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the-last-kenobi · 3 years

Note

I love your writing so much!! If you’re still taking requests, could you do 9 with Obi-Wan and Anakin?

Thank you!! <3 And of course! I hope you enjoy.

From this various prompts list.

Set after The Wrong Jedi arc. And it’s way... way longer than I meant it to be. Whoops. I told myself, make this one short. Actually a prompt fill. And then I laughed at myself and wrote a fic and I don’t know exactly how long it is because I was too scared to look at the word count.

I tagged it as long post so I hope those of you who aren’t in the mood for my rambling bs are as to skip it!

I will add a reading cut when I get my hands on a laptop.

When Skywalker stormed into the training bay, his fists clenched by his sides, troopers scattered out of his way like silver-fish before a Bloodfin.

Even without Force-sensitivity, it was impossible to miss the potent fury rolling off the young General in waves, almost visible on the air, scalding anyone who got too near. His eyes glided right over the Clones, however, and fixed on a single figure standing alone on a mat, performing a slow exercise.

Anakin strode over to the edge of the mat and stamped his foot on the edge, twisting it a few inches just as the other man’s foot came back down from a stretch. He slipped. At the last second he caught himself, turning on the spot to regain his balance.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan spoke calmly, as if nothing had just happened. As if his friend wasn’t glaring at him with rage and disdain.

“A duel,” said Anakin, in a tone that brokered no argument.

General Kenobi’s face tightened slightly. But he nodded graciously and summoned his lightsaber to his hands, drawing backwards towards the opposite wall and raising his blue blade in a low Soresu opening.

Skywalker waited only half a second before launching himself at the other man in a blur of blue light and red-hot anger.

Cody, watching from the wall, clasped his hands behind his back as he watched the two Jedi spar at bewildering speeds.

Dizzying swirls of colliding blue light. Last-moment maneuvers, a blade hot as a sun missing moving limbs by inches. Skywalker always on the offensive. Kenobi always giving ground.

Obi-Wan’s eyes widened slightly as his entire body trembled under the weight of a blow that could have removed his head from his shoulders had he not blocked it; his own serenity seemed to shrink in the face of Anakin’s fire and desperation.

There was a blur of motion, and Skywalker stood triumphant as Kenobi crashed to the floor with the younger man’s saber an inch from his chest.

Obi-Wan stared up at his friend. “Solah,” he whispered.

For a moment more, the scene hung suspended. The lightsaber burning close, too close, to Obi-Wan’s vulnerable body, Anakin looming over him with anger in his eyes.

Then Anakin turned and stalked out of the room, leaving his former Master on the floor with a faint scorch mark on his pale tunics.

“Sir.” Cody strode over to his General immediately and helped him to his feet, watching him wince, feeling a surge of helpless anger at the nagging realization that he had never anticipated a time when his General would be hurting because of Skywalker. “Sir.”

“Cody,” the Jedi said wearily. “I need to get up to the bridge.”

“You need to see Hoop,” said Cody, referring to the 212th’s medic.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No. We’re still two days out through hyperspace and we need to find a way to make contact with the ground troops on Ryloth before we go barging in.”

Cody clenched his jaw but assented, knowing that there was no dissuading his General, not now. He had just one more thing to say.

“General.” He waited until Kenobi looked at him. “You threw that fight.”

Obi-Wan inhaled slowly, a look of what his Commander recognized as pain — grief — flickering behind his blue eyes. “Anakin needed the win,” he said quietly.

The second time Anakin Skywalker stormed into the training bay, everyone moved aside to watch even before Obi-Wan had turned around to greet his former apprentice.

Men from the 501st and the 212th, thrown together on this joint mission as if to both aggravate and soothe the hurt of Ahsoka’s departure, stood side by side and watched as their Generals flung themselves into the fight as if lives depended on it.

As Kenobi let Skywalker take the offensive. As he let Skywalker come to the edge of victory again and again and then held him off at the last second.

As Anakin’s rage grew, as he began to resent Obi-Wan for dragging the battle out and denying Anakin the victory he craved and deserved. Holding him back as always.

As for the second time Kenobi threw the fight in a way that Anakin didn’t notice.

Letting him walk off with his rage dispersed for awhile, the relieved and triumphant victor, while the bruised and shaken loser climbed to his feet and went back to work with an air of gravity around him. As if Obi-Wan had absorbed the weight of his friend’s anger and carried it like a shroud.

Maybe he did.

The third time Anakin confronted Obi-Wan, he won by punching Obi-Wan in the face.

The fourth time Anakin confronted Obi-Wan, he won by burning his leg from hip to ankle.

The sixth time Anakin confronted Obi-Wan, he won by pressing his foot down on the other man’s throat almost to the point of unconsciousness.

The eighth time, he won by knocking Obi-Wan’s lightsaber from his hands and driving him back against a wall with his own saber at Obi-Wan’s neck.

“You have to stop,” Hoop said.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “He... needs this.” A hiss escaped his lips as the medic dabbed bacta along the abrasion above his eye, the bacta he had tried to say he didn’t need.

“He needs a therapist and an ass kicking,” retorted Hoop, disregarding standard respect. He didn’t care about protocol in general, and certainly not when his General turned up every other day — usually dragged in by Cody — with bruises and cuts and strained muscles.

Obi-Wan only shook his head again.

Cody, Rex, Hoop, and many of the others had hoped that the battles on Ryloth would serve as a good outlet for General Skywalker.

They did.

But it wasn’t enough.

Fighting what felt like a futile war for the planet’s freedom, being back on Ryloth yet again, and the gaping hole in the 501st where Ahsoka had once stood only seemed to drive Skywalker’s pain upwards. And for Anakin, all emotions led to rage, eventually.

He could not stand the depths of his emotions, the dark days, the low times. If he was not happy, he chose rage over sorrow.

And there was so much sorrow.

There was a two-day reprieve after the campaign on Ryloth. Temporary victory had been purchased yet again with the blood of the natives and the GAR, and the 501st and 212th departed for another campaign halfway across the galaxy at once.

And for two days there was time to rest and think.

And then Anakin stalked into the training bay again. Not finding Obi-Wan, he waited for him, and as soon as the older Jedi entered the room, raised his lightsaber in an Ataru salute.

The thirteenth time Anakin challenged Obi-Wan, they dueled for over three hours, and both fell exhausted to the ground.

The nineteenth time, Anakin left Obi-Wan with a leg broken in two places. Cody had to physically restrain Hoop — and himself, frankly — from jumping General Skywalker and throttling him.

The twenty-eighth time, Obi-Wan’s guard slipped, and Anakin’s saber drove straight through Obi-Wan’s thigh. A mirror image of the wound Dooku had inflicted on his other leg, a lifetime ago it seemed, back when they had been on the same side.

Were they still?

Anakin’s face had dropped with shock at the injury, and before any of the men could react, he had picked Obi-Wan up in his arms and rushed him to the med bay.

And then the Council called to speak with Kenobi privately, and Anakin’s rage and hurt against them for their role in handing his Padawan over to the authorities rose up again like a serpent reading to strike.

The thirtieth time Anakin challenged Obi-Wan, he fought with his left hand, as if taunting his Master that he was still superior.

The thirty-sixth time Anakin challenged Obi-Wan, the older Jedi fought back, taking the offensive just long enough that it seemed he would be victorious — and then something in Anakin’s face broke. Grief and dismay were revealed in the cracks of his wrath, and Obi-Wan retreated again, and then fell.

The fortieth time Anakin challenged Obi-Wan, he was met with silence.

Anakin stared, his saber already lit in his hands, as Obi-Wan stood up slowly from where he had been meditating.

He dragged himself to his feet like a man on the verge of collapse, but he was as irritatingly graceful as ever, composed, serene. Anakin’s hands tightened on his weapon.

“Well?” he prompted.

Obi-Wan said nothing.

He looked down at the floor, and some of his burnished, ruddy hair fell over his eyes, concealing his face from view. Anakin waited impatiently. A strange feeling rose inside him, something nauseous and uncertain, and he did not want to know what it was.

“Well?” he demanded more aggressively.

Obi-Wan swallowed hard and looked up at him.

And Anakin was struck by how small his Master looked.

Shorter than him by a few inches, yes, but somehow that larger-than-life quality that hung about the man had fallen away. He looked tired. Beaten, humbled, hurt — like a child, like a man driven to the edge and then over it without anyone pausing to take notice of his fall.

His blue eyes were shattered by unshed tears.

Anakin recoiled.

“I can’t,” Obi-Wan croaked. His voice was tight as a wire, strained with the effort of holding back tears. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Anakin. I... I’m too tired to be your emotional punching bag today.”

“Obi-Wan—” said Anakin, not even knowing what he was going to say, and stopped there.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan repeated. And he sounded it. Looked it. Was dripping remorse into the air like a sky about to storm. “Please. If this is what you need, I can keep doing it, but I just need today. I need a day to breathe. And — and if you’re —”

A tear trickled down over one cheek and into his beard. Then another.

Anakin was watching with his expression frozen between anger and shock.

Cody leaned forward as if about to spring. Rex’s hand settled on his shoulder.

“If you just need more time, I’ll give it to you,” Obi-Wan whispered. “But if you’re angry enough to strike me down unarmed... do it. I don’t — I don’t want — I can’t —”

Cody jolted under Rex’s grip.

And still, Anakin’s saber blazed in his hands, casting Obi-Wan in blue light, reflected in his shining eyes.

“I can’t,” Obi-Wan said helplessly.

Anakin hesitated.

Conflicting emotions ran across his face one after the other, grief chasing pain chasing anger chasing despair chasing rage, like shadows passing over deeper waters.

He raised his saber a little higher.

#and that there is an ambiguous ending #obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #star wars #my writing #prompt fill #commander cody #captain rex #501st battalion #212th attack battalion #ahsoka tano #the wrong jedi #Anakin has issues #obi wan has issues #someone hug them #long post #very long post #very very long post

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prettyboyreid · 4 years

Text

tell me about the stars

Request: For the prompt list could you do number 1 from the angst/sad section and can it be reid speaking to cat? Maybe at her execution or him visiting her in prison or something? Thanks!

Cat Adams had one last request of Dr. Reid before her execution.

Warnings: Mentions of needles, mentions of death

Word Count: 6,014

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

He looked over the letter he had just received from the Mount Pleasant Women’s Correctional Facility one more time, both at the official announcement he had requested after his last meeting with her, along with a handwritten letter with the name “Spencie” written in wide, neat letters, signed at the bottom by none other than Cat Adams.

He leaned forward on the round table as he looked it over again, glancing up at the door at the sound of a light knock. He gave Jennifer a small, obviously forced smile, looking down at the flimsy notebook paper once again.

“Everything okay, Spence?” she asked him in her motherly voice, knowing it was more of an impulse whenever she noticed him under duress. His hands grasped onto the edges of the table until the bones in his knuckles pressed against the skin, burning them white. He simply shook his head, some of his light brown curls falling down into his eyes.

“Her execution is next Thursday. She requested the lethal injection,” he told her, his hazel eyes scanning over her writing again to make sure he actually understood what she had asked of him. Knowing her, however, made the entire letter feel more like a demand. He slid the paper across the table to his friend, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes as he let out a groan. The blonde woman picked up the paper, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she read what had been written to him.

“Spencie,

I hope you haven’t missed me too much since our last date. I know I left you probably missing me like crazy, but I’m sure you managed to control yourself without me around.

They gave me the execution date, two weeks from today - two days before your birthday, if my math is correct. Of course, by lethal injection. I might as well shoot up once before I die, right?

I managed to get my lawyer to work out a deal with the warden. I didn’t want any special last meal - I’ll end up looking too bloated in my best dress when you bury me, and I can’t have you having that as your last image of me.

I want one last date with the good doctor - you, of course.

I figured you’d be at the execution anyway, but I wanted to make sure you got to say your last goodbyes to me before you lost me forever. Now, whether you decide to bring me a Happy Meal or not is entirely up to you. Whatever you need to set the mood. Personally, I’d prefer something more classy for our last meeting, but it is up to the gentleman to bring it all together. It’s just my job to look pretty.

I can’t wait to see you again, Spencie. I know you can’t wait to see me either. Tell Maxine and Mommy Dearest I said hi!

-Cat Adams xoxo”

She even went so far as to draw a little heart at the bottom of the page, with “S+C” written on the inside of it.

“I have to go.”

“No, you don’t Spence,” she quickly assured him, folding the letter up before making her way around the table to talk to him. She leaned herself against the edge of the table as she spoke to him, her hands folding together in her lap as she looked over at him. He kept his focus on the execution notice in front of him.

“She’s just trying to get into your head one last time. It’s what she does. If you go, she wins,” she tried to convince him. He looked over at her after a few moments, pushing out a breath of air through his nose.

“What if she’s planning something else? What if she’s trying to hurt someone again and I’m the only one who has the ability to stop it?” He asked, knowing that every time she wanted to speak to him someone was getting hurt. He didn’t want to talk to her, he told himself, but he didn’t want anyone else to get hurt at the hands of Cat Adams. JJ sighed out heavily as she listened to his concerns, knowing where he was coming from, but still not liking the idea of him being in the same room as her again.

“I know it’s frustrating, but she doesn’t have a taunt about anything specific this time, besides you mom and Max, but we know that they’re both safe and will be. I really just think she’s trying to get in your head.”

He tugged at the tightly knotted tie that clung to the collar of his shirt, suddenly feeling as though he was being suffocated by his choice. He paced around the room as he thought through all of the possible situations and outcomes of what she could possibly do, but it was no use. She was the one person that was always able to stump him. She was by no means as smart as him, but she was by far one of the most clever people he’d ever come in contact with. It was one of the handful of things he hated about her.

“I don’t think I can take that chance, Jennifer,” he said softly, his feet finally coming to a stop in front of the large window overlooking the bullpen. He watched as Tara and Luke talked at his desk, and Emily and Matt having their first cup of coffee in their little kitchen. Emily had a stack of files under her arms, probably looking into a replacement for Rossi. Kevin Lynch was currently covering for Garcia while they searched for her replacement, but he knew that a lot of the team would rather keep him on since they at least knew him. He looked back to his best friend, her hands still laced together in her lap as she watched him, letting him make the decision for himself.

He couldn’t risk any of them getting hurt because he was too prideful to go face a woman that they had outsmarted three times before.

JJ already knew that.

After work on Thursday, he had called in a takeout order for an Italian restaurant that was on the way to the prison. He figured he could at least play into her fantasy if she did have something planned. It was probably the best way to protect everyone.

He picked up the order and drove to the prison. It was a silent drive, but his mind raced a mile a minute. For the past week and a half, she had been stuck under his skin like a splinter, and he couldn’t wait to put it all behind him. For five years now, she had followed him and his team, trying to break them down and beat them. Today was the last time they’d ever need to think about her.

He decided on going alone, mostly to minimize any possible damage she could try to inflict, and because he didn’t know what really was going to happen. He had a habit of losing his temper around her, and he didn’t want to give her the benefit of the doubt by letting his team see the way she could affect him.

Once he had parked his car in one of the available spots near the entrance, he turned off the car and sitting at the wheel, his eyes fixated on the sign in front of him, reminding him where he was. He didn’t want to be here. It was the absolute last place he wanted to be in the entire world. But, of course, he worried what she would do if he didn’t show up.

As the watch that clung onto his wrist showed the time of 7:45 PM, he gripped tightly onto the steering wheel and let out a heavy breath. He thought for a brief moment, he should just turn around and go back home. He should forget about all of this, forget about her, and let her execution play out the way it was supposed to.

He pushed the car door open and grabbed the bag of food, locking the doors before he made his way to the front doors of the prison. Upon entering, he flashed one of the guards his FBI badge, letting them know why he was there silently. The guard nodded towards another in the little booth by the entrance, and the door pushed itself open.

