#i'll maybe post it on archive?? chapter one out of something | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lynaferns · 3 months

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BIOMáquina: Sense of Living

Chapter 1: Stranger danger.

Ver. [ENGLISH / ESPAÑOL]

The first meeting! In a world where humanity has confined themselves in encapsulated cities to let the outside world heal, our protagonist, Fern, breaks into the forgotten abandoment facility of Fazbear CO. in search for old materials and scrap to sell. But something's very off with this place, like the constant rotting smell that's in the air... (No, it's not Afton, there's no Afton in this AU, this is very DCA centered).

I have to mention, I never had the intention of writing this. But after I finished reading I see you, Sundrop! by @shirajellyfish (Thank you again @/cipher-the-sidhe for recommending it to me! I'm too shy to tag I want to cry EDIT: it's tagged now) I got motivated to write the first chapter of my AU and doing it my way. The early version of my BIOMáquina Sun may have some inspirations from ISYS's Sundrop, but I plan for him to develop by the end of the story into something more close to canon. Sassy, not the mean sassy tho.

I appreciate feedback about the english adaptation. I think I did fine but still, I'm not a native speaker, some parts may be weirdly worded. I'll be posting the Spanish version too, so you can judge my writing in two lenguages.

AU, DCA centered (but Moon doesn't get mentioned in this chapter) ...and mostly Sun centered too, Sun fnaf, OC, Selfinsert, Character & OC, platonic, friendship, slowburn (probably), OC is a potty mouth, Sun has amnesia, nonbinary/pangender Main Character, labs and abandonment facility, retrofuturistic world, steam/dieselpunk themed.

The first post where I showed this AU and Sun and Moon's designs. There's info about the world and characters, not necessary to enjoy the story but maybe you want an idea about this AU.

BIOMáquina AU Tumblr archive, with all the posts and asks.

Youtube Playlist wich has like half of Portal's ost. I have a especific order for the songs but you can put it on mix if you want.

Note: even though I try to keep things light some things may be triggering for some readers so I'm putting here the warnings just in case. Please tell me if it needs any additional tag.

TW: implied death, near death experiences, implied abuse (non sexual), panic/anxiety, paranoia, robot gore, violence.

Wordcount: 12,874

06:23 Thursday, Weather: clear.

It's been a long time since anyone has been here. The place has been reclaimed by nature over time, not completely consumed but enough to assume that it has been around a decade without any humans moving around.

Until today.

A small hovercraft vehicle is approaching in the distance. Today, instead of their usual destination, Fern decided to take another route and explore a little. She heads to the building she has seen in the distance. The abandoned facilities of Fazbear CO. She shouldn't be snooping around an abandoned building, much less one that seems to have been totally forgotten by the world, but Fern already had experience in breaking into dangerous and abandoned places, so it was okay (no, it was not).

She looks at the place for a while before parking their vehicle. A thought of 'Why not?' incites them to enter, and that's what she does. After struggling with the entrance locks she manages to open the doors. It looks like an automatic door but with a manual system for when the power is out, it's a pretty old design. The door stays open.

06:39

Fern enters inside, it's all dark, the only light being the one that comes through the door. She always carries their backpack loaded with all the basics she needs for when he goes out for materials (trash) or exploration (for more trash). She takes out a flashlight and inspects the place. She notices that next to them is an old robot disconnected and degraded by the passage of time, possibly unable to turn back on. It seems that this bot was in charge of guarding the entrance.

Advancing through the abandoned facility, Fern finds more disconnected bots. She's not with the right equipment to dismantle them and take their valuable parts, if there is anything salvageable from these robots. She makes mental notes and keeps going. The place is worse on the inside than the outside, somehow the dirt and weeds have managed to get in and grow in the most random places.

She finds a guide map of the place, it appears to be larger on the inside than it looks from the outside, much larger than one would expect. There are four upper floors and six lower ones, the upper floors makes a circumference leaving an empty space in the center, they are factory and assembly areas for bots/animatronics, tools, electronic devices... all equipment from the Fazbear brand, they have always made their own material. On the ground floor (L0) where Fern is, it seems to be the unloading area, cargo transport vehicles, offices and power generator on the upper floors. The first two lower floors appear to be more offices, boiler room, power generator room for the lower floors, laboratories, and... another animatronic assembly area.

...The last four floors are blurred out but you can read the words 'AI testing'. Did the test rooms have to be that far down? And why 4 entire floors of the building?

There is an annotation:

Authorized personnel only. Any unauthorized personnel who passes from the restricted area will be subject to a dismissal sanction.

Oho... now Fern wanted to go in there. Why would they hide that part? What do they have to hide? Knowing the company Fazbear Entertainment, a lot. It would be cool to be one of the few people to know what's down there, even if it remains as secret as before because Fern doesn't want to be reported or arrested, leaving the city without permission is already a reason for that. But before going to the deeper floors, better take a quick look at the upper ones first, their nature makes them want to keep an order to explore the place in the most efficient way (that she can think of).

As the map said, everything up there is material and assembly, some rooms even have narrow windows that let in some light through their gaps at the top of the wall... where you can't look outside, but at least they had some natural light in their work areas, those who worked up here at least... Fern looks around, it's a mess, there are papers and metals scattered on the floor... It seems that some of them left in a hurry, due to the misplaced chairs and tables... Fern makes a mental note to stop by again and take a better look at the old tools before heading home.

Hm? The central area hasn't been seen. Fern assumed that the part surrounded by the building would be visible from a window or that there would be an entrance to a flat area, but there appears to be none. Why would they waste so much space? Or maybe they weren't wasting it. Maybe there was something else there but it was inaccessible from the surface floors.

Fern didn't waste another moment to get down to the lower levels. The power generators seemed out of order, she wasn't going to be able to use the elevators. She wasn't planning on it either, They may possibly collapse over the time they have been sitting there without maintenance. What she planned was to save flashlight power if the generator could light the way. Oh well. Maybe the other generator on the lower floors is still functional.

...

It's not. Well, she had to try it. Fern would have felt stupid if the generator would had worked and by simply not checking she would have wasted the flashlight battery foolishly. Exploring the floor a bit more before continuing down she finds a small kitchen room. Oh? Was there a kitchen on the map? Fern doesn't remember, she should have taken a photo of the map now that she stops to think about it. There should be at least one map on each floor, she'll take a photo of the next one she sees.

Going down the stairs she finds the assembly rooms and laboratory that seems more advanced than the upper levels. These looks a little less messy than the previous floors. It's still noticeable that people left in a hurry, leaving the chairs and tables in any position and dropping objects along the way, but it seems that at least they cared about storing hazardous materials in the closets, all messy but at least not exposed... some doors aren't even closed properly- look, I'd better shut up and continue.

07:12

She finally reaches the end of the floor. There are no more stairs, just an elevator that takes to the restricted area (floors: L3, L4, L5 and L6), which means she needs the generator running... or... she can force their way through the elevator doors with a crowbar... opening the emergency hatch... and slipping through the gap between the elevator and the wall, which is conveniently one of those old-fashioned designs with bar steps on the wall (Nowadays these spaces are not left unless the elevator is very large and/or has been built with plenty of space). She goes down the wall stairs to the next floor which is also closed, so she has to force the elevator's security doors again. This time it's more complicated, she has to force the door without having a supporting floor since all there is is the circular wall, the beams that support the elevator structure and the void of the pit. Fern hangs from a beam near the door, digs the crowbar between the two doors with their feet, presses against the crowbar using their legs, and pushes their way through. After opening the doors enough, the crowbar slips from between their feet and falls into the pit. Fern watches as it falls, pressing their lips, and waits for the *clinggg* sound it makes when it reaches the bottom, '...hhhhhah, I'll have to go down for it later' she thinks.

After forcing the door a little more with their hands, just enough to pass through, she is finally inside, on level L3. Oh! And the first thing she sees is a complete map, good! She can take a photo with their phone so she won't get lost. From what it seems, this map reveals that there is indeed a central area of the facilities in use. For some reason to access the center of the building you have to go down to the deepest floors and from another elevator go up to the central area... weird. The design of the facility seems made to keep something as far away from the outside as possible, with all these turns and different elevators that they make you take to get to a place that would be so easy to access if only they had put one or two doors in the ground floor or upper. There was definitely something there, Fern had no doubt, maybe she was theorizing too much and it was just a strange design choice, but what a strange design choice, there is something there for sure and Fern was going there.

According to the map, the four lowest floors contain... a good bunch of animatronic storage cells, wow. Wait, now that she stops to take a closer look, that's a lot of cells. There are three or four larger rooms compared to the rest, 'daycare', it says. ...Fern didn't like the implications of that, she didn't like seeing the cells, daycares and laboratories so close to each other. If this is what's in the first restricted floors to the unauthorized, what could be deeper? For God's sake, what did they do with the children?

Fazbear Entertainment's animatronics were made specifically to deal with children despite their questionable AI performance. The daycares could have been to test how the animatronics behave with real children, okay, but why three entire daycares on the same floor? And there are at least two more on the floor above. It would be better understood if there were only assembly and repair rooms next to the cells, but laboratories... right in front of the daycares? Shady, very shady. Don't like it, don't like it a bit.

The lower floors are more littered with broken robots than the ones above. Somehow the place is more in ruins than the surface floors, which are more exposed to the outside. But the doors seem to have higher security with card readers, some broken, not all but they seem to be able to open. Going down the stairs to the L4th floor she began to see a different bot design half-assembled, this could be an animatronic design they were working on. On this floor she only sees half-assembled endoskeleton pieces and blueprints for said robot along with promotional posters of a daycare mascot... with a... Sun...? theme. Orange, yellow and red shades.

Fern approaches one of the blueprints, 'DaCaAtt/ProtoType_Model_N15', the N15 has been underlined several times in red and there are notes all over the blueprints. It's... a clown animatronic- rather a jester, with an astral theme? The head seems to represent a sun with the right half of its face being a crescent moon, as in those representations of the sun and the moon together, the moon looking sideways and the sun facing the front... only that, here it's like they have merged two faces into one, leaving the nose crooked to the side. All the unfinished endoskeletons seem to belong to this model. It is a somewhat extra complicated design, it has a lot of joints, especially in the face, seems like they wanted to go further with this design.

It seemed a little much to Fern for a children's animatronic daycare attendant. She understood that they were trying to make him look like the friendly mascot on the poster, but Fern could come up with a couple of ideas to simplify the design of the face: a screen with facial animations, for example. And why so much complexity in the robots interior? The more she looked at the blueprints, the more it seemed to them that she was looking at a disproportionate recreation of the human skeleton in metal. She continued advancing through the facilities until she found the next stairs to floor L5.

...At the bottom of the flight of stairs is a disconnected animatronic- rather broken, it's the sun. It seemed to be crawling up the stairs... its legs and the back of its head were busted, as if they had tried to stop it from going any further by hitting it with something. Peeking through the hallways, Fern finds more sun animatronics lying on the way or against the wall, damaged, some are whole, others missing chunks or entire limbs. She touches one of the robot bodies with their foot, it doesn't move, as expected. There is a gray cord and a piece of plastic sticking out from under the animatronic's hand, Fern uses their foot again to pull the cord out from under the hand. It's a torn, stained and mauled ID card, the string is broken as if it had been torn from something, neither the photo nor the name of the former owner can be identified. It's Fern's now. She should keep their eyes open in case of seeing more cards in better condition, if she can get the generators working she could open their way to more places. If they were to be useful.

Moving down the hallway she stops to look at the poses in which the animatronics were turned off; some of them have their faces intact enough to see an expression of terror them. None of them seemed to be going in a specific direction, just... running away. They were afraid. How advanced was their AI to simulate fear? Weren't they prototypes? No developed AI is put into robot prototypes, although well, that is a recent norm in robotics, who knows how old this place is.

Now that she realizes, there is a fairly dominant smell in the air since she came down the elevator. Fern thought it came from the labs and assembly rooms, because of the old metals and chemicals, but it has gotten stronger as she goes. Like something rotten mixed with rust and motor oil.

Fern is starting to think that she would like a friend to explore this place with. The deeper she goes, the more uneasy the place gets, and the more noticeable is the lack of fresh air.

She checks out the map, from the path she has taken it seems that she is approaching one of the daycares. Where the entrance should be there is a handful of sun animatronics in a pile blocking the door that's full of scratches and bumps. It seems that they tried to force it open, you can see the desperation in the wear and tear on their hands.

Hopelessness.

It's the word that best fits seeing this situation.

Fern feels a chill run down their spine and their stomach turns. She continues forward. More animatronic bodies disconnected or destroyed, there were almost no animatronics in the storage cells, they had all tried to escape. Upon reaching the floor L6, the number of robot bodies lying around seems to decrease. It seems that they were all already stored in their chambers, or they managed to get them in and disconect them before panic set in... or revealed themselves. No, this didn't look like robot rebellion. Maybe they found out something, a rumor that got out of hand? Maybe they found out that they were going to disconnect them forever and they panicked... Fern wouldn't blame them.

Peeking through the glass of one of the cells she could see a group of sun animatronics, all in their respective cabins on the wall, connected by a head cable. Some are standing leaning against one of the walls of their cabin, have a safety belt holding them in place, others are sitting on a seat in the cabin, and others are directly sitting on the floor. They are disconnected, turned off, obviously. The floor is padded with colorful sections and there are old pillows and stuffed animals on the floor. The rest of the chambers are the same, some with empty spaces. The number of animatronics lying on the floor in panic positions is less, rather they are sitting against the wall or simply lying on the floor in a more peaceful way. They either gave up or were somehow convinced to shut down.

07:38

Finally Fern reaches the elevator that takes you to the center of the facility. This elevator is more hidden than the rest and appears to be more advanced, Fern didn't seem to know if it was going to be as easy to open as the rest... ah- wait- their crowbar. She has forgotten to go look for their crowbar, which is at the bottom of the second elevator's pit... and to go look for it she would have to go back upstairs and down the stairs of the pit because she can't open the doors from the lowest floor as she had planned because she doesn't have their crowbar.

Fern.

You're stupid, man.

“Aaaaaggh...” she groans, looking up to the ceiling. She sighs. Before leaving the room she looks around to see if there is anything that could be used to force the doors and their eyes fall on the elevator again, it has a light. Wait, it has light? It can't be, the generators don't work. Unless there is a third generator for this elevator... She approaches the button panel, indeed, the lights above glow slightly, but how is it functioning? The entire place should be shut down. She decides to press the button just to try it out and a few seconds later the doors open, the light from inside illuminating the room along with Fern's flashlight.

Even though it seems to work, Fern didn't like the idea of using it. The elevator that took her to the lower floors was as dangerous as the others but at least she didn't had to use it to get down (Although it could have perfectly fallen as soon as you stepped foot inside, you idiot), but this one she was going to have to use it to open the doors to the next floor unless she finds something to use as a crowbar. However, this elevator did seem to be in better condition than the other. Maybe if she only made it go up one floor she could access the rest of the place from there.

Fern walks into the elevator. The floors available from bottom to top are: L6, LC2, LC1, C0, C1, C2, C3 and C4, there are no Lows 5, 4 and 3, C it'll be for “Center” just as L is for “Low”. She hesitates before pressing the button for LC2, a few seconds and the doors close, the elevator makes some screeching noises as machinery that hasn't moved for a long time starts working again until it suddenly begins to ascend. It moves non-stop, the noise it makes is worrying but it doesn't stop. As fast as the doors open, Fern crosses them and turns to the elevator, waiting for it to collapse and fall back to the bottom. It doesn't, the doors just close after a few seconds. If while she's at another part of the building she hears a crash noise in the distance, Fern will assume that the elevator has fallen and therefore will have to look for something that can be used as a crowbar.

For some reason there's no map of this part of the facility. There has always been one right out of the elevator or down the stairs, but this place doesn't have one. Weird, maybe all the employees in this area had their own? Or they knew it by heart. No, the first thing makes more sense.

Moving through the hallways, laboratory rooms, assembly rooms, etc, the floors seem to be the same as those already visited, but more advanced? The walls and doors are of higher quality and security, and the laboratory equipment, tools and others seem to be of the good-good ones... and expensive, but good, and quality. The central floors seem to be the only ones with electricity, partially, not all the lights are on and some of the ones that are are blinking. 'I hope none explode-' she thought to themselves. Immediately afterwards, a security door begins to open and close uncontrollably, giving Fern a start “AH-!” After the scare she takes a breath while the door begins to move slower and finally stops halfway open. The doors here must have a sensor or something, it must have been activated by proximity, is the card still functional? She takes it out of their pocket and passes it near the door trying to find the sensor. The door reacts but doesn't close or open completely.

Fern grabs one of the disconnected 'Staff' bots down the hallway and drags it to the door, blocking it in case it moves again and gets locked inside. It's an archive office, there are papers and file cabinets scattered on the floor. A ceiling panel fell on some filing cabinets and knocked everything to the floor. Fern glances vaguely over them, some papers seem to be records of laboratory materials and ingredients. Emphasizes, seems, because Fern doesn't understand the technical and convoluted language in which they are written, whoever worked here the guy's writing was embarrassing, they keep repeating the same elements all over the page in horrible handwriting. She doesn't see anything of value in the office so she leaves to continue moving through the maze of poorly iluminated hallways and malfunctioning doors.

08:10

Fern has been wandering around the facilities for quite a while now. Most of the doors are bolted shut and can't be opened (if a certain someone had gone back a few floors to get their crowbar...), next time Fern comes she'll bring suitable spare tools to open them. Although, is it worth going that far to get some pieces of metal? With what's on the first floors should be enough to renew tools and equipment, and make a good profit in the market. She wasn't into science so she didn't know what valuable objects she could take from the labs. She could look into it later, when she's done looking into what's here first.

The closer she gets to the center, the more the hallways light up, to the point that Fern no longer needs her flashlight and turns it off, for now. There are liquids running down the walls and dripping from cracks in the ceiling. Curiously, there are fewer marks of humidity than one would imagine; the leaks did not form long ago. The doors here seem to be in better condition than the ones before, possibly they are more complicated to open if this area has electricity and they are working better than the one before. She might have to see if she finds any more abandoned cards lying around.

This area is more open... and the wall appears to curve. There is a... castle door?? Like the ones you would see in cartoons or children's tales, with a crown of sunrays as the door frame. It's not made of wood, but it is some kind of hard material that Fern can't identify. There is a card reader panel next to the frame. A light comes out from between the doors crack.

...

Is this the center?

Fern grabs one of the door handles and pulls it. She hears a sound like rails moving inside as she opens the doors. What's on the other side has to be the strangest, largest room she's seen since she entered the building. Most of the floor is padded and colorful except for the entrance and a few more square meters of flooring which is tiled in a checkerboard pattern. Where there floor is tiled, there are security tables with computers, machines of some kind and office supplies. Where the floor is padded there are children's playground structures, jungle gyms, with tubes, slides, ball pits... Above the ball pit there's a fairy-tale like tower on the wall with a balcony, red curtains cover the entrance. No idea how to get there, there must be access from somewhere else. On the floor there're boxes of toys and stuffed animals... broken, but organized by size and color, it seems, some colorful cylindrical boxes are placed in a tower. Only what's on the play area seems tidy, everything beyond the padded floor is noticeably dirty, messy, basically a mess. The ceiling lights seem to come out of beams and are shaped like clouds, not all of them are on, some flicker. At the center of it all is a tower of cables that rises until it's lost above the lights in the darkness of the ceiling.

Fern enters the room, still observing the place. Although the gigantic column of cables and tubes in the center catches their attention, their interest falls on the computers next to them. The screens are on but they don't show anything, just a solid cyan blue color and some horizontal lines crossing the screen every now and then. The computers may be broken but there could be a possibility to repair them or take out the parts and put them to use... or even sell them as antiques.

