle in their feather-light touch against your skin, clasping the chain around your neck. The pendant hangs at the base of your throat, cold at first, but slowly warming with the afternoon sun.

It feels right.

“Thank you,” you whisper when he’s finished, sinking into a low bow. “Thank you so much.”

Changbin smiles, loosely taking your hand. He drops a butterfly kiss to your knuckles and you physically have to restrain yourself from gasping too loudly, because – oh, because –

The spot where his lips touch your skin sends warmth spreading throughout your body.

“It was my pleasure,” he says, still smiling. “My name is Changbin.”

I know.

“May I know yours?”

“Oh.” You smile, hoping your lips don’t tremble too much. “I’m Y/N.”

His smile widens at your words, making your heart flutter in shy embarrassment. “I hope to see you around once more, Y/N,” he says.

A sudden burst of courage turns your smile a little teasing. “Just once?”

Changbin’s laugh – it’s shy, it’s a shy laugh, your heart can’t take it – makes you want to melt into the ground. “Maybe not,” he finally says, ears red. “Maybe many times more.”

. . .

He keeps his promise of many times more, appearing again on your next day off, then again, and again. If possible, you seem to fall in love with him even more than you did in your previous life, his laughs tickling your heart, his smiles like sunshine against your skin.

Deep down, you know this won’t last. If Cupid took your love away so harshly in your last life, he won’t hesitate to do it again, possibly with even more malice. But Changbin is intoxicating, pulling you toward him like a leaf on the wind, forever fluttering in the breeze, only resting when the air does.

It’s not even just Cupid. At least before, you and Changbin were on equal footing – one a healer, the other a poor runaway. There was no status difference. Now, though, Changbin wears silk while you clothe yourself in homespun fabric, finer perhaps than a peasant’s, but homespun nonetheless. No matter how daintily you embroider the cloth with leftover threads from your work, it will never match up to the rich, gorgeous clothing of the nobles with whom Changbin must walk.

Such differences inevitably drive a wedge into a love that could have been.

It starts after you go to the market once, twice, three times, and Changbin doesn’t meet you at any of the stalls. It feels empty, walking around with no one by your side, and you’re just wondering if something’s happened when you receive a note written in your love’s handwriting, asking you to meet him at midnight where you first met.

He arrives a bit later than you, footsteps softly padding across the empty market. For a moment, you only stare at each other, faces lit just barely by the light of the moon.

Changbin breaks the silence. “I’m getting married.”

The words send a knife into your heart, but you try to ignore the pain. It was expected, you tell yourself, expected of someone with Changbin’s high status. The two of you could never end up together, not a sewing apprentice and a member of nobility. “I see,” is all you say.

For the first time since you’ve met, Changbin looks broken. It hurts your heart and you want nothing more than to hold him close until that expression disappears, but you can’t. You’ve barely even touched – you don’t have a right to hold him the way you’d like.

“I don’t want to be,” he says.

Your hands shake slightly with your reply. “Why?”

“Because…” Changbin’s voice almost fades into the silence. “I think I love you.”

His words should make you feel happy, should make fireworks burst in your heart the way they did when Changbin kissed you in your past life. And yes, a small part of you jumps for joy. But a larger part withers with disappointment, with pain, with the knowledge that none of this will come to good.

“Y/N.” His voice turns insistent. “Don’t you… don’t you feel the same?”

You swallow. Take a breath. “I do.”

A lovely brightness enters Changbin’s eyes, hope filling his face. You hate yourself for having to crush it. “But you have a duty to your family.”

“We can run away,” Changbin says, taking your hand. You want to melt yourself into his touch, rest in his warmth forever. “We can run, Y/N. We don’t have to stay.”

Only the greatest force of will allows you to pull your hand away. “I have a family, Changbin,” you say, trying not to focus on the light that’s fading out of his face with every second. “I have to support them. And you… you have a duty to the village.” You swallow. “We can’t run. It’s too selfish.”

He doesn’t blame you, you know. He understands what you’re saying, has probably already thought of it himself. Still, it doesn’t stop pain from breaking the glass in his eyes, gaze becoming fragmented as he nods once, twice. “I know. I just thought…”

Changbin never finishes his sentence. In fact, you never speak again. He walks you back to your mistress’s house that night, squeezes your hand once under the moonlight, then disappears back into the darkness.

And with that disappearance, he leaves your life forever.

Over the years, you hear stories of Changbin’s lovely partner, her flowing hair and vibrant face and pretty smile. You hear stories of how much they love each other, the children they have, how well they watch over the village together.

It doesn’t matter how much your heart hurts, you tell yourself every time you hear one of those stories. It doesn’t matter at all, not even when his wife commissions a dress from the shop you now own, years later. It doesn’t matter when Changbin comes with her and stands in the main room silently as you take her for fitting, and it doesn’t matter when his eyes linger slightly on you when you lead her back out.

You exchange no words that day, but you’re certain Changbin sees the black gemstone still resting at the base of your throat. He makes no obvious expression, but when his eyes flicker over it, their light dims the slightest bit.

In this life, there are no kisses, no hugs, none of the passion you shared in your first life. Instead, you love through vivid conversations, knowing smiles, and in the end, the barest brush of his hand against yours before he leads his wife out of your shop.

In the end, you never marry. Instead, you spend the rest of your life sewing until your eyes go blind, leaving you all too much time to contemplate everything you’ve lost.

Which is worse, you wonder, losing your love to death or to societal pressures and another woman? Which is worse, never knowing how Changbin suffered as he died, or knowing that he’s doing well without you?

Which is worse, having your love die in a land unknown, or having him live so close, yet so far away?

. . . . .

It continues, over and over again, endless cycles of living, remembering, loving. He’s a thief and you’re a merchant. You’re a shop owner and he’s a soldier. Both of you are orphans, living on the street. None of it matters, not gender, not occupation, not social status – no matter what, you end up apart.

With every lifetime, the dreams grow more vivid, as though to make sure you don’t forget a single instant of the love you experienced, the love you could never see to the end. You’d think that the lines between each life would grow blurred as each one passes, but they only grow sharper, more defined. It’s impossible to forget how many lives you’ve lived, not when Cupid forces each one to remain in your mind, endlessly playing in your dreams time and time again.

On your twenty-ninth reincarnation, you experience a month’s worth of dreams in your silken bed, the bed of a noble heir who can have nothing to do with the boy who stays by their side day and night as a bodyguard and nothing more. You wake up every night stifling screams resulting from twenty-eight lifetimes of broken hearts, muffled cries and tears that bring Changbin running into your room, asking if you’re all right, reminding you that you’re safe.

Physically, you agree. You trust Changbin entirely – he’s proven more than capable of protecting you after multiple attempts on your life – but mentally? Emotionally?

How can he protect you from a god’s wrath, a wrath he doesn’t know of, when you can’t even protect yourself from that same wrath you’ve known of for twenty-eight, soon to be twenty-nine lifetimes?

You try to harden your heart, speak to Changbin a little less, spend more time focused on your lesson books and less on Changbin’s lovely face, but it’s impossible, you find after several months of this forced silence. It’s impossible to ignore the allure of your guard’s lips, his entrancing eyes, impossible to ignore the gentleness of his strong, roughened hands guiding you through life.

But with every chaste kiss, with every stolen hug or brush of skin, you know, deep in your heart, that something will befall your love. Something will tear you two apart.

When he dies, stabbed in the chest by a traitor to your family, rage drives you to take the knife that fell out of your love’s hand and shove the blade into the attacker’s heart. It drives you to cry, to weep, to wail to the sky as Changbin’s skin grows cold, the remnants of his last “I love you” still hanging on his lips.

Watching your love die in front of you, you decide, is the worst punishment of all. Nothing, absolutely nothing could be worse than this, knowing that Changbin died because of you, for you, without a singular doubt in his mind as he did it because he knew you would do the same for him.

Moonlight streams through the windows, illuminating Changbin’s blank face and the blood on his chest. As people begin entering the room, pausing at the carnage next to your bed, you raise your head, tears still flowing down your face.

“YOU SELFISH GOD!” you scream at the cold moon, resisting the arms tugging you away from the body of your love. “YOU SELFISH GOD! I GAVE YOU TWENTY-EIGHT LIFETIMES OF MY LOVE, AND YOU WANT MORE?”

Someone’s speaking, trying to make you hear their words over the raging of your voice. You don’t care, violently wrenching yourself out of their grip to stay thrown over Changbin’s body, tears mixing with his blood. “COME DOWN AND FACE ME!” you gasp. “COME DOWN AND TAKE MY LIFE, DO ANYTHING, I DON'T CARE! FACE ME, YOU COWARD!”

Strong hands, too strong, containing none of the gentility Changbin used to show you, begin pulling you away. You thrash in their grip, still staring at the moon. “I WISH HE NEVER MET ME!” you scream as they drag you out of the room. Blood stains your nightclothes, sticky against your skin. “I WISH HE NEVER MET ME, NEVER DIED FOR ME, DO YOU HEAR?”

. . . . .

The god grants your wish.

. . .

You regret it more than anything in all of your now-thirty lives.

. . .

To know of your love, but to never experience any semblance of it in your entire life? To know of a certain Seo Changbin, but to never meet him, never know how he is, never see him once in over fifty years of living?

Torture.

. . .

From your sixteenth birthday, when you begin having the dreams, until your death well into your fifties, there’s only pain, endless pain, marred by a piece of disgusting hope that rests in your chest, a piece of hope that keeps you praying that you will see him just once in this lifetime, that you’ll know his face and he’ll know yours.

. . .

It becomes so clear as you grow older that you will never know the Changbin of this lifetime, if he even exists. You will never touch his skin, see his smile, bathe in the glory of his laugh. You’ll never kiss, never experience even the briefest joy of seeing his face.

But your heart hopes, anyway, even though your mind sees reason. It prays, refuses to accept the truth.

. . .

Hope, you decide, is a weapon. A weapon far deadlier than the sharpest sword or the heaviest club, a weapon wielded by only the most intelligent of tyrants.

. . .

Apparently, you go mad towards the end of this life. You can’t blame those who eventually put you in an institution, over fifty years old and withering away. They don’t know who Changbin is. They never will.

You never will.

. . .

You blame the dreams. If you didn’t know of your previous lives, if you didn’t know Changbin existed, you might have lived happily – well, maybe not happily, but you’d be content, at least. You wouldn’t be wishing you were dead every minute of your existence.

. . .

You die in that institution, supposedly of a wasting disease, but more accurately of a broken heart, a heart even more broken than the one Changbin left behind that first life when he never came back.

