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wisp-of-chaos · 2 months

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OC Kiss Week 2024 - Day 5

Todays prompt is "Darkness". The little ficled about my and a friend illithid OC's takes place roughly a year after "Lost". Progress is made and issues are healed but some ghosts of the past are stubborn and refuse to leave without a last, nasty reminder that they're still around and not yet done with Vlassk.

As always, my little ficlet can be read here under the cut or at Ao3! Enjoy!

Day 5 - Darkness

Everything was calm and comfortable and shrouded in a cold, gentle darkness.

Vlassk’s mind was quiet and unbothered but stirred when he felt a long, slender claw carefully moving down his back; tracing one of the dark markings near his spine from his shoulder blades to his hips and then …

He twitched ever so slightly. “Stop that”, he giggled and squirmed as clever fingers teasingly brushed over his tails but he made no attempt to escape them, “I’m ticklish.”

“Oh, I know my little slug”, Vlassk heard a familiar voice chuckling and froze; dread rising and gripping on his mind and heart. No!, he thought and snapped his eyes open; fear and denial gathering in his chest and his throat tightened and constricted. No, this can’t be! He can’t be here. He’s- …

Qirilissk laughed. Sharp and cruel and with a dark promise laced into every single noise of it. “He can’t be here because he’s dead”, he voiced out Vlassk’s thoughts and his fingers dug into the soft, tender skin at the small of his back just above his tails; making Vlassk wince and gasp in pain.

Qirilissk laughed again. “Oh you silly little slug”, he cooed with poisonous sweetness as something cold snapped around Vlassk’s neck, “you should know better. I am never going to leave you. Nothing can part us, not even death.”

There was a tug, which had Vlassk choking and gasping as his neck was twisted at a most hurtful angle and pulled around; making his single red eye meet a pair of bright, green ones that smirked down at him with ill intent.

Qirilissk’s tentacles curled with a smile and the corners of his eyes narrowed and sharpened while he moved his hand from his back to his chin; tracing a claw along Vlassk’s jawline and then tilting it up even further; putting some additional strain on his already aching neck. “I will forever be a part of you, my beloved little pet”, he purred and flexed his wrist; making his claws tear and dig into Vlassk’s skin, drawing pale, silvery blood and a soft cry of pain out of him.

“No!”, Vlassk defiantly shot back at him and began to struggle; to wriggle and push against Qirilissk’s hold in an attempt to break free and get away. “You’re not a part of me! You never were and never will be! You tried to taint and corrupt me but never succeeded. You failed!”

Qirilissk hissed disapprovingly and tightened his hand around Vlassk’s face; burrowing his claws deeper into his skin and piercing flesh and muscles alike. “It seems you need a few more lessons on how to properly behave and address you master, slug”, he growled out but instead of cowering, Vlassk only laughed at him; raw and rough but sure of himself.

“Try as you may, but you’ll never break me”, he bit back with equal poison in his voice as he saw in Qirilissk’s gaze.

Qirilissk’s eyes flicked to the side and towards Vlassk’s left, blinded eye for a brief, lingering moment before his tentacles curled some more and his smile turned into a smirk. “But I already did break you, didn’t I?”

Vlassk almost laughed again. “You damaged me”, he corrected him with cold detestation and brought up his hands to push and punch against his chest, but soon enough had them gripped and restrained by a pair of slippery tentacles, “but every wound eventually heals and nothing you ever did was permanent.”

Vlassk saw Qirilissk's eyes narrowing down dangerously and felt his fingers stabbing him deeply, yet he didn’t stop. Never again would he bow and flinch away from Qirilissk’s hollow cruelty. Never again would he give up on fighting him.

“All of your efforts and experiments will fade from the colony’s archive, disappearing into nothingness. You will be forgotten and nobody will remember your name or that you even were born in the first place because all you ever did was sow fear and pain. And nothing of that ever lasts. Your existence was a complete failure!”

Qirilissk’s eyes hardened and his tentacles parted and exposed his teeth in a threatening sneer. He growled deeply and lowly but Vlassk refused to back down. Never again.

Vlassk growled right back. “You are an utter waste of time and brainwaves”, he declared; reached back with one of his tentacles, tensed it and then lunged at Qirilissk. His limb made contact; slapped him hard across the cool, damp cheek and pulled out a surprised “Ow!” out of him that had Vlassk’s mind stalling and the nightmare disappear like matutinal fog.

He blinked his eyes open and into focus and found himself staring at a very sleepy and grumpy Larik rubbing his cheek and giving him a questioning look. Vlassk tensed and nervously knotted two tentacles in front of his mouth. Oh no.

“I am so sorry, Larik”, he said and instantly shuffled closer and carefully pried Larik’s hand off of his cheek to inspect the spot he accidentally punched, “I didn’t mean to. I was dreaming and having a nightmare and- … I’m sorry. Truly. Did I hurt you?”

He gently smoothed a tentacle over the slightly bruised cheek and felt a wave of sympathy and regret rising in his mind and didn't try to mask or hide his concern. He gave Larik’s other cheek an apologetic nuzzle and cuddled closely to his chest; a soft purr rumbling out of his lungs and onto Larik’s skin.

“It’s fine”, Vlassk heard Larik not say but chuckle and felt himself getting pulled closer; his face almost getting squished against his broad, strong chest and let out a small yelp, “I understand.”

He found his frills nuzzled and the top of his head softly kissed and started to melt into the embrace; a small smile curling up the tips of his tentacles and giving his mind a warm, pleasant buzz.

“And besides”, Larik continued, a playful edge sneaking into his voice and mind as he teasingly nudged him, “you need to try harder than that to hurt me, my sweet siren.”

Vlassk blinked; then snickered, flexed his tentacle and …

“Ow!”

#oc kiss week #ockiss24 #oc kiss day 5 #my writings #random rambling #harem au #squidlings au #dnd original stuff #illithids #illithid oc's #vlassk #larik

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dr3amofagame · 3 years

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more of the mutually assured destruction duo, post-prison this time! this one was really fun, thinking about what this dynamic might be like in the future gives me SO much brainrot, im so excited. this one’s also a little dark, so make sure to read the warnings + tags !! :D

tw: implied prison abuse, starvation, toxic relationship, touch starvation, manipulation, panic attack, trauma, blood, injury

Dream hasn't been the same since he escaped prison.

And it's ironic, because Wilbur hasn't even been around, has been in hell for fuck's sake playing Competitive Solitaire for nine-odd years, but even he could've seen the self-destruction hanging like a cloud around the other's head from a million miles (and several months? years?) away. Perhaps, he thinks wryly, you can only see the signs when you've lived them, or maybe red flags don't raise alarm when you’ve painted the entire figure in blood, but it doesn't really matter, in the end, because the final result is the same.

Still, it's just a little funny when he's stopped in the middle of his journey through the Nether, not a piece of armor on him per usual and an unused netherite sword slung over his hip.

"Hello, Sapnap." The kid is standing in front of him, eyes gleaming in badly-hidden anger and desperation, smoke rising from the mottled red-black skin on his hands. "Fancy seeing you around."

"You-" Sapnap sputters, unable to speak as his face flushes red in frustration, and Wilbur smiles at him condescendingly. The expression on the other's face is one he's seen before - one Tommy had been particularly inclined to give him in the past, when his emotions raged so heavily that there was nothing for the pressure to do but build, too thick and heavy to force themselves out of his throat. "You're monsters," Sapnap manages, finally, and Wilbur quirks an eyebrow.

At least we're self-aware, he thinks, the all-too-familiar twinge of irritation at Tommy's - and apparently, Sapnap's particular brand of reckless naivety pulsing at the base of his skull. He lets none of these thoughts show on his face as he cocks his head to the side, smiles wider - and Sapnap, just like Tommy, takes the bait.

'Why are you smiling?" He looks achingly young - they all do, really, their expressions and reactions dripping with a sort of innocence and sincerity that dissolved from Wilbur's own face somewhere around the fifteen-hundreth game of poker, and it really does feel ironic, how quickly the outside world can fall apart compared to the unending constancy of the void - but he digresses.

He didn't know Sapnap well before his whole death thing, and as much as he wants to use his partner to get information on the other members of the server, he doesn't really think Dream is really even lucid enough for that - the man clearly hasn't been thinking clearly, not for a long time. It doesn't matter, though, because you learn to read people when your life becomes nothing but running the same broken-edged memories over and over again in your mind and smiling jaggedly over the same few card games - Wilbur had always been a people watcher, and Sapnap's feelings are stamped on every corner of his face.

"Monster, huh," he says, saying the word slowly, rolling it over his tongue like he's tasting it for the first time, watching from the corner of his eye as Sapnap squirms, "Interesting word you've got here. You use it often?"

Sapnap bristles, smoke curling from his nostrils - "It's what you are, dickhead."

Rolling his eyes internally, Wilbur keeps up the act, humming as he fiddles idly with his cufflink. "I mean, if you really believe that," he rocks forward on his right foot, stifling a smile at the way the younger draws back, "But really, it's all a matter of perspective." He twists himself around, pivoting around his heel, beginning to walk in an arc around Sapnap's left side, watching as he spins around, shoulders drawn up to his ears. "What do you think?"

"I think that you're full of shit," he says, voice flat, and Wilbur laughs. It's genuine, really, because well - Sapnap's different. He's fun; the entire server is, after so long in the void. You can only spend so much time with the same two people before they drive you a little up the metaphorical wall, but Sapnap's reactions are fresh and new and different, still saturated with vitality that hasn’t been leached out by the same deck of cards in the same scarred hands shuffled and reshuffled for eternity. He's interesting, and new, and most of all, predictable.

"Say, Sapnap," he continues, blowing over the other's anger, knowing that it'll only make the frustration build more. He lets his hair flop lazily over one eye, lets his smile grow wider, lips pressed together in amusement, turns his face so that it's lit eerily by the lava lake beneath them. "If we're monsters for, I don't know, setting off a few stacks of TNT," he waves his hand flippantly, watching the muscle of the other's jaw jump in poorly-hidden rage, "What does that make you for what you did to Dream?"

Sapnap's eyes go wide, and Wilbur knows he's struck the jackpot. He lets his lips part to reveal bared teeth, jagged and glinting in the light. "I'm sorry, did that hit a nerve?"

The kid's mouth opens- closes- emotions warring on his face, fists curling and uncurling at his sides, lip trembling. "We- we had to-" his hands come to his face, palms digging into his eyes, and while he's not looking, Wilbur draws his expression back a bit, becoming softer, more welcoming. When Sapnap looks back up, his eyes are shining, hands shaking still; he steps forward, then rocks back on his back foot like he doesn't know where to go. "What do you mean?" he throws the words like they're meant to be a threat, but by the end his voice has devolved into something high-pitched and keening, overflowing with desperate grief that Wilbur latches onto like a starving man (ha) with his last meal.

"I'm sorry, it does seem rather insensitive for me to assume," he resumes pacing around the other, voice lilting, soft, "I just mean, it seemed pretty obvious, don't you think? I don't think I've ever seen someone so skinny, really, but I guess that is what happens when you get starved,"

"Shut up-"

"Not to mention the whole panicking thing, I mean, he's like Tommy sometimes with all of the fucking shaky breathing and mumbling around like creepers, not that I'd know what all of that's about," he watches Sapnap through half-hooded eyes, darkly amused, "and pickaxes, oddly enough, but oh well. Who am I to judge?"

"Shut up-"

"And all of the scars - I thought they were from you, honestly, he told me about the whole 'taking his last life' thing, but then he jumped into lava one day - I guess there wasn't much to do in that cell, huh? He didn't even scream, it's really pretty fucking incredible - I thought I'd actually have to break him down a bit, but really, you've made my life so much easier-"

"SHUT UP-"

Wilbur watches with a too-wide grin as Sapnap finally, finally charges, a netherite sword appearing in his hand as he races blindly ahead, tears shining on his cheeks, his words more pain than thought as he brings the blade down-

A blur of purple, the sound of crumbling netherrack and metal meeting metal, flesh hitting flesh - Wilbur moves smoothly out of the way as Sapnap crashes to the ground, an armored figure bearing down an axe against the shield he's raised between them.

Dream, hair tangled and long, wearing armor that is far too heavy for his skinny frame, every inch of him shaking in panic, should hardly be a threat - but this is Sapnap, weakened by Wilbur's sharp words and crippled by the shock of seeing his former best friend's face again, eyes still unfocused from the rage and tears that had clouded over them moments before, so he can do little but raise his shield as the netherite slams into it, again and again. Not a word falls from Dream's lips, but he brings down the weapon at a ruthless pace - ever since he's been free, his attack style has changed greatly from the defensive style he used to favor, even to Wilbur's untrained eye - there's no skill, no art to the way he attacks anymore, just the fearful ferocity of a dog trapped in a cage for far, far too long.

He finally kicks Sapnap down the netherrack cliff that they're on, the other man left to nurse his wounds below them - Wilbur doesn't bother sparing him another thought; Dream's far too weak to cause any permanent damage. Instead, he approaches his partner, weapon, with a smile, watching, satisfied, when he whirls around with a manic expression.

"I'm alright, see?" he croons as Dream's shoulders move up and down with his heaving breaths, eyes fever-bright, teeth bared. He brings a hand down on the other's shoulder and watches as he flinches at the movement, breath hitching, every muscle freezing, knuckles pale on the handle of his axe, before moving again, stumbling forwards, hands reaching for Wilbur's head and stopping halfway. Wilbur tips his head forward, lets the shorter brush his face with trembling fingers, checking his unmarred skin for blood through the purpling bruises already forming on his cheek, and thinks how powerful he is to have a god at his beck and call, a perfect attack dog brought to heel, death itself obediently at his side.

Dream hasn't been the same since he escaped prison, and as Wilbur runs his hand up and down his back, feeling the way his spine arches at the touch, at the fluttering pulse under the skin-and-bone wrist under his fingers, he thinks how fortunate he is to be the first to notice.

#old stuff :]#queue <3 #tw abuse #tw panic attack #tw manipulation #tw toxic relationship #tw blood #tw injury #tw trauma #tw touch starvation #mutually assured destruction duo my beloved #post prison dream brainrot always lmao #my writing :D #my asks !!

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sunrisefairy · 3 years

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Don’t forget me

Pairing: George Weasley x reader

Word count: 3.6k

Summary: Y/N and George were in a car accident, leaving Y/N in a coma. George isn’t sure if their life will go back to normal.

Warning: Car accident, mention of broken bones, a few swear words, sad George.

A/N: this was longer then I planned for it to be, it’s a little one the angsty side but worth it I swear.

Taglist: @hufflepuff5972 message me if you would like to be added!

Hope you enjoy.

Italics signify a flashback.

George couldn’t remember the last time he felt this worried and scared, actually the second Wizarding War would be a close contender. But right now, he couldn’t think about anything else besides you laying unconscious in a hospital bed.

George’s leg bounced up and down in the waiting room chair. What was meant to be a romantic date night turned into nightmare.

“Merlin, I think I’m going to explode with how full I am right now. That was the best risotto I’ve ever had.” Y/N moans, relaxing in the passenger seat as George chuckles and pulls out of the parking spot.

The redhead rests his hand on Y/N’s leg, concentrating on the snow filled road. “We definitely need to have date nights more often.”

The couple had been dating for almost 6 years having met at Hogwarts. George had worked up the courage to ask the H/C haired girl out, she had said yes, and the rest was history.

“I won’t say no to that, especially if you pay” Y/N jokes and squeezes Georges hand.

George glances over at Y/N who is staring out the window watching the snow fall. He can’t believe how lucky he is, Y/N is by far the most gorgeous girl he’s every laid his eyes on.

Y/N turns to face him having sensed his gaze on her. George swears he had only been looking at the beauty next to him for a moment, but his heart stops when he sees Y/N’s eyes widen and his name escaping from her lips, drawing his attention back to the road. George panics when his brain registers the bright lights of a truck right in front of them, gripping the steering wheel with both hands he tries to swerve out of the way, causing the car to flip and crash into a nearby tree.

“Any news yet dear?” George looks up to see his mum, Molly standing in front of him with a cup of water in an outstretched hand. He just shakes his head, taking the cup.

“Still in surgery” George sighs rubbing his eyes, Y/N had been in surgery by the time George woke up in the hospital bed. Molly and Fred had been waiting for him to wake up, they looked equally distraught. George hadn’t been told much of the details surrounding Y/N, only she had been taken straight into the operating room when they arrived.

George groans leaning back into the rather uncomfortable plastic chair. His arm is wrapped in a sling, doctors said he had broken his collarbone and his legs and arms were covered in multiple cuts and bruises but that was the extent of his injuries.

“She’s gonna be okay mate. Its Y/N we’re talking about, she’s a fighter” The voice comes from Fred, George hadn’t notice when he returned from his mission to find some decent food, not that George really cared to eat anything right now.

“Y/N L/N?” it’s the doctor speaking now, he is standing in front of them, clipboard in hand with a rather serious look on his face which might just be his permanent expression.

George jumps to his feet eager to know something, anything, he needs to know if Y/N is okay. His throat is dry, and it feels like a razor blade when he swallows, he’s 80% sure he might be sick or pass out from the worry, but he doesn’t care. Molly grab his hand in comfort, George finds himself squeezing it back.

George is having a hard time understanding what the doctor is saying, his brain feels fuzzy and he can only comprehend bits and pieces of the conversation. He can make out ‘Y/N is out of surgery’ and ‘brain swelling’ and ‘induced coma’ and George feels his legs give way.

Fred is at his side pulling him back up, “c’mon Georgie, we can go see her.”

Y/N’s giggles fill the air “Georgie, stop! Anyone could walk around the corner and find us.”

George’s hands are under Y/N’s school shirt, caressing her sides while his mouth is attacking her neck leaving as many dark bruises as he can, “I don’t care, I’m allowed to kiss my girlfriend when she looks this ravishing.”

Y/N moans quietly, her eyes fluttering closed as her hands thread through the redhead’s soft hair tugging lightly.

“I love you,” Y/N breathes out before she can stop herself. She stiffens, clamping a hand around her mouth. They couple hadn’t shared those words with each other yet, only been dating for a few months. “pretend I didn’t say that.” Y/N tries to backtrack, worried she gone and scared George.

By now George has moved from his original position and is looking down at Y/N searching her eyes.

“Say it again.”

Y/N hesitates, “I love you.”

George grabs her face in his giant hands and begins peppering soft kisses all over her face, “again” he mumbles against her skin.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.” The short girl giggles.

Eventually George stops his attack on his girlfriend, “I love you too. Please don’t ever stop saying you love me.”

“Promise."

George reckons if it was quieter the world might be able to hear his heart thumping in his chest. His pace quickens as he looks at the room numbers, 205, 207, 209 and then 211. Once he enters the cold, white room he sees Y/N, laying in the hospital bed, covering in tubes.

“Godric,” he rushes over to his girlfriend’s side, clinging onto her hand and brushing some hair away that’s fallen onto her face. “baby.”

“I’m aware Doctor Anderson has already spoken with you Mr. Weasley, but Miss L/N here is in an induced coma due to the swelling against her brain. While she isn’t awake, I’m sure she can hear you.” The nurse notes before slipping out of the room.

“Baby, you have no idea how scared I’ve been. I miss you so much, I need you to get better so you can wake up and tell me how much of an idiot I am for driving in the snow. I am so sorry. Darling I am such a fucking idiot. Merlin, that should be me laying in a coma right now.” George babbles on and on for what feels like hours, his tears dried against his cheeks. At some point he falls asleep in the chair beside your bed, still clinging onto your hand.

“Happy birthday darling,” George says handing a very confused Y/N a small yellow wrapped box.

“Georgie my birthday isn’t for another few months” She grabs the box and slowly unwraps it, slightly nervous about what’s inside, Georges gift giving can be very unpredictable, most of them result in some sort of prank.

“I know but I couldn’t wait any longer to give you this present, seeing as you just finished school and all.”

Y/N tosses the wrapping paper aside and carefully lifts the lid of the tiny box; inside she sees a single key. “a key?”

“To my apartment” George answers, “I want you to move in with me and Fred.”

Y/N gazes up at her boyfriend surprised, “really? You want me to move in with you?”

“Of course, I can’t stand being away from you a moment longer. So… what do you say?”

Y/N has tears forming in her eyes, she has never felt love like this before and she prays it always stays this way forever. “Of course I’ll move in with you, silly!’ Y/N exclaims wrapping her arms around George’s neck.

George realises a breath he didn’t know he was holding “I was worried you might say no, thought maybe you think you’d get sick of me.”

Y/N shakes her head and nuzzles her face into Georges chest, “could never get sick of you babe, you’re stuck with me forever.”

It’s been a week? Maybe 2 or is it 3? George isn’t really sure how long its been, he’s spent every day in the hospital since the accident, the days seem to blur together. Fred has brought him some clothes here and there and convinced him to go home to shower a few times because ‘you smell like actual trash, probably doing some damage to Y/N’s nose with your stench’.

The doctors said the swelling in Y/N’s brain had improved and decided to bring her out of the medically induced coma. George has been persistent in asking when his girlfriend will wake up but only receiving an unhelpful reply of ‘it’s hard to tell, could take some time’. So, George decided he’d make sure he was by Y/N’s side for when she wakes up, not wanting her to be confused about her surroundings.

George has been tracing patterns onto the back of Y/N’s soft hand, quietly humming a tune to one of her favourite songs when she wakes up.

“Uh, excuse me?” Y/N’s voice came out croaky.

George’s head snapped up, “Oh merlin! You’re awake! You’re awake! Oh I’ve missed you baby!” he rushes to say as he’s clicking the nurses button to notify them.

Y/N scrunches up her eyebrows, feeling confused and eyes darting around the room. George is back at her side gripping her hand so tightly he doesn’t notice Y/N flinch slightly.

“How are you feeling darling? Are you in pain?” The redhead asks.