He led Spencer back through a dark hall of the building, the only sounds he could hear being his heavy steps and the heartbeat in his ear. The hall seemed to drag on for miles, as if she was trying to make him walk as far as he possibly could to see how far he would go to see him. He checked his watch as the guard unlocked the door he presumed she was behind, watching it barely hit 8:00 before he walked in.

“Spencie!”

Her voice was much too cheerful for what she was about to endure in four hours. He half expected her to be wallowing, feeling bad for herself, or to try and start a riot to put it off even more.

He realized she was really ready to die.

She could tell, simply by his demeanor, he was ready as well.

“Hello, Cat,” he said, walking further into the room as the guard pulled the door shut and locked it behind him. He set the bag of food down on the table in front of her, though she paid no mind to it. Her focus was primarily on him. It made his stomach wrench.

“Italian, my favorite!” she exclaimed, her gaze still on him as she pulled the plastic apart, grabbing the two to-go boxes before setting them on the metal table, each in front of one of the rusting metal chairs.

“Have a seat. You look like you’ve had a long day,” she coaxed with her infamous mischievous smile, opening her box before grabbing one of the small packages of silverware the restaurant had added in.

He sat across from her, his hands folded neatly in his lap as she began to dig into the food, keeping up an act as if she was trying to be on her best behavior. It didn’t last long.

“Come on! Eat! You couldn’t have gotten all of this food just for me,” she said with a grin, twirling a bit of spaghetti around her fork as she spoke to him. He silently opened his food and did the same, taking a bite of his dinner while keeping his eyes on her.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why you’re here?” she pressed. He imagined her waiting a little longer before beginning to taunt him. He couldn’t blame her, though - she did only have four hours left to torture him as much as she could.

“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready,” he said simply and emotionlessly, twisting the spaghetti around his fork. He wanted to do his best to give her as little attention as possible, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for that long.

She hummed a little bit at his answer, almost unsatisfied with it. She almost didn’t respond to him, wanting him to actually ask her, but she knew she didn’t have that kind of time. They both knew she didn’t.

“I wanted you to make up for our last date. It wasn’t exactly a girl’s dream evening, you know,” she quipped, trying to get a rise out of him, trying to get him to break his little charade and try to humor her. She was going to be dead in three and a half hours, and then he could forget about her for the rest of his life. He could be happy and not even remember her name. But all she wanted was tonight.

He held back from rolling his eyes at her answer, crossing his ankles under his seat as he continued to eat his meal quietly. He wanted to hear everything she said, and he knew the only way was to lure it out of her with his silence. The one thing she could hardly bear. Of course, it worked. A few quiet minutes passed as she ate, her eyes shifting over every inch of her date’s face, trying to profile him the way he had done to her since the first time they spoke.

“Although, you really did surprise me with that kiss. Did you ever kiss Maxine like that?” she questioned, grinning as she noticed his grip tightening on the plastic utensil. It was the most she’d gotten out of him all evening.

“Do you really care about how I am with her? I thought tonight was all about you?” he asked, taking another bite of his food as he watched, waited for her next move.

Talking with Cat Adams was like a game of chess - strategic, long, and a big waiting game. It was her move, yet he was already four moves ahead, thinking of what he could do next to stay ahead of her.

“Yes… no,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit as she slumped back in her seat. She folded her arms across her chest, pushing the food away as she looked at him. “At least you have the right idea. It is all about me, so why don’t you act like it is? You can make up for last time and then drop me off at home at the execution table.”

He watched her body language, relaxing in the small room they had to themselves. She noticed, leaning forward again so her elbows rested on the table. “Come on, Spencie. Just act like you’re on a date with her.”

He paused for a moment, doing his best to remain stoic as he watched her move. Almost too slowly, like she was drawing each and every second out as if it would give her more time with him.

He cleared his throat before closing his box and tossing it in the flimsy bag he had brought it in. “How are you, Cat?” She found the question rather humorous, considering she knew he’d probably been keeping tabs on her and her behavior since she had told him she was going to be put to death.

“You can do better than that, Spencer,” she pressed on, her dark gaze flicking from his lips back up to his hazel eyes. Once she realized he wasn’t moving on without her answer, she let out a soft huff. “I’m doing great. I’m dying in…” she grabbed his wrist and slipped his watch off, checking the time before looking back up at him. “Three hours. You wasted one hour trying to profile me, when you could’ve made it worth my while,” she reminded him, wrapping the watch around her much smaller wrist.

“What did you want me to talk about?” he asked, leaning back in his chair again, his hands laced together in his lap as he waited for her response.

“Me, of course!” she said, throwing her hands up to bring more attention to herself, like the bright orange jumpsuit didn’t already have her sticking out like a sore thumb. “Ask me about the baby, ask me why I wanted to have the lethal injection, talk about me. I know you haven’t been able to get me out of that pretty little brain of yours.”

“I don’t think about you. Quite honestly, I haven’t thought about you since our last date,” he lied to her, knowing she wouldn’t pick up on it as easily as he would be able to.

He thought about her at least once a week. He thought about her whenever he called his mother to talk about how she was doing. He thought about her whenever Max kissed him last month when he got back from a case. He thought about her when he bought a new watch, not wanting to wear something so plagued with her touch around every day. He hated that she had become so prominent in his life, wanting nothing more to forget about her. He pushed her to the back of his mind, but her maniacal grin always found his way back into his thoughts. He would never say it aloud, but he couldn’t have been more relieved when he found out she was going to be executed. He hoped it would bring him peace, finally getting some sort of justice for himself after all she had put him through.

She gave him a playful frown. She knew it wasn’t true, but she’d rather not waste her last hours arguing with him over what he would never admit. She knew he would stand by that statement until midnight, as they plunged the lethal needle into her veins.

“Why did you really want to see me, Cat?” he asked her just as she had opened his mouth. Her lips broke into a smile, standing up from her seat before walking over to him, standing beside him and hoisting herself onto the metal table.

“Do you really want to know the truth?”

“Did you hurt anyone this time?”

She smiled down at him, flattered he would think that of her. She wanted to lie to him, make his blood pulse against every inch of his veins out of anger, but she knew it wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And I knew since you’d be here anyway to watch me die, I figured you could try to make me feel better about not ever being able to see you again,” she told him. She truthfully didn’t have some big elaborate scheme planned out. She thought about it, of course. She even planned out a few ideas. But somewhere deep in her gut, she wanted to have a good memory with him. One where all of his focus was on her, not someone else he cared far more about.

His eyes watched her check the time again, and she let out a hum. 9:17. She’d been counting down the minutes all day. She probably didn’t need to check the watch. She did it for him. She did it to remind him how little time she had left. She hoped it would make him feel bad for putting her here, for having her next up on the execution block. And it almost worked.

“How do you expect me to make you feel better? What do you want me to do?” he asked. His mouth was pressed into a flat line, his eyebrows raised as he waited for a response. She pretended to think for a moment as if she hadn’t planned out how the evening would go down to the last move she would make on him before he sat in an audience for her final performance.

“Take me out on a walk. In the yard. The stars will be out, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He nodded at her question, looking back to the window where a guard was more than likely watching over their every move. The door unlocked and was pushed open, and Spencer stood up, holding out a hand for her. He would play into every last move she set up for him at this point, mentally picturing his girlfriend to make everything easier.

She laced her hand with his quickly, following behind him like a little school girl following her crush around the playground. He only looked ahead as the guard led him down the hall again, two big red doors awaiting them at the end. He felt her eyes burning into him, the bright flash of her white teeth catching on the light out of the corner of his eye. She was enjoying herself, much more than she was supposed to be.

“Did you really never think about me?” she asked as the guard pushed the door open, a gust of cold air washing over the two of them. He looked around for a moment, looking up at the clear sky before his gaze landed down on her. She looked at him, silently pleading for an answer.

“Not until you sent me your letter,” he answered coldly, walking towards the benches that were scattered around the spacious area. He sat down in the center, and she sat beside him. Her eyes never left him, even when he was barely a shadow before the motion sensored lights kicked in and lit the area up like Times Square.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice carrying the same tone as a pouting child. He realized long ago that she might as well be a child, considering she always wanted it to be about her and she would do anything to keep it on her. Which was why he was out in the cold 53° weather, with the last person he wanted to be with on October 26th.

“Why, Spencer?” she pressed agitatedly, just wanting an answer out of him. She knew it would be an answer she wouldn’t want, one that she’d be better off if she never heard what he had to say. He didn’t have to worry about her feelings anymore, since she wouldn’t remember anything he ever said to her in two and a half hours.

“Honestly? I can’t stand the thought of you. I can’t help but think about every bad thing you’ve done, every victim you took, every person you put through hell just to get back at a man whose face you probably wouldn’t be able to pick out in a lineup. You hurt people close to me just to see me, so pardon me for not exactly being thrilled about the idea of you.”

And, for the first time in her shortened life, Catherine Adams didn’t know what to say.

His words stung in her chest, like he reached into her and squeezed her heart until it couldn’t beat anymore. But, she wasn’t capable of being hurt. His words rang in her head that he always told her - “You’re incapable of having the same emotions as me.” She never believed him when he said that to her, but that didn’t keep them out of her head. It was one of the many things she could never stop thinking about, along with the way he looked when he met her for the first time and the way he kissed her outside his apartment a year ago.

She stared up at him blankly, hiding any emotions she allegedly didn’t have as she watched him. He never looked down at her when he spoke. He stared straight ahead at the brick wall in front of him, and she figured he was counting each and every brick so he could ignore her.

She laid her head on his shoulder as he stayed silent, not knowing what to say to him. Nothing she could say would change the way he felt about her, and she figured it would be a waste of breath to try and convince him otherwise.

She sat with him for an hour in silence, a single tear falling from her eyes, but she wiped it away before he could notice. She was a psychopath. She couldn’t have emotions. He’d accuse her of faking it for sympathy, and the last thing she really wanted right now was to be lectured by Dr. Spencer Reid.

He had noticed it, his focus turning to her the moment he noticed she was no longer paying attention to him. He noted the way her breathing would speed up every few moments, and he couldn’t help but wonder what thoughts were running through her mind. He wanted to know if she actually was ready for her fate, if she wanted everything to finally be over for her. He wanted to know if she felt like she had done everything she wanted to, if she had a bucket list she was or wasn’t able to complete.

He couldn’t find the words to ever ask her.

“Spencer?”

“What?”

“Tell me about the stars.”

He looked down at her, not noticing he had become lost in his own thoughts. She was looking up at the sky now, her arm looped around his as she remained as close to him as he possibly could. Her body was pressed to his, as if she was trying to stay behind with him. He thought it was the least he could do, before looking up the clear night sky once again.

For about half an hour, as the air chilled around them minute by minute, he told her about the constellations that they could see. He talked about how the Zodiacs came to be pillars of Astrology and where superstitions about each star sign came from. He told her anything he could remember about everything above them, until the guard came up to them.

“They need her back inside, Dr. Reid,” he informed him. Spencer looked down at Cat again, her gaze dropping from the spheres of gas millions of miles away to the man beside her. She took in his features for the last time, committing every freckle, every eyelash, every wispy curl to memory before she stood up. The guard placed the handcuffs around her wrists and tightened them, leading the two back into the prison and towards the back of the building, towards the execution chamber.

The walk was long and silent. Cat’s gaze focused on the end of the long hallway, staring straight ahead. Spencer’s eyes locked on the three pairs of shoes that shuffled down the quiet hall, chewing on his tongue as he thought of the last thing he would say to her. He thought about why he cared so much about it. He wondered if she’d care if he even said anything to her.

They had reached the chamber in a matter of minutes, stopping outside the door as Cat looked up at him. The guard took off her handcuffs, letting her have a few more minutes of freedom before everything was taken from her. Spencer could tell from the look in his eyes that this night wouldn’t leave his memory for a while.

Cat slid the watch off of her wrist, taking his hand in hers before sliding it back to its rightful place. Both of them stared down at the time. 11:52. She had eight minutes left. Eight minutes left of breath, eight minutes left of life.

Eight minutes left of him.

She looked up at him after watching the small arms on the watch tick around the circle, and his eyes followed her. She gave him a soft smile. It was genuine. It physically hurt him to see it.

“Did you mean it?” She asked him in a quiet voice. She didn’t sound like herself. If he thought she was capable, he would think she was scared. He never answered her question. He hated to lie, but he didn’t want to make her last moments any worse than they already were. She simply nodded, looking down at her feet before back up at him.

“Thank you. For today,” she admitted to him. He treated her with the same amount of respect as he would have given a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, but it had been the best memory she held with him. She leaned up on the tips of her toes and swayed closer to him, pressing her lips to his scruffed cheek before returning to her normal height. She stared at him for another moment before the door opened, and they were faced with the warden.

“They’re ready for you, Miss Adams.”

The guard ushered her into the room slowly, and she stole one last glance before the heavy metal door closed behind her. He let out a heavy breath he had held since he walked into the first room, looking up into the fluorescent lights for a moment. This was the moment he’d been waiting for for five years, one he practically prayed to come quicker.

He made his way around to the viewing area, noticing some of the family members of her victims - wives, parents, children. People who have waited for justice longer than he had. People who he helped grieve. He weaved his way around the seats and towards the front, taking a seat at the center.

He watched as they strapped her to a chair in the center of the room just on the other side of the glass, holding her in her place. She almost looked as if she was at peace as they inserted the needle into the vein of her right arm, her head resting against the back of the chair as her eyes searched for something in the room across from her. Once she had found what she was looking for, she let out a sigh, her eyes locking with Spencer’s for the last time.

“Do you have any last words?” the warden asked, making his way to the large set up that displayed the chemicals that were soon to find home inside the girl strapped to the chair. She simply swallowed and nodded, her hand gripping on the edge of the chairs arm as she watched Spencer.

“I’m sorry,” she managed out after a moment. He watched as her eyes welled with tears and she unapologetically let them fall on her round cheeks. Right before the warden pressed the button that would send her to her final fate, she blurted out one last thing.

“I really did love you, Spencie.”

His eyes didn’t leave her once she admitted her deathbed confession, but he could tell that her fate had officially been sealed. He watched as her face slowly relaxed, her body slumped into the chair as any life she had drained from her eyes. The recorder announced her time of death to be 12:02 AM, October 27th. He let out a shaky breath as the blinds lowered, separating him and the families from her. He heard quiet sobs let out around him, the families finally having a storm cloud that had been hovering them for years clear away. One person, a father of one of her victims, he presumed, slowly clapped. Everyone began filtering out of his room, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t.

He was escorted out by the warden at 12:15. They walked quietly down the barren halls to the front of the building, Spencer’s hands digging into his pockets. He thanked the warden for making a few exceptions, promising that he owed him before he made his way to his car. He unlocked it and sat in the driver’s seat, but didn’t put the key in the ignition.

He tugged on his tie roughly until the loop was wide enough to pull it over his head, throwing it into the passenger's seat with his leather messenger bag and his gun holster. He held onto the steering wheel tightly as he rested his head against the steering wheel, taking long, deep breaths as he ran through the events of the evening once again.

But her last words rang in his ears like a gunshot.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Emily’s number after a few minutes, hoping she would still be awake as the phone rang twice.

“Spencer? Is everything alright?” she asked, her tone laced with worry. Her voice instantly helped release the tension that had built up over the past few hours, rubbing at his eyes tiredly with his large hand before leaning back in his seat.

“I think I need to take a sick day.” He swallowed thickly again as he looked at the prison sign, his head falling back against the headrest as he waited for her to respond. She was silent for a minute, trying to pick up on his breathing and assess what was going through his head. Of course she knew what this evening was, but she never got to talk to him about it before he left. She didn’t really know what he was like going into the situation, which didn’t help her figure out how he was leaving it.