. . . . .

Your forty-sixth life is first one in which you end the love with death, not Changbin. Looking back, it was probably better for you, you suppose, because you didn’t have to feel the pain of losing your love. Maybe this was Cupid’s laughable attempt at some sort of mercy.

You loathe it anyway, loathe it almost as much as the lives – yes, plural by now, which automatically cancel anything Cupid tries to do to make up for it (if the god is even trying) – where you dreamt of certain sparkling eyes and a lovely smile but never met them face to face. It’s not quite as horrible, but nearly.

To know that your love had to deal with any measure of the pain you’ve felt for so long, the pain you wouldn’t impart on even your worst enemy, is unimaginable.

It’s ironic, too, considering your occupations in life. You’re a healer on the battlefield, wearing the strip of blue silk on your arm that denotes your immunity to the opposite forces. He’s a soldier on the same side, though he has no protection other than his skill from enemy swords.

You are sworn to heal. He is sworn to kill.

Isn’t it strange, then, that fate wills you to die first while forcing Changbin to live?

You weren’t supposed to be killed in war. Your healer status, that piece of blue silk tied around your arm, was supposed to protect you from enemy blades. But some unsuspecting enemy soldier, perhaps not seeing the blue amidst the dust of the battlefield or genuinely just not caring for the rules of war, drove their blade into your back as you knelt over a fallen man of your side.

Within minutes, you had succumbed to darkness. The pain of dying, the blade in your back wasn’t even the worst part.

All you could think, after all, as you lay there gasping, was that he would have to learn of your death from finding your body, that you wouldn’t even get to say a proper goodbye.

. . . . .

It’s a pitiful, desolate figure who sits on a clifftop fifteen lifetimes later, blankly staring at an expanse of open ocean, waves crashing against the rocks below, contemplating every single one of the sixty-one lives you’ve lived so far.

You married Changbin in this one, this sixty-first life. You married him for the first time in sixty-one lives, made your vows with him, kissed him under a shower of flower petals.

It didn’t change your fate, not even when, unable to have a baby of your own, you adopted your first, then your second child. It didn’t change anything, not when Changbin had a duty to this village that you couldn’t interfere with. It didn’t change anything, not when pirates came ashore and massacred the village population, killing your two children and half of the rest of your family.

Changbin threw himself from this very cliff, you remember, threw himself to a watery death rather than die at the hands of the pirates who came to raid the town so many years ago. He was brave to the last, fending off invaders even when countless others had thrown down their swords, and he never lived to see the defeat of the pirates whom he died fighting.

You hug your shoulders tightly, staring down at the waves crashing against the rocks. With all that’s happened to you over sixty-one lifetimes, who would blame you for tipping off the edge the same way Changbin died, albeit much less heroically? Who would blame you for giving up in this life, giving up in every life if you knew just how badly it would end every time?

“You’re right,” a rich voice sounds behind you, a voice that you once heard in person, many centuries ago. “Who would blame you? Not even I would.”

Your eyes slam shut, refusing to gaze into blood red. You don’t speak.

A sigh passes from the god’s lips, breath puffing softly. Where the air hits your neck, you feel your skin curdle with disgust.

“It’s no use not speaking,” he continues, a hint of amusement tinging his voice that makes your hands curl into fists. “I can hear your thoughts.”

A snarl twists your lips. “They must be very loud,” you snap, words dripping acid.

More silence.

“You hate me,” he finally says.

You breathe in, out, in, out. Calm, you tell yourself.

“Why wouldn’t I.”

A pause.

“Perhaps you can elaborate.”

For the first time since they appeared, you turn around, eyes blazing, to stare into the red gaze of the wrathful god who cursed you. “I would rather throw myself off this cliff,” you seethe, “than relive my lifetimes in front of you.”

Is it remorse that glitters in ruby eyes, pity that rests in their shadows? Whatever it is, it makes you smirk without mirth, lips curling without cheer as you turn back around to watch gray waves crash against the cliff. It doesn’t matter how a vengeful god feels after lifetimes of revenge. Apologies from the curser mean nothing to the spite of the cursed.

“I made mistakes,” the god says simply. “I acted rashly. I should not have taken my anger out on you, and certainly not with so harsh a punishment.”

You want to snort. “I am ever grateful you realize after sixty-one lifetimes of wrath,” you say, acid practically burning a hole in your tongue. “Now quit with the blather.” You don’t care that you’re staring at a god who could smite you down a thousand times over with a single flick of their finger – they’ve already hurt you too much for it to matter anymore. “After so many years of never answering my calls, you finally come, unbidden. Tell me why you’re here, or I will jump off this cliff.”

“I’ve come to offer an exchange,” they say. “It is impossible to erase a curse, but I can impart it on someone else.”

In a flash, you’re standing, staring the god dead in the center of their bright red eyes. “You said you could read my thoughts,” you snarl. “Tell me, God of Love, what I’m thinking right now.”

They raise an eyebrow. “You don’t want it,” they say calmly, though surprise coats their words. “You have no one, then, on whom you would impart this curse?”

“When I tell you,” you snap, “that I would not wish this curse on my worst enemy in all of my sixty-one lives, I do not lie. That –” you take a breath – “that is how much you have hurt me.”

Astonishment shows itself in the god’s gaze. “I don’t understand,” they say, for the first time looking bemused. “I have given you everything, dying first, dying last, watching him die in front of you, never seeing him in a lifetime –”

“You don’t need to remind me,” you cut him off. “I know it very well.”

“Then you would not even give this curse to me?” they ask. “Not to the god who has shown you so much pain?”

That almost gets you, almost. The desire for revenge claws its way through your chest, begging to be released in a monstrous cry of pain, but you rein it in with a scoff. “For a god of love,” you say, turning back around, “you really understand nothing of it.”

More silence.

“I will leave you with two gifts,” the god finally says. “Two gifts to try and make up for what you have lost.”

You suppress another snort.

“Your love will remember you on your one hundred and first lifetime,” they continue. “When the curse is over, your love will remember you, will know how you have lived one hundred lifetimes without him.”

The words, acerbic with derision, fall from your lips without missing a beat. “Will I remember him, then, or will you take that away from me too?”

A short pause. The air seems to grow slightly warmer, as though the god has been angered, but it cools quickly. “You will remember him,” they reply, voice thinner with a tinge of frustration.

You smirk.

They clear their throat. “The second gift you will find when you return home.”

You give no response to that, only stare resolutely at gray waves, feeling the ocean spray tickle your skin. The god must disappear at some point, because when you finally turn around to return home, they’re gone. But once you enter your empty house, there’s something on your table, something that sparkles in the last glimmers of sunlight peeking through the window.

You pick it up, eyes narrowed, and almost immediately drop it.

A thin silver necklace, polished to shine, with a small black gem as the pendant.

Though there’s no way to prove it, you’re sure this is the very same piece of jewelry that Changbin gifted you so many centuries ago, two lifetimes in a row.

The chain trembles on your shaking fingers as you place it back down, carefully, so carefully, like it’ll explode any second. You go to bed that night wondering if the necklace will have disappeared by morning, but when you wake up after a fitful rest, it’s still there, glittering on the table.

You wear it for the rest of this lifetime, hiding it beneath your clothing so no questions are asked. And when you feel you will die soon, you carefully place the chain in a small box and bury it just outside your home.

You’ll find it in your next life. You’ll find it in the next, then the next, time and time again until the end of your hundred-lifetime punishment.

It’s a small comfort, that simple silver chain with the little black jewel, but it’s a comfort nonetheless, a piece of your love to carry with you until the end of your times. Even if it was given back by the god who cursed you.

. . . . .

Years trudge along, years of waiting and waiting and more waiting for the torture to end. More death, more illness, more societal pressure to drive you two apart. In five lifetimes, you die first. In the others, Changbin either leaves you to face the world on your own, or you never know him at all.

It seems that even though Cupid may have felt some remorse for your curse, that didn’t stop the god from finding new ways to hurt you.

At some point, the lives finally begin to blur together. There have just been too many. If you tried, you could probably piece them all together, work out the details of how the two of you lived and how you were ripped apart, but after seventy, then eighty, then finally ninety lifetimes of broken hearts, it becomes too painful to relive.

(As you near the ninetieth lifetime, if you’re lucky enough to be born to a family who cares, someone always comes running in for months to the tears that stain your cheeks through dream-filled nights. You must have helped send so many people to an early grave with the endless screaming they would wake up to on the nights you dreamed of particularly painful lives.)

There are two saving graces to this pain, and as much as you hate to admit it, they came from Cupid. The god never deigns to meet you again (something you’re grateful for), but their gifts keep you from losing all hope as you near the end, the blissful end of your punishment.

One, the necklace. In every lifetime, no matter how painful, no matter whether or not you find Changbin, you find the thin silver necklace from your previous life. And no matter how rusty the chain gets, how dull the jewel becomes after years of wear, it shows up shiny and polished the next time you find it.

Two, the knowledge that Changbin will recognize you that first lifetime your punishment is over. You don’t have to keep track of your lifetimes, don’t have to count them until the hundredth has come and gone, don’t have to live any unnecessary lives with the fear that Changbin will be taken away from you suddenly and horribly.

As much as you loathe saying it, these gifts give you the slightest bit of hope that keeps you going.

So you trudge through lives, living as a tailor falling for a shoemaker, a nurse who comes to love a bedridden patient, a rich socialite who wants to marry the son of your family’s sworn enemy (this one’s interesting, quite like Romeo and Juliet, really. In your next life, when you dream of it, you wonder if Cupid met Shakespeare after the playwright’s death and decided to have a sick laugh at your expense). Seventy passes at some point, then eighty, then ninety.

By your hundredth life, you aren’t entirely sure what number you’re on. You think it must be ending soon, what with all the dreams your seventeen-year-old self had to suffer through, but it hurts too much to pick them apart and count. When Changbin doesn’t recognize you, though, a student at the same university as you, you resign yourself to several more lifetimes of heartbreak. It’s too much to hope for at this point, too much to hope that you’re on your last cycle of punishment, that the next time you live, you will be able to love Changbin wildly, freely, without a care in the world.

The dreams come once more in your hundredth and first life. It makes you despair that your punishment isn’t over, not even now (because though you don’t dare to freely pray, hope still buries itself deep in your chest, allowing Cupid to wield it like the monster he is).

Cupid assured you on his second and last visit that you would remember Changbin when you met him, though. You don’t like it, but hope only grows when you recall his words. Blind, blind hope.