Y/N is in a tremendous amount of pain, her neck is aching, her wrist feels sore and stomach hurts when she breathes but she isn’t focused on any of that, all she is focused on right now is this man in front of her, this stranger.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Y/N whispers out, her throat stopping her from speaking any louder.

“What?” George squeaks dropping Y/N’s hand. At this moment the nurse comes into the room to tend to Y/N. George feels like he’s suffocating, he throat feels tight and dry and he can’t seem to breathe.

The nurse peeks at him noticing his pale face, “Mr. Weasley are you okay?”

“She-she doesn’t remember me.” He says not sure if the nurse heard. “She doesn’t know who I am.” He says louder this time.

The nurse looks taken back and begins asking Y/N questions, ‘what’s your name?’, ‘can you tell me what year it is?’.

George doesn’t wait to hear the answers, instead rushing out the room and heading outside, needing air. He quite literally bumps into Fred outside the hospital who was on his way to deliver him some food. The older twin notices his brothers horrified expression.

“Woah, is everything okay George? Is it Y/N? is she awake?” George’s breathing starts to quicken, he’s losing his grip on reality, he feels like he’s falling and he doesn’t know what to do. “Georgie mate look at me. Okay, just breathe buddy. Like this.” Fred takes some slow exaggerated deep breaths trying to calm down his brother. George’s eyes meet Fred’s and starts to copy him, which eventually slows down his heart rate and calms him down.

“Okay now can you tell me what’s going on?” Fred enquires.

George feels the hot fat tears running down his face as he wraps his arms around his brother, “she doesn’t remember me, Freddie. She doesn’t know who I am."

“Okay now are you going to tell us why you randomly dropped by?” Arthur asks as the 3 of them sit around the kitchen table, sipping at his tea.

“Not that we don’t love having you over dear.” Molly adds sending Arthur a glare.

George clears his throat looking between the 2, he knows his mum is going to flip. “I’ve decided I’m going to propose to Y/N.”

Molly squeals and pulls her son into a bone crushing hug, “oh my boy! This is amazing news. I’m so happy.” Arthur pats him on the back, “congratulations, we’re so proud of you.”

George chuckles as Molly pulls away, wiping the tears off her face.

Molly begins asking a million questions ranging from when George is planning on popping the question to how. “I haven’t decided yet, kind of waiting for the right time.”

Molly couldn’t stop the smile spreading across her face. Y/N was perfect for her boy, since they first started dating in school Molly had an inkling it was the real deal and they’d end up getting married. George’s face would light up whenever Y/N was mentioned in a conversation and when he invited her over to spend the summer at the Burrow for the first time, he always had his hand in hers or holding her waist, stealing kisses whenever he could. It made Molly insanely happy to see how smitten her son was with Y/N.

“You tell us as soon as you her ask okay?” Molly insisted pointing a finger at George.

“I will, you’ll be the first to know.”

George is back in Y/N’s hospital room with Fred by his side. They’ve passed Doctor Anderson on their way up who explained Y/N’s situation. Retrograde amnesia, she can’t remember the last 7 years of her life, ultimately her life with George. The doctor mentioned her memory may come back, with brain injuries it’s hard to tell, but there is the chance that it won’t and that terrifies George. Doctor Anderson said that in a few days once Y/N is feeling better she can go home, he says it best for her to get back into her normal routine as soon as possible.

Y/N’s eyes look between the 2 identical men standing in front of her. They look vaguely familiar, like older versions of boys she used to know from school. After the redhead ran out of the room earlier the nurse and doctor filled Y/N in on her situation. Y/N was completely shocked to find out that she’s forgotten 7 years of her life, she isn’t some teenager at Hogwarts anymore and that is kind of freaking her out to be honest. The 2 redheads in front of her have yet to say anything and its annoying Y/N, she senses they are scared to speak to her, as if she might break.

“Oh my godric will one of you please something” Y/N finally huffs out annoyed.

The twin on the left, who isn’t the one Y/N ‘met’ earlier clears his throat and speaks “so I’m guessing you don’t remember us. Uh- I’m Fred and this is George, my brother.” Fred finds this unbelievably hard having to introduce himself to someone he’s known for years. Since Y/N and George started dating at Hogwarts him and Y/N had become pretty close friends.

“Fred and George” Y/N whispers, that does sound familiar. “Nice to meet you” Y/N pauses “re-meet you?”

Fred gives a light-hearted chuckle.

Y/N is filled with an ample amount of questions, she doesn’t know where to begin. “So how do I know you both? I mean we must be close if you’ve been waiting at the hospital for me.”

Y/N notices the twin on the right, George, looking like he’s in physical pain. Fred and George share a knowing look with each other before the younger twin starts to speak.

“Um, we met at Hogwarts actually and became pretty close,” he clears his throat and Y/N waits patiently for him to continue “you and me are… we’re actually dating.”

There’s an awkward tension in the air, no one can find the right words to speak. Fred has sat down on the wooden chair next to Y/N’s bed kind of regretting his decision to be here for moral support. George hasn’t moved from his position at the foot of the hospital bed, hand in his pocket staring down at his shoes.

“Oh” Y/N manages, “for how long?”

George inform Y/N that they’ve been officially dating for 5 almost 6 years, that they also live together in a flat above Fred and George’s joke shop which Y/N sometimes works at to help the boys. It feels strange for Y/N to hear about her life when none of it sounds familiar.

A few days later Y/N is standing in the living room of the flat, looking around at the photo frames hung up on the wall. Many of them include her, one in particular catches her eye. It’s a photo of her and George at the beach, George looks the same as he does now so Y/N guesses it may have been from the past summer. George has his arm around her waist tickling her sides as Y/N throws her head back laughing then George plants a sloppy kiss against her cheek. They look so happy, so in love. Y/N’s heart aches.

“I’ll show you to the bedroom if you like” Y/N turns around to find George standing there. She follows him into the bedroom. “If you need anything, I’ll just be in the living room.” George steps towards Y/N but falters, he normally kisses her goodnight. “um night.” He turns quickly on his heels and walks right out the door.

Y/N lays in bed that night, trying desperately to search her brain for something. She’s gotta remember something. But nothing comes up. She feels like a failure, and so overwhelmed she can’t help but cry herself to sleep that night. Just in the other room George lays uncomfortably on the couch, trying to sleep with a sling on your arm and a broken collarbone proves very difficult, he too has tears staining his cheeks as he finally falls asleep.

“Will you quit staring at me” George mumbles, his eyes still closed.

Y/N pokes his cheek earning a grumble from the sleepy boy. They had been living together for 1 year now and Y/N couldn’t be any happier. “Wake up sleepy head.”

She tries poking his cheek again when he doesn’t answer. “Leave me be” George mumbles.

Y/N purses her lips an idea forming in her head, “you leave me no choice.” She stands up in the bed and starts jumping around and yelling “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

Eventually George opens his eyes and grabs onto Y/N’s legs pulling her down and on top of him who is giggling like crazy, George smiles too.

“You are going to be the death of me, ya know that?” George says kisses her cheek.

Y/N laughs, “you love me though right Georgie?”

“Always.”

Y/N jolts awake, that dream feeling so realistic. It’s been 2 weeks since she left the hospital and some nights, she has these dreams that feel so unbelievably real or she’ll do something that give her déjà vu. She hasn’t told George about it though; she doesn’t want to get his hopes up in case her memories don’t return.

Y/N walks into the kitchen to find George making coffee, his red hair sticking in a million of different directions.

“Mornin’ Georgie” Y/N greets, going to make some toast.

George whips his head to face the smaller girl, she hasn’t called him Georgie since before the accident. Y/N doesn’t seem to notice though and continues to make her toast. “Morning,” he mumbles back “any progress on the memory?”

Y/N shakes her head and George feels his heart drop. He doesn’t want to think about what happens if Y/N never regains her memories, frightened she’ll never feel the way she used too. His family seem very optimistic about the whole situation, Ginny thinks that the whole situation is very romantic but each day that goes by George loses hope.

It's a Saturday night and they’ve just finished watching a movie on the couch. Y/N fell asleep half-way through which wasn’t surprising, her head resting on George’s shoulder, he doesn’t dare move in inch. In this moment he can pretend everything is normal again.

“Mm, Georgie. Dinner.” Y/N mumbles, George looks down and sees her eyes still closed, he realises she’s sleep talking.

“What was that love?”

Y/N stirs slightly, curling into Georges side. “We should do dinner. Date night. Been too long.”

The redhead starts playing with her H/C hair. “Yeah? Where should we go?”

“You know, Valentino’s. Always go there.” Y/N breathes out.

George’s breath hitches. Y/N always chose Valentino’s when it was her choice for date night, it was this cute little Italian restaurant they’d found one night in London, it was where they went the night of the accident.

“That sounds lovely, darling.” George kisses Y/N’s forehead.

Y/N stirs from her slumber “did I fall asleep again Georgie?” she rubs her eyes trying to take in her surroundings. Her brain feels fuzzy having just woken up. Y/N looks around trying to remember how she got on the couch when she lets out a loud gasp and jumps up.

“What is it? Is everything okay?” George eyes Y/N carefully who is frantically looking around the room finally landing on George.

Y/N’s doesn’t speak for a minute her brain going crazy. While Y/N doesn’t remember everything that she’s forgotten from the last 7 years she remembers parts, the important parts. She remembers kissing George for the first time and being each other’s date for the Yule ball, she remembers how sad and proud she felt when she watched Fred and George fly out of Hogwarts for the last time, she remembers the fear and terror of the war, she remembers joking around with Fred late at night and drawing on George’s face when he fell asleep after a night of drinking but most importantly she remembers loving George.

George’s heart sores and little fireworks erupt inside his chest when he hears Y/N say, “I remember.”

He palms the small box in his jacket pocket which he hadn’t the heart to remove just in case he found the right moment.

#George Weasley #George weasley x reader #George Weasley Fluff #George weasley one shot #George Weasley oneshot #George Weasley fanfic #George Weasley fanfiction #Fred Weasley #Fred and George #Harry Potter #Harry Potter oneshot #George Weasley Angst #George Weasley fic #hp fanfic #hp one shot #George Weasley x you

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todoscript · 4 years

Note

I’ve had this idea in mind for a bit but don’t have the confidence to write it myself, so if it’s alright may I request some headcanons for 1-A’s big 3 (Deku,Bakugou,Shoto) with a S/O who; due to high pain tolerance gets small bruises on their legs, but doesn’t remember where they got them from cause they don’t feel it? (honestly this me most days) Btw love your writing!

A/N | My indecisive ass couldn’t decide between quick bulletpoints or descriptive headcanons so I went with a hybrid(?). I hope I did your request some justice, anon, and thank you for enjoying my writing!

Now here’s some love from our main trio! <333

Midoriya Izuku

midoriya becomes a bit worried when he spots the blemishes on your legs, especially when you tell him you don’t remember where you got them from

he’s prone to getting many injuries himself and has developed a high tolerance to pain from how many times he’s nearly blown off parts of his body with his quirk

but he knows the sensation of pain is there as a defense mechanism for your body to tell you when you’re about to hurt yourself so he wants you to take extra precaution when you’re out fighting villains or training

also because midoriya doesn’t want any scars embedded on your skin, considering he has so many littered all over his arms, hands, and legs. so if it’s possible, he’d rather avoid you having the same ordeal

“Y/n, where’d you get those bruises?”

Midoriya notices your small blemishes and points them out immediately on your way to class due to your uniform’s skirt and short socks unhindering the expanse of skin. You peek underneath and finally realize the speckle of red and faint blue blotches, tilting your head in a befuddled manner.

“Huh… I’m not sure, myself...”

“Were you pushing yourself too hard during training?” he asks and you hum off in thought, trying to recollect any memory of hurting yourself.

“I don’t think so? Well, even if I did get hurt, I probably didn’t feel it,” you reply nonchalantly. Your boyfriend takes your hand to turn your attention to him. A worried look crosses his face at your absent concern for the marks.

“Y/n, it’s not good if you just push them to the side. I know you have high tolerance for pain but I don’t want you to get injuries that may permanently damage your body.”

His other hand not gripping your own tightens into a fist, and you’re aware of the boy’s own near-irreparable blows dealt on his body due to the self-destructive nature of his quirk. He’s only looking out for you and wants to make sure you never get to that point like he did—heavily bandaged up in a hospital bed and laying there regretting your reckless actions. He hopes you never have to experience such a thing.

At his visible concern, you reassuringly clutch his hand back.

“Alright, I solemnly swear not to go overboard and take better care of myself,” you promise him and that sunshine induced smile curls back on his lips. However, the easily flustered side of Midoriya appears right afterward as he rubs the back of his head in quick succession.

“Ah, I didn’t mean to be overly dramatic or anything! It’s just I was concerned and I thought about myself and your position and I just—” His words clutter into that speedy jargon that you found yourself chuckling at before promptly muting him with a simple kiss on his cheek.

“It’s okay, I know you’re just looking out for me, Izu, so thank you.”

The boy’s cheeks burst red by the time you two enter the classroom.

Bakugou Katsuki

his instincts flare up the moment those bruises are revealed to his very eyes

the vexation is quick to show on his face and without warning, he’ll tug you off to the side to interrogate you about them

when you don’t have a clear answer for how those blemishes came to be, he doesn’t pry further since he knows you have a heightened tolerance against pain—a trait he doesn’t think you should be particularly proud of if you aren’t conscious about your injuries

instead, he’ll scold you throughout your whole walk to the nurse’s, pulling you along in a protective manner you can’t help but think of as a tender act in spite of how brazen he usually is

“What the hell?” Bakugou mutters to himself while standing on the sidelines of the track field. As he watched you jog along with the girls on the bounds of the track, the small red and bluish marks did not evade his sight considering you rolled up the cuffs of your gym pants that day.

Right after your run, you soon hear the stomp in his steps when he approaches you. “Oh hey, Katsuki, what’s up?” you greet but he ignores it, instead grabbing you by the wrist and hauling you to the side, past all your classmates.

“Wait, Katsuki—”

“How long have you had those fucking bruises?” He’s quick to head straight to the blatant inquiries, backing you up against a wall so you can’t dodge away from him. You understand what he’s talking about, but you can’t tell him for sure when or where the bruises emerged, with your tolerance for pain likely eluding them from you.

He breathes out a heavy sigh after the evidently drawn out pause. Your resistance to pain made you quite audacious on the battlefield so it’s no wonder you end up with these blemishes. Though the blonde is a bit reckless himself, he knows there’s a limit people need to maintain.

Bakugou takes your hand in his again and briskly drags you along off the P.E. field and inside the U.A. building.

“C’mon, we’re going to the old lady,” he says.

“Huh? What about physical training today?” You try to tug him back but his hold on you is firm.

“Shit like that doesn’t matter when you get hurt, ya big idiot. What if you worsen those bruises?” he chides, “Now don’t struggle. I’m taking you there whether you like it or not,” Bakugou immovably declares and you surrender, discerning the tenderness beneath his tone that you can’t help but happily grin at.

“Y’know, this concerned side of you is pretty soft. I quite like it,” you tease. Bakugou narrows the crests on his face as he turns back to look at you with his usual discontented frown.

“Yeah well don’t get use to it, princess,” he quips back, however, you lean forward to sneak peck on his cheek before he can move away.

“Love you too, Katsuki.”

He immediately faces forward again, but the tips of his ears reddening tell you all you need to know and you grasp his hand tighter along the way.

Todoroki Shouto

the usual stoic expression he wears everyday would immediately shift into mild concern upon noticing the little blemishes on your legs

he stops what he’s doing and gathers to your side, asking about them with firm intent

when you answer that you don’t exactly remember when they appeared, he’s reminded of your high pain tolerance

todoroki sits you down, and though you tell him they don’t hurt, he still takes his time to thoroughly inspect each and every one of the marks for himself just to make sure

“Y/n… your legs…”

Todoroki walks into the dormitory kitchen, where you’re washing up a few dishes after you fixed yourself something to eat that night. The casual pair of comfortable shorts you’re wearing leaves your legs bare for him to concern over the bruises that blot bits of your skin.

You extend out a leg and gander downward. “Oh? These? They’re nothing, Shouto, probably something I missed during training today maybe,” you insist with a stiff chuckle, though you know your boyfriend isn’t one to let the topic get brushed to the side that easily.

Thus despite your words, Shouto twists the knobs on the sink to cut off the flow of water running down the dirty ceramics and ushers you to sit in a chair at the tables. He kneels before you and sets his hand around the base of your ankle to hold your leg up, eyes keen as they line down your skin. You fidget a little under his acute gaze toward your blemishes.

“Shouto, I said it’s fine. They don’t hurt or anything,” you try telling him again, but his only response is a hum, not looking up.

“From how some of the marks are fading compared to others, I can tell they’ve been appearing periodically,” Shouto mumbles loud enough for you to hear and then finally meets your eyes from below.

“Y/n, I know you have a high resistance to pain but what if these bruises get worse?” he says, worry lingering in his voice, “I don’t want you to suffer if these wounds stack on top of each other.” He runs his warm left hand on your leg that soothingly rubs the nerves beneath the troubled skin.

“Okay okay, I’ll patch them up a bit before I go to bed tonight.” You ultimately concede to the boy’s abiding stare that soon draws a grin. He lifts himself to his feet and bends down to lightly kiss your lips—your reward from him for listening to his concerns.

“I’ll get the first aid kit for you then.” Just before Todoroki starts down his path to the cabinets, you pull him back into you at the last second and astonish him by returning his gesture with your own tender kiss.

“Thank you, Shouto.”

He blinks twice in that instance, slowly regaining his leveled expression, but is now accompanied with small traces of pink.

#bnha x reader #midoriya x reader #bakugou x reader #todoroki x reader #bakugou #midoriya #todoroki #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #todoroki shouto #mha x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #my writing

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consumeconstantly · 4 years

Text

Bring Me To The Precipice of Victory

1| 2 | 3(you are here) | 4 | next

Summary: When Batman departs— just for a short time, just to patch things up in Gotham— things go horribly, horribly wrong in Paris.

He doesn’t know if he can come back from realizing that Marinette and Ladybug are one and the same (and that his daughter has died more times than he can count.) (all biodad bruce are posted in chronological order but can be read as stand alones)

______________________________________________

The moment of peace, of solidarity, that Batman shares with Ladybug up on that rooftop at night means the world.

After a minute or two, Ladybug pulls back, tear tracks down the sides of her face, eye and nose red. She takes another minute of silence,hugging herself in the muggy Parisian air. When she next opens her eyes, Batman can almost imagine that Ladybug never cried at all.

But he knows that's not true. Ladybug seemed so fragile in his arms. He can imagine— he can imagine Dick in her place, broken over Jason’s death. Tim losing his parents. All of his children facing insurmountable odds with no team by their side. Alone.

Ladybug is not alone, but functionally, she may as well be. He’s watched the fights. He’s analyzed them. Ladybug is always, always the leader. She strategizes with Ryuko and Viperion, but Ladybug is who everybody looks to for an answer when things don’t work out the way they want them to. She’s the one with the plan, the backup plan, the out. She’s the one who swoops in to save the day.

She’s also the one who has racked up the most hours on the battlefield. Even Chat Noir, her partner, only has three quarters of the hours that she’s put in. For most of the other members of her team, she puts in double, sometimes even triple of what they do. Over the course of six years, there have been a little under two thousand battles, lasting from under an hour to over five hours. Ladybug has shown up for every single one, without fail. That’s not even counting the patrols that they do; although Ladybug is given a lot of flack for not patrolling as often as Chat Noir, there’s a fundamental difference in how they patrol. Ladybug is methodical, Chat Noir is volatile.

He’s not a bad superhero when it comes down to battle, but the two of them are fundamentally different. Ladybug sees her time as a superhero as a duty. Chat Noir seems to view it as a time to unwind— and while that’s worrying, considering the information he’s gathered on the Miraculous Team so far points to the majority of them beings teens or young adults— it’s not what is needed to deal with the Paris situation.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to see these differences is during patrol. Chat Noir uses patrol time almost seems to be an outlet for stress. He entices whoever he’s on patrol with to race to random places in Paris with no rhyme or reason. Whenever he comes across crime, he stops it, but Ladybug— Ladybug searches for crime.

Ladybug has a team and she trusts them with her life, but she cannot trust them to be responsible. That is perhaps the worst possible thing that can happen. And through the videos that he’s watched, it’s clear that the hours she puts in do affect her, and fairly heavily.

Whoever she is, she’s young. Too young to be in battle untrained, because they are untrained— despite being in the field for years, all of their basic form lacks and tells anybody with an experienced eye that they’ve never had formal training in martial arts.

When Batman and Ladybug leave the roof, they leave on a better note than where they started. Batman is still upset that Tom and Sabine are dead, but he cannot attribute it solely to Ladybug’s negligence. He admires the young heroine for rising to the occasion when there was nobody else to help. He has no doubt that with the resources and training that he can provide him and his operatives already on the case, Hawkmoth will be revealed in no time at all.

He’s right, but in the worst possible way.

It’s largely a mistake on hiss part-- he gets a notification that the Joker broke out of Arkham again, and Hawkmoth and Pavona are missing for the time being. Though Ladybug has made a mistake in not taking Pavona out immediately, she and her team have won every akuma and sentimonster battle. The logical course of action is to go where the most danger is.

Bruce does not have any predictive powers. There is no way for him to know what’s going to happen. But when he and his team finally catch the Joker and put him away again-- a feat that takes just a little under twenty four hours, extreme concentration, and a good number of injuries-- Batman finally gets a chance to breathe. The adrenaline from facing off against the Joker’s latest scheme fades. Batman reclines in a chair as Alfred binds his wounds and passes him pain relieving pills while he gets stitches in his abdomen.

He checks the news in Paris.

He almost drops the device that he’s using to view the news.

