#i’m holding him like that because he’s a talisman. against everything else wrong in my life rn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

my-brothers-corrupted · 3 years

Text

Chapter Four - Part 7

Dapper wakes up beside Red disoriented and upset and decides to take him somewhere he barely remembers to help him come to terms with their situation.

Tws for hospitalization, bruising, manipulation, and imprisonment.

Part 7 - Aftermath

aether-mae asked: Ok ok hear me out Dok- what if you were to make a deal with Dark, for him to off a certain someone for you. That way he won’t hunt you anymore and you take the opportunity while he’s undertaking the deal to run away

Dok sits stroking Noodle, staring at the ceiling, lying across his bed. He has nothing else to do. Nothing to do but wait and think and wonder. His mouth parts. He looks young and casual in his boxers and t-shirt, his usual semblance of professionalism and normality having faded away with his stress and the torn white coat lying beside his bed.

“Oh, yes, that would work,” he mutters, a gleam coming back to his eyes. “If that Dark thing can kill Anti and we could turn them against him… I mean, Anti’s pretty fucking terrible, so it couldn’t be too hard to switch the side that Dark’s on, yeah? Unless they’re equally terrible… damn. But I think I’d ally with just about anyone at this point if they told me they could kill him. But who would even know how to do that?”

He sighs, shaking his head against his pillows, mussing his hair. He hasn’t eaten. He wants his siblings, all of them. All of the real ones. Safe and sound.

“Doesn’t someone have to know? Was there ever anyone? Did you ever know, back when you knew us, from before? Does Dapper remember anything? I have to find a way to make him stop hurting us…”

Anonymous asked: um. so hey dok! things are... stable for now. trick's alright, he's with anti, who did possess blue. red has a cut on his throat but trick said it wasn't lethal. dapper got hit pretty bad. they're both in the upstairs bathroom, um, sleeping/unconscious? they were just now coherent, though. anti is... not as angry as he could be, which is good at least! we're working on keeping everyone safe. i'm sure it's not been easy. how are you?

The door to the downstairs guest bedroom creaks open. Dok shoots up, staring at the entryway - and there, unharmed, is his twin.

“Trick,” breathes Dok, reaching out for him, and Trick has rarely looked as relieved to go crashing into his arms, halfway tackling him onto the bed.

“Is that all true?” asks Dok, muffled by the closeness. “Red’s not going to die? You’re okay? Dapper, what’s wrong with him? Where’s Blue?”

“Anti was still wearing Blue last I checked,” says Trick quietly. “I think I heard Red talking to Dap, but I’m not sure. He was pretty busted up, Dok. Are you alright?”

“No one touched me, Trick, I’m alright. It’s been days since someone’s laid a hand on me.”

“I was so scared Dark would send people into the house while we were all distracted, but I knew the cameras would tell me if someone tried to take you.”

“Thank you for going up there,” says Dok, wrapping him in his arms. “You’re my hero.”

Trick’s face flushes with pride, scooping Dok close to his body, though fear lingers in the whites of his eyes. He runs his fingers over the ravens on Dok’s chest without even having to look down at them, his other hand in Dok’s hair. Noodle jumps on top of his stomach and makes him yelp - and then laugh, accepting kisses on his nose from his kitten.

Anonymous asked: Yeah, you're both okay. Everyone's okay. You're all alive and okay.

“What are the chances?” murmurs Dok, and it makes Trick laugh. He wants to build him nests out of t-shirts and blankets and buy him fish and chips. He wants to give him coffee at Christmas and deliver babies with him. He wants to make him smile.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” says Trick. “I bet you haven’t eaten.”

“Okay.”

Anonymous asked: Dok, still got your necklaces?

“And wouldn’t take them off for anything,” he says, pulling them out from beneath his shirt - three little black raven talismans, arranged one two three from his collarbone to the curve of his chest. Trick doesn’t react, heading upstairs without looking back.

“The animal one, the light weapon, and the one that protects my head and my heart,” says Dok gently, plucking at his ravens one by one. “From my friends.”

Anonymous asked: JJ, I know you're beat to hell right now but we're running out of time. Anti's done playing around. Red and Dok are basically out of his control and he sees that, if he starts cutting losses, he's going to kill them. He's gonna hold onto Blue for usefulness, and trick out of favoritism, but JJ, somehow you've fallen in the middle. This damn twin system is throwing everyone's judgment but I think you have a better glimpse of the whole picture. We don't want to cut losses but we need a plan.

“Noooooo,” protests Dapper unhappily, shaking his head. “Nooo, don’t make me decide things, am tiredddd.”

He draws out his signs in long motions and flops down against the side of the tub, silver chain around his throat. At least he’s been able to get out of the bathtub and move around a little with only his neck chained - Red is not so lucky.

“Don’t shake your head so much, buddy,” he coughs, sallow and pale with the coming of the morning, his neck as white as the t-shirt strip wrapped around it. “You might still be concussed.”

“I want off my collar,” protests Dapper, struggling to get up to his feet, only to crash back down to the floor. “I should have been a good boy, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” whispers Red. “He’s been like this all night. Anti hurts him and it snaps him back into his sugar-sweet, obedient little brother mode. It’s not healthy. Dap, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Reddy, lemme go.”

“Just try to lie still.”

“I wanna go home, I wanna go away, I wanna go somewhere nice.”

Red shudders, both of them struggling to take care of each other while they deal with their own shit. Dapper is spacey and injured, wheezing when he breathes, and Red has been over-stimulated and uncomfortable for about nine hours straight. He ran himself a bath for the blood and Haldol and everything on the floor of the filthy tub, but he hates it when his clothes are wet almost as much as he hated sitting in his own blood. He wants to cry again but he’s too tired. He’s just got to stay strong and get through it, like he always does. Tomorrow, this will be over. Tomorrow, this will be over. Tomorrow, this will be over.

“Wanna go home,” repeats Dapper weakly.

Anonymous asked: i know, buddy. i'm sorry, dap, jamie, love, you didn't do anything wrong, you don't deserve this. but i don't think you'll be stuck like this for much longer, okay, bud? i don't think you'll be stuck right there for more than a few more hours, and i think in a week or so things will have been figured out. hold on, okay? you're doing great, and i know it's hard, but just hold on, buddy. we're doing our best to help you guys.

“I do not want to hold on.”

He is grumpy and tired, childish in his fear of Anti, because it’s always been the best way to protect himself.

“I want my bear and my friends and pasta and Jack. I don’t want to hold on. I don’t feel good. Red, come home with me. Can’t we?”

“We’re kind of stuck right now, bud.”

“Not stuck, never stuck. I wanna go. If I can think of something. Take you with me so you’re not so unhappy.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Dippin’ Dots. Want to look for Tylenol or something in the drawers?”

“Anti took everything out of the bathroom in case I try to overdose,” signs Dapper. “I can’t even die to escape him.”

“Hey, we don’t talk like that,” warns Red with a thrill of fear down his back. “Don’t have to die to escape anyone. We’re going to be okay.”

Dapper plays with his clock distantly, running it between his hands.

Red sighs and turns back to you. “Is my twin okay?” he asks. “Please? Can you see him? Is he awake?”

Anonymous asked: Anti if you're going to be wearing Blue, march him to a hospital. You're only making him worse.

Anti is running his hands over the flesh of Blue’s arms, standing in front of the mirror in his bedroom.

“You know,” he says, his voice a fine low rumble. “I’m almost getting used to having skin.”

He strokes his throat, his fingers drifting down his esophagus.

“With the sickness I get otherwise, it’s a lot more comfortable. And with Blue breaking down and always turned against me… I’m starting to wonder.”

He cups his face in his right hand, his left resting on his caved stomach. He listens to Blue’s heartbeat in his skull. Thump, thump, thump. Quiet and tired, but reassuring in its steadiness.

When he was small, he used to sit in the back of Jack’s head, only half-formed, and listen to the beating of his heart. The only rhythm he knew.

“I could maybe just wear him all the time,” he says. “And only leave when I needed to glitch. He scratches a little. Doesn’t fit quite so well as Dapper. But still, I could just… rest.”

He touches Blue’s image in the mirror.

“Change this body til it feels like my own.”

There’s a sly light in his eyes as he turns to you. You know that look by now. He’s trying to get a rise out of you, to wind you up, to piss you off - but he could be serious, too.

Blue shudders faintly, Anti’s eyes gleaming in his head.

Anonymous asked: You really think that'll impress Dark? Okay then.

Anti rumbles out a laugh. “Dark’s always impressed by me. Even when I thought they were a total creep they looked at me like I’m the prettiest little killer in the world, right down to the essence of me. Sometimes people tell you to go kill yourself with enough emphasis that you can tell they got it bad.”

It’s difficult to tell if he’s joking or not.

“But I’m glad you agree Blue’s unimpressive right now too.”

Blue’s body drops like a sack of flour as Anti steps out of him almost literally, backing away from his body and regarding him coolly, popping bubblegum in his mouth as he looks down at him.

“Got something on your face,” he says, nudging Blue with his foot as his eye begins to bleed.

“F - fucker!” gasps Blue, clawing at the hardwood and drawing in huge lungfuls of air. “What did you do to Red?”

“I’ll give your precious twin back to you when he’s learned his lesson. Get out of my sight, you little witch.”

pine-storm-season asked: Hey, Dok and Trick? Anti just unpossessed Blue, he's in Anti's bedroom and might appreciate help leaving the room and stuff.

Trick puts his cereal down right away, turning to head upstairs. Dok makes to follow and Trick shakes his head at him, warning him off. “You’re still not allowed up here.”

Dok can’t say he really minds staying away from his torture room. He waits for his siblings at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey,” says Anti, pleased when Trick comes up to him.

“Hey, Green. Can I have him?”

Anti rolls his eyes. “If you want him, you can have him, but you don’t have to look after him if you don’t want to.”

“It’s okay, I just want to get him out of your hair,” says Trick nicely. Anti relaxes against his bed, watching Trick pull Blue to his feet. He isn’t looking well.

“Red, Red,” begs Blue.

“Maybe we can have Red and Dapper back too?”

“Don’t worry about them. A little later.”

Anonymous asked: (Dok, while you're alone, Anti hypnotized the ever-living FUCK out of Trick and told him that he has three days to get the necklaces off you or else he'll kill you. I'm really sorry to drop this on you so bluntly but it's really important you know. If you don't want Trick to know you know, you can probably play off your reaction to this news as reacting to Blue looking like shit, Trick's bringing him back now)

Dok’s mouth parts so softly you see his chapped top lip cling to the bottom for a second, revealing his slightly crooked front teeth. He doesn’t answer you - barely looks at you - for a good thirty second. A deep breath passes in and out of him without conscious thought and his eyebrows fall into a dismayed sort of terror.

“Oh, he - he said he’d kill me? Anti did?”

And how stupid it is - how utterly and painfully stupid - that after all the realization he went through, after all the growth, after all of his own hopes to kill his little brother - the thought of Anti killing him still burns like a betrayal.

He never loved him at all.

He spent so long being so good for him - gave his whole life up for Anti, loved him no matter what he did to himself and his siblings - and Anti would cut him open and leave him dead on the grass of the lawn just to punish Trick.

Dok has to go. He gets up and he leaves you there, racing away and back down the stairs.

Anonymous asked: well on one hand dok is totally entitled to that reaction on the other hand FUCK

“What reaction?” asks Trick, and then his twin isn’t at the bottom of the stairs.

“You told him!” he accuses instantly, whirling on you. “You - he shouldn’t have to know that! He shouldn’t have to think about it! Why would you - ugh! I was going to keep him safe, like I always do! He’s got enough going on right now, he - Blue?”

He catches Blue as he begins to slide off Trick’s shoulder, sinking towards the ground. Trick heaves him up in his arms, huffing with the weight of him, and, determined, he carries him to his and Red’s bedroom, setting him down on the bed.

“N-no, I’m okay,” stammers Blue, wiping at his forehead. “I’m okay, Dok.”

“It’s Trick, Blue.”

Blue pants, looking up at him. His foggy eyes are squinted nearly into slits, blinking fast.

“Can you see me?”

Blue closes his eyes and turns away, burying his face in his hands.

Anonymous asked: Can we set the cameras to transmit audio? If not, Trick, can you pass it on to Blue if he can't read these? It's gonna be alright, Blue. Right now, you're downstairs in Red and Trick's room. Trick is in the room with you, and Dok is I think also downstairs? But not in the room. Anti, Red, and Dapper are all upstairs. What's one thing we or someone else can do for you right now to help?

“I want Red!” snaps Blue, turning suddenly on Trick and shoving him away. “Get out! You’re just Anti’s little pet! Leave me alone! What can you or somebody do? Fucking nothing, that’s what! I’m just disgusting and sick, leave me the fuck alone!”

“Hey, Blue, calm down,” Trick snaps right back, real fear in his voice. “You’re panting way too hard, okay? Just try to breathe.”

“Then get out! Get out of my room! I don’t want you here! I don’t want anybody but Red and even he can’t save me so go away!”

Trick’s never really been snarled at by Blue, but he won’t let it get to him while everyone else in the house is in worse trouble than him. He decides his sibling isn’t joking about wanting to be left alone. Trick knows the feeling. He gives you a meaningful look, tilting you towards Blue. Keep an eye on him.

Trick leaves Blue alone. Blue tries to get up to draw the curtains closed for himself, but even this one little thing he can’t do for himself - he crashes to the floor, his legs giving out, and grits his teeth as the blurry image of his pale hands holds his shaking body off the floor.

Not even his hands. Not even his skin. Not even his body. Oh, fuck. His head swims. The world is falling away from him. He sits up, trembling, and falls back against the bed, gripping at his head. Gripping at the head. Not even his skull. Not even his fucking body.

“This isn’t me, this isn’t me, this isn’t me,” he whispers, his voice faltering back into despair. “Where did my body go, holy shit. This isn’t happening. This isn’t Blue.”

Trick finds Dok downstairs, hiding under the bed.

“Dok?”

He’s never seen him under there before.

“Dok, I’m here.”

He crawls down beneath his twin, reaching for him. Touching Dok does not make him look over or speak. He’s just still.

Trick’s heart sinks.

“One of your zone-outs, my brother?” he asks quietly.

Dok stares at nothing, breathing a little too slow, a little too deep. In. Out. In. Out.

“I’m here,” Trick repeats quietly, even though it never seems to be enough. “I’m here.”

Dok lies still. Lets him hold onto him.

He’s scared. No matter what he told himself, it all seemed to come down to this - in three days, he’ll most likely be dead. Yeah, he’s scared. His brain decided to give him a break. He’s far off in his head. Trick doesn’t think he feels anything at all when he’s like this. It’s a defense mechanism.

For a moment, Trick reaches up and touches Dok’s necklaces. The talismans burn his fingers dark red, but he doesn’t draw them away until he has to. He doesn’t think he can get them off with just his hands, but if he got a knife…

He sighs and leans against Dok’s shoulder, closing his eyes. Not right now. He can’t even think about it right now.

“I’m here,” he whispers. “I’m with you.”

They lie beneath the bed, in silence.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

“Dap,” begs Red, panting through his discomfort, trying to keep his calm. “You gotta stop rambling, little brother. You are okay. Okay? I’ll get you out of here.”

“No, I want to go home! Now, now, now!”

“Dap, we’re stuck! Come on, please take it easy!”

“No, we’re going now,” says Dapper, determined. He brushes at sweaty curls on his forehead and shivers, scrambling around the bathroom, his silver chain jingling. “We’re going away. Maybe we don’t have to come back. Where, I don’t know. I have to remember something. We can go home. I want to.”

His hand finds his little clock in the corner of the room. Red’s eyes widen.

“Now - hey, hold on a second, Dapper. I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

“Where do you want to go?” asks Dapper, barely seeming to hear him, staggering back towards him in the tub. “Who should we go see? I just have to remember… I just have to… we’ll go somewhere it doesn’t hurt so much. I’ll be good then. I promise. He won’t catch us. He can’t smell it, not in here. Where do you want to go, J-happy?”

pine-storm-season asked: I don't think that's a good idea, Dapper. He's already irritable and angry, and the chances of making it worse seem too high. I'm sorry, buddy, I think you have to stay here.

“I don’t want to, I want to go away, my whole body really really hurts.”

He crashes down besides Red and his big brother does his best to catch him as he falls, but this only makes Dapper gasp in pain as hands make contact with his bruised side. For a second, it seems to startle him out of his frantic determination. He collapses against the side of the tub, his head falling against Red’s. Red holds his shoulders and tries to make him breathe in time with him, rubbing his arm.

“It’s okay, Dap. It is. I promise. It will be.”

Dapper shakes his head, low, low, his eyes haunted.

“He really beat me. Like he used to back when I was never good.”

Red just holds onto him, shaking his head. He doesn’t know what to say anymore. He just knows - they have to go. They have to. He has to get his family away from Anti. He hopes Anti will forgive him someday, but he can’t worry about him now. Not when he’s treating them like this.

“I loved that big house in the forest,” signs Dapper quietly. “I only got to live there about a year.”

“Some day I’ll find a place where we can live and you can feel safe again. I promise.” He presses their foreheads gently together, minding the dark bruises across his little brother’s tired face.

“I want to go see Jack,” signs JJ gently, pressed against Red’s head. “I really want to talk to him. I think I need to talk to him. I miss him. He doesn’t remember me in reality. But I still remember him in my own timeline. I want to go see him.”

Maybe Red should protest more. But the truth is he’s filthy and hurt and in a lot of discomfort, something that translates directly into distress and pain for him.

And that one time when Dapper sent him back - when he saw them all again - when they were so healthy and clean and safe and Blue laid beside him and told him he was a good man -

Yes, Red wants that.

So he whispers:

“Are you sure you can make it? Even though you’re hurt?”

“Jackie,” signs Dapper, like it could be the sign for love or brother or family. “I’m sure.”

“And Anti won’t catch us?”

“Not if we’re quick. He didn’t catch me before.”

Dapper has eyes like suns faraway, big and bright. Red has had trouble saying no to him ever since he began to see the little recluse trapped in the attic as his baby brother again.

“Okay,” says Ro. “Let’s go home.”

He touches Dapper’s hand.

Anonymous asked: He, Dok, I doubt you'll be up to reading cameras right now, but however you're feeling is okay. You've done incredible work getting as free as you can from him, but not even magic can undo the effects of months of conditioning, abuse and hypnosis overnight. He's a master manipulator, you've done so well getting this far. Please don't beat yourself up for how you're reacting. Also Trick, this is a crazy stressful time for you guys, and you're doing your best, and we thank you sincerely for that.

“You know what?” says Trick, a little weakly. “We’ve gone through worse times together and come out okay, right, Dok?”

He’s managed to get Dok out from under the bed. They’re curled up on the couch in the basement, playing Lord of the Rings on the big TV. They don’t have internet, but they do have a DVD player.

“Look, Aragorn,” Trick prompts his brother, patting Dok’s arm. “You love this movie, right? When was the last time we saw it?”

Personally, Trick doesn’t really get the appeal, but he likes the monsters and the fighting scenes and things. Dok’s really into it, though, most of the time. But right now he’s just burrito-ed in all the blankets Trick gave him, staring down at the floor with a truly miserable expression on his face.

Trick hovers unhappily, patting his arm.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he says. “They’re right, don’t gotta blame yourself. It’s okay. You’re doing great.”

He curls up against him and keeps him company. Dok’s eyes don’t start to re-focus until they’re on their way to Mordor.

Anonymous asked: Yeah, you both are doing so well handling all this. Dok, however you're feeling is okay. We're going to do our absolute best to protect you guys, yeah? It's okay.

Dok lets out a small, tired sigh at Trick’s side.

“Hey,” whispers Trick. “Are you with me?”

Dok looks wearily over at him, meeting his eyes at last, but he doesn’t say anything.

Trick scoots forward and presses their heads together, lying against him. Dok glances over at you before lying back again. Faintly, his hand moves to rest across Trick’s.

They do not speak about the talismans. They do not speak about the death threat.

“Gimli is my favorite,” says Trick, after the dwarf says something funny, and Dok is grateful that he’s pretending to care.

“Can we watch all three?”

“We can watch all three.”

Dok will be asleep by the end of the first, but Trick doesn’t mind that either. He slides the second DVD in and goes back to his place at his side.

Anonymous asked: Hey Dap, Red, I'm all for you guys doing that, but are you completely sure you're going to be safe? If anything goes wrong, things could go even more south for you guys, and it's already really bad at the moment. Again, not trying to dissuade you, but please please make sure it's going to be safe. Or, as safe as anything in this family can be.

Ro comes to spitting and coughing.

He finds himself on his hands and feet - mid push-up, he thinks? He lets himself go down and then rises again, and, with a burst of pride, he feels taut muscles raise and lower him as though his weight were nothing to them. Another push-up. Another.

Jackie was strong, he realizes, and he blames the flash of jealousy on his old counter-part for being this fucking ridiculously fit, and then notices how strange it is to think of the person he used to be as someone else entirely.

He gets to his feet, glancing around.

Was this his room?

A lava lamp bubbles in the corner. His eyes get fixed on it, watching the colors rise and fall and float. His windows are open and cool air and birdsong float into the room. The walls are a nice light blue, the bed is a Queen with thick black blankets, and everything else - oh, fuck - it’s neat! It’s clean! Everything he owns is packed politely into drawers, a row of nice running shoes tucked in a perfect line in his closet, Spider-man decorations and pictures of his family arranged in clean lines on his dressers and drawers.

This is like Heaven.

For a long time, he sits in the middle of his floor, just breathing. Just watching. Just trying to remember.

A slow breath fades from his chest. He closes his eyes and he opens them again.

He remembers you and looks down, smiling.

“Safe, huh?” he mumbles, feeling the cool breeze through his hair. “What’s the fun in that?”

Anonymous asked: Oh alright, you made it safely!! Your room does look pretty cool, and damn wish I could do push ups like that. Way to flex, hero man. If you're able, would be be able to look for Dapper? You both weren't exactly doing super well when you left, and the magic might've taken a toll on him. (Hope this trip goes well for you!!)

“I’m not even flexing, this is just how I be,” purrs Ro, letting himself revel in the pride of it for a second, standing up and looking down at himself. He feels immortal like this. He looks into the mirror and his face is flushed with health - though he finds one deep scratch across his collarbone that surprises him, bandaged by neat hands, but stinging across his skin.

“Weird… wonder what that’s from? Oh, geez, yeah. Where is Dap?”

cest-mellow asked: it’s good to see you so healthy, red. but where is jameson? is there anyone else in the house with you?

“I better find him,” mumbles Ro, looking around like he expects JJ to crawl out from under the bed. “I don’t know if anyone else is here. I’m assuming this is the same house I was at last time he brought me back, the house in the woods he always talks about.”

He glances out the window. The trees are swaying in the wind.

“I don’t know how to get home without him, so he has to be around here somewhere. Right?”

“Hey, Jackie, are you coming?”

A voice with a familiar accent startles Ro out of his thoughts. He turns towards the door. “Uh… yeah, Dok, sorry, give me a second!”

“I know you’re just visiting, but I have a shift to be on time for, you know.”

“Right, sorry,” says Ro, a little startled. Did Dok just give him sass? Dok? “Oh, fuck, that’s not his real name. Uh… H, something German.”

cest-mellow asked: henrik! his name is henrik. where is he trying to take you? maybe jamie is there too? you should ask tho O_o

“Henrik! Right.”

“What?”

“No, I was just - uh - ”

Henrik pushes open the door to his room, leveling a look at him.

“Oh,” says Ro. “Hey.”

He’s got this clean white coat on and a dorky, cute blue turtleneck. His hair is very short at the sides, soft and dark on the top. He raises his eyebrows at Ro in a way that is both bemused and challenging. It’s not a look Ro is used to.

The Dok he knows is quiet and submissive, scampering back to his nest every time Red used to raise his voice at him, slathered in scarring and always trying and failing to keep his hands clean. But Henrik has this light in his eyes like nothing in the world has ever made him afraid, and his back is held so straight that for a moment Red thinks that he’s taller than him. Maybe he is taller than him, and Ro just never noticed before.

“Come on, dummkopf,” laughs Henrik, nudging his head towards Ro’s shoes. Ro doesn’t think Dok has ever insulted him out loud and to his face, even as a joke. “Let’s get going. Don’t you want to visit Jameson?”

Anonymous asked: Oh wow, guess this is happening, cool! What do you want to do while you're here, Red? (Is there anyway you could get information on Anti or any weaknesses? Or not, goodness knows you guys deserve to just have a nice time without worrying about him)

“One second, Henrik, I’ll be right there.”

“Oh, Henrik,” he says, and it takes Red a couple seconds to realize he’s being teased. “Today I’m Henrik, huh? Well, of course, Jackson, take all the time you need.”

There must be something else he’s supposed to call him, but Ro doesn’t remember what. Henrik grins at him like he’s waiting for him to say something back, but Red’s at a loss. Henrik blinks and steps back.

“Sorry,” says Ro. “Really, I’ll be right there.”

“Um, okay,” says Henrik. “I’ll just be on the porch.”

Henrik leaves and Red smacks himself in the head. “Two seconds in and already I’m acting weirder than usual. Okay, what do I want to do while I’m here? Geez, I gotta leave most of this up to Dap. Sounds like he had somebody he wanted to talk to. But, uh.”

He pauses, cocking his head.

“Well, if we have time, I would like to see Blue and Trick and… well. Blue and Trick. And just - yeah. Well. Probably don’t have time for anybody else, but I really liked last time seeing how healthy everybody looked. Kind of jarring. But right now especially, I really want to see that Blue’s okay.”

Anonymous asked: Ro, Dok's name is Henrik (von Schneeplestein)! If you run into Trick, he's Chase, you know Blue's name, and Dapper's with you, and oh if there's another guy you haven't seen before, he's Jack or Seán, I think JJ might be looking for him. Also, from what I can remember, yeah expect some sass from Henrik haha! These guys are probably going to pretty different to who they are now, but regardless of all that, you're still their brother. Best of luck!

“Holy shit,” gasps Red. “Holy shit!”

Schneeplestein, holy shit!

And it’s funny, first things first, just because that seems like such a ridiculous name on the surface, but Red isn’t even laughing, not for a second, because shit, that was his name, wasn’t it?

“Schneep,” he breathes, and it doesn’t matter how silly of a name it is, it’s a memory alive again on his tongue. “Holy shit… we were friends.”

He doesn’t remember the things they used to do or the way they used to get along, but with that name he knows that they did used to get along, that they did used to love each other in a way he’s long since forgotten, that Schneep was his brother long before Dok and Trick were bound at the hip, that that’s not just his tired, struggling little brother with the haunted eyes - that was Schneep, his Schneep, the doctor who always kicked his ass when he came home hurt, the man who would patch them up while grumbling in German the whole time, the arms he would come back to when he was in pain. That was his brother.

Ro has to sit down for a moment.

“Shit,” he whispers, biting on his nails. He lets his eyes slide shut for a second. “Schneep…”

Because it’s one thing to know that they used to know each other better and that their bodies used to be healthier. But to know that they used to be different people who loved each other, deeply, in different ways than they do now -

Fuck, it’s a lot to have stolen from them. It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that Schneep is dead.

He wants to see the others right now.

hollenka99 asked: Just a reminder for if you bump into them, Trick is Chase and Blue is Marvin. I'm guessing you used to call Henrik by a nickname. Try 'Hen' and see how he responds. After all, you're still shortening people's names now like Dapper being Dap etc. Can't hurt to try. Worse that will probably happen is that Henrik may tease you again.

“Okay, right,” mumbles Ro, getting to his feet. “Yeah, I’ll just… Chase. Right.”

And then he can’t bring himself to say the name Marvin out loud.

He tugs on sneakers - nice sneakers, red and white - and finds thin black gloves near the door, slipping them on despite a warm fall outside his window. He loves having gloves. Jackie is wearing a long, heavy red hoodie and long black and white sweatpants. He feels covered and comfy and - for the first time in a long time - handsome.