...

Fern feels watched. She looks up from the machines to the play structures. A screech of moving rails. She sees nothing. She leaves the computers aside and approaches the play area. Another rail sound. Fern turns to look at where the sound came from. Behind the cable tower. Fern takes out a jackknife from their pocket and proceeds to circle the tower. Another screech. Accompanied by another noise coming from the ball pit. Fern approaches. There is a row of cables coming out of the tower and entering the pit. Uuuum, ok...?? weird... She steps on the bridge that comes out of the pit, without entering she leans to looks over it.

It could have just been a rat but Fern tried calling “Is anyone there?” knife in hand “Hello-?”

“HeEEEL-” A tall, disproportionate, slim figure suddenly emerges from the ball pit accompanied by the tinkling of bells, sending several balls flying, creating a rain around it, some balls falling out of the pit. It's arms extended in the air in salutation and a huge smile on it's face with crooked teeth. Some 'sunrays' in the shape of elongated orange triangles stuck out around it's head. “-LO!” A sun animatronic.

“AAAH-!” Fern screamed, backing up. The robot froze in the pose and the noises of a processor running could be heard, smile not leaving it's face, white eyes fixed on Fern, it only made a couple of movements that stopped abruptly halfway through as if it had paused and resumed its animation. It must not have registered their reaction, because it continued talking as if Fern hadn't screamed in shock.

“-N-new friend-? Oh-o-OH- Are you new-?! FRIE-NEW FRI-” *SCRRRR SCRRA SCRRRGGGH KKKKRRR* It froze again while something in his internal system made a noise that sounded like 'something's wrong' and it continued again as if nothing had happened “Who are you-?! I can't find your profile-! -Do you have a profile??? Have you come to play!? Have you come for the manteinence routin-? Are you a new technic-!? Can we play NOW!? We can-! You're not on the employee register-! You need a register-!”

Its arms were stretching out towards Fern trying to reach her. Fern backed away, trying to keep as much space as possible between them and the robot. It kept getting closer, without stopping smiling, without stopping penetrating them with its gaze, without blinking.

“-profile- you need a-! You cannot perform any procedures- or manipulate- any- *srsrsrrsrsrsrsrsrrckrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrk* fromtheFAzbear'sbrand- *krkrkrkrkrkrnnnnnnnnnnrr* Do I make you a profile!? You need a-” Its fan started to sound very loudly “How were you able to enter- without a profile-!??? Do you work here? How did you get in-!? What are you doing here-!?” Fern hit her back against the cable tower and raised their knife to put distance between the damaged robot and them “DETECTED: DANGEROUS OBJECT, IS THAT A WEAPON!? *VRRRRRRRRR*” A panicked expression replaced its smile, its fan getting louder and louder “YOU CAN'T BRING THAT HERE! YOU CA- YOU CAN'T- YOU- *krkrkrkrkrkr* THE RUL- *krkrkrNNNNNNNNNGGGH* AG-AGAINST TH- *NNNNNNNNNGNNGNGGNGN-* DAN-GRROS-” It stopped forming coherent sentences and began to blurt out half-cut words amid the noise of the processor overheating.

Despite the clear problems it was experiencing, its movements didn't stop, getting closer and closer. A robotic hand reached out to grab Fern's arm, planning to take the weapon from her. Fern waved their knife away from its hand and finally broke into a run.

“AH-! eeeh-eh-e...! WAIT” The sun shouted as Fern fled towards the doors “Why are you running!? Where are you going-!? NO- WAIT- waitwaitwaitwait!” It ran after them. Fern left the play area and rushed through the doors. “WAIT-come back- I'm so...” She crossed the hallways like a bullet, ignoring the screams that became progressively quieter. She didn't realize she had left it behind until she could no longer hear it and the hallways were dark again.

Fern finally stopped to catch their breath, looking back to make sure she had left it behind. Vocalizing between pants “What... th...e fuck...? ...what...the fuck? God... what the... shit was... that...?” She sat down against a wall to rest. She hadn't realized that she had been gripping the knife tightly in their hand and now it was a little sore, if it weren't for the gloves she would have seen their knuckles white.

08:48

It's been a while. After calming down and drinking some water, Fern decides to go back to see what is happening with the sun and why it's the only active animatronic (seen so far) in the whole place. Thinking about it, it surely didn't want to scare them, possibly. It has been abandoned here for a long time, it's normal for it to be damaged. If its processor is salvageable and its AI gets a fix or two she could use it for help. But if that were the case, what should she do? She can't leave a robot with autonomy abandoned, much less in these ruins, part of Fern would feel bad but she can't take it with them. Where would she put it? Where would she take it?

That seems like a problem for future Fern.

It will be best to keep the knife, and possibly any type of weapon away. There was a lot of movement and noise at that moment but Fern believes she remembers a slight change in the robot's behavior when it discovered the knife. More erratic, more anxious, it couldn't even formulate complete words. Maybe if she went calmly and manages to calm the robot down, she could talk to it and find out what happened here. And why it is active.

She's arriving at the castle-like doors again. They're open, just like Fern left them. The robot could have gotten out and be hanging around the building, but something was telling Fern that wasn't the case. Slowly, without making a sound, she approaches the doors and peeps from the entrance, their eyes scan the room but don'tt find the sun. Fern decides to go in, thinks about calling it but backs away when she hears the screak and the rails again. If that sound came from it then it was still here.

...

Fern decides to go into the room. She wanted to prove a theory and for that she needed it to appear, and something was telling them that if she stayed at the door it wasn't going to appear. She puts one foot on the padded floor. Nothing's heard. She goes further into the playing area, the loose cables that entered the ball pit are no longer there, possibly they are connected to the robot so the logical thing would be to look for where they've gone. Starting from the central tower, the cables seem to go behind the play structure, Fern approaches to follow the line of cables.

*creeek*

A squeak. Fern turns around. Another screech. It came from the tower. Looking around she notices that the cables comes out of the play structure and disappear behind the tower. Fern approaches, circling the tower slowly, cautiously, following the cables. A metallic hand grabs their shoulder. “You are... here...”

“AACK-!” Fern screamed as she jerked the hand off their shoulder and ran towards the doors.

“No, wait, not again!” Fern leaves the room and turns to look inside holding the doors, ready to close them. But it seems it won't be necessary.

The robot has not moved past the padded floor. It looks at the tiled floor in front of them with concern, its posture is hunched as if it doesn't know what to do from that point or something bad will happen if it steps on a tile. Its arms curled against its chest, it clutches the red ribbons hanging from its wrists. Its eyes alternating between looking at Fern and the ground until it finally decides to speak.

“a...a-...y- You are here!” It says with joy, extending its arms and putting on a smile again, forced... no, genuine? “You are here again! ...a- I-I- was- you- *skrrrrrrrrr kr kr kr* You're back! And you are here and you are back and I thought you wouldn't come back and-!” it gesticulates very widely “-and-and- I'm sorry- sorry I scared you- TWICE!” emphasizes by pulling out two fingers of its hand “I'm sorry... it's just that- I haven't seen anyone in a long time! Or talked to someone! Or touched! And I was SO EXCITED! B-because you were there! And I touched you! And you were there! And I-! *skr...skr...skr...skr...* And I thought you weren't coming back! ...I thought you weren't going to come back.” Its shoulders droop and its body loses all movement, it stares at the ground, muttering. “And then I thought I scared away my new friend and they weren't coming back. But then I heard footsteps! And I felt something! And it was you! And I'm so happy! *sKNNNGNGnnn...*” It stands still again, with a somewhat creepy smile and its gaze fixed on Fern.

Fern remained silent. She doesn't really know how to react after having heard all that. The only thing that was going through their mind was that this robot showed autonomy and clear signs of stress, anxiety and loneliness. She can't leave it here but she also doesn't know if they could be dangerous or if it's just very hyperactive. They are clearly disturbed. Now that Fern noticed, one hand was more skeletal than the other, the entire casing of its left arm was missing and the ribbon was tied poorly with its bell. Parts of its endoskeleton were exposed, their casing was damaged in many places, and their jester's clothes were not much better either. The red and yellow striped pants were torn, the left leg open by a gap that ran from the bottom to top, an adhesive tape near the groin prevented the gap from spreading further, it appeared that the pants were held in place by a belt that didn't belong to the costume. The cables coming from the central tower and scattered across the floor seemed to end at the back of his head.

The sun began to look nervously between Fern and the floor again “H-ey- a- cou... c-could you come closer?” Its posture shrinks again, hands against its chest.

“...What?”

“Could you come closer? P-p-please?”

“...” Fern glances at the floor, at the robot's feet, and then at them “...You can't step on the tiled floor, can you?” The sun lost its smile and looked down at the ground, after a few seconds they nodded its head.

It looked back at Fern “I...can't. I-it's off limits. I can't." The forced smile returned “B-but you can come closer, could you come closer? Please…?”

“No.” Fern truly wasn't planning on doing so.

“Ack-! *knnnnnnnnn skrskrskrskr* W-w-w-why?!?”

“I'm just fine here, I think I'm going to stay at the door.” She said as she let go of the handles and sat on the floor crossing their legs “Besides, I don't want you grabbing me again.”

“I didn't grab you! I didn't!” They made a gesture with its hand, replicating the motion they made when they touched Fern earlier “I only touched your shoulder! I placed my hand on your shoulder!” Did it really only placed its hand on their shoulder? It happened not long ago, Fern remembers feeling more pressure than necessary. She could still feel the metal fingers digging into their right shoulder.

“Yeah... I don't remember it that way.” Fern put their hand on their shoulder “You've been trying to get your hands on me ever since you saw me.” The sun was about to open its mouth to say something but they backed out *kknnnnnnnnnnn* it seemed to be thinking in what to respond, it looked tense. Fern was also thinking about what she could do to calm them down so she could get closer, but it seemed that at the slightest chance she'll have it near it was going to pounce on them (And for your information, Fern, your attitude isn't helping either).

“You shouldn't sit on the floor.” the sun said.

“Eh?”

“*skr skr* I-it's not good *skrrr* that you're sitting on the floor. You're go-o-oing to hurt yourself, why don't you *skrrrrrrrr* sit here in the play area? The floor is softer, that would be better...” Fern frowned at them “O-o-or-” The sun looked around, pointed to the desks where Fern was looking at the computers earlier “-you could use one of the office chairs, where the security desks!” It smiled, its smile seemed more sincere this time “You don't have authorization to be there! But...” It glanced nervously at the chairs, then at Fern “It won't hurt to use it for a bit! Until the security guards come... But I won't tell anyone! Word!” It held up its hand as a promise gesture “Just, don't touch anything... they get really angry when people touch something, and then they yell at me...”

“No, I'm fine, thank you.” That chair was worse than the floor, and Fern didn't want to move away from the door. A *skrrrrrrrrrnnnnnn knnn knnn krkrkrkr* was heard from the robot, she didn't like that. The sun started looking between Fern and the chair again, finally ended up staring at the floor. The way it let its 'rays' fall was reminiscent of the ears of a saddened animal “...” “Hey.”

“Huh?” It raised its 'rays' again expectantly.

“Why don't you sit down? ...so we are both sitting.” Fern said trying to make the situation less awkward. It occurred to them that if they were both at the same height it would ease the atmosphere a little.

“...I don't need to- *Knnnnnnn skrskr* ...-Okay! Yeah, yes, okay...” It slowly knelt on the floor. It looked at Fern and then returned its gaze to the floor. “...” “I'm sorry...” It apologized again “I'm sorry, I know I scared you and that you don't trust me and I'm sorry, I'm very sorry.” It clenched the fabric of the pants where the scuff marks met with its fingers, its shoulders shrinked “...Please don't go.”

“Nah, I'm too lazy to get up now.” She said in another attempt to convince him she was staying to reassure him.

“Please don't go…” It repeated. They sounded like they were about to cry.

“... I'm not going anywhere.” She tried again, leaning back and supporting their weight on their hands. “...Word.” Fern imitated the hand gesture the robot made earlier, as a promise.

*Knnnnnnnnnnn* The sun stared at Fern's hand, then at them. “Are... you're staying?”

“Yes, I'm staying.” Fern looked to the side, thinking. She looked back at the robot “...For a while. Until I have to leave.”

“*knnnnnnn* When will you leave?”

“Eh... possibly within a few hours. So... yeah, we can talk.” (For my mother's love Fern, my child, you sweet summer child, more cheer.)

*skr- skr- skr- knnnnnnn* The sun seemed to be processing the information. Fern looked at them expecting them to start talking at any moment.

...There was silence for a minute. Fern decided to speak.

“So what's your name?”

“What's your name?” They said practically at the same time.

“Ah-”

“Oh- *skr skr skr*.”

Fern gestured for them to start first.

“I- a- *knnnnnn knnnnn knnnnn knnnnn* n-no, you can go first!” The robot said, with a constant *knnnnn* sound.

“Um, okay. My name's Fern, you?”

A *kr kr* interrupted the previous sound and only *knnnnnnn* could be heard again. It was silent for a bit. Then it decided to speak “Fern! Oh, that's a very nice name! It fits you, yes... *sk sk knnnnnn* Hey, hey, Fern...! What do you like to do-? What do you like to play? Your favorite color-?!”

“Hold on, hold on! Are you going to tell me your name or am I going to be left without knowing?”

“Um... *skr skr skr* one... *knnnnnnnn* one moment-” Again that *knnnnn*, another minute in silence “...” “Oh! Hey, hey! Do you like puppet shows? I'm very good at making them! Or I can teach you how to make puppets if you want-!”

“What I would like is knowing what to call you. Don't... you know it's rude to ask someone's name and then not introduce yourself?” She said trying to pressure them into saying its name.

“Oh! *skr skr* My name! *skr* Yes, my name!”

“...”

“*skr... skr... skr... skr... skr...*”

“E-”

“Do you like painting?! I can get some paints and papers and we can paint together-!

“Your name! How can I call you?”

“Oh-! ah... You can call me whatever you want!” They said as it adjusted its posture, sitting crossing its legs like Fern “You can use a nickname, or nicknames! If you like, I love nicknames! Do you like nicknames? Do you want a nickname? Do I give you a nickname-?! Okay!” They put its hand on its chin, thinking “Let's see...”

“You don't know your name, do you?”

“ng... *sknnnnnnnnnn*” Its head twitched and it froze in the posture looking to the side. Some fans began to make sound “nn... i...k...kno...i... I-I-I- I know! It's- It's here! Here! In my sys-! *skgghghrghrghrrrr* -TEeem... eh... ah...” It looked confused, its eyes move as if it was reading something in the air “I...” Its shoulders slump in disappointment, whatever it was searching for in its system they couldn't seem to find it “I can't...” murmurs.

“...Can you tell me your code? The name of your model I mean.”

*skgkg-* “...” “I cannot give that type of information to unauthorized personnel or not employed by Fazbear Entertainent.” It said in a monotone voice. “...” “It makes no sense as a name anyways,” it laughed “it's boring and hard to pronounce.”

“Don't you have a name they used to call you by here?”

“Um...” It's fans started up again.

“...” Fern remembers seeing something written on the posters she saw earlier, something about sun...drop? She looked around. Those same posters were here too, on the walls and desks along with others that seemed more outdated. 'Sunnydrop', said the posters, although it seems more like the name of the candy they promote. “Eh.”

“Hm?”

“What if I called you 'Sun'? For short, for the moment. Like a short version of the poster over there.” Fern said, pointing with their head and thumb. “And 'cause, well... it's literally the shape of your head... it's not very original but...” (I'm not pronouncing that whole name every time I want to refer to you.) “I don't know, how about it?”

It looks between Fern and the poster until it smiles and nods its head vividly “Okay, yeah! Call me Sun!” It looks happy with the idea. The fans and noise of its processor have reduced. Fern already has a name for the sun animatronic, Sun, ironically. “I like it! Oh, I like the nickname you gave me!” Its 'rays' make a spin around its head followed by some *clicks* and *tics*, was that to express happiness?

“Hey.”

“Yes, friend!? Uh-Oh! Is it okay if I call you friend?” It seemed nervous again. Fern was going to have to be extremely careful talking to Sun if at the slightest it'll get upset over something like calling them 'friend' instead of using their name.

“Yeah, sure, call me whatever you want. Hey, how long have you been here?” Possibly not the best question to start with but Fern had many questions about this place and especially about Sun.

“For-! Uh... *knnnnnnnn skr skr skr skr* since... *kr kr kr kr kr kr kr kr kr* uhhh...*skr skr skr srk*”

“Okay, stop stop.” After a few moments Sun stopped as instructed, along with the processor's noise, and looked at Fern with curiosity and a feeling of having done something wrong. “Let's see. How long... have you been On? Since the last time you started up again.”

“Oh! I can anwser that! *knnn krkr kr skr...* Four...thousand *skr skr kr-* two...hun...dred ninety...-EIGHT! Days. Since my last reboot... Ah- no- well... since my last hard reboot. I don't really need to shutdown but sometimes I need restarts... Be a few minutes (or hours) 'off '. Oh, but since then I've been fine! Working perf-*skgrah*-ectly! *skr*.” It swung its fist to the side with energy and a smile, ignoring the distress call from its system.

“...Yeah. And those noises that are constantly coming out of you? They don't sound very good, to say the least.” She's right.

“I've already fix-! *skgrr-* I've already fixed it! S-sometimes it happens and I don't realize it, but I always fix it!” “...” “I-I know you were a little scared before! And-and that- And that I acted weird! I...I know! I'm sorry... But that's it! I'm functioning perfectly!” It swung its fist again, this time with less enthusiasm “...Seriously...”

Fern looked at Sun thoughtfully “Back... in the ball pit. The noises were much worse and constant, and you froze with every movement or at mid-word. Does it happen to you often? I am no expert!” Fern held up their hands in excuse “But I wouldn't call that 'functioning perfectly'.”

“I-I- said I already fixed it! *skrgggrggrgr- kr kr*” There it was again.

“It's getting worrying, you know?” If it wasn't already before.

Sun waved its hand in denial “Nothin'nothin'nothin'-! *skrrr* It's nothing, it's nothing! *kr kr*” It repeated over and over between loud processor noises, the more it panicked, the longer the noises became “that that that! Dasit-! That's it! *skr krr-* There! *skrrrrr- kr- kr- kr-* Now, it's-! *sknnnnnnnnn skrGRRRrrAH* IT'S ENOUGH!” Its fans were starting up again along with the noise at an alarming rate. Sun started to make a sound that resembled hyperventilating. By panicking, it was asking too much of the internal system and it became destabilized (Hey Fern, the part about being careful with what you say, no, huh?).

“Okay! Okay, calm down. It's okay.” Fern sat forward raising their hands, still kneeling on the floor. Sun looked at them as it tangled its hands together. “It's okay...” She tried to think quickly what to say “You said that you had been... like four thousand or so days On.”

“*Skr skr* ...Four thousand two hundred and ninety-eight...*skgr*” It frowned at that last noise.

“Four thousand two hundred and ninety-eight days, okay. And in all that time, have you seen anyone else besides me? Have you received maintenance or any messages from them?”

Its expression shifted to a bewildered look at Fern. It started playing with the ribbons on its wrists “No... No, but-” It tried to show a smile again “-but it's okay, I've been taking care of myself a lot-lot-lot-! And I have been very careful! And I've paid attention to the alerts! And then they won't have much work ahead of them...! For... when they come back...” “...” “They're taking their time. They're...-they're taking a long time to come back.” It started rocking on the spot, back and forth “But it's fine! Because when they come back-*skrgrgrhs* when they come back- I'll-! *skrgr* I've been behaving well! I've been behaving very well.” It suddenly lowered its tone of voice. It looked at the floor while its hands still played with the ribbons, tangling them between its fingers. “I have been good. They won't have to worry and will be able to return to their work. I have been very good. I am functioning perfectly. There is no problem. I'm fine. I already fixed it *skrnnnnnnnnn*” Again the noise “I've fixed it, I've fixed it, I've fixed it!”