Marinette’s existence has been hidden from his family. With Dick, he was more concerned about his existence as Robin, rather than informing him that he had a sister. As soon as he started contemplating bringing up Marinette, Batman and Robin had a bad break. Then Jason came along, troubled and angry. Bruce didn’t want to introduce Marinette into the mix then because he was volatile.

Jason died due to Batman’s incompetence. Bruce grieved the loss of his ward; Batman was never allowed to mourn the loss of his second Robin.

Tim felt unworthy as the only child Bruce didn’t pick up off the streets, and Damian-- well, Damian was Damian. First he had a superiority complex the size of the Grand Canyon, and once he got accustomed to how they handled things in the Wayne Manor-- though Tim would argue that Damian is still not used to this kind of lifestyle-- he overcompensated every single mission and needed a remedial course on How to Interact With Other Humans 101. Add the overarching concern of Marinette being exposed to his vigilante life style and being unprepared for it, and he was never able to tell his children that he had another biological kid. A daughter.

When the news that Sabine and Tom died reached his ears, he told everybody he had business in Paris without elaborating what. With Wayne Enterprises opening a Paris branch of their R&D specialising in European artifacts, it was easy to draw connections that weren’t there.

“Bruce, you need to relax. Business in Paris can be dealt with later, you need to take the time to heal,” Tim says.

A clip in his shoulder from a bullet, knife wounds on his torso and legs, a sprained wrist. Whatever chemical experiment the Joker got his hands out still pumping through his veins. “I need to go-- it’s important--”

The pain relievers Alfred gave him earlier were also a sedative.

Tim catches him before he passes out.

He wakes up three hours late through sheer force of will.

“Paris!” Bruce jolts upright, still in costume, lying prone on a medical cot in the Batcave.

The first thing that catches his eyes is the red and black flying across the screens.

Ladybug.

His kids are all watching the screens with abject horror.

“Is this,” Tim wets his lips. “The business trip that you were on?”

Bruce drags himself out of bed, adrenaline washing out any residual pain. He doesn’t have the capacity to respond, he needs to get to the zeta tube, he needs to get to Paris, Ladybug is bleeding, the city is in shambles, and Marinette--

One of the news sites up on the screen declares the arrondissements that are obliterated. The one that houses Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie is amongst their number. An approximate death toll fills the static.

-- Marinette is likely among those lost. He has lost another child due to his inaction. Due to his inability to push through, to look forwards and predict the future and the consequences of his actions. Marinette is another Jason, but if Ladybug doesn’t get it together, she’ll be gone permanently. And Ladybug is little more than a child. She can’t handle it, not by herself, not with her team. She needs an experienced hero, and Batman will be there for her, be the one leading the charge against Hawkmoth as the civilians hide in their homes and pray for her Miracle Cure to reverse the damage.

Dick places a hand on his shoulder. Bruce tries to shrug it off, but his fingers dig into the place where the bullet clipped his flesh. The pain is just a reminder that if he does not get to Paris now, there will be thousands-- no, millions-- more who feel this pain. How did Marinette die? Was it an akuma? Did the rubble of one of the destroyed buildings fall on her? Did Ladybug even try to protect her?

“I need to go,” Bruce growls.

“You can’t. While you were out, the majority of the Justice League prohibited all travel via zeta tubes. Nobody can get into Paris right now.”

Bruce knocks Dick’s hand off his shoulder and turns to his eldest. At the very least, Dick and the rest of his children look solemn. Damian’s gaze is fixed to one of the screens that shows Ladybug. “A city is in danger, millions of lives are at risk, Marinette--”

His daughter is dead. He can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

Standing by idly is the last thing he’ll let himself do.“Who put out the order? I’ll get them to reverse it.”

Dick moves so he’s between the zeta tube and Bruce. “B, you don’t understand. If you go to Paris right now, you’ll get akumatized.”

“I can handle my emotions.”

Jason points at the upper right section of screens that’s replaying past footage. “I wouldn’t bet Paris’ survival on it. Not when more level headed superheroes got on the scene first and failed. They really don’t need any heavy hitters getting akumatized. Not when Superman put three members of their team out of commission.”

Superman arrived on the scene first; it took a matter of seconds for him to get akumatized. He was responsible for razing down three arrondissements in no time flat. Ladybug had to call for a Lucky Charm in order to get her hands on some kryptonite, which forced her to recoup after her time ran out.

Black Canary arrived next. Then Red Tornado.

Both were akumatized in mere minutes.

“After Red Tornado got akumatized, Wonder Woman led the charge to put the rest of the zeta tubes on lockdown,” Duke says, grim. “All we can do now is hope that these Parisian superheroes can pull off a win.”

Bruce stumbles over to get a better view. He remembers Ladybug, small and slight in his arms. A child, crying over the loss of her pseudo parents.

A warrior, bloody and bruised and broken.

She is one of the last ones standing.

King Monkey and an ox themed hero both died at Superman’s hands. The former got in the way of his laser beams, the latter a victim of super strength and getting thrown through two buildings and having their necks snap at an unsightly angle. Chat Noir was also sent hurtling through the air, and the only reason he was still alive was because Ladybug alighted from the sky and grabbed him before he got sent through a building in his unconscious state. Black Canary came shortly after, apparently informed of the Superman situation and carrying kryptonite.

She didn’t last for long either. Almost immediately after helping Ladybug and Ryuko bind Superman in such a way that he couldn’t escape,

Pegasus got hit by Black Canary’s sound waves and Chat Noir’s residual injuries from his fight with Superman forced him into a state of unconsciousness. Queen Bee and Carapace were able to pull off a win against Black Canary, but not without serious injuries. Ryuko faced off against Red Tornado alone, which normally would have been a thing of awe, but in the grander scheme of things, was a huge issue, as without her, the Miraculous Team functionally lost all of their heavy hitters. Rena Rouge and several Miraculous users that clearly had never been in battle before were the ones left to hold their own against the scores of akumatized Parisians.

The only ones left to hunt down Hawkmoth and Pavona were Ladybug and Viperion, and the former was already on her third use of Lucky Charm.

Ladybug pulls out her communicator, dodging an attack.

“Can we get sound on this?” Jason grips the closest table.

Dick shakes his head. “Zatara says there’s already enough interference just trying to get these images. And for some reason, Dr. Fate refuses to get involved with any of this.”

Bruce’s phone rings. He doesn’t pick it up on the first ring, too focused on the ongoing battles. He does take his phone out of his pocket to silence it the next time, but when he presses the sound off, an image comes through.

“Bruce.” Ladybug’s image comes through crystal clear, and it doesn’t make him feel any better. Ladybug, blood dripping from her mouth, costume torn open, hair burnt, wild eyed.

He opens his mouth to speak, but the image goes blurry as she moves to avoid several attacks pointed towards her.

“Before I go, I--”

“Watch out, LB!” Bruce lifts his eyes to the screen that displays Ladybug and Viperion in battle. The spotted heroine gets pushed out of the way of a laser, but the snake themed hero takes the hit.

The ambient noise coming from his phone is strong; he can hear blades clashing in the background as Chat Noir, already on his last legs attempts to hold off Darkblade. Screaming from civilians, a strangled sob from Ladybug. “Viperion.”

Ladybug comes back into view. Blue eyes filled with rage.

“If this doesn’t end in our favor, you need to make sure that Hawkmoth and Pavona do not acquire both the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous. Do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.” She blinks, retreats into herself, and Bruce wonders if he’s seeing the girl behind the mask.

“And If I don’t get to see you again--” If I’m dead, the words go unspoken, “I really did want the chance -- I-- you’re a good man. A good father. Your daughter-- she loves you. She really, really does. Stay safe.”

The transmission cuts off. On the screen in front of him, Ladybug closes her communicator, closes Viperion’s open eyes, and strides to the epicenter of the akumas. Blue fire flashes in her irises, and for a moment, she’s staring directly at the screen. And Bruce knows those eyes. He knows them.

The next second, all of the computers simultaneously die.

Bruce is numb. No-- no.

He is nothing.

All his children-- no, not all his children, Marinette is missing, Marinette is Ladybug, and she’s out on a field that he can’t see grappling with magic forces strong enough to incapacitate Justice League members like their powers and abilities are inconsequential-- stare at him.

“That was… Ladybug?” Tim’s brow furrows. It’s clear that he’s thinking up a hundred different reasons why Ladybug and Batman are connected, why he’s the last person she calls before going into a battle that could very well cost her her life.

“My daughter.” The words are ash on his lips. An existence he’s never acknowledged. Not out loud. Saying it brings a sense of finality to the room. An impending death. “My daughter.”

Nobody asks how long he’s known or when he met her or why he’s never brought it up before. Everything is fuzzy. Floating.

For a while, there’s silence.

“Zatara says there’s too much interference to get the picture back up,” Dick opens his messages, frowning.

Damian still stares at the screen Ladybug looked at directly, frozen.

Bruce picks himself up and moves. He may not be able to use the zeta tubes, but he has a private jet and a license, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do something.

It takes two hours too long to get to Paris. He shaved five hours off the flight length due to superior technology, and another hour and a half off due to sheer force of will.

The landing is not a pretty thing, but Paris is already in shambles, and there’s no way that the ATC will approve his landing, so Bruce picks out the flattest looking spot of rubble before his jet meets the ground.

According to Tim and Duke, who stayed behind in case this turned out to be an attack spanning multiple cities, the battle ended mere minutes before they landed. Dick manages to get Zatara to broadcast the image in the cockpit of the jet, and on the screen lay three prone bodies. Gabriel Agreste, whose body type fits that of Hawkmoth, Lila, and a third that Bruce does not recognize.

A bone sticks out of Marinette’s arm, the connected hand crushed and hanging limp. The opposing ankle is twisted almost fully backwards. She is covered in blood and ash and filth. There is no victory in her eyes. Only weariness.

In her good hand, she holds her yoyo.

She raises her eyes skywards-- the roof of the Agreste mansion is blown clean off-- blinks slowly, and throws the yoyo into the air.

“Miraculous Cure,” her lips read.

The corpses in Paris rise from the dead. Rubble reforms into buildings. The ashy haze that covered the city disappears.

Ladybug looks like she wants to disappear, too.

She collapses, instead.

Nobody is there to catch her when she drops to the floor.

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip @theunquiet-dead @sleep-deprived-aroace @enternalempires @lilkymilky @woe-is-me0 @officiallydarkgeek @miyla-lokidottir @queencommonsense @demonicbusiness

mb for not doing tag list right away i forgot i had these cued up already

#bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #maribat #what are dates #what's going in order #time? i don't know her #i'm always late #marinette dupain cheng #bruce wayne #bio!dad bruce #angst

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mythicamagic · 3 years

Note

As usual... I can never just choose one... soo here are my top choices you choose one. Lol

1. Are you flirting with me?” “You finally noticed?

2. The worst thing is, that even after all of that, I’m still in love with you.

3.that ship has sailed. i’ve had my one great love already

4. we’re just…friends.” “friends don’t do this type of shit!

5. Did you just slap my ass?” / “Actually, I firmly grasped it.”

Why did I decide 2 of the hurt/sad/angst.. idk.. i suppose im glutton for punishment. Dont hurt me too bad if you choose to do one of them myth.

Decided to do a part two for - this ask.

I chose; The worst thing is, that even after all of that, I’m still in love with you.

---

The air felt crisp and clean, biting at Kagome's cheeks as she wound her scarf tighter around her neck. Winter markets were so much fun. The vast array of cute little items on display made warmth light up her chest, even as the candy and children's toys reminded her of a certain fox she'd left behind in the past.

Kagome smiled at Ayumi as she prattled on about something or other.

She shouldn't feel guilty. Shippo had barely visited the village in the last year she'd been there. Everyone had moved on. Including herself, somewhat. She'd been so wrapped up in her whirlwind romance with a certain Daiyoukai- the feudal era had been irreparably damaged as a home for her the second they'd broken up.

But she missed her friends. Dearly.

She shook herself. It was too late to go back on her choice now. The well had sealed shut for good.

Ayumi stopped to grab some hot chocolate from a street vendor, allowing Kagome a moment to warm her hands, rubbing them together.

Snowflakes gently danced about like powdered sugar, kissing Kagome's face as she turned- almost bumping face-first into a muscular chest. Fresh scents of wild forests and thunderstorms filled her nose, and she stiffened.

He smells the same.

Kagome bit the inside of her cheek, blue eyes narrowing. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing."

"Haven't the faintest idea of what you mean," he arranged his features into mild innocence, which was near impossible due to his smiling eyes.

"Riiight," she muttered, wishing Ayumi would hurry up.

Sesshoumaru gazed down at her, a pink gift bag in hand. Kagome grit her teeth, hating that she wondered who it was meant for.

"I did not intend to run into you here, before you accuse me of anything," his silky voice caressed her hearing once more. It sounded so lulling, designed to draw her back in. "Did you take my gift home with you or did you throw it away?" he asked, deceptively casually.

"Home. But don't think that means anything- it's not the plant's fault you're trying to worm your way back into my life."

The Daiyouki smiled to himself, obviously absurdly pleased. He began pursuing the street vendor's items right beside her, gazing at children's toys with a touch of gentleness in his steady gaze. Kagome was prepared to ignore him- until he leaned down, breath fanning 'accidentally' over her cheek as he picked up a doll and straightened.

"Do you remember Rin? And the other children-"

"Don't," Kagome said, unable to move away. She hated the thrumming of her skin so much. The way it cried out. Hated him.

Her skin flared alive, body humming with hunger. Like a shot of adrenalin to the heart, Kagome dipped her chin into her scarf to try and mask her escalating breathing due to his proximity. When they'd had sex- so many years ago- it hadn't been like human lovemaking.

He'd wired new pathways within her system via his youki. Sometimes she felt like it still lived inside her, having made a home for itself. They hadn't mated, but she felt irreversibly changed by it.

Kagome made a faint noise, squeezing her eyes shut.

Resist him-

"Kagome?"

Oh thank God.

"Ayumi, let's go," she said abruptly, facing her friend with an urgent look in her eyes.

Ayumi tilted her head slightly, eyeing Sesshoumaru curiously. "A-alright?"

"You do not need to leave," he turned, exuding a magnanimous air. "I am the one who intruded on your time, please continue," he gestured to the market, ensnaring Kagome's gaze with his own. Unblinking, unable to hide his more animalistic habits even after so many years.

"I hope to see you some other time when my presence does not disturb you," he said softly, walking away.

---

When entering work that Saturday, Kagome could already sense the buzz in the air. Someone had generously donated some priceless artefacts to their museum. The previously undiscovered finds that shaken everyone due to their rarity and mint condition. No one could stop talking about it.

Kagome's blood ran cold the second the items in question were described to her. Pushing through the crowd that had gathered, she stared in horror at the display case.

Itching for a fight, she immediately stormed to his office downtown, opening the door to reception and letting herself in. "Is Sesshoumaru here?" she burst, stopping in front of the secretary's desk.

"Mr Taisho?" the woman blinked, obviously thrown by the petite, angry miko currently glaring at her and using his name so informally. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No. Just tell him Kagome is here."

She was let into his office soon enough, trying to keep a lid on her crackling reiki. Sesshoumaru glanced up from his computer. "Miko? What a pleasant surprise."

Kagome slammed an article atop his desk. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she snapped.

He raised a brow, briefly flicking his attention to the contents. A photo of red and white silks, coupled with polished spiked armour sat in a display unit. "Something wrong? It was just a donation, given in good faith."

"Donated to my workplace!" Kagome seethed, groaning and burying her face in her hands. "Don't you realise I'm going to have to see your things now every day? I've worn those clothes! I've slept in them as pyjamas! Are you trying to mess with me because you want me back?"

"That's a little dramatic, dear one, I'm not trying to 'mess with you.' It was just a donation," he rose from his seat, face inches from hers. "And if I wanted to romance you, I'd go about it much differently."

"Don't 'dear one' me," she snapped. "You could've donated that stuff years ago- or to a different museum. But no, you had to give it to mine."

"My gift was not meant to distress you, but," he rounded the table slowly, fingers dragging over the wood. "It does make me worry, seeing you so worn thin. Is something else going on? Separate from...us?"

Kagome stiffened, avoiding eye contact. Things with her boyfriend had been strained as of late, and the Daiyoukai's sudden appearance back into her life wasn't helping matters.

"There is no 'us.' I'm frustrated and exhausted, that's all. Don't make things even more complicated by asking about that stuff."

Sesshoumaru lingered close, and Kagome didn't shy away. The one person she couldn't bear to be near was also the only being who could offer some semblance of comfort to her due to his familiarity.

"This one meant to give you something," reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card, handing it over. Kagome immediately froze, staring at the name. "You miss him," Sesshoumaru murmured. "The kit lives in Kyoto now with his wife and children. Call him."

Tears pricked her eyes, and Kagome bowed her head. Full lips crumpled into a wobbly line.

"If there is something I regret more than our parting, it is that you felt compelled to leave. The fault lies with me."

Shaking her head, a saddened laugh bubbled up her throat. "It was my decision to break up, and it was my decision to leave the Feudal Era. Don't...blame yourself for that part."

"You did not do anything wrong," a long-fingered hand reached out, blunt nails losing their glamour. Sharp claws stroked dark curling hair back from her neck. Kagome's breathing hitched. "When we were together- you did not do anything wrong. We were both so young. It was foolish of me to act as I did, but I think it is now... that we are in the right place for something more."

Kagome shivered, body warming to him. Intuitively, the brush of fingers on her neck made her foolishly anticipate a kiss- sorely disappointed when it didn't come. "I'm not," she forced herself to say. Seeing the disappointment darken his brown eyes, she sighed. "I miss you," Kagome admitted quietly, turning away to escape from his touch. "I miss how... we were. I'm terrified of that, though. I was...under the impression we'd be together. Permanently. Then you had to go and tell me you needed 'pure' heirs to continue the family bloodline."

She laughed bitterly, loosely holding her arms. "The worst thing is, that even after all of that, I'm still in love with you."

"You are frightened that I will hurt you again."

Kagome nodded mutely. She then forced a giggle, giving a weak smile. "Besides, you may not like me as I am now. I'm more jaded than before."

"I like what I see very much," moving closer once more as though experiencing a gravitational pull, he stopped inches away. "I have missed you too," he muttered quietly, genuinely. She could feel him inhale her scent through her hair. "Very much."

Her mouth suddenly became dry. "I'm with Natsuki-"

"Leave him," a rush of passion entered his voice as Sesshoumaru swept closer, backing her into the desk. The wood dug into her thighs, their hips meeting. "This one is not interested in being 'the other man' in an affair. Nor am I interested in watching you remain with someone less than ideal," he snorted, resting his hand over her wrist and grazing his thumb over it.

"Y-you don't know anything about it!"

"I could smell your scent. It was not bright and cheerful even before I re-entered your life the other day. His feels...murky on you. Unhappy."

Kagome swallowed thickly, glancing away. "Observant as ever," she admitted softly.

"Or perhaps you did a poor job of hiding it," backing off a little- he rested his hip next to hers beside the desk, remaining near but barely touching. And yet everything felt so close. "You've changed. But you're still the same at your core, miko," hot breath fanned over her neck, teeth ghosting over the shell of her ear. "If you permitted me, I would not be reckless with your heart again, as I was in my youth."

Her palms traitorously slid up, sliding over firm muscles- running across his chest. He felt warm. His heart was beating fast. Was he nervous? Such a thing sounded impossible.

She bit her lip, secretly longing for the sensation of silks under her hands again instead of the modern cotton of his shirt.

"I don't know that I believe you," Kagome met his gaze, rewarded with the golden glow of his eyes instead of human brown.

"I've gotta go," she said reluctantly, forcing herself to pull away. "I need to be at work."

"Very well," he hummed, unmoving. "But if you...need something. You know where to find me."

He sounded almost desperate for an excuse to talk with her. Giving a curt nod, she let herself out of his office with a long breath, shaking her head. Sesshoumaru's static youki haunted her steps for the remainder of the day.

#Sesskag #Sesshoumaru x Kagome #asks

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alyss-spazz-penedo · 3 years

Text

Okay, so life has gotten STUPID stressful of late, and these days I have basically no time to indulge happy daydreams AT ALL.

Thus: screw pacing, I'm just gonna toss up this mostly-completed 11th part of the unedited v!Wind fic and then blow through the rest of this fic sometime in the next few weeks, bc I’m not adding any more content to what I’ve already got (or at least not anytime soon).

So yeah, @w1lmutt, expect a larger and more chaotic worddump than usual eventually! (I figure I can worry about proper scenes and editing nonsense if/when I ever move these words over to AO3 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

<<First Part 10 Final>>

(I made a Masterpost for this!)

They drag the big doors open.

The inside of the cave is poorly lit and offers little in the way of room to stand; a pathway of those monster-built walkways follows the wall around to the back of the cove, but otherwise the space is all open water with an impressive ship bobbing at the center.

Tetra lets out a grunt of approval when she sees it, though she scowls at the massive cage that's been built on its deck. It’s a crude thing, large and runed with ominous symbols meant to contain the imprisoned, but otherwise the ship itself seems surprisingly understated and not-evil for the primary vessel of someone who’d conquered as much of the sea as Phantom had boasted.

At first, things seem fine. Quiet. The ship is untouched, all gangplanks pulled up and cannons pointed out but otherwise unharmed.

Then one of the pirates peeks their head over the railing and spots them.

"Boss! Swabbie! Is that you?" Niko yells, and there's blood all down his side. "Look out! Monsters afoot!"

"Niko!" Tetra calls in alarm, and the pirates who are able to scramble to lay out a plank for them to board. Phantom doesn't bother waiting, yanking his mask on and clearing the side of the ship in a single bound.

"Who did this," he begins, voice distorted by magic and fury.

Then the monsters attack, dropping from the ceiling and rising out of the sea. Every one of them bleeds black.

The heroes fight, of course. The crew has taken a beating, and the gathered Links do their best to defend the exhausted sailors—Phantom most fervently of them all.