“Of course, whatever you need,” she reassured him. He let out a quiet sigh, nodding as he let his eyes close for a moment.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He let his eyes slowly open, looking to the center console between the two front seats, where her letter was opened and on display for him to reread quickly.

“Her last words were that she loved me, Emily.”

It was dead silent on the other line. He couldn’t even hear her breathing. He pulled the phone from his ear for a moment just to make sure he hadn’t lost their connection before pressing it back to the spot it was before.

“She was trying to get under your skin, Spencer. You know that she was-”

“Incapable of emotions. I know,” he cut her off, the heel of his hand digging into his eye as if it would clear everything up for him, explain why she said what she said, why she did what she did.

“Go home. Get some sleep. We’ll all come visit you after work tomorrow. Saturday, we’re all going to Rossi’s. He wanted to host your birthday this year,” Emily told him. He nodded again, practically forgetting what this weekend had even held for him and his friends.

“Alright.”

“Spencer?”

“Yes?”

“It’s all over. You don’t have to worry about her anymore,” she reminded him. Her voice of reason comforted him, wiping at his eyes with the sleeves of his button-up once he felt hot tears falling over his cheeks.

“Thank you. Goodnight, Emily.” He hung up the phone as soon as he pulled it away from his cheek, putting the keys in the ignition finally. He listened to the engine roar to life before putting the car in reverse, pulling out of the parking lot before turning the car to the road, and finally heading home for the night.

He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. He couldn’t be bothered to show her at least a little more kindness on her last living day. He treated her the way he wished he could have after she took his mother, after she took Max’s family. He didn’t even treat her as poorly as she had treated everyone else, yet he felt bad. He felt bad because he wasn’t the same as her, he tried to tell himself. He repeated it to himself on the long, quiet ride back to his apartment.

I’m not like her.

When he had pulled up to his apartment complex at 1:23 AM, parking the car in the spot he always parked in, turning off the ignition before gathering his things and heading into the towering building. His feet trudged up the stairs as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb any of his neighbors at the ungodly hour.

He unlocked this door before walking inside, hanging the keys on the hook once he closed the door. He dropped everything down on his large leather couch, his body carrying him over to his bedroom. He was too drained to even take off his tight slacks and the button-up that hugged his chest, crawling underneath the heavy duvet and resting his head against the feather pillows.

He slowly let his eyes close in the comfortable darkness, falling into a deep sleep he felt he earned after the day he had. But for at least a few more moments, before his body finally had been drained of every last drop of energy left in him, one thought kept his brain turning over and over.

If he hated the thought of her so much, why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?

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ellipsesarefun · 4 years

Text

DAMIRAE DAY 5: Soulbond

A/N: SO THIS CAME OUT OF NOWHERE I SWEAR HAHHAHAAH. It’s probs the coffee talking but damn. Finished this baby todaaayyy after reviewing for a subject (and damn is this a weird day because writing and studying feels like two different worlds) so this will be queued to post on the 14th or 15th? Maybe I’m too excited but it’s been awhile since I’ve been excited to write something.. Been awhile since I’ve used 1st POV. This is probs a bit messy :( But I’ll edit some stuff out someday..

May not be participating anymore but I hope to come back to DamiRae <3 It’s been a comfort to me during my study breaks.

------

There are some things about my magic that I cannot fully comprehend nor explain.

Ever since I’ve healed the young Robin, I’ve been receiving vivid dreams. I can’t fully grasp the images but the emotions that wake me to reality are always filled with heartaches, pining, and desperation. I never bothered to clue anyone in on what they are. Kory knows I have dreams but I can never tell her what happens in them because I don’t know how to describe them.. Damian has his ways of knowing. The little bird never lets me forget that. But he never asked, just implied. And I never said anything, merely let him draw his own conclusions.

I’ve been harboring feelings for him for a long time but I never acted on them for a number of reasons... Sometimes, we were romantically and sexually involved with other people. Other times, there never seemed to be a time and place to voice it out on the open. The moments we spent alone meditating, reading together, flying during my nightly rituals are the moments I cherish too much to let him feel my burden.

But out of all the reasons I've expounded, My father is the center. Even when I have created an enchanted fortress created out of his and my own demonic magic (with the help of Constantine and Zatanna), I still fear that he may one day break through those chains and destroy Earth... and kill Damian. Trigon senses the bond between us and it disgusts him.

His insults hit right through my own insecurities. I mean technically, he is trapped in crystal that’s stored in a small box that I carry around but damnit there are times when his thoughts crowd over to mine and... it terrifies me.

The mechanics of the bond isn’t the “if he dies, then I die too” but more of “I feel his presence more than I let on”. I still have no idea if it also might be the former, but the latter is one that I experience often. I don't always know what he is feeling (I may be an Empath but I have my mental barriers to maintain). It's only when he's in danger do my senses burn right through my barriers. It probably comes with this strong sense of protectiveness within me, a desperate need to keep him safe... and it’s becoming a little too obvious.

Throughout the six years as Titans, training with Damian has gradually become a torture... Every urge to shot turns into every urge to shield him from the pain... Every scar he receives fuels my anger against those who dare to hurt him, especially the enemies we’ve faced during missions and/or patrol.

The last one was worse. I arrived at the scene with him on the floor, body tainted with bruises and then..

I saw him on the floor.. suddenly burnt into ashes.. face barely recognizable... I heard my screams of agony, despair, and heartbreak as I watched my other self enveloping him in what seems a spell..

I love you...

And it wasn’t a dream but a memory... It all felt so real, like I was in Apokolips (what the hell is Apokolips?) once more and the Earth has crumbled to its fucked up state and he was gone and I needed to save him (from what?)...

I didn’t even stop to comprehend what it was and I lost my control.

AZARATH. METRION. ZINTHOS!

...

I blacked out, I think, and now I find myself back in the infirmary of the Titans Tower. Not a single glimpse of a sunlight reached the room and nothing stands out from the dark except a figure sitting beaide me.

"Hi." Is the only greeting I offered. Damian stands and turns the lights back on. He sits back down, burning holes into my skull. I squint at the brightness and immediately force myself to focus at some place that isn't him.. I couldn't bare to look at him.

I hear a sigh but I let my gaze linger at the clock far longer than I liked, matching my breaths with the ticks and tocks of the arrows of the clock. His agitation prickles at my senses like a thorn to my side. The damned urge to come and wrap him in my arms gradually resurfaces once more.

He clears his throat just in time, like he already knew what I was thinking and I look down, hoping he doesn’t notice the heat pooling my cheeks.

“Look,” he says and I pause my train of thought, “You and I both know there’s more to this that letting your demon lose and almost killing Dr. Light, so let’s not beat around the bush.” I couldn’t look at him, I just can’t bear to.. But I nodded, just so he knows that I’m taking his words seriously (and I always do)..

I might as well tell him..

“I’ve been having nightmares ever since the first time I healed you.” There’s movement from my periphery but I ignore it, “Of you.. dying...” Silence is his only answer so I continued.

“It wasn’t that bad at first but through years it’s been difficult to fight this desire to protect you all the time.” I haven’t reached the most important part yet and I’m already feeling the rising tension in the air. He holds up a hand, and I wait for him to speak as I try to calm my heartbeat.

“Raven, I was trained by the League of the Assassins. I know how to handle myself-”

“I know you do, Damian.” I cut him off, hearing my voice rise a bit,

(And I realize later that he didn't need to say this because damnit the smart ass saw right through me. He only did so to bait me into confessing.)

“But these aren’t nightmares.. not really. They’re from another timeline.” I let out a sigh. This conversation is beginning to exhaust me but he needs to know. I turn to him this time and he’s not holding back his own concern etched on his face. He gets up from his chair and sits at the edge of my bed. My gaze drifts to his hand. I remember a lingering feeling, probably from another memory of that timeline, that he’d reach out and hold my hand in his.

“There was a war.. We were around at this age..” I continue, “We were trying to stop someone and... you died in the process. I revived you.. brought you back from the dead.” I watch him watch me. Not a single gasp was uttered nor any ounce of surprised was showed on his face. I didn’t sense any of that. There was so much I can pick from that unreadable frown.

Longing, concern, understanding.. and it’s only occurred to me that he knows. He’s known this whole time. I was too engrossed to what he felt and what Trigon may do that I didn’t stop to read through his actions. But does he...

No.. I shouldn't ask... not when I haven't laid all the cards out..

"We have a bond.. sort of." I say, and he nods, confirming of his own assumptions, "But I'm not sure if this will get us killed. So far the pain inflicted on you does not mean I receive the same kind of pain. It just fuels my drive to protect you."

"And you think that this was a result from our previous affections to one another in that timeline." He concludes.

"We never really spent time together as... together." I say. It feels out of the blue but something about what I said needed to be heard, "You left for the League of Assassins. You offered me a place there because you had feelings for me. I would have went with you if Trigon hadn't threatened me to kill you if I stayed..."

I face him, feeling this odd confidence swelling within me. "I do still have feelings for you. And Trigon still wants to kill you so.. that hasn't changed.."

There is a slight elation and giddiness within me as I catch a mixture of bewilderment and amusement on his features. But my heart begins to soar as I watch a tiny, tender smile drawn by his lips.

I've seen that smile before.. a couple of times. There were only glimpses of that smile during our many glances throughout the years, hidden beneath the layers of his mask.

And now the last of his mask has finally come off.

"Raven," he says and I feel the tingle in my ears at the sound of my name, "You should know by now that my perseverance exceeds the fear of being devoured by demonic conquerer of worlds."

I frown at him. "You sound so sure of yourself..."

"You've defeated him twice, Raven." He reasons, "In this timeline and probably in other timelines. You were lucky, you say, but now.. you're--no, we're, more than four times as lucky."

"Damian.. where is this all coming from?" I ask, because he makes it sound so simple. Like he's up against merely a strict father who wouldn't let his daughter marry the person she loves in those cheesy romcoms. But this isn't a romcom. This is Trigon, for Azar's sake..

"He isn't called a Conquerer of Worlds for no reason!"

"And that doesn't stop you for creating a tiny fortress that entraps and gradually diminishes his demonic magic instead of trapping him in a crystal and sticking it to your forehead from your other timeline. Look Raven,” he continues, “You and I both know that there’s something between us? Why wait for the inevitable?” Why wait till I leave for the League of Assassins? Why wait till the possibility of Apokolips comes around again? He leans in and his bright green eyes search my own.

I keep my frown on my face, not wanting to give in to his charms. He throws back a smirk because he's fucking...

"Insufferable. That’s what you are." I spit the words at him, only halfheartedly at best. He laughs. The cheeky fucker is laughing me.

"But I'm a kind and generous soul." He teases with a grin on his face. And shit, I can't fight my own my smile any longer. He reaches out and I meet him halfway, entwining our fingers together. I haven't affirmed anything but the gesture already is the answer. Our answer. We’ve been dancing around this for a long time. Might as well take the chance before it’s too late.

Something magical, his aura perhaps, loops with my own. I close my eyes let the magic guide me.. and him. A meadow materializes itself and I find him in the distance, his smile warm and inviting. I extend my hand to him and he mirrors my actions. A raven flies out of my hand and another one out of his. At the same time we open our eyes and-

The magic suddenly bursts forth into a kaleidoscope of colors, a plethora of shapes of any kind. They all coalesce into a giant raven. A white raven. It soars above us, circling around the room with a happy tune. It eventually disappears into a sparkle of fireworks. We laugh and turn our gazes to one another.

With foreheads pressed against each other, we guide our silent conversation with twinkles in our eyes and smiles forming on our lips. It's like those typical chessy lovebird montage things people see in romantic subplots. It might be the calmness of the air or the sleep edging its way through my train of thought but I can sense our heartbeats in sync. A lullaby to my woes, perhaps, but someone like me can hope that this bond is knitting our souls into a comfortable blanket, however mysterious and unpredictable it may be.

Trigon's box rattles on the table. I almost forgot that it was there in the first place. I feel his presence, cursing disgusting words at the edge of my aura but I pay no heed.

After all, I'm a billion times luckier now.

#damirae week 2020 #damirae #Damian Wayne #Raven #ellipsesarefun writes #life is just.. a mess #Someday I'll comeback to this #queue

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komahinasecretexchange · 5 years

Text

Title: The Voice in Your Head Author: @notcoolhajime For: @himanochi Rating/Warnings: T, for discussions of anxiety, trauma and suicidal thoughts. I can only hope this is done gently enough, but safety is priority, so please be careful before reading. Prompt: Komaeda has been haunted by the images and voices of the people that died because of his luck for years. He tries to keep it a secret, but Hinata finds out anyway. Author’s notes: I love these two… ah. This prompt stuck to me immediately, though there were so many cute ideas, it was hard to settle. This plays with so many themes I love, though, so I hope you like it!

(ps. i love your fics, and "Tumbling Through the Remains" is a fave of mine ♥ i hope this finds you well!)

The first week was a little worrying, but it wasn’t anything anyone wasn’t used to. Everyone was still recovering, after all, and there were times that one of their classmates would disappear into the ether- or god knows where- before reappearing at the dining room like nothing had happened. It wasn’t until Komaeda had been gone a second week that alarm bells started ringing, and a search party was sent out.

When Hinata opens the room door, he’s not sure what to expect. The old motel on the third island had avoided the notice of their search party. Souda said he’d checked it but apparently he hadn’t done a good enough job. It wasn’t until Hinata realised all the blinds were rolled down that Hinata decided to check for himself. The blinds were usually all half-closed, but the way they were closed now was too intentional. Hinata doesn’t recall things ever done so immaculately- how neat it was screamed hide me.

Opening up into each room was darkness, and the smell of musk and mould that permeated the motel after years of neglect. Seeing each room abandoned and dusty called for some airing out. Before Hinata left each room, he gave the blinds a roll up and opened the window for sunlight to enter. The smell and old air would be replaced by the summer outside. There were condom wrappers, and Hinata crinkled his nose at the condoms when emptying the trash. He had no idea how long they’ve been there, or who on the island was irresponsible enough to let these biological materials fester.

It’s only when he exited the third room that he picks it up, a kind of low murmuring from the end of the corridor.

His heart rate picks up, and he’s walking in two-step paces until he reaches the door, but by the time he gets there it’s mysteriously silent. Hinata gives the door a knock, and there is still silence. He gives it one more knock before deciding- to hell with it. He turns the knob, and pushes the door open to another dark room.

If one didn’t focus hard enough, or if they decided only to have a peek, the stillness could have masqueraded as deception. But because the door is wide open, and the dim light from the corridor shone into the room, vaguely, he sees the shadow of a boy tucked into the bed looking straight at him.

“Komaeda.” Hinata says, reaffirming to himself that it is indeed Komaeda. Hair paler than his skin, messily strewn in all directions.

He stares at him for a few seconds. The other boy lay still as a statue. Finally, maybe after realising that Hinata wouldn’t disappear anytime soon, Hinata hears a shuffle as Komaeda starts to sit up.

…

“They were here yesterday. They were around the curtains there, in the corner of the curtains- no- over there- Hinata-kun.”

“What were?”

“The apparitions.” Komaeda says. Each syllable enunciated deliberately, like a man getting used to his own voice.

“Hallucinations?” says Hinata. Now that Hinata has closed the door upon Komaeda’s request, the room is dark inside, and Hinata can hardly see anything for the drawn curtains. Small rims of light appear around it, but it only lights clouds of dust. There is a figure in shadow to his left, nestled into the bed. He is now sitting upright, blanket folded around him like a half cocoon. The voice came from there.