“Okay! Okay. Alright, I believe you.”

Sun looked up and tensed its shoulders... and its 'rays'. It looked surprised, like it had forgotten Fern was there. “*Skr skr skr skr skr skr skr skr* Oh-! Oh.” It looked at the ribbon tangled between its fingers for a moment, untangled it, and looked back at Fern as its hands continued to play “I- didn- ...I'm sorry.”

“I was- I was just wondering, how... come that-” 'How are you still functioning after all this time?' was what Fern wanted to ask among a thousand things. But seeing Sun's expression, that mix between stress, fear and somehow enthusiasm, just to be there, with someone. Fern decided to put their questions aside “You know what? Why don't you ask me something?”

“*skr skr* Oh! I've already asked you a lot of things earlier! You still haven't answered those~!” It said with a more cheerful tone.

“Sorry, I don't remember them, can you repeat them for me?” Better to start gaining its trust.

Sun's posture tensed as it leaned forward, it clenched its fists with enthusiasm and its 'rays' shrank and extended, making a wave effect around its head, it made an inspiration sound “*GAAAASP* What is your favorite thing to do-?!What do you like to play-? What places do you like going to-?What's your favorite color-?!Your favorite song-?Your favorite food-?Do you like puppet shows-?Would you like me to teach you how to make puppets-?!Do you like nicknames?Would you like me to give you one-?Do you like painting-?Can we do make-?”

“One at a time! I can't keep up with everything.” Fern cut them off before it continued its endless list of questions. Sun had that guilty look again with its 'rays' drooping. Before it could began to apologize Fern continued “What's the first thing you want to ask me?”

“Um- eh-ah- *knnnnnn* What's your favorite thing to do in the world?!”

“Humm...” Fern took a moment to think. She could give a random answer to move forward the conversation faster but she wanted to be honest. And she was having a hard time because she couldn't remember what she liked to do most. “I guess... uuuuuhh... drawing? Although- well I don't really draw much.”

“*kr kr* I like to draw too! And painting! And crafts! What's your favorite game?!” Sun jumped to the next question.

“Uf, uh...” Fern wasn't great at remembering their own interests. It's hard when you don't think about it often, or ever “I don't think I have a favorite game... Mmmm-I like it when the game uses cards... but I don't know.”

“*skr kr kr* Oh! I also like card games. What's your favorite color?!”

“Oran...ge...? No... Well, yes, but maybe pastel yellow... although I also like some shades of green and purples.”

“*skr skr kr*” Sun seemed to be taking note of everything Fern was saying before asking the next question. “You can choose more than one! I like sky blue!” How ironic “What's your favorite food?” If it wasn't for the enthusiasm it gave off when asking and waiting for the answer, Fern would have thought Sun was getting back at them for asking it difficult questions earlier. It could be, but hard to believe with the little bounces it gave in place while smiling with excitement.

“I mean... I don't know- I like salty foods, and some acid ones but... I wouldn't know what to tell you my favourite food is.”

“*skr* Oh, well... I like cupcakes!”

“...How can you have a favorite food?”

“Why wouldn't I have???”

“Can you eat? Are you made with the capacity for it?”

“*kr knn* Ohoho! No, I can't eat them, but I like how they look! I think they are pretty! There are many ways to decorate them...! *skr kr kr* Oh! I also like homemade cookies! You can give them any shape you want and decorate them and you can also make them colorful!” What Sun seemed to like was the process of making them, makes sense.

“Ha.” Fern showed a smile of understanding.

“... *skr krkrkr skr kr*” It took a moment to ask the next question. “Do you like music? Do you have a favorite song?” It seemed more relaxed talking.

“I like it but um... I couldn't tell you... I've never chosen one as 'the favorite' ...you know?”

“*SKRRR* Y-you don't have to choose! Y-you are not obliged *skr kr*” Sun must have noticed Fern upset, but it wasn't because of them. What bothered Fern was not being able to give a confident answer. “Everyone has a hard time choosing sometimes-! *kr* There are a lot- lot of songs and music! How to choose just one... ahaha...” It laughed.

It continued the relentless bombardment of questions. Sun asked the typical basic children's questions when they have just learned how to make friends and chatted about various game topics. Fern tried to slip some 'discreet' question about the Fazbear company and Sun, but it would get nervous when it was unable to respond and would hung up, so they would change the topic again and talk about personal interests.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

It's been a long bit.

“*knnnnnnnnn*... Do you… do you have a favorite place?” Sun asked, showing a bit of shyness.

“...” It took Fern a while to answer “I- guess... My house? I don't know..."

“... D-don't you have... a comfy place? A place where you feel more comfortable than others?”

“Heh, yeah, my bed…” Their answers became more and more vague.

“Oh-! *skr* hehe... Does that mean you're not an early riser?”

“Actually, I usually get up early, but who isn't comfortable in their bed, you know? Besides, I get up early out of obligation. It's not that I can just stay in bed and do nothing.”

“*krkr* Oh...haha, of course...” There were a few seconds of awkward silence until it asked “Uh... a-a-are you bored? A-a-are -y-y-ou getting bored?” Its fans began to be heard.

Fern cut them off before it could start rambling in panic again. “No no! It's not that... it's just that-” She wanted to explain themselves but couldn't find the words. “I don't know. I guess- I'm a little tired, and lost in thoughts. I wasn't expecting...this” She pointed their hand in Sun's general direction.

“...Ah?” Sun tilted its head to the side in confusion.

“I mean... it's just...” I came to steal old material and scraps “I came in here expecting to explore a little and leave and now I'm... sitting here. I didn't expect to be answering questions about me or my personal tastes in craft materials.” She looked at Sun “...Or to have a conversation with a robot” Sun frowned a little at that last bit. “Not to belittle! I didn't expect to find anyone when I came here.”

“No no-! It's not that- ah- Why weren't you expecting anyone??” Sun asked with genuine confusion “There are always a lot of people working here, especially during the day!”

“...” Oh, boy. That “uh... Sun” It's better for them to know it now as soon as possible ...right? “I think... no one comes here anymore.”

“...?” Sun looked at Fern with bewilderment but maintained a light smile.

“...”

“...a-”

“AHAHA-” Sun suddenly laughed. Its posture and smile had frozen, its gaze fixed somewhere behind Fern.

She knew it wasn't looking at them, she swayed sideways and made various arm gestures and poses to check it. The *knnnnnnnn* that began to sound confirmed to Fern that it was still working and had not suddenly broken, maybe it just gave an error and was processing a response. “...Sun?”

“HA-” *SKRGKRrrgkk...* It looked like it had a spasm for a moment. Its head tilted and a mechanical *click* was heard, shortly after its face made a full rotation followed by more *clicks*. Its smile widened again, maintaining its worried expression, it put its hands on its ankles and began to sway back and forth rhythmically. “Silly-silly-silly-silly-silly-! *sKRKRrrg* OOOOH so silly-! That's so silly-! AHA-ahA ha-! Don't say nonsense!” It said smilingly.

Fern could only look at Sun in bewilderment and pity.

*skr* It stopped its swaying and relaxed its tone “Don't be silly, friend. Of course people still come! They have to come and do their job! Their work is very important! They wouldn't all quit so suddenly!”

“...Has anyone been here in the last years?” Fern asked, worried for the answer.

*skrKR* “You have come!” It responded instantly happily “You are here! -Right now!"

“...Sun,” uff “Have more people come here besides me in the last years?”

“...” *skrkr skr kr kr kr...* Its smile was falling but it didn't disappear completely. “Surely.... they are working in another part of the building. -Y-yes *kr*, they must be very busy! Working! Elsewhere...!” A low *kr kr kr kr* began to be heard “That's why... it must be that... You aren't a new technician! Right!?”

“¿¡!?” That took Fern by surprise. “Um- nope.”

“A-a-a-and- you haven't seen anyone since you came in here! Right!?” *skrskrskr*

“...No-?”

“Of course!” *SKR* The half-joyful-half-nervous tone returned “-Of course you couldn't have seen anyone! You don't work here! You can't have the work schedule or know where they might be-! You can't know- aHAha-!” If Sun noticed the worried looks Fern was sending him, it must have ignored it.

“Y-yeah okay, but- alright... and... haven't you thought... that they haven't stopped by to visit you in a long time?” Fern gave a small worried smile. “-Haven't you seen them in a while time?”

“LIIIke I said before- they're busy- they don't need to come see me now! *krkrkr* It must be that I don't need to be examined at the moment! That must be it haha! You're not from here so naturally you don't know! You don't know what they're working on! Don't worry- don't worry-!”

Fern could only think that this was going to be more complicated than it already seemed at first. The robot continued with its paranoia that this place was still running. Something light up on its face, as if it had remembered something.

“B-besides- they said they would come back tomorrow! So it's fine! They'll be back!”

That got all of Fern's attention. “Wait- holditholditholditholdit-! They told you they would be back, tomorrow???”

Sun nodded its head vividly “Mhm! That's what they said!” It looked more cheerful.

“But- like, tomorrow-tomorrow?”

*Sknnnnnnnnnnnn* Ah, one of the various sounds of thinking “They said they would be back tomorrow!” It drops that and stays chill, with a smile on its face.

“So you're telling me... they talked to you today?”

“Oh, no! I haven't seen them today...”

“They sent you a message then.”

“No no, I haven't received any messages in a while.” *skr*

“...” For the love of my life “They... told you the date they would return, and that date is tomorrow?”

"No, silly!" it said with laughter “I'm telling you, they told me they would be back tomorrow!”

Fern was perplexed. She was finally managing to get even a sliver of information out and she had gotten themselves into a loop with the robot. But wait- “Sun, how long ago did they tell you they would be back tomorrow?”

Sun stayed silent, the only audible sound the long, drawn-out *knnnnnnnnnn* it seemed to do when it thought. It dug its fingers into the fabric of its pants near its ankles and didn't move again. A while passed and it was still motionless, thinking. It began to repeat a sequence of noises as if it had gotten stuck in its thoughts and suddenly the sound stopped. Its smile fell, its body lost all the tension that kept them upright, and it slumped to the side.

Fern startled. “¿Sun?” Didn't seem to respond “Oh, God...” Just as she thought of getting closer to check if it was okay, Sun sat up, making a lot of mechanical *clicks* and *tics* as its limbs settled back into their natural positions. It could be hear the fan running and soon the *skr skr* it had been doing the whole time they were talking.

It finally looked up at Fern. It seemed to function normally again, “...” “...” “...HEEEEL-” or almost “-LOOO... *SKGrkrgr* N-new friend-? Oh-o-OH- Are you new-?! ARE YOU FRIEND!? *kgr*” This sounds familiar... Sun got up from excitement, it couldn't stop bouncing on the spot. “Who are you-?! What's your name!? *skgr* I can't find your profile-! -Do you have a profile??? OH! Are you the new playmate!? Wait, are you here for the routine maintenance? *kr- kr-* Are you a new technician-!?” And we start again “Can we play? Can we play NOW!? Can we-! You're not on the employee registry-! You need a registry to-! *skgrkrkrkr* How could you get in without a profile!??? Do you work here-?” It stopped dead and stared at Fern. Its white pupils scanned them from top to bottom. “*skrgrkrg* *GASP* You don't work here! How did you get in-!? What are you doing here-!? INTRUDER! STRANGER! ¡AAA-!” His rays tensed, Sun began to run in circles screaming “SECURITY ALERT! SECURITY ALERT! WOO WOO WOO WOO!” And imitating alarm sounds. Its screams mixed with the noises of its processor and fans. Fern could only look in amazement and disconsolation at the panorama.

“Sun.” She tried calling them but it kept going 'woo woo' while running and doing pirouettes across the floor. “Sun! Hey!” No case. Eventually it went back to just spinning around in circles while shouting 'DANGER DANGER' over and over again. “Sun! Listen! SUN!” It stopped but not because of Fern. It had frozen in its animation again, its head and hands rotating in place, sparking from the friction. Now it was just repeating 'ERROR ERROR' non-stop with a monotone voice.

Fern panicked, she spun around on themselves looking around, searching for something. She located an old, dusty ball behind a chair and threw it hard at Sun, hitting them in the face. Somehow this made it stop completely. Fern watched silently waiting for something to happen but Sun remained motionless without making a sound. A few seconds later the fan sounded again along with the rest of the usual noises, it took them a while to start up. When it finally did, it returned its gaze to Fern, scanning them up and down.

“...” “*GASP* New frie-!”

“AH- NAH-no-no-no-no-nah-! We are not going through this again!” Fern cut them off before it could start with everything all over again.

“...f-...frie-nd-...” That left them in shock. It lowered its rays and its posture shrank. The *vrrrrrr* of the fans could be hear.

“Y-Yes- yes... friends! We're friends” Saying that seemed to help improve its mood. Sun went to open its mouth to speak but Fern was the one who did it first. “Before you say anything-! Um... No, I don't work here and I don't have a profile. Yes, I've snuck in, uh- don't activate the alarms yet, I don't have any bad intentions...” That last one was partially a lie. Don't get upset, okay? ...We don't want you to suddenly shut down and collapse again.” Sun tensed up upon hearing that but did as instructed and remained calm for the moment. “We've been talking for the last- THREE HOURS.” Fern looked at their watch, it had been over three hours and she was having a hard time assimilating it but she looked back at Sun who was expectant of Fern's words. She took a breath and continued. “Okay, look, we've been talking for a long time and you've already asked me everything about me. Y-you should have that information recorded somewhere in your memory! It happened just now.” She paused to see if Sun had caught everything she said and gave it a moment to search for said information. It could be hear the *skr skr* of thinking and the fans. After a while it stopped making noise, but the nervous fidgeting of its hands let Fern know it hadn't collapsed again. “Do you remember anything of what happened in the last few hours?” She asked.

Sun seemed to have come out of the trance it was in and started looking between its hands, the computer desks, and Fern. “*skr- skr-*...uuh...uh...” The fidgeting passed from its hands to the ribbons “...yyyyyess?? uh- *SKRG* I- *kr* I shouldn't give- *sKRGRRGKRgrrss*” Oh no... It froze again- “Yes! Yes, of course! Ha- How would I forget-?” It had that expression again between happy and on the verge of an attack “I haven't forget anything! I haven't forget anything-! Don't worry! It's all here-!” It raised its arm doing a swing with one finger pointing at its head. “It's here! I forgot nothing- nothing! It only took a lil' bit to load- haha...” Sun smiled awkwardly while Fern looked at them with concern and seriousness. “Yup, a-aALLLl in order! *-skrgr*” It confirmed one last time.

Fern let out a tired sigh. She looked worriedly at the watch on their wrist. 12:11 “Okay... okay look, I- have been here for a long time now, I should go-”

“What-!? No no! *-kgrkgrgr* Please no!” Aaaand Sun panicked again. “Don't go! HahA-! I- Um- Can-! *SKGR* I-I-can-can-can- a-any- thing! I can do anything-! Whatever you want-!” Its voice was cutting off with static and it let out gasps between pleas, its rays were trembling. Fern tried to say something but it was only a murmur between Sun's desperate screams. “Don't leave yet, please! It's still too soon! Don't leave me alone! I don't want to be alone-!”

“I'LL COME BACK!” Fern finally raised their voice.

“...eh?”

"Listen." Fern made sure she had Sun's attention “I cannot stay any longer, I just can't! I've already spent longer than I intended here and I have a lot to do. So...” She sighed and looked at Sun, they maintained eye contact. “...I'm leaving for today, and I'll be back tomorrow, okay?” She saw confusion on Sun's face, from the sound of *Knng* and the way it tilted its head it didn't seem to have understood. She repeated again gesturing with their hands as she spoke making their points clear. “Today: I'm leaving. Tomorrow: I'll be back... Understand?” She let a few seconds pass to see how it'll responded.

It had its hands together, one finger scratching the joint of a knuckle on its exposed hand. Its noises could be heard at a lower volume and the rays from its head shrank and extended in a wave movement. It finally reacted “ah...uh-... o-okay... okay... *skgr* a- Yes! Alright... okay...” It nodded with a shy smile. “*skr... skr...* um- I-... if- If my friend says- *kr* says they're coming back, then they're coming back! Ahaha...” It tried to return to a more cheerful voice. It sounded like it said it more to themselves than to anyone else. “Ri...ght... friend?”

"Sure." Fern nodded, tilting their head to the side.

“...” “...Do you promise...?”

“Yes.”

“...You promise you'll be back here tomorrow?”

“Yes, I'll be back here tomorrow.”

“R-really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Do you really promis-?”

"Yes!" Sun jumped back, its eyes and shoulders hunched and it looked in fear at Fern. “Sorry...” She sighed “I promise. I really, truly, really, truthfully promise that I will be back. Tomorrow morning I promise you I'll be right here.” Sun looked at Fern expectantly. “...” “Word.” Fern held up their hand in promise. Sun imitated the gesture “Okay?”

Its expression brightened, the rays came out again and its posture relaxed. “Okay, y-yeah, okay! W-we'll see each other tomorrow!” It confirmed.

Fern was relieved to hear Sun finally understand and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Okay, then... I'll get going, alright? Bye.” She waved goodbye as she headed towards the doors.

“¡Ah! Uh... Can you close the doors on your way out? The doors have to be closed if no one's here...”

“Yeah.” She grabbed the door handles and pushed them.

“U-um- S-see ya!” It said waving its hand in the air.

"See you tomorrow." Fern confirmed one last time, “Bye, Sun.”

Sun stood there, waving timidly into the air, watching as its new (apparently) friend disappeared after closing the fake castle doors. It stopped waving “...” “Who's Sun?”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Fern was back on the first elevator, the one that wasn't working and, naturally, she hadn't forgotten their beloved and much missed crowbar. She made a long descent to the bottom of the pit using the stairs on the wall to get it back and climb back up. She sighed, “Next time, I'm bringing two crowbars.” She climbed back up to the roof of the elevator and entered through the emergency hatch to reach floor L2. After coming out of it, she stopped in front of the doors to look at the state of the crowbar more calmly 'Wow, it's pretty good for having fallen from 30 me-' *SKREEEEEENNNNNNGG* Fern flinched at the sound and turned to look at the elevator.

*SKREEENNNGG NNNGG NNNGGGGGGGgggggggggg.......*

*...*

*BOOMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............*

“...”

Fern stared with their eyes wide open at the now empty elevator shaft. She looked at the crowbar in their hand. She decides to put it away and return home. We aren't going to think about how she narrowly escaped that, no. If she had taken few more seconds to come out and turns into mush, in an elevator pit, in an abandoned facility, in a building not even its mother knows, in the middle of nowhere. Nope! We aren't going to think about that, better to get out. Down the stairs, straight ahead to the right. Fresh air here she goes.

As soon as she left, Fern felt a pressure release from their head. Just a few meters away from the entrance she felt like she had to sit down and take off their backpack before getting where she had parked their hovercraft, she needed clean air. The fresh air helped them clear their head and thoughts. She hadn't realized until now how overwhelmed she was feeling being in there, apart from the recent scare with the elevator, which has also made them feel anguish.