It's hard battle. What footing there is is unstable, and their enemies many. Most of them are not suited to aquatic battles, and the waters of the cave are treacherous. They take injuries, all of them.

But when he's standing between their injured and their enemies, when his eyes are clear and sharp and his strikes deadly precise—for the first time, the gathered Links can see the look of a hero about their youngest.

~o0o~

Of course, he proceeds to thoroughly ruin that impression by the time the battle draws to a close.

The monster he's chosen is not a type of creature he recognizes—green, reptilian, fast in the water. Phantom's cut it's legs out from under it, quite literally, and so it writhes on it's elbows and stomach across the wooden deck as it tries to escape him. Outside of their little corner of the ship, the last of its comrades fall to the blades of the traveling heroes.

"Who sent you?" Phantom demands. When he doesn't get a response he likes, he drags his blade through the side of it's belly, long and nonfatal. It squeals in agony.

"You're going to die here," he observes, soft. He stomps on the wound, heedless of the dark blood splashing his sandals. "But it's going to take time. Quite some time, if you so choose. Answer me: who is your master?"

The creature gibbers. Phantom tilts his head, somehow divining meaning from the nonsensical noises of terror.

"A shadow?" he murmurs. "What-?"

Someone steps in. “What are you doing?!”

And it's only because it’s Hyrule—Hyrule who tried to help, Hyrule who’s lightning magic Phantom can still feel painful echoes of in his bones—that Phantom stays his blade. “Get out of my way,” he growls, which is better than the stabbing any of these other interlopers would’ve gotten.

A hand lands on his shoulder. Phantom's sword swings around, action to reaction with no pause for thought in between. The edge stops a hair's breadth away from Tetra's scowl.

"That's enough," she says, and shoots the lizalfos in the head.

Phantom scowls at the dead body, then at her. "I was not finished," he growls.

Tetra yanks on his ear.

"Ow! Hey!" He flails. "Leggo leggo!"

"We have more important things to worry about!" She yells, dragging him around to look at the sorry state of her crew. "Genzo needs a splint! Niko needs stitches and more bandages than we have! Everyone is beat to shit! And only one of us can fly, idiot!"

She lets go of his ear to shove him forward. Phantom stops. He looks.

"Oh," he utters, and he notices for the first time that he has blood dripping down his shield arm. He shakes his head, once, like a dog, and clutches at the wound. He feels very cold. "...Oh."

As though it had merely been waiting for his permission, the lizal corpse finally explodes into dark smoke.

"Right," he breathes. "Right."

~o0o~

"What were those," Phantom demands.

The pirates have been left in the care of the brothers who'd first opened their dojo to the traveling heroes, recuperating from their various injuries. Fortunately, none of the damage seems permanent. A few fairies, some liberally applied first aid, and all the crew should be at least back on their feet within the week.

This, however, has left the group of heroes with nowhere to stay, which led to Phantom reluctantly opening his own home to them. They're packed in there now, sprawled about both floors and generally tending to themselves with experienced hands.

"What do you think?" Legend replies snippily. Phantom scowls at them all, pacing back and forth restlessly in the tight space by the front door.

His glare lands on Four, helping Twilight wrap his wrist—on Wild getting scolded while Legend rests his ice rod on the Champion's ankle—on Hyrule tutting over Sky while Warriors dramatically bemoans his black eye—

He takes in the group's injuries with a dissatisfaction that very, very poorly covers his unease.

"You're not weak," the boy asserts. Time wonders who he's trying to convince. "You wouldn't have beaten me if you were weak. Why was this battle so difficult?"

"You didn't get off lightly yourself," Time points out, nodding to the thick mess of gauze on the boy's arm. At a guess, the boy had tried to block a blow with his shield and forgotten he wasn't wearing one. Fortunate that there's a fairy fountain on the island, or Phantom might've lost strength in that limb.

Phantom waves him off. "I was handicapped," he dismisses, not denying that he wasn't fighting at his best. Time frowns at the excuse. "I'll figure something out to compensate for it, and this won't happen again."

He gets a lot of dubious looks at that; none of them have forgotten that what he's trying to 'compensate for' is the loss of that parasite. Time's almost dreading what the boy might scrounge up to replace that.

Phantom turns away from them sulkily, unable to defend himself and unwilling to look all that suspicion in the face.

"To answer your question," Four starts, with the air of someone steering the conversation back to safer waters, "that's just the kind of journey we're on."

Sky swings his previously-dislocated shoulder in a testing motion that immediately gets him a cease-and-desist look from Hyrule, before he adds, "Those were pretty standard for black-blooded monsters, I'd say."

Twilight, catching the look on Phantom's face, rolls his eyes. "Did you think something the goddess summoned eight heroes to fight would be easy?"

Phantom scoffs, arms crossed. "It took eight of you to fight me," he grumbles, and there's the arrogant little brat they'd met at the start of this. Hopefully that means the kid's feeling better, if he's up to sassing them like that again.

Time rather doubts that—Phantom IS a Link, after all—and so the one-eyed hero makes a mental note to follow up on that later.

#Vinked Universe #the unedited v!wind fic #linked universe #my writing #fanfic #me: tries my hand at action bc this is supposed to be a LU fic #Also me: drops it like a hot potato bc I have no idea how to Fight Scene #next part is just gonna be me turning my notebook upside and shaking it until all the plunnies fall out #I hope ur prepared #this has been a lot of fun but I am just. done #i think it's clear enough where I'm going with things at this point anyways

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sxfterhearts · 4 years

Text

wounded

24. [7:25 pm]

➳ pairing: yugyeom x reader

➳ genre/warnings: slow burn, fluff, slight bad boy!yugyeom, triggers; mentions of violence, injuries, physical abuse

➳ word count: 2,504 words

➳ summary: 24. “Just because,”

➳ author's note: this will probably turn into a two-shot, inspired by new era yugs. all creds for the gif below to @jinyoungot7, thank you so much 💖 i’ve been sitting on this idea for a bit too long + rewrote it 3 times (bc my dumb self forgot to hit save) so i really struggled to form the right words. i hope you’ll forgive me for this! any form of feedback will be very much appreciated 💕 (also: imo = aunty)

wounded // scarred // healed

A rush of stiflingly hot summer air pummeled through the double doors of your family’s restaurant, disrupting the once cool atmosphere created by the air-cons. Being reminded of this season’s unforgiving behaviours urged you to lift the straw of your cool drink to your lips.

The sip of iced Americano, however, got stuck in your throat when you laid eyes upon the restaurant’s newest patron.

Yugyeom. Kim Yugyeom, with his untucked shirt and loosened tie, took confident strides across the dining area in the direction of the kitchen window where chefs would place finished dishes, ready to be served. Your brain short-circuited for several moments as you did nothing but watch him from your position behind the cashier. His actions were that of a regular’s as he arrived at the window and stuck his head through the opening in the wall, his hand coming up in a small wave to catch the chefs’ attention.

It was then that you registered, quite belatedly, the bruises and splotches of crimson littered across the back of his raised hand, tarnishing the fair skin.

You distinctly remembered that you saw plasters wrapped around his fingers earlier today when you sat beside him in class. His current wounds made the older ones seem like insignificant paper cuts. It wasn’t unusual for Yugyeom to turn up covered in fresh cuts and purple bruises, though. In fact, you had grown so accustomed to this that you started stocking up on assorted Rilakkuma plasters. Since the start of the semester when you were assigned the furthest desk from the whiteboard, you learned how to disinfect open wounds with saline solution and cover it properly with pastel-coloured dressings, all courtesy of Kim Yugyeom.

“Imo, can I please order takeaway? One bibim naengmyeon and one mul naengmyeon, double serving of pickled radishes, two eggs and extra-”

“Yugyeom-ah!” Your mother’s unmistakeable voice pierced through as her head peeked out of the little window, coming face to face with your desk partner. She addressed him with such a warm and motherly tone, which left you surprised and confused. “Oh, oh dear… It’s best if you take a seat, you can have your dinner here. I’ll pack Mark’s in a takeaway container, don’t you worry.”

“But Imo, I need to get back, Mark-”

“No buts, Yugyeom. I already memorised your orders. Sit down, your food will be ready in a second.”

“Imo, I can’t-” Yugyeom protested weakly, waving his hands in refusal, but you knew it was all for nought. Attempting to deny your mother’s orders were an impossible feat.

A short silence ensued. You guessed this was caused by your mother’s signature death stare. Having been on the receiving end countless times during your lifetime, you were well aware that it could make anyone’s skin rise with goose bumps or a chill to run down their spines.

“Okay, Imo…” Came Yugyeom’s resigned voice as his lanky legs dragged himself over to the vacant seat closest to the kitchen.

You took this as your cue to question your mother in detail about how she became so familiar with your class’ bad boy. Unfortunately, you were met with a curt reminder of the first-aid kit in the cupboard under the counter as she busied herself with blanching the buckwheat noodles. When she was in her element, there was no way to deviate her attention from the task at hand.

Rummaging through the cupboard, you fished out the white box with a red cross stuck on the top of the lid. Taking a few moments to steel your quickening heart rate, you were struck by the realisation that this would be the first time seeing Yugyeom outside of school in the entire five years you spent as classmates. He was a quiet boy, never uttering a single word in school, even when the teachers were asking him questions, landing him a semi-permanent spot in detention. Most days, he would plug one earphone into his ear and rest his head on folded arms, taking frequent naps as the class learned about organic compounds or Punnett squares. He was also handed multiple demerits for breaking the school rules, which ranged from getting into fist fights with seniors who bullied students for their lunch money, or wearing one too many piercings (especially the shiny ones), to refusing to get a haircut when his fringe began to grow past his eyebrows, obscuring his eyes.

The most intimidating aspect about sitting next to Kim Yugyeom, however, was that nearly every week you were forced to come face to face with angry gashes and wounds that he seemingly gained overnight. He always turned a blind eye when you succumbed to your curiosity and inspected his injuries from your seat, mere inches away. Wordlessly, you would clean the damaged skin with practiced hands, then patch it up with a plaster. Rilakkuma, you decided, suited him best. The plasters matched his yellow Rilakkuma earphones. You even caught him occasionally staring at the plasters when you stayed in class during lunch, the only period in which he remained awake.

“Y/N,” Yugyeom called as you drew the seat next to him. He stared at the table, refusing to meet your eyes.

Your ears perked up the moment your name left his lips; you were not used to this. It was a rare occurrence for the two of you to speak. Usually you went about your everyday tasks silently, with little words being exchanged. It was a silence that grew comfortable over the semester, and you found yourself appreciating the peace it brought during stressful times.

Conversations between the two of you had only started up recently. This was largely attributed to your father, who worked front of the house, being ridiculed by your classmate’s parents when they visited the restaurant. They complained about your father’s complete lack of competence when they had to wait forty-five minutes for their food to arrive, only to receive the wrong dishes in the end. Furious, they shoved the plate of food off the table and stormed out of the restaurant, not even bothering to settle the bill. Your father was left to clean up the scraps in front of all the other customers, severely damaging the restaurant’s reputation.

The classmate, a snobby, pampered girl, confronted you in school the next day by rudely pushing your books and stationery onto the floor, just like her parents did. You held back angry, frustrated tears as she ridiculed you and your family in front of all your other classmates, tearing you down to shreds. Yugyeom, rousing from his nap, caught the girl’s wrist before she had the chance to slap you across the face with a notebook.

Everyone grew quiet then. The boy had never done anything to gain attention, always preferring to remain behind the shadows in perfect silence. “Keep it down, you’re ruining my sleep.” Yugyeom hissed threateningly. She cowered in fear and backed off, never to provoke you again.

“Look up, Yugyeom.” You instructed, returning to the task at hand. With a concerned gaze, you conducted a thorough examination of his injuries. The cuts on his hands and the bruises on his knuckles were fairly standard – a quick clean and plaster should do the trick. You got to work, pulling out the alcohol-free cleansing wipes and dabbing over the torn skin with gentle fingers. The boy flinched slightly upon the first contact but behaved rather well as you continued to tend to his hands. Your gaze flitted over the two spherical scars on the underside of his left forearm as he reached forward, closing the distance between the two of you. They were cigarette burns, you figured. You could feel Yugyeom’s fingers brushing against your temples as he pushed strands of your short hair back to rest behind your ears, the tips of which glowered pink at his actions.

“What happened this time?” You asked, somewhat rhetorically. You knew full well that Yugyeom would never divulge the events that led up to his injuries, no matter how persistent you were.

He hummed in response, as though that were an appropriate answer, and scrunched up his face slightly to express his reluctance in answering your question.

The wound smack bang in the middle of his nose presented itself as a bit more of a challenge. While Yugyeom was no stranger to facial injuries, often sporting shallow cuts close to his brow or near his chin, this was much deeper; much larger. It drew unwanted attention and tarnished his otherwise handsome features.

A dull thud sounded as a bowl of cold noodles landed on the table. Your mother stood over the two of you, shaking her head as she handed you a warm towel. You accepted it, still utterly clueless about how your mother was so well acquainted with Yugyeom and his injuries. “Y/N-ah, use this to clean the wound. If it’s still bleeding a lot, apply some pressure to it.” She then turned to the boy, tutting in disapproval. “Yugyeom, I’ve always respected your privacy when you show up in my restaurant covered in cuts and bruises, but this is where I draw the line. Your injuries are getting more serious. You and I are going to have a serious talk once you finish your dinner, young man. It’s been two years and I can’t watch from the sidelines any longer, are we clear?”

You watched as Yugyeom nearly heaved out a sigh, but decided against it in the last minute. “Yes, Imo. Thank you, Imo.”

Your mother, with her hands perched atop her waist, nodded gravely before strutting over to the kitchen, leaving the two of you alone once more. A million questions swarmed in your head as Yugyeom took the towel from your hands, pressing it onto his wound as he began to devour the bowl of cold noodles. This has been going on for two years? You wondered to yourself. Two long years, and yet I’ve never even ran into him in the restaurant. There’s no way, he must’ve been here when I worked over the summer. Maybe he was just sitting in a corner, eating in silence… As usual.

“You’ve been coming her for two years?” You asked before you could stop yourself, your curiosity getting the better of you. “But why?” Why didn’t you tell me? You thought silently, the rest of the sentence unable to leave your mouth.

Yugyeom shrugged as he picked out two halved egg yolks from the boiled eggs with his chopsticks. “Just because,”

Because you pitied me? Because you were ashamed of me? Because you couldn’t face me in school without thinking about that incident caused by the girl’s parents?

“It’s not like that.” The boy said flatly, his eyes meeting yours with a resolute gaze when he noticed you withdrawing, getting lost in your thoughts. “This is the only place that sells naengmyeon all year.”

“What?” You muttered in disbelief.

“I have naengmyeon every Friday, even in winter. The food is good and I only live five minutes away.”

You nodded at his explanation. Perhaps you were overthinking the situation.

“I was also trying to hide most of my injuries from you.” He admitted in a low voice, barely audible above the white noise of the restaurant. Yugyeom took another mouthful of noodles into his mouth, chewing appreciatively as the refreshing flavours soothed his senses. “Fridays…” He paused, eyes wandering vacantly around the vicinity of the restaurant. “Fridays are gambling days for my uncle. He’ll gamble, lose, drink and come home for dinner. You know my older brother, Mark?”

“Yeah, I know Mark.” It was hard not to know about Mark. Before he graduated four years ago, rumours about him spread like wildfire throughout the entire school. The one rumour you distinctly remembered as a first-year student was that he maintained good grades by doing, for a lack of better word, favours, for his female teachers.

“Mark would rush me out of the house before our uncle got home. He acted as my uncle’s babysitter by cooking him dinner, and then as his punching bag when he had to take out his frustration. I was home once when it happened, some time last year. After that I made Mark agree for us to take turns.”

Your head started to spin as your brain worked to process this new information. “Wait so, the cuts, the bruises, the burns, all of that…?”

Yugyeom nodded, still staring beyond the double doors. The sun was beginning to set. In the back of his mind, he registered that his uncle would be home soon. “Honestly, Mark had it worse, especially in the first few months after.”

He meant after his parents passed away two years ago. A car accident. They were coming home from their anniversary dinner. It was raining. There was a truck going around the corner at insane speeds, towards their car. It swerved. Their car plummeted off a cliff. They died instantly, the aunties gossiped as they filtered in and out of the restaurant. Poor kids, they would remark, casting pitied looks at the brothers.

“Your mother, she’s really something else.” He said with a small smile while picking up a few pieces of cucumber and radish. “The first time I came in, the restaurant was about to close. She took one look at me and forced me to press a piece of frozen beef on my bruise. She talked to me the entire time she was dressing my wound, I swear my ears nearly fell off.”

That sounded exactly like your mother. She loved to nag, but it always came from a place of genuine concern. “Imagine being her daughter.” You joked, grateful for the slight comedic relief from the heavy nature of the words you shared. It was one of the few proper conversations you had with your desk partner.

“Sometimes I have to remind myself that she isn’t my mother.” Yugyeom said, his tone so broken and devastated that you felt your heart ache within your chest.

You placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder, trying your best to provide him with some form, any form of comfort. “I’m sure she cares for you like her own son. Especially since she’s been making you dinner every Friday for the past two years.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“She even nurses your injuries.”

“But you do that too.” He pointed out without missing a beat, a teasing glint in his eyes as he finally turned to look at you.

“I…”

“Nevermind, forget I said anything.” Yugyeom replied with a knowing grin, returning back to his dinner.

I care about you too, a lot. You confessed silently, resting your heavy head on your palms as you watched him eat. The golden shine of the sun casted upon his pointed features. Despite the old scars and the new wounds, he glowed.

A part of you realised that after so many months, you had finally broken-down Kim Yugyeom’s iron walls. School would be very different from now on.

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ohmygodtheywereparabatai · 3 years

Text

And I feel Zhao x HappinessInAnyForm in this Chili’s tonight

I borrowed the ship name @guiltyportfolio chose. It’s perfect!

(3.9k and many weeks late...) A young Zhao doped up on seratonin meets unapologetic Pianjeong fluff. But I rake it through the mud before it’s earned. A lot.

It took longer than he would like to admit in later years, nursing a strong, bitter liquid instead of scalding tea while revisiting memories with none the will to pocket them out of sight and mind... to realize he had sharpened a broken tool to the snapping point. That in his militant head, damaged things were only fixed by pressuring them to spring back into service, for some miracle of self-discovery to take hold after the umpteenth squat that burned through the soft muscle in the legs, the last haggard, gasping mile on unforgiving terrain. That such was the nation he served, one that made good youth into disposable markers, on maps with charred-out territories that had already been taken... the dead buried, the soldiers burying a part of themselves deeper in the low croon of drinking songs that stretched into twilight.

Then there was him: that impish boy of gawky height and thin wrists, scraps of techniques off the battle charts of famed commanders, designs for tanks and warships familiarized down to the bolts, oaths of loyalty to the Firelord and vibrant praises burned verbatim on the tongue... shelved away in a mental compendium. Eager adrenaline when he was first placed under Jeong Jeong’s charge. And underneath it, anger.

Anger at everything, the battle charts with weak points that had needlessly prolonged the fighting, the ships and tanks that were on the losing side and cost them precious resources, the Firelord himself for wronging him, anything at all for crossing him... Enraged at an invisible injustice whenever Jeong Jeong glimpsed the heart of Zhao: the fire below the soldier. The fire that ruled a soldier.

The only catch was that a heart existed. His master had failed him in that regard. Jeong Jeong couldn’t identify the source, for the life of him, of whatever bred the anger that tunneled into those bronzed eyes, into the thoughts lit behind them like sparks off a fuse. When the only notion he’d had to bend his mind around was glancing at the wrists Zhao kept hidden under tied sleeves and sturdy braces, ever since the earliest of his battles - a gruesome enemy on equal footing.

He showed him now, by candlelight in the commander’s tent, as the rest of the camp dozed or caroled in a discordant slur.

“I... he was...” Zhao’s tone had deflated from the similar, loose pitch of a tooling young man. He sounded sober now - much too sober.

A curse escaped on Jeong Jeong’s next breath. If breath escaped him at all. His pupil was by no means shy about crowing - he was the type to parade around the stump of a limb, butt into any conversation, ‘Want to hear - want to see?’, sit himself down, and embellish to the extreme. Yet the most glaring scars were ones most soldiers acknowledged, and none shared.

This was neither.

Faded circlets, seared into either wrist, often in place of a traditional ceremony, more often a last act of desperation. A bond of significance that ran deeper than flesh, worn proudly in spite of the decree it defied.

“... a close friend.” Jeong Jeong finished, amending carefully so as not to oust the criminal crouched in front of him.

Zhao sniggered, reclaiming his sleeves. He tipped the cup to his lips. “Yeah. A friend I kissed regularly.”

The commander made a tch sound, his worry spiking. The boy looked up to catch his gaze, then laughed brightly, imitating a suggestive charade to the act. Jeong Jeong was left to bear witness with thinned lips.

“Last words- he said... and get this,” Zhao shook himself with another fit, further from the hole the memory had burrowed - closer to the fiction he’d tried to entangle around it, like dressing a wolf in koala sheepskin, “He made me promise, ‘Win the war for me.’ It was a joke between us... If one of us knew we were first to go, we’d dare the other to do anything. Anything.”

“Except, it was gonna be some stupid shit. Like, kissing a girl.” Move on, make her a wife. “Like setting your hair on fire. I told him I’d set your hair on fire. Bastard left with... ‘Win the war for me.’” Zhao set down the drink, blinking hard.

Answers that drifted at arm’s length, all this time: the bundled, hot knot of grief the soldier hadn’t learned to swallow around. And how could he? He was bound to a lover’s final will.

The commander abruptly reached across, wrested him forward by a bruising grip. The empty cup clinked aside - Zhao nearly shouted in alarm, the mild upset in his stomach lurching in march with a lolling pulse. His arms looped firmly around him, merciless strength still grasping his head by the palm. His master probably wasn’t aware of it, or worse, it was as weak as he’d ever come off. Zhao sensed quaking; his own or his teacher’s, his eyes were heavy, and the line had blurred.