It’s a cold morning, bitterly cold, when you roll out of bed to go to work. Eyes blinking blearily, you fumble around the cabinets for a package of coffee before remembering you ran out yesterday.

Just my luck, you think, scribbling “coffee” onto the grocery list on your refrigerator. You shove the piece of paper into your pocket, hoping you remember to go shopping later for whatever’s on the list. Your roommates are out of town, so you can’t rely on them to get anything this time.

Bitter wind slashes at your face as you walk to the small café just down the street for your daily fix of caffeine. By the time you’ve reached the shop, your nose is already stiff with cold, and the steaming cup of coffee the barista presses into your chilled hands only briefly warms your skin before you have to step back into the cold.

The bus will be coming soon, you note, checking your phone for the time. Steps quickening, you bend your head into the wind and set off for the stop.

So focused on your destination are you that you don’t notice the person until it’s too late. You smack right into them, sending them lurching into a nearby pole. They fall to the sidewalk as you spew apologies from freezing lips, holding out a hand to help them up.

They take your hand, squeezing with a grip that seems a little too familiar to be coincidental. A familiar sensation of warmth, a lovely, dreadful warmth, spreads through your body, emanating from where the stranger’s hand touches yours.

You freeze, eyes hardly daring to look up and gaze into someone who might be Changbin, who might be the love of one hundred of your lifetimes. You don’t even know whether to hope it is him, because if it is, will he finally recognize you after so many cycles of pain? Or will this just be another love that ends in heartbreak?

Slowly, slowly, your gazes meet.

It’s him.

Lovely brown eyes, eyes that throughout twenty, fifty, ninety years of pain, have remain unchanged in their depth and gentleness, stare into yours. Your breath catches. The coffee in your hand drops to the ground.

It’s really him.

Belatedly, you realize he’s still on the ground and give a quick yank to pull him up. You try to apologize, both for hitting him and for the coffee that’s spattered onto his shoes, but your vocal cords won’t work. All you can do right now is stare.

He doesn’t recognize you. He hasn’t reacted to your touch, hasn’t given any indication that this is anything more than a chance meeting, an everyday occurrence where a stranger bumps into him (albeit a little harder than normal). You’re about to retract your hand, to force your vocal cords into giving an apology for smacking into him, but then he opens his mouth and speaks words you never dared to believe you would hear.

“It’s you,” he breathes, gripping your hand even more tightly, almost involuntarily, like he’s trying to keep himself grounded to the earth. His eyes, now wide with confusion and awe, search your face greedily. For what, you don’t know, but you’re doing the same, even though you’ve seen his face millions of times by now over a hundred lifetimes.

“It’s you,” he repeats once more, raspy voice breathless with emotion. “It’s really you.”

Finally, your throat manages to choke something out. “Changbin?” you try, words small and soft, conveying all of your disbelief in that one single word, that one single name. “Changbin?”

He says your name, then, says it once, twice, as he keeps staring into your eyes. It sounds like honey on his lips, sweet in a way that makes you heady with bliss, and only the biting wind keeps you rooted to the present, reminding you that this is real, this is not a dream, that this is real, completely real.

Slowly, naturally, one of your arms curls around his waist, just as his hands rise to cup your cheek. His fingers are cold against your bare skin but you lean into his touch, pulling him closer, closer, until your faces are only inches apart.

“It’s you,” Changbin murmurs, still as though he can barely believe it. “It’s really you.”

A strangled sound escapes your throat, something between a sob and a laugh all at once. “You remember,” you choke, eyes beginning to fill with warm, salty tears. “You remember, Changbin.”

He cups your cheek with an ungloved hand, cold skin brushing against yours with a gentleness that makes you want to melt. “I do,” he replies, voice almost cracking with emotion. “I’m only sorry I didn’t remember before.”

In your previous lives, time and time again, you kissed Changbin’s lips. It was always lovely, absolutely lovely, lovely in a way that made it feel like a field of flowers blooming in your chest, butterflies fluttering in your stomach. But there was always a lingering desolation on your part, a despair born of the knowledge that this love would not last, that Cupid would not allow you to see it to its natural end.

Today, Changbin’s lips taste of sunshine and honey, dew on green grass on a summer morning, the excitement of a first snow, nothing reminding you of a lingering heartbreak to come. You can’t even feel the bitter wind with him pressed so closely to you, lips molding against yours as his hands cup your cheeks.

The last walls on your heart crack down, walls formed with the knowledge of your hundred lifetimes of punishment. From the broken walls springs a new warmth, a sparkling warmth that you can’t even find the words to explain, a warmth that spills through your body and makes you feel full, happy, joyous in a way you’ve never felt, not once before in your hundred lifetimes of heartbroken love.

When you break away, tears are streaking down your cheeks. Changbin’s eyes glitter, too, but the smile on his face is radiant as he gazes at you.

Cupid’s punishment was cruel, you know, crueler than it had to be. It was harsh, evil, almost wicked in the pain he inflicted on you. But even though the vestiges of that pain still line the edges of your heart, it’s easy to ignore it in favor of staring at your love standing in front of you as a wobbly smile of the purest joy finally begins to curve your lips.

Is this real? you wonder to yourself. Is this truly real, your punishment finally ending, Changbin remembering who you are and the lifetimes you’ve shared? This bliss, this love, this warmth… it all seems too good to be true.

As though he can read your thoughts (and perhaps he can – a hundred lifetimes of love have probably given him a window into your soul, the same way it’s given you one into his), Changbin grins, vibrant, radiant, warm even in the bitter cold. “This is real,” he says, lovely lips curved into a brilliant smile.

“It is?” you ask, soft, wondrous, childlike, hardly daring to believe.

He brushes away a tear on your face, his thumb stroking your cheek with the gentlest touch. “It is,” he whispers. “As real as your love for me, and mine for you.”

Time and time again, you burned your heart for Changbin, burned it with the love you felt for him over one hundred lifetimes of a curse. Time and time again, you swore at love, swore at the god who inflicted the curse on you without so much as an afterthought until sixty-one lives had passed.

But now, as you crush Changbin close, fitting your lips to his once more, you push those thoughts to the back of your mind and lose yourself in a kiss finally free of pain.

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

(1 reblog = 1 slap in the face for Cupid fuck them)

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iamanartichoke · 3 years

Note

Another totally unprompted ask, on the assumption that you are definitely no longer in need of them… another thing I’m trying to work out about Loki characterisation in preparation for perpetrating fic torture on him is how suicidal the poor sod is most of the time. This is another thing I’ve seen referred to a lot but only in passing. Though obviously this is a pretty triggery topic, so ignore if you want.

I am always in need of totally unprompted asks, otherwise I just assume no one wants to talk to me lmao

So, hoo boy. I have been mulling over this for, apparently, three days now bc there's just ... there's a lot to unpack here. Putting under a cut for obviously triggery content and also for length bc fml.

In my opinion, the response to "how suicidal is Loki most of the time" is "very, but whether or not he wants to do anything about it varies from moment to moment" (see what I did there? I'll see myself out). In other words, I have always had a headcanon that Loki is consistently, passively suicidal. This is a headcanon that comes straight from TDW, bc I'm certain that Loki never had any intention of surviving their mission. And that could be a whole other post, really, but the point is that even though this is a TDW-centric headcanon, I have come to adopt it as applying to Loki in general as well, not just in those specific circumstances.

When I say passively suicidal, I mean that Loki is just sort of ambivalent about the value of his own life. He feels like he doesn't deserve to be alive, and feels like there's little point in being alive. Which - I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom, like, poor uwu emo Loki (and I kinda hate that I have to pause to disclaim that, no, I don't just have a fixation on Loki being depressed for funsies/the aesthetic/whatever); I think that this mindset stems from really complicated places that I'm not sure I can articulate, but I will try.

I view Loki as someone who suffers from a severe inferiority complex, and I feel like it stems from being abandoned as an infant. Loki's life started with a traumatic event and, even if he doesn't remember the event itself, the feelings he experienced stayed in his subconscious. Feelings of loss, of fear, of despair and abandonment, of suffering - these are all feelings that burrowed into his bones and lived there for his entire life, feelings that colored how Loki viewed himself as a person as well as how he compared to the people around him.

Keep in mind that Loki didn't know he was abandoned until the events of Thor 1, obviously. We don't really know how old Loki is, in human years, but I have always assumed that he and Thor were at least adults (not teenagers), maybe the equivalent of early twenties - and the reason I bring that up is because it means Loki made it all the way to adulthood carrying the weight of a trauma that he did not remember or even knew had happened, so to him, there was no real reason for how wrong he felt. There was no explanation for the feelings of loss, of neglect, of fear. So on top of struggling with those feelings, Loki was also burdened with the alienation that comes with wondering why one can't just be like everyone else, why one can't just "snap out" of depression, why one's sense of self-worth has always been lacking.

So imagine what it's like to grow up as Loki. He was traumatized as an infant. The trauma has been with him his entire life, along with the confusion/alienation of not understanding why he feels the way that he does, and then on top of that, his basic personality lends itself toward introspection and isolation, so he likely felt even further removed from Thor and from his peers. Loki's too smart for his own good, and he's got an enormous capacity to feel and I feel like this is a combination that works against him as much as it does for him, bc it probably means he spent a lot of time examining himself and identifying all of his perceived flaws - and then berating himself for said flaws.

People with depression are probably pretty familiar with the bully that lives in your head, the one who is always there to remind you that you're stupid, or ugly, or that nobody likes you, or that you have nothing of value to contribute to anyone, etc. Loki's no different; he's got that bully in his head, too. Add onto this the fact that his brother is literally perfect, that he feels his father doesn't love him (or love him as much), that his interests in things like magic are looked down on in his culture, and that he's a prince (meaning that along with the privilege comes pressure, and being in the public eye, knowing that everyone around him is comparing him to Thor as much as he compares himself to Thor, well.) and you have a total clusterfuck of a mindset, and Loki's been existing inside of that clusterfuck for nearly all of his life.

I always go back to the quote where, when filming I think the vault scene, Kenneth Branagh directs Tom by saying, "This is the moment where the thin steel rod holding your brain together snaps." And it's such a significant moment for Loki bc this is where it all crumbles for him, learning the truth, but I also fixate on the "thin steel rod" part of the quote bc that's not how one would describe a healthy, stable person's mind. The implication, to me, has always been that Loki wasn't that stable to start with due to his general upbringing, his internal struggles, and his personality, so of course the devastation of learning he's adopted, and Jotun, would send him over the edge. One doesn't go from zero to 60; one doesn't fall over the edge unless they were balancing fairly close to it in the first place. And to me, the "thin steel rod" basically equals the aforementioned clusterfuck of a mindset.