She looks at the clock, it's past one o'clock in the afternoon. She should eat something if she's driving home after all that walking, climbing, and running. She gets up from the ground and drags the backpack along with their body to collapse in the car so she can eat there. It's a little harder to carry the backpack with the extra weight of the tools she has been collecting on the way back (hey, they were free). She takes off their gloves and digs through their backpack to take out the multipurpose knife, the lunch box containing the chicken with rice she had prepared in the early morning and an apple, some of the rice has stuck to the lid of the lunchbox and she scratches it off with the fork. She spends a few minutes digging into the food until she finally decides to bring a portion to their mouth.

Although she decided not to worry for the moment, Fern can't help but think of the robot trapped and abandoned at the bottom of the building... who's alone again. Should she really come back tomorrow? Yes, she promised, but, what difference would it make if she just pretended nothing happened? What consequences could there be-? In fact- Fern would be suffering consequences for taking responsibility for a defective and damaged robot. Bots themselves are already a pain in the ass to maintain and the lack of bot rights management doesn't help, there is nothing that protects them; there's no way to get good insurance for them, especially for models from 5 years ago. If your bot is older than that you better have a complete manual stuck in your head on how to solve any absolute damage or problem it may suffer, because if not, you're both very screwed.

Speaking of which, how is Fern supposed to repair a robot as broken as Sun is? Especially one made by Fazbear Entertainment, the bastards make their own unique tools and parts of exclusive use for their company. You can't find them anywhere. It would be impossible to repair one of their animatronics unless she made each piece by hand and- um- no. Thank you. Is Sun even in saveable condition? Would it even be worth it? Even in the hypothetical case that she managed to save it, what would she do next? She doesn't have space at home for a robot that's taller than 2 meters. There is the machine refuge, yes, but...

...

Could she even help them? Without compatible or interchangeable parts I highly doubt it. It would end up turning into useless scrap metal. Not much differece from what awaits for it inside. There really wouldn't be any difference between leaving it here or taking it to the city.

Nobody knows it's there.

...

Fern knows.

...

But no one else knows of its existence. Who would care?

...

It's down there suffering and nobody knows.

...

Fern knows.

...

Without realizing it she had stopped eating and was just playing with the fork. Let's see, on one hand we have: a damaged, defective and hyperactive robot in an abandoned facility in very poor condition an... give it an hour and a half by hovercraft away from the city, without much chance of repair or survival in or out of this place, not to mention the lack of knowledge about its model. On the other hand we have: guilt.

On the one hand: Fern wouldn't feel right just leaving it here, Sun has autonomy and in the time they have known each other it has demonstrated enough intelligence to have its own opinions and make decisions for itself, it clearly has a developed AI so it is capable of feeling emotions; in other words, its suffering is real and it is morally wrong to leave it like this. On the other hand: she wouldn't know where to put it, as said before, there is no space at home and Fern has neither the resources nor the time to take care of it, they wouldn't accept it in a job or company because it already belongs to one, on top of it with a bad reputation. The refuge is an option but it wouldn't help much, it could end up becoming a burden and may not end up getting along with the other bots that are already there.

What will win in the end? Rationality or morality? The crushing and tormenting feeling of guilt! Of course! That's why Fern is sitting curled up in a ball, perforating with their gaze at the half-eaten rice and chicken, unable to make up their mind. She could at least try. Try... something. Even if it's just, paying them a visit? She already promised them that she would come back tomorrow. At the very least she should go see them tomorrow, she doesn't have to go every time, she doesn't have to repair it either. Maybe keeping company is enough? From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like it has much of its lifespan left... Oh God, she's really considering doing this.

For now, Fern will worry about finishing their meal and driving back to the town. She'll think better about it when she gets home.

#Edit: fixed a word count mistake #again. I'd really appreciate the feedback please #I'd like to get better at translating and adaptation. this was rough #my writing #biomáquina au #fnaf daycare attendant #dca au #fnaf sun #fnaf dca #selfinsert #character & selfinsert #character & oc #platonic #no ships #fanfic #long post

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olderthannetfic · 3 months

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Hi hi! I have a question and I apologise if it's impertinent but I really didn't have anyone else to ask. I'm new to ao3 and I'm still figuring out how it works. The problem is this- when I look up a character x reader, I'll see the tag included in many works that have oneshots but since it's a side character, more often than not the oneshot for the character hasn't been written and the tag has been there for months. Is it okay to do that or is it tagging something incorrectly? They say they'll write one eventually but they never do, y'know? To me it kind of feels like they're just trying to reach a wider audience but because of this I can't even filter tags and I have to manually search through the book to check if the character is included, especially when the chapters are titled only by numbers :')

Is it okay to tag things in advance like that?

Oh boy...

Wattpad refugees do tend to use AO3 "wrong", sometimes in ways that break the rules and sometimes just in ways I find annoying and against typical AO3 culture.

I'm assuming you are coming from Wattpad based on you calling a work or a fic a "book", which is a very, very Wattpad thing to do.

I'm assuming they are coming from Wattpad given the bad behavior you're describing and the fact that they're a x reader writer.

So, here's the thing, if you start writing a fic and there's any amount of the actual fic, even if it's pretty short and bad or in a weird format or whatever, it's still a valid fanwork. Most of the time, AO3 leaves it to the author to decide how to tag (aside from a very few things like death threats in the tags or failing to use the required archive warnings).

AO3 won't stop someone from tagging a future pairing that hasn't appeared yet.

But "books" of "oneshots" are such an obnoxious Wattpad thing. This is a completely stupid use of AO3 from the "Please send me prompts" part that is usually in there to the way that unrelated fics are smashed together.

It's not against the rules, but it's a crappy use of AO3 befitting of n00bs.

Sadly, old hands at AO3 also make shitty works that are unrelated stories mashed together. They're often a whole set of kinktober fics or something where the trope tags and the ship tags are accurate, but you can't tell which ones go with which ones without searching the whole fic.

We regularly complain about that on here.

A much better way to use AO3 is to make a series titled "My x Reader Oneshots" or "All of my kinktober fics" where each separate story is its own work with its own tags.

My assumption is that this person is using the inaccurate tag both to get more eyeballs on their existing work and because they probably take prompts for that ship or something. (I'm basing this on the kinds of things people say on their oneshot books on Wattpad. Maybe they don't actually take prompts since you haven't mentioned it.)

Some people just don't care that they're annoying others and messing up the tags, but I think some actually don't realize how AO3 filtering works and have no idea this behavior is a nuisance.

On a lot of sites, both Wattpad and algorithm-driven social media, unless a post/work is very popular, it disappears out of sight. Even an inaccurate tag doesn't do that much.

On AO3, one is getting a full list of everything with the tag, going back however far. It's a library catalogue for which you should use accurate data. But this writer is probably thinking of tags more as advertising and a way to get their name out there so readers can follow them pre-emptively. They mean to write the ship in the future, so it's not really inaccurate... (And, tbh, if it were a single work and the ship just hadn't appeared yet, I would agree with them even though those are frustrating too.)

So no, they should not do this.

But it's not actually against the rules.

I would mute the annoying people who do this.

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soulfulazrael · 2 months

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Who am I and what I write. The tale of a weird as all Hell fanfic I put too much time into about an odd ship.

So... If anyone here cares I am a Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss fanfic writer (and I am 23/24 year old. Depressing isn't it?). Although I can't exactly call myself the biggest fan anymore. I do love the potential those series have and the ideas in them, but I am not a nut over the execution. In fact I say it is pretty bad in many respects and I think Viv and her writing team do not utilize the full potential of what they have on their hands.

What I want to do is well... Do something I would prefer this world they created to be. So I make several odd as hell Fics. Or at least one now. As you can see from the image about Stella and Moxxie (art btw is made by talented @Caffe1neW1tch on twitter). Now I know, I KNOW how she is in the show... I can explain my case. I do change her character quite significantly from what she is in canon show (as I do so with MANY other things). To something I would prefer her to be. Something while still deeply flawed being more dignified than what she is in Helluva Boss season 2 as I think the direction they took her character was severely disappointing. I can't say they retconned her, but I have to say they went overboard with the direction she was taken. Way too far into just pure Hate Sink. Something I would prefer if it wasn't done at all with a character tied to such a potentially interesting conflict.

Not to mention the direction Vivienne took the world of Hell and it's characters... I must say. I do not enjoy how easy it is to say who is good and bad in both of her shows and how similar Hell is to Earth. It honestly robs the setting of it's potential as it is perfect place to explore some deeply disturbing characters with interesting alien mindsets and their own unique conflicts as it is hard to grasp who are you supposed to root for in the end. But both Hazbin and Helluva greatly miss the mark on that front as every character is either without a shadow of a doubt a good guy (that at most cries, swears and likes to tell sex jokes because I guess that's enough to say character has depth these days) or are so cartoonishly evil and stupid they make Team Rocket look competent and make Micah from RDR2 and Erebus from 40k say "THAT'S NOT SUBTLE ENOUGH!". Not to mention how similar so many of her characters are and how limited their interactions are, the treatment of Heaven, the confusing character arcs... You know what. Issues with both Hazbin and Helluva are too many to count, too many for this post, but I also say they are not TERRIBLE shows, they are just shows that disappoint me at every step for the last few years.

And now I get to the crux of this elongated point. Again. I'm writing fics and one of them is Song for the Quiet Bird. A fic I say is best to read on a site AO3 (but it is also on Fanfic site if it's up to your speed) where I try to explore hell in more meaningful ways and make their culture more unique while telling a story of a very strange ship which is Stella and Moxxie. And do not worry, I am not going on any "Millie is dead" kind of cop out. I am into doing things in an easy way. And here is the link to it:

I also make another fic called Torments of Sinners and Imps which you may find on my profile as well which delves more into Angel and Moxxie, but that one for now is on a break. In a way Song is too, but I do hope I'll post a chapter for that one soon (personal issues and family issues).

Alright, if anyone is interested or sees this post I hope that you will enjoy my take on this series. Will post something more here? I dunno. Maybe? But anyway I just want more people to see it and maybe give their opinion on it which is what I always want to hear.

And I may post more things about what I do not enjoy in those shows and how I think they could be fixed. Talking about several things in both shows that irk me the wrong way.

Also given how deeply I go into the worldbuilding in my fics I may also post some stuff about how I made some things work there and things about culture of Hell I came up with and mythology there... Or maybe just talk about some philosophical mumbo jumbo that I sometimes think of. But whether or not I do it, especially consistently will be another story. If anyone sees this, thanks for sticking around. If anyone is interested in my works or opinions share your thoughts. If anyone hates my guts for the things I write about and my opinions of these series... Can't say I am surprised some people do hate those. You are free to share your discontent too. I welcome all voices. At least until they make my head hurt, then I just take a nap.

Anyway. I rambled for long enough. Again check out the fic if you are interested. Wont force you. If you do so leave a comment which is the most important thing for me when I write something. Hearing what people like and don't like. Have a good one and I hope you enjoy yourself. If not with my story then in your life whoever you are (as long as you are not a total POS).

#hazbin hotel critical #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #Ao3 #ao3 fanfic #vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism #hazbin hotel criticism #helluva boss criticism #fanfic #I have no clue what the hell am I doing #stella #moxxie

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bitbybitwrites · 4 months

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Puppy Love (RWRB New Years Exchange Fic) - Chp 1

So I signed up to take part in the @rwrbnygiftexchange and was selected to write something for @omgbarbiegurl.

My prompts were : snow, fluff and kidfic

Thank you again for being so patient - I'm still writing, so I'll post as I go. but here's the first chapter for you!

Thanks as always to my betas who I run things by and are so supportive - and my friend @iris7124 who made the cover art for this fic!

*******

Henry shivered as the winter wind sliced through him. Pulling his coat collar up and holding it closed with one hand, he walked as quickly as he could. He knew his apartment wasn't that far.

So close. . .it was so close.

Henry had plans. Plans involving the biggest mug of Earl Grey he could imbibe, tucking into his sister's care package from home that was filled with Jaffa cakes, and probably watching Pride and Prejudice for the hundredth time.

Or maybe he’d switch to Star Wars. . . He could do with a little Return of the Jedi happy ending today.

The plans weren't exactly fixed in stone.

Henry sighed. Perhaps it wasn’t the most exciting evening in the world, but at least it was nice and cozy.

And warm.

He was really looking forward to the warm part.

Henry started to speedwalk as the first heavy, wet snowflakes began to fall. As he passed a poorly lit alleyway he could have sworn he heard a soft crying sound coming from the shadows. It stopped Henry in his tracks.

“Hello?” he called out tentatively. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Read more on A03

#bitbybitwrites #fic: puppy love #firstprince #rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrb fic #rwrb fanfiction #rwrb fanfic #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #rwrbnygiftexchange

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artaxlivs · 2 months

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I found this little 3k fic of Steve Rogers/Stiles Stilinski (25 year old American Assassin looking Stiles) and I was like "that's a combo...very unusual, I'll mark it for later" so I did. And then I forgot about it. Until I was cleaning out my "marked for later" (because it is a fucking mess up in there) and I found it and thought to myself, "well, Artax, you were cleaning this out but it's only 3k so maybe treat yourself, you deserve it."

So I did. And I LOVED IT. And it turned out that it was part of a series so I opened the next one - just to check on it, you know? It was like 86k or something but...you know, treat yo'self, so I read that one too. And it ended on a fucking cliffhanger but there was ANOTHER one. You sensing a theme here?

Anyway, Parts 4 and 7 are a side story from Allison's POV but part 6 is incomplete. It's at 28/30 chapters and has been there for three years. The writer openly talks about how sick they've been in their notes but is still answering comments (I always worry about people when they drop away, you know?).

Did I read the 216k part 6? FUCKING' A RIGHT I DID. Do I regret it? Hell No. I don't know how the story ends and I may never know but you know what? That gorgeous 545k series that someone put two years of their life into writing and creating deserved my love. It's seriously some of the best writing I've read in a while, managing to weave SHIELD, Avengers and Teen Wolf into a gorgeous cohesive full fledged story. I loved it. If they ever come back to finish it, I'll be there within hours of them posting.

You should go read it and COMMENT. Let them know how much you love it. Don't ask for more - if they could, they would - just give it some love so they know we'll be here if they can ever come back. Plus, it's just nice to tell a writer thank you for sharing this beautiful thing they made - even if it's unfinished.

#the avengers #steve rogers #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #american assassin #agents of shield #Stiles is the Clint Barton of Teen Wolf

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mamadoc · 2 months

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1, 2, 30, 38, 46 🤗

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

My two long multi-chapters have taken most of my writing time (and I love them), but I actually really love the first series I ever wrote, *Sense* You Know Me So Well. The second chapter of this series and the second chapter of its sequel are the two that I am most proud of. They just feel very authentic and have deep feelings.

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

I'm not great at tagging apparently or my stories are all quite different. My only tag that I've used more than once was 'Alternate Universe,' which makes since given that 3 of my 6 are AUs.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

I have a story that was my first ever idea for a story that I've started writing, but I still haven't felt confident enough in my writing to tackle. It's all outlined with some parts written out, but there's a lot of heartbreak and angst in the beginning of the story, and I haven't written much of that into my stories to date. Perhaps one day when I finish my long multi-chapter, I'll get back to that.

I'm emotionally very affected by what I read and write. So I think I'll have to be in a good place with a good chunk of time to dedicate to writing so that I can get through all the angst more quickly. Yikes... that means I'll have to do it before my kids get out of school in May. Sheesh. Maybe it'll have to wait until fall.... We'll see.

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?

Honestly, when I started I wasn't sure anyone would like any of my stories. I definitely lacked confidence in my ability to write creatively since I had never done it before. I have written academically quite a bit, so I wasn't worried about sentence structure or grammar. I just wasn't sure anyone would like what I had to say - that it would be up to snuff.

But the response I've gotten to Catch of a Lifetime has been so amazing. I wasn't sure how many baseball AU Chenford readers there would be out there. But it also just started with 3 outlined chapters, and now I have it outlined to chapter 19. I think it'll be done soon after that. That makes me feel like a lazy, inexperienced writer, but this story has just taken on a life of it's own. I post it at the end of baseball season because that seems appropriate, but somehow it's still going.

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

I make a lot of notes on my phone, but I always write out the stories on my computer.

Thanks for asking!

#fanfic #chenford #tim bradford #lucy chen #the rookie #tim bradford x lucy chen #chenford fanfic #fanfiction writer #fanfiction

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baileys-3 · 5 months

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Then today there is the last or penultimate sneak peak. I'm not quite sure if I'll post another one tomorrow.

And then there won't be any need for sneak peaks anymore, because on December 1st I'll post the first chapter on AO3.

Current status of the story: At the end of chapter 20… and yes it happened. The 100,000 word limit has been exceeded. It's now 102,000 words. And no end in sight.

______

By the way, you can already subscribe to the story on AO3. Then you won't miss anything. You can find the link below:

______

Then enjoy the sneak peak. It's from Chapter 15. Tim is a good uncle :) And buys a round of ice cream after Tylers baseball game.

______

"So, he's single now, is he? Sorry, that sounds really strange. I'm just asking. He makes a nice impression, even if he doesn't talk much. And he's obviously good with kids."

Genny must laugh. "Yes, Tim's not exactly the chatty type. But he has a good heart, even if he sometimes comes across as a bit harsh. And I don't know if he's single. He hasn't mentioned anything to me, but there are signs that he's dating someone."

Lisa leans slightly forwards towards the table and rests her head on her arm, which she has propped up on the table.

"Now I'm curious."

"He always has this smile on his face. And when he writes messages, he's always grinning to himself."

"Not much evidence, is it?"

"That's right. Maybe I just want it so much. He deserves it." Genny leans forwards a little and speaks a little more quietly. "To be honest, I have someone in mind, too. And I would so like the two of them to be together." Then she pauses briefly. "Sorry, that was nothing against you."

Lisa laughs. "No, no, it's fine. It was more a question of interest. But go on. I'm always open to love stories."

"A work colleague of his, or rather he's her superior. Tim is a sergeant with the LAPD."

Lisa whistles briefly in admiration.

"I've seen the two of them together. She even helped renovate our father's house." Genny raises her hand. "It's a long story. But back then he was still with his girlfriend and yet it wasn't his girlfriend who helped, but his colleague. And I swear to you, they were flirting the whole time. Not overt flirting, more like subliminal flirting. It's hard to describe. But Tim always says she's just a friend."

And then she moves even closer to Lisa, as if she's afraid Tim will come round the corner and hear her. And she whispers. "But that's no way to look at a friend.” When Genny says the word friend, she raises her hands and indicates goose feet. “I think they're really into each other and don't realize it. But as far as I know, she has a boyfriend. So, I'm probably wrong and just imagining things. It's more likely that my wish is the father of the thought."

She wants to add something else, but then sees Tim coming out of the café with the boys in tow. Blake and Tyler run towards the table. Tyler almost rolls over. "Can Blake come with us? Please?"

Genny looks at Lisa. “If you don't mind."

"Sure, very gladly," says Lisa.

The two older boys jump up and cheer. Genny looks at Tim, who is standing behind the boys.

"Do you want to come too Tim? The offer from last time with the pizzas still stands."

Tyler turns to Tim.

"Oh yes, Uncle Tim. And then you could show Blake some of your baseball tricks."

Tim runs his fingers through Tyler's hair and tousles it. "Sorry, Ty. I've got plans tonight. But we'll get round to it eventually."

Tyler looks briefly disappointed, but when Tim adds a "I promise", he smiles again.

Genny glances at Lisa and sees her raise her eyebrows and grin furtively. Perhaps she's not entirely wrong with her assumption.