But somehow even that realization is painful, and he turns away from the mirror, swiping at a place on his forehead where a scar will one day exist.

He pushes out of his room, glancing down a short hallway towards a homey little living room with a couple worn-down couches. The house is quiet. He wanders through the kitchen and the laundry room, where faint voices waft in through an opened window. Pushing through the back door, he sees a pair of siblings working on a pretty little garden together, helping each other tear up weeds and chattering about nothing.

He’s never seen Blue and Trick spending time together alone.

“Hey,” he calls weakly.

Their heads turn up together, both smiling at him. Chase sticks his tongue out at him. Marvin winks. Ro hears a laugh bubble out of him, shaking his head in amazement.

pine-storm-season asked: Here you are, yeah! This is good, I think, to see them again like they are. You doing alright, Red?

“I feel weird,” he says, with a fluttering laugh. “But after being stuck in that fucking bathtub, I can’t be upset with anything. Hey, guys.”

“Hey, J-man.”

“The king, the legend!”

“Your shift at the hospital?”

“We’ll be there after lunch to give you a break.”

“He likes those Twix bars in the little shop out front if he gets upset.”

“I love a little shop.”

“Look how my mint is coming in!” Chase and Marvin both lean back to give him a view of bunches of herbs growing up from the ground. Ro shakes his head, laughing.

“Why don’t you just grow it with magic?” asks Ro.

“I’m still so tired from the fight,” says Marvin, grinning up at him and pushing long, dark hair from shining eyes. “But even if I wasn’t, it’s good for me to work the earth a little sometimes.”

Marvin buries his fingers in the soft damp earth, breathing in the deep richness of the smell like a worshipper breathes Easter incense. He closes blue eyes. The wind brushes across his soft hair. He smiles back at Ro and Chase follows their gazes.

“You have freckles,” says Ro faintly.

“When I get enough sun,” answers Chase warmly, touching his cheeks.

Anonymous asked: I think Schneep is a common nickname for him, maybe try that? This is probably going to be painful, seeing how much you guys have lost, and remembering things too, but hey, you can still reach something like this again. Healing is possible, and while you're not likely to be the same, you can still all make progress and learn to love each other like that again. While you're here, do your best to make the most of it!! Love you Jackie <3

“Hey.”

A hand descends on Ro’s shoulder and he turns to ice eyes behind thick glasses.

“Are you okay?” asks Schneep, frowning. “How’s the cut?”

Ro touches his chest uncertainly, feeling the faint burn of a clean wound. “Um. Okay.”

“Ready to go to the hospital?”

“Yeah, okay. Is Jack coming?”

Henrik blinks. “He’s still there from last night.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, let’s go.”

Anonymous asked: So... are you guys going to visit Jack at the hospital? Is he okay?

Ro doesn’t know how to start asking about it without alerting Henrik to the fact that something’s wrong. He trails after his little brother towards the door of the house, next to which hangs a great silver mirror.

Schneep takes his wrist without preamble, making Ro startle, but all his brother does is say “amo, vale,” and then -

Hold on a second.

Ro is too startled to protest when Henrik pulls him through the mirror after him.

Gone is the forest. Red closes his eyes in shock against a strange sensation, feeling the world give an odd lurch around him, and - well, it’s not unlike the time travel, but his body has moved instead of changed. Brick walls rise on both sides, birds chittering around the rooftops. It might have been a dirty alleyway, once, but so many flowers and weeds and grasses have grown up through the broken earth and brick and pavement that it makes a tiny pocket in the back of the alley, hidden from the world. Henrik pushes through a curtain of vines and Ro sees people and cars rushing down the streets around them, feels the burn of city electricity, hears the laughter and the noise and the life of lived-in places. He takes one last look back at an abandoned mirror sitting in a dirty rectangle of painted blue wood and moves after Henrik, counting his breaths to keep them steady.

“What did you say?” he asks shakily, hurrying after Henrik to catch his wrist. “Those words, like a spell?”

Henrik quirks his eyebrows at him. “Marvin’s password? That was all.”

“Henrik, how’s everyone doing?”

“I didn’t get any calls overnight, so I’m hoping that means good. No more breakdowns for JJ, I hope, and if Jack got caught staying past visiting hours and thrown out on his ass, well, he can take care of himself.”

nikkilbook asked: .... Jackie, ask how Jameson is doing.

“How is Jameson? How was his last breakdown?”

That light like sunflame in Henrik’s eyes gives its first flicker of the day, and he turns to give Ro a frog-frown look, his mouth tight.

“Look, I promise I won’t let them put him back in the psych ward. I’ll convince them to let us take him home first, once they know he’s going to be okay without the hospital. It’s not his fault. It’s just Anti in his head… soon, things will clear up, and he won’t be saying things like that anymore.”

“Things like what?”

Henrik rubs his arms together, shaking his head. “You know what! Like that there’s messages hidden in his prescriptions and all the doctors are secretly trying to kill him.”

Red’s head clears a little. “Oh. He’s psychotic?”

“No, I told you!” protests Henrik, his upset rising. “It’s just Anti, it has to be! He’ll clear up again!”

“You should put him on Haldol,” says Ro wisely. “If we’ve learned one thing from all this.”

Henrik gives him a despairing look, stopping in the middle of the path. “Bayard, he’s been through too much already. I don’t… I don’t want him to be any sicker than this. Don’t want him to have to deal with delusions. We just got him, can’t he have a break? I want him to not get hurt anymore.”

Red’s chest twists. Dok never did stop trying to look after him, either.

He looks smaller than Ro again, standing in the middle of the street, playing with a loose button on his sleeve.

“We’ll do everything we can, okay?” he says, stepping forward. He slides an arm around Schneep’s shoulders and finds that it feels easy, natural, normal. Henrik pushes gently back against him. “Even if he has got something going on in his brain, he’s still perfect. Can still be happy. You’ll see. I’ll make sure he gets the chance. I promise.”

And Henrik smiles again, small and correct, yes, correct, right, normal, natural, true. Schneep. Like nothing has ever hurt him. Pride in the cold ice of his eyes, in his clean skin, in his head lifted up.

Was Anti the one who taught them all to cower?

Anonymous asked: Oooh they don't know yet about Jamie's psychosis... Red, can you find a way to discreetly ask how long JJ has been with your brothers? Because it either has been not that much or they've all gotten lucky for a big stretch of time

“He’s been in here… what, how many days is it now?” asks Ro, dodging out of the way of harried nurses and - oh, Schneep just slammed his shoulder into the arm of that doctor with the clipboard.

“Watch where you’re fucking going, Kerchek!” he hollers, narrowing a glare at her.

“Hey, everybody look out, it’s Mr. Genius!” snarks back Kerchek, rolling her eyes.

“Still jealous about that botched piggyback, aren’t you?”

“I’ll show you a botched piggyback, Schneeplestein, you check your back.”

“Just stay away from my brother or else.”

“Holy shit,” laughs Ro. “Stop fighting with the other doctors! What the hell?”

“She deserve it,” huffs Henrik, tearing away. “Hey! You two stop snickering and get back to work!”

A pair of howling medical students all but crumple over their assignments, head bent low together.

“Yes, Doc,” they laugh.

Henrik just rolls his eyes and keeps walking.

“You cause a lot of trouble, Schneeps?”

“Please, everyone knows I run this hellhole. Clarissa, how is my patient?”

“Hi, Jackie. Hi, Schneep,” says a dark-haired nurse, glancing them both over fondly. “He’s doing okay. Just slept most of the night. You’ll have to go check if he’s been giving the morning staff as much trouble as you do.”

“Unlikely,” answers Henrik dryly, pulling Ro away again. The hospital is crowded and he dislikes the smell and feel of it, but everyone is smiling at them as they pass - or glaring at Henrik, who snipes right back. He’s a vicious little man and ever since he started working here, any passive-aggressiveness or false niceties died with a bang rather than a whimper. The hospital’s been better for it - and a lot more entertaining.

“It’s been what, a week and a half?” answers Schneep belatedly. “He was so shaken up to begin with. But a nice young man, isn’t he, once you get past the murder attempts?”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the thought of you being a competent professional,” answers Ro cheekily, and a moment later a clipboard slams into his stomach. He groans out a laugh, snatching Henrik by the turtleneck and dragging him under his arm, making him yelp in protest and squirm to get away. They half-chase each other down the hallway towards Jamie’s room, Henrik fending him off with his clipboard, and Ro can’t stop laughing.

Fuck, when Blue reads him poetry with love in the lines of it, this is what he means.

Anonymous asked: Dang, I almost forgot how much confidence Schneep used to have. It's nice in a way to remember that he wasn't as quiet as he is, or well... will be. Bask in this moment, red. Enjoy that long passed time where brotherhood still held any kind of meaning other than simple hierarchy.

Ro looks at his brother as he pushes open the door to a nice little hospital room with lots of light. He doesn’t think he wants to know what sort of things you have to do to a person like Schneep to turn him into the little brother in a tattered coat shaking beneath the bed.

And this is better, he thinks, fleeting and true. Not that he was a different person. He could love him for whoever he is if he only got the chance. But that’s what was better - the chance to be his friend, and not just his brother. Maybe Jackie got swallowed up, too, the same way that Schneep did. Eaten up by that one role, letting it define him.

I��m more than his protector, though. I’m more than his big brother. He’s more than someone I need to look after all the time.

“Hey.” Henrik’s voice, gone gentle, interrupts his thoughts. “How are you feeling, my dear?”

Letting his legs dangle over one side of the blue hospital bed, Jameson tears his eyes away from the sun through the window and meets their eyes.

He looks exactly the same.

Anonymous asked: How's Jamie doing? Is he alright?

JJ reaches out for Ro.

He moves over to him and wraps his arms carefully around him, pressing JJ’s head to his shoulder. “Did you come to not knowing where I was?”

JJ nods, gripping at his sweatshirt. He doesn’t know what would have happened if he and Ro weren’t together when the timer on his clock ran out. He doesn’t travel like this a lot, or not that he remembers.

“Fuck, you really don’t age, do you? Like, truly. You just don’t.”

“Not until it’s my time,” answer JJ’s hands, a needle taped to the back of the right one. “And I haven’t had much of a chance at being twenty-five yet, you see.”

“I never thought this would be possible, but you might be skinnier now than you are… well, now.” Red draws back to look at him, pushing stiff, overgrown hair from his eyes and touches the back of his head, examining him. “I thought you said there used to be a time when Anti was nicer to you.”

“That time hasn’t come yet,” answers JJ wearily. “When he gets me back the second time…”

He notices Henrik standing by the door, staring between the two of them with his eyebrows up, worried and excited and confused all at the same time.

“You seem better,” he breathes, bouncing on his feet just a little. “Are you, um… feeling safer today? You are hugging today? We are not the enemies?”

JJ smiles, reaching out his arms. Henrik sweeps forward, beaming, and hugs him to his chest, pouring reassurances into his ear.

It’s about halfway through that JJ realizes this might have been the first time in his life he ever hugged Henrik. In the original timeline, he doesn’t think that happened until weeks later, when he stopped baring his teeth at anybody who tried to come close. He holds tighter and closes his eyes.

“You’re shaking,” murmurs Henrik. “You need more for the pain?”

JJ sucks in a breath, feeling at his body bit-by-bit. He does hurt, terribly, somewhere beneath the dull relief of whatever drugs he’s on. He’s beat and fragile, one of his ankles wrapped in a cast and an awful haze of weakness making him feel more like a ghost than a man.

And he’s never been medicated for his psychosis in his life. He knew it from the moment he came back to this moment in time. He miscalculated. He can barely think straight, and he’s afraid, and he doesn’t want to leave this room or face anyone.

“Where’s Jack?” asks Henrik, pushing lovingly at his hair. “Didn’t he stay with you?”

“Went to get me a hot chocolate,” signs JJ. “I really wanted one.”

“Oh, good.”

“Can I stay with Jackie a little while, H-healing? I want to talk to him.”

“Alright,” says Henrik, despite a little disappointment in his face. “Well, I need to get started at work for the day. But I’ll go over what the nurses said and if you need anything at all, I’ll come right back. Okay?”

JJ nods. Henrik cups his bruised face, soothing his thumb over a cut by his ear, and then, with one more look at the pair of them, he sweeps away again.

“You’re going to have to talk to Jack for me,” signs JJ immediately.

“What? No way! I don’t even know who that is. Leave me out of it, Jay. Hey, come on… don’t look at me like that.”

Anonymous asked: Jamie, how about you explain Jack real quick, and then we can also help Jackie talk to him if we need to?

“No, I refuse to explain,” says JJ politely.

“Dapper!”

“What! You might remember as you see him… I’d prefer for you to remember what he meant to you than me have to explain…”

Ro sighs, crossing his arms over his chest.

“This is the person Anti hates so much,” he says. “The old master.”

JJ picks quietly at the hospital bedsheets, watching mice crawl up the sides as he hallucinates. “I guess. Well, yes, he is the person Anti hates.”

“The magician who created us.”

“Something like that.”

“How can somebody have that much power?”

“It happens once in a millenium, my brother. And he has a bit of an energy boost.” JJ glances over at you, raising an eyebrow. “But I don’t remember all the details. Nobody understands the full thing. Usually, we let Jack stay out of it. It’s not really his fault, and he has a completely different life that’s not anybody’s business. We fight our battles without him. But… now I need to know.”

“What do you need to know?”

JJ stares up at him. “I… Dok and Blue have been… I just… I need to know more about… Anti.”

“What, Dap?”

“I can’t say it.” JJ ducks his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Not while I can hear him whispering to me from the television…”

Ro glances at the TV on the wall. It’s off.

Anonymous asked: It's safe, bud. You can say.

“You should know by now,” says JJ begrudgingly, turning away from Ro. “You want to protect us, do it. I want my hot chocolate and to go back to bed.”

“Oh my goodness.”

“Blue has been sneaking around with Dok ever since Peru, Ro. Hasn’t he told you anything he’s been thinking?”

“No!” protests Ro, offended. “Well, I mean - he’s not sneaking around without me! We sneak around together! Geez!”

“Ro, we all know you haven’t picked a side yet. Blue doesn’t - ”

“Picked a side?” Ro scoffs, pacing at the foot of his bed. “What sort of side is there to pick? You’re talking about Anti. I want to get you away from him, I do, but that’s our brother, Dap, that’s our - ”

“You think I don’t know that!” JJ’s hands tear the air apart. “What, you think I’m naive to his love and his hatred, Ro? Look around you! Do you see Anti back home with you? Does he come to visit me in the hospital, bring me hot chocolate, garden with Marvin, play around like a kid with Schneep in the hallway? Ro, Anti can be your brother if you want him to be, but it’s a choice that we make. Or you, at least… I think I’m bound up in his blood forever.”

“You’re talking about hurtingAnti.” Ro holds onto his wrist, trying to make him look at him again. “You’re talking about hurting him, not just running.”

“He just chained us to a bathtub!”

Ro backs away, gnawing on the nail of his thumb. He shrugs, eyes flickering around.

Anonymous asked: I know he's your brother, Red. But can I ask you a question? If you just met him, and he started pushing people around like he does now, is he the kind of person you would want to be friends with?

“Mh, no, he scares me, but it’s not about friends, it’s about brothers.” He shifts on his feet, hugging his arms over his chest. “And Anti’s protected me before too, even if he’s hurt me to match. He gets lost in his temper… I want us to be away from him, and not to go back until he can stop hurting us. If he can. But I don’t want to hurt him…”

He knows the warmth of Anti’s body in a hug. He knows the warmth of his own blood on Anti’s hands. He shivers.

nikkilbook asked: Jackie, what does “brother” mean?

“Well,” says Ro. “Your blood, yeah? You gotta look out for your brothers. And they’re supposed to look after you. And if they don’t, well, I think you gotta go, at least to keep the others safe. But you don’t turn around on your family. He doesn’t… mean to hurt anybody. Just angry. Right? And hey!”

He whirls on JJ again, wagging a finger. “That’s Jack’s fault! Anti always says the old master made us like this.”

“Anti blames him for everything,” answers JJ bitterly, wiping at his face. “Just because Jack fucked up a couple times when he was younger. It’s not Jack’s fault Anti’s always mean and you know that. Or if it is Jack’s fault - honestly, I don’t remember - then Anti can never change, and it would be better to kill him than to let him keep living so ferociously miserable.”

Real emotion breaks Dapper’s face. He turns away, pulling his hair over his eyes.

He hates Anti. Often. Not always. And no matter what he tries to tell himself, he can’t deny that it hurts to see Anti in pain. Lately, he doesn’t even hold him at night. His condition rears thoughts in his head - traitor little brother. Selfish brat. Turning on him. Something touches his ankle and he gasps, jerking it back to his chest, but nothing’s there. Ro reaches out to soothe him, hand held out in front of him like a shield.

nikkilbook asked: I’m not sure Jack “made” you anything. He created you, but that doesn’t mean he micromanaged your every flaw and personality trait. You are you, you’ve always been you, you’ve never not been you. All he did was give you a way to exist physically in this world.

Maybe Anti’s angry a lot. Maybe that’s outside of his control. But hating is a choice. Turning affection into a weapon meant to hurt and to maim is a choice. And crucifying yourself on the hate of someone who would call himself brother has only ever been the role of one man, and you are not Him.

“Jackie,” signs JJ gently. “Jack doesn’t even remember us anymore because of what I did… so we know for a fact he doesn’t control any of us any longer, if he ever did. You are you. And I… I’m me, for better or for worse. And Anti is himself. The person he’s chosen to be. Ro… how long have we loved him, and he still does things like this?”

Ro tears a strip off his nail, eyes haunted. “You remember better than I do.”

“Well, it’s been a long time,” he sighs. “And all of us have done our best. But it’s not our fault, Ro. It’s not… it’s not my fault. I have loved him, I have… it’s not your fault if that’s not enough to change him… it’s not my fault.”

Ro tilts his head, pressing his lips together, but JJ doesn’t turn back to his gaze. He’s curled in on himself, petting his hands through his hair, face very tired, and very guilty.

Anonymous asked: It doesn't equal out like that, Red. You don't owe a n y loyalty to someone who hurts you, even if they also protect you. And what you said about his temper, and if he stops hurting you? Red, he's had the chance to stop, many times. If he hurt you once when he was angry, and then did his best to work on it and not hurt you again, that would be okayish. But he doesnt, Red. He has no excuse for cutting your throat just last night, or for any of the other things he's done. Nothing justifies that.

“Okay, fine,” snaps Ro, pulling at his hair. “I know that Anti sucks ass and I have for a long time, okay? But I’d be scared, Dap! I’d be scared! It’s always safer to stay away from him or just wait his temper out! That’s always been true… and I… he is my brother, even if he’s the fucking worst and I hate his guts half the time!”

Dapper sighs. “Alright, Red, just - ”

“If we try to hurt him he’ll kill us!” shrieks Red. “He’ll do things to us like he did to Blue at the river while I was running away! I got scared and he put Blue in the hospital and he still hasn’t recovered, Dap! I don’t think he ever will! Anti did that to him just because he hated him and wanted something he had. He can get inside our heads, he can control us. I wanted to attack him in Peru, but I had to protect Max.”

“Ro, I know.”

“And then he made me feel like I loved him again! Even when I know the truth, I still feel that way sometimes. I’m not strong enough, Dap, don’t you get that? I can’t keep him out of my head, can’t convince myself to do anything, can’t protect you from him! He does things like chain us to a bathroom and I can’t stop that, JJ, I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m not… I’m not enough! I’m not what anyone needs me to be! He’s going to keep hurting us… but he’ll hurt us less if I can just get you away for a while or keep shielding you the best way I know!”

“No, that’s not true!” cries JJ, slashing at the air. “Stop, Ro, J-Joy, listen to me. Watch. Watch. Ro, don’t you know why I’m in the hospital?”

Ro blinks, glancing around. “You’re hurt. Anti hurt you. He’s always hurt you. Your whole life.”

“But Anti’s not here.”

Ro brightens a little. “I found a way to get you away from him? You’re hidden?”

“No, Ro, better,” says Dapper, clutching at his aching ribs as he leans forward. “You and Blue beat him. Beat him into the earth and took this past version of me away from him. And that was the night you made Anti terrified of the weakness that would force him to scamper away from a fight like an animal.

We are not the ones hiding right now, Ro - he is.”

Anonymous asked: Red, Ro, Jackie, you're strong. And I'm sorry you've been forced to be for so long. But you can get through all of this. You can win. We've been with you for a long time, haven't we? We know you. And we believe you can do this. We're with you, bud, we'll help you. It won't always be the way it is, because you all can fight, and you can win. He wouldn't beat you all down into dust if he didn't think you could be powerful enough to fight back and win.

Ro sits down at the edge of JJ’s bed.

His little brother’s fingers tug gently on his sleeve, waiting for him.

“I love you,” he says, though the words are ashy in his mouth.

JJ nods, stroking at his wrist. He presses an “I love you” into the mattress as he scoots closer.

“I love all of you. I want to keep you safe. I’ve never been able to do that. And I… still don’t think I could hurt Anti.”

“I know I couldn’t,” JJ agrees. “But I need to find out. For Blue and Dok. Cause, Jackie, I think maybe… when it comes down to keeping all of us safe, or staying Anti’s brother - I think maybe, on that day, we’re going to have to hurt Anti.”

“Kill him?” asks Ro weakly.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I could watch that. But if he comes at us again and tries to hurt us like he did today, wouldn’t you rather that we had a way to stop him?”

Ro bites down on his lip.

“If he tried to hurt Blue like he hurt us today, wouldn’t you rather that you had a way to protect him?”

Oh, yes.

Instead of running away.

He would like to stand tall again.

nikkilbook asked: There is no “enough,” Jackie. There’s only you, and that’s all your brothers—your friends—have ever needed. Not the you that Anti has twisted you into thinking you’ve become, but the you that’s real. The you that says “I love you” by telling the truth. That’s who you are. And sometimes, the truth does mean fear. Because Anti is frightening. You deserve the right to be afraid. But fear does not mean cowardice, and it does not mean shame. You are not shameful for being afraid of him. Remember yourself, Astrifer. You’re the boy who loves by telling the truth.

Red - Ro - Jackie - hell, but he can never make one of them fit quite right. He thinks there used to be a truth to him, somewhere, before all the lines went blurry and his hands spilled so much blood in the name of someone who’s always hated him anyway.

JJ touches his palm.

The contact of skin makes Jackie shudder, but he’ll allow it, just for a moment. Beneath JJ’s touch, with a smell like the earth after rain, Jackie’s clean white hands rise with Red’s scars, revealing his present again.

“Anti always mocked you for being a terrible liar,” signs Dapper. “Because when you knew what was true, Jackie - that was when he was afraid of you.”

“What’s true, JJ?” he asks numbly.

JJ puts his head against his shoulder.

“Big brother, you’ve always known.”

Anonymous asked: Yeah, it's gonna be hard, I know. But we believe in you all, and we'll be right here with you to help.

“Okay,” says Jackie softly, an arm around Dapper’s waist, and he knows what it is to be holding him - natural, right, truthful.

“If you want me to, I’ll go talk to Jack.”

Dapper closes his eyes.

He thinks a part of him wanted Jackie to refuse. To refuse to allow Dapper to betray their false brother. But he said yes, and Dapper has.

“Okay.”

He hides in Jackie’s shoulder and tries to ignore everything else in the world but the feeling of his warmth beside him.

Anonymous asked: Where is Jack?

“Getting me hot choccy.”

“Holy shit. Don’t shorten it to hot choccy.”

“What? You don’t want hot choccy too?”

“That’s - hahaha. The worst possible spelling.”

“It’s the best way!”

“Don’t you have a sign for chocolate?”

“Maybe I like saying hot choccy! What!”

“Jay, haha, I - ”

The door pushes open.

Jackie’s on his feet in a second, adrenaline pumping, fists clenched, body taut.

He knows that face. He knows that energy in the air. It makes all his nerves light up like firecrackers.

Anti stares back at him, holding a little cafe cup in both hands.

No…

No, he was wrong. Not Anti.

He just looks like him.

Down to the second and third tattoo.

Down to the way his fingers move.

Down to the way his eyes gleam in the light.

“Hey, man,” comes his tired voice, coughing a little. He steps past Jackie and hands JJ his hot chocolate, setting a coffee down on the table beside him. “You just got here?”

“Yeah,” says Ro quietly. “Yeah, I did.”

“Mmh.”

Jack adjusts the white cap on his head and lays his head down at JJ’s side without another word, letting half-circled eyes slide shut.

Ro doesn’t move.

The air feels like a storm is coming, faraway lightning playing with the ends of his fingers. The air feels like the birds have flown away and the frogs are hiding.

Anonymous asked: Red, you alright?

“Um, yeah,” murmurs Ro, scratching at the back of his head. “Yeah, fine.”

But he’s nervous watching this person lying beside his little brother like nothing is wrong. Like they’ve known each other their whole lives. And Jack isn’t talking either, which means - worse still - Ro might have to start the conversation.

In all honesty, he just wants to take JJ and go back to the house, to have a few minutes of peace before they’re returned to that goddamn bathtub. He glances at his little brother, whose face has gone dead, his affect flat and his body tired. JJ lifts up his little pocketwatch, where only a sliver of gold, counting mercilessly down, continues to disappear.

Anonymous asked: What are you supposed to talk to Jack about, again?

“Anti,” mumbles Ro.

“Hm?” asks Jack, like a cat uncurling.

“Nothing,” replies Ro, backing off a little.

Anti. His master. How to hurt Anti. Anti, who hates Jack more than anything. Ro shouldn’t be doing this. But he told JJ he would. So they would have a way to protect themselves and each other if Anti becomes violent with them again before they can find a way to escape. Ro can’t watch his brothers get hurt anymore. He doesn’t want to be a bystander in their pain. He doesn’t want to be a coward.

He glances down at his outfit, clutching his hands into fists. A thick hood at his back, strong running sneakers, gloves on his fingers.

He wants to be a hero again.

Anonymous asked: Ro, there is a way to help Blue recover. When we were with Dok and the magicians, a magic book told a story of a girl who had her magic stolen and had the same ailments as Blue does now. The girl recovered and got her magic back when the thief was killed and had blood stolen from him and given back to the girl. There's a way to fix it, but something tells me you won't like this very much.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up, no way!” cries Ro in sudden alarm, making Jack sit up on the bed, blinking. “Nobody said killed, okay, what? What the fuck? Is that what JJ meant when he said Dok and Blue were trying to figure out how to hurt Anti? They’re going to - oh, fuck no! I’m not a part of that, okay?”

Terror and panic and guilt burst like a water balloon in his chest and overwhelm Ro with a sudden ferocity, making his eyes water.

“I’m gone, I’m out. This is fucked up. I know he’s cruel but I would never want to killhim. What’s wrong with Dok and Blue?”

“JB,” calls Jack. “What - what is going on?”

Ro locks eyes with him and gets no comfort from the face so much like his own. He turns and races out the door, needing to cry.

“JB!”

Anonymous asked: hey, red, it's okay. deep breaths, love. i know you don't want to kill him, and that's okay. no one says you have to. it might have to happen eventually, but right now we're just figuring out ways to protect them, okay? no one says you have to kill him, it's okay. we're just protecting your other brothers, that's all we plan to do.

“Might have to?” wheezes Ro, sweeping past a crowd of medical staff to race towards the stairwell. “Might have to happen… holy fuck… I didn’t… I’m not… but then, he’s the one who made me a killer, isn’t he?”

He shoves through the door into the stairwell, racing away, logical thought flown from his head. “But then, I do have to protect them, don’t I? I do, I do. I - ”

“Is this because I couldn’t do it?” cries Jack’s voice behind him, the door clicking open again. “Jackie, I tried, I - he was screaming for me! What was I supposed to do? He’s gone, isn’t he? Isn’t that what matters? I’m sorry.”