THE POINT IS. (Holy shit, I ramble.) This is the foundation on which I'm basing my headcanon that Loki neither values his life nor feels as if he even deserves to live it - bc his default mindset is one of inferiority, of loss, of pain. And I think that going from being a general unstable person pre-canon to being passively suicidal post-canon is a thing that happened because, somewhere between the vault in Thor 1 and the dungeons in TDW, Loki just stopped caring.

Life is exhausting for everyone, but even moreso when your mental load becomes more than you can carry. Loki is exhausted. His experience is that things just keep getting worse and worse for him - he's never been valued, he's always been found wanting. He discovers that he was literally thrown away as an infant, unwanted and left to die, and things haven't gotten much better for him since then. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. His plans spin out of control. He's unable to prove his worth and his value and when he is, in fact, rejected, he literally tries to kill himself (only to survive and end up in an even worse situation).

It all just continually goes downhill, and Loki is fucking exhausted. He's done. He has no hope that anything is ever going to change - he will never be valued or even seen, he's unable to connect to anyone, he has no family (aside from Thor, but their relationship is so fraught with pain). As far as he's concerned, his life has been nothing but a waste since he was born and if no one else values it, why should he?

So - passively suicidal. He places no value on his life, and doesn't shy away from situations that could cost him his life. It's possible that the only reason he's not actively suicidal is bc his previous attempt not only failed but led to such a horrible situation that he's probably too afraid to intentionally seek out death again. He doesn't want to fail and end up worse off for it.

And - not that you asked this in particular, but - my biggest disappointment in the series is that none of what I've just written is addressed in a satisfying way (to me). That is, we don't get any real explicit acknowledgement of the trauma of Loki's abandonment as a baby or how that affected his mental health growing up; we don't get to explore how devastated he was to learn of his adoption; we don't ever see him reconcile his ingrained belief that jotuns are monstrous savages with the fact that he is jotun. He says "I betrayed everyone I loved, but I'm different now" and we're supposed to infer what he means without Loki actually articulating why he feels that he's the only one who should be held responsible for all these things that had happened or what "I've changed" even means to him (aside from not betraying Sylvie).

I would have liked to see these things addressed for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that I would want to see how Loki comes to terms with all of his issues and his pain enough that he stops being passively suicidal. We never get to see that; after TDW, the time that passes allows for Loki to kinda chill, resulting in the Ragnarok version, but if there was any real healing or recovering going on, it was happening off-screen, with the audience expected to just go with "yeah Loki was going through it for awhile but he's kinda better now."

Furthermore, much of what I've written here is based on prime Loki's development through TDW, but doesn't account for series Loki's split from that timeline nor the theme of "Lokis survive" that's so prevalent in the series. So I don't think the "passively suicidal" headcanon is really appropriate for series Loki but, at the same time, I'd like to have seen why. I'd like to have seen Loki learning to value his life, or where the "we survive" mindset comes from, since that's not really been a thing before now. (Out of universe, I suspect it comes from the context of Loki just not dying whenever he tries to, but since TDW and IW haven't happened, and Loki didn't intend to survive his fall from the bifrost, framing Loki as an innate survivor doesn't really make sense, but to be fair, I'm just being picky.)

So, yeah. I'm not saying Loki doesn't experience growth or development in the series, I'm just saying that his arc left much unsaid and, furthermore, framing his growth as "wanting a throne to not wanting a throne" without addressing that Loki doesn't actually want the power of the throne, he wants the value and self-worth he associates with the throne, is - well, again, unsatisfying. Not bad, but it leaves viewers like me wanting bc we're cognizant of how much more could have been done.

I ... am going to end this now. This is probably nonsensical and all over the place, so I'm very sorry, and I'm sure this is why I don't get meta-starter asks lmfao bc no one's out here trying to read my dissertation submission for a Ph.D in Loki, but well, sometimes it just be like that.

Thank you for the ask and the opportunity to ramble.

#asks #charlotte replies #loki pokey artichokey #loki series #loki series criticism #loki meta #tw suicidal ideation #tw suicide attempt #tw suicide #tw mental health #tw depression #i spent two fucking hours on this yet i still feel like it's rambly nonsense #i hit stream-of-consciousness at some point and just went with it #and now i'm too lazy to revise #so i'm sorry #this'll probably only get like 10 notes anyway bc that's how it be on tumblr #put effort in and get little validation; put no effort in and everyone loses their minds

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remindingpersephone · 2 years

Text

Thoughts On Things

I've got a potentially long, rambly post coming, about attention, energy, social media, attitude, mindset, etc. So I'm going to put it under the cut to preserve the dash.

I took a break from Tumblr at the end of December, but I'm not sure I could tell you exactly why. I think there were several reasons, but they were kind of all floaty and ephemeral. Just now, I saw something in one of @ohhelloholly's posts that might have zeroed in on it, a little bit: "...but it just makes my anxiety churn. It's like we're caught in a loop, and the motor is driven by idiots." I love my Tumblr mutuals, you know who you are, but I think I'm following too many other people. Good or bad, right or wrong, it's all just too much. Too many voices, too many opinions, too many thoughts, too many ideas. Even if they're good ideas, righteous thoughts, it's just overload.

I have already cut back all news feeds and 99.9% of Instagram/Twitter/Facebook. I have to stay on Meta *snort* for work purposes, but I am laser focused when I use it. I log-in, check work stuff, log out. Tumblr was always where I spent the most time. It was alarming how easily I could start scrolling and then BOOM, it's an hour later.

What I learned on this last break from Tumblr, and the continued break from all other social media, is just how detrimental it was to my mood and attitude. Not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also for the ugliness, the political farce, the willful ignorance, the intentional and unintentional damage people inflict on one another. As users of social media our attention is a commodity for the world to access and exploit. I am now unwilling to give mine away easily. I will ruthlessly protect my attention and energy. It takes a little more effort to trim down a feed or dashboard, but it's worth the effort to get the connection/information I truly want. It feels like the early 2000s, when if you wanted to see someone's work, you had to go to their website. No more dashboard to automatically deliver it to you. Right now, this feels like the wiser course, the healthier option. It may mean I don't get to my favorite Tumblr's page for a while, and then I heartbomb every post in one day. This ensures I keep in touch with the people who matter, while maintaining the distance from all the other noise.

For a couple years now, life in general, and in certain specific ways, has felt like a constant back and forth. I am being pulled in several directions: work that pays the bills, creative endeavors that keep me sane, taking care of two aging parents alone, normal everyday life errands and chores, self-growth and improvements projects. There is never enough time to get to all of it, and that's okay. That's the deal. Life was never going to be easy and fun and fulfilling and wonderful and awesome all at the same time. Over the last few weeks, realizing exactly how draining certain things are, things that I can control, and learning how to minimize their negative effects, has been very illuminating.

The short and fast of that analysis is: get off the rollercoaster of other people's opinions; guard my attention and what I allow to take up my time and use my energy; stop taking the bait of political and social arguments with people IRL; stop judging myself for all the things I don't get done; more deep breaths/long walks/quiet time alone.

I took the week between Christmas and New Years off. It was the first time I had done so in 14 years (the year my nephew was born) and likely I won't ever do it again. I work in hospitality in Florida, so that is a busy week, and it took a lot of effort and aggravation to be able to leave work at that time. But while I was out of the office, I used the time off to pay attention to my attitude and mindset. How were they different when I was at work versus when I was at home? What affected them at home and if those effects were negative, what could I change? Same thing for when I was at work. Most of what I learned is that I can control far more than I believed. The trick is identifying what I can control. It's not always as obvious as you'd think. What I can do is maintain the control I have, instead of throwing my hands up and saying "Fuck it, life is chaos" and then stewing in anger and resentment about all the things I think I can't control. Because the one big, BIG thing I can control is my reaction to what's going on. And there are SO MANY THINGS I don't have to react to at all. Acknowledge then move on. No need to answer, comment, react, etc. It's simple: George is having a meltdown, not my circus, moving on. I don't need to fix George's problem, or comment on it, or commiserate. I just need to acknowledge it, and then move on. Now, I say this is simple, because it is. It is not a complex thing. But it isn't easy. Not for a fixer like me. It takes effort and energy to not react. That seems silly, but it's true. At least, for me it is. Finally understanding this about myself, and taking the steps to behave differently, has been incredible.

Wow, this post got long. If you're still reading this, bless your heart. I didn't write it for likes, though I'm always grateful for them. I didn't write it for approval or attention. I wrote it because the things I write here carry more weight and meaning for me than anything I write in a journal. I take it more seriously, maybe because it's public. And there is always that small hope that someone else may read it and get a tiny morsel of guidance, inspiration, humor - something that makes their day better for having read it.

#motivation #inspiration #talking to myself

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stealingpotatoes · 3 years

Text

The Thorns of the Crown

ao3 link

summary: After everything Corvo’s family has been through in the past six months, he’s not so sure the throne is worth it all. (Emily doesn’t take the throne back au)

The Loyalists had been fools to think they could kill him and take his daughter, and still get away with it.

Corvo had silently fought his way through the Lighthouse, putting guards to sleep as he forced his way to the very top, where he knew his would-be murderers were. Where he knew Emily’s now-captors were.

He entered the foyer of the highest part of the Lighthouse as quietly as a ghost, and was immediately met with the grotesque sight of a golden statue of Hiram Burrows, standing proudly in the middle of the golden-gilded room. It was ironic to lay eyes on the false sight of the traitor Corvo had defeated, while on his way to deal with the very traitors that had ordered him to do it. The Loyalists had not learnt from the mistakes of those before them, it seemed.

A grand staircase wound around the circular walls that surrounded the beastly statue, leading to a room above. That was where they had to be.

I’m coming Em.

Corvo lifted his mask off as he quietly ascended the winding stairs. There was no point of hiding behind the face of Death; the Loyalists knew who he was. Or, at least they thought they did.

Corvo finally drew up to the entrance to the war room, and put his back to the wall beside a bust of Burrows. With a deep breath in, he channeled the Void through his hand, and watched the world shift into muted reds.

He looked over his shoulder, through the wall.

There were only two yellow shapes -- two men -- in the room ahead. Not guarding, but sitting at a table. No, slumped against the table. Are they sleeping? Or something else?

Corvo checked his crossbow, making sure it was loaded with sleep darts, and rounded the corner fast.