#archive of our own #chenford #chenford fanfic #lucy chen #the rookie #tim bradford #tim bradford x lucy chen #chenford fic #tim x lucy #chenfordsource #fanfic writing #fanfiction

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toskarin · 8 months

Note

Hello! I've scrolled through a lot of your blog today trying to find an answer but I didn't have any luck. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind a breakdown on how to consume Vesalblood? I checked the website and hit the main read link, but reading the tags and things for Alterne made it seem like it's an AU? Or a different timeline, maybe. If it's something you've answered recently, my apologies and I'll go back to scrolling.

no worries! that's a bit confusing right now because I ended up taking Diesem Fernen Traum much more seriously than I initially planned, so it's going through some housekeeping to get it up to standard for all that. I consider it fully canon now and the description will be updated to reflect that

the ALTERNE label denotes stories that are self-contained insofar as they're "asides" that don't require following a previous story to enjoy them. they all take place in the same setting, but it will be exceptionally rare for an ALTERNE story to directly conclude a previous one. this is done with the goal being that you can pick where you want to jump in

that being said, there's only one ALTERNE plotline out right now!

the recommended reading order, as of right now, is

ALTERNE: Diesem Fernen Traum [chapters I-VII/Rain Arc]

any less-structured side stories that catch your interest, like Lullaby for the Peregrine

there's a few posts on @ri47 that I haven't mirrored in the archives yet, along with some technical setting info in the setting material tab on the VesalBlood Project Hub

further chapters of Diesem Fernen Traum are forthcoming and will be published on AO3 first. when that series finishes its run, I'll release the already-completed side story, ALTERNE: Fingers on the Mirror, and then begin to upload the next major plotline, ALTERNE: Black Star Ibis

hope that helps!

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weepingfromacedartree · 7 months

Text

Ten Milestones: First Pet

Hi friends! The first chapter of my new fic is now ready for anybody interested.

Hope you enjoy! I'll be posting chapters every Friday (and sometimes Tuesday).

Chapter 1: First Pet

Today: April 29th, 2023

Relationship Status: Dating

꙳

“Gregory just texted me to ask if we’re dating. I didn’t think he had my number.”

“That little arsehole probably sent it to himself when he stole my phone.”

It’s Saturday, 7:02 PM. Penelope and Colin are sitting on the floor of his flat, a few containers of Chinese food littered between them. It’s not a particularly unusual setting to find either one of them in on a Saturday evening. However, some things are different now.

Two weeks ago, they would not have been playing footsie. Not this shamelessly, at least.

“I assumed that Eloise’s ‘vow of secrecy’ would involve her immediately telling Benedict… And that Benedict would tell Anthony… And that Anthony would tell Kate… But I don’t know how the rumour managed to spread to Cambridge in…” She glances down to her phone again. “Six hours flat.”

“‘Rumour?’” Colin echoes, a smirk on his face. “Surely, you’re not trying to keep this sordid love affair hidden from me as well.”

“‘Sordid?’ God, Colin. You make us sound so dirty.” She kicks his foot away, then picks up her container of shrimp fried rice. “And I’m not trying to keep it from anyone. We both knew what was going to happen when I told El.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised Greg didn’t text you sooner.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Penelope watches as Colin uses his chopsticks to play around with his chicken dish, never actually putting a piece in his mouth. She can tell there’s something brewing in his mind.

“So… What are you gonna tell him?” he eventually asks.

“Well… I was going to leave him in suspense a little while longer. Maybe take the ‘no comment’ approach at first. Then, I don’t know… the truth?”

“Which is?”

Before answering, Penelope takes a moment to study the look on her supposed boyfriend’s face. She wonders if he’s playing dumb as a joke, or if there has been a miscommunication of monumental proportions between them. Judging from the expression on his face alone…

Neither option seems to be the correct one.

“Yes?”

She hadn’t intended for her answer to sound like a question, but her voice squeaked upward at the end, nonetheless. Colin doesn’t appear at all phased by her uncertainty, though. He looks quite calm and collected, placing his takeaway container on the coffee table and leaning further into the big blue couch behind him.

“‘Dating’ is a bit too casual a word for us, I think.”

“Okay…” Penelope draws those two syllables out as long as her breath allows her. She’s stalling for time, trying to sort out what it is that Colin is getting at. Still, she comes up empty.

“It’s only been a week. What do you suggest we call —”

“We should get married.”

“What!?”

He’s joking. He’s teasing. He’s —

“I said we should get married.”

Before she can yelp out another barely intelligible sound, Penelope bites her tongue. Literally. She watches his face, remaining quiet, waiting for him to expand on this insane, out-of-nowhere proposal. In the end, all she gets is a smug little smirk.

“What do you mean, ‘We should get married?’”

“I thought it was a rather self-explanatory proposition.”

“Col—”

“Why does anyone get married? I love you. I wish to continue loving you forever and ever. Ergo, marriage.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

“It —”

“It was a proposal.”

“Colin,” she scolds, using the sternest tone she can manage to muster up — which, at the moment, happens to be about an octave higher than her typical speaking voice.

If nothing else, at least he has the decency to drop that stupid smirk from his face in response to her apparent anxious state.

“Pen,” he murmurs, leaning forward to place his left hand on her right knee. “Just think about it. We didn’t meet a week ago, we just finally admitted what we should have told each other years ago. I’ve known you my entire life, and I spent most of that time either too oblivious to realise how in love with you I was, or too scared to do anything about it. Dating just seems… unnecessary. We know what comes next — why delay it any longer?”

Sitting stunned, eyes wide-open and fixed on the thumb currently tracing circles across her bare knee, Penelope attempts to make sense of what Colin just said. But the longer she sits there silent, the more divided her mind becomes.

On one hand, at her core, Penelope is sensible. Reasonable. Logical. That part of her is sounding alarm bells, insisting his proposition is irrational and goes against everything she knows about marriages and engagements and proposals altogether. After all, plenty of people go from friends to lovers and don’t jump directly to marriage.

On the other hand, also at her core, Penelope is a romantic. A willing fool. An idealist against her better judgement. That part of her is susceptible to Colin’s sweet, silly, and perhaps not so irrational words. She has been in love with him her entire life. Would it really be so crazy to —

Shaking her head ever so slightly, Penelope tentatively, regretfully brushes his hand off her knee. At the loss of her touch, Colin’s bottom lip juts out in a pout.

“Dating isn’t casual, necessarily… It’s important. It’s like a — like a test run for marriage and —”

“Well —”

“And it’s different from friendship. It puts you through different tests and trials than you go through with someone when you’re just friends.”

Colin appears to think over her words for a moment, squinting at her in that way that makes his blue eyes look grey.

“Friendship is not so different from dating,” he argues, eyes wide and blue again. “At least, not the way we did it.”

“Col —”

“You’re right about one thing, though.”

“Oh. Is that so?” she asks, unable to contain her sarcasm, even now.

“Dating is like a trial period. It’s when you figure out if your relationship is strong enough to last through all of the bullshit life can throw your way.”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

“Do you disagree with my summarisation?” His lips form a smirk that tells her that he already knows her answer. Still, she shakes her head.

“Okay,” he chuckles, leaning in an inch closer to her. “And after the mountains of bullshit we went through during the course of our friendship, do you have any doubt about our ability to stick with each other through everything? Is there anything holding you back, Pen?”

No. Nothing.

That’s the truth. There isn’t a single thing about Colin that she feels unsure of. Not anymore.

But still…

Even if there has been love between them for decades, they couldn’t admit that to each other until a week ago. That assuredness — that knowing — is still so new. She’s spent more time deciding whether or not to cut bangs, and the answer always ends up being not.

Still…

“Let’s consult the experts.”

Those four words break Penelope out of a daze she hadn’t realised she had fallen into.

At some point in the last few seconds, Colin had pulled out his phone. Now, he’s typing away at the keyboard with alarming urgency.

“What are you doing?”

With his phone screen mostly out of her view, Colin taps it one final time before looking up to meet her curious eye. Then, he clears his throat.

“Ten Milestones Every Couple Should Celebrate Before Walking Down the Aisle,” he reads aloud. “Number One: Sharing Your First —”

“What are you doing?” Penelope asks again. This time, a laugh escapes her lips as she does so. Something about the seriousness on Colin’s face reminds her of the absurdity of this situation. That it is a joke, whether or not he had intended it as such.

“I know you think this is all very funny, but I’m serious,” Colin contends. “Everything a couple needs to go through in order to be prepared for marriage, we have surely gone through at some point over the last twenty years. We’ve wasted enough time as it is — why was even more of it by delaying the inevitable? It just seems silly.”

Penelope has a bad habit of getting lost in Colin. In his words, in his voice, in his eyes… All of which seem to be pulling her in with a force that could rival anything she’s felt in the last twenty years. So when he stops talking, presumably offering her the space to get in her latest rebuttal, she remains silent.

With the smirk back on his face, he continues, “And while I know part of you is very tempted to agree with me and run down to the courthouse right now, I know the inherent skeptic in you needs some convincing.”

He briefly pauses again, this time to hold up his phone and display the article he had just been urgently searching for.

“So we will go through this list, which details every milestone a couple must accomplish before they get married. At the end, if we find that we checked off every single to-do item while we were just friends, we will make the reasonable decision and get married.”

If there’s one thing Colin Bridgerton is unnervingly good at, it’s making a convincing argument. The realist and the romantic on Penelope’s shoulders suddenly go quiet.

“And where exactly did you find this scholarly article — the one you are basing such a life-altering decision on?”

He looks down.

“TheMarriageExpert.com”

“Colin!”

“They’re an expert, Pen!”

Penelope giggles, for as often as Colin provokes her, his charm always gets her in the end. Once her laughter lets up, she thinks over his slightly altered proposal.

He’s convinced me to play more tedious games before…

“Fine. I agree to your terms. What’s first on that list of yours?”

Any seriousness left on Colin’s face quickly melts away. He grins at her in that way that always makes her stomach flutter.

“Number One: Sharing Your First Pet,” he reads aloud. “During the course of your marriage, you and your partner will share many things together. Finances, homes, memories, and a million other things you cannot even begin to fathom now. A pet will help you prepare for those shared responsibilities. It will teach you both about the importance of…”

As Colin continues reading, Penelope feels a frown pulling down on her lips. When he finishes, she attempts to cover her disappointment with a shallow laugh.

“Game over, I guess.”

His eyebrow arches. “Pardon?”

“We’ve never shared a pet, so…”

Colin’s mouth falls wide open. He pulls his free hand to his chest, as if the aghast look on his face wasn’t enough.

“Pen… Did Mr. Whiskers mean nothing to you?”

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

Twenty Years Earlier: July 21st, 2003

Relationship Status: Sister’s Best Friend // Best Friend’s Brother

꙳

How did I end up here?

Today is Monday. Today also happens to be the first real day of summer holiday for children all across London. For most kids, that means the start of freedom — six weeks of fun, followed by real life crashing down on them when the fall term begins. But for Penelope Featherington, it marks the start of something different.

The loss of structure.

For the next six weeks, it is up to Penelope to determine how — and more importantly, where — she spends the majority of her time. She didn’t want to spend it at home. Not this morning, at least.

That was how she ended up in Grosvenor Square.

At just eight years old, there aren’t many places she can run off to unaccompanied. Even the park, just two blocks away from her home, is hard to get away with. Her mum only allowed it because she was under the impression that Eloise would be joining her — that between Penelope’s sense and Eloise’s toughness, the two girls would be safe in the nearby park. But when Penelope ran across the street to request her best friend’s company, Anthony informed her that Eloise was not available for a morning stroll in the square.

She could have gone back home, but she really didn’t want to. That was how she ended up in Grosvenor Square alone.

While walking around the park’s perimeter, she kept her eyes down, careful not to step on any cracks in the pavement. She kept her shoulders hunched, trying her best to blend in with the other park-goers. She kept her ears pointed outward, picking up every little sound that surrounded her.

She listened. To the birds chirping. To the wind rustling. To the rumbling engines of nearby traffic. Mostly, she listened to the people.

Two teenagers were fighting. She was mad. He was sorry. She said something about him cheating, then their shouts turned to whispers and Penelope couldn’t make out the rest. As she walked out of earshot, she couldn’t help but wonder what sort of exam he could have cheated on that would warrant such a reaction.

A man with a big yellow dog was flirting with a woman. Though Penelope couldn’t make out much of what he was saying, she could tell just from the look on her face that she wasn’t particularly liking what she was hearing. When Penelope got a little closer, the yellow dog started barking. By the time the man got his pet to settle down, the woman had disappeared.

A neighbour from down the street walked past, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and pushing a stroller with the other. As Mrs. Abernathy walked closer, Penelope briefly considered hiding behind the nearest tree, certain that the woman would recognise her and ask where her mum was. But before Penelope could turn and run in the opposite direction, the little blonde baby started crying and distracted the woman.

Just as she was about to turn the corner and listen into the teenage couple’s fight again, Penelope heard something new.

“Meow.”

At first, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. But no. When she walked to the bush that the noise had originated from, two round green eyes stared back at her.

Oh, right.

Penelope looks down at the little grey ball of fur currently nestled in her arms.

After approaching him in the park, the second thing she noticed was the kitten’s whiskers. They were so long — so disproportionate to how small everything else about him looked. He was so scrawny that Penelope couldn’t tell if he was actually a kitten, or just an older cat who had spent too much time with too little food in his stomach.

She spent an hour searching Grosvenor Square and the surrounding area for his family. But with no collar and evidently no family in sight, Penelope decided to take her new friend home.

Penelope and the cat spent approximately 20 minutes walking the 10-minute route home; she slowed her steps, took unnecessary turns, and waited longer than needed at crosswalks. During all of that time, she held the cat tightly to her chest, shielding him from the rest of the world with the nest she made out of her yellow cardigan. Also during that time, she practised what she would say to her mum once she and her hopeful pet arrived back at home.

“Penelope. Anne. Featherington. Get that rodent out of my house!”

It had not gone well. But in truth, Penelope knew long before she landed back on her doorstep that this was all a lost cause. That there was nothing in the world she could have said to convince her mother to let her keep the cat.

Penelope had followed her mother’s instructions, fleeing from their home as quickly as her feet would allow. She didn’t have much of a plan once she hit the pavement outside, but like they so often do, her feet automatically started walking in the direction of the home across the street; they stopped short before she could reach it.

Mr. Bridgerton died last summer. Ever since that morning in August when they learned of the awful news, Penelope’s mum has incessantly warned her against showing up at their door unannounced. After all, there are eight fatherless children in that house now — the youngest of which never even got to meet her father. They have enough going on as it is.

They have enough going on as it is, Penelope repeats again and again and again.

That’s how she got here. Sitting on the curb outside the Bridgerton household, a cat sleeping soundly in her lap.

“It’s all gonna be okay,” she whispers to herself more than she does to him.

Silently, Penelope wonders what the right thing to do is. Where the right place to go is.

The first place she thinks of is an animal shelter. Surely, that is the most logical place to bring a lost kitten to. The people there would know how to take care of him — how to find him a home with people who will love him and keep him safe. The only problem: Penelope does not know of any actual animal shelters in Mayfair.

The second place she thinks of is the fire station down the street. Firefighters save cats, don’t they? Or was that —

“Pen?”

Colin, her mind registers before she even has the chance to turn and look at him. Before she does so, she shifts in her spot and attempts to hide the contraband currently sleeping in her arms. And when she finally does set her eyes on him, her stomach starts to flutter; it always does when he smiles at her.

“Hi,” she squeaks out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to —”

“What’s that?” he asks, nodding to the kitten she clearly failed at concealing away from him. Before she has the chance to answer, he sits down beside her on the curb.

“Oh, I, uh — I found him in Grosvenor Square. He was all alone and I didn’t know where else to go…”

Her voice trails off, once again contemplating what a responsible person would do next in this situation.

“Are you gonna keep him?”

“No,” she answers, disappointment leaking through to her voice. “Mum won’t let me. She hates cats.”

Penelope takes her eyes off the kitten to look up at Colin. While he may only be two years older, he stands nearly a head above her (he’s tall for his age — she’s short for hers). Even sitting right beside him, she has to tilt her head up just to look him in the eye. As usual, his mop of hair hangs so low that it nearly covers both his eyes, but still, Penelope can see little glimpses of blue shining through strands of brown.

She’s always quite liked that shade of blue.

“I’d take him,” Colin says, raising his hand to pet the cat behind his ears. “But mum and Daph are both allergic.”

Any butterflies left in Penelope’s stomach are quickly replaced by a new sensation. This one, not so pleasant.

Mr. Bridgerton was allergic to hornets…

“Not that kind of allergic,” he reassures her, seemingly reading her mind. “They won’t, like, die or anything. Their skin will just get all red and scratchy if he gets anywhere near them.”

“Oh, uh — sorry,” she stutters out, barely comprehending his last few sentences. “I should just go.”

Pulling the kitten away from Colin, Penelope stands. She starts to turn in another direction, but is once again reminded that she has no idea where she is supposed to go.

“Stop,” Colin orders, gently. He stands too. “Where are you gonna take him?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Where are you supposed to take stray cats?”

He shrugs.

“Dunno.”

“Okay. Well —”

“But I have an idea.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

The Bridgertons live on a gold mine. Metaphorically. Literally, they live on nearly an acre of land in the middle of Mayfair.

The Bridgertons’ home has been in their family for several generations. This is the primary reason why they’re able to hold on to so much land in London’s bloodthirsty real estate market. If they ever were to sell, a row of flats would be built up in the back garden within a fortnight.

(Inheritance is the same reason why Penelope is able to remain in her own home on Grosvenor Street, despite her father’s tendency to dwindle away all of their other assets. The Featheringtons’ garden is not nearly this sprawling, though.)

“Where are we going?”

She and Colin hadn’t gone through his house. Rather, they went around it. They’re currently walking along the wall towards the back of the estate. Colin is a few steps ahead of her, tracing the cracks in the stones with his index finger.

“Have some patience, Pen.”

“I — I do.” And she does. Usually.

Usually, Penelope is a remarkably patient girl. Well-mannered. Quiet. She usually wears those attributes on her shoulders like a uniform. But for some reason, they tend to slip away from her whenever Colin is near.

She looks over her shoulder, towards the massive house behind them. It’s purposeful, she suddenly realises, that they’re walking along the shadows of this wall.

“Is Eloise home yet?” she asks, for no other reason than to fill the silence between them.

Usually, Penelope doesn’t feel the need to fill silences like these. She usually feels quite comfortable in them.

“Uh, no. Ben took her into the city for her, uh… Her doctor’s appointment. They’ll probably get back around supper time.”

Out of Colin’s view, Penelope nods.

For the past year — ever since her father died — Eloise has been seeing a doctor in the city pretty regularly. Penelope’s mum told her to never ask any follow up questions about these visits, but in her own head, she’s always wondered what type of doctor is able to fix an ailment such as heartbreak.

“Are you leaving London for the summer holiday?” she asks, another attempt to fill the void. She already knows the answer. The Bridgertons always travel up to Aubrey Hall this time of year. Always.

“No. Just staying here, I guess.”

Dread appears suddenly and sits heavily in Penelope’s stomach.

Mr. Bridgerton died at Aubrey Hall last summer. Of course they’re not eager to return.

“Oh, uh,” she eventually mumbles, her mind desperately searching for any route this conversation could take that would land them back in safe territory. “Us too,” is all she manages to say.

“Cool. I’ll see you around then.”

She feels her cheeks instantly flush. “Yeah. Cool,” she says, hoping her voice does not expose the growing warmth on her skin.

Without another word, Colin breaks away from the stone wall and walks towards a particularly dense cluster of trees at the edge of the property. He leads them to a spot that, despite spending so much of her childhood playing in this very garden, she has never seen before. It’s a little wooden shed, wide and about as tall as Penelope.

“What is that?”