Ro stops dead, panting. Jack’s footsteps race down the stairs towards him.

Anonymous asked: red, do you think it's safe to tell jack what's happening? you don't have to, it just might help.

Ro lets out a shaky breath, turning to face Jack.

“Can we talk about this? Are you okay?” asks Jack, pushing a strand of long hair from his eyes and tucking it beneath his cap again.

His mouth is curled with guilt, his voice small and sad.

Ro stares at him, trying to make his heart stop pounding. He doesn’t know why he feels afraid of him - though it’s not uncommon for him to feel confused about what it is that he’s feeling or where it’s coming from. Jack, for his part, makes him feel like lightning is about to come down over his head.

“JB, you’re kind of scaring me,” he admits uncertainly, stepping forward to put a hand on Ro’s shoulder. “Are you - ?”

Ro jerks away from his touch, staring at him.

Jack’s eyebrows raise, a flash of something more sinister than confusion entering blue eyes.

No, wait…

One blue, one green.

Jack takes a step back, green eye swirling. “Is it you?” he asks, voice hardening. “Or is it… no, I would know if it were you. JB, what’s going on?”

Ro swallows. You have a good point - he’s going to have to tell Jack something, unless he’s about to become a much better actor than he’s been the whole rest of his life very suddenly.

“It is… it is Jackie,” he says.

“What’s going on?” asks Jack, the light fading from his right eye, leaving it blue again. “Is it just the hospital? Do you want me to walk you home? Where are your headphones?”

Anonymous asked: Do you think you could ask him what Anti's weaknesses are? That might be a place to start, Red.

“What were you taking about?” asks Ro quietly, taking another step away from him. “Just now, when you said you couldn’t do it. When you apologized.”

Jack’s shoulders slump. He waits for a moment to see if Ro will follow up or move again, but when he doesn’t, he lets out a deep, tired sigh and sinks back against the railing of the stairs.

There’s no walls on the outside of the stairwell. White light streams in as the colors of cars and people and the soft dappled green flickers of a few well-loved trees move around them in a silent dance.

“Look, I… I know you would rather I killed him,” says Jack, pushing round glasses up on his nose. “I’m sorry. If you’re mad, I just… didn’t have the guts for it, JB.”

Ro nods, eyes flickering. “How… how did he get weak enough that you could have killed him? What were you going to do?”

Uncertainty in blue eyes.

Jack stands up again.

“Jackie,” he says. “What year is it?”

Anonymous asked: uhhhh my guess is 2017? i don't know if i'm right though?

Ro bites down on his lip. “It’s 2017, Jack.”

Jack blinks at him.

Then he laughs, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh, my buddy,” he says. “Not even close.”

“Come on,” protests Ro, embarrassment making his cheeks flush.

Jack reaches up to shove his shoulder, making Ro start.

“Just tell me next time he sends you back! What’s up, man, you seem spooked as fuckkkk.”

He draws the word out and grins, his posture loose and relaxed again, bumping shoulders with Ro as he comes to stand next to him.

nikkilbook asked: He created you all, Jackie. He knows what JJ can do.

“Guess that’s true,” grumbles Ro, a little off-put.

“Thought you could get away with it,” teases Jack. “I shoulda smelled it even without you acting all weird. Why’d you hide that from me, Mr. Boyman?”

“You’re making fun of me.”

Jack’s joy falls out of his face. “Oh, um. Sorry. No, I was just playing. I’m sorry, I’ll stop. I didn’t… sorry. Um. What’s up?”

Anonymous asked: Can Jack hear (see?) us? What even are we rn?

I’ve said since the beginning that the camera system requires a suspension of disbelief at times when it’s not convenient. I describe the audience as a camera even when it doesn’t always quite make sense. For now, we’ll assume you’re a little camera clipped to Jackie’s hoodie or in his hoodie pocket, but he can still get your messages. Jack can’t see or hear you and doesn’t know you’re there.

Anonymous asked: He wasn't mocking you Ro. Anti may have used your name to belittle and hurt you, but Jack uses it to love you.

Ro flushes and ducks his head, rocking on his heels, uncomfortable. He isn’t the person Jack expects him to be, and he’s awkward on top of that, and he wants to go home.

“What’s wrong?” asks Jack, flustered.

“I just need to ask you some stuff,” mumbles Ro. “I don’t want to pretend we’re friends.”

Jack’s face falls. He doesn’t move for a second, his eyes flickering. He wraps his arms around himself in a hug, sets his mouth, and nods. “Okay… Fine. What’s up?”

Anonymous asked: It might take too long to explain everything, so maybe try saying you're worried about the others, and that it'd help to know Anti's weaknesses just in case you need to use them?

“I need to know about Anti’s weaknesses,” says Ro.

Jack looks up at him, blinking. “You just kicked his ass a week and a half ago in this year. How far in the future are you?”

“Don’t ask questions, please,” he answers quietly.

Jack rubs at his chest and adjusts his cap again. “I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong. I can help, right? Where am I in the future?”

“Not around, okay? I’m kind of… stuck. With him. I need to get out.”

“Well, it was you and Marv and JJ the other day,” says Jack. “I made sure there’s enough between the three of you to hurt him. Are Marv and JJ with you?”

“Kind of? But, come on, what did we even do to him? I don’t remember the fight well - hit my head.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You were apologizing,” says Ro. “What did you mean? When you said I’d rather he was dead?”

Jack shakes his head quickly, clasping his hands together. “JB, seriously, if that’s why you’re mad, I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry. I can’t stop thinking about it… if I had just got my phone out and filmed it… but I let him live. He was there writhing beneath your hands, calling for me! What was I supposed to do? I know he took JJ but he’s still… he’s still…”

Jack shakes his head again, turning away. He pulls his cap lower over his eyes and hugs himself.

“You and Marv just beat him up as you would normally, I guess? Marv’s fire and you fighting him and JJ there to make sure it all went alright. And then you… you had him pinned down… you were both bleeding but Marvin had him trapped in his vines and he was too hurt to glitch away. He doesn’t have weaknesses, per say - I just made sure the five of you would be enough to defeat him if you could ever pin him down. And you did. I’m glad. I’m sorry I couldn’t finish him off.”

Anonymous asked: I don't know if telling Jack straight up that you're from a time where you're with Anti is a good idea, but perhaps getting to the point fast would be. How much time do you and JJ have left here?

“Oh, shit,” hisses Ro. “You’re right, I should have stayed with JJ. He has the clock.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jack quietly. “Here.”

He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and hands Jackie a clock just like JJ’s, with the little sliver of gold still counting down.

“How’d you get this? What the hell?”

“It’s not really a clock,” shrugs Jack. “Just a piece of his power. Our power. He and I can pull it out whenever we need it. But I can’t use it unless he’s nearby.”

“Why?”

Jack grins wryly. “Hey, I handed that power over when I made him. No use to me anyway. But when he’s close enough…”

“You can tap in.”

“Right.”

“Same with Blue?”

“What?”

“Er, Marvin?”

“Yeah, same with Marvin. And Anti, too.”

nikkilbook asked: All five? Are we talking power of friendship here, or do Schneep and Chase have specific contributions? And does it have to be you that films it, or is it just cameras in general? Would it have to be posted on the channel?

“Anybody could hurt Anti,” says Jack. “It’s just not often that people do because he can teleport and shapeshift. And he’s vicious. And smarter than most of his enemies, though of course he acts like a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” says Ro. “I’ve seen him hurt before, Jack, but he never dies. I don’t understand why.”

Jack lowers his eyes, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Anonymous asked: Maybe ask him that if one of you couldn't do it, if he thinks it would still be possible to beat him again? Because Marvin doesn't have his magic right now, so he can't use it against Anti.

“Would we be able to beat him?” asks Ro. “If we couldn’t fight him like we can now?”

“You might be able to beat him,” mumbles Jack. “Anyone could beat him, even strangers to us, but only the five of you… well. Best chance is always getting the drop on him. Otherwise you gotta muster up enough strength and power to kick his ass, and that’s a lot harder.”

Anonymous asked: Okay, that went well. You could probably tell him that in your time you need to fight him, and so his weaknesses would be good to know?

“What do I need to know, Jack?” asks Ro, beginning to get frustrated. “Don’t cut corners or bullshit me. My family’s in trouble.”

Jack steps into his space, unafraid, eyebrows drawn back in worry. “Okay, deep breaths, okay? There’s nothing special to hurting Anti. You said you’ve seen people do it before.”

“Yeah,” says Ro. “In Singapore, there was a magician who fried him with electricity for about fifteen minutes and then set the house on fire, and he still didn’t die. I’ve seen a whole pack of magicians come after him. JJ says he’s seen Anti take all sorts of blows that should be mortal. He always comes out alive.”

Jack’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t question. He grips at Ro’s hoodie as he thinks.

“Listen, JB. I’m a creator, yeah. But creation doesn’t happen alone. There’s ways to focus power. Ways to make things happen. Like how Marvin can only grow plants if there’s already seeds or bits of them deep in the ground or nearby. There’s limits. There’s ways things have to be done.”

“Be direct,” Ro demands.

“You came to be not just because of my power, but because I shared you with other people,” says Jack earnestly, squeezing at the fabric of his jacket. “When I created most of you, you were pretty clearly human, so you can die like humans do, because that’s what people expect you to do. But Anti…”

“Isn’t human.”

“And that’s obvious about him from the start.”

“So he doesn’t die like a human.”

“No.”

“What does he die like?” Ro asks. “What is he then? A demon? A fairy? If you tell me then I’ll know how to kill him.”

“Right,” says Jack softly. “But that’s the thing. I… didn’t have a clear idea in mind when I created him. And I never told the audience jackshit about what he is.”

Ro stares at him, thinking.

“So…”

Jack clears his throat and closes his eyes. “Anti is confined only by the story that we tell. That means two things - you can’t kill him without telling the story, without building up to it, showing it, making it believable. And, two…”

Jack’s eyes open. His mouth is tight and trembling. He looks up at Jackie.

“It has to be one of the other characters in the story who kills him.”

Ro’s stomach drops.

“It has to be one of the five of you.”

Anonymous asked: why doesn't he die?

Ro clutches at Jack’s shoulders.

Tight.

He can’t help it. His brain is spinning. There’s nothing but a feeling he can’t name driving through his head, pounding against his skull, painful.

“You’re saying that Anti is immortal unless one of us kills him? One of his own brothers?”

Jack squirms a little beneath Ro’s tight grip, trying to back away, looking up at him in alarm. “Yeah. JB - ”

“And it has to be in front of a fucking audience? Like a public execution? No.”

“I made you real, but you’re characters at heart,” says Jack, panting a little as Ro squeezes tighter. “Since Anti’s not human, you have to tell the story.”

pine-storm-season asked: Would we count?

“How?” asks Ro weakly. “How can an audience be there?”

“Most of your story happened on my channel, over video.”

“On your channel?”

“Right,” says Jack, like it’s obvious.

“I… okay. So on video? Who has to see it?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. The point would be… the point would be that the people who care about you, about these characters, about the people that you are - they would have to believe that something had changed.”

“They would have to believe that Anti had died.”

“Yes.”

“They’d have to see Anti die. See his corpse. See - ”

“Jackie, get off!” cries Jack, shoving at his arms as Ro’s grip begins to bruise, but Ro can barely breathe. He feels himself shove Jack back against the railing of the stairs. “Jackie, it’s okay, ow, you don’t have to squeeze me like that! It’s going to be okay, alright? Tell me where I can find you in the future! I’ll remember and I’ll come get you!”

Anonymous asked: Mmmh, is there really a point to avoiding telling Jack you don't remember him? I get that you didn't want to attract too much attention on yourself but at this point he's aware you're not from now and that there's something wrong. It's probably worth a shot, no?

“I don’t even know who you are!” cries Ro, trying to make himself let go of Jack, though he only seems to feel his fingers squeezing tighter. He can feel his heart racing, fast, fast, and he sees his vision going red. “If you think that Anti should die, why don’t you put his fucking costume on and film it yourself?”

“I was going to film it when you beat him!” shouts Jack. “You had him beat, had him hurt, and I had JJ back again, where he belongs! But he’s my creation too, Jackie! He was screaming for me to save him! How was I supposed to film that? Post that? He’s my boy too! I just wanted him to stop hurting JJ! He’s gone now, why can’t we just let him go!”

“He’ll come back!” screams Ro, shaking him, hard. “He’ll come back and spend the rest of his life hurting us!”

“Tell me where you are,” chokes Jack. “JB, I’ll come get you.”

“You left us the fuck alone!”

He lets go of Jack and staggers back, letting his creator crash back against the wall, panting.

“You’re not coming, Jack. You don’t even know me anymore. You never told the story in this timeline. It’s just the people who actually cared about us who remember.”

Jack stares up at him, shaking his head. “Jackie,” he croaks. “Jackie.”

And Red wonders if it’s the same way he said his name when Max came to his door, asking him where he was, and all Jack could do was stare at him and repeat their names like memories from dreams that were never real.

nikkilbook asked: He already tortures and abuses you in front of an audience. We’re the audience, Jackie. We’ve always been the audience. He rigged the cameras this way so he could make us watch, because he thought it was funny. Let us help you. Let us make a real difference.

“No, no, no,” chants Red. “No, no, no. This is awful. I don’t care if he’s terrible sometimes. He’s my little brother. I can’t… we can’t… not like that. Is that what Blue and Dok have been planning? I can’t, I…”

He needs to go home. Needs to see Anti. Needs to get back to JJ. He races towards his little brother, rushing up the stairs, his heart throbbing so hard it hurts in his chest.

“Let’s go,” pants Red, pushing back into JJ’s room. “Let’s go right now.”

JJ looks up from his hot chocolate, wiping at his tired eyes. “The timer’s almost up. Did you find out - ”

“Don’t talk about it, Dapper!” shouts Red, slamming his hand down on the table beside his bed.

nikkilbook asked: Remember yourself, Astrifer. Even if Ro-Red-Jackie don’t feel like they can fit, you can build a new identity, starting now. You can do this, Hero.

Ro covers his face with his hands, trying to breathe.

He needs to calm down. He can’t do this again. He can’t let his emotions control him so much. Make him so despairing, make him so angry. Make him so afraid. Surely Jackie never felt like this. That’s why he was a hero and Ro isn’t.

No, no.

Even saying that is letting the self-hatred win. He has to be stronger than it.

He slumps back into the hard plastic of the hospital chair at JJ’s side. Pulls the hood up over his head and hides in it, eyes closed, hugging his body the same way Jack did.

Okay. He’s okay. He just needs to calm down. He just got a little spooked. He’s okay. If Blue were here, he’d rock him and tell him he loves him and that it’s alright to be scared. If Max were here, he’d sit with him and talk to him until the terror passed and tell him he’s not going anywhere, even if he does get too angry and too loud and too aggressive sometimes.

And JJ sits with him, and doesn’t go anywhere either.

“Shit,” whispers Ro, beginning to uncurl from his ball when five minutes have passed. “I’m sorry for yelling at you… shit. I shouldn’t have grabbed him like that either. I don’t know why I… I’m sorry.”

JJ nods quietly, staring at him.

nikkilbook asked: Out of... curiosity, what would happen if we were able to help JJ get on meds and other supports from the very beginning? Would that do anything to prevent or weaken the psychotic episode that made Jack forget them?

“No, sorry,” says JJ softly, giving you a fleeting smile. “This is the timeline where Jack did create us and does know who we are. Nothing we do here will change the present. But thank you for thinking of me.”

Anonymous asked: You know the truth Ro. Anti is not, and never has been, your brother. You know the truth of brotherhood, and you've been there every time he's broken it.

It’s a truth that both of them are still struggling to grasp. It cuts Ro deep. He’s made Anti his whole life - his protection, his leadership, his service. But he’s known for a long time that his little brother does not love him. He’s told him things like that to his face, but Red still stays, because he wants to believe something different. The thought that all of this time and this life and this love that he’s given to Anti was for nothing is almost worse than if he had been trying to escape this whole time.

I gave myself over to this monster. I loved him. I never should have. We have to get away from him or I will never stop finding excuses for him.

For JJ’s part, what you’re saying is the truth of not just the last year, but of his whole existence. There was never anything but Anti. JJ tried for years to love him, and it was never enough. A part of him - fuck, more than a part of him - wishes desperately that he could still change his brother. Beneath his anger and his hurt, he just wishes that he had ever been enough to make Anti love him back. Maybe he did, time to time, but it never lasts.

Anonymous asked: Red, I know, bud. I know it's a really fucking hard thing to think about. I wouldn't want to kill any of my little siblings either. But killing Anti could save the life of Dok, or Trick, or Blue, or Jamie, it might be that for one of them to live Anti has to die. I'm sorry, Red, I know this is incredibly hard. And it doesn't have to happen now, okay? No one says you have to go back to your time and kill him immediately. But you might have to later, Red, love, and I'm sorry you do.

“Even if I don’t kill him,” whispers Red, whispers Ro, whispers Jackie. “We still have to go. Like I promised you. I’ll get you away from him. Okay?”

“Okay,” answers JJ despondently. “Okay.”

“I really shouldn’t have grabbed Jack. He asked me to stop and I didn’t even listen. If someone did that to me I’d lose it. I’ve got to go tell him I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have much time.”

nikkilbook asked: You are not to blame for choosing to love him. Either of you. He is wrong for choosing to hurt you with it.

“You know what? You’re fucking right. Especially because he’s a goddamn hypnotist. I just… I don’t understand why he would go to all this trouble of making us feel this way for him if he didn’t really want to love us back. We could be a real family… why not just kill us? I - ”

He catches sight of Jack, still sitting in the stairway, right where Red left him.

His face is covered by his hands. His glasses are abandoned on the ground beside him. He doesn’t move.

Red steps down towards him, mouth opening, but no words come out.

He stands above Jack for a long minute. His creator never moves.

Ro sits down beside him and touches his arm.

Jack lets his head fall against Jackie’s shoulder, face still hidden, crying quietly into his hands. And it’s only now that Ro sees just how tired he is - it’s in the curve of his shoulders, the bow of his legs, the subtle shaking of his fingers.

“Have you… been staying up with JJ at the hospital?” asks Ro softly.

“Don’t want to let Anti get him again,” whispers Jack. “Don’t want him to get any of you again. But now I know I can’t protect you. It’s my fault. I should have killed him when he was crying for me. It’s my fault.”

Anonymous asked: Jack? I don't know if you can see this, if so Red maybe tell him, but Jack, it's not your fault for being kind enough to spare him. I'm sorry that he took that and used it against the others, but Jack, you are not to blame for letting him go. You couldn't know what was going to happen. You're not to blame.

“Hey,” says Jackie, taking his hand in his own, drawing it away from his face. Jack looks up at him with Anti’s eyes. It makes Ro’s heart hurt.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” says Jack, eyes red, voice rasping. “I should never have let this happen.”

And Red wants to tell him a million things, everything you’ve told him to say and more. Things like “it’s not your fault” and “it’s not wrong that you loved him, that you didn’t want to kill him, I feel the same way” and “I know I wasn’t very nice, but I hope you know that I have wondered about you for the longest time and that, even though it hurt, I think meeting you just this once fixed something inside of me - ”

But it’s too late.

Time’s up.

“Jack,” says Red, and then he’s gone.

Anonymous asked: Did any time pass at all? Are we back to the bathtub?

You are back in the bathtub.

Ro struggles for a second, spasming against the ropes that bind him before he realizes his situation and surroundings and forces himself to quiet again, shaking with the pain of his aching muscles and the discomfort of being bound and wet.

That’s when he becomes aware of the screaming.

“Hey, wake up!” Anti shrieks, shaking Dapper’s shoulders. “My little brother, my little brother!”

Time has passed.

Dapper is unconscious, bleeding from his nose - he has been for several minutes.

“What’s wrong with you?” Anti tears the collar off his throat and cradles him against his chest. “He was fine! I was watching, he was fine! Dapper! Jamie!”

“Anti,” begins Red shakily.

“Shut up!” screams Anti. “This is your fucking fault for stealing his medicine! Get the fuck out of my sight! Carver, Monochroma!”

Red yelps as the rope around his body combusts into a short burst of flame, singeing his legs and his blue hoodie.

Anonymous asked: Red? Dap? You guys okay?

Red is shaken and hurting, but no worse than he has been the rest of the night. He still desperately, desperately wants to get out, get a shower, put on clean clothes, and just sleep, but now his little brother is weak.

Dapper has gone frigid pale, but then he’s always so white. This nosebleed is worse than most of his casual ones. It’s like a vessel has popped in his nose, sending streams of red dribbling down his mustache and beard and all the way down to his shirt. Ro thinks he sees him twitch for a moment, his eyes flickering, and he wonders if it’s safer for Dapper to be unconscious as long as his eyes are silver anyway. He recovered alright last time, didn’t he? But he’s still so black and blue from the night before, still wheezing and trapped in Anti’s arms…

“I said get out!” shouts Anti, throwing a shampoo bottle hard at Ro’s head. Ro startles and leaps out of the tub, retreating to the doorway of the bathroom.

Anonymous asked: red, can you go? i don't trust anti at all, but he sounds actually worried for dapper and so i think you should leave him be, i don't think dapper will get hurt worse.

“Okay, okay,” he pants, backing out of the room. “Just… keep an eye on him for me.”

Dripping water, he races away and down the stairs, casting one glance back at that room at the top of the hall. The door slams shut and locks.

Anonymous asked: anti, is he okay?

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t know what went wrong!” he cries, sweeping Dapper into his arms and rising like he weighs nothing. “It’s not catatonia, it’s not a concussion, he’s breathing alright… shit, Dap, what were you doing? Oh, fuck’s sake, this is cracked, and not in the good way.”

He’s gripping at Dapper’s side, feeling the shifting of his ribs.

“Goddamn, goddamn… I barely threw him around! He’ll have to rest. I’ll tape it. It will hurt for a long time, but he’s still breathing well enough. Nothing punctured. Come here, my doll, lie down…”

Anonymous asked: do you think this might be his body shutting down from getting hurt, or something?

“It’s because he time-traveled,” mumbles Red from the bottom of the stairs, looking up at locked door. “Going back a day or so - he can do that maybe a half-dozen times without it knocking him out. But going back so far… it’s like in Colombia, when he passed out afterwards. It takes a lot out of him.”

Ro sighs and rubs at his face, stepping into the hallway, looking around. Everything is so quiet. Where are the others?

“Think I’m going to get a shower,” he mumbles. “I’m gross and exhausted.”

Anonymous asked: Anti, do you know how to help him?

Anti grits his teeth in frustration and turns away from you, setting Dapper down in their bed. He sinks into the mattress and the pillows as Anti pulls the blankets over him and strokes his knuckle down the side of his face, his own expression twisting with fear and anger and exhaustion all at once.

“Why do you keep causing me so much trouble?” he growls, though his voice breaks halfway through. He grabs Dapper’s unmoving face between his fingers, trembling with the urge to squeeze until he leaves bruises. He forces himself to let go instead, sinking down onto his knees beside him. “You used to be so good for me. We never fought. I never had to discipline you. Why did this fall apart…”

He growls again and strikes his own face like he’s waking himself up, letting a shiver run up his spine and then, with a soft sigh that ruffles the bedsheets, letting his head sink onto the bed beside his brother, and closing his eyes.

Dapper’s eyes flicker, showing blue and silver. Anti is lying beside him, touching his hand. It hurts Dapper’s heart.

Anonymous asked: Red, you doing alright?

“Um, no, everything sucks and I’m probably going to lose it later and just… I just need a break. From all this. Hey, at least Blue’s not in bed. Worried about him sleeping so much. Don’t tell him I’m upset. I’m just getting a shower, okay? See you guys later. And… thanks for the help.”

He leaves you on his bed and heads into the bathroom, stripping off his clothes for the hamper as he goes.

Anonymous asked: Is Dap still out?

Anti’s eyes slide open as Dapper’s fingers curl around his own.

They look at each other. Dapper’s eyes, barely open, are tired and silent. He’s joyless lately. He’s numb.

“Where’d my little boy go?” mumbles Anti, pressing his forehead against their joined hands.

Dapper closes his eyes again. The wind is brushing against the screen over their window. The trees sway outside. A clock is ticking.

“Look,” says Anti. “I… I didn’t think about how Dark would scare you. Alright? I should have. I just wanted to see them again. I didn’t do it on purpose to make you upset. I didn’t realize you were still upset about them. I could have asked.”

Dapper blinks, opening his eyes to look at him.

“Dap. I’m sorry.”

Dapper’s mouth parts. He glances away, awake now. Anti doesn’t look up from their hands.

“When I said I wanted us to be friends again,” he mumbles, quiet and begrudging. “I meant it.”

Dapper touches his side, his bruised face darkening with unhappiness and hurt - and something deeper, too.

Anonymous asked: Are you more hurt than before, dap, or is it just still hurting?

“I’m more tired than before,” he admits, drawing his hand gently away from Anti’s. “That’s all.”

“Maybe you just needed a second out,” sighs Anti. “But I couldn’t wake you up. Just rest. You’re such a fucking… I just… just… just rest.”

Dapper nods, not sure what to say.

“I didn’t mean for you to get really hurt. I was just mad. Don’t do that again.”

Anonymous asked: Anti, you're calm now? Not gonna hurt anyone at the moment?

“Why don’t you fuck off,” sneers Anti, turning to you, but Dapper takes his hand and pulls his attention back.

“Yeah, we’re done,” mutters Anti, nuzzling back into his hand. “Quiet time, whatever. We’re going to stay up here and watch the trees so Dark doesn’t try to pull shit tonight. Tonight or tomorrow, I expect. We’re just resting.”

Anonymous asked: Don't fall for his same old excuse Jamie. "I was just angry" doesn't cut it this time. Don't forgive him this time, he could have killed you and Ro.

“Look, you shouldn’t have taken that medicine.”

“I just didn’t want to be - ”

“You have to listen to me, Dap! I wasn’t going to let anything actually happen to you.”

Dapper sighs, shaking his head. Anti squirms, frustrated, and gets to his feet. He touches Dapper’s beard and strokes his fingers through the short hairs. Carver looks up at him, his body aching.

“It’s been hard sleeping without you,” says Anti.

Dapper purses his mouth, but he nods. It’s been hard for him too.

Anonymous asked: He used love as a tool of manipulation. The main reason he bothered with love, with the brother and twin hierarchy, was to ensure you never left him and went back to Jack, was to ensure you never stood up for your true family, to solidify the deaths of your sense of self.

Manipulation. Tools. Weaponry. Love.

The slow death of self.

Red stands in the shower and thinks about it, head bowed, the water running down his skin.

But for Dapper - for JJ, for Carver, for Monochroma - there never was any self before Anti. There was never anyone to go back to.

“You have to be nicer to me if you want to be friends,” he protests weakly. “You can’t keep hurting me.”

“I… I’m sorry about the cracked rib too,” says Anti. “Okay? Fuck. I shouldn’t have fucked around with your medication in the first place. It was stupid. I’m sorry. But you can’t just disobey me either. You’re rebellious by nature because we’re cut from the same cloth, Dap. You and me - we’re the same. But at the same time, I’m big brother, and I’m the one who has to be in charge. Sometimes you make things so hard from me… I’ve been trying to make amends and it’s like you threw it back in my face. We’re supposed to be brothers. You know I don’t have anyone without you… not really.”

Dapper’s eyes water. He turns away, closing his eyes.

Anti sighs, a slight whimper in the noise. He puts a hand on Dapper’s side to be mindful of his ribs, and then he crawls into the bed beside him, and - carefully, carefully - wraps himself around his baby brother.

“Why you’re crying?” he whispers, stroking his hair. “It’s okay now. I’m sorry. I am. I’m right here.”

But Dapper doesn’t know why he’s crying. It’s not even because of the pain of every part of his body being coated in bruising. He doesn’t know.