A dead man’s silence lay over the room like a heavy shroud, interrupted only by the harsh patter of rain.

The top of the Lighthouse was a purpose-built war room. It was finely wood-panelled like the rest of the building, but the left wall was covered with a huge map, places circled and labelled with smaller papers. There was a lit fireplace at the far end, with chairs surrounding it.

At the room’s main centre was a large war table -- where Burrows had no doubt spearheaded his campaigns and his war on the common people of Dunwall.

But it was not being used to plan any wars now; at the end of the table, fine foods had been served with expensive-looking wine. The food had not been eaten -- but the drink had been poured.

Martin’s body was slumped in place, and Pendleton had fallen half-off his chair. Neither of them were moving in the slightest.

Corvo slowly began to lower his crossbow, keeping a firm grip on it, and skulked towards Pendleton.

He put two fingers to the pulse on Pendleton’s neck, and heard the crunch of boots on glass. Corvo stepped back.

Shards of glass were shattered about by Pendleton’s limp hand, with drops of blood-- no, wine spilt around them.

Corvo glanced back up across the table; Martin had a glass in his hand too, and Corvo was willing to bet he had no pulse either.

Corvo stood up straight. From the glasses and past experience, he did not have to guess what had happened to them. Poisoned -- but with no boatman to save them.

But where was the man that had done this?

Corvo activated his dark vision again, scanning for any more yellow shapes that might have been out of range before.

His dark vision melted back away, unsuccessful -- but as it did, Corvo’s eyes halted on a purple shape on the floor behind Martin.

He moved over to it, a new sense of dread filling him, and crouched to pick it up. He inspected it for barely a moment; he didn’t need any longer to recognise it. It was Mrs. Pilsen, Emily’s favourite doll, the one Corvo had given her back upon his return to the Tower.

Corvo ran a thumb over a new, small crack in the doll’s painted porcelain face -- Emily must’ve dropped her. But she had been here. She had to have been. So where is Emily now? And where is Havelock?

A little girl’s scream was Corvo’s first answer.

Corvo’s eyes widened. Emily.

The voice had come from above, and-- outside? Corvo looked around the room again, and he zeroed in on the second set of stairs, behind the wall. She had to be up there. She had to.

As he rushed up the stairs, he noticed the small splashes of blood on the wood of the stairs and floor. If so much as a speck the blood is Emily’s, Corvo thought, running, then I am going to make damn sure Havelock wishes he had never been born.

The trail of blood continued into the office at the top of the stairs, out onto the metal balcony that began out of a door in the glass-roof and wall. Corvo continued his pace, unfolding his sword as he burst into the pouring storm once again.

There was no sign of her there. Corvo raced to his left, up another set of stairs. He paused on a landing -- the trail stopped there, on a maid, dead, surrounded by her own blood. It was no relief.

“NO! Let me go!”

Corvo’s eyes darted up.

On the walkway far above, two people were moving-- struggling, silhouetted against the sky. One far larger, one far smaller.

“Quiet now! And move already, child!”

Havelock.

A hundred words of vengeance filled Corvo’s head, but he said none of them. He only darted to his left again, bounding up the rest of the staircase to the entrance of a sheltered stairwell. The voices were audible again as he entered.

“Hold still you stupid girl!” Havelock’s voice boomed through the rain.

“Let me go! I am the Empress!”

Corvo kept running up the twisting stairs.

“Didn't you learn anything in your short life?” Havelock yelled seethingly. “Empresses are pieces on the board. And Empresses can sometimes die--”

Corvo stepped out of the shelter and onto the walkway. He didn’t need to announce his presence -- Havelock looked up the second Corvo laid more than two steps on the metal.

Another bout of thunder and lightning struck somewhere in the storm.

“No! Stay where you are Corvo, or I jump,” the Admiral yelled over the rain.

“Corvo! Save me!” Emily screamed.

Corvo stopped walking.

“That’s right,” Havelock said, a maniacally grim satisfaction rising in his voice at Corvo following his orders. “If you take one step closer, we’re both off the edge.”

I don’t need to take a step to get to you, Corvo thought.

He made a show of folding his blade back up and sheathing it, before holding his hands up slowly in a surrender. The rain was beating down on him.

Corvo let himself lock eyes with Emily -- but only for a moment. Then he fixed his blazing-ice gaze on Havelock, who wore the grin of a man that thought himself entirely in control.

Havelock opened his mouth to begin some taunting speech. Lightning struck beyond the edge of the walkway.

Corvo curled his raised left hand into a fist, feeling that sharp pins-and-needles sensation on the Mark and called the Void forth. It heeded his demand with a sharp whisper. Time ground to a complete halt around him.

The lightning behind Havelock and Emily stopped its descent half way down, looking like a harsh rift of pure light in the sky. Water droplets stood in place, small gems floating against the dark storm clouds.

Everything was still.

Corvo didn’t waste a second; he ran forward and at once pulled Emily out of Havelock’s unknowing grip, shoving the Admiral hard as he did it

Corvo took a short, undeserved moment to take in the frozen sight of Emily, half in his arms, before releasing his taxing hold on time.

The grey scream of the dragged-out present disappeared. and the world resumed its pace. Emily almost tripped onto the metal floor with the force of time’s discharge, but Corvo held her safe.

Havelock hung for a moment, as if time wasn’t yet properly flowing, his footing just lost and surprise written all over him. He had expected one last piece of control -- control over his own death. But he had fallen into the same trap as all those before. He had become too comfortable in his position, and he had forgotten that Death belonged to no man, and followed no man’s orders. No matter their station.

Havelock fell.

Corvo, still holding tight to Emily, peered ever so slightly over the edge. He watched the Admiral’s screaming descent until he hit the jaws of the rocks below.

After what felt like a moment too many, Corvo turned to his daughter, still holding onto him for dear life. He held her back, and tucked a drenched strand of messy hair from her face. The rain still beat down on them, ceaseless, soaking their already-soaked clothes and hair.

“Are you okay?” Corvo asked hurriedly.

Emily gave him a shaky nod, eyes still wide with fear. “I-- I think so.”

Corvo nodded in return. “We need to get out of the storm.” Logic was slowly returning, replacing the blood haze seeing Emily in such danger put him in.

Corvo made himself let Emily go for the moment, and she ran ahead onto the covered metal stairwell he had just come from. Corvo followed just as swiftly. They both traversed down the small stairs, the sound of Emily’s little shoes on metal filling Corvo with more and more relief.

He had only paused by the bottom doorway for a second when Emily barrelled right into him for a hug. “I knew you’d save me! You’re my hero, Corvo,” she said, voice half-muffled by his wet coat but slowly coming back to herself.

When she pulled away briefly, Corvo knelt down to just below her eye level and pulled her into a proper hug. He knew was probably hugging her too tight, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything but the feeling of his daughter in his arms. She was shaking and freezing-wet, but still warm enough. But still alive.

The storm raged on on the walkways outside of their small shelter.

Eventually, they both pulled back, and Corvo took Emily’s tiny hands in his. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“You-- you already asked me that,” Emily said, still shivering from the cold and the fear. When Corvo’s worried expression didn’t change, she told him, “I think I’m alright. I’m alright now you’re here.”

Corvo nodded, feeling some small part of the weight on his shoulders go.

“Is it going to be okay now? Will I-- will I be Empress?” Emily asked, almost eagerly.

Corvo glanced down.

He thought of Jessamine. Of her cold dead eyes in the Gazebo. Of her blood on his hands.

Empresses are pieces on the board. And Empresses can sometimes die.

The Heart was beating, an unrelenting pulse in the back of his mind. An incessant reminder that what Havelock had said was true; Empresses die. And who was Corvo to be able to stop it? He had failed once; he could fail again. Death followed no one’s orders; not orders from Empresses, nor those from Lord Protectors.

I know what it felt like to drive a blade into your Empress.

Empresses die. And for what? So men could take control of the damned city of Dunwall? This city didn’t care about them. It didn’t care about anyone. It ate everything alive. It would not let an Empress be safe, no matter how good or pure of heart she was.

The crown and throne were nothing but a curse and objects of desire for ambitious men who thought themselves the better of people. The curse of power nearly took the last of his family from him -- the family that, because of the crown and its rules and its curses, he had never been able to openly call his own.

Empresses die. And so did Burrows, and Havelock, and Pendleton, and Martin. And so did everyone else that tried to hold that kind of power.

Now I want nothing but to leave this wretched city, and fade from the memories of those who reside here.

Emily was just a girl. She was Corvo’s girl, his baby girl. She wasn’t meant to be a piece on a board, a piece in Dunwall’s deadly game of power. She wasn’t meant to hold an Empire in her small hands.

She wasn’t meant to die.

If they went home, if Corvo let Emily take back the throne… what fate would he be damning her too? She would be forever caught in the crossfire of power-grabs and the schemes of conniving politicians. All it took was one wrong move, and Corvo would lose her to that crossfire. That was not the life he wanted her to live. That was not the death he could ever let her die.

This was the only way he could protect Emily. He wasn’t sure if Jess would ever truly approve of it, but she had not been through what they had been through. He hoped what was left of her would understand.

Empresses die. But Emily wouldn’t. Not if Corvo could help it.

The Heart continued to beat.

Corvo pulled Emily closer and planted a kiss on her forehead, “It’s going to be okay now. I promise.”

A relief seeped into Emily’s big brown eyes, and Corvo felt something squeeze in his chest at her expression. “Are we going home then?”

Corvo swallowed. He shook his head.

Confusion knit itself between Emily’s furrowed brows. “What?”

“We can’t go home, and you won’t be Empress,” Corvo said slowly, forcing the words out. This was how it had to be. I can’t protect you from this city. Nothing can, Corvo thought. “Dunwall and Dunwall Tower-- they aren’t safe,” he said instead. “They aren’t ever going to be safe.”

Corvo had expected Emily to show more resistance, or be more upset at the idea they couldn’t return to Dunwall Tower -- but maybe he still expected Emily to be the girl she had been six-and-a-half months ago, before this all happened. But she was not that girl; Emily merely nodded, with a look she was too young to have in her eyes.

“So where are we going to go?” she asked.

Corvo tightened his grip on her hands. “We’re going to take a ship out of here--”

“Like a pirate ship?”

Corvo huffed out a half-laugh, relief at really having his daughter back hitting him hard. I love you so much, he thought. “Yes, like a pirate ship,” he said with a small smile. “We’re going to take a ship out, and-- and we’re going to make a new home, somewhere else. Just the two of us.”