“A shed,” he answers, shrugging his shoulders. “I think they used to store firewood in here — you know, back in the olden times.” Walking up next to it, he undoes the little metal latch with a flick of his index finger. “Empty now, though. I don’t think anyone remembers it’s here.”

“So…”

“So, your cat could live here.”

Penelope looks down. At some point in the last few minutes, she had somehow forgotten about the creature held tightly against her chest. She had forgotten her whole point in being here.

“Oh! Right. That’s, um…”

She steals another glance at the shed. It certainly looks like it hasn’t been used since the “olden times.”

“That’s nice of you to offer. But how would he — how would that work?”

“I know it seems bare now, but we get him a bed, milk, food — everything a cat needs to survive — and he’ll be happy here.”

Bed. Milk. Food.

“Those things cost money. I —”

Colin shrugs. “I’ll steal a tenner out of Anthony’s wallet,” he says casually.

When Penelope’s face is overtaken by shock, a cheeky smile erupts on his.

“Kidding! I’ll just tell him I’m sad. He’ll hand me some cash and tell me to go fix my feelings with ice cream.”

“Oh, okay. But…” Her mind stalls, searching for another flaw in his logic to voice aloud. The problem is, there are just so many to choose from.

“My mum always says we can’t get a pet because they’re too much responsibility. You have to take care of them. You have to feed them, make sure they —”

“Hey,” he interrupts, smile still hanging on his lips. “We’re both very responsible people. I help keep Greg alive, and that kid thinks licking an electrical socket is a fun hobby. If I can do that, keeping a cat alive will be nothing.”

“So we would, um…” She steals yet another glance at the shed in front of them; she can’t help but look at it and see a cage. “We would just keep him locked up in there all day?”

“No,” he reassures her. “We’ll keep the door open — or I could even cut a cat-sized hole in the side. You know, so he can come and go as he pleases.”

“But if he’s able to leave that easily… Won’t he get lost again?”

Colin shakes his head.

“If I know anything about cats it’s that if you feed them, they’ll always find their way back to you. And since you found him hanging out in Grosvenor Square, clearly he’s an outside cat, not an inside cat.”

Penelope looks down at the little grey cat in her arms. His attention is no longer on her, his round eyes darting wildly as he takes in the space around them.

“I thought only strays went outside.”

“No. A cat can have a home and not want to be cooped up in it all day long.” Colin takes a few steps towards her, raising his hand and scratching behind the kitten’s little ears. The cat seems to like it, as he starts purring immediately. “Clearly, this little guy wants to roam free.”

Yet again, Penelope feels her cheeks burn pink. She isn’t used to this — being so close to him. In fact, she can’t think of a single time when the two of them have ever been so close and so alone together. After all, Colin is her best friend’s brother — a friend of sorts, but tangentially so. Until today, he has only ever been in Penelope’s company through her friendship with Eloise.

She isn’t used to having this much of his attention on her.

“Here.” After what feels like hours, she pulls the kitten away from her chest and nearly shoves him into Colin’s. “He seems to really like you.”

Annoyingly quickly, the creature settles soundly into his arms. Clearly, Colin’s natural charm works just as well on animals as it does on human beings.

When Colin turns his back and his gaze falls on something other than her, Penelope’s mind flushes with panic. She rethinks words she had mostly brushed off just moments before.

Colin offering to spend his own money. To cut a hole in the shed. To take care of this little creature she found in a bush.

He has enough going on as it is.

When she looks to where he now stands, Penelope spots Colin setting the cat down in his prospective home. The cat takes two tiny steps across the wooden beams before Penelope walks over and hastily takes him into her arms again.

“I’m sorry, Colin. I didn’t mean to get you wrapped up in this.” She turns away, pulling the kitten even closer into her chest. “I’ll drop him off at the fire —”

“Pen, stop.”

Before she can step away, Colin’s hand falls on her shoulder. He squeezes it once before letting it drop back to his side. Although Penelope is not very experienced in receiving small physical gestures such as this, she can tell he had meant for it to be reassuring.

“He’ll be fine here. I promise.”

She turns slowly.

“Are you sure it’s not too much?”

“No,” he laughs. “Of course not. How could this little guy ever be ‘too much?’”

Pushing away all the alarm bells blaring in her head, informing her that this is a bad idea, Penelope pushes her shoulders back. She stands tall — metaphorically, of course.

“I’ll do half the work,” she tells him. “At least. I can check on his bowl every morning — make sure he has water and food and whatever else he needs. Maybe you can do the same at night. And if you ever can’t, just tell me and I’ll help. And if it ever does become too much, I can find him somewhere else to live.”

When she finally stops rambling and closes her mouth, Colin smiles again. Then, he extends his right hand towards her.

“You got yourself a deal, Featherington.”

Tentatively, Penelope raises her arm to seal said deal. But before she can make contact, Colin’s hand moves again. He turns his palm towards her, as if to signal “stop.”

“One ground rule before we make it official: let’s keep this whole thing between the two of us. Cause if Anthony finds out… he’ll send me and the cat to the nearest shelter.”

“Colin! I —”

“Kidding!” He laughs again, which has a shockingly effective influence on Penelope’s nerves.

“But really… It’s simpler if we don’t tell anyone else. Not even Eloise — she can��t keep a secret for her life.”

While thinking over his words, Penelope tilts her head upwards. She steals a not-so-quick glance at his eyes — at the little bits of blue shining through the brown.

For as long as she can remember, Penelope has always wanted more of Colin. Though she won’t be able to fully understand or define this feeling for several more years, it burns in her heart, even now. She wants to be closer to him. To make him laugh. To be his friend. To share a secret with him — even if she knows that it could very well end badly for everyone involved.

“Deal.”

With that, Penelope shakes Colin’s hand and seals their fate forever.

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

August 5th, 2003

Their secret turned out to be a rather easy one to keep.

Penelope was good at going unseen. Every morning at approximately 7:00, she snuck into the Bridgerton back garden, walking along the shadows of the east-facing wall. At approximately 7:10 every morning, she snuck out without being noticed by anyone except Colin, who always kept an eye out for her from his bedroom window. If his mum or siblings ever were to catch her back there, he highly doubts they would care or even bat an eye; before this past year, Penelope seemed to spend more time in their home than she did her own.

Colin was also good at escaping notice on his daily task. Every night around dusk, he would sneak into a bathroom, fill a plastic bottle with tap water, hide it in the pocket of whatever hoodie he happened to be wearing that day, and slip out the back door — always unseen by his family members. They keep the cat food in a little locked container in the shed — both of which Colin had bought using money he had stolen from Anthony’s wallet (not that he would admit to following through on the theft “joke” to Penelope).

As the summer droned on, and as dusk came quicker with each passing day, Colin put less and less effort into sneaking out every night. The more time passed, the more obvious it became to him, how easy it is to disappear from a home with so many people — especially when everyone seems to be looking for a person who is no longer around.

The only conspirator that ever put them at risk of being found out was Mr. Whiskers (a name Colin picked after Penelope insisted that they couldn’t just keep calling him “little guy”).

Three times in two weeks, Whiskers had loitered around the Bridgerton’s back steps following his dinner, meowing for someone’s attention. Colin had caught him the first time and shooed him off. Daphne caught him the second time and screamed bloody murder. Anthony caught him the third and nearly called animal control. The only reason he didn’t was because Gregory just so happened to push a vase off a table one room over; the mess had been too distracting.

Thankfully, Whiskers seemed wary of coming close to the Bridgerton household after that last encounter.

A routine formed. Penelope would sneak into the garden in the morning. Colin would sneak out of his home at night. Mr. Whiskers would come and go as he pleased between meals. Their paths rarely ever cross. That is, until tonight.

Tonight — like most nights — Colin can’t sleep. He ran up to his bedroom at 9:16, only after being ordered to do so by Anthony. He’s spent much of the last 145 minutes in bed staring at the ceiling. Now, bored out of his skull and needing any sort of distraction, he jumps up to grab the MP3 player and headphones sitting on the windowsill.

He turns up the volume all the way and, for the next few minutes, does his best to tune out the rest of the world. It’s probably for the best that he fails in doing so, otherwise he wouldn’t have noticed the shadow cutting across the moonlight in his back garden.

Less than five minutes later, Colin cuts along that same path; he’s far less cautious than he ever is at dusk. He knows there’s a chance that someone in the house could still be awake and spot him out here, but that risk feels less worrisome, the closer he gets to his intended destination.

Just as it comes into view, he hears sniffling. The sound is quiet, but persistent.

He sees her before she sees him. She’s sitting with her legs crossed in the shed’s open doorway, Mr. Whiskers curled up in her lap.

Colin had felt uneasy from the very moment he spotted her from his bedroom window, but a distinct wave of dread hits him cold the moment that his eyes meet Penelope’s. Hers go so wide that he swears he can see the moonlight reflecting off of them.

She doesn’t immediately speak; even her crying halts after realising that she is not alone.

“Pen?” he asks, when he can think of nothing else to say. He waits several seconds for her to give some sort of reaction. A word, a nod — anything. But still, she remains frozen in her spot in the doorway, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

“Are you o—”

“Yes,” she shoots out. “Yes, I, uh — I — I’m fine.”

Finally, Penelope moves. She places her hands around the cat’s belly and uncrosses her feet like she’s about to run off into the night. And though her claims of being “fine” offered his mind zero reassurance, Colin nods at her words anyway.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, sitting down beside her before she has the chance to flee. He raises his hand and scratches behind Mr. Whiskers’ ears while the cat remains perched on Penelope’s legs.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he offers, unprompted. “I thought I would see what Whiskers was up to.”

“Oh,” Penelope says. Then, in an even fainter voice, “Same.”

As he continues scratching, the kitten purrs; his soft murmur is the only sound in the air for several long seconds. Just when the silence begins to feel a bit too heavy on his skin, Colin drops his hand and looks up at the scene above them.

“Do you know any constellations?”

After a few more beats of silence, Penelope raises her finger to the sky. “That’s the North Star. And that’s the Little Dipper, connected to it.” She repositions her finger slightly. “And that’s the Big Dipper, right next to it.” She repositions her finger once more before dropping it. “And that’s Aries.”

Though the stars don’t shine as brightly here as they do in the country, Colin’s eyes glaze over the soft specks of light in the sky, searching for something familiar. Specifically, he’s searching for the constellation that Benedict had pointed out to him last summer at Aubrey Hall, just a few nights before their father died.

“That’s Capricorn.” He points his finger towards the sky, to his own star sign. THe snorts. “Do you know what type of creature a Capricorn is?”

Penelope shakes her head.

“Half-goat, half-fish. Like a mermaid with horns and a pair of hooves.”

Then, a miracle happens.

Penelope giggles. The sound is soft, but it cuts right through the darkness.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Not as cool as a ram, but…”

“Are there any cats in the constellations?” Penelope asks once Colin’s voice trails off.

He considers her question for a moment, recalling other star stories Benedict has told him over the years. He looks up to the sky, hoping he can discern an outline of a kitten somewhere between the lights.

“Dunno,” he finally admits. “But there are lots of stars — most of them, we can’t even see. There’s gotta be at least one cat out there. Somewhere.”

Penelope hums in agreement, looking down at her lap. “Mr. Whiskers is a good cat,” she quietly muses.

“Yeah.” Colin reaches over to pet behind his little grey ears. “The best.”

“He keeps trying to follow me home after breakfast.” She giggles softly. “He must not remember meeting my mum, or else he would stay away forever. She thought I was carrying a rat into our house. She shrieked.”

“Oh god,” Colin chuckles, and it’s only a little forced. “He tried sneaking into my house a few times. He met Anthony last time, though, and I don’t think he’s ever gonna forget that.”

She giggles again, her smile lighting up in the moonlight.

“Was he mad?”

“His face went red! Ant is always at least a little bit angry, but this was ridiculous. No normal human could get that mad about a cute little kitten hanging around their back door.”

With her eyes still pointed intently on the cat in her lap, Penelope’s voice lowers to almost a whisper. “I don’t know how people can see something so sweet and get so mad.”

Colin’s eyes don’t leave Penelope when he responds, “Me neither.”

For what feels like an unending moment, the three of them sit there in silence, looking up at the moon and the stars and the darkness all around. The longer the moment holds, the harder it becomes for Colin to push away the worries that had been building inside himself since the moment he spotted Penelope running across his back garden at midnight.

Trying his hardest to keep his tone casual…

“Was there a reason you couldn’t sleep tonight?”

She doesn’t respond right away. She doesn’t attempt to flee, either.

“No. It was…” She pauses for a very long, very quiet moment. “It was nothing.”

“Pen, you —”

“Nothing that isn’t — like — normal, I mean.”

Colin does not know what she means. He can’t imagine a single normal thing that would cause someone to run away crying from their home in the middle of the night. Especially someone as small and defenceless as Penelope.

“My mum and dad were just fighting,” she confesses, only after realising that Colin’s look of concern will not fade until she tells him the truth. “A bit louder than usual, I guess. But it’s not like I haven’t heard them fight a million times before.”

“That’s —” not normal, he almost says, but holds his tongue at the last moment.

He’s suddenly, alarmingly struck by the fact that what he deems “normal” might not be the same for Penelope. That there are “normal” things in his own life that others would say are unimaginable for a kid his age.

That’s not right, would be more accurate. But he doesn’t say that either. Instead, he simply asks, “Do you want to come inside? El is probably asleep, but I could wake her —”

“No,” she answers, looking him in the eye for the first time in what feels like hours. “Thank you, but… It’s really late. I should go back home before someone notices I left.” She lets out one awkward, forced laugh before saying, “Mum will kill me if she realises I slipped out.”

With one quick motion, Penelope scoops up Whiskers, plops him into Colin’s lap, then pushes herself out of the shed and back on solid ground. Just as she looks like she’s about to turn and run, Colin gathers the cat in his arms and stands beside her.

“Are you sure? It’s no bother.”

For the briefest moment, it almost looks like doubt crosses Penelope’s face. But then, just as quickly, she shakes her head.

“I should go home.”

Regretfully, Colin tears his eyes away from hers, turning his head to glance at his own home in the distance. The only light still on comes from his bedroom window.

“Yeah,” he grumbles, turning back to her. “I guess I should too.”

Penelope nods. Just when it looks like she’s about to turn and disappear into the darkness, Colin blurts something out.

“Do you wanna meet here again in the morning? When you feed Mr. Whiskers?”

She seems taken aback by his question. She doesn’t immediately respond to it with words, but with a confused, almost worried expression on her face.

“I —”

“Our system’s efficient and all,” he cuts in, “but we haven’t exactly seen much of each other since we started taking care of him. I dunno, I guess I just thought that we would be hanging out more this summer.”

“Oh!” Her voice suddenly comes out so high that it borders a squeak. “I know what you mean. I…”

Her voice trails off. It remains silent for so long that Colin wonders if it's his turn to speak. But before he can blurt anything else out, she opens her mouth.

“I’d like that.”

“Cool,” he says, lips pulling into a smile. “See you tomorrow.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

August 14th, 2003

“I’m not sure I understand the rules of this game.”

“It’s our game. The rules can be whatever we want them to be.”

Penelope stands with the tips of her toes and the palms of her hands pressed neatly against Colin’s matching sets. There’s a piece of cat biscuit placed between her right palm and his left. There’s a tiny grey cat peering up at them from where their shoes connect; he looks just as confused on the parameters of this game as Penelope feels.

The rules, they eventually settle on, are these:

Before getting into position, one person briefly presents a piece of biscuit to Mr. Whiskers. Players must take turns to avoid leading the cat towards favouritism.

On the count of three, one person takes the biscuit into their hands, then both turn around and run in opposite directions.

Mr. Whiskers follows whoever he believes holds his treat.

She ends up with the biscuit three times. He ends up with it five times. It falls to the ground between them eleven times. Each time, without fail, Mr. Whiskers immediately takes off after Penelope.

“This isn’t fair!” Colin calls out from behind a tree on their twentieth attempt at this so-called ‘game.’ “It’s not my fault you bonded with him first.” He points a finger at the cat currently pawing at her ankles. “I feed you just as much as she does — traitor!”

“Shhh, Colin!” Penelope whisper-yells. “Someone might hear you.”

“Oh, who cares?”

I care, Penelope thinks. She doesn’t want Colin’s mum or any one of his many siblings to stumble upon them back here. She’s not ready to give up this secret. She’s not willing to end this game.

Not yet, anyway.

“Mr. Whiskers cares. I doubt he wants to be kicked out of his home just because you’re a sore loser.”

Penelope picks up Whiskers from the patch of dirt he had just been rolling around in. She walks over to the shed where Colin now sits, then gently plops the brown-tinged grey cat in his lap.

“Well, he should have thought about that before picking sides.”

Like she has become accustomed to doing over the past two weeks, Penelope sits down on the other end of the shed’s open doorway. Colin’s body is turned towards her, but she keeps hers positioned outwards, as if to keep watch.

After a moment of quiet, he clears his throat.

“You can come over for dinner tonight. You know, if you want.”

“Oh, no. That’s okay,” Penelope says quickly. Dismissively. “Mum will expect me home soon. I think we’re having stew.”

“Yeah, but what about tomor—”

Colin’s voice stops short before he can get that last word out. Then, he pivots his head so he is no longer facing her.

“Well, maybe not tomorrow,” he eventually mutters, quieter than before. “But another day.”

Tomorrow is the anniversary, Penelope remembers. Along with that sudden, heart-aching reminder comes a little voice in her head that sounds distinctly like her mother.

They have enough going on as it is.

“I — I don’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t.” He finally looks her in the eye again. “Trust me, you wouldn’t. When you have eight kids, one more mouth hardly makes a difference.” He nods his head towards the house in the distance, partially obstructed by the scattering of trees they’ve found themselves in.

“Eloise would be happy if you stopped in. Mum too.”

Trying her absolute hardest to ignore that little voice in her head…

“Yeah. Another day. Soon.”

“Good.”

After another moment of quiet, Penelope pushes herself forward and lands with two feet in the grass.

“I really should head back, though.”

“Okay, I’ll —”

“But, Colin?” she interrupts (a truly rare occurrence for Penelope Featherington).

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking and… Maybe I could feed Mr. Whiskers breakfast and dinner tomorrow. I know we have our system, but… I just — you shouldn’t have to deal with taking care of him on top of any… family stuff.”

Colin doesn't respond right away. He spends several seconds looking at her with his brows furrowed; Mr. Whiskers uses that time to settle even deeper into his arms. Finally, his lips part. Penelope expects the first word out of his mouth to be “No,” but it isn’t.

“Sure.” He nods, brows lifting up a bit. “Thanks, Pen. That’s kind of you to offer.”

Penelope is surprised by his words. Not just because she was expecting him to dismiss her offer, but because she had never been thanked for something like this before. Her entire life, kindness was something that had been expected of her, but never really appreciated. She had been rewarded for her kindness in the past, but never thanked for it.

She’s hesitant to accept such thanks — gratitude for something as small as offering up a few minutes of her time for someone who had experienced more grief than she could even begin to imagine. But she can’t bring herself to deny it either. So instead, she simply nods and says, “Goodnight, Colin.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

August 25th, 2003

It’s Monday morning, 6:55 AM. Like most mornings around this time, Penelope is walking along the Bridgerton’s east-facing wall, feet stepping in the shadows, one finger tracing the stones beside her. Unlike most mornings, when she steps away from the wall and towards the shed hidden by a cluster of trees, she notices that the door that is always open is suddenly shut tight.

At the beginning of the summer, Penelope had convinced Colin not to cut a cat-sized opening in the side of the shed (he wanted to use a saw from his garage). Instead, they decided to always keep the door open so Mr. Whiskers could come and go as he pleases. Always.