“You have to stop hurting me, Anti, I don’t understand, I try to be good… I love you, I do, I…”

Anti listens to him. Pressed against his body. Rocking him gently against the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

He holds him for a long time.

“You’re tired. Sleep. We’ll rest. I’ll watch. Go to sleep.”

Anti lays his body down against the bed, pushing the pillows beneath him and tucking him in. He strokes Dapper’s beard, staring at him.

“I love you,” he whispers, his eyes closing, like it’s not a truth he can admit while looking him in the face.

Dapper closes his eyes too, hot with tears. The pressure on the bed beside him could just as well be Jack, watching over him in the hospital, but it isn’t.

It never is.

He’s so tired.

“I love you too,” he signs, and JJ lets his head rest against his brother’s.

Anonymous asked: Trick, Blue, Dok, are you three still alright?

You can find Trick and Dok dozing on the couch downstairs. Trick’s been talking to him and trying to ground him for a few hours now, and he’s exhausted from the emotional toil - but he still figures he’s doing better than his twin, who is only just now coming back from his panic.

At least Dok looks cozy and content now. Trick’s wrapped him up in blankets and made him a cup of the coffee he gave him for Christmas. Dok is so enamored with the smell he hasn’t even bothered to drink any yet. He sits breathing in the smell and holding the warm mug in his hands, his knees drawn up to his chest and his eyes sleeping. Trick lies down on the couch beside him. They haven’t seen Blue in a while when Trick hears his footsteps coming down the stairs.

Anonymous asked: Blue? Dok? Where are you guys? Is everything okay?

“Trick,” says Blue softly, padding towards him.

“Hmmmm,” hums Trick, lounging beside his brother. He lets his eyes slide open and finds himself very suddenly wide awake.

“Blue? Why do you have…?”

He trails off, staring up at him.

Blue holds the big kitchen knife limply in his left hand.

“I was thinking about cutting myself,” he says.

His voice is very dull. His face is numb. He barely looks at Trick. Like he’s seeing right through him.

“But then I thought I should tell somebody.”

“Oh,” says Trick. “Good… good job. Telling. Yeah. Can I have that?”

Blue lets him take the knife from him. Trick is stammering too much to speak. Dok takes a long drink of his coffee and lets out a deep, contented sigh, his eyes glazed.

“Dok looks better,” says Blue, turning to head back up the stairs.

“Come here, bud, come here,” gasps Trick, finding his voice. “Hang out with us a while, yeah, love?”

“Okay, Tricky.”

“Okay.”

Anonymous asked: Blue, you ok?

Blue squints at the camera.

“They asked if you’re okay,” Trick manages.

Blue looks at him like he doesn’t understand the question. Trick reaches out and grips his hand tightly, drawing him down to sit with them.

“What’s, uh. Are you… What’s going on?” asks Trick shakily.

“Not much,” answers Blue. “How ‘bout you?”

“We’re… we’re… Blue, what’s going on?”

“Not much, Trick.”

Trick scrapes at his hair, gritting his teeth in his mouth. “Blue, why were you going to cut yourself? Please help me understand?”

Blue stares down at the silver gleam of the blade in his brother’s hand.

“I was just in the bathroom and I thought maybe it would help. But then I thought, I have to tell someone, because that’s not right.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“Well, yeah, you’re my darling,” says Blue. At last, Trick hears a little emotion in his voice: fondness. But still no fear or distress. He’s just… numb.

“I just wanted to check,” says Blue.

“Check what?”

“That the blood… that the blood is mine,” answers Blue bizarrely, touching Trick’s cheek. “Oh, dear… I’m feeling a little faint. I’m really far away from you. I don’t know where I am.”

“Roll your pants up a little and let me check you didn’t hurt yourself.”

Blue obeys, unperturbed. His thighs and stomach and arms are all untouched. Trick grips at his shoulder, massaging his muscles, and Blue relaxes a little.

“You like to be touched when you’re like this, right?” asks Trick, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Blue nods, eyes flickering. Trick pushes towards him and wraps him arms tightly, tightly around him, kissing his cheek and pressing their bodies close together. He can feel his own chest shaking. He doesn’t want to get triggered, but he won’t leave Blue alone.

Anonymous asked: Blue, if you're interested to know, Anti just kicked out Red of the bathroom he chained him in. It's, uh, it's good news yeah?

Blue sighs through his nose, humming a little.

“Better a bathroom than flesh to keep us. Still stuck, though. Still stuck. I’m in the walls of this house. Or nowhere at all.”

You hear Trick swear quietly against him, but he just holds him tighter, rubbing circles into his shoulder with his thumb.

“Hey,” somebody whispers, but Dok is really too tired to care who.

“Mpf,” he replies, letting his head lull over to the other side of the couch. This has the chain reaction of stirring Blue from his sleep, but he too only flops back onto the arm of the couch.

The hand that reaches down to brush Dok’s shoulder is warm. He hears a tired little laugh. “Come on, Schneep, wake up.”

“Mmffff…. I’m up, I’m up. Trick?”

“It’s Roser.”

“Where’s Trick?”

“I waited til he went upstairs to cook you guys some dinner. I need to talk to you.”

Dok tries to rouse himself at last, shoving his glasses back up his nose and turning to look at Red. “What’s going on?”

There are eyes crossed out on your cameras. Ro has turned Anti’s sight away. They don’t have long before he notices.

“Dok,” says Red, looking him in the eyes. “Have you really been planning to kill Anti?”

Adrenaline pours into Dok’s blood and he chokes, sitting up quickly on the couch, drawing his knees to his chest. He’s going to flip out. He’s going to scream. He’s going to cry again.

“Red, Red,” he gasps, hiding his face from him. “Don’t punish me.”

“Fuck, Dok, no, no, I won’t, I swear, I just… I just need to know. Schneep, don’t cry…”

“He said he’s going to kill me,” sobs Henrik. “In a couple days. He said he’s done with me, he’ll murder me. I’m scared, I don’t want to die.”

“Okay,” says Red quietly, and it’s shocking enough that he doesn’t freak out himself that it makes Henrik almost stop, looking up at him in surprise, sniffling. Red touches the back of his head. “Okay, come on, then. I want you to go get your shoes on.”

“What?”

“Blue’s not well,” answers Red, drawing away from him. Dok sees a backpack stuffed full on his back, his shoes already on his feet, Blue’s cane in his hand. “And you’re in trouble. Come on. We’re going to the hospital.”

#chapter four

3 notes · View notes

boxoftheskyking · 4 years

Text

Something Good, Part Fourteen

This chapter was so hard, you guys. I hope it kind of works. If it doesn’t, feel free to write your own version. That’s what fanfic’s for, after all.

In which Wei Wuxian experiences A Reckoning

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen

Wei Wuxian sits in the dark, under a tree, and tries to meditate. Inhale (he knows, he knows, he knows). Exhale (a low buzzing, a rushing like wind through the Burial Mounds).

There must be order. He cannot shake apart, he can’t be driven mad, he’s not that wounded, starving boy anymore. He will approach it like a complicated talisman he wants to recreate. Break things down.

Lan Wangji knows. It stands to reason that the rest of Gusu Lan knows—or at least the Sect Leader and Grandmaster. And they agreed to his punishment, bore him as a shame to the sect. Made him a commoner.

You made yourself a commoner. A cultivator without a core is no cultivator, therefore not nobility, therefore common. That’s the mathematics of it. Who took your core away? You did.

So what’s the problem, really? The Lan Sect has broken nothing, betrayed nothing. They have treated Wei Wuxian as a villain, deemed him a villain based on all the information possible.

The Lan clan are learned, virtuous, just. Lan Wangji is learned, virtuous, just. And if Lan Wangji sees him as a villain, then…

Then he’s a villain. Fine. He doesn’t mind being the villain. It doesn’t mean he’s evil, it means—

It means you were wrong.

A night bird screams somewhere behind him, and he flinches.

There it is. There’s the nerve.

Under everything, every laugh, every tease, every clever sidestep, the root of it all is this unshakeable belief that he is right. He can play anyone because he knows something they don’t—that Wei Wuxian is always right. Even after everything he’s been through, he hasn’t had any regrets, because what he did was right. He saved his brother, he defended himself. That was right.

And raising an army of corpses, and cultivating as far down the dark path as you could before they caught you, all of that was right?

He never needed to be a hero, a genius, a beauty. Anytime someone flattered and admired him when he was younger, it never felt right, felt like an itchy shirt in the wrong size. It wasn’t flattery you wanted. You never needed anything from outside. You’ve just always needed to be right.

And be honest—the voice inside him spits it at him like venom—the whole time you’ve worked here, lived as a servant, it’s not the dishonor or the work that hurts you. They want you shamed, but you aren’t, not really. It’s that it wasn’t your idea. If you’d just decided to walk away, gone to live as a farmer somewhere, wouldn’t you have been proud of yourself? Wei Wuxian, who fooled them all. Wei Wuxian who walked away.

His hackles raise, his mind springing so typically to its own defense. (What else was I to do? What would they do, if they were in my place?) But the root of that defense, the “what else could I do”—it still comes back to his fucking pride.

He doesn’t like to look at that inner spine of pride. Never has. (I never needed anything from anyone.) The defensive voice is small, but stronger, finding its feet. (How can I be proud if I never needed anything from anyone?)

That makes it worse, the venom leaks from between his teeth, over his lip, staining his skin with invisible truth. So proud that you never valued anything outside your own mind. The only standards that matter are your own.

(It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have a choice. Things just happened to me.)

It takes pride to be a martyr too, Wei Ying.

He’s been telling himself that all the ugliness inside him came from the Burial Mounds, came as the result of his sacrifice, but what if he’s been wrong? It was there earlier, the whole time. That horrible, vicious pride. The pride that made him take an extra beating, even though he knew it hurt Yanli and Uncle Jiang to watch. The pride that never let Jiang Cheng win, even when he saw how much he needed it. The pride that only ever let him tease Lan Wangji during that perfect summer, made him push and push and push beyond what any reasonable person could take, but never ask for what he wanted, never offer anything true. The pride that drove him to the edge of his abilities, raising corpses without provocation, testing the boundaries of what he’s capable of, just because he can. Just to see what’s possible. It’s a blade without a handle, this pride; it cuts him too.

(Attempt the impossible.) The defending voice is a child, learning the motto for the first time. (I didn’t have a choice, it’s how they raised me.)

Poor Wei Ying. Nothing is his fault. Nothing is ever, ever his fault.

The whirlpool opens up inside him, an Abyss leading him down, down, howling in his ears. Creatures move around him in the dark woods, snapping branches, breathing in the dark. The venom voice grows like a dog inside his mind, and the child shrinks back, desperate for something to hide behind. He can’t breathe; his lungs are stone, his bones are iron, he’s going to sink into the earth and leave no trace behind, and no one will miss him.

Get up.

It’s not the defender, and it’s not the accuser. It’s familiar. It’s—

Get up, Wei Ying.

It’s Madam Xiao.

Get up, Wei Ying. There’s work to be done.

No, it’s Madam Yu.

Get up, Wei Ying. You’re no good to anyone crying in the dark.

It’s Cangse Sanren.

Get up, Wei Ying. You’re still alive, aren’t you? You survived the ghost mountain, you climbed your way with bleeding feet to the top of a pile of corpses and conquered them all. And this is where you give up? What, will you be chewed to death by rabbits? Get up, you silly boy.

Wei Wuxian gets up.

---

He is rolling up his one spare shirt and pair of trousers when Lin Biming finds him. If he’s surprised to see the bag on the bed in front of him, he doesn’t show it.

“Where will you go?” he asks, and in the half-light of the empty sleeping quarters he looks old, sad.

“Wherever you like. Send me anywhere, sell me off, trade me for someone competent. Someone who doesn’t scorch the laundry, eh, Master Lin?”

Lin Biming doesn’t smile back.

“Surely another sect would take me. It’s not fair that Gusu bears this shame alone. The Grandmaster was right about that.”

Lin Biming goes to a chest in the corner and pulls out an extra blanket. He rolls it neatly and holds it out. Wei Wuxian takes it and turns to pack it away, blinking hard against the sweetness of it.

“I—” he starts, but he’s cut off.

“I’ll need to speak to the Sect Leader. If I just let you go, that’s a diplomatic issue.”

“Of course.” There’s so much more to say, to apologize for. The man deserves an explanation, but Wei Wuxian can’t think of where to begin.

“Get yourself some leftover dinner from the kitchen. I’m not sure how long your trip will be.”

Wei Wuxian slings the bag over his shoulder and follows him out the door. He tries not to think about the weight of little Lan Sizhui on his back as he ducks away towards the kitchen. Before he can enter, a hand grabs his elbow.

“Wei-qianbei?”

“Wen Ning? What are you doing here?”

“The little ones can’t sleep, so I wanted to find you. Why do you have a bag?”

Wei Wuxian looks around, but can’t find a way to stall. Take the pain, you’ve earned it.

“I have to leave.”

Wen Ning’s eyes go wide and round, his dear little mouth falling open. “Why? Did we— What did we do wrong?”

Wei Wuxian throws his arms around him. “Nothing, nothing at all. Never, ever, ever. It’s all big world things, nothing to do with you.”

“But we need you.” Wen Ning’s hands grasp the back of his shirt. “Please, you can’t leave.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s like being cut open again, things removed from inside his chest. “Wen Ning, I—”

“You have to say goodbye to them.” Wen Ning lets him go and steps back, jaw set.

“I can’t.”

“You have to. None of the others ever said goodbye. But you’re different, right? You have to be different. For the little ones, at least. They won’t understand.”

“They’ll forget soon enough. And you have your jiejie. Isn’t that better? She’ll take care of you, and you’ll forget all about this one servant. It’ll be better with her. Aren’t you glad she’s here now?”

I’m right, I’m right, agree with me.

“I am, but . . .” Wen Ning’s brow is furrowed, his shoulders slumping. “I didn’t think, when she got here, I didn’t think I’d have to choose.”

Wei Wuxian opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Wen Ning nods once, growing a year in that one gesture, and leaves. Wei Wuxian is numb, no feeling in his fingers, no heartbeat.

He stumbles away from the kitchen (away, away, away echoing in his mind), heading for the main path down the mountain. Lin Biming can find him here, or they can send guards to capture him, he just needs to keep walking. His skin is nailed to the wall of the kitchen, and every step pulls another inch of it away.

He’s just stepped out under the trees when he hears “WEI WUXIAN” shouted with a full burst of spiritual energy, echoing and reverberating off the stone beneath him. Sparks fly past his ears and he freezes, shocked out of his despair.

He turns around gingerly to find Wen Qing staring him down, her hair loose and one red robe hurriedly thrown over her sleeping clothes. A few white clad figures are hurrying down the path behind her, but Wei Wuxian can’t look away from the fury on her face.

“Wen Qing?”

“You’re leaving?”

“I have to. After what you said. They know, and I can’t stay here if they know and it makes no difference.”

“What difference is it supposed to make? What does it matter?” He’s never heard her so angry, and the part of him that isn’t legitimately frightened is downright proud.

He can see the figures behind her now, Lin Biming, Lan Xichen, and Lan Wangji.

“Just let me go, Wen Qing. It’s fine. I was only ever going to get in the way—”

“You made my little brother cry!” she bellows, and a hot wind blows his hair back from his face.

Lan Xichen reaches out to touch her arm gently.

“Lady Wen, if I may?” He turns to Wei Wuxian, looking tired but patient. “Wei Wuxian, I understand that today was difficult. Wen Chao’s reaction was . . . regrettable. And if you cannot stay in Cloud Recesses, we respect your wishes. You have more than earned that.”

Wei Wuxian stares at him, confused. “It’s not about today.”

“It’s not?”

“All this time, I—” Wei Wuxian looks around at all of them, at a loss for words. “All this time I thought you didn’t know the truth. About my golden core. I thought if you did, then you might— but I was wrong. And I don’t know what that mean; I don’t know what I am anymore; I don’t know what I’m good for, and I can’t figure that out here.”

“Why not?” It’s Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian covers his face and groans into his hands. Because of you, and the way you’re looking at me right now, because your hands are so big and warm and your eyes are so soft, and none of it means anything, and I can’t handle it.

“We all know you lost your golden core,” Lan Xichen says gently.

“You can’t tell Jiang Cheng.” He’s a moment away from falling to his knees. “Please, you owe me nothing, but please. It will destroy him.”

“I don’t understand,” Lan Xichen sounds like he is really, truly trying. “What does Jiang Wanyin have to do with—”

“Because he’s the one who has it!”

“Wei Ying,” Wen Qing says, grabbing his hands. “I’ve told no one. I swore to you I wouldn’t.”

“But you said—”

“I swore to you.”

“You said he knows. You told me that Lan Zhan knows.” His hands are the only real part of him, tethered by hers. The rest of him is smoke, looking for a shape, a container, floating around as nothing. His vision is blurry, like the moment before fainting.

“Wei Ying.” She grabs his face and shakes him a little. “I meant that he knows how you feel about him. I thought that’s what you were saying. Everyone knows. You’d have to be a blind fool not to.”

The complete reversal of Wei Wuxian’s entire life is interrupted by a quiet gasp to his right.

“How Wei Ying feels . . . about me?” Lan Wangji is staring at him, eyebrows furrowed.

Wen Qing sighs. “And clearly I was wrong anyway.”

“And clearly,” Lan Xichen says, “there is information we are lacking.”

Wen Qing looks over at him for a long moment, then nods. “Wei Ying, it’s time to tell them.”

“Can I sit down?” He doesn’t wait for a response before he drops down into the dirt, legs kicked out like a half-crushed spider. Lan Wangji rushes over to kneel beside him, one hand hovering an inch away from his forehead.

“Are you all right?”

“You’re not the doctor,” Wei Wuxian says faintly. “She is.”

“Is he sick?” Lan Wangji asks the others.

Wen Qing smacks Wei Wuxian’s face gently. “He’ll be fine. Wei Ying, I’m going to talk to Lan Xichen. You talk to Wangji.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You invented a new type of cultivation while living off corpse potatoes and carrion. You’ll figure it out.”

Without another word, she turns to Lan Xichen and nods, gesturing him back up the path. Lin Biming, looking as stressed as ever, grabs Wei Wuxian’s bag and hurries after them.

“I guess I’m staying,” Wei Wuxian says, and somehow that sets him off laughing. “I think I’m going mad.”

“What did you mean. Wei Ying. When you said ‘he has it.’ What did you mean?”

Finally, Wei Wuxian’s eyes focus, and he can’t stop a smile at Lan Wangji’s worried face. How strange that he used to think he had no expression.

“I don’t think I can stand up right now, Lan Zhan. Will you sit by me?”

Lan Wangji doesn’t hesitate, he sits down in the dirt, white robes and all. They must make an absurd picture, white and grey sprawled out on the path like cast off clothing.

“Lan Zhan, I’m going to tell you a story. But you have to promise—”

“I promise.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan! You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“It doesn’t matter. I promise.”

The promise is a building. A house for him to live in. He stops drifting and feels the ground underneath him, and then he begins.

Part Fifteen

#something good #assorted writings #the untamed #cql #mo dao zu shi #ughhh this plot stuff is too much for me #climb every freakin mountain indeed

73 notes · View notes

sssrha · 3 years

Text

clambered down the gibbet tree

As the juniors leave, Wei Wuxian beckons Lan Sizhui to say. “A-Yuan,” he asks vaguely, “do you remember those days before I died?”

Because Wen Qing and Wen Ning gave themselves up three months before Wei Wuxian’s death. Because the rest of the Wen Remnants died a week before Wei Wuxian’s death, the same day Wei Wuxian had destroyed the Stygian Tiger Seal. Wei Wuxian had whisked A-Yuan away with him, deeper into the Burial Mounds than he should have gone, all to buy a precious few days of time.

Because there is a week where there was only Wei Wuxian, A-Yuan, and the yawning eternity of the Burial Mounds, and Wei Wuxian doesn’t remember most of it. The few things he does remember, the few memories that he has managed to dredge up…

Or: Lan Sizhui, Lan Jingyi, and Jin Ling decide to ask Wei Wuxian about why everyone used to be so scared of him, and they get the truth, along with a few laughs. Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, gets memories, and he isn’t sure that he likes them.

[part one of dead man’s fate. read it below or on ao3]

“They were terrified of you.”

Wei Wuxian stops humming, pausing his work on whatever talisman he’d been working on at that moment. “What are you talking about?” he asks Lan Jingyi.

Lan Jingyi, Lan Sizhui, and Jin Ling have all crowded into the Jingshi, enjoying the honor of being one of the few people that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian trust enough to enter their personal living space. They all share a glance, as if they’re steeling themselves to the monumental task of continuing the conversation.

“The entire cultivational world,” Lan Sizhui eventually finishes. “They were scared of you. We grew up hearing stories about various atrocities you had supposedly committed. They say that it took all of the Sects three months to finally manage to wear you down to death, that they all had hundreds of disciples but you single-handedly fought them all off. How?”

Jin Ling snorts. “Yeah. No offense, but your performance with Xue Yang wasn’t exactly impressive.”

Wei Wuxian’s expression morphs into one of faux outrage. “How rude!” he sniffs. I will have you know, I was not in the best shape during that whole disaster!” And then, sobering just slightly, he admits, “And don’t let Xue Yang’s demeanor fool you—he may have been…unhinged, but he was certainly powerful. He managed to recreate half of my Seal and almost all of the power that would have entailed.” Really, Xue Yang was a genius—why, if he’d found himself coreless in the Burial Mounds for three months, Wei Wuxian suspects that he would have been able to discover a good bit of the things that Wei Wuxian had managed to. Luckily for everyone, that’s now how it turned out.

Lan Jingyi scrunches his nose. “That man was crazy and…and horrible!” Jin Ling snorts, nodding along, as Lan Sizhui puts up his arms to calm them.

“Ah,” Lan Sizhui says, “let’s not talk ill of the dead. What’s done is done.”

“That doesn’t make his actions okay,” Jin Ling points out.

“Well, no, they don’t, but we can curse him all we want and it will never make a difference.”

Wei Wuxian snickers. “Aiyah, Sizhui, if everyone had your mindset, then I wouldn’t have become the boogey-man. Imagine, everyone just choosing not to talk about me, not to acknowledge me—it would have been a peaceful existence!” But then he glances down at his arm, considering. “But then Mo Xuanyu may not have summoned me, and I wouldn’t get to be here with you three and Lan Zhan. Ah, it’s a good thing, after all.”

“You weren’t…peaceful?” Lan Jingyi asks. “When you were dead, I mean.”

Jin Ling immediately smacks him over the head, screeching, “What kind of question is that, you moron?”

Lan Sizhui was already attempting to calm them down when Wei Wuxian waved him away. “No, no, it’s fine. And…no, I don’t think I was. I certainly wasn’t a ghost or monster of any sort, but…well, I’ve heard the Sects spent years trying to summon me. I’ve seen the monuments they’ve placed in the Burial Mounds. None of that helped me have any sort of peaceful rest.”

“But they really did try to summon you for years,” Jin Ling says. “Uncle says that every sect would send fifty disciples, at least, to help.”

This makes Wei Wuxian pause. “…really? That much?” He had no way of knowing, back when he was dead. It had all washed over him—and the summoning attempts all washed away Lan Wangji’s Inquiry, a trickle against a ferocious river. It makes sense when there were so many people, he supposes, but still. “Fifty each?”

“They were terrified of you,” Lan Jingyi repeats.

Wei Wuxian makes a vague sound in the back of his throat. “Well, you’re right. They really were, weren’t they?” He absentmindedly traces the brushstrokes on the talisman he’d been working on. “I was strong back then, I guess. Stronger than I ever was in Mo Xuanyu’s body…even in those last days, I’m pretty sure. And I do mean physically. Mo Xuanyu, bless his soul, can’t seem to lift anything stronger than a medium-ish rock.” He sighs, forlorn. “I swam laps in Yunmengs lakes every day when I was younger. I was very muscular as a teenager, you see. Nearly as tall as your Hanguang-jun! And my shoulders…well, I spent much more time looking at my Lan Zhan than at myself, but I think our shoulder-width was comparable. Maybe mine was even wider, actually? I can’t recall.”

“Nearly as tall as Hanguang-jun?” Lan Jingyi demands. “No way! You couldn’t be that tall, you’re…” He doesn’t seem to know how to continue his sentence.

“What?” Wei Wuxian says slyly, leaning forward on his table. “I’m small? Petit? So cute and tiny for your Hanguang-jun!” Even as he says such shameless things, he’s restraining laughter.

The three disciples go red and Wei Wuxian finally gives in. “You three!” he says, laughing and wheezing all at once. “Are you saying that my personality didn’t suit my body? How rude! I don’t need to be this small to be shameless! And given the chance, I would have let Hanguang-jun manhandle me all he wanted, even in that body!”

“Senior Wei…” Lan Sizhui says, beet-red. “Let’s talk about something else?”

“No, no, this is too precious—but, ah, I will admit, I didn’t act the same for those last few years.” He finally manages to calm down. “It was…well. Demonic cultivation harmed both my body and my temperament, and that’s not even touching on how much demonic cultivation I used, and the lack of a golden core to fall back on properly when I finally noticed it eating away at me. I would have been fine, I think, if I also had my core. Well, theoretically, anyway.” He pauses. “…though, I will admit that trauma most definitely played a large role in it.” He doesn’t elaborate and they don’t ask him to.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what happened,” Lan Jingyi says suddenly, looking painfully earnest, “but I think Senior Wei was great! You helped the Wen Remnants—and Senior Wen!”

“And you helped win the war, didn’t you?” Jin Ling points out.

Wei Wuxian considers. “Yes,” he says finally, “I guess I did. I’m sure that the sects would have been fine without me, but…I’m proud to say that I helped them win the war in a substantial way.” As the teenagers smile encouragingly at him, Wei Wuxian makes sure to smile back, and keep his own thoughts to himself: he may be proud that he helped in the war, but he’s certainly not proud of how he did it.

Lan Sizhui, taking control of the conversation, decides to steer it into safer territory. “Senior Wei,” he says, “can you tell us about your time in the Jiang Sect?”

Wei Wuxian’s smile turns mischievous. “Oh, can I ever? Come closer, come closer—I have a few tales that Jiang Cheng will kill me for telling anyone, so, of course, I’ll tell them to you three.” Naturally! As Jiang Cheng’s (former) Shixiong, it’s simply his duty to embarrass him!

The evening wears away like that, with laughter from both sides. But—well, Wei Wuxian is a genius. He can do two things at once. So, while he laughs and laughs and laughs, he remembers.

His memories are…not complete, not in any sense of the word. Some things he remembers so vividly, and others have been ripped away, leaving behind only an empty abyss, spaces where he knows life took place, but the only evidence of it seems to be the stories of others. How many times had Lan Wangji brought something up—something sweet and kind that Wei Wuxian had done for him, back when nothing had gone wrong—only for Wei Wuxian to have no memory of it at all? Numerous, countless.

But Wei Wuxian does remember those days in the Burial Mounds the first time around. He remembers why he’d only set up the Wen Remnants in the hinterlands instead of venturing further inward, where they would have been safer from the sects. He remembers the bloody path he carved during the war, the way he once single-handedly slaughtered so many Wen soldiers that no one could take a single step without staining their boots in blood. He remembers the satisfaction of reaching into Wen Zhuliu’s abdomen and ripping out his golden core, of smashing it to dust with three fingers and laughing as the man fell.

He remembers all of this, and he remembers the only emotion that he felt at those moments: complete and utter satisfaction.

One thing he doesn’t remember is Lan Wangji—during the war, at least. He’s heard stories about the fights he and Lan Wangji had, about their rivalry, ones that Lan Wangji himself had reluctantly confirmed. They used to fight a lot. Lan Wangji doesn’t talk about it often, but sometimes, in the dead of night, when everything feels safe and warm and far away, Lan Wangji will admit things to him: the way Wei Wuxian’s laughter used to send chills down his spine, the way Wei Wuxian’s actions bleached his world black and white, the way Wei Wuxian’s touch seemed so warm—with blood that wasn’t his own.