“Three of us,” Emily corrected. After seeing Corvo’s confused expression, she made an obvious face. “Mrs Pilsen! I grabbed her when they took me, but I left her downstairs.”

Corvo shook his head, half-laughing again. All that had just happened, and Emily’s first concern was her favourite dolly. It filled Corvo with faith. They could do this. They could live a normal life, where Corvo could just be a father and, Emily could just be a daughter. Where she would be allowed to be a child, and not a piece to be manipulated.

He squeezed Emily’s hands. “The two of us and Mrs. Pilsen. We’ll make a new home. How does that sound?”

Emily’s eyes drifted to the floor below, and she bit her still soaking-wet lip for a moment. “I…” her gaze returned to Corvo, and she slowly gave him a small smile, “I’d like that.”

Corvo pulled her into another hug.

---

Emily woke up to the slight sway of the sea beneath her.

They had been on this boat more than a week now. It wasn’t like any boat she had been on before -- far less fancy, and far more dirty.

Emily knew a smuggler was a lot like a pirate, but this boat didn’t look like the boats from Emily’s story books. This was a big metal steam-ship, not a pirate’s sailboat with a flag of skull-and-crossbones.

And the pirates in the stories never had to check themselves for signs of the plague, or make certain no rats had come aboard, but the smugglers had had to. So had Emily and Corvo.

Emily wasn’t sure “Slackjaw” was a real name, but apparently it was the name of Corvo’s friend who set this all up. He owed Corvo one, because he had saved “Slackjaw”'s life. Which made sense -- Corvo was good at saving lives. He’d saved Emily’s life more times than she could count. He’d been saving Emily’s life since before she could even count.

But Corvo had saved Slackjaw’s life, and so Slackjaw owed him a favour. Corvo used that favour to get him and Emily on a smuggler’s ship with new clothes and made-up papers.

The papers didn’t have Corvo or Emily’s real names on them, but Corvo had said that he and Emily would need to take new names, to stay safe.

Emily hoped they could come up with something better than Slackjaw.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up in her cot-bed, before glancing to the other side of the tiny cabin.

The cabin -- if it could even be called that; oversized cupboard seemed more apt -- was flakily-painted metal, like the rest of the ship. The tiny room was almost empty, besides Corvo and Emily’s few belongings, and the two foldaway cots pressed against the walls.

The size of the room allowed very little space between the two cots -- and so Emily had a very good view of Corvo, sitting on the far end of his.

He was fully dressed already. It still was funny to see him in something other than a long coat, but Emily supposed the roughspun jacket and shirt he was wearing now suited him well enough. His folding sword was somewhere underneath the jacket, and that gave Emily no small amount of comfort.

She squinted in the near-dark. Corvo was looking down at his hands, clasped as if they were tenderly holding something. He mumbled something at his hands, entirely fixated on the empty space.

“Father,” Emily started, barely able to stop herself from grinning as she did every time she called him that. Corvo said she was allowed to now. “Father?”

“Mm?” Corvo hummed in an almost-startled reply, quickly looking up from the nothing in his hands.

“What time is it?”

“Early enough that you can go back to bed,” Corvo said fondly.

“Is it early early?”

“What does that mean?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Is the sun out yet?”

Corvo glanced back ahead, as if he could see through the walls of the cabin. “No,” he said, turning back, “but it will be soon. The crew’s beginning to wake up.”

Emily perked up. “Can we watch the sunrise? Please?”

She thought Corvo might say no for a second, but instead he smiled and nodded. “If you really want to.”

Emily nodded gingerly, then shuffled to the end of her cot and pushed herself onto the floor.

Corvo stood up too -- bent over slightly, unable to stand to his full height under the cabin’s short ceilings. He’d moved his hands apart now, as if he’d put the nothing he was holding back down somewhere. Emily paid no mind to it, only grabbing her coat from the back of the door and putting her shoes on, before giving her father a big smile to say she was ready.

Corvo returned the smile, and quietly opened the door, letting her pass into the cramped metal hallway.

He didn’t have to tell her to try to be quiet too. Emily knew that some of the crew would still be asleep, and they needed to be nice and courteous to the smugglers, as any guest would be towards their hosts.

Part of that meant Corvo had to help around the ship a bit, so he and Emily were more worth their while. The smugglers seemed to like him; they’d told him that if he ever wanted a solid job, he could join their crew. Corvo didn’t seem that interested.

After a short time of quiet footsteps in the hall, Corvo and Emily reached a heavy metal ship-door, which Corvo opened with ease.

The fresh not-yet-morning sea air hit Emily with a gentle breeze as they stepped onto the side deck of the boat. It had been getting warmer every day, as the ship got further from cold Gristol, and closer to sunny Serkonos.

The sea ahead was almost dark, but a peaking of the sun on the horizon drove a warm streak across the water.

Emily walked up to the ship’s metal side railing and peaked over it, but didn’t look off the edge. She had done that on the first day on the ship, and promptly regretted it, needing Corvo to calm her down and remind her that they weren’t at the top of the Lighthouse anymore. That she was safe.

“I can’t wait to be in Karnaca,” Emily said. “Will you show me everything you told me about?”

Corvo nodded with a small smile, a fond and loving look in his eyes. “I’ll show you whatever you want to see in Karnaca.”

“And can I go swimming in the bay, like you said you used to? Ooh, or climb the big trees? And-- and--”

Corvo chuckled, “You can do all of that, and more.”

Emily grinned giddily, and looked back to the sea ahead.

The sun was beginning to rise over the waters, painting the world around them hues of orange. Emily wondered if the sun was rising just the same in Dunwall. She supposed it didn’t really matter; what mattered was that it was rising, and that she had her father by her side to see it.

A new day was dawning for them both, and Emily found herself apprehensively excited. It would be a strange new future ahead, one that she did not know, but she had decided it would be a good future. She knew Corvo would make sure of that.

Emily leaned in closer to Corvo, who too was partly leant on the railing, and rested her small head on his arm. In response, he lifted his arm up and pulled her closer to his torso, before settling his arm on her shoulders in a warm half-hug.

Emily smiled, snuggling nearer and keeping her eyes on the rising sun ahead.

#dishonored #corvo attano #emily kaldwin #farley havelock #HAHA I FINISHED A FIC AFTER NOT BEING ABLE TO DO THAT SINCE MARCH #but i did not read this through so have fun #a normal life dh au #potes wrotes #dishonored fanfic

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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Abridged: 1980 - The Dark Phoenix Saga

The X-Men, those enduring mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 132 - 140, X-Men Annual 4) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, John Romita Jr. and Bob McLeod

Go on. Name a more iconic X-Men panel. I’ll wait. (X-Men 134)

If you were born in 1980, you were born under the sign of the Phoenix. This means you will have great hair, but you’ll also be absolutely corrupted by power. Don’t worry, as long as you don’t consume any stars and/or galaxies, you should be fine.

This year hits the ground running, introducing Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde and Dazzler in one fell swoop. The White Queen is the first of the Hellfire Club to make her move, but Phoenix is quickly able to dispatch of her, as you can read here.

Cyclops, worried that the rest of the Inner Circle will soon come in for the kill, decides to abscond to Angel’s Aerie in New Mexico to throw their pursuers off their scent. Jean decides to make the most of it and has sex with Scott on top of mesa. (Kinky!) She also shuts off his uncontrollable destructo-beams, nbd. This somehow inspires Scott to go from reactive to proactive and lead an ill-advised charge straight into the Hellfire Club on the night of their big ball… soirée... thing. Call it a Hellfire Gala-avant-la-lettre.

Fine, he might have been inspired by the raw power of the Phoenix. She’s the biggest gun on their side and, if there's one thing you can be sure of, it´s that reliable powerhouse Jean won´t switch sides in the middle of battle.

Oh wait, that's exactly what she does.

As soon as they enter the Hellfire Club, Jason Wyngarde, who reveals he’s actually Mastermind, takes control of Jean, finally turning her into the Black Queen. With the power of the Phoenix and the patriarchy on their side, the Inner Circle makes short work of the X-Men. They consists of:

Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind.

Sebastian Shaw. Often shirtless. The Jeff Bezos of mutantkind. Has the ability to absorb kinetic energy, which means punching him only makes him stronger. (Colossus and Storm figure this out the hard way.)

Harry Leland. Ability of mass manipulation, which has got to be one of the dopest powers ever. Uses it to dunk Wolverine three floors down into the sewer.

Donald Pierce. 25% robot, 100% asshole, 100% useless in taking out X-Men, 225% the worst.

Wolverine is the only one who escapes, resulting in another iconic image:

Apparently, this picture is solely responsible for the fact that Wolverine became the face of the X-Men in the zeroes. It also lit my cigar from the other side of the room. (X-Men 132)

Needless to say, stabbing ensues.

Meanwhile, Shaw pontificates what he wants with the X-Men. He means to use them as guinea pigs to isolate the X-Gene, which he’ll then reverse engineer to give everyone (with money) super powers and all of a sudden, I want Shaw to do a team-up with John Sublime. Jean is not all there, however: she’s trapped in the astral plane, cultivating a cruel streak a mile high.

And suddenly, Jean-turning-evil is not all that funny anymore. (X-Men 133)

Cyclops traverses the mental link he shares with Jean to confront ‘Sir Jason’ and challenge him to a duel. Guy can’t catch a break: in Jean’s mindscape, he is stabbed and he promptly collapses in the real world. Ruh-roh!

Wolverine, meanwhile, has done a passable impression of the Bride against the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill, and he interrupts the Hellfire Club and their gloating. That’s when Jean resurfaces as well, snapping out of her voluptuous Victorian fantasy and, playing a dubious tango with everyone’s trust issues, switching sides once again. The Phoenix is like the golden snitch: as long as your team holds it, it’s enough to win.

Colossus snaps Pierce’s robo-arm, Shaw gets punted through a floor and Leland uses his powers to increase Wolverine’s mass - just when Logan is jumping on top of him. Oops! Should have made him lighter than a feather, Leland.

Jean, meanwhile, is doing her own passable impression of the Bride and goes on what the advertisements would refer to as a ‘Roaring Rampage of Revenge’. (Oh, she roars, and she rampages, and she gets bloody satisfaction.)

This is what happens when you fuck around and find out, Jason. (X-Men 134)

Phoenix makes Mastermind’s mind touch the infinite. His tiny human mind can’t cope. And, just like me when I’m at Pride and surrounded by a bevvy of shirtless gym bunnies, he becomes a dribbling mess. A shell with nothing inside. For those of you paying attention: this is where your Lit teacher would shout “dramatic irony” and underscore Emma Frost vs. Storm on the chalkboard.