“Master Jeong Jeong...” He huffed in difficulty. Ribs tightening, “Sir...”

As soon as he was released, Zhao scooted back within his bounds, rubbing the dizzied, interrupted train of thought from his face. He was awake, wasn’t he? Last he remembered, his commander was shrouded in smoke and stood over decimated ruins, unmoving, planted like an idol to their vicious occupation. Were they the same men?

When he looked down, a pair of hands were facing him, knuckles down, fists curled. At least the look his superior gave him retained the sternness of command,

See.

Feeling strange and guiltless, moreover entrusted, he reached under the other’s arm - the rough cloth felt like something thatched, ash singed permanently into the cuffs. Zhao pushed back one sleeve, a wave of numbness crashing over him in its wake. He repeated with the left, finding the same, uneven band of skin that had poorly healed... though the marks left weren’t quite the same as a firebender’s, pinching a forefinger and thumb before a circle of light hissed to life. It looked manual in a different way, as if burned by a nonbender - a clever one, handier with the tools of a forge.

His throat had gone dry. It was harmless; Zhao didn’t need a voice to ask.

You...?

Jeong Jeong raised a name, and an offer. Finally bowing to his pupil’s unyielding persistence. It overwhelmed Zhao in the moment, a blind over the realization that it was at once an answer to the question. He leapt for the commander with a cry, a string of thank you’s and I won’t fail him - or you’s buried in the loose embrace, followed by a grunt of displeasure as the old master shrugged free. Discipline tended to scrape out such displays in the Fire Army - his pupil had talent for a lack, more so when drunk. An unseen smile only tugged his lip after Zhao had picked himself up, dusted off, and staggered outside with the first hum he’d heard of the boy in ages.

. . .

“Don’t fidget.”

Before he could dismiss the tic in his fingers, his master, or both - the door slid open.

His eyes bugged of their own accord. And they didn’t dare blink and miss an instant in front of him.

How the hell could he? The swordsman of the century welcomed the commander with open arms and decorum the rest of nobility could only emulate. As genteel in appearance as a time-honored, decorated sheath that hid the steel he was known to steer like a fifth element. Before even gathering the thoughts that were doomed to somersault as soon as he opened his mouth, Zhao glimpsed them lean in, and deepen their embrace. Quickly turning a cheek that flashed red and a heart that raced, doubled.

Then he was in front of Zhao - his bow was low and graceful for his height - he held out a hand, burned circlets visible just over the sleeve - his commander cleared his throat as if to remind him, you’re meant to bow and shake it.

Zhao damn nearly folded at the waist. His arm shot out. “Master... Master Piandao. I’ve heard all about you. This is, it’s- a tremendous honor.” His eyes were starstruck, carrying a faraway twinkle. “You wouldn’t believe- I asked to learn under you almost every day since I discovered you were a close contact of Master Jeong Jeong’s.”

“Oh, if we’ve heard as much as we have of each other, I think I can believe it.” Inevitably, his voice conjured the image of warm, fluffy milk bread. How cake made the young soldier feel, in human form. Im-fucking-possible. “Sit.” He nodded for the commander and his charge, smiling. “I’ll pour the tea.”

The hour was whiled away. There wasn’t a moment that denied years of familiarity between the two, from how often he tallied his master’s laugh, to every occasion their hands came together, rubbing absent circles or just to draw one’s attention - cement a warm and long look into the other’s face. Envy hardly occurred to a third-wheeling Zhao, which was an honest first. Soon after, he was kneeling in the shadows of the branches that rustled outside the terrace. Nape pricked with sweat, despite the calm he leveled on the master - likely Jeong Jeong’s senior by a few years. Trifling details and their such conclusions immersed Zhao’s senses, tensing a high-strung concentration as it was.

“You came all this way. I couldn’t possibly turn you down.” The warmth had, temporarily, been withheld, to a surreal effect. Zhao felt cornered, felt that each answer was colored in more defiance than what was allowed. “Did you think my manners in serving tea to my guests applied to training?”

His stomach vaulted. “No, sir.”

“Then why? You think you deserve to be here, is that it?”

In any case, answer as yourself seemed to be the worst possible advice from Master Jeong Jeong’s end - yet he’d said nothing else. Zhao had no clue whether his prying ears and eyes bored through a blind spot in the windows, or were pressed against the wall as he smothered another chuckle. None of the outcomes struck him as upside.

“I have a war to win.” He resisted sinking a tooth into his lip, any sign of recoil. “And if you’d like to keep the life that I couldn’t, you have a war to win, too. I know you’re happy with the commander, sir. But as long as there’s fighting...”

“Ah, I see.” More strangely, Master Piandao didn’t miss a beat. His slow pace traveled underneath the floor, inching closer. “So you dream of vengeance?”

That seemed to tick him. “They won’t be dreams when I leave this place.”

“You came here knowing you were a bender of remarkable strength and skill. But you wanted the skill to slip a blade between their ribs, to watch them die at a close distance. You wanted your revenge to be cold and personal.”

A tremble stole into him. And I shouldn’t?

“I...” He was transparent. There was no lie to spin.

“Don’t think I’m unimpressed.” Piandao mused, now directly over him. “These are all brave things to admit to fighting for. But what else? What wakes you up at night? What makes you vulnerable, soldier? What haunts your every step?”

Vulnerable? Haunted? “I... don’t...” Answer as himself? The old swordsman turned, seemingly resigned, when Zhao rushed to finish as the words took definite shape,

“I don’t want to die a nobody.” He ripped the weight off his chest, bared for all of half a minute. “I want to be more than - than what they made me. I want them to remember, that when they shipped me off to never come home, I returned... I made history. Not for them. For me.”

For him.

A pause. “Them?”

His frayed nerves broke the surface - more fear than rage, at least. “The... all of them. The nation. The Fire Nation!” Zhao cried, pressed his forehead to the floor, as low as possible. Pride gave, and still, he only half-believed he’d really said it. “... please.”

Anger reeled, flared in the small breath that lit the space between his lips and the ground.

A foot connected under his ribs, turned him over with only so much effort. Zhao started, facing the ceiling... and the tip of a sword beneath his chin.

“Your temper unbalances you. Good for fire, maybe, but not mastery of the blade. I’ve been told you lack a clear head, pupil Zhao.” Piandao arched a brow, his head tilted in doubt. “You’re bound to lose fingers.”

Jeong Jeong had to have been rolling over by now. The soldier twitched, wary of the cold pinch of metal. “I won’t - lose.”

He couldn’t again. Serving an invisible legacy was one thing, lives laid down by the thousands to reap a tomorrow they wouldn’t see; but the war he fought hadn’t been so lonely or beyond fathom. Zhao had seen a clear future when there was someone to share it with. The drone of marching in and out of sleepy towns and provinces flocked with fleeing commoners by day, turned to the darkness when they climbed into treetops and plotted which stars to follow to the edge of the earth. The sunrise wasn’t the same as when their arms tangled and lips pressed together, keeping out of sight as the flush left their cheeks while idling, talking. Their sun had never felt as pale and small as his did now.

Zhao was sick of loss. He’d made a promise.

The sword slid away. An arm reached out for his. Piandao’s mouth was upturned.

“I will train you.”

There was a thud outside the door, as if an elbow had slipped and a body crashed.

. . .

He was well aware his partner had tried, on many occasions, to regret all things but the pupil they taught together.

Even then, Piandao had been the foil to Jeong Jeong’s cynical heart, urging him to find the sunlight dappled between grey clouds - run a hand under the few rays of light, and avoid dwelling on memories that would embitter the rest. Admitting that he’d partly acquiesced to the boy that walked circles in his own grief to spite the commander’s expectations had earned quite the laugh. A source of rib ache only for as long as it took the edge off. Piandao had wanted the challenge that he couldn’t surmount.

He took quickly to a variety of weapons, but the gifted swordsman was soon faced with the same plight: discipline. An unorthodox series of lessons and several precise, deliberate blows to the ego later, Zhao’s head had cooled long enough to comprehend the soul of the art. After that threshold in his instruction, it was a test of how well the student embraced it.

“Shall we, commander?”

The afternoon was hot, but not unpleasant. They watched a solitary spar from the steps to the dueling grounds. Smart, surefooted, well accomplished - the root of his motivation had been inexhaustible, dangerously so. The rhythm of Jeong Jeong’s palm cracking a line of knuckles was more than telling of his answer.

Jumped from behind, and in front. Mid-form when a sword came down in a whistling arc, and another sailed straight for his neck.

Zhao nearly careened out of the way, dual swords meeting either steel with a resounding clash. He threw his head up in surprise, arms straining with the effort of bearing two men’s strength, a bemused twitch in his lip. “What are you doing?”

“Pass,” Jeong Jeong sounded enlivened - difficult to think he hadn’t been waiting for this, “and I’ll allow you to set my hair on fire.”

That cocked the edge of his mouth. Abruptly, the opposing swords left, striking the ground in the same spot. His teachers shared astonishing harmony, to the point where seeing it again and again hadn’t taken his awe. The metal points raked forwards in unison, a cloud of dust flung into Zhao’s sight. “Hey!”

“Fire does little to weather the elements.” He was forced to hear footsteps, place voices, a Piandao shifting to the right. “Air may carry it, but only until it’s overcome. Water extinguishes it immediately. Earth can stamp out its path.”

“This is dirty fighting!” Zhao bit down a cough in fear of missing crucial information, narrowly vacating the empty air where they sliced. Just parrying in the nick of time.

“So why then, does it triumph in today’s world?” He blinked out the last, burning traces. Their student veered on a heel and made quick distance, still tailed closely. His reply was a stammer, resetting his own armed grip and stance.

“The... the bender makes the element.”

“So he does. Fire is wielded as fear, and suddenly, it owns the others. It shapes history.” Piandao feinted, jolted upwards to overthrow him. The soldier jumped, catching the steel on his crossguard. Zhao’s fist shook. Jeong Jeong lingered menacingly behind.

“Think of this as the same. You may feel outmatched - but you’re not outsmarted. Not yet.”

And the resulting chaos was ordered into dance. Deception, directness, three minds of cunning that happened to cross blades. The fight wasn’t the focus as much as it was the boy’s dexterity, his footwork which leaped to and from the garden wall and moss-capped stones, the occasional puff of flame that his commander averted with a tch. Smoke and dust were tossed into lazy spirals. Their techniques were a language, and the match, poetry.

Zhao very nearly slipped into the mindset that compelled one to search for meaning outside of war.

Outsmart them? His arm swerved to meet with a clang. Piandao dove for his exposed side, one, two leather straps snapped like kite string. Zhao fumbled over his guard when Jeong Jeong hacked the others, turning too late as it slid free - the commander’s cut was less clean, grazing the skin under his shirt. Blood welled, and his mind raced. But they were extraordinary! People he looked up to since he’d first met them. Before he even met them!

Then there was him, stupid, emotional - without a chest guard - hair and brows flecked with sand.

“Focus, you oaf!” That wasn’t Piandao. “Are you trying to think? That has never been your strength!”

Credit to the nerve of him, Zhao started to laugh. He redoubled his attack, broadswords running into one silver blur. Jeong Jeong was barking something about humor belonging to children, Piandao tried to usher his lover’s infuriated spiel back into the moment, and Zhao’s grin only grew wider, whiter - seeing his first out. Discipline was more or less hung on the laundry line, offense oozing with the arrogance that caught even the upper hand of insurmountable odds by surprise. His entire waist twisted, a sword shot skywards before he kicked out at their feet, rolled under, and caught it unerringly by the handle. Zhao ripped the serrated tip upwards, backed with a sneer. Piandao was forced to halt - step back - glance down at the split front of his robes, navel to collar.

Jeong Jeong paused, grabbed at the other’s arm, staring, uncomprehending, at the sight. Before color could even occur to rise in his face,

“I’m sorry. Nothing’s hurt, right? This reminds me-” Zhao swallowed another bout of laughter. His head tilted, making direct eye contact, “The commander has, on certain nights, provided enlightening commentary in his sleep. My partner and I would overhear how earthbenders couldn’t hold a candle to the sword master’s expert physical condition. Namely,” he damned himself for a win, “how they could only dream of rock as firm as his abdomen. Well, my master certainly could.”

Jeong Jeong purpled - crimson’d, maybe, was the shade - lifting with an arm that had already turned to butter. Zhao lashed out, knocking the other blade loose with learned technique. A square kick sucked the air from the firebender’s lungs, broke his balance, sent him crashing on top of the nonbender. Piandao hit the ground with an oof. Taking in the cool shadow that shielded him and his darling, he craned his neck as the soldier beamed down at him. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let your hair be.”

Piandao was stalled, a little agape. Then he gave into beating the ground with a fist, howling.

“Ongi!” He clutched at his stomach with a shout. The commander shot to his feet, rose a finger to begin a rapid rebuttal. “I had no idea!”

The boy’s shoulder was taken, steered around to face his instructor. Mostly to prevent Jeong Jeong dislocating the one closer to his reach. Piandao ruffled a dusting of grass, twigs, and sand out of his hair. “You certainly live up to your master’s word. Every one.”

He bowed. His - their - student hurried to mirror the motion, trembling with excitement. As sharp as the first day he’d knelt, and they began.

Back then, the name Zhao held promise. It was their asinine hope that they guided a potential successor to the White Lotus onto the road few traveled.

Few.

. . .

They toasted in private. Zhao was set to the task of keeping the forge, accompanied only by firelight, scorching coal, the sweat and grit of the final leg of his teachings. It was justice, at least.

The commander had been teased until he shut up his other by seizing him around the neck, jerking him down, and sealing the gap. Separated for air, scented breath stirred the chin opposite, eyes meeting across a sea of thoughts. Hopes, doubts, fears - they’d bared much of their souls during their years together, entangled wisdom, sought comfort where it was infinite.

“You didn’t tell him of your plans, did you?”

Jeong Jeong sighed. “I received the promotion. The madness ends before it consumes me as admiral.”

“Be patient. These things require the perfect opportunity. Rarely anyone who deserts so far into their career live.” Piandao sipped carefully, set the glass back down. “Of course, I have complete faith that you will be the first. A hope for any dying cries of fealty in the Fire Army.”

“If only that were the kind of death I’d witnessed.” His voice was low, morose. A heavy palm pressed on his shoulder, thumb rubbing circles.

“Seems to me that you neglect to share a lot with other people. I’ll take a wild stab and guess that the kid still thinks I’m a hero hailed far and wide.” Jeong Jeong made some sullen remark about a wild stab being far from his skill. Piandao chuckled. “At the rate I’m losing face, a battalion is bound to come to my doorstep to collect me.”

“You’ll defeat them all,” was his forecast. “And perhaps, stand a chance of passing into a legend like mine.”

Their hands brushed, scratching the twin scars adorning either wrist. “Oh, we’ll see.”

The doors burst. A servant gestured frantically, piecing together enough information for a gist. Stables, raided - forge, cold - gates, open.

They flew on foot, as if there were a point to the mad dash. Jeong Jeong arrived first, sifting through the soot, kicking aside the abandoned bellows and a shovel dug into the earth. Gone.

“Where-” Piandao’s gaze held his, moonlit in white, unreadable. “Will he be safe?”

Glazed, ghostly. Jeong Jeong’s eyes fell closed. “There has been an error in our judgement.”

“He needs to win the war... not end it.”

#pianjeong adopts a son: a short story #zhao fanboying over every white lotus member without even realizing is the fattest of moods #i blame neffy’s talent for instilling the need to write zhao x seratonin #i SWEAR i ship him with only four people and two of them are ocs #your local clown writes!#YES THIS IS based on those two seconds in the waterbending master when zhao does a fancy twirl with zuko’s broadswords

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ericsonclan · 3 years

Text

Lupine’s Eve

Summary: Prisha is enjoying some time with Violet during lunchtime when suddenly Violet starts acting odd...

Word Count: 2173

Read on AO3:

Prisha leaned the back of her head against the tree. It was such a beautiful day today. The calming spring breeze, the sounds of different monsters enjoying the freedom of lunchtime, and Violet resting in her arms. It was perfect. The werewolf’s natural warmth seeped into the vampire’s cold body, warming it up slightly. Prisha sighed happily and wrapped her arms further around Violet, causing the werewolf’s tail to wag faster.

Tilting her head up, Violet looked into Prisha’s eyes. “I’m glad I met you,”

“I’m glad I met you too,” Prisha leaned forward and stole a quick kiss, making the werewolf’s tail whack around at an accelerated pace. The vampire’s heart warmed at the sight and she wished to speak further adoration, going as far as to say the words that she truly felt. After pondering it for a moment Prisha decided to go for it. Lifting Violet’s hand up, Prisha pressed a kiss to it then summoned the courage to say the words. “Violet, I lo-”

Prisha’s words were instantly cut short though when Violet bit down on her braid, growling lightly. Violet munched on it for a second then glanced up, locking eyes with her girlfriend. Without waiting a second Violet released Prisha’s braid and scampered off. The vampire remained frozen in shock.

What on earth just happened?

Prisha waited a few minutes for Violet but soon found herself growing more and more concerned. Violet had acted odd just a few moments ago; perhaps she had gotten a head injury and sustained a concussion. The vampire started to wander around the campus, running into some friendly faces and some not so friendly ones. Each time she stopped to ask if they had seen Violet and each time she was met with the same response until she bumped into Marlon and Louis. The two best friends were currently laughing loudly as they swapped heads, wondering how many monsters they could spook like this.

“Prisha!” Louis beamed while his head was snugly on top of Marlon’s body. “Here for some music time? If so, I have to rain check - Marlon and I are about to go spook some fellow monsters!”

“They’re gonna freak out!” Marlon’s smile mirrored his friend’s. He fistbumped Louis’ wrist which immediately popped off again.

“Damn it,” Louis sighed.

“I came here hoping that one of you had seen Violet,” Prisha jumped back into the conversation, drawing the monsters' attention.

“Oh, Vi? She went tearing across the lawn a minute ago. It was pretty fucking weird,” Marlon motioned over towards the torn up grass that lead towards the picnic tables.

“Thank you and be careful with each others’ heads! I’m sure Clem and Sophie would be heartbroken if you two did something that caused any permanent damage,” Prisha gave a goodbye wave to her two friends then sprinted off, following the damaged grass.

After a few minutes she reached the picnic tables where Sophie, Minnie and Renata were all having a bug-eating contest. Renata and Sophie seemed neck and neck in the race to finish their tasty snacks first but Minnie was the dark horse of the race and soon she had not only caught up but overtaken the lead. Polishing off the last few bugs she gave a loud crow then without thinking she cupped Renata’s face and kissed her deeply.

“I won! Take that, Soph!” Minnie gave a smug smile over to her twin while her girlfriend seemed to be looking off into the middle distance with a dreamy look in her eyes. The huldra definitely felt like she’d won in her own way.

Prisha was about to make her way over there but stopped when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. Violet’s tail was wagging at a fast pace, her ears twitching this way and that as she slowly snuck towards the table. Her neck was extended as she tried to bite down onto Brody’s lunchbag. The selkie was too caught up in the excitement of starting a garden club with Ruby to even notice.

The dryad was practically radiating joy as she spoke with her best friend. “Oh, this will be grand! Our own garden, right here at school!”

Ruby’s smile made Brody’s grow and the two kept talking as Violet inched closer and closer to the lunch bag. Suddenly her eyes locked with Prisha’s. The vampire shook her head no which caused Violet’s ears to flop down but she immediately didn’t listen and snagged the bag. Her sharp teeth tore through the brown paper as she scampered off on all fours.

“What the hell?” Brody jumped up, pulling her sealskin closer around her shoulders, trying to figure out what had happened as the contents of her lunch were scattered across the ground. Prisha wanted to sprint after Violet and learn what was going on here but the correct choice was to help her friend out first. So the vampire helped the selkie and dryad, making sure they were both okay before running after the werewolf.

After a few more minutes of searching Prisha spotted Violet again who was frantically trying to catch her tail. The werewolf spun around again and again until she spotted Prisha. Violet’s tail was out of control as her eyes widened. Without warning she sprinted forward and circled the vampire a few times before tackling her with a hug.

“Oof-” Prisha collided on the ground and was stunned for a moment as the werewolf continued to hold onto her.

“I see you are having a fun Lupine’s Eve,”

Santiago’s voice made Prisha tilt her head back to see the mothman smiling down at her.

“A what?” Prisha got up but Violet continued to hold onto her.

“Lupine’s Eve is a werewolf holiday where the full moon appears during the day. It makes werewolves act feral while in their human forms. You really didn’t know about this?” Santiago quirked an eyebrow as he pushed up his glasses, his antennae twitching in amusement. “I understood me not knowing it till I met Javi but with you and your vast years of life, I suppose I assumed you did,”

“Vampires and werewolves tended not to be on good speaking terms. So we didn’t learn much of their holidays or customs,” Prisha explained as she saw Violet being distracted by a leaf fluttering in the wind. “So I suppose you have your hands full with Coach Garcia then,”

“That is putting it mildly,” Santiago gave a deep sigh and was about to speak but again when the werewolf in question sprinted towards him.

“Santi! Santi! Santi! Santi!” Javi ran around his boyfriend then got distracted chasing his tail for a moment before he turned around. “I LOVE YOU!”

Those words made Santiago blush deeply, his wings fluttering with joy. That is until Javi started to lick his face copiously. “Ugh, Javi, no, bad!” Santiago pulled out a spray bottle and sprayed his boyfriend. The werewolf’s tail grew puffed at that and he growled for a second but it soon changed into a whimper. After a split moment though Javi’s attention had turned elsewhere. His tail flicked this way and that as he watched a rather chunky squirrel bounding back to a tree. A playful glint entered his eyes and he was off like a shot.

“Javi, don’t harass the squirrels!” Santiago shook his head; today’s schedule was already a mess thanks to this.