He cries when he admits these things, when he tells Wei Wuxian that he wasn’t just scared for him, but also scared of him. All Wei Wuxian can do is hold him close and whisper assurances into his ear. ‘It’s fine,’ he says into the dead of the night, ‘you did nothing wrong. You still loved me, Lan Zhan, even after all of that. I don’t deserve you, you’re too good.’

Because, no matter what Lan Wangji tells him…Wei Wuxian knows he was a bad person. He knows he caused pain and he delighted in it. Wen Qing was lucky to find him only after the war, because if she had come to him during it…Wei Wuxian isn’t completely sure that he would have let her say a word before he took action, and that knowledge horrifies him.

As for his last days…Well.

As the juniors leave, Wei Wuxian beckons Lan Sizhui to say. “A-Yuan,” he asks vaguely, “do you remember those days before I died?”

Lan Sizhui looks at him in confusion, then realization, and then…if someone were to ask Wei Wuxian, he would describe Lan Sizhui’s next expression as appraisal. But the smile is back quickly, as warm as ever. “Ah, Senior Wei, I’ve only remembered bits and pieces—most of my memories from before I came to the Cloud Recesses are gone.”

That is not an answer. He lets Lan Sizhui go, anyway, and as he watches his form disappear out the door of the Jingshi, all he can think about is that stare. So familiar. He can’t quite put his finger on it.

But then Lan Wangji returns and all of Wei Wuxian’s worries are swept away.

Ah, he’ll think more about it later, then. For now, for now, he’ll be happy with his husband in their home.

(Until the other shoe drops.)

#ok so this is supposed to give off horror vibes #the next installments are gonna be very horror-heavy #hopefully i actually write them at some point lol #wei wuxian #lan sizhui #lan jingyi #jin ling #yiling patriarch wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs #mdzs fanfic #cql #the untamed #sssrha fics

26 notes · View notes

lettheladylead · 4 years

Text

avoid the unhappy ending (ch5)

ships/characters: Goldie, Violet, Lena, Scrooge/Goldie words (ch5): ~1300 summary: Goldie comes to town to see Scrooge. Instead, she somehow manages to run into literally everyone else. ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108943/chapters/66355184

[1 & 2] [3] [4]

Chapter 5 below the cut:

At this point, she was just checking random doors. That door used to be a closet, but hey - maybe it’s a secret room now! Oh, nope. Still a closet.

That door used to be a bathroom! And...still a bathroom.

Eventually she did open one that turned out to be a room. A surprisingly big room, actually. With two pairs of eyes staring right at her.

She didn’t want to talk to more kids. This was getting tiring. Goldie immediately tried to turn around, but the door was suddenly encased in a blue light and it closed magically in front of her.

“Who are you?!”

Goldie turned around to see the taller child floating two feet off the ground and holding a magically glowing hand towards the door. Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t Scrooge have magical children running around his home? He had everything else. This just made sense.

The other little girl was holding some sort of glowing magical talisman. Great. Great, great, great.

“How about a better question...who are you two?”

Lena scowled. “We asked you first!”

“I suppose that’s true.” Goldie shrugged, taking a few steps away from the door to test her current flexibility under this glowing child’s eye. She couldn’t take more than a few steps before feeling a magical heat on her feathers. The heat felt oddly familiar, like she’d fought someone before who used the exact same brand of magic. A hundred years of magical foes didn’t trim the list down very much, but it was something to think about. With that in mind, Goldie decided that fighting these kids wasn’t worth the effort nor the consequences.

“I’m a friend of Scrooge’s.”

Lena looked like she’d calmed down a little at that response, pulling her arm back, but Violet put up a hand threateningly. “Scrooge McDuck has a lot of dangerous friends. What’s your name?”

Goldie moved to slap her hand against her forehead, but quickly stopped and instead pinched the bridge at the top of her beak. “Goldie O’Gilt.”

Violet didn’t seem to recognize the name, but Lena immediately relaxed and landed back down on the floor with a thud.

“You know her?”

“Yeah, she’s Scrooge’s girlfriend. She’s a thief, but Louie says she’s harmless.”

“Harmless?” Goldie scowled. “Just because I don’t want to mess with a bunch of children doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be afraid of me!”

Violet raised an eyebrow and looked up at her sister. “I see what you mean.”

“What!?”

“So what’re you doing here, Goldie?” Lena asked impolitely, not bothering with any sort of title or explanation. “We’re kind of busy getting started on a sleepover.”

Goldie’s eye twitched and she stared down at these two unexpectedly sassy children. “I’m just trying to find Scrooge. Somehow I doubt you two vagabonds could help me out.”

“Like we would even if we could,” Lena said with a smirk, elbowing her sister in the arm. “I think she’s scared of me.”

“Your powers have grown exceptionally more intimidating, so it’s understandable.”

The blonde dragged her hand down the side of her face. “You two are starting to get on my last nerve. You should never mistake pity for fear.”

Violet and Lena glanced at one another and locked eyes, considering their options in case the strange, older woman decided to attack. Webby would return momentarily, and three against one would give them just the right odds they needed.

Lena lifted herself an inch off the ground and her eyes started to glow again and she glared at Goldie, who stared down at her suspiciously for a minute until realization struck. Those eyes, though a different color, were unmistakable.

“I know who you remind me of!” Goldie said suddenly with her pointer finger in the air. “Your powers, your face...are you a De Spell by any chance?”

That did the trick. The shock of the accusation made Lena’s powers all but backfire and she tripped backwards, landing on her butt. Violet stepped back to help lift her back up.

“Are you alright, Lena?”

“I’m fine!” Lena sat up and shook her head angrily. “How did you-?”

“Magica and I had a few run-ins back in the 70’s,” Goldie said with a shrug. “You have her eyes, you know that? You look just like her.”

Violet glared at the older woman and Lena almost felt like curling in on herself, turning her head to look down at her feet sadly. She didn’t say anything and suddenly Goldie felt a weird, unfamiliar sensation. Almost like she’d said something wrong when she knew for a fact she’d only said a simple fact.

Still...the kid looked very unhappy. Clearly Magica was not someone she wanted to be related to.

Goldie sighed deeply and walked closer, crouching down to be more on their level. “Look, the average person wouldn’t notice something like that, alright? I’m sure you’re nothing like Magica. You’re pretty clearly more level headed than her. And not insane.”

She looked away from the girls, who were both staring up at her with their big eyes. “I’m assuming you’re not evil, either. Pink doesn’t seem like she’d be into that.”

Lena and Violet looked at each other, then back up at Goldie again.

“Did you just try to comfort me?”

Goldie rolled her eyes. “Don’t ruin the moment. I just did my one good deed for the year.”

Violet helped Lena stand back up. “If this is what counts as your one good deed, I shudder to imagine what you spend the rest of your time doing.”

“Good.”

Lena crossed her arms over her chest again, feeling more like herself than she did a second before. “Does Webby even know you’re here? Or Scrooge?”

“She does; he’d better not.” Goldie shrugged. “If he does, he’ll face my wrath for making me hunt him down. These little chases are supposed to be fun. Instead I’ve been babysitting brats all afternoon.”

“From what I understand, you and Mr. McDuck are...romantically inclined?” Violet asked with a hand under her beak. “Why not just tell him you’ve arrived so he can greet you properly? You have a cell phone in your pocket.”

Goldie smirked. “Now how would that be any fun?”

“Efficiency is always fun. Proper communication leads to accurately scheduled arrivals and your available time for intimate interaction could increase significantly, likely strengthening your relationship and leading to a healthier outlook of your lives together.” She looked at her sister who was making a disgusted expression. “What’s wrong?”

Lena and Goldie spoke at once. “Gross.”

They both blinked simultaneously and looked at each other. Violet brought a hand up to her beak to contain her chuckle at the ridiculousness of the situation.

Goldie scoffed and flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder while Lena blew a raspberry and sank down into the make-shift pillow seat she’d been working on earlier. Neither of them spoke but Violet could sense an odd change in the air.

“When did you speak to Webbigail? She was supposed to be getting us some snacks and it’s taken her longer than expected.”

Goldie shrugged again. “She stopped for a few minutes to bother me. I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

“Back with questions for you, I’d bet,” Lena said and pointed behind her. “You’d probably have some great additions for the Mystery Board.”

Her curiosity was not going to get the better of her. “I don’t want to know what that means.” She moved towards the door and cracked it open to look out. No sign of the kid. No sign of anyone. Time to get back to looking for Scrooge.

Without a goodbye, she started through the door.

“Goldie?”

The blonde sighed and squeezed the door frame, turning her head to the side. “Yes?”

“Are you here to steal something?”

Goldie looked back at the girl who spoke and saw a genuinely curious expression under her dyed hair.

She sighed and turned back towards the hallway. “That’s not all I do.”

And she left, shutting the door behind her.

#scroldie #goldie o'gilt #violet sabrewing #lena de spell #lena sabrewing #fic #fics #avoid the unhappy ending

24 notes · View notes

isabilightwood · 3 years

Text

The Problem with Authority - Chapter 4

Or, Sacrifice Summon! Jiang Yanli is here to make things right, be the ultimate big sister (step 1: bring back her dead brother), and maybe steal the Peacock throne in the process

[AO3][1][2][3]

“A -Su ! I’m so sorry!” Lan Xichen grasped her hands to pull her to her feet. “I wanted to give you a gift, not a bump on the head.”

He was flushed, his eyes bright and manic, his forehead ribbon dangling around his neck. His soft gray geometric patterned outer robe was hanging off one shoulder, revealing the pale blue inner robe beneath. Jiang Yanli felt strangely like she should offer to give him his privacy.

Though they were outside. In the courtyard of her house.

Jiang Yanli felt entirely uninjured, but perhaps she had hit her head after all, and was merely hallucinating the impossibility of a discomposed and rumpled Lan Xichen. “Lan-zongzhu…?”

“Erge, wait!” Jin Guangyao sprinted towards them from the direction of the guest rooms. He stumbled to a halt, doubled over and panting. “You shouldn’t talk to anyone while you’re drunk, remember? Let’s not repeat the Moling incident. Come on, let’s get you to bed.” He grabbed Lan Xichen’s wrist and tugged, but the taller man didn’t budge.

“But I haven’t given A-Su her thank you gift yet.” Lan Xichen looked around, wide eyed and innocent. “Where did the rabbits go?”

Jin Guangyao sighed loudly. “We don’t have rabbits here, Erge. This is Lanling, not the Cloud Recesses.”

“But rabbits are the best gift. Wangji and A-Yuan both think so.” Lan Xichen pouted for a moment, then perked up. “Someone must have rabbits in town.”

Jin Guangyao’s face convulsed.

Lan Xichen nodded decisively. Dropping his sword so it hovered in the air, he tried to climb onto it. Combined with the alcohol, Jin Guangyao pulling on his sleeve was enough to unbalance him, so he fell backwards into his lover’s chest. Jin Guangyao stumbled backwards, but managed to hold him up.

Lan Xichen hummed, tugging on his arms to pull him closer. He seemed to have entirely forgotten his goal, content to remain where he was.

Stymied in his efforts to steal his lover away with minimum embarrassment, Jin Guangyao turned his head towards her. “Erge overindulged by mistake, my apologies. I will get him to his rooms — my rooms, I suppose, shortly.”

“None needed. I was merely startled.” Startled, yes, but also having the time of her life. Doubly so, considering the incoherent gibberish of Qin Su’s thoughts.

“Erge, it’s nearly midnight. You wouldn’t want your uncle to know you stayed up past nine, would you?”

“But Shufu is in the Cloud Recesses. He doesn’t like crowds.” Lan Xichen said as though revealing a great secret. “Wangji is somewhere in Qishan. He doesn’t like crowds either.”

“I could always write him a letter. ‘Lan-Xiansheng, I am sorry to inform you that Lan-zongzhu has taken liberties with the disciplines. Please have him copy the rules with the novices for the next month.’”

“A-Yao, you wouldn’t.” Lan Xichen let his head loll back against Jin Guangyao’s shoulder - somehow without tipping the shorter man over — and stuck out his bottom lip.

“I wouldn’t.” Jin Guangyao confirmed, his expression turning ridiculously sappy. “Please come back with me anyway?”

“But I haven’t thanked A-Su properly yet!” Lan Xichen grasped her hands and squeezed tightly, earnestly shaking them up and down. “Thank you, A-Su! I will take good care of our A-Yao.”

She doubted Lan Xichen would ever have mentioned it, if he wasn’t drunk.

“My deepest apologies for this.” Jin Guangyao grimaced, his cheeks flushed pink. He turned to face Lan Xichen, cupping the back of his neck and stroking the front of his throat with his thumb. “I’ve arranged to have dessert delivered to my room. I’ll feed it to you, if you’re good.”

Lan Xichen perked up, dropping her hands and —thankfully — dragged him away before she and Qin Su could be subjected to anymore unwanted details of their relationship.

As they vanished from sight, headed for a discrete side entrance to Jin Guangyao’s room, Jiang Yanli felt a twinge of guilt. Lan Xichen did not deserve to be shackled to a man who had killed his own son.

But she did not feel as much guilt as she would have liked to.

Because she had told Lan Xichen the truth, and he had chosen to do nothing.

Jiang Yanli had gone to him after she learned what she’d slept through in the aftermath of A-Xian’s defection, after Luo Qingyang left the sect and Lan Wangji slipped away unnoticed. After A-Cheng left for the Burial Mounds without her. “A-Xian did not do this unprovoked. The Wen siblings saved our lives, at great risk to their own.”

He smiled in appeasement. “Be that as it may, he killed the guards, and took away all the prisoners. You must understand what this looks like.”

Jiang Yanli’s patience had been hanging by a thread, and the patronizing you must understand snapped it. “I remember starving, terrified, dirty prisoners dressed in rags being used as target practice.” She laughed, a short, crazed thing too like A-Xian’s. “Oh, but you prefer to forget things that might upset your precious peace. Even if it dooms innocents, or breaks your brother’s heart.”

Lan Xichen stared at her, and Jiang Yanli remembered she was supposed to be the level-headed, soft-spoken one. No matter how little she felt it. “My apologies, that was uncalled for. It is simply that my brother cannot do anything, without your support.

But Lan Xichen only shook his head regretfully. “Both my sworn brothers have sworn to me that only dangerous prisoners were confined to the camp. I’m sorry, Jiang-guniang, but I cannot.”

Lan Xichen had not believed her. And perhaps he had doomed A-Xian. Perhaps it would have changed nothing. But for what she had done — was doing — to Lan Xichen, she clung to her rationalizations.

What just happened? Qin Su asked.

We just experienced the reason why Lans are forbidden to drink. Strange that Lan Xichen would get drunk like that, though. Thanks to A-Xian, she knew the Lan’s rule about alcohol was really because of the main clan’s low tolerance, but —

But I’ve seen him drink before. Qin Su’s confusion was like bubbles popping on surface of her mind.

Jiang Yanli had too. A-Xian once mentioned a trick Zewu-jun used to burn it off, while he was deep in his cups and reminiscing longingly about how cute Lan Wangji looked when drunkenly attempting to straighten his crooked forehead ribbon. Had Nie Huaisang switched their cups by mistake? A prank, perhaps?

Where was Nie Huaisang?

Jiang Yanli pushed open the door to the Fragrance Hall and froze.

That answers that question.

Nie Huaisang swore as a device he was holding up to the mirrored portal to the treasure room rebounded towards his face, using both his hands to force it back to the surface. There was a focused intensity to his expression that Jiang Yanli had never seen before, a far sight from the whining puddle who’d dragged the Chief Cultivator from his own banquet.

But then, she’d never paid him much attention. No one had, save perhaps A-Xian. “Nie-zongzhu. Is there something you need from the treasury?”

Nie Huaisang startled, glaring with a focused intensity that vanished so quickly she might have imagined it, as he threw himself back from the portal. He sprawled inelegantly on the ground, covering half his face with his fan. “Is that what it is? A treasury? I really didn’t know.”

Is it just me or is that bullshit? Qin Su did the mental equivalent of narrowing her eyes.

Jiang Yanli shut the door behind her. “So you didn’t just hide a talisman-engraved device you were using to inspect the wards up your sleeve?”

If Nie Huaisang is competent, I think we can safely say everything I thought was wrong. What will we discover next? Does my father remember my birthday? Has Yao-zongzhu been possessed by a gossip-loving spirit for years?

“I was just curious, I don’t know!”

She supposed he’d never bothered to come up with another line because this one had worked for his entire life. “Let me satisfy your curiosity then.”

He gave an exaggerated wail as she grabbed his wrist. But whatever else Nie Huaisang might be, he was not strong. Jiang Yanli was able to easily pull him through the portal. He stumbled against her, and, as she reached to steady him, bit her hand.

“Ow! What was that for? Are you a dog?” She demanded, wiping off her knuckles on her outer robe.

“You made unfounded accusations and dragged me in here!” He slumped inward, making himself look smaller. “I don’t know why! I felt unsafe.”

Sure he did. “You wanted to see inside. Now you’re inside. Take the chance or leave it.”

He took it. “Well, if you insist. There is some interesting art in here. Is this where the paintings of the Crimson Swan ended up? Tragic. I could help display them properly, if San-ge gave me half a chance. But no, it’s too soon. Half the sects would throw a fit, and Lan-xiansheng would kidnap me for remedial schooling. I can’t go back to the Cloud Recesses! I simply can’t!”

Qin Su snorted. At least some things stay the same. He’s still annoying.

Jiang Yanli watched Nie Huaisang dart around the room, peering at items on shelves and lifting curtains in what seemed to be no particular order, keeping up his narration all the while. “You know, the Wen really had some gems in their collection. This poetry collection is priceless, and yet here it is, tragically gathering dust — Oh, dear.”

His arm knocked into an ornate vase that had been placed too close to the edge of a display.

Jiang Yanli plucked a talisman from her sleeve and threw it, so it hit the vase, freezing it in place tipped halfway off the shelf.

Nie Huaisang turned, squinting at her with an air of smug satisfaction. “You’re not Qin Su.”

Nie Huaisang of all people notices? That’s it, good night. Wake me when things make sense again. Despite her words, Qin Su remained alert and attentive.

Jiang Yanli tamped down on the urge to throw another talisman, this time at him. “That’s quite the accusation.”

“Qin Su would have reached for her sword when I knocked over that vase. You stopped it from falling with a talisman. Also, she never calls me Nie-zongzhu.” He perched on a vase-free table, his hands folded perfectly, but one leg bounced to the rhythm of his thoughts. “The question is, are you possessing her, or are you using one of Xue Yang’s human skin masks?”

“Neither.” She held up Qin Su’s sword, and drew it. “Do you deny that this is Chunsheng?”

“So that is Qin Su’s body, but you say it’s not a possession. Hmm. Did Wei-xiong find a way to permanently inhabit a living body?” Nie Huaisang jumped disturbingly close to the truth with his second guess. “Are you Wei-xiong? But no, Wei-xiong wouldn’t have chosen a nice woman like Qin Su.”

Aww. He thinks I’m nice. So long as he’s just a sneak, I forgive him for the deception.

“I’m definitely not A-Xian.” Jiang Yanli realized her mistake even as it slipped out. She clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes widening.

“Jiang Yanli!” He cried, delighted. “Oh, I have to know how this happened.”

“I don’t know what —”

“No, don’t protest. You’ve been caught. But don’t worry. I’m certainly not going to tell anyone in Koi Tower about you. What would be the use of that?” Nie Huaisang was positively gleeful, and she didn’t trust him for a second.

Qin Su didn’t disagree, but sighed. Unfortunately, I think you’d better tell him.

“Take a seat.” She hung up a talisman to alert her if anyone approached the portal, and checked under every curtain, just in case. Once she was certain the room was secure, she knelt across from him. “You were correct that it was A-Xian’s work that made this possible, but it was not his doing.”

“Obviously, it was Wei-xiong’s invention. His most powerful imitator is Xue Yang, and he has the creativity of a sea slug.” Nie Huaisang sank gracefully to his knees, balancing his fan across them. Seeing him now, a stranger would never guess his reputation. “Now, who is this mysterious benefactor? Do tell.”

She briefly detailed the mechanics of the array. From his performance in the Cloud Recesses, she would not have expected him to understand it, but he nodded along without interrupting. “Qin Su found the wrong journal at exactly the wrong moment. Now I’m in her body, and she lives in my head.”

Was it the wrong moment? Qin Su wondered, and digressed before Jiang Yanli could contradict her. Insult his fan for me, that’s sloppy work. His mountains still look like Jin Guangyao’s hat.

Dutifully, Jiang Yanli repeated her words.

He gave a startled laugh. “Ah, Qin Su has long been my worst critic. Sadly, this revenge business leaves little time for developing my painting skills.”

“Revenge? Does this have anything to do with why you were trying to break in here?” If so, his grudge could only be against —

“Naturally. Jin Guangyao killed my brother.” Nie Huaisang asserted this claim as though it were common knowledge. “He also set up yours, which seems relevant.”

Jiang Yanli stiffened, lightning racing though her veins. “A-Xian? Didn’t he lose control?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I can’t be sure, I wasn’t there.” He said lightly. Jiang Yanli was beginning to believe he was allergic to acting serious. Dropping this on her as though it didn’t shake her entire worldview. “He is, however, the reason Jin Zixuan went to Qiongqi path that day.”

Jiang Yanli could have sworn she heard a dizi playing as she died, when Chenqing was hanging loose in A-Xian’s grasp. But she had been dying — that memory was not to be trusted. And just how clever would Jin Guangyao have to be to plan all of that? Surely not everything that had gone wrong could be laid at his feet.

Maybe we should consider the possibility anyway. Qin Su, for whom all the greatest cruelties of her life could be laid at the feet of that same man, suggested.

Jiang Yanli was uncertain that knowing would do anything more than make their losses hurt more. She sat in stunned silence for a long moment, and wished for a plum to let her retreat and reset. A reply to Tan-daifu’s latest letter was overdue, she thought hazily.

Tan-daifu would say that the truth helps. Qin Su seized the chance to turn her own nagging about Tan-daifu’s advice back on her, which didn’t seem fair.

But the truth would only help if she was ready to face it. Jiang Yanli still woke every day expecting to see A-Xuan beside her, was thrust back into sepia-tinged memories of afternoons on the Lotus Lakes at the distant sound of adolescent laughter.

She would not be ready until the day she saw A-Xian again.

What day? Yanli-jie? Qin Su asked, but Jiang Yanli was uncertain why she’d thought that. A-Xian was dead. She could not simply trade someone else for him.

“How did you learn this?” She asked, finally.

Nie Huaisang looked up from a book he’d snagged from a nearby shelf while she was lost in her thoughts. “I have my ways.”

“You have spies.”

He picked up his fan to flick it dismissively. “Just a few informants. Mostly, we Nies are simply very good at out-drinking people.”

She had a feeling he was downplaying the extent of his network. “What else have you learned from your spies?”

“I just ask people to keep an eye out, it’s hardly espionage.” He insisted.

“Sure.” She said, seeing this was a hill he would die on.

Mollified, he continued. “Jin Guangyao also killed his father.”

“I’m aware. Shockingly, I’m not actually upset about that one.” Perhaps Nie Huaisang had finally run out of shocking revelations.

But no, he had another left in store. “Who is? No, the interesting part is he left a witness. A little bird told me that somewhere in Koi Tower, there’s a woman trapped in a hidden room.”

Jiang Yanli would never get used to having to sit side by side on the Peacock throne with Jin Guangyao. She had been meant to share it with Zixuan, as not only his wife but his equal.

She hadn’t expected her husband to want her as anything other than the mother of his children. Not until their second engagement, when his earnest, awkward attempts at wooing her had turned to learning each other over the course of honest conversations that slowly grew less stilted. Finally, their words had begun to flow like a mountain stream thawing in spring, and Jiang Yanli knew her heart was right to choose him.

A-Xuan had listened, and confided he needed her help, not only with things like courtesy and public speaking, but in knowing what needed to change.

Jin Guangyao, she thought, was so certain that he was the smartest person in the room, that he didn’t notice his wife-slash-sister was an entirely different person.

Qin Su had nearly always sat in silence during conferences, listening perhaps half the time as she thought about lesson plans and inspected the attendees’ robes and ornaments in case anyone had discovered a talented new artisan. So for the moment, Jiang Yanli did the same, albeit paying the debate her full attention.

No matter the length at which Sect Leader Yao complained about issues that did not remotely involve him (Gusu’s high land tax rates), internal sect matters not on the conference agenda (how a small temple sect and town sect on his lands kept driving yao and gui into each other’s territory), or were entirely out of left field. “See! There’s proof! The Jiang have been hoarding the Yiling Patriarch’s inventions for themselves!”

A-Cheng, who had just reached the point in his status report regarding Yunmeng’s taxes, blinked. Clearly used to Sect Leader Yao, he didn’t even get angry, merely rubbed his knuckles against his forehead. “The Jin have all of Wei Wuxian’s heretical writings. I explained this last conference. And the conference before that.”

Sect Leader Yao continued to prove himself the least astute cultivator in the room. “But you’ve never let anyone into Lotus Pier to check for themselves!”

At that, the flush of anger filled his cheeks. But in an impressive-for-him show of control, A-Cheng only snapped, “What, exactly, are you insinuating, Yao-zongzhu? Would you like to share Xixia’s cultivation techniques with the class?”

“I see that Yunmeng’s recovery is continuing ahead of schedule. Let’s move on to…” Jin Guangyao blanched, as he realized who was next. “Qinghe. A-Sang, if you please.”

Nie Huaisang got to his feet, looking around with what she had to assume were faked nerves, clutching his fan close to his chest. He stuttered through the beginnings of his presentation, before swaying and kicking a bird cage hidden beneath his table into the center of the room. It spoke, in a disturbingly accurate imitation of A-Cheng.

And all right, that was entertaining. But mostly, the conference continued to star Sect Leader Yao.

At least today, A-Ling was perched on the wide throne beside her, making it a little more bearable.

Leaning into her side, his tongue caught between his teeth, A-Ling scribbled on each new sheet of paper. Ostensibly, he was practicing his calligraphy. And he did do a bit of that, with messy strokes, but only when he noticed her looking down. Mostly, he scribbled blobs that he proudly declared were all the dogs he would someday own, when she asked.

Black flecks of ink spattered the front of her robes, but Jiang Yanli could not bring herself to care. She’d missed so much. She’d take every second with her son she could get.

Jiang Yanli’s continued efforts to pay attention were stymied by Qin Su’s running commentary on everything from the tackiness of the gilded everything to the dust bunny that had attached itself unnoticed to Sect Leader Ouyang’s beard, taking the chance to say everything she’d never been able to.

It’s a shame I never tempted Ouyang-zongzhu’s tailor away. He doesn’t deserve her. And oh, look, Su She’s imitating the Lan more obviously than ever. It’s almost like he sold them out to the Wen or something and misses the status. The off-white and teal blue of Su She’s robes were at most a single shade away from Lan colors, and the wave embroidery on his hems was suspiciously cloud-like.

The most notable detail of Su She’s presentation was the way the Lan disciples — save, of course, for a slightly off-color Lan Xichen — pretended not to snicker as he claimed the peasants in his lands were superstitious about musical cultivation.

She’d ensured Sect Leader Ran was next to him, and noted the two of them speaking quietly during one of Sect Leader Yao’s disruptions. This time, he was one insult away from starting a cat fight with Sect Leader Tang, over some minor territorial dispute. Jin Guangyao actually got up and went over to them to smooth ruffled feathers, though his efforts were stymied by A-Cheng’s utter apathy over whether his young, hotheaded vassal stabbed Sect Leader Yao in the eyes with her chopsticks.

It’s not a cultivation conference if no one tries to murder Yao-Zongzhu. Someday, someone will take one for the team and actually do it. Qin Su sighed wistfully.