This is also the moment where she officially Breaks Bad.

We see powerless people become heroes all the time. The reverse, where the angel falls? That happens far more rarely. I think that is the reason this story was so shockingly effective in the eighties. The reason why it’s still so effective? I think because, like the One Ring, you can read the rise and fall of the Phoenix in a myriad of ways. Is this a victim, reclaiming power? Is this a woman, trying to rise in a man’s world? Is this someone who was always buttoned up, daring to embrace her own power, her sexuality, her dangerous side -- only to get promptly beat down? The ambiguity of the narrative gives it strength, which is why I think it keeps resonating even now. This counts especially in the X-Universe, inherently designed to appeal to the underdog.

Anyway, the X-Men try to flee, but it’s too late. Jean can’t hold it in any more. She explodes in Phoenixesness and vaporizes the X-Men’s aircraft over Central Park. Relishing in her power, Jean easily defeats her friends, before flying off into the galaxy.

In the Avengers mansion, Beast gets the report that the X-Men are trashing the Hellfire Club. Ignoring his duties as an Avenger, Beast chooses his old family and hops off to investigate on his own.

The report, by the way, comes from Shaw, who knows when to turn tail and cut his losses. Among the confused, scared refugees of their party, he begins working a politician on the importance of a Sentinel program. That politician? Senator Kelly. Remember that name.

Jean can’t talk, she’s doing hot girl things. Nomnomnom that star system, sis. (X-Men 135)

Originally, Jean wasn’t meant to die. This one panel, the one showing the inhabited planet, is the reason why she eventually does: Jim Shooter, editor-in-chief, felt Jean shouldn’t be able to get away with a literal genocide. Claremont and Byrne, who had planned to strip Jean of her powers at the end of this, had to change the end of their story within days before it went to print. Additionally, this stoked the adversarial fire between the two: Claremont claims that he hadn’t originally intended there to be an inhabited planet, but felt his hands were tied when Byrne drew one. I wonder how true this is, considering how embedded it is in the narrative, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Phoenix’s genocide alerts the Shi’Ar - and therefore Lilandra - to her presence. Lily says that Galactus is nothing compared to the Phoenix: he merely eats planets, she will consume all that exists.

A hungry Jean, meanwhile returns to Earth, not sure what she’s looking for. She pays a visit to the home of her parents, but when they warily come to greet her, she can’t help but read all the innermost thoughts of her family. Nothing is secret, nothing is sacred. (Imagine knowing all those little thoughts your parents had about you, all those little terrible human things they did in their life. Imagine knowing all their sexual fantasies. Brrr.) It sours the Phoenix against them and she is about to start familicide to her list of sins, when the X-Men attack!

Nightcrawler slaps a psionic scrambler designed by Beast on her, but she’s still too strong. Wolverine tries to end her, but he isn’t ruthless enough to do the deed. When the scrambler overloads, Scott tries reasoning with her, appealing to her love. This causes the Phoenix to waver and Charles Xavier (airdropped in by Warren), bolts Jean telepathically.

Drinking game rule for the Phoenix saga no 6: shout “ca-caw” and take a sip every time the raptor appears. (X-Men 136)

Xavier feels Jean helping him out from within the Phoenix and together, they slowly trap Phoenix in the same sort of energy-matrix as Jean did with the M’Kraan-crystal. The Phoenix finally lays dormant, the X-Men have Jean back and Scott, overwhelmed by emotion, sort of awkwardly proposes to her. Happy Ending! And then, pulling the rug out from under our feet, the X-Men (including Beast and Angel) are whisked away.

They appear in front of Lilandra. The Shi’Ar hold Jean accountable for her planet-killing ways and Lilandra orders her Imperial Guard to take her away! But Charles invokes an ancient law with the same relish of someone who invokes an obscure board game rule against the person who is about to win: he demands a trial by combat.

The rules are easy:

X-Men win: Jean lives

Shi’Ar win: Jean dies.

The trial will be on the dark side of the moon. The Shi’ar are way too strong and, one by one, the X-Men fall, until only Jean and Scott are left. In their last stand, Jean loses control and becomes the Phoenix again, wiping the floor with the Imperial Guard. Technically, they win, but she knows now.

Suicide by abandoned-machine-of-a-long-forgotten-civilization-on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon. (X-Men 137)

She dies. Phoenix dies. The X-Men lose. Scott, bereft, leaves the X-Men.

One detail I love is the holempathic crystal that Lilandra bestows on Jean’s parents.

Without becoming too maudlin, the idea of this is beautiful. A condensed image of a person you love, one you can touch when you feel memories slipping away so you can remember who they were. (X-Men 138)

And with that, season 2 of the X-Men ends. Without Cyclops and Phoenix, the X-Men have to readjust. While Beast returns to the Avengers, Angel takes up residence in the mansion again. He confesses to liking most of the new X-Men, except Wolverine. (To be fair, Wolverine is an acquired taste.) Kitty Pryde also formally starts attending the school and slowly, the Jean-and-Scott-shaped void is filled.

Patriarchal Charles is thrilled to finally have a new teenager in the house who will hang on to his every word. It’ll be like the sixties all over again! (X-Men 139)

There are so many beautiful touches in the few panels:

Wolverine calling Charles ‘Chuck’

Nightcrawler getting drinks (and a beer)

Most amazingly of all, Storm becoming the leader. (I give Chuck a lot of flak, but this decision is Right.) Not just because Storm is the best X-Man for the job, but also because she was a black woman leading one of premier Marvel superhero teams for, what? The better half of a decade? The eighties had barely started, so this was a big fucking deal.

Storm also takes up a motherly role for Kitty, who takes up her suggestion for a codename: Sprite. (This after Kitty rejects Charles’ suggestion of Ariel, which is only fortunate, considering that name would soon be associated with redhaired mermaids.)

The rest of the year is dedicated to two adventures, both of them starring Kurt. The first is depicted in the annual: on Kurt’s birthday, he receives a mysterious package with a mysterious figurine that mysteriously explodes in his face. Professor X calls guest star Dr. Strange for aid, who deduces that his soul has been stolen. What follows is a quest to regain Kurt’s soul in an adventure that feels a little too I just read Dante’s Inferno, check how smart I am.

Hell is a little too pedestrian and boring, though we do get a King Minos hitting on Kurt and Ororo. A man of wealth and taste indeed. Anyway, at the end of this side quest, it turns out all of this was a convoluted revenge scheme concocted by one Margali of the Winding Road. She turns out to be Kurt’s (adoptive) mother, who’s getting revenge for Kurt killing her son.

Kurt, racked with guilt, reveals he had no choice. Stefan had always feared the darkness in his soul and he’d made Kurt pledge to stop him if he should ever succumb to it. After Stefan killed a child or two, Kurt had no choice but to end him. Stefan perished and Kurt was blamed for all of the murders, having to flee an angry mob.

Margali forgives him, with some help from Jimaine, Kurt’s foster sister. In a twist that is a little too soap opera for my tastes (and I watch Riverdale), Jimaine turns out to be Kurt’s squeeze, Amanda Sefton. I’ve always disliked this twist, and not just because of the incesteous vibes: I like the idea of Kurt dating a regular lady who is into him despite his appearance and his being a mutant. Making Amanda Sefton his sorcerous half-sister dilutes that message a lot.

The tail end of 1980 involves Wolverine going to Canada so Wolverine can make amends with Alpha Flight. Kurt joins him, ostensibly to flirt with Aurora, but in fact this shows that Kurt and Wolverine are establishing a rapport. A deeper friendship.

In a pretty paint-by-numbers adventure, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and the worse half of Alpha Flight take down a Wendigo. We don’t get Northstar or Aurora, but we do get more Snowbird, who can change herself into Canadian animals, with the danger of being consumed by her animal side.

We get this delightful panel out of it:

Scared Nightcrawler almost makes me forget how full of shit Jimmy MacDonald is, considering last time Kurt saw them, they tried to kidnap the fuzzy elf. (X-Men 139)

This whole arc is meant to show the softening of Wolverine. Not only does he share his name with Kurt (well, sort of: “Logan, is that your name?” “Yup.” “You never told us.” “You never asked.”), but when they fight the Wendigo and Snowbird turns into a white wolverine to deal the final blow, he talks her out of being consumed by her vicious animal nature.

The year ends with two details worth mentioning:

The Canadian government dissolves Alpha Flight, which I can only find a prescient move that highlights their good taste. A realistic note I like is the minister referring to the mutant problem as ‘an American problem’ even though they employ the Beaubier twins. Wankers.

Fred Dukes escapes prison to join the New Brotherhood of Mutants!

We’re now entering a run of the X-Men which I haven’t read much of yet, but Freddy mentions he was helped by some lady lawyer. That’s gotta be Mystique, right?

I can barely contain my glee.

Ugliest Costume: Despite that godawful hooded thing Kitty wears, I have to give this to Dazzler. There’s no salvaging that costume: I’m sorry, but she’s wearing a disco ball around her neck. It's a boot from me.

Best new character: Emma Frost. Fight me by the bike rack near the parking lot if you disagree.

Turns evil: Jean Grey, famously so.

What to read: X-Men 129 to 137, the Dark Phoenix run.

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rent-a-bat · 3 years

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Drabble #3

Promt: #1 “You don’t have to do this alone”

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

Requested by: Anonymous

A/N: Aaaaaand it's done!! I really liked writing this one, it made me soft all over. I really hope you like it!! There was a dialog I really wanted to include but didn't really know how, let's see if you can find it. Enjoy!

Requests open

The first time it happened, it took you by surprise.

He arrived with a crash, falling from the ceiling, and getting straight into action. The way he moved, how he fought, everything he did was calculated, yet it flowed so easily like a second nature to him. If Batman was all brawl, Nightwing was all movement, he moved like he was giving a show, one you couldn't help but watch. Nothing like the clumsiness you moved with, relieved if only a little that your lack of any formal training could be helped by your abilities.

The warehouse you were in was one of the many you’ve been taking down for a while, a place where people gathered for illegal purposes, too small for the big guys to notice, which meant it was a job for you, nothing unusual, except for the number of people you were not ready for.

A job that should have been easy but escalated as more people started to come. He arrived just as a jab had you on the floor, not before you took out the one responsible, if he was surprised at the number of bodies already taken out, he didn't show it. The moment you realized who he was had you hiding as fast as you could, careful not to be seen and happy to let him finish with the rest.