Prisha watched as the mothman chased after his boyfriend for a second before her eyes looked off in the direction where Violet once was but she was no longer there. Shit. Prisha swore her heart would’ve stopped then and there if it wasn’t already dormant. Her eyes darted around left and right when suddenly they landed on her beautiful, blonde and feral girlfriend who was marking a nearby trash can. Her shoulders brushed against the pungent trash can again and again until she caught sight of the vampire. Her ears turned down and out as she growled, protecting her territory.

“I’m not going to steal your precious trash can, Violet,” Prisha sat down a few paces away and sighed deeply. The frantic calls of Santiago made her glance back to see Javi on all fours running across the baseball diamond with a tennis ball in his mouth he had stolen from a few monsters who had been playing a tennis match. This was going to be an experience.

And an experience it was. Violet kept marking different things as he territory throughout lunchtime before trying to drink a puddle of water then scampered off and accidentally ran into a tree right when the bell rang. Prisha silently picked up her girlfriend and carried her to the next class. Her plans for this lunchtime were shot and the courage to share the words of her heart had vanished.

Luckily Violet was better during classes but the vampire figured that was because she had rubbed her shoulders against Prisha, marking her. With that done Violet had sat in Prisha’s lap and stayed there throughout all the classes, her head tilting back and wanting attention every few seconds. Prisha would press a kiss to her head or cheek and play with her hair while she wrote down notes. The vampire’s cool outer facade didn’t stop the other monsters’ eyes from being on them; if Violet learned of how she was acting she would be utterly humiliated.

Still for the most part things went smoothly... at least until the final period of class where Violet kept growling and trying to attack a bird through the window. Luckily it was study hall and the ever positive imp Mr. Omid made sure that Violet didn’t get in any sort of trouble. As soon as the school bell rang Violet barreled out of the room and outside to the front of Ericson High.

“Violet, wait up!” Prisha called out as she grabbed the few books she needed and sprinted after her girlfriend. She soon found Violet playing a friendly game of tug of war with Javi.

“Glad he has a buddy now,” Santiago smiled, his antennae buzzing lightly. “My arm was growing sore throwing the stick again and again. Besides, it's easier to read a book with two hands. I see you made it through the day,” He smiled and turned a page in his book as Prisha collapsed onto the bench.

“That’s one way of putting it,” The vampire spotted a few more books in front of the mothman “Mind sharing your wealth of books?”

“Not at all. Not when it comes to someone who actually handles books with care,” Santiago shook his head at the thought of mishandled books.

“Oh, I completely understand your frustrations,” Prisha saw Santiago’s eyes flicker with appreciation at those words. The two monsters soon became lost in the joy of discussing books while both of their werewolf significant others fought for dominance in the tug of war match. The werewolves continued to have fun playing tag and fetch until the afternoon gradually turned into the evening.

“Before I leave there’s one thing I forgot to tell you,” Santi said as he placed away the books in his bag. “Javi told me that werewolves still transform on this night but they are usually fairly tame and far too exhausted to do anything as they normally would,”

“Good to know, thank you,” Prisha smiled then made her way to Violet. It would probably be best if she just spent the night at her dorm. All she had to do was make some calls and everything should work out. The vampire led the way to the dorms while on the phone as Violet was busy chasing her tail.

After a few minutes the pair was in front of dorm room 203. With a small yawn Prisha pushed open the door and helped Violet prepare for the full moon transformation. After clearing a few things out of the way, Prisha gave her girlfriend some space to transform. It was a sight that Prisha was used to: the creaking and rearranging bones, the fur, the overly dilated eyes, but still she always could sense how painful the experience was.

Within minutes Violet had fully transformed. Instead of her usual wild energy she immediately collapsed on the ground. Prisha carefully picked her up and placed her in bed, tucking a blanket around her before kissing her cheek. “Sleep well, Violet.” Prisha paused for a moment then decided to speak the words she felt. “I love you,”

The werewolf’s tail wagged excitedly at that but she remained still, deeply asleep. Prisha gave a soft laugh at that then pulled out her desk chair. She supposed she could get some homework done while Violet was sleeping. Although homework never seemed to last long when it came to a vampire doing it. Prisha stared at her math assignment for a second then glanced over Violet’s way. A small smile pulled on the corners of the vampire’s lips. She was truly glad she had met Violet.

#twdg #twdg violet #twdg prisha #twdg marlon #twdg louis #twdg minnie #twdg sophie #twdg renata #twdg brody #twdg ruby #twdg santiago #twdg javi #ruby brody brotp #louis marlon brotp #twdg privet #twdg javiago #twdg minata #fanfic #we are monsters we are proud au

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skylarmoon71 · 4 years

Text

Earth 2 Harrison Wells x Reader (Extra)

“Yes, just keep track of his heart rate, we don’t need another spike.” The nurse on your side took notes. You checked your patient’s pulse again before pinching his cheeks. He giggled, cuddling the teddy bear in his hand. “How are you feeling John.” he grinned.

“I’m better Ms.(L/N)!” The peppy tone of his voice made you happy. “Well that’s good, I’ll be here tomorrow. “ He bobbed his head excitedly and you gave one last smile before exiting the room. You made your way over to your office. When you were safely inside, you closed the door, pressing a hand to your forehead.

For the last couple of days you didn’t feel like yourself. You weren’t sick per say. Because you went through every possible test, checking to see if you contracted something. Everything seemed normal yet, you could tell something was different. The dizzy spells, unusual heart beats. There was no explanation. Frustrated with the lack of answers you decided maybe Caitlin could help. It couldn’t hurt to try. She was a fellow doctor, maybe she would spot something that you missed.

At the end of your shift you made your way to S.T.A.R Labs. You had a paper bag with a big belly burger, for Harry of course. You smiled, not quite sure why he was so obsessed with the food. You stepped into the lab, going straight to Harry’s room. He was mostly likely sitting at his desk messing with some tech.

Turning the corner you moved to his door. You knocked, entering. Just as you thought. He was at the desk, doing something to Cisco’s glasses. You closed the door and he looked up, just noticing you. “(Y/N).” you smiled, raising your hand. Harry dropped the tool in his hand instantly. He twisted his chair, reaching out for the burger. You moved it out of his reach.

“Wow, I’m starting to think you like this burger more than me.” He gave you that Harry stare but you didn’t relent. He knew his piercing looks didn’t work on you. At least not the ones he used to scare Cisco with. “You know that doesn’t work. “ you snickered. He stood, pushing his chair back and you gulped at the new look in his eyes.

“Then what does work on you (Y/N)..” his voice dropped a few octaves. He backed you into the wall and the burger fell out of your hands. You looked down. “S-Shit sorry I-I” when you turned back his hands were resting on your shoulder. He didn’t seem to care, the food already long forgotten.

His head tilted and he pushed the lab coat off your shoulders. Your skin tingled when you felt him brush the back of his palm down your arm. The intensity of his stare left you partially breathless. “Harry..” you couldn't stand his teasing. He was just stroking his fingers up and down your arms. It was driving you mad.

You could see the smile tugging on his lips. “Yes Dr. (L/N).” you groaned, his lips were now hovering over your neck. The warmth of his breath was doing sinful things to your body. He didn’t lean in though, he was enjoying watching you squirm.

All at once his lips were on yours in a heated fury. You responded with just as much need. The both of you were leaning and tugging at each other. Kissing as if it were the last time you would get to do so. Your hands reached around his torso, pulling at the black shirt that covered his chest. He got the message, pulling away to pull it over his head.

He discarded it quickly, flinging it behind him. You made quick work at the buttons of your blouse, dying to feel his skin against yours. When all the buttons were loose, you shoved it off, latching back unto Harry as you continued your desperate make out session. He hiked up your skirt, raising one of your legs to brace around his waist as he pressed into you. You moaned at the feeling. You went to reach for his belt buckle to relieve him of his pants. You stopped when you felt a strumming in your chest. You pushed Harry away lightly, gasping.

Harry was baffled at your sudden stop, but his eyes turned worried when he saw you fighting for a breath. When your eyes connected that’s when he saw it, the sparks in your eyes. One second you were right in front of him the next you were gone in a burst of wind. Harry turned on his heel, running out the door. When he passed the cortex he skated to a stop. Cisco and Caitlin were in there, watching the speeding light run around the lab, up the walls, on the ceiling, across the floor. You were just going.

Cisco was spinning around trying to keep track. “What the hell is wrong with Barry!” he exclaimed. Harry's eyes watched in amazement. “That’s not Barry.”

Cisco’s perplexed gaze moved in Caitlin’s direction. She shook her head, clearly just as confused at the situation. Barry walked in, equally as stunned at the speedster racing around the room. He rushed, grabbing the person to try and stop them. When he got a hold of your wrist you stopped. Both speedsters stumbled, stopping right at the entrance. Your eyes were still darting around the room. When you noticed you were no longer running you looked up.

“(Y/N)!” Barry’s shout of surprise caught everyone’s attention. Cisco and Caitlin were just as taken by the sight.

“B-Barry! W-What the hell was that, h-how am I a speedster!!” you demanded. You were losing your mind. He was about to try and figure that out, but then his eyes moved to your chest. Red covered his cheeks and you stood there waiting for him to say something. He just started mumbling incoherently, letting go on your hand.

“The better question is why are you shirtless?” Cisco quipped. You completely forgot. Your hands moved to your chest instantly, covering your bra that unfortunately the majority of Team Flash already saw. His eyes moved over to Harry, just realizing the dark haired male was also without a top. He looked between the two of you for a few seconds before smirking. Harry directed a glare at Cisco.

“Can it Ramon.” he walked over grabbing a coat that was hanging on the chair. He came back to your side covering you. You accepted it gratefully. Pulling the material over your chest.

Barry cleared his throat. “Uh...so how did this all happen?”

“I have no idea.” you answered.

Caitlin dropped the sample of your blood into the machine, analyzing it.

“I tested your blood and I’m comparing it to Barry’s, maybe this way we can get some answers. “ You could hear the machine in the background, you were still trying to wrap your mind around what happened. “Maybe we can retrace your steps. When did this start happening?”

“W-When Barry caught me in the cortex, it came out of nowhere I just started running.” you said in disbelief. Barry nodded. “What were you doing before, were you maybe exposed to something with dark matter that you didn’t realize.”

“Before..” when you recalled what you’d been doing before it happened you flushed. Your eyes immediately found Harry’s. “N-Nothing! I wasn’t doing anything!” you denied. Harry held back a chuckle at your embarrassment.

They’d already caught the both of you so your denial just made Cisco raise a brow. “Hah! It was when you and Harry were about to do the dirty!” he pointed out. Caitlin smacked his arm and he grumbled. “It’s the truth.” he muttered. You just looked down. “A-Anyway I can’t see how that would have anything to do with me suddenly getting these powers. Wait a second..” your mind moved through the last couple of days.

“For the past week I’ve been sort of sick but not really. I’m not sure how to explain it. I was coming here to ask for Caitlin’s help. I didn’t think about this before but it started shortly after I healed Barry. “

“That’s it.” Harry said. He got up, moving to one of the boards. He uncapped a marker, writing equations on the board. Whatever he was jotting was lost to you. “Your abilities deal with the removal of pain from your charges. You did the same for Barry, but until now you’ve never healed a meta am I correct?”

“Umm I suppose so. I've mainly been helping sick kids and a couple others at my hospital. “He continued scribbling. Cisco stood, from the look on his face he apparently was getting where Harry was going with all of this.

“No way!” Cisco's enthusiastic response made you stand. “W-What is it!”

“You can draw and transfer energy into your body!!”he blurted.

Just as you were about to inquire, the machine beeped. Caitlin took out the samples,clicking on the computer. She opened her mouth in surprise.

“He’s right..” you basically ran over to the desktop, reading her results.

“T-That’s..”

“Impossible.” Harry finished. You weren't sure what to say. “I-I’m not sure what to do. I can deal with healing powers but speed too. Barry I’m not like you I can’t face danger everyday. B-But if I have these abilities and don’t use them then what good am I as a person..” your world felt like it was spinning. Harry was by your side in seconds. He held your shoulders, calming you down.

“Don’t freak out, breathe (Y/N).” he instructed. You did as he said, leaning into him, steadying your breathing and your thoughts. “S-Sorry. “

Barry gave a small smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Listen, you have nothing to worry about, from what I gathered they should wear off in a few days. “ Caitlin said. You looked at her hopeful. “R-Really!!” She nodded.

“You can only concentrate for a short while. In a lot of ways it works the same way you heal. The damage to your body is never permanent. So this should react the same according to my calculations.”

“That’s a relief.” you exhaled with a grin. It was cool being a speedster but no way did you want to be a superhero. Caitlin squinted at the computer. She turned back staring at Harry.

“Harry are you feeling okay?” He gave her a look. “Yes, is there something wrong?”

She was unsure of what to say. “It’s just...I think I should test you too. (Y/N)’s abilities now have transferring properties. Since you're the last one to have contact with her it’s possible she may have passed some energy unto you.”

“Do you feel any different?” you quizzed.

Harry just shook his head. “I feel fine.”

“I’d still like to run some tests, just to be sure.” He followed as Caitlin guided him over to the med bay. When they were gone you looked at Barry.

“So...Wanna race?” He grinned so wide. “First one to CCPD.” he challenged. “You’re on!” you didn’t wait for him to give the okay, you just took off.