From the way Jin Guangyao’s dimples twitched when he returned, he’d contemplated it.

During their break for lunch, Sect Leader Ran approached the Peacock throne. As she’d expected, he asked directly for a meeting with Jin Guangyao to negotiate terms for the implementation of watchtowers.

Sect Leader Zhai’s approach was more surprising.

“Xiandu, Jin-furen.” Sect Leader Zhai bowed to each of them. “I would like to request a private meeting with both of you before I leave Lanling. Jin-furen brought up some interesting points yesterday that I would like to discuss further.”

“Both of us?” Jin Guangyao was a man who planned everything himself, who seemed to believe that seeking a second opinion meant smiling and nodding and then explaining why the other person was wrong.

The implication that his here-to-fore apolitical wife had made a better offer appeared to have broken him.

“I think that could be arranged.” Jiang Yanli said. “A-Yao?”

He recovered quickly, gesturing for his assistant to put a note in his schedule. “Yes, of course. I believe tomorrow, immediately after dinner would be an ideal time.”

“Excellent. I look forward to it.” Sect Leader Zhai bowed again and turned away, without waiting for their dismissal.

Tempers frayed in the afternoon, and Jiang Yanli had to pass A-Ling off to his minders for a nap. As Sect Leader Yao rose for his actual turn to report, Nie Huaisang made his move.

He screeched, jumping to his feet as though bitten, and bumped into Sect Leader Yao hard enough to knock them both to the floor. The wine jar in his hand shattered, sharp edges lacerating his palm. He stared at the cuts for a long moment as they began to bleed. And, clutching his wrist, he drew in a deep breath, and howled.

The majority of the room promptly began to find their teacups or the nearest tacky golden peacock drapes utterly fascinating. But his elder brother’s sworn brothers were at his side in an instant.

“A-Sang, please. Let us see.” Jin Guangyao pleaded.

I think Jin Guangyao really does care about Huaisang. He’s never going to see him coming. Qin Su said, and they both winced at a particularly high-pitched cry. Nie Huaisang should have been born to a theatrical troupe.

“Oh, that looks —” Lan Xichen caught only a glimpse of the injured hand before he had to let go to avoid Nie Huaisang’s wildly swinging other arm.

“Ergeeeeeee,” Nie Huaisang wailed. “I’m bleeding out, aren’t I? You can say it.”

“No, no,” As Jin Guangyao finally captured the flailing hand, Lan Xichen pressed down on the wound with his own handkerchief. “You should see a healer, just to clean and bind it properly.”

“Will you take me?” He sniffed, his eyes wide and filling once again with tears as he looked between the two men.

Jin Guangyao exchanged a pained glance with his theoretically secret lover. “I can’t leave right now, can you?”

Lan Xichen shook his head. “I’m scheduled to speak on our findings about suppressing ghosts summoned with spirit flags next.”

“Right. Right.” Jin Guangyao stared into the distance for a moment. Qin Su hoped he was watching his plans for the conference crumble before his eyes. “Huaisang, you’ll have to go with one of your disciples —”

Nie Huaisang sobbed harder.

That was her cue.

“I’ll take him to get patched up.” Jiang Yanli offered, already striding towards them.

Jin Guangyao looked around at the determinedly apathetic audience, then back to Nie Huaisang. He sighed. “Thank you. A-Su will take good care of you, please let her take you to a healer.”

Nie Huaisang kept up his whining until they were out of sight and earshot of the hall, though still under an awning away from the downpour outside. Then, with a glance around to make sure no one was watching, he plucked a vial of salve and a bandage out of his robes. He only asked her to pop open the salve, but she took it and the bandage from him, gesturing for him to hold out his hand.

“I can do it myself.” He insisted, the vapid act vanishing in an instant.

Jiang Yanli rolled her eyes. “Bandages are more secure when someone else wraps them. It’ll help stop the bleeding.” Cultivators were always such babies about receiving help.

“All right.” He gazed at her with wide and uncertain eyes. As though no one had offered to help him without something in return, or a fit of hysterics, in a long time. Yet even as she finished tying of the bandage, that incongruous seriousness took over once again. “We have at least until the end of the evening banquet, though it would be better if you returned for that. The house should be near the kitchens, in what looks like an empty space.”

They walked back and forth past the kitchens several times, but found nothing. The hems of their robs were soaked from the rain, the line between wet and dry creeping higher with every step.

“Right. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.” He pulled one of A-Xian’s Compasses of Evil out of his pocket. “Only Demonic Cultivation could hide a building like this, but it must be shielded somehow, or people would notice a cluster of resentment in the middle of Koi Tower. I wonder… hold this.”

He thrust his umbrella into her chest, expecting her to hold it over his head. Bemused, she did so.

“A lightning talisman, perhaps, to imitate the effects of Zidian.” He mused, sketching in the air with his injured hand as though it didn't pain him. “Yes! It’s this way.”

As they walked, she watched him closely. “I had no idea you were so…”

“That I’m in possession of a working brain? Yes, I prefer it that way.” He said brightly.

Being underestimated had its advantages, but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

“I was going to say that I thought you didn’t cultivate beyond the basics.” Jiang Yanli corrected. “Cultivation has no bearing on intelligence. I would know.”

“Yes, I suppose you would. I’ve always preferred talismans to sword cultivation, much less those horrible life-draining sabers, despite Dage’s wishes. Did you think Wei-xiong was only friends with me for my sense of humor?”

She hadn’t spent much time thinking about their friendship at all, not when she was occupied watching A-Xian fall in love.

What sense of humor? Qin Su said. Teasingly, so Jiang Yanli repeated it, earning an insulted gasp.

But Nie Huaisang’s methods bore fruit, his compass leading them to their destination.

From the outside, the building looked like a shed. One of the many near-identical buildings that housed tools or out of use decorations, albeit with an unusual amount of space on either side. But when she looked closely, Jiang Yanli glimpsed a shimmer of golden energy, mixed with writhing shadows. Wards, and made from a combination of resentful and spiritual energy at that. No wonder neither of them had so much as glimpsed it before.

Jiang Yanli stepped forward to inspect the wards in detail. They looked to be designed to hide the building, and keep someone in. Though the details looked overly complicated for concealing a single person, she and Nie Huaisang agreed. Keeping anyone who knew it was there out would require a level of intricacy that risked collapsing the entire ward every time someone passed through.

Their presence would not be detected.

Still, Nie Huaisang stepped through first, claiming, “I can talk my way out of this, if we’re wrong. You, on the other hand…”

When Jiang Yanli stepped through, there was a wave of disorientation, like stepping onto solid ground after hours on a boat. It passed, and a two-story pavilion of modest size stood before her. Far less elaborate than her own, she thought it might once have been used to house servants, before it was repurposed into a prison.

Keeping out of sight of anyone who might look out, they approached the open windows on either side of the door. Jiang Yanli plastered herself to the wall, and peered inside.

She and Nie Huaisang had agreed that if they found the woman’s prison, they would only scout from the outside.

But what Jiang Yanli saw through that window changed everything.

A young woman in linen servant’s robes knelt at a table, her shoulders hunched over as she methodically ground herbs into powder. A text depicting the anatomy of a human body was open to her left.

The woman looked up, and Jiang Yanli was certain she was seeing a ghost.

#the untamed #cql #wangxian #yanqing #qin su #my fic #the sacrifice summon! JYL fic #where the summoner (qin su) sticks around #this time featuring drunk! LXC #NHS's acting skills #and everyone's desire to kills sect leader yao

7 notes · View notes

multsicorn · 4 years

Text

book-and-show

My preferred mix of the two canons is basically ‘The Untamed, but Wei Wuxian lost control of his zombies by his own goddamned self, and also plot/logic holes are taped over by explanations from the book when needed and possible. And we know that wangxian are together and will be married, but we're left with spaces to fill in the details.’ (One of the cool/interesting things about having multiple versions of a canon is that one can mix and match!) But there are definitely things that I prefer, separately, about each.

[two very long lists. all of which are all about personal opinions/preferences, and none of which are looking to start discourse!]

Eight Things I liked better about the show:

1. "Who am I to you?" "I had thought, that you were the one who knew me for my whole life." "Still, I am." is *twenty zillion times* more romantic than a stolen blindfold kiss, in a way that pretty much encapsulates why I so much prefer show to novel wangxian overall. And in this TED talk - I mean, in another post, hopefully, in not too long, I will.

2. Lan Wangji's explicit questioning of and overturning his understanding of 'what is right, and what is wrong,' rather than simply being motivated by 'if loving Wei Wuxian is wrong, then screw everything else.'

3. Introducing so very many characters earlier in the chronological timeline, and showing us more about them and their relationships prior to Wei Wuxian's death - and outside of the key moments in which they're involved in the plot. Wen Qing and Wen Ning, Jiang Yanli, Mianmian, Songxiao, Xue Yang, Meng Yao - this list could also be its own post.

4. More focus on the Sunshot Campaign and its aftermath, pre-death, specifically on the period when Wei Wuxian is the feared necromancer, and he and his loved ones are dealing with that, against a background of war and then possibly more war. It's by far my favorite part of the narrative, just because of my preferences re: genres, so I appreciate it being foregrounded rather than just a backstory that's shown in flashbacks.

5. The successive confrontations between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji over 'leaving the right path'! In the courtyard, when Lan Wangji pulls Bichen on Wei Wuxian to make him listen; in the sad umbrella rain, when Wei Wuxian holds Chenqing out in front of him, defying Lan Wangji's efforts to rein him in. These things probably fall under the umbrella of the TED talk from the first point, but they're the beating heart of WHY I LOVE THIS STORY. And they're not even in the novel...! I thank the CQL team for my life.

6. Also, THE COMB STORY. I'd never have thought either that 'how do we improve an m/m romance novel? By adding a het romance subplot, of course,' but the fact is that I love the dimension it adds to both Jiang Cheng's and Wen Qing's stories. Highlighting their shared loyalty to their clans - except not shared, because they're from different clans! - but their shared *understanding* of what righteousness, justice, etc., is, and the way it leads to their tragedies, and the way it's a counterpoint to Wei Wuxian's and Lan Wangji's different and ultimately shared understanding of 'what is right' and the way *that* brings *them* together is just... so good. I am getting over it approximately never, and, again, it's show-original.

7. And I think the last big thing - other than, the acting's wonderful, imo, the visuals are great, (even the 'bad' special effects? I like 'em kinda ridiculous?), and when the prose-in-translation of all versions is iffy at best, (not judging MXTX's prose! or the scriptwriters'! but I unfortunately cannot read or understand it) it's REALLY NICE to have other major dimensions of the story that aren't lost or diminished in translation. Honestly, I am only watching cdramas and not reading cnovels (I only read MDZS so I'd know what's in it) for that reason alone. But in terms of *story* stuff -

8. I think that censoring wangxian's relationship down to the '(really really loud) subtext' level counterintuitively also makes the rest of the story seem considerably gayer. If wangxian exists in hints and looks and narrative parallels etc., then likewise, so do the 3zun and Yi City triangles. Not as much as wangxian, but they're more minor characters, and they're on the same continuum... to the extent that I legit thought that songxiao and xiyao would also be novel canon. (They are not.) If Wei Wuxian shocking Lan Wangji by showing him gay porn in the library, and commenting on Lan Wangji's beauty, is because he is actually into guys, then maybe Nie Huaisang lending Wei Wuxian that same porn, and also commenting on Lan Wangji's beauty, means the same thing, if that's all we have to go on. etc.

Nine Things I liked better about the book:

1. There's something about Wei Wuxian's narrative voice, the running commentary that he gives about others and most of all himself that is... funny? Yes, it is, but that's not the part I love. It's hard to pin down, but the pattern of the things he judges and the things he doesn't judge at all, even though maybe he should, but he really has so much empathy - in the literal sense, I mean, as well as the magical - is very specific and endearing? He's exactly like that in the show, too, but we hear much less of it when he's not telling the story.

2. Getting to hear A-Qing in her Empathy fleshes out her cleverness and her bravery, again, in a way that's not easy to replicate seeing it from outside of her head. (I think we may have more of all of the ducklings/juniors, actually, but I'm just not all that interested in their friendly banter. Not when there's life-rending trauma in the OG of the same story!)

3. From the chronological start of the story, the Wens' domination and power-hunger is portrayed in a realpolitik way that's both more interesting and fits the rest of the story better, with the Jins later filling that same vacuum, and fearing Wei Wuxian's potential to do the same sort of thing to them, etc., as chronologically following and competing different takes on the struggle for power, without any need for the flat fantasy mcguffins of the Yin Iron or the 'spirit snatch.'

4. Wei Wuxian ~appreciating~ Nie Mingjue's dead body parts is hliarious. I love him hanging out with the corpse girls. I love the Wens risingout of the blood pool for him ;___;. Overall his relationship withthe corpses that he magics is such a cool weird fun part of the book,that is missing in the show except his friendship with Wen Ning for'let's make a show about necromancy but pretend it's not' reasons.

5. The fact that Wangxian don't split up and go their own ways at the end of the story, even temporarily! I could go either way on 'Lan Wangji becomes Chief Cultivator' - I like the way that it moves into 'the future will be better than the past, and we'll work to make it that way', in the same way that 'the kids are alright' does, and the fact that Lan Wangji hates diplomacy and is bad at it can make for good amusing stories! But I also approve of the fact that the personal win condition for so very many of these characters is to peace right the fuck out of sect politics, (like Mianmian our true hero does <3), and I believe in that as a happy ending.

6. Wei Wuxian's and Lan Wangji's complementary ~ravishment~ kinks. I don't like the exact way they're written in the novel (and extras), but I *will* take and run with the existence of them, nevertheless.

7. The post-resurrection plot makes, um, sense? Let's not forget the importance of that! (But, honestly, 'must a plot make sense'? It's not all that important to me, lol.) Going from one place to another to collect the pieces of 'our dead friend's' body rather than seemingly at random makes the journey feel purposeful rather than direction-less, and gives an indication of progress that's not simply 'amount of the story read as per chapter count.' Though it's still not clear to me why the juniors squad needs to be in Yi City!

8. It has more of Wei Wuxian's inventiveness. Whether founding the Diabolic Path rather than 'just' inventing some tools and talismans within and also outside of it, or figuring out/explaining how some sort of magic works, whether lecturing to the juniors or working it out for himself, or something like that one night-hunting extra where he's being a supernatural consulting detective... it's fun to see more of his ~mind at work,~ in a way that doesn't fit as well either into an audiovisual medium or under the constraints of 'what is happening? definitely not corpse magic!' that censorship imposes.

9. The structure of revealing what happened in (what I can't help thinking of as) the main portion of the plot - who Wei Wuxian is, what his life story is, and Lan Wangji's part in it - through interleaved and not even necessarily in-order flashbacks is... so interesting? Unfortunately I can't tell how well it would've worked for me in terms of changing my understandings of characters etc., because I watched the show before I read the book, so I came to it knowing the outlines of the story. But it's a cool idea, and I wish that I could experience it properly! (Though I would never have read the book without watching the show first, I would've failed out at the start due to translation issues and then if I'd persisted past that due to all the gay chicken stuff.)

#the untamed #this is sufficiently show-slanted #i believe #that i'm not gonna put it in any of the other tags....

14 notes · View notes

eclecticlanie · 3 years

Text

The Alignment

On this night, Hubs and I were asleep and out of a dead sleep I woke up because I felt something incredibly intense and extremely dark searching my house! I sit up in bed and stare down down the hallway that shows all the doors to the upstairs of my home. My room being the very last room and furthest from the stairs. I haven’t felt anything this dark in an extremely long time. It did not feel familiar, either. If dementors were real, I would swear there was one in my house. The only difference is this entity didn’t bring depression or despair. This brought on a feeling of maliciousness and it was on the hunt. I haven’t been this scared ever in my life and I’ve been through some hellish experiences. I woke my husband up accidentally while I was freaking out in bed trying to rack my brain on what to do. I haven’t practiced in so long I was most definitely unprepared. He normally calls me out if I’m overreacting but this man immediately got out of bed and asked me what he could do to help.

I told him, “I didn’t know.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the hallway. I could feel something staring at me as if it had the most twisted grin you could think of. I could probably compare it to American McGees Cheshire Cat or Mad Hatter grins. I could feel its intentions of harm and malice seething and rolling off of it like a billowing fog. It was enjoying my panic and frozen in place stance. Hubs starts looking around the room for my cuddle toy to attempt to calm me down.

“I need a knife. I need to protect the kids.” I managed to state while shifting to sitting on my feet in bed. Now, I am bipolar. I was diagnosed at 27 and have been medicated since. Asking for a knife to protect the kids against an invisible enemy alarmed Hubs quite a bit.

“What are you going to do?” He asked as he tried to hand me my cuddle toy.

“Blood magic. I need to smear the door frames.” I muttered. Hubs is very wary about magick due to his own experiences with his mother as a child and doesn’t truly practice, only cleanses basically. I only raised more flags for him. We never went further than discussing we both have had craft experiences or practices and never adventured that pathway together. I’ve only done blood magic one other time in my life and I’m not proud of it either. I am tied to someone I now wish I could sever. In this moment, I didn’t think twice about using blood magick again as this situation would have been more than appropriate unlike the first time I used it.

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Would holy water work?” He asked. I nodded and he dug through some boxes (we never got to unpack our bedroom like we had the rest of the house). He pulled out the holy water and started anointing the doorways. He walked right through the spot where this thing was standing. It didn’t budge and Hubs couldn’t feel it specifically in that spot. He comes back in the room and crawls into bed with me. He tries to cuddle me and I barely move to allow him to attempt to console me. I’m still in a staring match with this thing who is now annoyed we made a protection move. I can feel it settle to the floor as if it was just going to sit there and wait me out to see if I would leave the room.

“What is it you’re staring at?” Hubs asked. I explained what I was feeling and he just nodded.

“You must think I’m crazy... maybe we should just admit me...” I was starting to doubt myself that there was anything there. Maybe it was just my bipolar? Maybe I was hallucinating? Maybe I need a med adjustment...

“No... You’re not crazy. I do feel something is off but I’m not as sensitive to this stuff as you are.” Hubs tried to console, “You have a much clearer picture as to what is here.”

With that, Hubs stayed up with me for another hour before he couldn’t any longer. Sleep overcame him and I sat up in bed. It was now 3 something in the morning. I feel like I can pull my eyes away from the hall even with that thing still sitting there. I start looking on my phone for ways to protect the house. I’m on a website with protection spells and an ad I didn’t touch at all starts playing (it shouldn’t have played without clicking on it). A song plays, “I can’t keep my eyes off of you...” I clicked off the ad and continued scrolling. This thing was now messing with me from the hallway. I am reading the spell and again the ad plays, “I can’t keep my eyes off of you...” I click the browser completely off. There I am, giving up on research, holding my stuffy.

Dawn finally arrives and I feel the entity leave. I can feel the message of it will be back crawl into my head. At this moment is also the moment Hubs wakes up. He looks at me, “You didn’t sleep at all did you.”

“No.” was my simple answer. We both get out of bed and start getting ready for the day. I start rambling about how my phone sang to me. I went back into my phones browser history to show him that the only way it would play is if it was interacted with. He looks at me and asks what do we do now?

“If you don’t mind, I would like to go gung ho and back into practicing. We need to cleanse this house inside and out. I want to do the perimeter of our property. I want to get some crystals for us personally and for the house. And that is just the start. I need to find out who is after me.” I stated. We go about our day with mini conversations and him agreeing to everything I’m suggesting. That day we made a trip to a metaphysical shop and bought a bunch of crystals and candles. When we got home, we cleansed and charged the crystals. I do a candle spell anointed with rosemary and sage to protect our home. I ask my pendulum and my oracle deck a few questions. Did we get cursed? Yes. Was that thing after me last night? Yes. Is it personal? Yes. Would it go after anyone else? No. I dug out my husbands moms box of spiritual stuff that we never had the chance to go through after her death. We don’t remove her many tarot decks. We do take her sage and cleanse the house. A day later we cleanse the border of our property and also go around the outside of the house.

The next few nights following this attack I had more attacks but in my dreams. My dreams were riddled with beatings and rapes by people who have previously done me wrong. We completed another protection candle spell. Hubs started anointing my forehead with holy water before bed and also made me wear his hamsa talisman. With those last two actions I haven’t had another issue. Although the night after I started wearing the necklace I felt like something not malevolent but creepy as fuck was “peeping tom” through my window with HUGE eyes. We decided to black salt the house that night. With that, it disappeared.

We have discussed with a few friends about these events and all of them are in conclusion that I’m being targeted, whomever is doing the targeting used the alignments power to attack, and that this will not be the last we see of these attacks. It is now priority to attempt to find out who this person is. No one has been able to help figure it out. Google has not been of help other than to suggest curse reversal, which is also the suggestions I got on reddit and other media sites as well as my friends. That will be my next post.

2 notes · View notes

curiosity-killed · 4 years

Text

a bow for the bad decisions: Chapter 10

prev | start | next

(on ao3)

Wei Wuxian.

We’ve been waiting, Wei Wuxian.

Do you remember, Wei-gongzi?

You can’t control it, Wei Wuxian.

You promised.

You promised, Wei-gongzi.

Wei Wuxian.

Let us out.

Let us out, Wei Wuxian.

Don’t you want to?

Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian

Wei Wuxian.

It’s time.