“They’re apparitions, Hinata-kun. They’ve been here for days. You shouldn’t disrespect them.” Hinata can hear the small pitter patter of fingers along the quilt. It was like Komaeda was playing piano in the dark, a private performance, meant for himself that Hinata has walked in on. “Ah, look. She’s angry at you-“

“Are you playing around with me?” If Hinata had any more patience, perhaps he’d be calmer… but to find Komaeda for the first time in two weeks, wrapped up in the dingy motel? His initial fear was turning into impatience. On his way into the room, Hinata kicked over a bin bag overflowing with crisp packets and biscuits. A few cans of half-empty blue ram cans stood on the bedside stand. If Hinata bothered to look around the room, he knew there would definitely be more. Whoever drank it wasn’t good at finishing carbonated beverages quickly.

Komaeda gives a solitary chuckle. On a normal day he might have strung him along a little further. “Maybe.” Komaeda says, with a small shrug. “Just so you know, Hinata-kun, they were actually here before. They’re just not here right now.”

“The hallucinations?”

“Apparitions.” Komaeda corrects, with one finger pointed up, swirling around the top a little. “You shouldn’t insult guests. Would you be happy if someone pretended you didn’t exist?”

A strange swirling pools in Hinata’s gut, the mixture of discomfort and sympathy. “Komaeda…”

“What are you here for?” Komaeda quips, immediate, like he’s afraid to lose direction of conversation.

“I’ve been looking for you.” Hinata’s brow is furrowed. “I mean- we all are- we’ve all… look, Saionji’s not gonna say it, but we’re all concerned.”

Komaeda laughs. “That’s unnecessary.”

“It’s been two weeks, and no one’s seen you. God, have you been here alone all this time?”

“I’m not alone, Hinata-kun.”

It takes Hinata a second to figure he’s talking about the spirits.

It’s enough to start him walking towards Komaeda, though he stops halfway to consider that Komaeda came here to hide. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t flip Komaeda over to search him for injuries, even if not knowing what the man had been up to for 2 weeks made Hinata’s stomach curl.

"Have you hurt yourself?” Hinata resists the urge to pick up Komaeda’s arm, ask him to remove the blanket he’s wrapped in, survey him for injury. It wouldn’t be appropriate, especially as he’s had to get through barrier after barrier to get here. Komaeda obviously hadn’t wanted to be found. He’d come into himself, purposefully, to the most unlikely place he could think of to feel… safe?

But Hinata looks around, at the cans and dust and empty crisp packets, and the mountains of pot noodles he starts to see hidden under the desk at the end of the room.

He wonders if Komaeda’s really safest here, with only himself.

“Nope. I’m well, Hinata-kun. I appreciate you looking for me, but I’m sorry to waste your time. You can leave if you want to.” Komaeda’s smile is as unconvincing as ever.

“What if I don’t want to?”

It draws Komaeda aback slightly. Komaeda’s finally looking right at Hinata, and not running away like he has been all this time. “Why would you want to stay?” He says, as if the thought is unimaginable.

Like the idea of leaving Komaeda alone was ever a comfortable one. Hinata had left on Komaeda’s suggestion twice, and the second time, he’d ended up dead. Discomfort still gripped at his chest, at memories of the stomach-churning horror he’d felt upon seeing Komaeda tied up on the ground, spear ripped through his stomach, eyes open in terror…

And then to learn, afterwards, it had been inflicted by himself?

It’d happened once. It wouldn’t happen again.

Hinata settles on a firm “I can’t just leave you alone.”

As if something clicks in his head, Komaeda nods. “Ahah… right, of course. It makes sense you wouldn’t trust me, after everything I’ve done.” Komaeda gestures to himself, lifeless arm pointed to his chest. Enoshima’s arm, sewn onto Komaeda’s missing one sloppily, though somehow the blood vessels had managed to connect by luck, and blood flowed through keeping the hand fresh - albeit useless. Hinata’s eyes follow it. He’d have to do something about it eventually. Komaeda continues. “But I can assure you that I have no plans similar to back then, in this state. Not when everything is going so well, and everyone is happy, and I-” The hand flops, and Komaeda does two blinks, as if he’s processing what to say. “Ah… excuse me. I just can’t figure out if you visiting is good or bad luck, Hinata-kun. You should really leave soon.”

Hinata feels his brow furrowed in frustration. “What do you mean?”

“Hinata-kun, I’m happy as ever. Everyone else is happy- things are as they should be.”

“Now you’re just being cryptic. There’s no way I can leave you now.”

There’s hesitation, as Komaeda contemplates those words. His mouth quirks into a stiff smile, like it’s something he’s kept in that wants to come out, but can’t. “If I tell you, Hinata-kun, you definitely wouldn’t leave.”

Hinata drags a stool beside the bed, and props onto it, reaffirming that he was serious about staying. This keeps Komaeda fidgeting on the bed. He fidgets for a few minutes with his fingers, and leans back into the bed-rest. Hinata almost thinks Komaeda’s forgotten about him, before suddenly he speaks again.

“I’m really sorry that you had to walk into this, I really wasn’t expecting any visitors. Usually cleanliness is all that’s good about me, so this must be disappointing, huh? It makes me embarrassed that you’d see me like this.”

Hinata waits for him to spill his mind. He can tell Komaeda’s anxious, from the way he dances around the topic.

When it finally comes, Komaeda sighs, and goes quiet for a bit.

“They say voices appear at your deathbed, you know, Hinata-kun? I used to wake up at night, and another patient would be screaming there was someone above their bed. They always came to my room when there wasn’t much time left. Do you think maybe, finally, it’s time I could…?” Komaeda says, peacefully. Komaeda’s fingers are fiddling above the blanket, and Hinata notices that they’re locked as if in loose prayer.

“Die?” Hinata says. How Komaeda sounds so wishful and hopeful eases over Hinata’s shoulders, into his breath, wrapping around his lungs and heart. When Komaeda nods, it squeezes his chest tightly. It hurts him. “Komaeda… it hurts when you say those things in that kind of tone. Is this what you were thinking about? All by yourself?”

Komaeda’s face morphs from one of feigned seriousness, to one where his eyes fall to nowhere and a smile graces his lips. Komaeda looks gentle in the way he does when he’s left his will to the wind. He’s in one of those moods where he talks, and whatever slips through his lips is a filtered, warped version of whatever he was feeling.

“Hinata-kun, for everything I did, fate is already too kind to me. These are all things I deserve. I have these feelings because it’s everything I’ve taken from others, and they’re still waiting, here to watch the end of the trainwreck.”

Hinata winces out loud, and blue-gray eyes dart to him.

“It’s for the best.” Komaeda laughs. “I hadn’t expected to make it this far. There were so many times, I could have died at any moment. But I haven’t! I’m so lucky. It could have been on the plane- but instead, it claimed my parents. I was told I had six months left to live, and my nurses died before I did. But now that everything is peaceful, I can finally hear them.”

Hinata can only stare in horror.

“It’s so much clearer than before, Hinata-kun, which means it’s closer now! And they’re telling me this…” Komaeda leans closer, closer, and Hinata only budges out of courtesy. It’s a flurry in his head, trying to capture everything Komaeda’s telling him, puzzle it together in real-time. The boy hooks a finger into Hinata’s shirt, pulling him closer, like it’s a secret. “Gathered together with you Ultimates- it’s you, or me. Stuck on this island, finally, my luck has nowhere else to go. I’m waiting for it- for something to happen. They’re waiting for me, it’s time for me to-”

“For gods sake, don’t insult us!” Hinata tugs himself off Komaeda’s grasp. “Do you really think you can think about all this by yourself and not tell us? And we’d just let it happen?”

“Ah, I knew saying these things would come off wrong…” Komaeda scoffs, eyes lowering knowingly, unimpressed. He sighs, like he’s processing heavy regret. “It’s impossible for kind people to sit back while something like me speaks.” His voice is steady- steadier than before- so matter of fact it shouldn’t belong to someone who had just invited his own death. Confusion lingers within Hinata, until Komaeda speaks again.

“In that case, it’ll please you to hear this was just a joke! Just leave now, Hinata-kun. I’ve appreciated your time.”

Oh. Yeah, right. As if he hadn’t heard that one before, the first time he’d told him about his history. A story so unbelievable, the Hinata back then had taken him for his word. Seeing Komaeda here, trembling in his words… it was obvious it hadn’t been a joke back then, too.

Like hell he’d believe that again.

”It’s not that easy, Komaeda! You can’t just leave us like this.”

“Why not?”

“Cos shit happens- but do you really think dying would rid the world of despair? Solve world hunger? Make our lives better? You think taking everything that happens and turning it in towards yourself really helps anything?” The casual, distant tone with which Komaeda talked about this, like he was deciding what to have for breakfast or what to wear to the cinema, was scary. “Our lives are better because we’re all together.“

Komaeda purses his lips, stares at Hinata to ask if that is really the case. Hinata stares back, until the realization hits him.

“We’re not gonna disappear so easily.” He murmurs.

“How do you know?”

“I… I don’t. But no one can.” It doesn’t convince Komaeda, listening calmly. Hinata can imagine, now, a younger boy with tousled white hair, too young to be anywhere close to knowing what death meant, waiting as the doctor gave his diagnosis. The first time. The second time. Maybe even a third and fourth. “But the thing is… I know I don’t want you to die. I can’t imagine our lives being better without you…” Hinata bites his lip. “The world outside is in chaos. I think it’s pretentious to think it’s all because of you. To act as if there were no other factors involved… no offence.”

"You always act like it’s your fault that fate played you around it’s finger, the way Enoshima played us around hers.” Hinata continues. “I mean, you’ve done… things, but we all have. It doesn’t mean you deserve…“ Hinata grits his teeth, upset. At what, Hinata doesn’t really know. At fate? The way it’d handled what had happened to all of them? What had happened to him? What had happened to Komaeda? "It doesn’t mean you deserved to be in pain, Komaeda. Life’s not this kind of equivalent exchange bullshit. It’s probably hard for you to understand, but…”

"Life’s not really about all the things that fucked around with us and put us where we are. It’s about all the things we have the power to control, and where we end up after that.” Hinata says. It’s only after this that he realises it’s just as much to his himself, and his head, as it is Komaeda. It wasn’t as if his whole past was clean. He had blood on his hands, from a string of bad decisions he’d made, that placed him at the heart of a nightmare. He was still alive now. That fact didn’t come lightly. There were still times he wondered if him being allowed a second chance was a mistake.

“Our own thoughts are a hard one.” Hinata whispers. The room is suddenly chilly, as if a ghost had run down his spine. After all, if Komaeda had demons, they all did. “It’s a hard thing to control, I mean. I bet it must be hard, to have ghosts talking to you. It’s hard enough having them telling you to die, you don’t need your own telling you that too.”

Komaeda gives a dull laugh, but he softens. “You talk like you have experience. Perhaps… you hear them too?”

It was a logical conclusion, after all. In every way, their whole class was far from innocent. Unspeakable things had happened that involved every single one of them. A team-effort.

“I… I mean… “ Hinata stammers. ”Just one.”

“Just one…” Komaeda’s eyes widen at that. “Ah- how silly of me, Hinata-kun. Of course Kamukura-kun-”

“Not Kamukura’s. Kamukura doesn’t really tell me anything bad. Or good, really. He just kinda…” Hinata takes a deep breath, stretching out his back a little, scratching at his head. “It’s kind of cliche, but… I don’t think anyone could ever hate me more than I can.”

Komaeda blinks, as if the notion of anyone hating Hinata is the most absurd thing he’s ever encountered. Regardless of his reserve course student status, what had impacted him at all was truly Hinata’s doing, and not Kamukura’s. And despite his hand in the destruction of the world, Komaeda finds, it’s hard to blame such a thing on him. It hadn’t been Hinata’s choice, or intention.

Just… unfortunate luck.

It slips from his lips, before he can catch it. “Ah… I don’t see why someone as wonderful as you should feel that way.”

Hinata groans, waving it away, hoping to wave the flush in his face out too. “Stop it.”

“Even if you were a Reserve Course student, you-”

"Please.” The pouty glare Hinata shot at him was almost comical. How Komaeda could make him feel both embarrassingly flattered and embarrassingly lame at the same time was astounding.

“Ah, I’m sorry,“ Komaeda smiles, solemnly.

They both sit in the dark, thinking. Now that the tension is out of the air, it was comfortable…

For the first time in a few weeks, Komaeda realises the room is silent. His eyes move over to Hinata, making faces at the ground like he’s trying to fight the flush in his face and soul. A fondness washes over himself too, for everything Hinata is, and for the things he feels when he’s around him.

For a reserve course student, serenity really did follow him, and it melted into Komaeda’s veins. It’s something he’s relatively sure hadn’t come up in the small moments he had with Kamukura, so the feeling was really all his own…

Komaeda is happy, though he wouldn’t admit it to himself, that Hinata had bothered to find him. That hadn’t been a lie. He was used to his words- almost as uncontrollable as his luck- frightening others away. Though everyone was kind enough to be civil around him, there was always a fear that one day everyone- and especially Hinata-kun- would come to his senses, and hate him.

It was a selfish feeling, to want Hinata to come and leave simultaneously. It was as contradictory as wanting to live with others, and needing others to be safe and happy as well. To be alive was to consciously hurt others, but…

Why would Hinata hurt if he died?

It’s not a possibility that had ever occurred to him. It’s not something he really understands, and he’s not sure if he wants to, but it pulls at his heartstrings like everything did about Hinata.

Like always, and always, and always.

"What you said about it hurting, Hinata-kun…” Hinata’s eyes turn so calculatedly, like they’re trying to decipher how much Komaeda has found out, what road he’s taken or if he’s reached a dead end. The attention makes Komaeda blush, so he looks up to the ceiling, because it’s more comfortable to have the unimpressed blank wall staring at him than whatever Hinata was trying to do - has always been trying to do - ever since the first day he’d met the ordinary boy. Like he was trying to look through his surface, straight at his heart and extract information Komaeda couldn’t afford to let out. “Can you still hurt?”

For the first time since Hinata’s started talking today, Komaeda can sense a flinch. Nothing physically, in the unsurprised still figure of the boy sitting beside of him, but almost as if something within him shook.

“I think so. Of course.” Hinata says. “I… I mean, I know what I do and don’t want. I try to…” Seeing Hinata, ungraceful and pained, looking from the floor to the ceiling, out the window to anywhere else but him.

It sets his mind at ease.

“Even with everything I am, you still don’t want me to disappear?”

“Of course not.” Hinata retorts. “We’re… friends, right?”

Friends. The word sends a shiver down Komaeda’s spine, and he clutches at himself. Hinata leans over in worry, but Komaeda shakes his head, a shuddery smile on his lips. “You make it so hard, Hinata-kun.” Hinata’s eyes fall on Komaeda, hunched over the blanket.

From the first day he’d met him on the sand and agreed to be dragged around so messily, when he’d known that death was a good option he could take at any opportunity, but the other boy had messed things up and made it fun.

From the day in the Neo World Program when he was in the hospital bed sweating and sure he was going to die, desperately and embarrassingly reaching out just one last time because Hinata had made him realise that death was terrifying. Back then, he hated himself because he should have been relieved to die from Despair Disease- he’d be a good person for it… but still he’d selfishly tried to ask him to stay, even if his words were slurred and beyond comprehension.

And then finally, right before he’d taken the spear in his hand, and Hinata had stopped him, remembering how hard it had been to turn him away, even with the realisation that the boy was anything but the Ultimate Hope. Hinata was a common boring reserve course student devoid of hope or despair… It was that day he’d found out he still had emotion, instead of the sheer faith in hope he preached.

Emotion. The word rung in Komaeda’s mind, because he’d cast it away long ago as useless and dangerous, because everyone he’d ever loved had died. And even now, with the boy beside him with such an ordinary body, a disordinary brain but the most extraordinary soul…

“You always make everything so hard.”