Her feet pace faster with each and every step, intrigue and anxiety building up and piling over the closer she gets to that closed door.

It could not have closed on its own. It wasn’t the wind or gravity or Whiskers himself. The latch is locked. Someone locked it.

Just as she raises her arm to swing the wooden door back open, Penelope hears footsteps. Quick and increasingly loud footsteps. She (literally) jumps around, heat pounding, eyes wide, and sees…

“Colin! Where’s Mr. Whiskers?!”

“In there.”

He points to the shed behind her, still shut tight. Once he gets close enough, he reaches over her shoulder and finally undoes the latch. Just as promised, the cat is there, curiously staring up at them with those round green eyes.

“He keeps trying to follow me back into the house after I feed him at night. Last night, he was scratching at the back door. Thank god I got to him before Anthony did.”

“So he was just locked in there all night?”

She spares another sideways glance at the shed’s interior. It’s not nearly as bare as it had been that first day she looked inside. Now, there are two containers, two bowls, two electric lanterns, a blanket, a few cat toys, and a few human toys she assumes once belonged to Colin.

To an animal as tiny as Mr. Whiskers, this place might seem huge — but to Penelope, it all feels very claustrophobic.

“Yeah,” Colin finally answers, sounding guilty. “But sometimes it’s just safer for him to stay put for a little while. Even outdoor cats need to be reigned in some nights.”

Penelope doesn’t know whether to agree or disagree with his words, so she tries her best to ignore them — for a little while, at least. After climbing into the shed and filling his empty bowl with food, she gives Whiskers an affection bop on the head.

“You’re not wrong,” she belatedly answers. When Mr. Whiskers finishes his meal, Penelope turns and hops back onto the grass. Tilting her head to look Colin in the eye, she says, “But maybe Mr. Whiskers isn’t an outside cat after all. Maybe that’s why he keeps trying to follow us back to our own homes.”

“I thought that was just because he loves us.”

Penelope can’t help but roll her eyes just a little. Leave it to Colin Bridgerton to transform guilt into charm in under 30 seconds.

“Well…” She turns back to Mr. Whiskers again. As usual, he’s peering up at them with a transfixed — maybe even loving — stare. “Maybe you have a point.”

“I usually do —”

“But still… Do you really think this is what’s best for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…”

She bites her tongue. Literally.

All of this started because of her own selfish desires. To keep the cat. To occupy Colin’s attention. To possess a reason to get out of her house every morning.

Her selfishness and its inevitable consequences were easy to overlook at the start of the summer. But now…

“The summer is almost over. When we go back to school, we won’t be able to look out for him all day. Then the winter will come and this little shed isn’t going to be very warm.” She stops ranting briefly to glance down at the little grey cat in the doorway. “What if he gets sick? Or needs a vet? I just don’t know if this is really his best option.”

She points both hands towards the shed. Towards the small wooden structure that completely transformed her summer. Towards the only home Mr. Whiskers has ever known — dim and claustrophobic as it may be. She expects Colin’s eyes to follow her lead, but they don’t.

For a moment, it feels as though her presence completely slips from his view. His eyes are fixated on something in the distance. Something in the opposite direction. Something —

“Shite!”

Colin’s arms hastily wrap around Penelope’s waist. It takes everything in her not to shriek in surprise as he practically throws her into the shed. Thankfully, Mr. Whiskers jumps backwards instantly, or else she surely would have crushed him on impact.

“Colin! What —”

“Shh!”

He climbs in and quickly shuts the door behind him. If it were not for the electric lamps in the corner, illuminating the space with what little battery power they have left, Penelope wouldn’t discern him mouthing: “Anthony.”

They sit on opposite sides of the shed, the tips of their toes touching in the limited space. Penelope wonders if Colin can feel her shaking through the rubber edges of her yellow converse. The concerned look he throws her tells her that he must.

“You okay?” he mouths.

She thinks about nodding. She briefly wonders if a nod counts as a lie, or if lies can only be spoken aloud. In the end, she doesn’t do anything — except remain frozen in her spot.

Everything is quiet. For a fleeting moment, Penelope actually believes they may have gone unnoticed. Then, just as Mr. Whiskers decides to move out of the corner and crosses the wooden floor, she remembers that the latch — the flimsy piece of metal that is the only means of securing this thing — is on the other side. And when the cat uses his tiny paw to press against the door’s interior, she barely has time to gasp before it swings open.

The morning light nearly blinds her, but not enough to miss Anthony Bridgerton’s very mad, very red face staring back at her.

“Colin — what the hell?!”

Just as Colin had thrown her into the shed less than a minute ago, Anthony now pulls Penelope out of it by her shoulders. Just like Whiskers, she miraculously manages to land on her feet.

“I knew it! I knew you were irresponsible, but this —” He bends down and grabs Whiskers by the scruff of his neck. “This is insane. Even for you.”

Anthony turns to Penelope, looking as though he only just now discovered her presence here. In mere seconds, she watches his face turn from anger to shock to annoyance. Then, he turns to face his little brother again.

“I will be the responsible adult and make sure this — thing — finds an actual home and doesn’t continue living on the streets.” With a near-growl caught in his throat, he tells Colin, “We will discuss this later.”

Anthony turns to leave, but stops just as quickly.

“And Colin, do not mention this to mum. Or anyone else.”

He starts then stops again.

“And Penelope, please do not let my brother’s bad influence rub off on you. A nice girl like you has enough trouble as it is being friends with Eloise.”

It isn’t until Anthony has stomped out of sight with Mr. Whiskers in tow that Penelope starts to regain control of her body and mind. Slowly, she turns towards Colin. She uses every one of those seconds to begin preparing an apology. For getting him in trouble with his brother. For putting him in this mess to begin with. For being a bad friend. But when their eyes meet… Colin does not look as though he is expecting an apology of any sort.

He laughs.

“Did you see the look on his face?!”

“Uh — I don’t —”

“He looked like a tomato! I swear one day he’s gonna burst and —”

“Colin,” she tries to cut in, to little avail.

“— pasta sauce is gonna go flying ev—”

“Colin!” she says again, a bit louder this time. Thankfully, it seems to get his attention. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have —”

“Oh god, Pen. Don’t be sorry.”

“But your — your brother —”

“I should be apologising on Ant’s behalf. Even if you and him were both right about Whiskers needing somewhere else to live.”

Penelope’s mouth parts, but all she can do is nod in response to those last few words. As much as she will miss her tiny, furry friend, this is for the best. For Whiskers, at least.

“But Anthony was so mad at you. And I —”

“He’ll get over it. That’s the great thing about having seven siblings — wait five minutes and someone will do something ten times stupider. Daphne and Eloise are probably inside getting into a fist fight as we speak.”

The mention of her best friend’s name temporarily draws Penelope’s thoughts away from her internal pity party. While she did hang out with Eloise over the last few weeks, their time together felt far less frequent and more fleeting than it ever had during previous summer holidays. During any time before last August.

“You wanna come over for dinner tonight?” Colin asks, breaking Penelope from her thoughts.

“Hmm?”

“I said,” he smirks, “do you want to come over for dinner tonight?”

“I don’t know… Anthony seemed —”

“Don’t worry about him — he’ll get over it. And you heard him, he’s not even going to rat us out to my mum.” He takes a step forward, then places his hand on Penelope’s shoulder. He squeezes it once. “It’ll be fun. Everyone will be excited to see you.”

Not for the first time — and certainly not the last — Penelope feels at a loss for words. All she can manage is a tiny nod. A nearly imperceptible movement.

Colin smiles.

“Good. Just so you know, the door is always open. Always.”

Finally, little Penelope Featherington finds her voice again.

“I know.”

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

There’s a smile pulling apart Penelope’s lips, but she does her best to cover it with another fork full of fried rice. Colin — of course — sees right through her attempt at concealment.

“So…”

“Anthony was right. We were awfully irresponsible that summer. That cat was better off after Danbury took him in and re-named him Lord Whiskers.”

“Hey — give us a little credit! How many 8 or 10-year-olds do you know who could keep a cat alive for an entire summer all by themselves?”

“The only impressive thing we did that summer was keeping our little secret hidden from the rest of your family.”

“What are you talking about?!” Colin practically cries out, unable to keep his ever-charming laugh from escaping his throat as he speaks. “Do not downplay our role in raising Whiskers. You rescued him from the mean streets of London. I —”

“I found him hiding out in a bush in Grosvenor Square!”

“Exactly! And I —”

“Colin!”

“I built him a home,” he barely manages to get out through another round of laughter.

“That’s a bit over-dra—”

“We fed and took care of him for over a month. We were just kids — that’s pretty impressive. That means something.”

In her heart, Penelope knows that — obviously — it means something. But does it mean what Colin wants it to mean? That they should get married?

Even with the rules he set forth, it seems like an insane connection to even consider.

“I don’t know…”

“For five weeks, he was ours. That means a lot.”

For a moment, Penelope does consider it.

She thinks about who Colin was to her before she found that cat. A friend — of sorts. Her best friend’s brother. A neighbour. A crush. Someone she looked at and longed for.

Next, she thinks about who Colin was to her on that morning, when Anthony found them hiding out in a tiny wooden shed. A friend. A fellow kid. A conspirator. Someone who saw her cowering in the dark and asked if she was okay.

So what, if their hypothetical marriage hinges on a technicality? People have married on flimsier grounds before.

“Fine,” she relents. “It counts.”

A moment ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Colin’s grin grows even wider.

“Of course it does.”

Penelope scoffs, yet another lazy attempt to cover the grin on her own face. Colin makes no attempt to call her out on it, though. He’s too busy scrolling on his phone.

“Let’s see what we have next to cross off…”

#bridgerton #fanfiction #polin #fanfic #weepingfromacedartree #ten milestones #penelope x colin #penelope featherington #colin bridgerton

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themurderrose · 5 months

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yiling fertility thoughts [test tube baby A Yuan cultivated via resentful energy by WWX]

further to my evil author day fic post available at the end of this post, I am HAVING THOUGHTS about how to write more in the verse. So, let us get into it:

THINKING ABOUT WWX WHO WANTED HER OWN FAMILY SO MUCH SHE CULTIVATED A CHILD ALL BY HERSELF ONLY NOBODY BELIEVED HER AND THOUGHT SHE'D GONE AND GOTTEN HERSELF KNOCKED UP SO THEY DISOWNED HER AND LWJ DIDN'T HEAR ABOUT IT UNTIL SHE WAS GONE FAST FORWARD 4 YEARS AND WWX IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF FERTILITY RESEARCH AND CORUNS A CLINIC WITH WEN QING

I'm thinking about wwx who uses resentful energy in her fertility work, and lwj who uses like purity rituals and stuff in her fertility work, and thinking about them meeting at a medical conference where they're both lecturing

thinking about lil baby a yuan in the conference daycare, and lwj falling Fast cause there is Literally No Other Way for lwj to fall thinking about them

thinking about lwj seeing a yuan and immediately forgetting her uncles teachings about 'those born from resentful energy are poisoned and wrong' and going 'how can anyone as cute as this be poisoned and wrong'

I'm thinking about yanli and her hubby ended up with Yiling Fertility. I'm thinking that they were having lots of trouble conceiving because despite how Prevalent his father was, jin zixuan is practically completely infertile. thinking about them going to lwj and it not working even after they've gone through 3 rounds of 'pure 'Purely cultivated' ivf, and then yanli sitting up one night crying about never being able to have a child because 'a xuan i'm getting older'

thinking about zixuan going Right. thinking about him down wwx because he'd heard something through a grapevine, and booking an appointment with just him first and being all 'i know a li's family have been awful to you - your family - but professionally, do you think you could treat her? us? we really want a child, and we've been to the lan clinic for three rounds

so wwx is like 👀 👀 👀 'how is shijie? or, well, Jiang Yanli? or does she— is it Jin now? How, how is your wife?" and jzx is just, not horrified, he'd known how badly the jiangs had imploded but he hadn't known you know? And he's like 'call her Yanli, at least for now. And yes, it's Jin privately but she keeps Jiang professionally' (idk if they do that in china?! but for now at least they do) and wwx is nodding and nodding and then wen ning opens the door "can i get you tea? coffee? boss?" and wwx is like "coffee please, a ning. Jin Zixuan, I'll be five minutes, you can tell A ning what you'd like to drink." and darts from the room, running into the loos and having a controlled 3 min breakdown, washing her face, reaplying her makeup and returning to her office, controlled, in charge, The Boss ™️

thinking about how they make plans to bring Yanli in for a check up, scheduling things and wwx opens a file for them, taking notes etc. [the fic part that ive published]

thinking about JZX saying 'if you need our notes from the Lans—" and WWX is like Absolutely not we do things my way, but secretly like ooo lan zhan cause WHEN IS SHE NOT.

thinking about wwx choosing not to contact the Lan clinic because she knows she'll only get condemnation there and they likely will not pass on their records, and although she's always liked lan zhan, if wen qing taught her anything it was self preservation

anyway thinking thoughts about maybe a lz pov for another chapter...

if that intrigued you at all please check this out 👇

#fic post #drabble #worldbuilding #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan zhan #jiang yanli #jin zixuan #fertility #modern with magic

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paulythide · 10 months

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Tensei Slime One Shot

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Authors note.

-Now, the reason why I posted this here is because I don't feel that is my best job so far. I couldn't bring myself to add more because I lost inspiration or was simply burned out.

-I guess that Tensei Slime wasn't really a history that resonated with me that much.

-Yet, I am quite stubborn, and I feel that in the near future, I'll come back to this history and give it another shot. Maybe, I'll change things or re-write this. Or think of something else. Nevertheless, decided to update this here for those who wanted to read it.

-Also, the reason why I would like to come back to this in the future is because I kind of wanted to make it a sort of RimuruxGaladriel type of history. I just think I could make it work... sort of.

Still, hopefully, this isn't going to be the last time I try to make this one. But until then.

-Adding, I'll not post this to either Fanfic.Net or AO3. I don't think it is good enough for it.

-Also, if you wish to support me with anything, please donate to my Paypal account. Your donations help me with continuing my work and keeping a constant update of chapters to all of my works.

-Paypal - [email protected]

(Edit... I posted on AO3)

#ao3 author #fanfiction #oc #new chapter #one shot #overlord oc #tensei shitara slime datta ken #that time i got reincarnated as a slime #crossover

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powertaco · 4 months

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2023 Writing in review (Today's promptmas at the bottom)

Long one inc-

Another year has come and gone. Or something.

Promptmas was a thing. Kinda fun I think. Hopefully (even though a few are still left) everyone liked their lil promptmas fics!

Burning WhiteRose and Cinwin were far more requested than I thought they would be, so that's neat. I will say Hailstorm (WR+Nora) is the most unique pairing I was asked to do tied with JBS so that's fun.

Not sure why I decided to start them like two weeks before December instead of any other time, but hey. Getting sick kinda blew, and means Shattered Moon will be finished come new year. Apologies BottledLemon for that one, but instead of the story being maybe 10k the first chapter alone was about 8k.

My inability to be compact strikes once again.

Plans for next year are to write more, and get better at writing, which is an ongoing process. Also fun would be to get ever closer to getting DWR out of rarepair status (we’re almost to 75 as of the time of writing this which is 3/8th of the way there!).

It wouldn’t stop me from writing them because I have issues, but hey them is the breaks.

Favorite short non DWR story this year?

Probably Shot to the Heart

Something about it just being a quick want a nail with a start and end point was fun with a large amount of fun work to do fleshing her out as more than an extra Jaune harem girl.

Plans for next year include a lot of work. In theory I’d like to finish ALL of my current WIP’s which leads me to a question. Do you prefer the random update schedule like before? Or do you/would you prefer it to hyper focus on one story ala Altered Paths or In Plain Sight where I focus about 75% of the story updates on a fic until it’s done then go to the next one?

Do you have any preferences for fics you'd like me to update first from my WIP's? Do you have a pairing you'd like to see (leave this in the comments por favor)

Next to last: Out of all the promptmas fics which, if any would you liked to see turned into short stories? Take your pic, and leave a comment or reblog with the answer so I can count it.

Finally for those of you that do read the fics what would you say I should work on improving most? Pacing, plot, dialogue, etc.

Goals for the next year are to get back into shape and hit my ee dan belt (kinda slacking on it tbh), write more, and improve the writing. Probably try to save money too, but I'll just end up comming more stuff for my goobers.

Have Tiny Samus wishing you a happy holidays and new year from her favorite gift box.

Promtpmas 28- When Doing it Wrong Goes Right-

Weiss had always known Ruby was special and strange. She never seemed to do anything right, or at least right by her fathers standards.

So in that regard she shouldn't have been surprised when she didn't even manage to die right.

Have some girls for the road!

#rwby #writing #death's whiterose #whiterose #plus young maria #frosensteel #royal snipers

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choicesficwriterscreations · 1 year

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CFWC Writer of the Month: liaromancewriter

Each month CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers, and this month’s writer of the month is @liaromancewriter ! We hope you will enjoy learning more about her and her work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr blog: liaromancewriter Tumblr Masterlist Maxenna Masterlist

Tumblr Blog:

How do you want to be known on Tumblr?

Lia or Mal. Both are my nicknames in real life, depending on who’s calling, so I respond to either.

1- When did you start playing Choices? What's the first book you played?

I first downloaded Choices in August 2020 after being bombarded with its ads on another game. I figured I'll try it and see what it was about. My average track record for mobile games is 2-3 months, and then I get bored and delete the app. That didn't happen here because I quickly realized it's not a game but a library of fiction books in all genres. Two and a half years later, I'm still here reading Choices.

The first book I played (read?) was The Royal Romance. I believe it pre-loaded when I opened the app the first time. I fell in love with the Prince (who I named Aiden as it's my favorite boy name) from the first moment. To this day, I think the first two TRR books are the most romantic stories on Choices.

Incidentally, I started playing Open Heart at the same time, but mostly to earn diamonds for TRR since medical stories weren’t really my thing (that’s changed now obviously). But Ethan Ramsey was equally irresistible and I had a hard time saving my diamonds when romancing the two.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I didn't know there was something called a Choices fandom, so it's very happenstance. Unofficially, I joined in November 2020 as a silent reader and didn't have a Tumblr account. Officially, I created my Tumblr account on December 7 and started becoming more active in January 2021.

I had just finished Open Heart: Second Year and then Platinum (for the fourth time), and was feeling adrift. I was obsessed with Raleigh Carrera and googled him out of curiosity to see what might be out there. I came across fics posted on AO3 and then Tumblr.

Then, I googled Ethan Ramsey as I was missing OH and just wanted to get lost in that world again. I came across a plethora of fanfics, mostly on Tumblr. I originally started reading them on my mobile browser and still have masterlist pages bookmarked (in order) on Safari for @lem-20 (the first OH writer I read and followed because her pfp match my book sprite), @jamespotterthefirst and @starrystarrytrouble.

I didn't know fanfiction was a thing, so I was a bit baffled by all of it initially. The more I read, the more I loved the interpretations others were bringing to the story. I was also generally impressed by writers unafraid to write and post their work for the world to read, and that inspired me to want to publish my original stories online.

3- How did you pick your url name?

My original intent with Tumblr was to publish my original romantic fiction novel, Happy Ever After. And, maybe in the future write and post more original romance short stories as an exercise to rediscover my fiction voice.

When I was creating the account, I blanked on what to call it. In a burst of "just pick a username already", I named my blog liaromancewriter to represent my nickname (Lia) and the type of stories I would be posting (romance).

By the way, my desired account name initially was hopelessromantic, but it was taken. When I was setting up the blog headline and description, I decided to go with The Hopeful Romantic because the phrasing best embodied my perspective of soulmates and happy ever afters.