Half-spectral, ash grey—

“Wei-gongzi, please.” Blood on his teeth, an open grave empty of bones— Revenge— Don’t you want revenge? Wen Chao laughing, sneering; Wen Chao trembling, peeling his own skin off in bloody strips. “Do you know what it’s like to starve, Wen-er-gongzi? Do you know what hunger tastes like?” Tears running hot as fresh blood, broken fingers closing around a seething hilt. Resentment cuts through him, splinters bone and tatters veins. His heart thumps hollow with the two-beat rhythm of revenge. “Wei-gongzi, please, you need to calm yourself.” Calm yourself. Restrain yourself. Chenqing hissing under his hand. Of course they can attack him as they please, but when it comes to protecting himself, he must hold back, curb his strength. How fragile they are, these all-mighty gentry. How thin their pride, how feeble their strength. The crack of bone breaking, a punched-out gasp. A valley of undead swarming two golden sparks. Jin Zixuan swaying, surprise breaking bloody over his lips. “A-Li—” Wei Wuxian comes to in the feeble light of candles. A tear slips hot down his cheek and he doesn’t let himself brush it away. How obscene, how wrong, to feel sorrow when he’s the one who’s brought this down on all of them. He is the architect of their ruin and he has the gall to weep? Absurd. He’s been lying to all of them, pretending he’s anything but a weapon, trying to hide his sharp edges under the swaddling of smiles and laughter. As if he could ever be anything but what he made himself. He’s a demon with a smile, a curse in human skin. “Why?” he asks. “Why him? You could have killed anyone else — why did you have to kill him?” He sits up, somewhere outside of his body. Nothing hurts anymore. All those aches and old breaks have been replaced. Reverse ossification, where once was bone is nothing more than resentment, dark hunger swallowing him whole. He understands. His body is not his own. His hands close around Wen Ning’s collars, clenching the fabric as if to tear it off or fling Wen Ning away. Wen Ning puts up no resistance, uses none of that terrible strength Wei Wuxian forced onto him. “Why did you kill him?” he demands. “Why did it have to be him? What is shijie supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do?” “I’m sorry,” Wen Ning bursts out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s my fault.” Wei Wuxian stumbles back, releasing him. Wen Ning is a weapon. Wen Ning is a blade in careless hands. He drags his fingers back through his hair, digs his nails into his scalp. “What am I supposed to do? Why did I choose this path?” he mutters, begs. “What on earth should I do? Who can tell me?” His nails bite into his scalp, blades of pressure against his skull. His body hums, sings, is brought to life with his grief and rage. Black sand scrapes through fragile capillaries. “What can I do?” he wails. “Who can tell me what I’m supposed to do?” Slipping down his skull, his hands clench around his hair, tugging, before they drop to fists at his sides. His own voice falls dead on the cave walls. There is no one here to guide him. He is alone, utterly and wholly by his own making. “Wei-gongzi?” Wen Ning’s voice is so tentative, hesitant and fearful. Fair, he thinks. Fitting. He remembers only snatches of the pass; he remembers enough. Fear, anger, blood, his own will rising like the tide and drowning out Wen Ning’s, the current dragging him under. Wen Ning had only ever wanted to be a cultivator and a medic, to make his sister proud and help his family. He’s only a kid — only nineteen when he died and only nineteen forever, trapped in a slipshod eternity. Wei Wuxian had thought he was helping when he did it — or was that only another lie he told them? He can’t remember his thoughts at the time, can only recall anger and grief and thrumming, screaming power. This is his own disaster. No one can fix this. His grief and panic cool, solidify like iron dropped in a bucket by the forge. Tempered, honed, he steadies. “Wei-gongzi, there is a message from Yunmeng. It came the night before last.” Wen Ning’s eyes are wide and worried; he watches closely even as he extends the arrow on shaking hands. Wei Wuxian takes it, and the spelled shaft unfurls into a small, tight scroll. He recognizes Yu Bujue’s hand, and before he has even read the first character, he knows the naïve hope that is to follow. ‘Da-shixiong, there will be an attack the day after tomorrow. All the sects have pledged forces.’ How innocent of a-Jue to think this warning would be either news or helpful. He’s always been like that, just enough younger to always seem a child even when he was fighting beside them in a war. Of course the sects are coming. Wei Wuxian has killed the heir of the Chief Cultivator himself. There is no other path they could take. “Perhaps if — if I turned myself in,” Wen Ning suggests. Wei Wuxian shoots a sharp look his way, silencing him. Wei Wuxian has done this. He started all of it, and he puppeted Wen Ning in the pass. He will not let another take his punishment. “No,” he says, straightening. He can feel the resentment now more than ever. It distorts his edges, blurs the boundary of his skin. His heart no longer pulses for his own blood but to set a steady beat for the burn-song replacing his veins. Every movement is a half-conscious command, a sequence of notes directing his limbs as Chenqing leads ghosts and ghouls. “No,” he says. “Leave. Go anywhere away from here, but do not turn toward the sects. There is a desert far to the north. Go there, go to the mountains, to the sea, but do not ever turn back here.” “Wei-gongzi—” Wen Ning protests. His dark eyes are wide and fearful. Wei Wuxian turns to him, crumpling the talisman scroll in his hand. Wen Ning’s throat bobs once before he squares his shoulders and faces Wei Wuxian stubbornly. “Wei-gongzi, I cannot leave my family,” he says. “I can’t leave you to face the sects alone. I did it, I was the one who attacked. Let me help you.” Help? What help will he bring but his own destruction? Does he really think there is any way Wei Wuxian will walk away from this? The end is here. There is no escape from the encroaching night. “If you won’t go on your own, I can make you,” Wei Wuxian says. His voice comes out cool and even, and Wen Ning flinches back. Wei Wuxian has always promised that Wen Ning was his own person, wasn’t a puppet, wasn’t just a tool. He’s made a lot of promises over the years. “Wei-gongzi—” Wen Ning starts, taking an uncertain step forward. “Wen Qionglin, leave this place,” Wei Wuxian orders. “Leave and never look back. I don’t need Chenqing to command you.” Some part of Wen Ning still seems to protest; his gaze searches Wei Wuxian’s face, begging, pleading. Wei Wuxian meets it, flat and uncaring. He promised Wen Qing he’d keep him safe. He owes them too much to do anything else. If Wen Ning will not save himself, Wei Wuxian will give him no choice. Wen Ning takes a faltering step backward. His face is so still, but there’s the faintest start of a frown. If he were alive, he’d be crying already. Wei Wuxian holds himself tight and still, strings pulled taut through the hollows of his bones. Wen Ning’s hands are shaking as he brings them before him, bowing low and solemn. “I’m sorry, Wei-gongzi,” he says and his voice trembles. Wei Wuxian doesn’t watch him leave, but he can feel it; the threads still connecting them, thin and stubborn, stretching farther away. He’ll feel it when Wei Wuxian dies. He’ll know when he’s free. Now, Wei Wuxian turns to his work. There are forty-eight of them living here. With Wen Qing and Wen NIng gone, that leaves forty-five villagers to protect. He doesn’t need to factor himself in, doesn’t need to calculate his own protections. That cause has long been lost. Everything is thinner, sharper-edged. He flickers on the threshold between realms, yin energy replacing his blood and bone. It scours the backs of his ribs, bites into the soft tissue still lingering like meat that hasn’t yet rotted from the bone. There were lessons Jiang Cheng took alone growing up, as sect heir, ones where Wei Wuxian would wait outside the hall and then talk them over with Jiang Cheng when he emerged. The duties of the Head Disciple weren’t limited to teaching, after all, even if that had always been his favorite. An attack on the Burial Mounds, on the Yiling laozu, will warrant full forces from all the sects. Now, he sketches rough estimates of the army coming for his head and prepares. The Jin sect will be the greatest force, both because they are the most offended and the most powerful. Next, the Nie sect — martial and brutal as their sabers. The Lan sect will hold back a little, still nursing wounds from the burning of Cloud Recesses; like Yunmeng Jiang, they haven’t fully replenished their numbers. He draws in a steadying breath. Yunmeng Jiang will bring the smallest force, but they won’t be able to winnow their numbers in his favor without risking the sect itself. They will come to fight, even if they don’t want to. He calls up disciples’ faces, draws up his shidis and shimeis, Yu Bujue and the new swordmaster Cao Xingtao. He pictures Jiang Cheng. The Burial Mounds have always liked him, ever since they tugged him down the first time. It reminds him a little of the lakes of Yunmeng, how he’d been able to feel the living energy swirling and flowing around them. The lakes had always pulled to him like the tides, ebbing and flowing, giving and releasing. Every Jiang disciple knows the harmonies of the waters, recognizes the disturbances caused by common problems: water ghouls, drowned spirits, and the like. The Burial Mounds are not so forgiving. The dead do not love by halves: they are made of hunger, of want. He’d bartered and bargained and dealed the first time to make them let him walk away. They’d resented having to give him up even temporarily, jealously clinging to this new song he composed from their screams. There are no concessions this time. He will not walk away. They give back fully, energy rushing up to greet him with seething delight. The qin-wire strings of his existence resonate with the force. There are no more lines between them anymore. He is the Seal is Chenqing is him. The Burial Mounds open up and welcome him. He cuts into his palm and begins painting. The array will be a focal point, the center of his force. The parched stone soaks in the scarlet of his blood, the thick lines spreading into the cracks of the rock. He chooses carefully, selecting with intent. Amplification, exclusion, repulsion. He is his own arsenal; he arrays his forces in the patterns of talismans and wards. With each cut, each stroke, he feels the resentment take firmer root. A spreading snarl of roots knotting through his chest, wrapping around and cracking open bones. The voices are louder now, shrill screams echoing in his ears as if reverberating through his own hollow shell. A bitter wind scourges his skin as the Burial Mounds opens itself to his crooked hands. “Wei-gongzi?” Popo and Uncle Six stand side by side, shoulders curled as if they’re only barely keeping themselves from cowering. Popo’s veiny hands shake where they’re clasped before her ribs. “Wei-gongzi, how can we help?” Uncle Six asks. They are so frail before him, so small and fragile. He can feel their qi, dull and quiet against the raging resentment all around them. Only the faintest brushes of yin energy shadow their own souls; they are peaceful people, gentle. They don’t have that shuddering quake to their bones. “Go inside,” he says. “Close the doors and do not open them. No matter what you hear, do not come outside.” Uncle Six swallows, shaggy brows furrowing as if in worry or perhaps fear. Popo reaches out a shaking hand but pulls back before touching his sleeve. “Wei-gongzi,” she says gently, “your eyes…” Her hand creeps back to curl close to her chest. He does not feel regret. They should have known from the beginning, should have been better warned of the monster walking among them. Wen Ning was never the one to fear. “Go inside,” he says. There’s a long hesitation before, finally, they give little bobbing nods. He can feel the rest of them watching, the uneasy shuffle into their hard won homes. The houses are small and flimsy, put together with hard work and meager materials. There are no wards that can make the dark wood stone, but he can seal them once they’re closed. It will be something at least, a barricade of broken table legs. The sects have their swords and spiritual weapons, but they can still bleed. A hundred thousand needle pricks can drain an elephant. Drawing out the Seal, he picks up Chenqing and begins to play. The screaming night of the Burial Mounds and the yin energy of the Seal have always been of two different fabrics. They share the common thread of resentment, but they’ve been woven in separate ways. Where the Burial Mounds is raw, unfinished grief and rage, the Seal is refined and condensed, a purer form of resentment. Ghosts and spirits are drawn up from their shallow graves in the Mounds; the Seal gives power with nothing but corrosion tagging along. Chenqing sings for them, drawing and plaiting them together. She hums with this overload of energy, this sudden flood soaking into her wards and walls. She was forged here, too; she carries the Burial Mounds in her edges the same way he does. The boundary is reinforced, then new walls of protections pulled up. He plays new seals into being and builds up walls of the living dead. The spirits echo his own music, and the notes reverberate through the Seal. Each passage, each resounding chorus, strengthens and solidifies the spells. “Xian-gege?” The voice is thin and frightened as it interrupts Chenqing’s dirge. Playing out the last notes of the spell, he lowers the flute and turns. A-Yuan stands at the edge of the array, his little shoes just shy of the blood. A paper butterfly is clutched tight to his chest, wings crumpled in his small fist. “Xian-gege?” he says again. “A-Yuan,” he says, lowering Chenqing. It takes him a moment to recall the name, to draw up the identity of the child before him. The resentment stirs, uneasy at this interruption, but recedes enough for him to reach out a hand. “A-Yuan, why are you outside?” The doors have already been sealed, blood painted in tight arrays along the walls. He could feel the huddled bodies behind them, the fear marinating in their four walls. “Xian-gege, I’m scared,” a-Yuan says, tears bright in his eyes. He can feel it, sublimating off his little frame. He’s not steeped in it, but it’s wound into the young fibers of his core. Resentment in the form of his arms circles around a-Yuan, pulls him up to rest on his hip. The boy nestles in close, his heart racing rabbit-like under his skin. He can’t feel his warmth anymore; there’s a gap between sensation and his soul now, the chasm filled by the prickling dark. “Xian-gege, will you sing for me?” “Of course,” he says. He hums as he walks, a melody untouched by the writhing anger around them. It rises from deep inside him, slips between the shadows of his shattered soul. The spirits do not touch this song, do not attempt to echo its refrain. This is his his his. It is a last bloom on a mountain of ash. They will not taint it. A-Yuan hums along, holding tight to his collars. He’s so little still, small for his age and always skinny. They’d given him extra portions whenever they could, everyone slipping something off their plate for his, but even still, there has only ever been so much to go around. Now, he fits easily in Wei Wuxian’s arms and hardly weighs anything at all. “I need you to be good, a-Yuan,” he says. There’s an old tree at the edge of the clearing in which they made their fragile home. Black rope-work scars it, and the bark peels back from the gash of the lightning strike. It’s an old wound in an ancient tree, and the edges have been worn smooth by wind and rain. “A-Yuan will be good for Xian-gege,” the boy promises solemnly. He offers up a smile, hopeful, even as his big brown eyes are dark and worried. Settling him up in the hollow, Wei Wuxian smooths back his mussed hair. “Be good and stay quiet,” he says. A-Yuan bobs his head in a nod. His little hands fold tight around the butterfly, clutching it close to his chest. “And a-Yuan,” Wei Wuxian says, “don’t look. I need you to promise me.” There are tears gathering in his eyes, his brows pinching toward each other in distress. Wei Wuxian cups his cheek with his palm. “Xian-gege, are you going away?” he asks. Wei Wuxian swallows, hums an affirmation around the knot in his throat. It was easier moments ago, when he was alone in the storm welling up inside him. So much resentment has threaded itself through his skin that he hardly remembered who he was if not an extension of the hurt and rage of this place. “Xian-gege, please don’t leave,” a-Yuan says, fat tears welling up and breaking. “Please don’t leave. I’ll be good, Xian-gege, I’ll be really good.” “Mm.” Wei Wuxian clears his throat and leans a-Yuan’s head forward to brush a kiss to his forehead. “It will all be alright, a-Yuan. I promise.” “You’ll come back?” Such a small voice, already breaking. Wei Wuxian settles him, smooths flyaway hairs where they’ve slipped from the tie. It’s only one more lie. “I’ll come back,” he says. “But you have to promise you’ll be quiet and you won’t look. Alright, a-Yuan?” After another tremulous pause, a-Yuan nods. “A-Yuan promises,” he says. A smile flickers on Wei Wuxian’s lips, shaking even as he suppresses it. It’s quick work to ward the tree, to seal it against the coming attack. Cruelty, even in this — to imprison the boy in an unmarked tomb. Perhaps his spirit will forgive him. He’s always been a kind boy, quick to forget his own tears. It’s too much to hope for, but it’s the smallest wish he can make. Perhaps, in another life, he’ll have the chance to say ‘I’m sorry.’ For this life, there is only so much he can do. Turning from the tree, he walks back to the center of the clearing and raises Chenqing once more. There are still a few loose ends, unraveled edges of wards. The corpses shuffle closer to the edges, congregating on the border toward Lanling. The Seal, still halved, hangs suspended at his sides. It hums, all hunger and thirst. Its filigree burns, rings with the white-hot heat of want. Sibilant words sing out from it, memories and reminders of the power that it holds. All he has to do is fit both sides together, slot them into place, let the power flood him. How strong they’d be if only he let them. He holds off. Perhaps some stubborn hope still lingers where he thought he’d drowned it. Maybe it’s Jiang Cheng’s insistence that they can figure it out; maybe it’s shijie’s assurance that the three of them will be together. He doesn’t really want to die, even if he knows he’s long past living. If he connects the two halves, it will be surrendering any hope of return; he will be lost in a way even death can’t fix. He’s been planning to destroy the Seal for so long, he knows the process by heart. If he can only get through this — if he can just hold off the sects and keep the Wens safe — then he’ll break it apart. He’ll be done. At least he’ll be able to do that one last good thing. He just has to hold on a little longer, dig his fingernails in and cling to his fraying control. There’s a ping against the wards, the first sign of an approach. It hums through him like the echo of qin strings in a cave. Reverberating through his chest, it’s caught and overwhelmed by the tearing sensation as the wards are broken. Pressure mounts, spiritual energy a rising crescendo against the seething resentment called up around them.

Closing his eyes, he lifts Chenqing and begins.

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #untamed fic #wei wuxian #burial mounds #my writing

4 notes · View notes

imhereforbvcky · 5 years

Text

Watch Me Run - Part 12

Masterlist - Series Masterpage - Part 13

Summary: You inherit a family relic that gives you the gift of foresight but there are others who are interested for more nefarious reasons. You turn to the Avengers for help. (Bucky x reader) Chapter: Needing a sense of security, you ask Bucky to help you prepare to defend yourself against the worst case scenario. Loki grows frustrated with tactical.

Warnings: Murdery violence! Loki at his worst, soz. Swearing, as per usz.

Word Count: 2985

A/N: We’re moving a little! Bucket and the reader don’t know that... well okay nobody knows it yet. Except for me. 😁

Page after page of nothing flashed over the grainy screen. An inquisitive porcupine, several returning deer, and what Bucky guessed were passing birds, too quick for the trail cam to catch. These were the only things to interrupt the sea of trees. He thumbed through shot after shot, carefully examining each one, just to be sure. It had been weeks of the same.

“This isn’t a very exciting movie,” you teased, hovering over his shoulder.

He smirked, but didn’t respond, clicking over to the next image.

“I don’t see anything,” you complained.

“Probably a bird.”

“Or a bear!” you clapped your hands excitedly. “Are there polar bears up here? Maybe you just can’t see him!”

“I’d see him.”

“Somebody’s sure of himself.”

“I was a sniper,” he leveled you with a look half bored, half offended. “I think I could spot an eight hundred pound animal.”

“Then why are we eating re-hydrated beef out of a bag?” You held your sleeve of beef stroganoff, designed for backpackers, toward him with a challenging smirk.

“Because it’s too early in the season to shoot anything but rabbits.” He snatched the sleeve out of your hands and shoveled a spoonful into his mouth. “And they’re not worth the energy.”

“But it could be something to do!” you protested, “And useful! One less trip into town where we could be spotted.”

He only sighed, handing you back the sleeve of stroganoff before returning to the trail cam. You’d had this argument before. Many times. You had begged him to let you practice shooting with his weapons, to get comfortable with them, just in case. He had firmly denied your request, every time.

“Come on!” you begged. “We have nothing else to do, and it’ll be good for me to practice.”

“No.” His answer was definitive.

But you were persistent.

“Please, it will make me feel safer.”

“We’ve talked about this.”

“No, you’ve steam-rolled me about this.” You dropped the bag of noodles on the table and pushed closed fists into your hips.

If he weren’t so serious about this topic, he might’ve laughed. You reminded him so much of Steve sometimes. Small and stubborn. Passionate and compassionate.

“Alright,” he set the camera down and turned to face you, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped in front of him. “Talk.” He had no intention of changing his mind. But if you needed to talk it out… again… maybe this time it would stick.

That surprised you. Your head tipped, and your chin lifted. A small victory, or so you thought, so you dropped into the nearest chair, dragging it close, until your knees nearly touched.

“I feel vulnerable out here.”

“You’re not. I told you, you’re safe. How many times—“

“I know,” you placed a hand on his clasped pair. “I know you’re good at this. I’m not questioning that. It’s just… I had to give up everything. I’m out of my element, here. The one thing I do have,” you placed a hand over the talisman hanging at your chest, “Is just as confusing and frightening to me as it is helpful.”

Bucky listened. He hadn’t expected to be swayed, but this… he could understand. Even if the outcome couldn’t change.

“You’re always saying how the escape plan could save me. Being prepared, having control, right? It’s so important to you?” you pushed, begging him to understand. “Well I feel very, very out of control here.”

Bucky leaned back, a frown creasing his face. “I’m sorry. I hear you, but it’s still not a good idea. The answer’s no.”

“You have the ability to give me some power over this situation. Don’t you feel… I don’t know, morally obligated to help me?”

He sighed deeply and shook his head. “Not everyone is as bound to their compassion as you are.”

“The world would be a lot nicer place if they were,” you grumbled, crossing your arms and flopping back in your chair.

“The world is not a nice place.”

“Come on,” you begged. “You brought all those weapons, just show me one! What if something goes wrong and—“

“It won’t.”

Your head dropped to the side with a frown. “Bucky. You can’t plan for everything. There’s a difference between being prepared and being a control freak. That difference is called denial.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m in control here. I’ve brought every weapon I think I’ll need to keep you safe and I won’t turn you into one of them just to make you feel better.” Bucky had gone from listening but firm, to deadly serious. “If anyone comes for you, they’ll be well-trained. Years of it. Training you to shoot would be… false confidence. Irresponsible.”

“Okay,” you nodded, relenting under the intensity of his command and wilting slightly with the reality of your peril. “I got it.”

“Your only job is to get the hell out of here, do you understand? I can’t have you second guessing that plan just because you can hold a revolver.”

“I said I got it,” you grumbled, springing from your chair and storming to the porch for air.

Bucky’s head dropped into his hands and he shoved them deep into his hair once you’d left the cabin. He could still see you through the window, kicking at weeds as you made your way over to the pile of firewood.

If he didn’t feel like such an ass, he might’ve laughed at the sight of you. Your frustration was futile against his will, but he heard it with empathy, nonetheless. The little ax stuck in the first log you’d struck while trying to break off kindling to blow off steam. The jerky imprecision told him your actions were more frustration than actual concern for the fire supply.

He knew he shouldn’t have snapped like that. He’d meant every word, but he hadn’t meant to anger you like this, to seem insensitive. It was just that he’d begun to break protocol in ways he couldn’t seem to get a handle on. There was a nearly imperceptible shift, a softening in the way he regarded you. Hell, even the fact that he was second guessing the conversation stood as clear evidence of that.

It made him want to dig his heels in wherever he could. None of it helped.

In any other circumstance, it wouldn’t matter. But this was a mission, an assignment. And he had a clear path. Only, it was getting harder and harder to think of you driving away. Yet if it came down to it, he needed you to do just that. Or worse.

“Damn it,” he cursed, shoving to his feet.

Nothing good could come of this. Nothing.

The logical, successful fugitive part of his brain told him it was better if you were afraid. It meant you would be more aware, you would follow the plan, you would run. But another part knew it wasn’t fair to keep you vulnerable and constantly fearful. The latter won out because there was a voice in his head that kept reminding him that he didn’t want you to fear one good god damn thing.

The longer he stayed in that cabin, watching you flail around with an axe stuck into a log, the louder that voice grew. When he caught himself smiling, a chuckle just punching out of his lungs, he decided.

He swept out the door with a shotgun in hand and a determined frown on his lips.

“Let’s go.”

The hundred year old brick trembled beneath the growing strength of the energy blistering from the blue mineral at the center of the long silver scepter. Slender fingers tightened around the cool metal as a snarl rippled up Loki’s throat. One sharp and aimless slash of the scepter diagonally before his body and the wall before him gave way in a ripple of blue energy.

The soft whisper of paper over the dirtied, hard wood floor drew Loki’s attention. And his anger.

“How many more?” he demanded, glaring over his shoulder at the woman trembling in the doorway.

Wide eyes roved over the mess Loki had made of the house, wild with terror and watery with regret. Her mouth hung open, while her chin trembled. If not for the shock, she would have been wise enough to answer.

“HOW MANY MORE?!” This time his voice was like an avalanche, a rumble that built as loud as thunder, tone as sharp as ice and just as cold. As he shouted he struck the base of the scepter against the floor and a wave of blue energy snapped out in a plane across the house. It creaked and groaned under the force, in the same way a frozen lake snaps and buckles in springtime.

“Th-this was the last one.” The engineer trembled as dry-wall dust fell around her, and the mortar cracked overhead. The entire house and everything in it trembled under his rage.

Loki took a slow deep breath in through his nose, face rising away from the puppet who’d failed him. The shimmering blue had left her eyes, his control relinquished when he realized this was the final dead end. Now composed, he stepped toward her with a deadly calm and a dangerously slow pace. Anger would not serve him here, not anymore.

“The last one,” he echoed her words, reaching for the badge clipped to her belt on a retractable coil. “And they’re not here.”

She shook her head, watching, unable to speak. Her breath came in sharp, frantic puffs while he drew the small clear plastic card closer, examining the bright red lettering. Stark Industries.

“And you’re sure your code was successful?” his tone was gentle, almost soothing. It did nothing to calm her.

She swallowed thickly before answering. “Y-yes. These are all the safe houses in Avengers’ possession. And SHIELD’s. And anything that was even mentioned on the Stark Industries servers.”

“And yet,” he raised a flattened palm, glancing around the room. “Empty.”

“I did everything I could,” she breathed, stumbling half a step back. “Everything you asked.”

“I know,” he smiled. The venom flashed in his eyes and soured his grin to a sinister bite. It made the woman’s stomach churn. “But you’ve failed. And now, you have no use to me. Worse yet, you’ve become a liability.”

Before she could even inhale a breath in protest, Loki conjured a long slender dagger, spun it quickly in his fist and plunged it with inhuman force deep between bone. He had struck quickly and precisely, with enough force to break through the cartilage of her rib-cage and dive straight into the sinewy muscles of her heart.

The engineer blinked down at the blade protruding from her chest. It wasn’t until he withdrew the darkened knife that she gasped, gurgling and wet, choking on death itself before it swiftly claimed her.

Loki was cunning and patient, but he was also a warrior. And when his patience ran thin, he knew where to strike. He’d hoped with a swift strike, he could avoid an all-out war with Midguard and its Avengers. That no longer seemed possible.

With a sharp sigh and a scowl on his lips, Loki took one last glance at the rubble before he set off, once more, for the heart of his operation.

“Bullseye!” you shouted. “That was a bullseye, right?”

Bucky could hear the smile in your voice. He could feel it on him like a warm candle in the cold northern air.

“High,” he answered, a grin of his own turning his lips, his eyes still pressed to the binoculars.

“What! No way. Lemme see!”

“Is the safety on?” His tone a clear warning that he knew it wasn’t.

You flipped the small notch and turned to him again. “Is now! Let’s see!”

He chuckled and handed the binoculars over. You pressed a clumsy hand against your hair, pushing it out of the way. It fell right back into place. Without thinking, Bucky reached forward and held a strand back just as you swept the binoculars into place.

First, he wondered if you’d noticed. Second he wondered why the hell he’d done it. Third, he wondered, when it had become so easy to reach out like this. At what point had he become so damn comfortable that it seemed normal to touch your hair or brush your cheek?

It suddenly felt too intimate, and he retracted his hand, nearly took a step back. Your head swiveled at the motion, just a fraction, and he flushed with regret. Whether he regretted the touch or the withdrawal, he couldn’t say.

“It’s the gun,” you decided. “It’s gotta be a hundred years old.”

“That weapon is in perfect condition.” He held his hands out for the binoculars, with an open palm. In it, he held a new round. An even exchange. “Try again. Aim for the bottom of the second ring this time.”

You took the ammunition and sighed, turning the weapon sideways to load it. Like every time, you mentally walked yourself through each of Bucky’s instructions.

“This is a single barrel shotgun,” he’d explained days before. “You need to load it every time you shoot.”

You’d nodded, trying to absorb every detail he shared.

“We’re using slugs for practice because I want you to focus on aim,” he’d reached into his pocket and showed you the thick green casing, tipped by what looked to you like a huge rounded bullet.

Another nod. “’Kay.”

He’d shoved the slug back in his pocket and reached into another. “But if you have to use this on somebody to protect yourself,” he turned out a bright red shell this time. “I want you to use buck shot.”

You swallowed, throat suddenly dry and tight.

“You’re gonna be nervous and full of adrenaline,” he’d explained. “I don’t expect you to be a marksman, and this’ll get the job done. If it doesn’t kill ‘em, it’ll sure as hell slow ‘em down. Understand?”

You’d taken a shaky breath then and nodded, eyes on the shot in his hand and trying not to imagine too vividly the bloody array it signified. “Red for trouble. Got it.”

Now though, you gently, steadily pushed the forest green slug into the oblong slot on the gun. These unfamiliar motions of violence were becoming easier by the day. But then again, you were only shooting at paper.

“This time I’ll hit it.” You grinned up at Bucky, half a taunt on your lips as you gripped the pump and pulled. The unmistakable swoosh-kerchunk alerted you both that you’d loaded and cocked the weapon properly.

“It’s loaded now,” Bucky had explained to you the first time ‘round.

“It sounds like a movie,” you’d whispered. Half awe, half horror.

“This is not a movie,” he’d been quick to contradict.

“I know.”

“It’s not a game or a dream,” sharp grey eyes bore down on you. “That is the international ‘back the fuck up’ sound. You load this weapon, you’d better be ready to fire it.”

You couldn’t have helped laughing if you’d wanted to. You’d been so high strung, and it was just too much.

“That was very dramatic.”

He’d merely shrugged. “Few sounds will light a fire under someone’s ass quicker than a pump-action shotgun. One way or another.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“You are such a soldier.” There was a scowl in your eyes but a smirk on your lips. Teasing, but truthful. “You gonna make me do push-ups next?”

He’d chuckled, but shook his head. He looked serious and a little sad when he looked down at you again. “You asked me to teach you to shoot so you’d feel ready to defend yourself. Drawing a gun takes a conversation in exactly one direction. You need to be prepared for that. If it comes down to you loading that weapon while we’re here, you shoot to kill. And then you run.”

Run. That was still your best shot if things went south. Turn your back and run.

You hated it. For all the power you held in your hands, deadly and loud, you still felt powerless in a battle of gods.

This time, after days of practice, you did as Bucky said and aligned your aim just low of the center ring. It felt odd, to aim off-target, but you trusted him.

Just like he’d instructed, you gently squeezed the trigger on a smoothly released breath. Your shoulder ached now from the repeated buck of the stock against the blast.

“Better,” Bucky praised, lowering the binoculars and offering them to you. This time, you remembered the safety.

“Ish,” you complained.

He chuckled. “Hit the paper this time.”

“Is that going to be good enough?”

His smile froze for a fraction of a second before it faded. The storm returned to the grey of his eyes.

He gave a sharp nod to the binoculars in your hand before withdrawing a handful of slugs. You watched him for too long. Before you could think to raise the binoculars he’d pushed a slug into the slot and braced the rifle to his shoulder.

One round.

You got the hint and put the binoculars to your eyes to look down the make-shift range. Upper left corner.

“Ha!” you taunted, but he’d already reloaded. “Told you the gun’s no good.”

Two. Dead center.

Oh.

Three. Bottom right.

Four. Upper right.

“Okay, I get it.” You rolled your eyes.

Five. Dead center. The shot lay so tight over his second that you could barely tell the paper had been blown open wider. Just barely.

Six. Bottom left. A perfect X fired into the paper.

You threw up your hands in defeat. “Fine, you win. Gun’s fine. I’m not a good shot.”

He carefully set the shotgun down and looked to you with that unwavering certainty that nearly had you believing everything would all be alright. “You don’t have to be.”

Part 13 >>

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader angst #bucky fanfic #bodyguard!bucky #avengers fic #watch me run 12

122 notes · View notes

wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

Text

Witches, Chapter 19: yeah there’s actually still one last little bit of investigation left in this case. I’m sorry too. Now who wants backstory for side characters in a DLC case!

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

For all her bluff and bluster about getting back to investigating in the face of Blackquill’s disdain, Athena doesn’t seem to have a clue what they should do next. She tromps in stocking feet back into the aquarium, Phoenix and Pearl trailing behind her, and stares at a poster on the wall with life cycle facts about penguins for five minutes before she suggests that they go visit Sasha, because if Blackquill was here, then he had to be done interrogating her, right?

Pearl remains behind at the aquarium to get settled in, and Athena complains the whole drive to the detention center because Phoenix made her put her wet shoes back on instead of driving barefoot. “I’m wearing tights!” she insists. “It’s not barefoot!”

“Shoes, kiddo.”

“They’re wet! It’s gross!”

“Should’ve thought of that before you threw a bucket of water at a witch.” Or whatever he is. Fae-adjacent, the same vague broad classification to encompass Phoenix and Trucy and Klavier and Thalassa. Apollo’s not quite there yet.

“Wicked witch of the bench afraid he’d melt if it hit him, you think?” She steps out onto the parking lot asphalt and winces at the tiny rocks digging into her feet. “Okay,” she sighs. “Shoes.”

As they wait at the detention center for Sasha to be brought out, Athena turns, very seriously, to Phoenix. “Alright, Boss, we’ve gotta cheer Sasha up! If you’re feeling bad about the investigation, don’t you dare show it!”

The door on the other side of the glass opens and an officer escorts Sasha in. She wears a grin on her face but has a wild look in her eyes. “Ahoy, me buckos! Worry ye not about me! My spirits be good and ol’ Prosecutor Nostache won’t keep me down!”

“Uh.” Athena blinks and turns to Phoenix. He shrugs.

Sasha’s entire posture collapses. “Well that was an anchor,” she says. “Straight to the bottom. I wanted to make you feel better for all the trouble I’m causing…”

“We were hoping to cheer you up,” Athena says.

“Maybe you both can just act natural,” Phoenix says. Not that telling anyone to “act natural” ever leads to any normal or natural behaviors. Certainly not if he ever told Maya that, though after the first time he learned to add the qualifier “act what might be natural for a human”.