“Hey…” Hinata places a hand on Komaeda’s shoulder, finally, and Komaeda’s gaze lingers on the contact.

Komaeda sighs, fiddling with the bottom of his T-shirt. “Well… if we’re friends… and if you don’t hate me, then perhaps I do need to do something about the voice in my head after all. At least one of them.”

“At least your own.” Hinata says, smiling. It’s the first time Komaeda sees Hinata really smile today, because of something he’s said. It makes his heart so bright Komaeda probably doesn’t need the sunlight once Hinata leaves. It’s like he’s gone outside, and he feels refreshed despite being cooped in the room under three layers of dusty blankets, sweating the sheets. “Komaeda, I hope they stop.” Hinata starts to settle in his chair, leaning back. “Are you sure I can’t stay?”

“Ah… Hinata-kun, you’re really asking too much of me. To ask my mind to shut up, and to have me not worry if you’re in the room while I sleep?” Komaeda chuckles. “Please don’t say things like that, Hinata-kun… it gives me hope.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Hinata presses, inching closer in a way that makes Komaeda’s voice skip a beat. “If you’re so stubborn, and you really can’t wait for me to leave…” Hinata grimaces, as if a particularly painful memory passes his mind. Komaeda feels a sense of deja vu, though Hinata’s getting a bit too close for his mind to work hard enough to decipher quite what hazy image is forming in his mind. “I’ll just have to leave something with you, I guess.”

Before he knows it, arms reach over his shoulder, and he’s hugged against a warm, firm embrace. One of Hinata’s hands is digging into the bed, but his other is firmly tucked around him. It’s warmth that beats the blankets around him, or the summer’s day, no question. Then, the other reaches out to wrap around him too. It’s not just warm. Komaeda’s wondering if he’s sick with disease again, because he feels his internal body temperature rise.

Komaeda wants to warn him, wants to push against him, wants to tell him he’s contagious, contaminated, that the ghosts will travel to him, Hinata-

“It’s okay.” Hinata says. And when he says it so reassuringly, how can Komaeda even react. It’s so self assured and calm. He feel Hinata’s deep breath, and the shudder of his sigh against his chest. “Komaeda…?”

“Hinata-kun?“

“I know it’s hard to control your thoughts, and I can’t hear what goes on inside your head. And I don’t know what the ghosts tell you…” Hinata pauses. “But I’m-”

It feels like time stops. Komaeda’s eyes widen.

I’m “glad”…

Komaeda’s heart beats.

I’m glad “you’re”……

Hinata speaks, over his shoulder. It’s a single line, and it leaves Komaeda’s chest beating and glowing in a way that almost hurts.

I’m glad you’re …………

"alive.”

It doesn’t process immediately. Even after Hinata pulls away, the words echo in his head. The particular combination of words were confusing, confusing, misplaced? Confusing. Confusing? Confusing?

Glad he’s…?

Shifting awkwardly from leg to leg, now standing upright, Hinata clears his throat. “I… Uh… I’m sorry if that was awkward.”

Komaeda shakes his head, the warmth lingering around him, as he pulls the blanket over himself, to fill the empty air. But it’s warm, warm. Warm. Up his neck, in his face. The sun wasn’t this warm. The sun wasn’t this warm, but Hinata was.

“I’ll… come again tomorrow. I’ll whip something up, too, so you’re not just eating crisps all day. I-if there’s too much in your head… I get it, it’s tiring.” Komaeda doesn’t look up at Hinata when he speaks, but he’s relatively sure despite his voice that Hinata’s heart is racing too, from the sighs the man tries to hide, trying to keep his voice stable.

“Are you… really serious about this, Hinata-kun?”

“I don’t make half-promises.”

“Do you know what you’re getting into?”

“I’m just bringing you a sandwich. It’s no big deal.” Hinata notices Komaeda’s eyes watching him, unwavering uncertainty. “I’ll be back. I promise.” Hinata holds out his pinky, and Komaeda doesn’t know how such an innocent gesture can be so intimidating. “Especially if you’re gonna make that face every time I come.” Komaeda was frozen. What face? Was he making a face? What kind of terrible expression could he possibly be showing right now? Trembling, exposed. Probably ill. “You just have to promise you’ll be here too.”

Komaeda brings his hands up, hesitantly. It’s Hinata who is offering, showing no intention to retract, but Komaeda’s eyes still flicker to his hand. When he finally hooks his pinky around Hinata’s… it’s a childish thing, a pinky promise. But it feels important.

“I can never tell if you’re stupidly brave, or brilliantly stupid.” Komaeda pouts, eyebrows knitting together in almost challenging unsureness.

“Well… I have a man so bored he memorizes cereal box nutrition-labels in my head. I agreed to a lobotomy to put him there. What do you think I am?”

“Probably both.”

Hinata gives the curtest, stiffest nod he can get out there. “Probably.” Hinata mumbles. “You’d think having someone filling up your brain would be the least bit entertaining, but it’d be good for me to have a good conversation too.”

“There’s always everyone else, Hinata-kun. People enjoy talking to you. You’d never be alone.”

“…You think so?” Hinata says, like his popularity is unknown to him. Komaeda wonders how someone so tuned-in to others can be so clueless about himself. If only Hinata could see in himself the unplaceable feeling that Komaeda could sense from the man- that captured the rest of the class the way it did. The sense of serenity and life within him…

He wonders if even someone like that couldn’t love himself, how anyone could possibly be able to.

“I mean… everyone else isn’t… you. It’s just not… the same.” Hinata turns away, face turning the faintest shade of pink even in the dark. “I like it… spending time with you. Even if we’re just…” Hinata’s gesturing into the air. “You know.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Komaeda asks, as Hinata reaches the door.

“Yeah.” Hinata chuckles. “I’ll see you again tomorrow. Have a rest, yeah? I hope it’s quieter, tonight. If the voices come back, just remember, I’m-”

“I know.” Komaeda waves.

Hinata turns away, but he still looks unsure, somehow. “W-well… if you need me..? You know where I’ll-”

“Hinata-kun.” Hinata freezes, and Komaeda chuckles. “I think I’ll be fine. Thank you.” The light of the corridor is shining into his eyes, and it’s blinding, so he can’t help but squint before settling under the blanket once again… and then, with a click of the door, Hinata’s gone.

It’s just him, the darkness, and history. For the first time in weeks, it was silent but for the hammering of his heart. If the ghosts weren’t back, they would be eventually.

He’s tired.

Tired.

So in the end, Hinata had known, that coming wouldn’t have made them disappear, huh?

Komaeda had nightmares, sometimes. He was sure they’d be back sooner or later, as the warmth drifted over his body, and the exhaustion from his beating heart dragged his limbs to sleep one by one, and his eyelids closed.

But for now, for the first time in weeks, it was quiet in his head.

There was just one voice- Hinata’s voice- that stood in his mind.

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

Even with hundreds of voices crowding his head, as long as Hinata’s was there, at least he didn’t have to deal with them alone.

One day, maybe Hinata’s voice could strengthen his, and he could say that about himself as well.

But for now, it’d do.

…

#komahina #komahina secret exchange #fanfiction

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thecosmicsen · 4 years

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NOVEMBER 11 1972.

There is a perpetual HAGGARD look to his older brother’s face that comes in the form of a thinly stretched layer bruised skin underneath his eyes. The discolouration of sleep deprivation ages him slightly which causes Taesoo to frown till a teeny headache forms in the centre of his forehead from all the facial tension. This does not look right. Jaewoo should not be appearing this gaunt and ghastly ashen at the age of seventeen. It sets off a hot red spark of agitation within Taesoo’s chest that unfurls as an ugly raging monster of INTRUSIVE scenarios that claws up in his throat as a frantic beast ready to escape and wreck havoc. There is no way he can allow his older brother to already start distinguishing himself from the perfect duplicate image of PICTURE-READY identical twins albeit it may be minor variations of stress lines creasing their eyes. What is he so distressed about in the first place? It makes him look ugly to be in this fretful state. He wants the old Jaewoo back, the one who upholds the golden values of what the IMPECCABLE role model of society exemplifies. The warm-hearted yet gutsy brother with the unwavering smile that puts the sun to shame with the way how his pearly whites reflect his characteristically optimistic beams of sanguineness. What happened to him? It is making Taesoo apprehensive of the future and he does not like toying with the uncertainty of Jaewoo straying into the unknown paths that include ANY deviation of Taesoo being ripped from his side. They are not two halves of the same product but the same INDISTINGUISHABLE entity. Watching his brother restlessly flip through his latest book on space travel causes Taesoo to silently draw nearer till his elbow knocks Jaewoo’s. The imperceptible FLINCH from Jaewoo does not go amiss and it soothes a fair bit of Taesoo’s increasing trepidation as he smugly basks in the fact that all he has to do is rest besides Jaewoo’s side to get a reaction out of him.

“Jaewoo, what’s wrong? What is making you frown like that? Tell me.” Taesoo persists despite Jaewoo staying frozen on the same page and practically IMMOBILE as if he fainted on the spot. Another hysterical rip of exacerbation causes Taesoo’s heart to achingly constrict when he does not receive an immediate response from his brother so he harshly digs his elbow in Jaewoo’s side before grabbing hold of one of Jaewoo’s hands tightly between his own two palms. With utmost TRIUMPH, he realises that Jaewoo is trying to practice one of his taught breathing techniques to calm down his hyperventilating — which is frankly, an attack on Taesoo’s existence. What on earth did he ever do to make Jaewoo shrink up from him as if he is diseased? A heartbroken sob makes its way out from Taesoo’s lips as a PAINED whimper to reflect the amount of anguish that Jaewoo is cruelly inflicting on him right now by remaining wordless to his questions that require an answer as soon as possible. “Is it me? Am I a bad person?!” Taesoo can’t help but shriek out accusingly with his eyes welling with tears. Roughly rubbing at his eyes with his free arm, he takes in a shuddering inhale of his own as he earnestly gazes at his older brother who is FINALLY looking at him in the eyes now. His tone hitches up a note with his fingers slacking around Jaewoo’s clammy ones. “I’ll leave if it’s me. I always knew there was something wrong with me. My own brother hates me so much.” another sob tears from his lips as the tears freely stream down his cheeks in free-flowing cascades.

Only when Jaewoo snaps out of his own escalating hysteria does he feel better. Now his entire UNDIVIDED attention is on him. Good. “What, no! You’re not a bad person Taesoo!” Jaewoo firmly insists despite his voice quivering from subsiding nauseous anxiety and Taesoo relishes how it’s now Jaewoo clinging onto his arm for dear life. “I don’t hate you! I could never hate you. Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to... I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I wasn’t feeling too well but that doesn’t matter when you don’t feel okay. I love you so much, got it? Please always remember that. There’s nothing wrong with you...” his rushed words of gentle reaffirmation soothingly abate Taesoo’s flaring insecurities and he calms down with the last of his tears drying up. He’s heard what he wanted to hear so he hugs his brother’s arm in return.

“Then why are you so upset? I don’t understand. You’re being mean to me and ignoring me for some reason. I want to know why. Did someone else upset you? Tell me who it is and I’ll go sort them out for you.” Taesoo cajoles him with his tone low and urgent now as he stares into his brother’s PETRIFIED expression. It’s always the same look when Jaewoo is paralysed with the crippling fear of Taesoo getting up to leave for another of his notorious sulking sessions where he disappears on hours on end, leaving Jaewoo to tear his hair out in worry over where his precious little brother is.

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I’m fine.” Jaewoo’s tone wobbles but he tries his best to flash a warm encouraging smile at his twin. “I’m sorry for acting that way. Do you want to read together?”

“No no, I want to know what made you so upset.” Taesoo grimly shakes his head as he gently squeezes Jaewoo’s palm, once again cherishing the flicker of daunted tension in his brother’s eyes.

“Nothing is wrong. I’m serious. I’ve just been feeling moody. I’m sorry for that.” Jaewoo’s breath edges towards becoming a panicked pace of INTENSIFYING alarm of what could happen within the next few moments. “Let’s forget about it. Tell me how the broadcasting club went today after school. What activities did you do with the others?”

Now Taesoo’s eyes light up animatedly as he begins to jabber excitedly about what went on for him for his extracurricular activities whilst intently scrutinising Jaewoo’s FORLORN expression of utmost regret of potentially losing his brother again over another “fight”. Everything is fine and back to normal, Jaewoo is focused and attentive to Taesoo again. Even now, Jaewoo still attempts to console Taesoo with openly transparent affirmations about how he loves him more than the whole world and that he will do better to keep his negative emotions in check.

Yeah, that’s what I thought so.

#( I AM DYING FROM CAFFEINE I had too much and got heart palpitations #this is a result of me trying to get over this caffeine rush!!!#have a peep inside Taesoo's head #this is set when they were still alive ofc )#tw: emotional abuse #* : ✮ ┆ 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 (𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑠).#* : ✮ ┆𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑦𝑠𝑠 (𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡).

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tanyuu · 5 years

Text

end-eavor

Hi! This is my first article-style theory. It’s obviously not like an actual article, you can tell by the deteriorating quality and fact that I used my own headcanons in place of canon information, but I’d just really love to see an article written by a sleep-deprived reporter bashing Endeavor.

That’s… all this is. It’s just a 7-page rant on why Endeavor is a terrible parent. And then it quickly dissolves into a theory on why Dabi is Todoroki Touya, so… good luck.

The reporter who writes this (Ella) is me! I’m not actually a reporter or writer at all, but I work around books. So. I’m gonna call bullshit on myself and get INTO THIS!

YEEHAW!

Todoroki Enji, also known as Endeavor (#1 in PHR, but #-7,000,000 in our hearts), has at least three children. They are known as Todoroki Natsuo, Todoroki Fuyumi, and Todoroki Shouto. Shouto has been in the public eye for a while now, especially after he was accepted by recommendation into UA.

Shouto was confirmed to be previously the victim of an act of domestic violence. His well-known facial scar (over his left eye), covers a quarter of his face. The cause was confirmed to be his mother's unstable and rapidly declining mental health.

All three of the Todoroki children released statements in the following years to plead their mother as not guilty (and worthy of single custody.) Endeavor harshly refused these claims, and insisted that their mother had endangered his children. (though he did not call Shouto his child. the term used was 'masterpiece,' which implies... certain things.)

In all fairness, Endeavor's stance on the topic is expected. The safety of your children is important. It's a touchy subject though, so all you need to know is this:

- Rei Todoroki (ice quirk), mother to the Todoroki children, poured boiling water onto her youngest child (Shouto)'s face.

- The cause was deteriorating mental health, but the cause of said mental state has not been released. Ever.

- Endeavor has potentially harmful opinions regarding his children, as well as near POSSESSIVE qualities with and to his youngest child.

Moving on.

Todoroki Natuso (quirkless), has cut ties with his father, for unknown reasons. Speculators and theorists claim that his father MADE him, as to not interfere with Shouto's "training."

He is now working as a doctor near Shizuoka Prefecture, and has saved many lives. His sister and brother are very proud of him. (and we bet his mother is, too)

Todoroki Fuyumi (sparking ice quirk) works as a preschool teacher. Though Natsuo moved out of Endeavor's "estate" (look up the square footage. we DARE you), Fuyumi has not. According to THIS (link) article, she will not until Shouto has graduated from UA. When prompted, she gave no answer.

Now, you're probably wondering: "Hey, Ella? If there's some kind of scandal, why don't you just go right out and say what you think is going on?"

That's the fun part! I legally CAN'T. Todoroki Enji (Endeavor, your #1 PUBLIC HERO) has ordered that no reporters are allowed to comment on 'how he runs his family.' And honestly, I value my job just a LITTLE too much to run the risk of the Hellflame's wrath.