You watched him fight until the last one fell unconscious. He lingered for a while after that, making a call to what you guessed was the GCPD, looking around as he did so, like waiting for you to come out and then, just as fast as he came, he was gone. You stayed hiding even after he left, you were sure he hadn't seen you, but one can never be too sure, so you waited, in case he wanted to come back. Minutes passed but he never came. Before you knew it the sounds of sirens surprised you, the police were getting closer, which meant you also had to go.

Gotham was your home, born and raised, and like many who did so, you were used to its antics but cared for the city nonetheless, even when this city was a danger to people like you, people with abilities that will have them either fighting for you or trying to kill you, if you were not with them you were against them, something they needed to get rid of.

You knew you were different from a young age. After your parents died you went into the system, a place that's not easy on those who've lost it all, where the first lesson you learned was that in order to survive, you had to fight for everything, literally. And the more you fought, the easier it was to see what made you different.

Your abilities were far from super, but where enough. Just fast enough to dodge a bullet, just strong enough to lift a car, just invulnerable enough to keep going, just enough to save a life, to help those who needed it, to keep the weak safe. And that's what you did.

It took you time to be ready, training yourself to control your power. Too much force might break them, too fast and you’d be doing more damage. Your suit was easier, something light so you could move freely, but strong enough not to break. All black to hide yourself at night, your hair neatly pinned down and a hood to cover yourself, attaching to mask that hid half of your face. It was a long way, but when you were finally ready, you took it to the streets.

While the big ones took out big organizations or fought against the ever-growing list of rouges, you helped the ones that thought were lost, that thought they weren’t important enough to be saved. A girl trying to get home safe, a student getting mugged, doing the little things, because you knew that helping the people of Gotham was the real change.

Trying to go unnoticed in the city where the greatest detective resided was a feat in itself, but you had managed to do it so far, until the little problems you were trying to fix got bigger.

The second time it happened you were expecting it, still, you couldn't hold your surprise when you saw him appear.

A growing number of disappearances and a little digging through the streets of Gotham had you at the docks. Turns out, the warehouses you had been taking down were part of a larger operation, still small, but if left alone it could grow into something much more troublesome, which explains why Nightwing appeared that night and how your chances of staying anonymous were closing to zero.

He arrived just like the first time, so when he landed on the floor and all eyes were on him, you took it as your queue to go, freeing the people your top priority.

The Intel you had was scarce, rumors here and there, bits of information you heard passing by, so you weren't sure how much you could trust it. Luckily for you, that information proved to be true. The area you were headed remained heavily guarded, even with all the commotion on the other side.

Deciding it was now or never, you charged. Taking advantage of your speed, you made your way to the farthest corner of the warehouse, to some merely a blur, a well-placed hit taking them down, but even then you weren't invisible, the moment they saw what was happening they began to shoot. Bullets grazing you as you made your way to the container where they kept them, the hits weren't strong enough to pierce but they still hurt, leaving bruises and scratches on your skin. Moving through the pain you kept going, until you took down each of them, clearing the area enough to check on the people while Nightwing continued fighting with the rest.

The container was chained close, nothing a good pull from you couldn't break, but before you could do anything else, a quick glance to the other side made you stop. Nightwing was a good fighter, you could tell that from the last time you almost met, but they were closing in on him, you could see he was getting tired, his body losing the previous easiness he had, there were more than last time, and he was fighting alone.

You had to make a choice, taking the chance, and freeing the people now, leaving him to his luck, or risk everything you've worked on remaining invisible and help him. Letting out a groan, you moved before you could regret it further, hurrying to meet him in the middle, knocking out a guy as you reached him. He paused for a moment to look at you, smiling a little before he went back to fighting.

You worked in tandem. He moved with you. Every open you had, he covered it, the ones you fought, he made sure they stayed down sending some your way so you could do the same. It felt like dancing.

The both of you working together managed to take them all in no time. You hurried to check on the people, making sure everyone was okay and no one was hurt, confirming they were the ones that'd been reported missing. Leaving the rest to him you quickly made your way out, before being stopped just as you crossed the door.

"Hey! Wait!" He grabbed you from the arm, his grip firm but soft. A little tug had you turning around to look at him, his face flushed from the fighting, smiling from ear to ear.

You looked down to the hand that was still holding you, following your gaze he let you go, holding up his hands as a sign of peace. You rubbed at the spot his hand left, it felt warm.

"What?" You said, not trying to hide how much you did not want to have this conversation. You had done enough showing yourself like that when you helped him, talking was another mistake you didn't want to add for tonight.

"I saw what you did back there. You handled yourself well." He kept smiling, ignoring the sharpness in your voice.

You remained silent, eyes locked on him. Seeing nothing else was coming from you at the moment, he kept talking.

"You're welcome, by the way" you laughed at that. His smile grew as he looked at you, making you do the same.

"Cocky much?" The question leaving your mouth before you could think

"Some might say that." He winked, getting another laugh from you.

“I could've handled it on my own.”

“I know you would.”

“I would! I ha- I had a plan.” Your emotions were getting the best of you. You took a deep breath to calm yourself. “I didn't need help.”

“I know.”

“Don't be condescending.” Now was his turn to laugh. You glared at him, his laugh making you feel things you were not in the mood to acknowledge.

“I'm not! You seem more than capable enough to me, but I can't help saving someone so clearly in distress.”

“I'm not some ‘lady in distress’ for you to come and save me or whatever it is that you do”

“Are you sure?” he was having fun, if the amusement and the ever-growing smile on his face were any indication, and you were in no shape, physically or mentally, to keep up with his games.

“Dick.” you huffed, no malice in your voice as you said it.

“At your service.” he said with a wink. Was it a habit of his?

"I'm Nightwing." He introduced himself as if he wasn't one the most famous vigilantes in Gotham, extending his hand towards you, expecting.

You looked at his hand for a moment, thinking what it would mean to take it.

"And I'm leaving." You finally said, turning around as you began to walk, leaving your speed for when you were further away from him, hurrying to leave before the GCPD could arrive.

"I didn't hear your name." His shout making you pause for a moment. "It'd be nice to have a name for the mask."

You thought about it for a moment, how fast were you to change your mind for someone you'd just met, but he had something that made you want to open up and break your own rules, something that made you want to reach out.

"I'm Nobody!" You shouted without turning back. Your name was a little play on words. If they say nobody is going to save you, you could at least give nobody a body to do so.

"See you around, Nobody!" You could hear the smile in his voice as he shouted back.

You walked a little more before breaking into a run. Your conversation leaving a warm feeling in your chest.

A third time became a fourth, and a fifth, and before you knew it you began to wait for him to come and vice versa, working together on the case and sometimes more. Keeping each other company on patrol in the nights where you could barely catch your breath and the ones where all you did was talk. He became your friend, someone you could rely on, who you could talk and tell things no one else would be able to understand. The life of a vigilante was lonely, you both knew that well, but the nights you spent together made you feel otherwise.

The night you finally decided to reveal your identity was one you'll never forget. After years of being almost invisible, of not daring to appear, fearing who might find you what they'd do if they knew about you, the time spent with him had you tossing all of them away. And when you finally did, taking down your hood and removing your mask, your heart roaring in your ears as you looked at him, waiting. The joy, the calm, everything you felt when his hand went to his own mask revealing his face, his permanent smile and his beautiful eyes for you to see, where nothing you'll ever be able to describe.

“I’m Dick.” he extended his hand to you, much like the first time he did so, only this time, you took it, no longer afraid of the meaning.

“And I’m y/n.”

The more involved you became with him, it was a matter of time before you finally met the big guy. Batman was imposing, but you could see why Dick respected him so much. He welcomed you, offered help, if you needed. The rest of the group was just as welcoming, chatting and joking with them. Dick was more than happy by your interaction, beaming as he looked at you. Here, with these people, you felt welcomed, safe, all thanks to him.

Today was one of the few nights where Gotham was calm, it wasn't like nothing happened, but it was slow enough that you could still rest and take your time. You were sitting with Dick on a rooftop, enjoying each other’s company in silence, you always felt comfortable with him, that's why you took it as a now or never.

“Hey, Dick?”

“What is it y/n.” the way he said your name leaving goosebumps all over.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.” You took a deep breath. You could do it.

“I wasn't the best with you at first, and you didn't know me, we were strangers. So why keep coming back?” You finally asked the one question that’d been rounding your head from the beginning. He remained silent for a while before he could answer, his cheeks and ears getting redder with every second.

“We, uh, heard from you a long ago.” he started to say, visibly flustered. “Nothing specific, just that there was someone helping out in the streets.” he glanced at you as he rushed through his words.

“Batman let it pass because it wasn't anything dangerous and it was pretty on the low, we actually lost track of you a couple of times.” he smiled, “That was quite impressive, you were really good at that.”

“That was the point.” you blushed at his admission, not that you weren't as invisible as you thought, but that he was still impressed that you managed it, if even a few times. He left out a chuckle, low enough to for you to miss if you weren't by his side, his sight lost in the horizon like lost in thought.

“But then, we found each other that first night, you had taken out half of them already, I was impressed. I couldn't see you, but I knew you were there, that's why I stayed, I wanted to talk.” he looked at you once more, his sight fixed on you as he continued. “Then I thought that if you were trying so hard to cover your tracks then you'd show yourself when you were ready, so I left, but the feeling lingered.” you felt his hand on yours. Not daring to look down, you took it and held it firmly, relishing the warmth it gave you.

“I guess, what I wanted to say that night was that, you don't have to do this alone.” your heart clenched, tears threatening to come out as his words echoed in your head.

“That's why I kept showing up. I wanted to support you, let you know in a way that there are people you could count on. That you could count on me.” he was the first to look away, taking both your hands in his as he waited for you.

You knew words wouldn’t be enough to convey what you felt, not enough to thank him for what he did, of how he did that and more, the lump in your throat not helping either. He gave you a place to come back, someone to trust. So, you did the only thing close to that. You took your hands away from his, ignoring the question that flashed through his eyes, placing them on his face, holding it carefully as you pulled him down to you, hoping he could feel everything you did as your lips touched. He let out a surprised gasp, before he took your face and deepened the kiss, his mouth moving with yours like an answer, that he understood. Tears freely flowed down your face, not touching the ground as he wiped them away with his thumb, caressing your cheek. When you finally broke apart, foreheads touching while you caught your breath, you smiled, a laugh passing between the two. You held each other after that, holding closer as you enjoyed the night. The start of many to come.

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