4- Go back to your archive and tell us about the first post on your Choices blog.

My first Choices fandom post was a reblog game response on January 11. All posts on my blog before that were chapters of Happy Ever After.

5- How long have you been writing fanfiction?

I published my first ever fanfic, First Impressions, on February 15, 2021. So, about 22 months.

6- What is your favorite Choices book to write about?

I only write for Open Heart, so I would say it remains my favorite as I keep coming up with stories for this extended universe I’ve created for my pairings.

7- Share the first fanfic you wrote with us. Do you still like it or would you change anything about it?

The first fic I submitted to CFWC was Me Before You on April 5, 2021. I think I’d only heard about this blog in March of that year and didn’t know that anyone could submit.

It’s very much an introspective piece, showing Ethan’s inner thoughts, and Cassie's too. I love writing descriptive stories about what people are thinking and feeling. It’s when my writing is the strongest.

I still like that story. Having said that, the middle of this fic drags a little, so I’d probably want to tighten that up. I also hadn't fully developed my headcanon for their relationship yet. Anyone who reads my work knows that it's like a TV series where everything is connected, and the plot continues along a specific timeline, even if one-shots are posted at different times of the year.

So the timeline inside the story doesn't quite sync up perfectly with the rest, but I've learnt to let it go....somewhat. 😂

8- What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Can I pick two? I’m picking two, one for each of my pairings. At this stage, they’re both equal OTPs anyway.

Ethan & Cassie: Come Undone

Max & Sienna: Unforgettable

9- Do you have a fic that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to be but could use a little more love?

I know that notes aren't everything since there are many silent readers out there. But it's the only metric Tumblr allows writers to use. So, this answer is solely based on that.

It’s not a fic, but a series. The original Maxenna series, Then There Was You, was incredibly popular both in terms of notes and comments and in attracting new readers despite the fact that I wrote it after the series had already ended, and it was a side character (Sienna) and an OC (Max). I’m forever grateful because it’s an original story in every sense of the word, with some nods/references to canon. Despite the fact that it’s Sienna, she’s an OC, too, since we don’t know too much about her in canon.

For the second part of this question, I thought Seeing Red would have been more popular. It's angsty, and has Ethan’s relationship with Louise, Cassie and Ethan fighting (somewhat). So, it was surprising it didn't get as many notes. But then, I also wrote it in 2022, and the fandom isn't what it used to be. So that could be one reason.

10- If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Fluff...absolutely 100% fluff. Anyone who knows me for five seconds knows that I'm all about finding and keeping your soulmate. Real life is hard, the fictional world doesn't have to be.

I grew up reading fairytales and love Hallmark movies. When I discovered romance books in uni, I fell in love with the journey of two people falling in love and finding their happy ever after. I also enjoy writing about relationships; while there are angsty moments in those, it's the resolution of finding your way to the light that makes me happy. Happy Endings Guaranteed is my motto.

11- Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

I bring parts of myself to all my characters. In real life, I'm more like Ethan and Max; the professional and personal elements in their personalities are based on me and my experiences.

Cassie's ambition and determination to prove herself are pure me. That's why even in canon, I never gave a thought to why a Junior Fellow was qualified to head the Diagnostics Team. I was running my own department by the time I was 30. It's all about seizing opportunities even if you don't think you're ready. You learn on the job and eventually make it your own.

One other observation is that I’m a champion researcher and accuracy is important to me. So, when I write I bring that accuracy and plausability to all scenarios. My Google history will attest to that. 😝

12- What element of writing do you struggle with most?

I struggle with writing common, every day body gestures without repeating myself. I can visualize the scene in my head like someone wrapping their arms around the other or framing their lover’s face between their hands. But I don’t always know how to write it well or at least have more diversity in the words/expressions that I use.

13- Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

No. I don't do WIPs. Sometimes I'm not happy with a fic, so I'll write the first draft but not publish it for a while. I'll do/write other things and then come back to start editing the fic until it works. Candy Thieves and Postcard Memories are two good examples of that.

I do have a document with about 20+ possible story ideas, but some of those are random thoughts that might or might not have a story in them.

14- If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

Absolutely! I mostly share my Wattpad account with them rather than Tumblr as the former can be easier to navigate for novice readers. But my close friends have my Tumblr blog link.

I always ask them to read Happy Ever After (original work) first since it’s mine and doesn’t require knowledge of canon. But for fanfiction, I tell people to start at the top of my masterlist and work their way down. This way, they’ll get to meet my characters from the beginning and go on the journey with them, even if they’ve never read canon.

15 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing?

I’m mostly influenced by published authors with Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz and Julie Garwood leading the pack. I love how Nora does scene setting and descriptions, and shows relationships between people (romantic and platonic); my approach to storytelling is largely influenced by her.

Jayne Ann Krentz does a great job of writing spunky heroines who aren’t afraid to take chances, no matter if it’s a modern setting, paranormal or historical. While Julie Garwood’s novels are fluffy with wonderfully memorable characters especially the LI. Aiden Madison remains my perfect guy to this day and I wish he was real. 🥰

I do want to give a shoutout to @jamespotterthefirst whose edits and text fics showed me that there’s another interesting way to tell a story than writing prose. I live in hope she will finish her First Year Pictagram series (hint, hint, Bree 😉)

16- Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series?

Maxenna’s original series would make a great Hallmark movie/series. As a student of Hallmark’s formula, I think it has all the elements including a slow burn, delayed first kiss, love declaration closer to the end, swoonworthy proposal and wedding, and of course family.

17- Do you write original stories?

Absolutely, but maybe not as much recently (unless you count Maxenna). I’ve already talked about Happy Ever After here. I have 2 other completed manuscripts that I hope to do something with one day.

18 - What other hobbies do you have?

I don’t have a ton of free time, so what I do have is reserved for reading books (my first love). Other than that, I watch a lot of cooking shows on Food Network. At the end of a long and busy day, there’s something very soothing about watching other people cook/work.

19 - What’s your favorite emoji?

😂

#choices fic writers creations #writer of the month #cfwc writer of the month #liaromancewriter #open heart choices #open heart

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vergilsfluff · 2 months

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elevating desires (one-shot) victor vale x eli ever

…·.·.✵.·.·… Word Count: 2,577 words

…·.·.✵.·.·… A/N: This fic was brought to life by a post I saw on Tumblr by 'daphnedumauriwhore' who stated that Eli and Vic being in the same hotel whilst simultaneously trying to hunt each other down is really just hilarious because of the possibility of them accidentally bumping into each other somewhere random like at the breakfast buffet or at the pool. The elevator idea came from 'victorfrankingstein' who said that the thought of them running into each other in an elevator whilst people being present was funny, and in fact I found this terribly funny so I had to do a little something. It's not my best work but I didn't want it to be too long and boring so I did what I could. Who knows, if people end up liking this I may make more chapters based on different scenarios based on other places in the hotel that they can potentially meet... Anyway, this was meant to be the slightest bit funny and the slightest bit serious, but expect the unexpected! I hope you enjoy! <3

…·.·.✵.·.·… Description: Victor Vale is restless and still hung up over the fact that Eli Ever is out there roaming the streets somewhere claiming to be a hero. Perhaps Victor has some sort of gut instinct telling him to leave his apartment and try and locate Eli based on a hunch alone. Or maybe Victor thinks a drink can temporarily solve his unease on Eli's whereabouts. Either way, he finds himself entering an elevator in attempt to leave the hotel so he can figure things out alone. But that all comes to a halt once he realises that Eli is far off from leaving Victor alone.

…·.·.✵.·.·… Ao3 link: Elevating Desires (One-shot) - horridmort - Villains Series - V. E. Schwab [Archive of Our Own]

Victor shrugged his black trench coat on.

Upon hearing a noise, a shift in the silence, Mitch paused. He stopped washing the dishes and instead he twisted his head around to peer over at Victor, who was fixing the collar of his trench with one hand and fetching something in his pockets with the other.

"Treat Syd tonight," Victor ordered, placing a couple dollar bills onto the counter. "Get whatever she wants."

Syd, who was perched over the kitchen counter, craned her head to look up at Victor. He stared back with no expression in his eyes, just pale blue. Sydney knew it was code for "Don't ask about it", which usually meant he wouldn't be around by the time she and Mitch had dinner and were off to bed.

Victor's gaze drifted over to what her hands were occupied with. Observing what seemed to be a half-filled, half-forgotten crossword and a cup of hot chocolate.

Dol rose from his position beside Syd's feet and moved towards Victor's legs. Nuzzling the trims of Victor's coat. Victor looked down, not knowing whether to let his hand muzzle the fur on the dog's head or to shoo it away with his leg.

"Where are you going?" Syd spoke, asking the question Victor dreaded hearing the most. Her eyes strayed downward to Dol, watching as the fuzzball hummed against the fabric of Victor's dark clothes. The dog whined, as if it knew Victor would leave again and come back at an ungodly hour. She pat her knee, causing Dol to swivel his head around to search for the source of sound. He retreated from Victor and decided to settle against Syd's leg once again. Victor straightened his cloak. Pat down his slacks.

"Out," Victor responded, already twisting the handle of the front door. It was the usual response he gave her when she asked such things, which seemed to be quite often as of late. He could see Mitch drying his hands from the corner of his eye, but didn't bother to give his former cell mate a glance.

"Don't stay out too late," she said quickly, just before Victor was inches away from stepping outside of the hotel room. He turned to look at her once again, offering her a ghost of a smile.

"I'll try not to," he said, before shutting the door behind him.

Sydney saw through the lie.

He always smiled before he lied.

In reality, Victor wasn't planning to go that far. Theoretically, he would be back before midnight. But in actuality, he wasn't planning to slip back into the apartment that early. He had some business to take care of.

Privately.

He wouldn't call it progress, but rather just a hunch.

A hunch that was itching Victor the moment the thought came to him.

Eli.

Eli who was plaguing his mind day by day and torturing his sanity. Eli who just kept on getting away. Slipping through his fingers like cascading water.

Victor kissed his teeth. The thought of Eli still running around Merit aggravated him to the core.

With his hands buried deep in each of his cloak's pockets he began walking towards the elevator. He usually preferred taking the stairs, no matter how many there were to descend. Perhaps it was a habit. But today he was feeling a little... let's say, spontaneous.

Mitch would tease Victor, claiming it was because he had an internal fear of elevators - to which Victor responded by grabbing a hold of Mitch's nerves, turning the dial up just a little in warning.

Mitch never teased Victor about anything else after that.

Victor entered the empty elevator, his slender fingers pressing the button which claimed to bring him down to the ground floor. The doors shut and he let himself ponder over the real reason why he avoided elevators. He first thought about how it didn't allow the operator to have much control over their transportation. It was heavily reliant on the carriage itself after ordering it to descend or ascend accordingly. Complete control was something Victor enjoyed having and he realised elevators stripped that from him.

He then thought about how it was so easy for an elevator to malfunction. Although it's machinery wasn't as complex as most of the things found in Merit, there were always articles upon articles on cases which weren't so convenient for someone like Victor to experience. He had already gone several years contained in the same four walls when he was placed in solitary confinement. He couldn't bare to withstand that again.

He also thought about the change in gravity, the change in motion. The change that felt odd at first, unnerving for some, and fear-inducing to many. It was random, but he wondered what Eli would think about elevators and their escalating nature. He'd probably think un-highly of them. Claiming that it goes against God's will. No human should have as much control on their final destination. He'd probably execute the man who brought the idea of elevating carriages to life if they were still around today.

Victor wanted to laugh at that, though he put that thought to a halt once the elevator chimed unexpectedly, opening it's doors at floor four. Victor looked down at the buttons beside him to see whether he asked for the wrong floor or not. To his amusement, it was still heading down to the ground floor.

Three women entered the carriage and he suddenly remembered another reason why he despised elevators so much.

People.

Upon seeing Victor in the carriage they paused their rather loud conversation, shuffled in, and stared at each corner of the carriage to withstand the awkward silence engulfing them. Victor used his ability to create a subconscious aversion around him, the very small and very subtle amounts of pain caused the other passengers to avoid standing too close to him. They avoided making eye contact with him too.

Good. That's just what he wanted.

He didn't bother asking either of the women if they were heading upwards of downwards. Just clicked the elevator doors shut and proceeded his way to the ground floor.

But of course, another interruption just had to surface its way up.

The doors chimed open again. Victor looked up to see that it was only floor three. He cursed himself for booking a hotel room on floor five, if he was lower down it wouldn't be such a hassle.

If he had just taken the stairs, it wouldn't of been such a hassle.

Two men made their way in. Only this time, the two just couldn't stop talking.

Great, Victor thought.

He was too out of it to bother using his power. It would be quite unnatural for him to use it in such a refined space. And so he allowed for the women to stand beside him, allowed their small frames to make physical contact with his lean one, as much as it irked him. Should've wore more layers, he thought.

He tried his best to step into the far left corner of the elevator, that way he felt as though he had more control on what he could see.

"It's all over the news, man, how have you not heard about him?" Asked the man wearing a dark navy three-piece. Victor had easily guessed the man was speaking about Eli. He restrained himself from sighing out loud. The man's olive-skinned fingers made it's way to the buttons of the elevator, just beside Victor. He clicked on the last button which led to the ground floor. The man offered Victor a lopsided smile, to which Victor didn't return. His blond hair was too shiny and teeth too white. It almost ached to look at such a flashy man.

"I don't know, I just don't care about all that EO crap, you know?" Said the other, who was shorter than the blond man but dressed more refined - according to Victor's taste. He loosened the knot of his black tie slightly, fingers unbuttoning the first two buttons on his dress shirt, revealing a glimpse of chest hair.

Victor noticed two of the three women stare at the man who was casually stripping his upper garments. Their hawk eyes were shamelessly zoned in on the exposed flesh of man he had so naturally put on show. He noticed, finally, and then flashed the two women a cheeky smile - a smile that reminded Victor of Eli. It was flirty. Misleading. Destructive.

The women averted their gaze, and Victor observed how their cheeks reddened and watched as one rubbed her hands down her skirt, straightening it out and removing the sweat beading from her clammy hands. He inwardly sighed. He never really understood the art of attraction. The human desire for sexual intimacy and whatnot.

The elevator glided down once again, surprisingly making it's way past the second floor. But that didn't last too long as the carriage came to a stop, yet again. Victor looked up, containing his annoyance. His gaze fell on the sign which read: ONLY CARRIES FOUR PEOPLE.

He didn't have to do a headcount to know that this carriage unfortunately exceeded that limit.

The doors opened again, the words 'floor one' glowing just above. But what the doors revealed this time was certainly not something Victor was expecting.

Not here.

Not now.

Eli blinked. He hesitated a little before quickly regaining his composure. A smile slipped onto his face and Victor felt as though his heart was in his mouth. He stood huddled in that far left corner of the elevator like he was frozen in time. Like somehow Dominic Rushers' abilities were in effect right here and right now in this very elevator.

Eli didn't let his smile fade. He knew the effect he had on Victor and he liked it.

He liked it very much.

The women attempted to get out of the elevator, but they too seemed to be entranced by Eli's presence.

"Excuse me, ladies," he spoke, and Victor felt his voice pierce him. He was still frozen, but that ice on him didn't seem to thaw.

It was burning him.

The women weren't even inches near him anymore, they were at the front of the carriage, yet Victor still felt suffocated. Still felt as though there was a noose clutched around his throat.

Eli shimmied his way in, his hand curving along the shoulder of one of the women in a gentlemanly gesture as he maneuvered past her and into the carriage.

The women dispersed, Victor saw one of them glance backwards at Eli as they ventured onwards. But Eli's eyes were fixed on Victor.

The doors shut and Eli just stood there. His lips still playing that smile Victor hated so much. Eli opened his mouth. Tried to summon the right words but failed. He closed his mouth and instead shook his head. Closed his eyes and laughed to himself.

Victor should've taken him there. Should've taken advantage of his vulnerability. Should've gotten a hold of his nerves and squeezed. Watched the life slip out of his eyes.

But he didn't.

Couldn't.

He was still frozen.

Goddamn, Eli.

Eli opened his eyes and exhaled. Like he was relived. Like seeing Victor right here and in front of him in a fucking elevator was fabulous. Just perfect.

Eli would probably say fate brought them here to this moment.

Victor would've told him that was bullshit.

Eli looked at the two other men in the carriage - or what Victor would like to preferably rename as a torture chamber - and took into account that the two were absolved into a conversation so deep that they didn't realise the Eli Ever was within arms reach.

Eli cut his gaze towards Victor and broke the silence between them, "Well, isn't this amusing,"

"Very," Victor responded, dryly.

Eli smiled, "I have to admit, I wasn't expec-"

"What's your opinion on elevators?"

"I'm sorry," Eli said, face looking overly puzzled. "What?"

"Elevators. What do you think?" Victor said, impatiently.

"I think," he began, looking around the confined space for a good few seconds before narrowing his eyes on Victor. "They can be quite misleading, for example, I requested for the ground floor and instead got you."

"I'm hurt," Victor said, sarcastically.

"Good thing you know how to numb the pain," Eli mused.

Victor spoke through gritted teeth, "I wonder who's fault is that?"

"I'm sorry?" Eli said for a second time, only now it sounded more like an interrogative question. Victor watched as Eli shook his head in disbelief. He really wondered why he kept saying 'sorry', like it wasn't the most useless word in the world, like Eli ever knew what it was like to be in true sorrow. "Are you seriously trying to blame me for your impulsive and reckless choices? Need I remind you, you killed my girlfri-"

"And that wouldn't of ever happened if you didn't decide to go investigate something so far out of your-"

"There he goes," Eli spoke, his smile twisting into something evil. "Blaming my thesis of all things, for his own stupidity. You are a joke, Victor. "

Now, Victor really wished he took the fucking stairs.

"Now that I think about it," Eli said, his voice splitting the silence after realising that Victor wasn't going to respond. "An elevator's convivence of vertical transportation can be compared to that of the path to either heaven or hell. You click one button, you desire and aim for one thing, but end up receiving the other. And why is that? Clearly, it's due to the actions that were made to lead you onto this moment. There was a circumstance doomed to interrupt your path, in other words - a conclusion to your one true fate, no matter how hard you try to strive for your own destination, there is always a destination already written for you."

Of course he'd say something like that.

Victor scoffed in distaste. "I wanted you to say something like that."

"Oh?" Eli spoke with an eyebrow raised. "Did the local church finally manage to make you see the light?"

Victor gave him a blank stare.

"Guess not," Eli muttered to himself.

The elevator chimed and Victor realised he missed the ground floor. Eli glanced sideways to see that the two men on the carriage had already left.

The elevator was already on the highest floor, making it's way down to the bottom floor once again.

They both stood there quietly for a moment after letting their mistake sink in.

"You know, for someone who doesn't believe in God, you sure don't act like it," Eli spoke, causing Victor to narrow his eyes at him. Urging him to elaborate.

"I know you've been on my trail like a man on pilgrimage, you are following me to no end like I'm your last prayer. Your last hope."

Victor scoffed, his lips tilt into a small smile, "You're not the saint you think you are, Eli."

The elevator opened its doors. Victor let his fingers curl, he could feel Eli's nerves in his grasp. It felt as if he were holding his beating heart. He held onto it delicately, like he knew it would bleed darkness and sin if he clutched his pale fingers around it more angrily, more urgently like he had always dreamed of.

Victor gave Eli a final warning before he let the dark haired man step out of the elevator.

"Run."

"Chase me."

#my fics #fics #eli ever #victor vale #evervale #eli ever x victor vale #vicious ve schwab #villains duology #evervale fic

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