Onwards, I suppose. And time for some (LEGAL) speculation.

If you recall, I mentioned how there are three confirmed children. That's because (and i did some actual digging here) there are FOUR legitimate Todoroki children.

Does anyone else remember the sports festival 6 years ago? The kid who had a CRAZY blue fire quirk? And then there's the fact that five-ish years ago, all of the footage from the semi-finals was deleted. Almost all of it.

Now, (I say with a grimace, here) I found one photo, and anyone with an eye on the news regarding high-profile villains would recognize THOSE piercings.

Why am I bringing up this blue fire quirk kid, anyway? Blue fire, blue fire, blue fire.

Todoroki Enji, ENDEAVOR. THE NUMBER ONE HERO. Lied about his kids. I'm definitely losing my job now, so... might as well just go with this, I guess. How do I know this?

We're familiar with Endeavor's ultra-move, the jet-stream style fire blast. He used it in the Hosu attack earlier this year, just before he captured the villain 'Stain.'

What color is the fire in that crazy powerful attack? B L U E.

Sports Festival mystery kid? Blue fire, spiky RED HAIR, turquoise eyes. It's like... younger, amped-up Endeavor.

I brought up piercings already, right?

The boy from the sports festival (let's nickname him v2 for now, short for Version Two of Endeavor. because I would pay SO MUCH to see this kid kick Endeavor's ass. i'll be linking a kickstarter for that later, too) has four piercings on his ears, and a triangle of nose piercings on both sides of his nose.

Blue fire, spiky hair, turquoise eyes, a FUCK TON of piercings, and just LOOK at this smirk: <IMAGE ATTACHED>.

Now, who does this remind anyone of?

The leader of the Vanguard Action Squad of the infamous League of Villains (LoV). The villain's name is 'Dabi,' which means 'Cremation.' Coincidentally, I looked up what v2's quirk was named. After a HELL of a lot of digging, I found both v2's name AND the name of his quirk.

Cremation.

And as for the name, well, I'd like Endeavor's official and public reason for keeping his FIRST and OLDEST child out of the public eye.

Todoroki Touya.

What am I implying, here? That one of Endeavor's children became a villain? A high-profile villain, involved with the kidnapping of a minor and attempted murder of at least 19? A villain with a criminal record longer than Shiozaki Ibara’s hair?

I'll provide a list of reasons why I (personally, and definitely not free of bias) think there's way more going on in this picture. Thank you for reading this far, by the way. It really does mean a lot, especially considering that this will likely be the last thing I'll... ever write, at least professionally.

To answer my own question, I'm telling you that Todoroki Touya became the villain 'Dabi.'

Now for the REALLY fun part. Why on Earth would Touya even become a villain? And especially as one of the children of such a well-known (but, frankly, not well-liked) hero?

I have a short list of reasons why this may have happened.

- Todoroki Enji kicked Touya out (reasons unknown, date unknown, all unconfirmed)

- Touya ran away (reason unconfirmed)

- Pressured by villains (honestly? unlikely)

But, drawing attention to the scar patterns on Dabi (Touya?)'s arms and face. It's a fire burn, but not a REGULAR fire burn. From the looks of it, it wasn’t caused by an external force (you can tell b/c of his fingers). But this implies that Dabi did it HIMSELF, which... is a whole new can of worms.

(I swear all of this is relevant. I'm just... speculating. Diligently.)

In order to do so much self-inflicted damage, you would need a few key things.

1) High pain tolerance. (30% of Dabi's skin is scar tissue. That's... a lot. Have you ever accidentally touched a flame? It hurts, and keeping it there would hurt a lot more. Doing something like that and holding the flame there requires a lot of control.)

2) A high sensitivity to your OWN quirk. Now, quirk biologists have talked about how people usually have a natural immunity to their own quirks, especially emitter-types. But, if Touya THEORETICALLY had a body made for an ICE QUIRK (see where I'm headed?), it would explain why he was so easily burned.

But why would he have such a pain tolerance? And especially... towards burns...?

Well, I'll let you decide that one for yourself, there. I'm not allowed to talk about that, remember?

GREAT! We've answered some questions! (some meaning, like, two)

Now onto a Fun Part™! (It's not fun. Honestly, writing this makes me feel horrible. The things pro heroes cover up, no kids should EVER go through ANY of what I'm writing about.)

So far, Enji's been in the wrong... probably 80% of the time? Some of it (20%) can be marked down as 'concerned parent,' but the rest... yeah.

Anyway! Let's address a concerning topic. There are a few things I'm going to be talking back and going back to QUITE a bit:

- Shouto's refusal to use his fire in the Sports Festival last year (earlier this year? time is a concept, and i'm not familiar with it)

- The difference in personality with the Todoroki trio. (i'd say quartet, but my boss says i'm not allowed to interview a villain, and also. all of these. are still speculation. please pay me)

- How Endeavor (#1 hero. i keep bringing that up just to reiterate who exactly is the current face of the hero world and WHY THE FUCK IS HE STILL TH-) addresses his children

Where were we again? Let me check.

Oh yeah, before I start yelling about Enji being a piece of shit, I'm going to say a few things about myself. This article is very unorthodox, and I shouldn't... technically do this? BUT I'm already gonna lose my job! So, onwards and upwards, y’all:

- My name is Ella.

- I work for a really well-known (and lovely) publishing company, as a writer and editor.

- I get paid XXXXX a year. Which is okay, and better than some other companies, but I'm still... not getting anything out of this, so you can't say I was paid to write this. If anything, I'm LOSING money by writing this. (but i'm in too deep to stop now, so...)

- My hands hurt a lot from writing this. I've written it all in about an hour, but the research has taken me WEEKS. W E E K S, I TELL YOU-

Todoroki Shouto (15, Half-Cold Half-Hot emitter quirk, aptly named) is a student at UA. He is in class 1-A, the Hero Course. He's been involved with many mainstream villain attacks, such as the USJ invasion, the Stain + Hosu event, and All Might's last stand.

Shouto's personality can be seen as cold and standoffish, and the media likes to depict him as an aloof pretty boy. Please keep in mind, he's... been through a lot. And I'm speculating that he's been through more than anyone's actually THOUGHT about before. Kudos to him.

In the Sports Festival in Shouto's first year, his fight with Midoriya Izuku was ALL OVER THE NEWS. The green haired “no bones about it” kid had gotten Todoroki "I'm not using half of my power" Shouto to use his fire. Nobody knows the exact content of the fight, but it's worth mentioning that Shouto smiled during it. Full-on GRINNED.

(the more i think about that... the sadder it is? kid didn't look like he’d smiled very much. ever, actually. WHY COULD THAT BE-)

Speculation as to why Shouto didn't actually use his fire during the first events (and according to his classmates Asui Tsuyu and Kirishima Eijirou, he hadn't used it all YEAR. not even during the USJ invasion) was rampant through hero forums. Popular theories included:

- Shouto didn't want to one-up his classmates, so he restricted his power to make it fair. (which is understandable, but.... hon.... how likely is that. the damn MOTTO is ‘plus ultra’)

- Shouto was told not to by his father, and didn't, as some kind of rite of passage. (which is a whole NEW kind of 'what the fuck, enji' and i'm just. not touching that theory)

- My personal and biased favorite: Shouto was rebelling against his father after being pressured to surpass him and be even greater. (which, fair. honestly, any kind of intense pressure ESPECIALLY from a high-profile parent is stressful. take music lessons, for example! kids are gonna give up if they're forced to do shit! come ON, endeavor)

Endeavor (in MULTIPLE) interviews, has referred to Shouto as 'his masterpiece,' or 'his greatest work,' or other terrifying names. Honestly. Children aren't property, and although quirks are tossed around like clothes in a washing machine, their uses don't justify the treatment of their people. Especially with all the stigma surrounding "villainous" quirks. (WHICH IS BULLSHIT, OKAY? quirks aren't inherently villainous. sure, some are a little less flashy and virtuous, but fear is irrelevant! it's what you choose to do with what you have that matters. choices affect content of character, not predetermined morality)

BACK ON TOPIC. I'm not sorry. I feel like I could write a whole separate article on why villainous quirks don't actually exist? Should I? Hell yeah. I will, eventually.

Endeavor's blatant favoritism of Shouto is highlighted by the way he talks about his other children. By that, I'm referring to the fact that he outright DOESN'T. Not one WORD on Natsuo's confirmed cure for quirk burns. Not ONE WORD on Fuyumi's (SIX) teaching awards.

And, most concerningly?

Endeavor has refused to allow Todoroki Rei to leave the mental hospital she was put into (10 YEARS AGO) although she's passed EVERY SINGLE examination. (fuck, i'm not allowed to talk about that. OH WELL if i go i'm going OUT)

Shouto has affirmed that he doesn't want to work under his father, and will likely be joining a separate agency in the event of immediate hero work after graduation. He sort of implied that his father didn't know when to stop, but then left the interview.

"Didn't know when to stop? Stop what, Ella?" Remember how I mentioned some kind of 'training' way early into this? Mmm-hmm.

I'm going to do some extreme hand-waving here. This is ALL speculation, and as of now it's ILLEGAL speculation.

Back to Touya for a second. The records I found said that he won his match, but lost the semi-final due to intense quirk backlash. The time of the first match was INCREDIBLE.

6.3 seconds. Holy... SHIT.

(great job, touya! we're all really proud of you!)

Honestly! That's crazy! Record-breaking, even. Second only to... Shouto.

Second to Shouto. Maybe that's... not the first time Touya's heard that phrase.

Anyway. Training plays a role in this, because the difference in control between Shouto and Touya with fire is barely noticable. They both copy a move (left hand swing and then a full-fire short range blast) from each other. Well, maybe not from each-other.

Let's look into the Hosu fight. Endeavor uses a blue-fire jet-flame attack (can't remember if it has a name, only that it's INTENSE and I would NOT like to be on the receiving end of it), but later with the LoV's monsters (they're called 'noumu'), he uses a very familiar move.

Left hand swing. Full-fire short range blast.

Only this time, there's no eye flinch or subtle shoulder tense. Only cold, hard, fury.

What am I implying?

Well, I can't legally talk about THAT, now can I?

Thank you very much for reading this! I picked up this style from a few meta posts in other fandoms; the writer has access to information the reader does NOT, in this case the lack of canon information regarding Dabi’s background and/or schooling. I added headcanons:

-Natuso being quirkless

-Touya going to UA

-Touya being a badass (that’s not really a headcanon, though. he’s related to fuyumi. of course he’s gonna be a badass)

#dabi is a todoroki #786653328 #thats my tag for fics i WROTE #ya YEET #wooooo #bnha #todoroki touya #dabi is touya todoroki #todoroki fuyumi #todoroki natsuo #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #todoroki rei #speculative fiction #character study #todoroki family #all handwaving! none of this is canon!#im a shit writer but IDC #thanks for coming to my ted talk

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gimmesumsuga · 6 years

Text

Sweeter than Sweet (65)

Pairings: Jimin x reader, Yoongi x reader, Jimin x Yoongi, Namjoon x reader, Taehyung x reader, Jungkook x reader + others as the story progresses

Warnings: Explicit sexual situations, fingering, oral sex (male and female receiving), rough sex, degradation, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, unprotected sex, hair pulling. The culmination of this chapter may upset some more sensitive readers.

Word count: 7.7K

Previous / Next

“All yours?” you repeat like an idiot as Namjoon’s fingertips release your chin and begin to wander back along the angle of your jaw. He smirks at the utter disbelief written on your face, revelling in being able to catch you so off guard.

“Mine,” he confirms with a growl so low that you feel it reverberate in your pelvis, and as he speaks his hand suddenly slips down to firmly grasp the back of your neck, squeezing tightly - just like he had the first time he'd ever touched you.

You remember how frightening that gesture had felt back then; how terrified you’d been when he’d grabbed you from behind as you’d been sat so innocently at the kitchen table with the others, so many months ago. The emotions and feelings that stir in you now as his head tilts to the side and he wets his bottom lip are far, far away from anything that might be considered as fear - though that's not to say you’re not nervous.

The realisation that this might actually be happening after so many months of fighting and failing to resist him - after wanting him so badly and for so long - is a daunting one, and you can’t deny the frantic pounding of your heart against your ribcage. Even if you did, Namjoon would know you were lying anyway.

“No more waiting, little one. Nothing left to keep you from me.” You swallow hard, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth as your stomach lurches with nerves, and he chuckles softly on witnessing the way you hesitate. “Are you frightened?”

“No,” you reply instantly, breathlessly, and Namjoon smirks again, his eyes glinting as though you’ve issued him with a challenge. He leans closer to you, his second hand leaving your hip to brace his weight on the arm of the sofa behind you, effectively trapping you in place.

“Maybe you should be.” With that, he seizes your mouth with his own.

Unlike the kiss you had initiated a couple of minutes ago, this one belongs entirely to Namjoon. His downy soft lips seek to dominate your own as they press ardently against yours, rough from the offset, and as both your hands slip up and into his hair you’re barely even aware of how easily you submit, your body relaxing into the cushions beneath you.

Leaning back, you part your lips in an invitation to deepen the kiss that Namjoon takes without hesitation, his tongue seeking out yours whilst he grabs a hold of your thigh to drag both your legs onto the sofa, dress riding up. He breaks the seal of your mouths for the briefest of seconds to sit up, throw away his jacket in a harsh rustling of fabric and then lie on top of you, and all the while his darkened eyes never once leave yours, his jaw tensed but breathing heavy.

As Namjoon delves back in, your chests crashing, the pendant of his necklace swings against the base of your throat and brushes cool against the heated flush of your skin. His tongue rolls inside your mouth and Namjoon lets out a low-pitched groan that you swallow, your body arching up into the greedy palm that begins to fondle your breast through your dress, squeezing the flesh so hard that you release an answering moan, your fingertips digging deep through fabric into his shoulder blades.

He sucks your bottom lip between his teeth, tugging harshly as his hand does the same to the neckline of your dress. Fabric rips and exposes your bra, but Namjoon isn’t satisfied yet. Incensed by the way you gasp and writhe at his rough treatment, he scoops your breast from the cup, admiring the way it yields underneath his fingertips.

“Just as sweet as always,” Namjoon appraises, words interrupted by the wet smacking of your lips as you chase after his when he starts to pull away, “Just as desperate to be touched.” Bracing himself on his forearm Namjoon leans back to admire how wrecked you’ve so quickly become; blotchy chest rapidly rising and falling, kiss-swollen lips parted, eyes heavy-lidded as you gaze up at him, wantful.

He takes your arousal stiffened nipple between his thumb and forefinger and twists it savagely, smirking in satisfaction at the way it makes you wail, your head flopping to the side and hair falling across your face. As Namjoon continues his abuse the little peak begins to redden, swelling even further between his fingertips, and so does his cock within the confines of his jeans.

“Such a needy little whore.” Pain and shame flood through you at his actions and accompanying words, back bowing further and further off of the sofa as Namjoon pulls at your nipple, and the more it hurts the wetter you become; the more intensely your core begins to throb as it aches for him.

“Joonie,” you whimper, your two front teeth sunk deep into your lip, fingers grabbing at the soft white cotton that covers his shoulders, and when Namjoon finally ceases his pinching your nipple both aches and tingles as blood floods back into the tiny capillaries inside.

Namjoon looks pleased by the sound of your name falling from his lips, eyes lighting up and they remain locked on yours as he then dips to his head to take the encircle the entirety of your nipple with his mouth, areola and all. He suckles at the flesh as though trying to soothe the pain he’s just inflicted, gently circling his tongue around the bud and smiling, mouth full, when you sigh with pleasure.