“Cheater!!” he laughed dashing behind you.

~~~~

You and Barry came bursting through the cortex with joyous laughs. You’d run practically everywhere around Central City. You were starting to understand why Barry loved it so much. The rush was amazing. When your feet grounded to a stop you caught the sight of the flame on your jacket. “Crap!!” you shrugged off the garment in a hurry stamping on it to put the fire out.

“Hey that happened to me once.” he cheered. You just giggled.

“I see the both of you were having fun. I don’t appreciate you trying to catch my girlfriend on fire Allen.” Harry’s tone made Barry stiffened. You brushed it off. “Quit being a worry wart, I heal quickly too remember. “ Harry’s gaze landed on you.

All you saw was the white light that trailed from his body. One minute you were next to Barry, the other you were pinned against the wall of the cortex. You let out an unsteady breath. “H-Harry you-”

“He’s a speedster too!!” Cisco cried pulling a rope from his body. “Dick move tying me up Harry!!” you looked back at your boyfriend. He just grinned.

“Just a little payback Ramon. “ he snarked.

“Wow..” you mumbled. “His powers should wear off the same time as yours (Y/N).” Caitlin informed. “Yeah..” you answer distractedly. You could see the light shining behind his eyes. It was an unbelievably sexy sight.

He scooped you into his arms. “Now that this is all sorted out, we’ll be taking our leave.” Harry didn’t even wait for a response. He ran off, nothing but the backlash of wind left on exit. Cisco huffed at the paper that landed on his face.

“That’s really annoying. “

Harry zipped over to your apartment, placing you down when he stood out the door. You steadied yourself, still adjusting to the fact that Harry also obtained speed abilities.

You opened the door, laughing at all that took place that day.

“I have to say, life is never boring with you guys around.” You bent to unbuckle your shoes, then pulled off your coat hanging it at the hook by the door. Harry didn’t say a word since you entered and you turned to see why he was so quiet. He moved in your direction slowly and you had to will your knees not to buckle at his darkened eyes.

“How about we test out these powers in some more beneficial ways. “ you held back a shiver.

“What do you have in mind?”

He smirked. “Oh, a few ideas you may enjoy very much.”

Looks like being a speedster came with a lot more than you expected. You sure weren’t complaining.

#harrison wells #speedsters #healingreader #cuteness #powers #relationship #flash #ciscoramon #CaitlinSnow #barryallen #doctorreader #harrisonxreader #Central City #metahumans #cortex #starlabs #earth2wells

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firebirdsdaughter · 4 years

Text

Random Writing Tidbit-ish Well…

… I said I was thinking about them.

@fluttering-by I dunno if you’re still thinking about this from like, last week (or was it the week before? my memory is a sieve sometimes), but it got stuck in my head.

You know how they killed the horizontal line and it was the worst thing ever? I suffer every day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fuwa slammed the door behind him, stomping across the floor to dump his bag onto the armchair, the primary piece of furniture he still felt like he could consider his after Jin had laid claim to the sofa (when he wasn’t off patrolling the rooftops, jumping in and out of windows as he pleased, much to the annoyance of Fuwa’s neighbours), with a little more force than necessary, making it jump slightly. A brief glance in the direction of the couch, in a small break from scowling at the floor, revealed that the younger HumaGear wasn’t there now, at least—the only one present was his father, looking up from a book. Fuwa didn’t remember having many books—at least, not any Horobi would be interested in—but the fact that the HumaGear was doing something besides brooding about the apartment blankly was… Reassuring. He wasn’t in a particular mood to be relieved about anything, but the discovery still generated a soft ball of warmth in his chest, interfering with his attempts to stay angry. But the day had just been so…

“What is it?” Horobi’s voice sounded completely calm, but Vulcan prided himself on being able to detect the mild curiosity in the tone.

Fuwa groaned. “It’s… Politics.” He spat, giving the chair a sharp push with his foot in displeasure that still came out rougher than he intended, making it skid a small way across the floor. “People… Are…” He looked back up at the HumaGear and hesitated.

Horobi was gazing at him with that innocent, simple interest that was so indescribably beautiful it always made him lose his train of thought for a moment. At the same time, though… It fuelled his temper—especially since he had been upset on the HumaGear’s behalf in the first place.

He was pretty sure he knew why Yotagaki had it out for Horobi so badly—the man had had a permanently displeased look on his face ever since Horobi had both fully restored his son and been repaired himself (Yaiba had been sour for days after the dressing down the HumaGear father had given her, even while heavily damaged, for everything she had done wrong in trying to restart Jin’s AI). He scowled every time Horobi came up, and made pointed comments, generally about how he was a ‘dangerous influence’—which even Fuwa, who Horobi had nearly killed, could easily see was bullshit. Even if the two hadn’t moved into his apartment uninvited, or the… Other developments… But, especially after all the time he’d spent with the HumaGear, all it took was watching him for a bit to know that Horobi was very different than before—completely free of the Ark’s influence and with even just a bit of proper support, he was eons away from the picture Yotagaki loved to paint. Without a doubt, what the bastard actually meant was that Horobi was a threat to his coveted control over Jin, who had refused to speak to the ZAIA executive since reviving.

Now the man was demanding that there be regulations placed on Horobi’s movements, because the HumaGear had been ‘too quiet,’ because there were rumours of ‘good HumaGear’ looking up to him—even to the point of insisting he be tracked permanently, clearly with the intention of making Horobi as vulnerable as possible. It had been all Vulcan could do to not punch the guy—no, he hadn’t even managed that, it had been Yaiba who came to the rescue, grabbing his arm before he could swing and backing him up that distrust and aggression had been what made things go wrong the first time.

He looked back up at Horobi, still watching him with that soft, naive curiosity, and a myriad of emotions swirled in his chest. Horobi was definitely in a better place than he had been back then, but… He’d seen the HumaGear turn on himself before, and recently the episodes he still had were always in that vein; tipping him back over the edge could result in… There was a sharp pain in his chest before he could even finish the thought. He remembered clearly the scene he’d come upon that night, something that had unexpectedly burned into his memory—though the results had turned out to be… More than pleasant, in the end, the experience had been… Terrifying. To the point that he was still reluctant to leave Horobi alone in public spaces.

The HumaGear frowned slightly, head tilting, and Vulcan quickly looked away, embarrassed. Pushing the chair with his foot again, knocking it further out of place, he groaned loudly, stalking to the other end of the sofa, acutely aware of Horobi’s gaze following him. “Just…” He struggled to find the words as he began to pace in short, quick steps, raking a hand through his hair, the other stuffing into his pocket. How much could he say? Yotagaki was already a tense subject for the HumaGear, who would always immediately look around for Jin whenever the man was so much as mentioned, like he was terrified the human was coming to take his son again. Fuwa didn’t want to cause him undue distress, that was the whole point—but lying to Horobi was equally dangerous. He was already on his sixth pass in front of the sofa by the time he continued, “Just… Yotagaki… ZAIA, being… Augh!” With a growl, he furiously dragged both hands through his hair, mussing it up completely in his outburst, “Being… Stupid!” He aimed another kick at the chair as he turned and missed—with another snarl, he whirled back around to continue pacing.

On his eighth pass in front of the sofa, fingers closed around his wrist and there was a soft tug on his arm stopping him short, followed by another, stronger one. The next thing he knew, he was being pulled down into Horobi’s lap—he squirmed instinctively, resisting out of residual anger—but the HumaGear’s arm curled around his waist, the other hand drifting up to cup his face, and he turned his head to nuzzle into the palm on an even stronger instinct. Horobi pulled him closer, pressing a kiss to the corner of his jaw, the upper hand moving up to comb slowly through his hair, fingertips trailing over his scalp. It was impossible to stay tense like that, especially when Horobi continued brushing lips up and down the side of his neck in slow, lingering kisses. The HumaGear’s long fingers carefully worked their way through his curls, hitting all the sensitive spots on his head—it wasn’t long before Horobi reached the particularly tender place right behind his ear, drawing a soft moan from his lips, making Vulcan sag against him.

“You know I enjoy watching your emotions…” The HumaGear’s voice was warm murmur right next to his ear, a musical, mesmerising sound that made his eyes flutter closed, his hand drifting up to hang onto Horobi’s sleeve, “… But you’re going to break your furniture.” Vulcan grumbled discontentedly—only it came out a bit more like a whimper. Twisting around, he snuggled against the HumaGear’s chest, pulling his legs up on the sofa and tucking his head into the crook of Horobi’s neck while the HumaGear continued stroking his hair, finding out the same spot on his head again. “I know, I know…”

Fuwa pressed closer, letting his eyes close completely. There was still a slight tug in his chest in moments like this, when he remembered what Horobi had originally been built for, because of how comforting it was. There was a small part of him that felt like a child again, curled up safe in the HumaGear’s lap, arms wrapped around him, a hand smoothing his hair—but the stronger, more dominant feelings were very different. With a little shifting, he leaned forward, nuzzling past the Horobi’s collar to press his lips to the HumaGear’s throat, unable to resist a small smile at the soft gasp he heard above him in response, the sound and the way Horobi’s arms tightened around him spurring him to continue. Keeping one hand holding securely to the HumaGear’s sleeve, he let the other drift up to lay against Horobi’s face, fingers brushing across his cheek, felt the HumaGear tilt into his touch, sending a wave of warmth through him.

Slowly, his hand crawled up, fingers brushing Horobi’s hair—until the tips connected with the HumaGear’s new earpiece, and he felt Horobi stiffen. Fuwa’s eyes snapped open, lifting his head slightly, “Sorry,” He whispered quickly, hand stopping, “Did that hurt? Do you want me to-”

“N… No.” The word was shaky, but firm, and the HumaGear even tilted his head into the touch slightly, closing his eyes. “… Don’t stop.”

Fuwa swallowed, hesitating for a moment just to be sure, but Horobi still didn’t pull away. So, very slowly, he traced his fingers along the metal rim of the earpiece, feeling the HumaGear shudder in response—but it felt different than the first one. Encouraged, he continued, exploring further, fingers moving across the area that used to be open mechanics and cracked artificial skin. Horobi’s mimic breathing caught, speeding up, and he made a soft noise that sounded wonderfully like a moan, fingers weaving deeper into Vulcan’s hair, pressing again to the sensitive spot on his head, making him sigh deeply as well.

They stayed that way for a long time, or maybe not so long. It was impossible to think about time when he was tucked in the HumaGear’s lap, one of the most comfortable places in the world, those amazing fingers tangled in his hair, gently massaging his scalp while his hands did the same on Horobi’s head. At some point, however, the HumaGear felt relaxed enough, curling around him like they were moulding together, and he didn’t feel like he could wait any longer.

“… Yotagaki wants to track you.” As he’d feared, Horobi went still, fingers freezing in his hair, and he quickly reopened his eyes, trying to sit up more and failing completely because of the tangle they had become. “He’s not going to! He’s not… He’s not going to.” He gave the HumaGear’s arm a squeeze, trying to be reassuring. “Yaiba-”

“It’s…” Horobi’s voice was unexpectedly steady, cutting him off with a firmness that was both reassuring but also slightly concerning because it sounded a bit like he did when he zoned out, “It’s… Okay.”

Fuwa frowned, giving the HumaGear’s arm another, even tighter squeeze, “No, it’s not.” He muttered, the words edged with a growl, “He’s…” For a moment, he almost got lost in the anger again, and pulled closer to Horobi to fight it off, “He’s a bastard.”

The HumaGear was silent for a long time. “I…” With a little shifting, Horobi repositioned so that they could see each other’s faces again, his hand in Vulcan’s hair drifting back down to his cheek. The vulnerability in the HumaGear’s expression felt like a stitch in his chest, but the hand on his face set a finger to his lips before he could say anything, “I don’t want to talk about him.” The finger disappeared, but was quickly replaced by Horobi’s lips in a determined, intense kiss, the hand dropping down from his face to trail along his chest. In an effort to keep his balance, Fuwa hooked an arm around the HumaGear’s neck, relishing how good Horobi’s touch felt even through the fabric of his shirt—and then there were buttons being pulled open, the magnificent fingers slipping in to brush his skin.

Vulcan gasped loudly, breaking the kiss, glancing down at the hand half inside his shirt then back up at the HumaGear questioningly. “Horobi…?”

Horobi’s head tilted forward, pressing his forehead to Vulcan’s. “I don’t want to talk about him.” He repeated, even more firmly, “I… I want…” The HumaGear’s hand moved slightly, tracing a tiny pattern over what he could reach of Fuwa’s abdomen, “I want you right now.”

Vulcan stared at him for a moment, searching his gaze for any uncertainty, panic, or glassiness. Even if Horobi was being point blank about it… After that night, he always wanted to check. The HumaGear’s expression, however, was completely clear and quite calm, eyes fixed on Fuwa’s face. Vulcan took a deep breath—after all, he would have been lying if he claimed he wasn’t feeling the same way. “… My room?”

Horobi hesitated for a moment, looking away shyly, and Fuwa almost backtracked to try and give him an out, but—“… Our room?”

Vulcan couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “Yeah.” He pulled himself up to give the HumaGear another quick peck on the lips, “Our room.” Just saying the words made a large ball of warmth form in his chest, made everything feel different.

Horobi didn’t respond, instead moving his arms to wrap around Fuwa’s shoulders and tuck under his legs, then lifting him easily as he stood up from the sofa. Vulcan pulled closer to the HumaGear’s chest, leaning his head back against Horobi’s shoulder and nuzzling lightly against his neck as the HumaGear started down the short hallway toward the bedroom—their room—closing his eyes again. Anger was already a faint memory that it was easy to put aside, especially as Horobi was already depositing on the bed, making a soft, surprised sound when Fuwa didn’t let go, pulling him down on to the mattress, too. It was impossible to hold onto it when they were tangled together, trying to manoeuvre to undress each other while also getting distracted by the urge to kiss again. Besides, it felt a little like poetic justice to be putting Yotagaki’s bullshit on hold to focus on making love, making Horobi feel good, especially when the HumaGear was showing even more signs of recovering.

They could worry more about ZAIA later. Much later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have no idea what time of day this is happening… They probably have plenty of time before Jin gets home.

I think.

#Firebird Writing #Random Writing Tidbit #Kamen Rider Zero-One #Kamen Rider Zero One #Romance #HoroFuwa #my precious evil stoic scorpion dad #my precious angry wolf dad #it's a little long for a tidbit but it got away from me #I just #Fuwa in Horobi's lap #mah dudes #listen #I had a mighty need #Binary Retro Rider

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jeanstoppable · 4 years

Text

17th & 18th OF OCTOBER

hop, step, jump

fuck your pride

(A/N: Fun fact! This oc is based on a dream of mine AND they exist on the same universe as Yelena/Yasemin, my villain oc. Now, buckle up cause it’s time for some Cyberpunk goodness.)

Supposedly, there’s an unspoken rule that whatever background you came from, rich or piss poor or somewhere in between, as long as you end up in the streets, you’ll always be at the bottom of the system. Unless you fight your way up---that is to say, if you survive the climb.

“Hey!” A voice called out from behind.

I stopped walking and peeked over my shoulder, expecting trouble that’s usually present around these parts to have finally found me and lo and behold, a bunch of ‘thugs’ were waiting at the entrance of the alley. Four people differentiating in sizes, three men and one woman, their dark silhouettes painted by the bright neon lights behind them were nothing short of intimidating.

My eyes darted to the walls of the two surrounding buildings, measuring the distance between each window, the extending pipes and the height of both structures. Scalable. There was also that fire exit just ahead, I reminded myself as I mulled over what will happen within the next 10 minutes.

A fight, no doubt.

I glanced at the floating holographic numbers on my wrist, taking into account the time and---the meeting that was about to start soon.

Escaping might be the more reasonable choice but...

I hate taggers.

Blowing out a rough sigh, I turned my attention back to the group who was now leisurely cruising towards me, wearing devilish grins and haughty gazes. Some of them were even cracking their knuckles while exchanging unashamed jabs about having first dibs grated on my ears---and my nerves.

Oh boy. Things are about to get interesting.

My lips curled into a snarl as I repressed the overwhelming urge to be the one to draw first blood. Instead, I focused on scrutinising them individually from top to bottom: their gadgets, clothes, bags, shoes. Anything of importance at all that I can lift and hopefully sell.

It only took a moment to finish the assessment, if you know how to estimate things from face value.

After gathering enough information, I spun to fully face them, smirking provokingly as I loosened the straps of my bag, letting it hang on my fingers and then swinging it.

“Alright, assholes!” I whistled cheerfully before letting the venom bleed into my tone, “Whoever’s got first dibs, you’re up.”

Each of them looked taken aback for a second but then their expressions darkened, my words finally registering as insults, as they should, and then immediately charged forward.

I halted the swinging of my bag.

It was the slightly skinny man that approached me first, I figured he was the leader or something along those lines because he was the one barking the most---however… I narrowed my eyes and observed as the man tossed his shoulder back and aimed a fist at my face. I ducked to avoid it, then I tightened my grip on the straps of my bag and swung it to his side, hitting him square in the ribs----accompanied by a distinct crack and a metal clanking noise.

The man howled in pain as his body smashed into the wall to the left.

One down. Ignoring the groans, I stepped over the crumpled man’s legs and stared down the group with a raised chin.

I huffed and then pointedly tilted my head at the others, “Next?”

The second one didn’t hesitate to attack, taking on the challenge. There was an enraged expression on his face as he reached forward with knees bent and back lowered while his arms went wide to try and trap me in a grapple. Seeing through him, I grabbed my bag with both hands, feeling the solid weight of the robotics inside, and rushed forward to match the man’s attack.

Right before his arms would’ve caught me, I clutched the bag close and whacked it in his face, successfully causing him to lose balance.

Taking advantage of this, I lifted a boot and launched a strike to his thigh, swiftly bringing him to his knees. Without a second to waste, I twisted on my heels to deliver the final kick to the side of his head, waiting for the satisfying thud of his body hitting the ground---

There was a blur of shadow to my right and before I knew it, excruciating pain bloomed in my stomach.

The third came quicker than I anticipated, it was the woman, who didn’t wait for the fight to finish as she sneaked up on me and ruthlessly swung the bat directly to my gut. I hit the ground a second later after the previous guy did, landing on my ass hard. Fucking ouch.

I shot a glare at the woman and within her grasp was the source of my injury, which was a goddamn light-up metal baseball bat.

“Bitch, don’t get ahead of yourself.” The woman hissed.

My blood’s boiling even more now. I bit the inside of my cheek to hold in the groan that was about to escape me as I willed myself to get up, slightly making it look like I’m struggling more than I actually was and then ripped off the mask covering half my face.

Hook, line and sinker.

Puffing proudly, she took a step forward closer and was about to pitch another hit when I hastily seized my arms around her hips and forcefully pushed, knocking the woman off her feet as she fell backwards on the asphalt. I wasted no time to straddle her, trying to wrestle off the bat from the woman’s tight grip, but what the hell, she wasn’t letting go at all.

Letting out a frustrated growl, I took a hold of her collar, pulled it towards me, and then spat the blood that I’ve been purposely pooling in my cheeks in her face.

As expected, she shrieked in shock and disgust, momentarily forgetting about the bat and easing her hold on it---

Now!

Jumping into action, I snatched the bat, wrapping it around my fingers and drove its hilt straight to her forehead, knocking the woman unconscious as she slumped to the ground without any further hassle.

“Fuck...Goodnight to you.” I grumbled out, panting and breathing heavily before I steeled myself to glance at the last person left.

“Okay, one more.” One more and then I’m fucking going home.

It was another man, his frame was slightly wider and larger than the others I’d beaten so far. He stood only a few meters away and I swear he hasn’t moved an inch since the beginning. Enjoying the show? I almost wanted to say but kept it in as I studied him a bit more.

So he’s the boss.

I slowly got to my feet, not taking my eyes off the man as I flaunted the newly acquired weapon to my side, the bat’s cool metal surface feeling quite nicely in my palm.

“Ready when you are,” I said with a raised brow and a cocked hip.

He regarded me for a few seconds, his face hidden in the shadows, before bringing up a hand to his right arm and surprising me by tearing away at the sleeve, the cloth ripping into ribbons to reveal---a bionic limb.

My gaze brightened. Bingo.

While he probably saw me dead, I saw him...as a means of profit.

A smile took over my features, “That might sell a pretty penny,” I coughed out.

The man let out a savage cry as he shot forward, his robotic arm poised to strike and or grab. I counted his heavy footsteps as I prepared the bat and gripped it with both hands, waiting for him to get closer.

Once he got near, I noticed traces of a smile dancing on his lips---Fuck, too late---and then his forearm suddenly popped off its socket. Those metal fingers soared and latched themselves around my bicep, squeezing painfully. I grit my teeth, thinking it would bruise later if he didn’t let up soon.

But the man wasn’t done yet. His eyes glinted dangerously and pulled on the wire connecting the detachable limb to the rest of his bionic arm.

I panicked as I got yanked roughly by my bicep, “Shit…!” Cursing my luck, I tried hitting him with the bat but it lacked enough momentum to actually do damage. So he merely stopped the attack with his other arm and smacked the weapon out of my grasp.

I was being slammed into a wall the next second, a pained gasp slipping out of me whilst black spots swam in my vision, just barely registering the man’s words.

“Where’s that bravado now, huh?” The man sneered, bringing his face real close to mine.

I cringed at the distance, wishing I hadn’t taken off my mask earlier, and clutched him by the nape---then crashed my forehead against his. I knew it would take much more than a headbutt to release me but I only intended to disorientate him.

That small moment of distraction was all I needed to snake my free arm around my back as I grabbed something from the hem of my pants and pulled it out by its handle.

“Right here, fucker.”

I brandished the weapon in front of me and clicked on the switch, the buzz of electricity split the air as the stun baton hummed with power, producing small yet lethal blue sparks.

The man paled. I grinned.

Before he could protect himself, I arched the baton and jammed it into a narrow gap in his bionic arm. The reaction was instantaneous as those metal fingers involuntarily opened and dropped uselessly, the electronics inside malfunctioning. The man himself was in shock, never getting the chance to see the punch heading straight for his nose.

I bitterly smiled whilst hearing a satisfying crack the moment my fist landed.

I shoved against his chest, pushing him back a couple of steps as he held his bleeding nose, “Y-you...you bitch...!”

I stared at him, my expression impassive, and shook my head.

“This’ll fuckin’ hurt,” I say to him before zipping forward, baton ready to strike once more.

. . .

It was the memories that motivated me, helped me get up in bed every single day, the reason for me to keep going and going---because they were the only permanent things I have left in my life.

I tucked away the stolen bionic arm inside my bag along with the rest of what I managed to collect today. My eyes shuttered as I remembered a rather specific memory: my younger self and my father having multiple discussions about our extremely flawed society, still is, and the people who run the streets, making an adamant point about never stooping to their level.

If only I knew back then how people, including us, will react when faced with complete desperation and defeat..

It was a lesson I had to learn quite painfully.

A merciless beating and almost bleeding half to death behind some old abandoned factory.

“Fuck your pride.” They spat and then just left, taking off with my shit. Everything I owned.

That was 3 years ago.

“Fuck my pride, huh...” I bit back darkly, “Might as well fuck everyone else’s too.”

I did one final sweep at the bodies littering in the alley before running towards the fire exit stairs, hauling myself up and up, the wound on my stomach burning by the time I made it to the building’s rooftop and just leaned against a wall to rest a bit.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Without looking, I swiped a finger across my wrist.

It needed a few seconds for the transmission to go through and then a familiar scolding voice boomed in my ears,

“Where the hell are you? The meeting’s about to begin.”

That damned meeting.

“...Can’t I just skip it?” I rasped, my voice sounding foreign even to me.

There was a pause and I held my breath.

“Get your ass over here,” the voice growled out and I resisted the urge to groan in defeat, “You’re not missing the meeting twice in a row.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m on my way.”

“...Is it okay if I’m a bit late?”

“Get moving.”

(A/N: AHHHH, I’M HAVING FLASHBACKS TO MY UNRELEASED TOKYO GHOUL FIC. Anyways, I kinda lowkey love writing action. I swear it’s because of the Cyberpunk theme in this. I hope ya’ll enjoyed this, I might want to expand more on this character’s lore, there’s tons to unpack, so be ready for that! ALSO IM LATE LIKE REALLY LATE SO YEAH PEACE)

#alkinktober #inktober prompt #myOC #myart #mywriting #cyberpunk oc #this spiraled out of my control i swear

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whumpster-fire · 4 years

Text

Whumpmas In July - Day 12 (Belated): “Do it.”

CONTENT WARNING: Female whumpee, minor whumpee - and I don’t mean “can get a driver’s license but not vote.” Character is 18 days old at the time of this incident, and mentally a child. Read at your own risk.

The Animator’s voice was low and calm – irritatingly calm. His brown eyes stared down through his glasses with barely a spark of anger. “If you ever – and I mean ever – pull a stunt like that again, you’ll be disposed of. The Resistance needs weapons, not liabilities.”

Wendy Weasel, Human Resistance Toon Weaponization Program Number 15, scowled up at him, flattening her ears partway and baring her pointed teeth. “What, you givin’ me this goddamn lecture now? Couldn’t you have done it...” she glanced around, looking for a clock. When she didn’t find one, she made a watch appear on her wrist, then remembered she didn’t know exactly when the event she was referring to was anyway. “...Yesterday morning? Or were you scared Herschel was gonna turn that hammer on you too if you interrupted him?” She wasn’t scared of Lowell. He was one of the two Animators, and de facto leaders, of the Human Resistance, but he wasn’t the one who’d drawn her. He didn’t have the guts to create something like her.

Lowell’s brow furrowed, stretching the skin on his shaved-bald head. “I know you’re trying to turn Herschel and me against each other, Number Fifteen, and it’s not going to work. I’m not going to be baited into badmouthing my colleague and closest friend to a toon. Herschel has a short temper, but his actions were warranted given yours. The only thing I have to question is whether he went far enough.”

The man was so composed and non-threatening it was boring. He was almost three times Wendy’s height, of course, but she doubted he’d ever been in a fight in his life, unless you counted getting shoved into a locker. And size was nearly meaningless against a Toon. Mental and emotional strength was what counted. Any human was helpless against her physically, but she couldn’t exactly take a mallet to her superiors or she was as good as dead. What she could do was mess with their heads, and Lowell seemed to think if he showed the emotional range of a bowl of wet sawdust she’d have nothing to use against him. “Besides,” he went on, “I don’t think you were in any state to hear me then.”