“Anyway.” Athena inhales deeply and the large, forced smile that she had put on calms down into something still friendly, still smiling, but closer to neutral, and much more natural. “What we’re here for, Sasha, is to tell you that we’d like to represent you in court tomorrow!”

“What!” Sasha shoves herself backward from the sill, her chair screeching horribly across the floor until it gets stuck, and she still pushing tips herself and the chair over backwards, thudding out of sight to the ground.

“Sasha?” Phoenix asks. “Is - is something wrong?”

She doesn’t stand back up. Athena pushes herself up on the sill and presses her forehead against the glass, trying to peer down to see if she’s okay. “Pros - Prosecutor Blackquil s-said--” Sasha’s shaking, shuddering breathing interrupts her words. “Said that you w-wouldn’t show up. You’d abandon me.” She’s definitely crying now, loudly and messily. “And you’re here! You - you’re - you’re h-here. To rescue me.” She rights the chair, rubbing tears off of her cheeks and out of her bloodshot eyes.

“No, Sasha!” Athena still has her face up close to the glass and she presses her palms up against it, too. “We would never! Even Prosecutor Blackquill should know that! I would never! Don’t cry!” The next loud sniffling comes from Athena.

Oh boy.

“These are happy tears.” And Sasha is smiling, beaming really, even blinking furiously to stop further tears from falling. “I’m so so glad I met you both! For Orla and me a-and—” Another shaky breath stops her for a moment. “Okay. I’m okay. I’m okay! You’ve probably got questions, right? Fire away!”

What she tells them of cleaning the orca pool that early morning is a review of what they’ve already heard, up to the point that she readily tells them she was arguing with the captain. She talks more about Orla’s tricks, says that the calendar with the seven am meeting with the captain is definitely not hers, and when they tell her that they dropped off her medications - it was Fulbright who tasked them with this, but it still had to be cleared with the prison so that they know no one is trying to smuggle in something illegal like white powder (Apollo is way too straight-laced for an Anything Agency and it’s hilarious every time he smacks inconsequentially up against that wall) - she starts getting weird. Like she’s trying to distract them from the fact that she’s on medication at all, which isn’t really working. “Are you sick?” Athena asks. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s all just peachy!” Sasha says with false, feigned cheer; the fact that she couldn’t drum up a fish pun to use really seals it. (Wait, isn’t a drum a kind of fish? Why’s he know more about fish than flowers? And seals - god damn it.)

Athena stares doubtfully at her. Her shoulders slump. “I guess I could just tell you, huh,” Sasha says. “It’s for a heart condition but—”

“A heart condition?” Athena cries, her voice high and shrill.

“—but it’s not that serious—”

“Not that serious!” Athena’s second echo isn’t quite as much of a piercing shriek, but it’s even louder, an angry yell. “It’s your heart! Don’t tell me not to worry!”

Sasha heaves a sigh. “This is why I don’t tell people,” she says. “Because you freak, and then I’m trying to reassure you that you don’t need to treat me like I’m fragile, and I’ve got to explain that I’m not dying, so on, so on.”

“Oh,” Athena says. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s okay.” Sasha shrugs. “I’m sorry for snapping at you like that. It’s not you. It just gets a little tiring going through the same song-and-dance every time I tell someone. Much less fun than putting on the same song and dance with Orla every show!” Athena laughs and Sasha sticks her tongue out at her. “And I’d just had that argument with the captain the other night, too. The one that came up in the trial this morning. He knew about my condition, and I’d told him that I’d scheduled the surgery that would fix it, and he was worried and he told me that’d been thinking, and he was taking me out of the show. You saw the new flier, right? That I’m not in it?”

Phoenix nods.

“And it was supposed to debut yesterday. But I needed to go out there and perform yesterday. It was the anniversary of Azura’s death, and I had this crazy idea that I would go in front of the audience and tell them all that her death was just an accident, that Orla didn’t kill her, and now the captain wasn’t going to let me out there. So what I did” - her smile is somewhere between devious and sad - “was move the skull rock from the show stage. Put it back in the orca pool, figured the captain probably wouldn’t look there, and if he couldn’t find the major prop for the new show, we’d have to do the old one again, right? Marlon gave me a hand with it, while he was watching Orla at the stage pool.”

It was a bold plan, is about all Phoenix can say to that. “Azura is the orca trainer before you?” he asks.

“Yeah. Azura Summers. She taught me everything I know - she was a year older than me and we were like - anemone and clownfish. Remora and shark!” Phoenix doesn’t speak marine biology but Athena is nodding in solemn understanding. “She was a year older than me. She was the best - you ever meet someone and just, hit it off immediately, you just know that they’re someone who’s gonna be so important in your life?” Sasha stares down at her hands, fiddling with something. “And then she was gone.”

“That must’ve been awful,” Athena says. “Losing someone you loved, and then having everyone else say that your friend was the one that killed her, and no one believes you when you know otherwise.” She sniffs again. Poor girl and her sensitive hearing and hyperempathy.

Sasha nods. “Azura was like family, since my own family was never exactly supportive of my career path.” And not that Phoenix wants to downplay the severity of family disapproval, how much of a mess of hurt their influence can make, but he can’t exactly say he’s surprised to hear that a selkie’s family might think that her getting a career with an orca was bad news. “I can only imagine what they’re saying now after the captain’s death now too.”

He doesn’t want to pick at a reopening wound, but he never knows what strange little pieces of information will help, and so he asks, “Were you and Ms Summers - involved?”

“Huh?” Sasha blinks at him. A moment later the meaning clicks. “Oh! No, she was straight. She had a boyfriend that I never got to meet, but I’d help her send him videos of some of our orca-training sessions, because I mean, getting to see your cute girlfriend hanging with a cute orca, what could be better?”

“Toss a cute penguin in there too!” Athena suggests. “And then you’re golden!”

“Athena, I love the way you think!”

Phoenix clears his throat. Something more for his “legal etiquette Athena needs to learn” list: the detention center is not a place for hitting on people. Or maybe it’s more Sasha hitting on her. Or maybe they’re just like this.

Sasha’s face falls and her eyes turn downcast. “She had this matching charm with her boyfriend that I’d wanted to return to him after she died, but I didn’t know enough about him to find him, so I just hung onto it myself. Swore on it that I’d become the best orca trainer ever, for her.” She holds up the charm; it hangs from a cord with a bead strung on it, and looks like a little talisman or envelope one would find at a shrine. “Just like the captain always used her walkie-talkie after that. It had teeth marks from Orla in it, when she brought Azura back up from the water…”

Jack Shipley’s death must be like reliving a nightmare for her.

(But also, remembering the photo of the body, Phoenix did not see a walkie-talkie in the victim’s holder for it.)

“Wait, you didn’t even see her boyfriend at her funeral?” Athena asks.

Sasha shakes her head sadly. “She didn’t even have a funeral. We held our own memorial for her at the aquarium, but her family just sort of - showed up and took her away. I’d suggested that we get an autopsy or something done, to know how she actually died and that it wasn’t Orla, but we needed her family’s permission for that and they wouldn’t give it.”

Her face is turned toward them, and her eyes are, or should be, but she has the spaced-out look of someone not seeing what’s right in front of her. “They had this huge row with Dr Crab about something, too. I wonder if that’s part of what changed him. He and Azura were pretty close, and he started acting so different after she died - talking about how he was going to euthanize Orla, when before he said he’d never do such a thing. He thought she did it! He still always keeps poison on hand, ready to put her down at any moment! If she’d been found guilty today he would’ve just done it, right then!”

Phoenix has a very good idea of who they need to talk to again, next.

Back at the aquarium, they find Dr Crab in his laboratory, with Pearl, who is holding a furiously a squawking Rifle in her arms. “—correct, she does hate me. Since this little annoyance” - Dr Crab gestures at Sniper, who is for once free of the nest of his hair and waddling about the lab - “imprinted on me right out of the egg, she thinks I stole her baby. I didn’t want to steal her baby! But I guess she feels like the human parents of a changeling would.”

“That’s very sad for both of you,” Pearl says seriously. Rifle’s wings flap against her hands. “Your job involves inducing animals to vomit a lot, doesn’t it?”

The doctor snorts. “Today’s just been a hell of a day.” He squints down at the strange machine in his hand, something too boxy to be a regular tablet, with a small screen that flips back on a hinge. “Now let me see if I can find out when she ingested that foreign object.”

“Hi Mr Nick!” Pearls releases Rifle to the ground and the penguin makes an immediate beeline for Dr Crab’s shins. Absorbed in whatever he’s looking at on his machine, he doesn’t seem to notice. “Watch the penguin vomit! It’s for Sniper to eat!” She directs his attention to a pile of, yes, penguin vomit, that he doesn’t want to consider any further, but that Sniper is pecking at. “Mr Doctor told me that mama penguins partially digest and regurgitate fish for their babies to eat, because it’s easier for them to eat that mush!”

“You two seem to be getting along well,” Phoenix says. “You and Dr Crab, I mean.” They already knew that Pearl hit it off with Rifle, somehow.

“Rifle ate something she shouldn’t so I was helping him get that out of her.” Pearl gestures now at the corner of one of the lab tables, where an object, familiar though it’s partially covered in mushed-up fish, lies. Phoenix takes a few more steps forward. The mess doesn’t smell as fishy as he expected, or perhaps he’s lost all sense of smell, and yes, whatever it is that Rifle ate looks a whole hell of a lot like the little talisman Sasha had, that once belonged to Azura. And there was supposed to be a second one, that Azura’s boyfriend had, wasn’t there?

“Excuse me, Dr Crab?” Phoenix says. He grunts. “Can we take a look at that charm that Rifle swallowed?”

He grunts again. Phoenix decides that’s a “yes”. Investigations don’t get anywhere fast, otherwise. He gingerly picks up the cord on the charm and lets it dangle. Yeah, that’s definitely the same thing as—

“Hey! What are you doing with that?” Dr Crab snaps out of his reverie, with all the anger of a man who’s only just realized something is happening that he would’ve liked to have stopped sooner. “Put that down! That’s Azura’s!”

Phoenix drops it back on the table. Dr Crab, with no regard for penguin barf, snatches it away. “What the hell was it doing in Rifle’s stomach?” He drops it back into the pocket of his lab coat.

“Would this one happen to have belonged to Azura’s boyfriend?” Phoenix asks.

“I don’t make it a habit to discuss the affairs of the deceased! Especially not with you people!”

Bit of a fraught subject, there. Sasha did say that they were close. “Yesterday was the anniversary of her death, right?”

Dr Crab’s sigh sounds more like a growl. How close is Phoenix to being kicked out of the lab? “That’s right,” Crab says. “A year since the orca killed her.”

“You really think Orla did?” Athena asks. “I don’t believe it!”

“And I was there, Ms Lawyer. I saw Orla bite her. Maybe she didn’t mean to kill her, who’s to say - but what I do know is that Azura is dead.” The point he puts on his last several words closes down the topic even more firmly than his outraged yelling did. Satisfied that he’s shut Phoenix up - for the moment, because Phoenix refuses to be done until he’s run out of questions and he’s still got plenty - he returns to studying the data on his machine.

Who knows what might be important information for a trial? “So what’s that there?” Phoenix asks.

“Monitoring system. Collection of medical records for all the creatures. Between it and the cameras I can monitor them all constantly, twenty-four/seven. Company secret, that’s all I’ll tell you.”

“Really?” Phoenix asks. “Aren’t medical records just like - past exams and stuff? How can you get present, constant data from that?”

“Good point,” Crab says, after a slight pause. A sneered, thin smile stretches out across his face. “I can see there’s no fooling you.”

“Are you trying to fool me?” Phoenix asks.

The two Psyche-Locks that clang into place answer that question for him.

“You tell me,” Dr Crab says.

“Clearly,” Phoenix says.

“Excuse me, Mr Doctor?” Pearl asks. She scoops Rifle up into her arms to stop the penguin from resuming an attack on Dr Crab’s shins. “Mr Nick is a very good lawyer who always finds the truth but he needs to know everything he can to do so. Even if you don’t think your monitorings have anything to do with the case, it might be the information that Mr Nick needs to bluff himself into a better position to win!”

Dr Crab stares at Phoenix, his eyebrows raised. Phoenix wishes Pearl had found any other way to phrase that. “And it would be very kind and helpful of you to do,” Pearl adds.

The lab is far from silent - the hum and murmur of computers, Rifle’s struggles to break free and attack, Sniper eating, Athena cooing at Sniper. But it still feels quiet and empty as Pearl waits for any response and reaction at all from Dr Crab. He says nothing. She narrows her eyes, glancing from Rifle to the floor, like her next step in convincing him will be to sic a penguin on him.

Instead she simply readjusts her hold on Rifle, pulling the penguin up further in her arms, and says, much more seriously, no longer with any sort of pleading edge, “You asked for my help to examine Rifle and I gave it to you, remember? It was just a few minutes ago, right before Mr Nick came back, but I didn’t just offer that on my own.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dr Crab hisses. “That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? I asked her if you could grab her for me and - damn, now I owe you, don’t I?”

He and Athena both glance over at Phoenix’s sharp intake of breath. Pearl doesn’t do this; she cares about human standards of fairness and tends to cancel debts made out of careless words of people who don’t know better and don’t know what she is. This situation, this case, she thinks is desperate. And Dr Crab saw what she is. It’s fair.

Pearl, unblinking, hollow-eyed, nods. “And I think you should answer Mr Nick’s questions about your monitoring,” she says.

Dr Crab shakes his head. “Well,” he says. “Shit. I got careless and that’s on me - to the victor go the spoils. So if I answer whatever questions our Mr Lawyer here has about my monitoring equipment here, then we’re settled, yes? No debts after that.”

“No debts after that,” Pearl agrees.

They both wait for Phoenix to say something; it’s a bit tricky, he thinks, to follow up a top-tier negotiation such as Pearl’s. “So. Twenty-four/seven monitoring. How’s that work?”

“It’s an ecological data organization system developed in Europe. Teleobservation Realtime Pertinent Data Organizer, TORPEDO for short.”

Phoenix decides not to try and suss out how well that acronym actually fits it, and not just because the whole name has already been ejected from his brain and he couldn’t repeat it back if he tried. Tele-pertinent real-time data what?

“It records information on its subjects constantly - heartbeat, vocalization, movements, temperature, and so on - through sensors placed on or near the subject. All that gets sent to me and my equipment here. Rifle has her sensor attached to her flipper ID tag.” Pearl takes Rifle’s wing in her hand and holds it out to examine the tag in question. “For Orla and the fish, it’s attached to the side of the tank. Now here we go, what’s it say about Rifle’s feeding?” Dr Crab glares down at the terminal in his hand. “Four am on the nineteenth is when she swallowed that. What a weird time. And - shit, Orla didn’t eat at all that night until the next afternoon.” He shakes his head. “What is going on here?”

“Maybe that’s why Rifle wouldn’t eat my fish but Orla would.” Athena sounds slightly cheered at the prospect that it wasn’t her causing personal offense to Rifle - Rifle just wasn’t hungry.

Phoenix clears his throat. “Why keep it a secret?” he asks. “This monitoring system - it’s clearly helpful and it’s not like we’re competitors trying to come in and steal your secrets.”

“Let me preface this by saying” - nothing good ever starts that way - “that this system has been tested rigorously and approved as safe and legal in many countries. Just not this one.”

Ah, that would do it. “You’re breaking the law?” Athena asks, startled.

Dr Crab grimaces but it ends as something more like a grin. “That’s why I keep this terminal with me at all times. Lucky, else the police might’ve been poking their noses into it yesterday. None of the rest of the crew knows - keeps them safe from the legal repercussions, but I had Jack’s permission for this. He felt, and I agreed, that giving the best care possible to our animals was more important than legality.”

“But - but you’re breaking the law! And that’s—” Athena sputters, searching for a solid objection. “That’s breaking the law!”

Yeah, she’s a smart kid but hopefully she’s not going into a trial without a co-counsel any time soon.

“And if breaking the law betters the lives of our animals? Are we supposed to just sit and wait for the law to change, when in the meantime we can have more information and act quicker to help them - to save their lives?”

“But…” Athena glances to Phoenix for backup she won’t find. Not that he’s not a hypocrite, but he’s not going to step into this debate just to be one. It’s disconcerting, again, every time he realizes that part of Athena’s admiration of him comes only from the fact that she doesn’t know him as well as Apollo does. She’s arguing against the logic that bore him his ace in the hole. And he can’t blame her; it took him a long, bad time to get there. “You’re just - twisting it around, now.” But she looks rattled, not sure how to square this away with the foundation of her career.

“Dr Crab,” Phoenix says. “I might need to use this information in court tomorrow. But that would obviously cause serious problems for you and the aquarium.” He isn’t asking permission, but this isn’t quite an apology, either. It’s just a statement of what it is, regrettable, inevitable.

“You’ve gotta do your job, Mr Lawyer, and I do mine.” Dr Crab shrugs, more resigned than bothered. This must be a prescient concern, for however long it’s been since they installed this system at the aquarium. Maybe it’s even a relief by now, to no longer be hiding. “I stand by my convictions and don’t have regrets, and I hope you won’t, either. I can’t blame you, or her, for that.” He nods at Pearl.

“I appreciate it.” Nice to not have a witness biting his head off, even if in this case it would be - not deserved, he’d like to think, but understandable.

“Hmph. Any last questions on that or can I—”

A loud peeping begins, like the chirps Sniper made but louder and constant. Dr Crab frowns and slips a phone out of his pocket. “Hello? Crab here.”

“That’s a ringtone?” Pearl asks. “That’s adorable!”

“I don’t think Maya’s gonna let you change mine,” Phoenix says to her.

“I didn’t think that Dr Crab liked the penguins that much,” Athena whispers. “But I guess he’s just a big softie, really!”

Were he actually listening to them Phoenix has no doubt the doctor would consider those fighting words. As it is, his fighting words are for whoever is on the other end of the line. “Son of a bitch, you people again! What more do you—”

He storms from the lab and slams the door behind him. Athena looks at Phoenix. He nods. She creeps closer to the door to listen, crouched with her ear by the crack where it closes, though Phoenix isn’t sure she needs to be that close to actually hear. “He’s saying that Orla was found not guilty,” she says, “and that should be enough - stop harassing him, he knows that - if it comes to it he - Mr Wright!” She tried to spring back up but smacks her head against the bottom of the doorknob on her way up, and wincing and grumbling to herself, stands tall again. “He said - that if he has to he’d euthanize Orla!”

“No!” Pearl gasps. Rifle wriggles around in her arms and Pearl sets her on the table. “She’s not guilty! In a court of law! She can’t be punished!”

Knowing that the whole orca pool can function as a faery ring makes Phoenix even more nervous that she’s going to commit larceny as soon as anything starts seeming tense. Grand Theft Orca. This is not something he ever thought he would have to consider.

The door swings violently inward, banging hard into Athena’s shoulder. She stumbles away, cursing under her breath again. Phoenix picks out pieces of several languages. (He really should ask her how to say “fuck you” in German. It would be funny.)

“Where’s my goddamn calendar?” Dr Crab storms back in, sweeping a dozen takeout containers from the desk in front of the largest screen into the trash can strategically positioned right next to it. A few fliers for the orca show drift to the floor. “Son of a bitch, where did I leave it this time?”

“Calendar?” Athena perks up. “It wouldn’t happen to be one of those cute penguin ones, is it? Mr Rimes found one in the nap room and—”

Dr Crab snatches it away from her and scans the mess of his desktop for a pen and scribbles something on it. “Yes, that’s mine. It was a gift, all right?” He sighs. “From Azura. She designed the calendars for this year and this was the prototype.”

“Oh.” Athena’s smile vanishes. And then, seeming to take a cue from Phoenix’s line of questioning of Sasha back at the detention center, she asks, “Did you and Ms Summers happen to be, erm, romantically involved?”

“Of course not!” He bristles at the suggestion, almost weirdly defensive, so while he sees no Psyche-Locks, Phoenix still won’t take it as the end-all-be-all. Maybe he’s defensive about the calendar for what’s written on it, that meeting with the victim at seven am. Could he, at that time, have committed murder? “Were I even so inclined to partake of ‘romantic feelings’” - he doesn’t make them with his hands but Phoenix can hear the air quotes - “I certainly would not involve myself with—” He stops. He glares at Athena and Phoenix in turn. “What business of yours is it, anyway?”

“I just heard a lot of sadness in your voice when you mentioned her, and the calendar,” Athena says. “And I wondered—”

“She was a good friend and now she’s dead, of course I’m sad!” Though he’s probably not sad now, just mad at them and their prying questions. “How can you possibly think that’s related to your defense of Sasha, or do you like using the excuse of being lawyers to pry into people’s personal lives?”

Seems like it’s time to redirect; this thread when pulled on isn’t going anywhere good. “Your phone call just now - what was that about?”

“Heard all that, did you now?” Dr Crab sighs. Phoenix skips the part where he clarifies that Athena did, because she has better hearing than the human and fae also in the room. “That’s the Center for Dangerous Animal Control, insisting that if Orla ever attacks anyone again, we’d better not bother with this rigamarole and just put her down immediately.”

“But that’s not fair!” Athena has her fists raised, ready to fight the shadowy specter of this vague organization. “Did you agree to that?”

Dr Crab is quiet for a very long time. “Sometimes,” he says finally, “unfortunately, things happen. As a veterinarian, I am prepared to do whatever needs to be done.”

“Sasha says you keep poison on hand to always be prepared to put Orla down!” Athena levels the accusation with fury that Sasha would be proud of.

Dr Crab reaches into one of the pockets of his lab coat and pulls out a tiny plastic bag that contains within it a red and yellow capsule.

One that looks exactly like that they found mixed in with the contents of Orla’s stomach.

Phoenix is very, very glad they didn’t show it to him.

“That’s awful!” Athena says. “How dare you!” She’s livid enough that Phoenix isn’t sure she realizes this pill is like the other one, and while that’s something they’re going to have to work on - making sure she’s clear-minded enough to make all the connections that matter, for now she’ll have him or Apollo with her, and Phoenix is just glad she won’t blurt it out to Dr Crab. He wants to keep this one close to his chest until he sees the best opening to play it.

“Sasha thought the same thing.” Dr Crab drops the pill back in his pocket. “When security around Orla was tightened last year, she insisted that I not be given a key card to access the orca pool room. Thinking, I imagine, that the chances of Orla having a medical emergency when either she nor Jack were here to let me in were lower than the chances of me doing something to her.” He huffs derisively, Athena still seething.

“Dr Crab, I have a last question for you,” Phoenix says. “This - Center for Dangerous Animal Control.” Or however the words were ordered. “Ms DePlume told me something interesting earlier today.” That the Center had made this same demand a year ago, and for some reason relented, but the aquarium has been making large monthly payouts to someone or somewhere ever since. Phoenix repeats this fact to Dr Crab’s expressionless face, and adds, “It’s clear that there’s something going on behind the scenes here, and I suspect that it has something to do with this murder.”

“Do you.” He’s good at responding by saying nothing, but any words at all are sometimes enough to trip the trap, let Phoenix know exactly how much a witness is hiding.

Five Psyche-Locks this time, the appearance punctuated a moment later with loud footsteps and a louder yell. “Dr Herman Crab! Sorry to interrupt, but Prosecutor Blackquill wants to speak with you!”

“Son of a—” Dr Crab punctuates his speech by smacking his calendar down hard on the the table. “What the hell else could you possibly have to ask me?”

“We were hoping to have Mr Rimes testify at tomorrow’s trial, but we’ve been having some trouble getting him to cooperate. As such, Prosecutor Blackquill would like to call you instead!”

“Hmph.” Crab takes a moment in which he clearly is sizing up and assessing Fulbright, deciding whether he can get out of this and if he wants to tangle with Blackquill in that way. Surprising that he didn’t manage to coerce (or threaten) Rimes into talking and has to go for a backup. “Fine. But I’m not giving my opinion on what happened. I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m not taking sides.” He turns to Phoenix. “Until tomorrow, Mr Lawyer.”

Neither Trucy nor Apollo notices when the office door opens. Trucy has her laptop in her lap and is furiously scrolling, glancing between the screen and the notebook Apollo is still trying to write it. It’s a silent and periodic scuffle between the two of them as Trucy grabs it and yanks it toward her to check something, and Apollo pulls it back to continue writing. Phoenix shudders to think how unreadable his handwriting is from this. “Commonly for a number of heart conditions,” Trucy mutters. “Is this relevant, Apollo?”

“Of course it is!” He reaches across her keyboard and turns her screen toward himself. “Go back to the book - the picture. If she had a heart condition and a physically intensive job—” He taps his pen against the screen. “There’s no visible injury, look, wouldn’t you think a killer whale could cause some damage—”

“Oh! You think that—”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, guys,” Phoenix says. “What are we working on?”

They shriek in tandem, Apollo flinging the pen and Trucy knocking the notebook to the floor and almost dropping her laptop. Athena claps her hands over her ears, belatedly, and braces herself against the doorframe. “Yes, we’re back now,” Phoenix adds. “What’ve you got?”

“First: the capsule!” Apollo moves his hand like he means to gesture with the pen to the capsule in a bag on the coffee table, except the pen is no longer in his hand, so he’s just sort of waving, and his voice still as enthusiastically loud as ever. “It’s a sleeping drug! That’s the brand name on it, ‘3 Zs’. The Shipshape Aquarium vet recently bought a bunch of it from Hickfield Clinic - it’s meant for people, but apparently would work on other mammals.”

“A sleeping drug?” Phoenix repeats.

Apollo nods.

That had been Phoenix’s first thought, when he first saw that capsule, but Dr Crab called it poison - sure, enough of it could certainly kill, but he’s a veterinarian. He’d be legally able to get some kind of actual euthanization drug instead of trying to overdose an orca on sleeping pills - if that was actually what he intended with it, and not something else. Why pretend it’s poison?

“And the other thing - Shipshape Aquarium had the woman who died last year, Azura Summers, right?” He doesn’t wait for Phoenix to confirm he knows and barrels on, “She was getting medication prescribed by Hickfield Clinic to help her manage a heart condition.”

“I found an illegal download of that writer lady’s book!” Trucy pipes up. Bless that girl.

“A heart condition?” Phoenix can’t do much but echo right now, but his mind is racing. What was Apollo saying when they walked in? Jack Shipley removed Sasha from the show for fear that she would come to harm because of her condition - theoretically, that could’ve already happened. “Do you know what the medication she was on was called?”

“Uh…” Apollo glances down at his notebook. “I wrote it down? It’s like—”

Phoenix takes the notebook from him. The writing is exactly as messy as he imagined, jagged pen lines trailing off across half the page when Trucy grabbed it. “That’s the same medication that Sasha is taking,” he says to Athena.

“So what’s that mean?” she asks.

“I have no idea.” That’s a hell of a coincidence, but he doesn’t really see how it could be anything but an unfortunate coincidence, even as a man whose policy is to not believe in coincidences. Orla isn’t on trial now, and wasn’t on trial for Azura’s death, either, yesterday. But maybe this information could offer some reassurance, and closure, to Sasha and the rest of the aquarium crew. “But that capsule, now that’s something. Nice work, Apollo.”

Apollo gives Phoenix a wide-eyed, startled look. Has Phoenix really complimented him so rarely?

“Where’s Pearly?” Trucy asks. Her face falls. “Did she go back home already?”

“She’s staying at the aquarium to help out with Orla, with so many of the staff dragged out to testify and everything.” There she goes again, slotting herself perfectly, naturally, in somewhere, like she’s meant to be there, so that no one even questions letting a strange little faery girl in so far behind the scenes.

The only thing to put him slightly at ease is that she said she would be ready to call in, from the aquarium, through video phone during the trial tomorrow, which holds the implication that she’s not going to spirit Orla off to the Twilight Realm in the middle of the night to keep her safe.

Though she didn’t promise for sure that she wouldn’t, so he should probably call her and extract that promise from her, before he ends up defending in a case of orca larceny.

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

9 notes · View notes