“Say it again for me, little one,” he murmurs into your breast, his cold breath stiffening the tight little nub caught between his teeth even further. His large palm cupping the other side of your chest ensures that neither mound remains neglected, and when Namjoon switches his mouth’s attention from one to the other, biting and tugging until each nipple is just as deliciously sore, it’s all too easy to fulfil his request.

You cry his name again - louder this time - your pelvic muscles tensing around nothing when Namjoon suddenly presses his pelvis into you to dig his erection into your hip, hard. Latching onto the swell of your breast he proceeds to suck, his tongue lapping at the skin under which a thousand tiny blood vessels are breaking to draw blood to the surface, and he doesn’t stop till you’re twisting and tugging at the roots of his hair, your head thrown back over the edge of the sofa.

“Beautiful,” you hear him wistfully declare, and when you tilt your chin forward you see Namjoon running his fingertips across the plummy red bruise he’s left on your skin, admiring it like the finest of artworks. It still shines with the wet of his mouth, moistening the pads of his fingers as they glide over it again and again, prodding just to hear you wince. “If I weren’t so impatient to have you writhing around on my cock I’d spend all night covering you in these.”

On hearing your needful whimper at the filthy mental image his words so effortlessly paint Namjoon smirks, taking the shuddering of your breath as his cue to yank your dress unceremoniously upwards, dragging it over your hips. He grabs a hold of your knees and forces them apart, and as the cold air hits your underwear you’re suddenly shamefully aware of just how badly they’re sticking to you, soaked all the way through. You spare a thought the sofa underneath you that you’re inevitably staining, but it’s only a fleeting one.

He sits back on his heels and inhales hard, his eyelids fluttering closed with the scent of arousal that’s saturating the air, and when they reopen his irises are black from his pupils having expanded so greatly with lust; seduction personified.

You’re caught completely under his spell, preoccupied with the feel of his body on yours, his grasp on your hips, and It’s all you can do to keep breathing as Namjoon begins a slow, worshipful trailing of his lips between the valley of your breasts. Your hands cling to the sofa cushions like a liferaft as you watch him skim the skin that runs beneath the underwiring of your bra with his sinful mouth, his eyes closed, tongue and teeth licking and nipping until the bunched silken fabric around your waist prevents him from descending any further.

“Please,” you moan softly, peering down past your eyelashes, and when he hears the sound of your voice Namjoon looks up with a devilish curl to his lips, dimples pitting his cheeks.

“Yes?” he replies, tone as sweet as honey, full of faux naivety - as if he’s totally unaware of the way your hips are squirming restlessly beneath his pelvis.

“P-please touch me, Joonie.”

After having fought against Namjoon’s lustful advances for so long, how strange it is to now be lying underneath him practically begging for the feel of his touch where you crave it the most. With one hand curled around the swell of his forearm the other reaches underneath your thigh to pull it back and spread your legs open further for him, coyly biting your lip. His fingertips brush yours as his palm comes into contact with the inside of your thighs, and as he slides it upward towards your core you can’t help but hold your breath.

“You’re soaked through, little one,” he groans as his fingertips slip through the slick of arousal coating your skin, pressing kisses to the angle of your jaw. “Dripping all over the place.” Namjoon traces the pad of one long finger along the outside of your underwear, directly down the centre, and your hips strain to the lift off of the sofa as best you can whilst his weight is pressing on top of you when you feel it brush teasingly over your clit. “Are you really so desperate to be fucked?”

“God, yes,” you gasp brazenly, unashamed of finally expressing just how much you’ve longed for this, “Please, I want it - I want you. ” Namjoon’s growls lustfully at your confession, his teeth finding the lobe of your ear and biting it sharply.

“I know. Even when you denied me… I always knew.” Shifting your underwear roughly to the side, Namjoon pauses before making contact with the skin he’s revealed to speak directly into your ear, his cold breath making you shiver. “Last chance, little one,” he whispers.

Your core throbs, pulsating to the rhythm of your heart, and Namjoon’s so near yet so far, his body pressed to yours and his fingers hovering so close to your centre that he can feel the heat radiating from you as though it’s trying to lure him in.

“If you let me start, I’m not going to stop.” Namjoon’s words are both a threat and a promise, and your body responds to them as such, quivering with both fear and arousal. “And I don’t intend to, not until you’re begging… and you’re shaking.” A nudge of his nose to the shell of your ear. “Sobbing.” The graze of his teeth against your jaw. “Ruins laid out before me.”

In some deep recess of your mind, you know that making this choice - taking this step - might well bear some sort of negative consequence. Whether he has Jimin's permission or not you have no idea how this might change things hereafter, and however explicit in nature Namjoon's intentions towards you might be, you also know he's expressed feelings towards you that are far from solely sexual; wants and needs that have the potential to lead to complications a little further down the line.

Yet, however the few of your brain cells that remain unaffected from the combination of tonight's liquor and Namjoon's equally as intoxicating presence may protest, their concerns go unheard, drowned out by the furious pounding of your heart.

It feels like minutes for which you hesitate but it's barely even a second in real time that your eyes dart between each of Namjoon’s, lips parted, panting, until the lightest ghosting of his fingertip against your throbbing clit has you abandoning the last of your senses.

“Yes,” you gasp as you body bucks at the featherlight contact, surrendering yourself entirely to him, and it's with a feral growl that Namjoon grabs a hold of your consent and sets about conquering you. He delves into the crook of your neck, all lips and tongue and teeth against your skin as his fingers do the very same, his soft touch now hard and unrelenting as he hones in on the sensitive little nub that crowns your aching core.

As your hips start to grind against his slowly circling fingertip, silently demanding more pressure - more pleasure - Namjoon too begins to undulate his pelvis in time with his ministrations, rocking himself against the inside of your thigh. The material of his jeans chafes the sensitive skin there till it’s blushing red but you do nothing to discourage him, slipping your hands down his muscular back to rest in the small of it, just underneath the hem of his shirt, palms pressed to cool, firm skin.

A second fingertip joins the first, increasing the surface area with which Namjoon stimulates your rapidly engorging clit, and when he starts to pick up speed your let out a stilted moan, head tipping back.

“Feels good, hm?” he enquires darkly, briefly pausing his passionate assault against the base of your throat, “Do you want more?”

“P-please,” you acquiesce, tipping your hips upward in an attempt to slip Namjoon’s fingers southward to the entrance to your core. The need to be filled - to be sated - is so great that even the bones of your pelvis feel as though they're aching. You'd say anything, do anything he wanted you to right now just for the feel of even his most slender of fingers inside.

A brutal pinch of your clit has you keening, nails digging into the dimples that sit at either side of his spine as you release a cry that morphs into a moan as Namjoon rubs the pain away into pleasure, chuckling against you.

“ Please .” Still in no hurry, Namjoon continues to taunt you, even going so far as to run his fingertips past your entrance to collect further lubrication to massage into your clit, and though it feels wonderful - maddeningly so - you need more.

Agitated by his continuing torment, you attempt to make a grab for Namjoon’s wrist in hopes of forcing it lower, but you’ve barely even touched him before he's countering your move, seizing your wrist with his unoccupied hand and pining it roughly by the side of your head, your hand dangling uselessly over the arm of the sofa.

“Impatient,” he tuts, lifting his face from your neck and smirking when he sees the desperate look in your eyes, “You made me wait so long, little one. Why shouldn't I do the same?”

“B-because,” you stutter back through gritted teeth, desperately trying to formulate some kind of reply with the scrambled egg you have for brains, “I'm so wet, Joonie - you always make s-so wet.” One of Namjoon’s eyebrows subtly shifts upward, amused by your fumbling attempt at seduction, yet you can tell you've piqued his interest by the way his smirk grows and his fingers tightening around your wrist.

Spurred on, you continue.

“You remember, don't you? How warm I am inside?” It's difficult to keep your eyes open as Namjoon starts to apply more pressure between your legs - pressing harder, moving quicker - but somehow you manage to do so, almost smiling at the growing heat you can see within his gaze.

“Was I nice and t-tight for you, Joonie?” The longer you speak, the more the cocky smile on Namjoon's face gradually slips away, his full lips parting as his breath becomes laboured by lust, his gaze darting down to your lips when you bite them.

Seeing the way you affect him is exhilarating; even with one wrist held down you've never quite felt so powerful as you do now, knowing how badly such a formidable creature desires you.

“Don't you want to have another feel?” you purr, your one free hand trying once more to urge him on, slipping gently down his arm and tracing the veins along his forearms as it goes. Namjoon’s eyes flutter closed for just a second, and as his eyelids fall you quickly reach out to place the flat of your palm against the crotch of his pants, seizing the opportunity to squeeze at the generous bulge lying within whilst his guard is lowered.

“Fuck,” Namjoon spits, his hips surging forwards, and at that his will to further torment you falters.

Passionately, he takes possession of your mouth, slamming his lips into yours and then dragging himself away mere seconds later, his chest heaving as he declares,

“No I don’t - I'd rather taste you instead.”

You get no other warning before Namjoon is suddenly half way down the sofa and face first between your legs. Palms flat against the inside of your thighs to spread you wide, his nose dug deep into your fleshy mound, a faltering cry is ripped from your throat when Namjoon’s mouth latches onto your clit, and as the tip of his tongue wriggles rapid circles under its hood it feels so good that you honestly think you might lose your mind.

The pleasure is overwhelming - the sound of him beginning to suck and slurp noisily at the sensitive nub nothing short of obscene - and as your fingers find their way into your own hair, dragging and pulling at the roots, you hear yourself call out his name in a voice you barely recognise as your own.

Namjoon relinquishes your clitoris with a slick ‘pop’ of broken suction - though not before he's sucked on it so hard that it almost starts to sting - and ever the glutton for more punishment your hips chase after his mouth all of their own accord. They flex up uselessly under the unyielding force of his hands pressed down on your thighs, only to slam right back down into the cushions when the rough of his tongue licks a firm strip from your perineum upwards, parting your swollen lips along the way.

He laps at your core hungrily - messily - gorging himself on the wetness that drips from you like a dog dying of thirst let loose at his water bowl, though his lack of coordination does nothing to extinguish the growing heat deep down within your pelvis. If anything, the fervent way in which Namjoon seems determined to devour you only serves to arouse you all the more and when he groans, flat of his tongue pressed to your entrance as his face slowly rocks from side to side, a fresh gush of your sweetest nectar serves as his reward.

“Oh god,” you gasp, rocking your hips up to meet every swipe of his tongue through your folds, every flick against your clit. One of your hands slips from your hair down into his, threading tight through the chestnut strands to tug greedily, pleading more, more, more. “I'm gonna - mmff - I'm gonna cum, Joon, oh, fu-!”

Rendered mute by the force of the orgasm that suddenly grasps you in its hold, you can do little more than twitch and gasp and quiver underneath the vampire laid between your legs who's lapping up every drip that gushes forth from your spasming core with a hum of contentment. He continues to lick and kiss and suck at you even as pleasure begins to give way into oversensitivity, his plush lips wrapped around your clit, refusing to release you even as you tug on his hair, hips bucking wildly.

“S-stop, it - ahh - it's too much,” you mewl, dragging open your eyes for the first time since Namjoon’s feast first began and looking down to see his own peering right back up at you.

The deep, dark brown his eyes have turned completely black, swallowed up entirely by lust, and there's a feral quality to their gleam as he continues to gorge himself on you that you're powerless to ignore. Has he been staring at you this whole time, watching you fall apart?

“I'm too sensitive, I can't, please.” One last flick of his tongue - one more keening whimper from your lips, and mercifully, Namjoon withdraws.

“I thought you wanted me to touch you, little one?” he questions as he lifts his face from between your thighs, lips and chin coated with your fluids. He doesn't even bother to wipe it away, simply licks his lips as he tilts his head to the side, watching the way you gasp for breath with amusement. “I'm just giving you what you asked for.”

“I-I know, but - nnghh! ” Your respite is woefully short-lived. Namjoon delves back down for more, licking you sloppily from bottom to top and then latching onto the already well abused bundle of nerves that rests there and a garbled shout bursts forth from your lungs when he pinches it between his front teeth, devilry shining in his eyes.

He tortures you this way for a minute or two more, your cries of pleasure-pain incensing him further, and just as you're starting to get used to the sensation - just as you're starting to roll your hips again, too aroused to fight how undeniably good it feels - Namjoon finds another way to make you shriek.

Two fingers suddenly breach you without warning, sunk deep within your core. The unanticipated stretch is eased a little by how wet you are, the slick that coats the length of Namjoon’s fingers aiding their passage as he begins to pump them roughly in and out of you, squelching with every move he makes.

“Are you going to cum again for me, little one?” Namjoon asks, his words slurred from the continuous movement of his tongue. “I know you want to.” The pads of his fingertips drag along the roof of your pussy with every withdrawal of his fingers to catch your g-spot along the way, and every time they do your breath catches in your throat and your grip on Namjoon's hair tightens, nails digging into his scalp. “Little whores like you always want more.”

Desperate, you grab at Namjoon’s shirt and yank at him with both hands to pull his mouth back into its rightful place against you. You may be proving him right but you really can't seem to care at the way he rumbles a laugh against your clit; all you're focusing on is the growing tightness within your pelvis and the second orgasm that's coming on so fast that your legs are already quivering in anticipation of it.

“Namjoon, fuck,” you whimper as your pelvic floor spasms and clenches around his invading digits as though trying to draw him back him. It feels so good that it's almost too much to bear, tears collecting at the corners of your eyes, tightly clamped shut.

“That's it,” Namjoon growls into you, leaving his fingers in place deep inside and curling them in place, beckoning you to cum with the rapid pressing of his pads to the spongy bed of nerves nestled within, “Give me what's mine.”

Namjoon’s final assault begins, falling silent save the sloughy sounds of his efforts, and when you feel his tongue try to wriggle it's way into your hole alongside his fingers, his nose pressed to your clit, you rapidly begin to fall apart. The building pressure within you is nothing quite like you've felt before, so intense that it feels as though you might burst - at least into floods of tears - if you don't cum soon.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god ,” you ramble mindlessly, every muscle within you coiling tighter and tighter as his tongue presses its way inside, head twisting and turning so in order to keep stimulating your clit with the pointed tip of his nose, and all the while you're grabbing, pushing, pulling, tugging at the vampire whom you swear must be intending to kill you with such exquisite kindness.

Namjoon’s face is no longer visible above your pubic bone. All you can see through watery eyes is the bobbing of soft hair and your own fingers wound amongst it, but when you look further down Namjoon’s body you suddenly realise he's shifted his position; one foot on the floor, one knee remaining on the sofa as he leans over in order to consume you.

It's the realisation that Namjoon has already got the front of his shiny black jeans hanging open and a rapidly jerking hand stuffed inside to pleasure himself to the sound of your broken moans that the tension inside you finally reaches its breaking point. Your neck arches backward, core clenching down around his fingers and tongue as the pressure within you is released in a series of curses, high-pitched, faltering moans and the sudden, spurting escape of clear, watery fluid from between your legs that Namjoon quickly catches with his open mouth before it has chance to soak the both of you. The force with which he makes you cum has your body near convulsing with pleasure for almost a full minute, fading into a series of twitches and shaking limbs when the lean vampire refuses to let up, now licking slow figure of eights into your clit despite him knowing all too well how swollen and tender it is.

“No more,” you sob, only realising that tears have escaped your eyes when you press the heel of your hands against your closed eyelids, fingers clutching at your hair, “No m-more, please!”

It's too much - it's too much - and yet, as Namjoon continues to stroke at your insides and swipe soft kitten-licks across your clit with the tip of his tongue you can feel it rising again, ready to engulf you once more. He was right; you should've been afraid. You are now - terrified that you might not make it through this one alive or that even if you do that more might follow.