“Exactly,” Wendy said with a smirk. “Would’a been better for everyone that way. I wouldn’t have to listen to you, and you could pretend you were the one making an impression.” But her gloved hands clenched. Yeah, like she needed to be reminded that Herschel’d beaten her into a bloody pulp, which it wasn’t supposed to even be possible to do to a toon. But the Resistance had invented a special plastic that completely suppressed her reality warping abilities, and a fluid that didn’t dissolve toons’ flesh like Dip did, but it made it break and yield and not bounce back… like a human’s. She rubbed her wrist where the cuffs had dug in, and her chin where he’d broken her jaw. The damage was gone now, of course, now that her powers were back, but it was still sore. Her throat hurt too, from Herschel forcing the damn stuff down it and then her puking it back up along with half the ink in her body and maybe a couple internal organs. It was almost impossible to permanently injure a toon, but the problem was, the line between thoughts and reality was so blurred for them that the memory of pain could be almost as bad as the real thing – sometimes could even make an injury reappear, or take way longer to heal, if you couldn’t get it out of your head. Lowell bringing it up again was a dick move. He was really pissing her off now. She wanted to kill someone – or something. Not like she was allowed to kill humans anyway. Even enemies of the Resistance she’d need a direct order to harm. And other toons, the creatures she was made to kill, were in the ‘something’ category. Like her.

But there was tension in Lowell’s face too. Good. Prick. Like she needed a repeat of the same fucking lecture, except not even entertaining.

“Fifteen...”

“Ooops! Was that last bit out loud?” Wendy’s voice was still hoarse and scratchy. It had barely been an hour since she’d finally been let out of the cuffs and the straitjacket and muzzle.

Lowell sighed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Apparently you do,” he said through gritted teeth. “Although you’re right, I doubt it will sink in anyway, which is why I’m in agreement with Gene and Lawrence that you should have just been Dipped. And you should know, I’ve discussed it with Herschel, and he’s only resistant to the idea because -”

“Because I’m the daughter he never had?” Wendy interrupted.

“No. If you’re trying to shock me, forget it. I’ve known about Herschel trying to create a Toon as a surrogate child for years – his story was part of what opened my eyes about Toons. I’ll admit when he created you and Number Six with such… childlike forms, I was worried he still had some sentimental tendencies, but even if he did I doubt they survived contact with you.”

Wendy’s smirk got bigger. It had taken all of five sentences to get him ‘badmouthing’ Herschel. Although he hadn’t exactly said anything juicy.

“Listen. The reason you’re still alive is because Herschel’s afraid. He’s afraid of you, he’s afraid of another feedback event like the one when you were created, and he’s always been a bit overly cautious. But remember this: you represent about a week’s work for either of us – maybe two. You aren’t irreplaceable, and you aren’t invincible. I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not afraid of getting rid of you. Six, Eleven, and Eighteen can all fulfill your role for a few days, and once Herschel’s and my next creations are animated, there’s nothing stopping us from -”

“Blah, blah, yadda, yadda.” Wendy feigned a yawn. “Come up with some new material, and then get somebody else to threaten me with it, ‘cuz your delivery’s a lost cause. And so’s your animation talent. You think Eleven can replace me? The moron I got to deep fry himself when I was just drawn? Ya know, calling me replaceable’s really the pot calling the kettle black when all your toons are good for is making Dip soup.” Her smirk grew to a vicious grin as Lowell’s face finally contorted in anger. He made a grab for her. She nimbly stepped back, waited for him to blink, and reappeared behind him. “And so’s calling Herschel too cautious. At least he’s not some spineless dickweed who can’t draw up any toon with the balls to reach down and scratch ‘em without asking permission first, because he was terrified of Elmer Fudd as a child and now he relives his boyhood nightmare every time he looks in the mirror. Face it Lowell, you’re the replaceable one around here, not me! If Herschel died tomorrow the Resistance’d be fucked. If you died tomorrow, they’d just have to put up a classified ad for some animation college dropout – ack!”

Oh, she was dead. That had felt good to say, but he was soooo dead. She’d been letting him get a little closer with each lunge, reveling in how angry she’d gotten him, reveling in how she’d completely ruined his calm demeanor, reveling at the fact that whoever checked the security cameras was going to get a good ab workout laughing at Lowell’s expense. But she’d dropped her guard a little too much, and he’d moved faster than she’d expected. He seized her by the throat and slammed her against the concrete wall. It wouldn’t have even been enough to get her adrenaline pumping if it wasn’t still sore. And even so… why was having her ability to breathe cut off like this making her pulse jump like crazy, and not in a fun way?

“Fifteen, I swear… I swear to God… I’ve spent ten years of my life dreaming of wiping your species off the fucking Earth, but I’ve never wanted to kill a Toon as much as I do right now...” His glasses were askew. His eyes were mad, the pupils unevenly sized. An occupational hazard. Bringing a toon to life was kind of like sticking your head in a microwave. Everyone in the profession had some kind of brain damage, Herschel had said. Some just hid it better than others. “I want to melt that smile right off your fucking face...”

“Go ahead then. Do it.” Wendy pried his hand away just enough to get the words out. “If you want me dead that bad, then kill me.” Yeah, right. She knew he was bluffing. Oh, the Resistance’s leadership weren’t happy that she hadn’t technically 100% done exactly what she was supposed to, and the mission hadn’t technically been successful, but they also knew she’d mopped the floor with Acme Looniversity’s star pupils, and Riley – Number Six – had barely made it out of a one-on-one fight alive. That kind of power was too valuable to throw away, not when they didn’t know if the Animators could replicate it.

But suddenly, that power vanished. Wendy felt the horrible cold feeling of one of the plastic cuffs snapping shut around her neck. Tight. Too tight. Suddenly everything was weak. She couldn’t pull her head free, or even squash and stretch her neck so she could breathe freely, or create a crowbar out of Hammerspace to break the lock. She’d felt this awful, helpless feeling once, and she’d sworn she never would again. But she hadn’t even made it a couple hours.

“Uhh… just… just kidding, Lowell...” Wendy gulped. The calm was back, icy and satisfied, as he dragged her down the hall towards the elevator. “Hey, I got legs! Put me down, you fucking -” She kicked and clawed at the cuff. It felt like a truck was parked on her windpipe.

The elevator rose one level. Level Four. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Dip wasn’t the only thing the Resistance made there: there were also weapons, spare parts for the ACME Machine, and other equipment they couldn’t exactly buy at a hardware store. But when Lowell had two other guys blindfold her, and tie her hands behind her back, she knew.

He was going to kill her. He was actually going to kill her. The harsh chemical smell of Dip, the one substance that was lethal to her kind, burned her nose and sent icy veins of instinctive panic coursing through her body.

“Morning, Lowell,” an older man with a rural midwestern accident said. “What’ve you got there?”

“A discipline problem,” said Lowell. Wendy could hear his scowl. Then, he hastily added: “Oh – good morning to you too, Bill!”

“Fuckin’ dweeb,” Wendy muttered under her breath. Not like they could hear her over the ventilation fans anyway.

“What’re you bringing it up here for, then?” Bill – one of the Resistance’s chemists – asked in an irritated voice. “I’ve told you guys I don’t agree with you letting your little Frankenstein’s Monsters run around this place, but – well, living quarters are one thing, this is another. I gotta remind you, even if your plan’s a total success you still need Dip to finish a toon off, and there’s a lotta fragile equipment on this line.”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could borrow a bucket.”

“Aaahhh...” Bill whistled. “Ah, that kind of discipline problem. About time if you ask me. I’ve been sayin’ you oughta melt that thing down before it kills someone.”

Wendy’s fists clenched. She glared daggers through the blindfold in the direction of his voice. A hundred comebacks and insults ran through her head, and it took all her willpower to bite her tongue. But right now, the anger was being blotted out by an emotion she’d hardly ever felt in her life. True fear. Her whole body felt weak, like her bones might dissolve and she’d melt into a puddle even before they finished her off. She heard Lowell saying something to Bill that she couldn’t make out over the hum of the fans and the pounding of her own heart. She felt sick to her stomach – although that could’ve been just the smell of Dip. She wanted to be anywhere but here – to vanish and reappear somewhere else in the underground complex. She wanted to pull a hacksaw out of Hammerspace to get rid of the cuff choking her, or failing that just blast it to pieces even if it meant setting off enough explosives to level a city block in her own face. Hell, she wanted to make Bill try it on for size on his fat fucking neck. The result would probably be like putting a bunch of rubber bands around a watermelon, but if they were going to kill her anyway, did it really matter if she got a parting shot?

But she was completely helpless in this goddamn thing. No teleportation, no hammerspace, no playing tricks on the humans’ minds. She should have had the strength to whip the two men’s legs out from under them and take them apart like Tinker Toys, but instead she was almost as weak as a creature her size should have been if it obeyed normal laws of physics.

A boot caught her under her ribs, hard enough to lift her off her feet and throw her across the room. It knocked the breath out of her, but it didn’t really hurt much. Even with the cuff cartoon physics still applied if something else hit her. But it did hurt that the blow had come out of nowhere. She’d been completely unable to see it, avoid it, or even brace herself.

She tried to run when she heard the bucket being filled – the sloshing of liquid, the squeaking and clanking of the handle. The smell was almost overpowering. But something tripped her, and she was dragged back by her tail and thrown against a concrete wall. That gave her an idea. She thrashed against it, dragging her temples along the rough cement to try to pull the blindfold free, but it didn’t budge.

“Come on, guys, you know I was joking, right? Right?” she fidgeted nervously, waiting for the fatal blow. “You’re almost as good an animator as Herschel, and I’m really sorry I said you were scared of Elmer Fudd. And Bill, I’m sorry I stole all your socket wrenches and replaced them with left-handed ones.” Metal scraped against cement. The bucket was being lifted. Wendy’s blood froze. She froze, pressing herself back against the wall. “Fuck! Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, don’t kill -”

She was cut off by the shock of cold liquid hitting her. She instinctively closed her mouth and ducked her head as best she could trying to protect her nose and eyes, but she knew it didn’t matter. She knew what Dip did to toons. A direct hit like this would dissolve her alive within seconds. Every muscle tensed, and she didn’t dare breathe as she tried to brace herself for what would surely be indescribable agony. A flood of panicked emotions melted her brain from the inside out. She was dead she was dead she was dead!

Only… she wasn’t. The pain never came. There was a little numbness, but it was just from the cold. Her fur was soaked to the skin, but it wasn’t melting her, just freezing her.

There was a howl of laughter. The blindfold was ripped away, and she stood there blinking and shivering in the fluorescent lights. A clear puddle was running down to a drain in the floor. Bill stood there holding an empty bucket, but there was a second one sitting nearby, full of caustic green liquid. That son of a bitch. It was water. Ordinary fucking water, but they’d even been smart enough to fill one with real Dip so the smell would fool her. He’d tricked her. He’d tricked her!

“Hoo! Man, did ya see the look on her fuckin’ face? I still think you should’ve dipped her for real, but damn, bet those couple weeks of life flashed before her eyes, huh? That oughta straighten ‘er out!”

Lowell smiled and gave a soft chuckle. “Don’t be fooled. They imitate human facial expressions and body language, but they’re no different from -”

“HAL 9000, like that scene in the movie where he’s telling Dave not to unplug him?”

“Exactly. Toons have a basic self-preservation instinct, but it’s not the same as human fear. We were unsure about whether to eliminate it from our creations, but they wouldn’t be nearly as effective in combat without it. And there are only two ways to motivate and discipline a creature with no capacity for empathy or morality: blind, programmed obedience, and fear. The first on its own would, again, make them too susceptible to mental manipulation.”

Wendy couldn’t make herself say a word as the animator knelt and reached out for her throat with a magnetic key. She was afraid her voice would break. Her breath was already catching in her throat in a way the pressure on her windpipe couldn’t cause, and silent tears mixed with the cold water dripping down her face. She couldn’t stop shivering. She hated cold. She hated it. She was so goddamn sick of how the compound was always at fifty-five degrees or something – maybe warmer in here with the heat given off by machinery and chemicals, but still always uncomfortably chilly.

Click. The cuff opened. The instant the cuff was released from her neck, Wendy snapped the zipties binding her wrists. She winced and rubbed her throat, and wrung out her soaked gloves. She fought the urge to shake herself dry; she’d probably get punished for that, too.

“Get the message, Number Fifteen?” Lowell said icily. “The next time, it won’t be water.”

Wendy nodded, and swallowed hard. Painfully. “Yeah. Whatever. There’s not gonna be a next time.” There was a concerned look. “Because I won’t screw up again.”

“This isn’t about your actions. This is about the attitude that lead to them.”

“I know.” Bullshit. What did he want her to do, bow before him and polish his shoes? He’d said it himself, the whole reason she was made was to have a toon in the Resistance’s arsenal that wasn’t a sniveling toady, that was completely devoted to her purpose and sure of herself enough to carry out her mission even if the humans that were supposed to be commanding her got killed, or worse – that was smart enough to disobey if her superiors fell under the enemy’s power. And that was exactly what she’d done – minus getting carried away a little bit. If Lowell had a problem with her attitude he could take it up with Herschel, not her.

But she couldn’t say any of it. That confidence had just evaporated. All that was left was ice-cold fear and burning anger and hatred that met in a deadly explosion. “Sir.” Goddamnit, why couldn’t she stop shaking? She spat the word out and glowered up at him. She clenched her fists, and a little smoke rose from her gloves. “I...” Fuck it. “I’ll be good.”

She snatched the empty bucket out of his hands and darted off around the corner. The moment she was out of sight, she folded space around her and her next step took her into the small concrete cell that passed for her quarters.

“Son of a bitch,” she snarled. A lit stick of dynamite under the upturned bucket shredded it like tinfoil in a blender, but that didn’t satisfy her. She wanted to kill something. She wanted to wring the neck of the next toon she saw and shove its face into a barrel of Dip herself. She wanted to die, but not enough to actually do it. The next words were just a whisper. “I didn’t even do anything that time.”

Just like she predicted, Wendy’s voice broke. It was freezing in the cell, and the water made it worse, but she didn’t have the mental energy to create something that would dry her off properly. She just pulled a threadbare towel from behind her back and wrapped it around herself, and shrank back into the corner, shuddering. Almost died. She’d almost died. For nothing. Just because she wouldn’t stop running her mouth. Just for behaving exactly how she’d been drawn to.

She knew she’d have a chance to release this anger, sooner or later. Being blown into a thousand pieces wouldn’t let her next target escape. It didn’t matter if they were toon or human, they were gonna die screaming. But the pain, the humiliation, the unfairness, ran too deep for the anger to burn them away. And she didn’t know what to do with them.

Faked emotions. Imitated expressions, basic instincts. The least Herschel could’ve done was made her not fool herself into believing her own lies. This was why she was glad she wasn’t human, even if it meant she was inferior, just a monster made to kill other monsters. She didn’t want to know what the real thing was like.

____

My first ever Tumblr prompt response fiction, yay! Meet Wendy Weasel, from my Who Framed Roger Rabbit (setting, characters are mostly from Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Looney Tunes) fanfic La Resistance. Basically she’s a Toon who was created by a genocidal terrorist group that wants to wipe Toons out, and for all intents and purposes a child soldier. When she’s not making life hell for the protagonists, she’s pissing off her own side as much as possible because she’s bored / wants attention. She’s way too cocky and aggressive for her own good.

This is the epitome of what I said in another post about liking whumpees who are dangerous to the whumpers. Power-suppressing cuffs and Dip not withstanding, there’s nothing but psychological conditioning between Lowell or anyone else in the Resistance and a shoebox funeral if Wendy turns on them, and they both know it. The problem is neither of them actually understands the true nature of that conditioning.

#whumpmasinjuly #whump fic #non-human whumpee #minor whump #dehumanization #mock execution #@whumpmasinjuly #minor whump tw #toon #who framed roger rabbit #fantastic racism

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ninzied · 5 years

Text

north/south

she doesn’t cry.

a pepperony/stark family fic. spoilers for endgame.

She doesn’t cry.

Pepper knows it’s to be expected. That she doesn’t understand; that she can’t understand, that she doesn’t know how. But there’s no comfort to be found in the things that are expected, when there’s nothing expected about any of this.

She doesn’t cry. She eats the food, or she at least picks at the food, poking the grapes around on her plate, and pouting at the “weird stuff” she doesn’t like, arugula in the salad, and “the hard bread” that she ends up licking all the toppings off of.

She is her father’s daughter, through and through.

There are sliders, but they didn’t come with any cheese, so Happy swipes some cheddar off the charcuterie board, stabs a toothpick back through each one and heats them up in the microwave for her.

She asks for ketchup, and Happy looks lost for a moment until Butterfingers unearths some packets from underneath papers at Tony’s work station.

“We have no idea how long those have been there,” Pepper starts to scold them both, but the anticipation on Morgan’s face – and Happy’s, too, really, even the robot is tilting its little makeshift head at her – suffice it to say she doesn’t go anywhere with the rest of that sentence.

It wedges a small crack in her heart, but only a small one, when Morgan takes her plate of small cheeseburgers and plops herself down on the couch by the fire. Only the smallest of cracks. There isn’t much left that hasn’t already been broken.

Morgan sits and looks around her, expectant. She’s waiting for something, and Happy’s trying his best to figure out what, when Pepper gestures at the table. The mask isn’t there anymore – it’s been replaced by the food, and a very somber Nick Fury who’s deep in discussion with Miss Danvers – but this is the last place Morgan had seen her father.

And it would certainly stand to a four-year-old’s reasoning that this is the first place he’ll come looking for her again. She just has to wait long enough.

Morgan turns to Happy with her untouched plate and says, “I thought you said Daddy liked cheeseburgers too.”

Happy’s face falls, and he’s rushing forward to do damage control while Pepper – Pepper’s just trying to breathe, because it’s hard suddenly, when her chest feels like it’s turned to ice. It was ridiculous to think that she was done breaking after all.

She remembers, at least, how to take one step, then two. In fact, she makes it all the way to the bookcase before completely falling apart.

…

Their life together is on those shelves. Pictures of Morgan, mostly. First breath. First coo. First sneeze, because that was not a battle that Pepper found worth fighting with Tony. First steps, first bite of cake at each of their birthdays. Chocolate for Morgan. Red velvet for Pepper. Anything topped with a disgusting amount of sprinkles for Tony.

Then there were the drawings of them with matching shrapnel hearts that glowed, Pepper’s on a necklace, Morgan with her little bracelets. Multiplication tables that Tony had proudly framed even though all of the 3’s were written insistently backwards. Crayon portraits of dogs that Pepper always said no to.

She should have let them have a dog.

But it’s not any of these things that shatters that last piece of her left still standing.

She’s always aimed for cleanliness, but living with a child – make that two, on most days – was not exactly conducive to keeping a place tidy for long.

There are toys scattered here and there, stuffed animals and small handheld robots that were ostensibly made to help with the chores but more often than not got caught up in turf wars with the lions, not to mention one very nefarious hedgehog.

The hedgehog had been borne of a so-called math project of theirs. They’d repurposed a coconut plushy, and then proceeded to cover every inch of it with Pepper’s hot glue gun, bits of fabric, and hair – hair from Morgan’s toy trolls, her Raggedy Ann dolls, and the My Little Ponys that Bruce had sent her one year for Christmas.

They’d completed the look by jamming in colored paper clips for paws, and adding on black button eyes as an after-thought.

It looks – well, it looks like a little monster, quite frankly, but Morgan adores it, and so had Tony. He’d been beside himself with delight when she christened it “Hairy Ball” – Harry for short, at Pepper’s insistence.

…

(“I…don’t understand this, but I suppose I will have to accept it.”

“Potts, it’s the hairy ball theorem,” said Tony, with Morgan giggling away in his ear as he hoisted her higher and higher. “Simple topology. Take an even-dimensional sphere, and any continuous tangent vector field must have at least one point on the sphere where the vector equals zero.”

“I’m sure it does, Tony.”

“In essence, if you try to comb a hairy ball flat, there’s always going to be that one stubborn tuft that sticks out.”

“I see,” said Pepper, entirely humoring them. “And this is useful because…?”

“Because it’s funny,” said Morgan, kissing her hedgehog in the middle of its lumpy forehead.

“Because it’s funny,” Tony had echoed, like no other explanation mattered more than this one, and they shook their heads at each other with perfectly matching affronted expressions.)

…

Harry the hedgehog is squashed beneath a teetering bookstack, its felt-tipped nose poking out from behind a textbook on origami.

Pepper bends down as if on autopilot, straightening things and dusting down the edge of the shelf. There’s a rectangular clearing where PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART had so recently occupied space.

She sinks onto her knees for a moment, the hedgehog’s paws pressing into her fingers. One of the seams has ripped in the body of the fabric, spilling out stray wisps of cotton, and when she runs her palm over its patchwork of hair, smoothing out some of the tangles, its nose perks up as though trying to sniff at her hand.

…

(“Look, Mommy,” Morgan demonstrated for her, vigorously brushing back as much hedgehog hair as she could. “It’s sticking up here – and see, here – also here—”

“I have an idea where you can try that theory out next,” Pepper winked, much to Morgan’s slyly growing delight.

“Like…Daddy’s head?”

“No, sweetheart,” and their little girl giggled again as Tony looked at them both in mock betrayal, “not like Daddy’s head.”)

…

One of the paper clips comes loose, dangling uselessly before slipping between Pepper’s fingers. She watches it fall, blurring together with the rug at her feet.

Her shoulders shake, and then they’re only shaking harder as she folds herself up, as small and still as she can make her body so that Morgan doesn’t see her cry.

Grief surges up from every corner, so cold it burns everywhere that it touches, and just when she thinks she has nothing left it comes crashing out of all that nowhere again, drowning, drowning, if only it would just let her fucking drown.

…

(“That little guy can help predict the weather too, you know.”

“Oh, not that hedgehog theory again.”

“Theorem, Potts. Theorem. And hear me out – you’re looking particularly ravishing today, by the way—”

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but he kissed her neck and it made her feel so very warm all the same.

“—so Earth’s atmosphere, right? A spherical surface.” He took her face into his hands. “Let’s say there’s a storm brewing, blowing its wind east to west. There are – guaranteed – at least two spots where everything stands perfectly still. There is no wind.” Tony leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Here.” He tipped his head down to hover his mouth over hers as she smiled. “And here, too.”)

…

Pepper’s lost him so many times, but he always found his way back to her in the end. This time shouldn’t have been any different.

This time shouldn’t have been any different.

Everything’s quiet. The music has stopped, even the clinking of silverware, plates, all the small talk. Maybe she’s imagined it, but she can’t hear anything else beyond the soft raggedness of each breath as it shakes its way in and out of her body.

“Mrs. Stark?” A voice, sounding more distant than it probably is, and then a light awkward tapping on her shoulder. “I mean, Miss Potts. Mi—umm.” Peter Parker clears his throat, and she blinks, blinks, blinks until the hand he’s held out to her comes into focus. “I think you dropped this.”

She takes the paper clip, and manages a watery chuckle when Peter moves his other arm around, into her line of sight, and Morgan’s at the other end of it, holding on to his wrist. There’s a smear of ketchup on her chin, and Happy close behind her, a crumpled up napkin in hand.

“Oh, my darling girl.”

Pepper opens her arms, and Morgan climbs onto her lap, tiny hands already hard at work to wipe away the wetness on her cheeks. Her fingers dance over the smile that Pepper musters for her, and then Harry’s face pops back into view, Morgan carefully lifting him up to give Pepper a fuzzy little kiss on the nose.

“I miss Daddy.” Morgan’s voice is so small – the smallest, most powerful sound that Pepper has ever heard, but now’s not the time for her to break anymore.

“I know.” Pepper tucks her hair back, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Morgan burrows closer, the weight of her settling like a permanent warmth into Pepper’s chest. “I miss him too.”

“He’s really not coming back?” She’s cradling Harry, touching the open seamful of cotton with unsteady fingers.

“No, sweetie. But he loved you so, so much.”

Peter’s furiously rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, and Pepper beckons him over, patting the spot of rug next to them. He looks uncertain, but it doesn’t last long before he’s collapsing himself down, shoulders quaking as she puts her arm around him too.

Morgan sniffles into her neck, her whole body tightening as though trying to resist all this sadness she still doesn’t know what to do with, how to make it go away. Pepper murmurs soothing things in her hair, and then she closes her eyes, if only for a few blessed seconds, so that the world can stop spinning and just give her daughter a moment to cry.

It almost hurts, not to let herself cry with her.

“Hey, Miss Pepper?” says Peter, after a while. He’s dabbing his nose with a clean handkerchief that his Aunt May has just brought him. He points at the hedgehog, its missing paw still clutched in her hand. “What is…that?”

Morgan pipes up, before Pepper has a chance to say otherwise, “This is Hairy Ball.” The words come out a bit gargly and hoarse, but she straightens a little, looking pleased that someone is asking.

Happy coughs out a laugh into his hand. At the edge of Pepper’s vision, she sees Nick still over by the food, his one good eyebrow nearly shooting right off of his forehead.

Peter, meanwhile, looks simply floored. “As in the theorem? Cool.”

“See, Mommy?” Morgan wipes at her eyes, and graciously passes the hedgehog over for Peter’s perusal. “Daddy and I told you.”

“You most certainly did.” Pepper leans back as Morgan points out all of Harry’s features, Peter following raptly along and nodding his head at all the right moments. That crack in her chest opens just a bit wider, leaving a hitch in her breath that aches, and aches, and aches.

Her eyes are burning again.

But it’s okay, Pepper thinks, because there’s no other option. She’d made a promise to Tony that they were going to be okay. She has to believe it will look different from this, someday, but for now—

For now, they can take turns standing still.

[ao3.]

#endgame #avengers endgame #mcu #endgame spoilers #pepperony #well this is mildly terrifying

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