“One more for me, little one.” Namjoon's voice is surprisingly gentle as it reaches your ears from where he's bent low between your legs, and when another sob bursts first from your pressed lips - a hiccup following immediately thereafter - he places a tender kiss to your pearl. “One more, and I'll give you what you need.”

You appreciate Namjoon's reassurance despite knowing that you really have very little say in the matter. Excruciating or not your body can't help but respond, and when your third orgasm hits you swear you very nearly black out, vision spotting as his name slurs out from between your loose lips. You can't even bring yourself to open your eyes once it's done, your body limp and spent as a fresh batch of tears roll down your cheeks. It's relief that has you crying this time - relief that Namjoon has kept his word and removed both fingers and touch from your battered, swollen pussy.

You feel him slip down the knickers you'd forgotten you were still wearing down the length of your legs, and when you finally open your eyes you're greeted by the sight of him using them to wipe off his face, corner of his mouth twitching up into a smirk when he sees you watching, open-mouthed. He drops them to the floor as he gets up off of the sofa, and as he stands over you Namjoon once again begins to palm himself through his pants, squeezing his length and groaning when you unconsciously start licking your lips as you watch him. Even as boneless and broken as he's left you, the sight of Namjoon touching himself still sends a new wave of arousal flooding through you. He's right; you can't help but always want more. A slave to your desires.

“You look hungry, little one,” Namjoon observes, amusement colouring his tone as he watches the pink of your tongue dab at the corner of your open mouth. Your eyes snap upward from his crotch to meet his, a flush of embarrassment colouring your cheeks at having been caught staring so openly. “You want a taste of me?” Cupping himself through the dark fabric of his jeans Namjoon chuckles at how eagerly you nod, pushing yourself up onto your elbows to sit up until he plants a hand firmly on your chest and forces you back down.

Adopting the same position as he was in earlier Namjoon straddles your chest, one foot on the floor, one knee on the sofa, and as he further opens up his jeans right in front of your face, sliding down the zipper, you can’t bring yourself to look away. His movements may be slow but you can still tell that he’s eager from the way in which he handles himself, yanking open his pants and then roughly tugging down the waistband of his navy boxer shorts as he simultaneously pulls his cock free, his long fingers cinched tightly around its base.

Long, thick and vascular, just looking it has your mouth filling with saliva in preparation.

“Open,” he instructs gruffly and you do as he says, letting your jaw go lax and mouth fall open wide as you gingerly place your hands at the tops of his buttocks where he’s hovering just above you. Namjoon’s eyes gleam at your willingness to obey and as he bends his cock towards you a pearl of pre-cum leaks from its plummy tip. It provides the perfect gloss with which he decides to paint your lips, slowly circling the silky head around and around your open, waiting mouth and then smiling at the way you begin to whimper, impatient.

“So hungry for my cock, aren’t you?” You nod as best you can whilst peering up at him, doe eyed, and Namjoon’s dimples disappear as he bites down on his bottom lip, his length twitching in his fist. “Such a hungry little cockslut.”

His eyes fixed firmly on your mouth he finally begins to feed you his cock, inch by inch, and the deeper he gets the more laboured his breathing becomes - the harsher his frown. He doesn’t stop until you start to gag, your throat constricting around the width of him, lips pulled tight, and even then you haven’t nearly taken him all. It twitches on your on your tongue and makes you gag again, eyes threatening to water as you gaze upward, and Namjoon groans at the flush of your cheeks and the stretch of your lips as you fight to accommodate him as best you can.

When he’s had his fill of witnessing your struggle Namjoon finally stars to move. Slow and steady he rocks his hips to slide back and forth between your spit-slick lips, and as he uses your mouth to get himself off you do all you possibly can to heighten his enjoyment, spurred on by the guttural groans he begins to make with ever-increasing frequency. Sucking, licking and guarding your teeth, your core clenches with every thrust, arousal dripping anew at the delicious taste and weight of his cock resting on your tongue.

His large hand slips underneath your head to lift it from the sofa, cradling the back of it in his palm and altering the angle of your throat enough to allow him to slide even deeper down, picking up speed.

“Look at you, dribbling down your fucking chin,” Namjoon snarls, eyeing the gleam of saliva that’s seeping from the corner of your mouth, “You’re fucking filthy, aren’t you?” Shoving himself as deep as he possibly can, Namjoon presses on the back of your head to keep your nose pressed to his pubic bone, unmoved by the way you choke around his length. Your throat burns like fire yet every other part of you sings with pleasure, slick coating the tops of your thighs as the clench and squeeze together, your pussy throbbing. “Such a dirty girl.”

You whimper around his cock, tongue wriggling against the fat vein that runs the length of it, and Namjoon presses his eyes closed and lets his head fall back as he relishes in making you gag once, twice, three times more before withdrawing from your mouth entirely with a yank of your hair and a lewd smacking of your lips. Gasping for breath and covered in your own spit, you look up at him with trepidation.

“Sit up,” he barks, climbing off you and dragging you up by the front of your bra. Strong hands push and pull you around until Namjoon has you in exactly the position he wishes; leaning back against the sofa with the balls of your feet rested on the edge, thighs spread open wide to display just how ready you are to receive him, your arousal seeping out onto the fabric cushions beneath you.

“I hope you’ve still got your voice, little one.” Namjoon looms over you as he speaks, stroking himself and squeezing tight when he sees the way your hole clenches with excitement. You wish he’d take off his clothes - you’d love to see his long, lithe body in all its naked glory - yet there’s something all the more arousing about being fucked so uncouthly. “I’m gonna need you to scream nice and loud for me.”

Moving swiftly, Namjoon rests his knees on the edge of the sofa either side of your feet and lines himself up with the entrance to your fiercely aching core, his one hand gripping the back of the sofa and the other pulling back on his cock and then releasing it to slap against your clit. The small respite it’d had from the assault of Namjoon’s tongue has done little to lessen its sensitivity, and as he does it again you let out a stilted cry, reaching out to grab desperately at his broad shoulders.

“Please, Namjoon, please just - just fu- ahh! ” Silencing you with his mouth crashing onto yours, Namjoon’s hips simultaneously surge forward into you, and the scream that you release is muffled by his tongue as it dives for your tonsils. He intends to take you in one sharp thrust but the strength with which your inner walls contract renders it impossible, and he has to pause with his length only part of the way inside, shaking, to then ease the rest inside at a far more sedentary pace.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he grits out, teeth clashing with yours as you frantically chase after his kiss, “Even with all the cock you that take, it still feels like I could rip you open.” Namjoon eases himself out slowly to sink back in, stretching you out at an excruciatingly slow pace. Moving as he is, you’re able to feel everything; every ridge, every vein, every throb and twitch of his cock as it glides between your walls. “Would you like that, little one? Should I ruin this pretty little cunt?”

He may have asked you a question, but it’s clear that Namjoon has no expectation of receiving an answer; how could he when he chooses that exact moment to thrust so savagely back inside you, perspiring forehead pressed to your own? The only sound that leaves you is a sharp, high-pitched cry that hitches with every forward motion of his hips, and as he gradually builds speed, grunting with effort, your hands reach up to clasp around the back of his neck, drawing his mouth onto yours.

“Na-aa-m-jo-oon,” you gasp out as he kisses your open, gaping mouth, both your body and words bouncing with the force with which he drives his cock into you, angling his hips to aim directly for your g-spot, “F-fuck, you - so good. ”

“Yeah?” Namjoon’s voice is breathy, hoarse, “You love my cock, don’t you?” One of his large hands releases the back of the sofa to slip down into your bra, palming your breast as his cock drags back and forth between your walls, accompanied by a symphony of wet, slick sounds. “You take it so well.”

“Faster, p-please.” Your nails drag through the short strands at the back of his hair - always tugging, always pulling, drawing him towards you as though you can’t get him close enough - and when you sink your teeth into his bottom lip and tug, pushing your hips back to meet his next thrust, Namjoon grants your request.

Pushing into you with abandon, the sofa begins to loudly protest under the weight of his thrusts yet neither of you really hear it. You’re too caught up, delirious with pleasure, mewling and jerking every time his thumb grazes your nipple, your core contracting even in the absence of an orgasm, and Namjoon has made you cum often enough in this encounter alone to be able to recognise when you’re getting close. He fucks you all the harder, his hip bones digging into the backs of your thighs, and when your cries start to reach fever pitch he grabs a hold of one of your hands and drags it from his hair to force it down between your legs.

“You gonna cum again for me?” he asks gruffly, leaning back just enough to be able to watch your fingers start to mindlessly grope around for your clit where he’d left them, slipping around in the copious amount of slick that covers the both of you where you’re joined. You groan as you find it, head tipping back, and it feels so raw, so sensitive yet so heavenly that it has your insides quivering with every gentle glide of your fingertips over the blood fattened nub.

“I’m gonna - oh fuck, Joon ,” you garble, head lolling to the side, mouth hanging open, “Oh fuck.” Honestly, by this point you’re so out of your head that you could be saying anything and you’d likely not remember it, so drunk with endorphins that you can barely even prise your eyes open.

Oh, but what a sight awaits you when you finally do; Namjoon towering over you, the pendant of his necklace swinging with every thrust as beads of sweat pool together in the dip at the base of his throat. His perfect, pillow soft lips are parted to drag air into his rapidly heaving chest and his pitch-black eyes are heavy lidded, the hair which was so carefully styled at the beginning of the evening now starting to flop forward to obscure the creamy smooth plane of his forehead, and he looks so perfect - so devastatingly handsome - that you find yourself wishing that you could burn an image of this moment into your brain so you’re able to keep it always.

Despite his utter preoccupation with the feel of being nestled so deep in your hot, wet heat, Namjoon still seems to register the weight of your gaze as it lingers on his face. The corner of his lip twisting into a satisfied smirk catches your attention and it’s as though the sight of it pours petrol onto the embers that were already smouldering deep in your pelvis. A simple expression shouldn’t do such things to you yet you can’t deny the effect it has; suddenly you’re rubbing between your legs with so much desperation that no one would guess that you’ve already cum three times tonight.

“Let go, little one - submit, ” Namjoon growls, noting the sudden change in you and going with it, encouraging your mania, his pace never faltering even as your fingers slip and slide against his cock in all your haste, “Fuck, let me hear you say my name.”

Your back bows as you shrilly comply and grab a fistful of your own hair, eyelids clamping shut and jaw going lax as you feel the heat within in your core unfurling, burning ever brighter.

The head of Namjoon’s cock crashes into the deepest, most pleasurable parts of you, and just as you think you can’t possibly take any more - that it can’t possibly get any better - the vampire between your legs takes it one step further. Hooking his hands under the backs of your knees, he brutally pushes them back so that you’re almost bent in half pinned under him, sinking down into the couch cushions so far that your chin is touching your chest and your bare feet dangle over his shoulders.

In this position you can barely even breathe yet somehow your cries of pleasure never cease, desperately hanging onto the front of his shirt as your unravelment gain speeds, hurtling towards your release so rapidly in this position that you barely have time to realise it's coming before you're already there.

“Yes baby,” Namjoon grunts as your pussy begins to tighten around his cock like some sort heavenly prison, “Cum like the filthy fucking slut you are.”

“ Namjoon! ” You’re not sure how many times his name pours from your lips as your orgasm drags you under like a riptide and thrashes through you - nor do you know for how it is that you’re clawing at his biceps in some feeble attempt to hold together long enough to survive - all you know is that when you finally come to Namjoon is suddenly pulling away from you, dragging in deep, ragged breaths.

“On the floor,” he demands as he stands, pointing towards the carpet at the foot of the sofa with a wild look in his eyes and with trembling limbs you do as he says. You’re so weak that you practically fall off of the sofa cushions when you attempt to move, the thud of your landing on the floor and the burn of your behind that follows indicating that there’ll likely be some rugburn lingering there tomorrow.

Before you can even start to maneuver yourself very far Namjoon is on you once again, grabbing you by the hair and yanking you forward to then shove you down onto your front, face first into the pile, and all you can do is whimper in response when you feel him pull your legs open with his one remaining free hand to mount you from behind. In a matter of seconds the swollen head of Namjoon’s cock is breaching you and you’re being fucked savagely into the floor, the movement of his hips so frantic that you know it’ll no longer be just your ass that’ll be covered in grazes but your hip bones, stomach and breasts too.

“Fuck, yes,” Namjoon groans, his pelvis snapping against your behind and making it bounce with every rut inside, his fingers still tangled in your hair and pushing your face down so hard that any sound you can make is completely muffled by the flooring underneath you. “Do you want my cum, little one? I can feel your greedy little cunt aching for it.” Roughly, Namjoon yanks your head to one side so that you can speak - or rather wail - your acquiesence.

“Beg me for it then.” An unexpected slap to your buttock makes you shriek as his palm meets flesh to leave a burn in its wake, and as he does it again Namjoon moans at the feel of your walls clenching around him. “Tell me how much you want it - tell me how much you want to be stinking of it by the time i’m done - and then maybe I’ll let you have it.”

“Please, Namjoon, please,” you gasp out, nails dug into the carpet and your eyes pressed closed, jaw tight as you try to withstand the growing soreness between your legs. Every part of you has been so overused that it’s bordering on unbearable, and all you long for is the heat of Namjoon’s cum to help ease the pain. “I want your cum so bad!”

You hear Namjoon groan in response to your words as he drops forward heavily, landing on his elbow to support his weight as his hand slips from your hair to wind around your throat instead, cradling your jaw. He uses his hold to force your head back, lifting it from the floor to plant wet, messy kisses to your cheek and ear and anywhere else he can reach, and all the while he continues to push inside of you, you can feel his cock begin to swell, throbbing, twitching - fit to burst.

“Cum inside of me, please, or-or- all over me, I don’t care- ” Namjoon’s movements begin to falter, his breath heavy against your neck and you screw your eyes shut even tighter as you just try to get through these last few seconds, even going so far as to rock your hips upwards from underneath him to push him to new depths, urging him on. “-Just please… Namjoon, please just cum. ”

“Fuck, fuck ,” he pants as his thrusts become shallow and hurried, his fingertips digging into the tender flesh of your neck as he uses it to anchor himself, “Fuck, baby, take it all.”

Finally, Namjoon cums with a near-shout of ecstasy, his hips slamming into you and then staying right there, buried deep within you as his seed pours out. You can feel it filling you, oozing, pulsing out to ease the sweet burn inside, so wet and warm, and as he cums Namjoons shout turns into a long, languid moan of release.

His fingers relax slightly from around your throat to allow you to drag in a deep, ragged breath, but Namjoon doesn’t entirely let go. Chest still heaving against your back, you feel his lips come into contact with your cheek to press a soft kiss there, nuzzling your cheekbone for just a second before uttering into your ear.

“Open your eyes, little one.”

You do.

Your eyes are a little blurry for a second - so used to the darkness behind your eyelids that it takes them a second to adjust - but when they do… when Namjoon uses his grip on your throat to turn your head to direct your attention to a figure standing in the nearby doorway, watching over the two of you, you find yourself wishing that you’d have stayed blind.

His mouth curls into a smile against the shell of your ear, his poisonous tongue rolling wetly in his mouth before he whispers,

“I lied.”

#bts smut #namjoon smut #namjoon x reader #namjoon/reader #sweeter than sweet #bts vampire au #vampire!namjoon #dom namjoon #rm x reader #rm/reader #rm smut

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otheroutlandertales · 5 years

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Anonymous said: Modern day au where Fergus and Marsali are members of opposing biker gangs.

Catch up on the first part of this story here. There will be one more chapter after this.

The Borders Between Us

by @wunderlichkind

Two

Fergus has felt the irritation crawl under his skin all day, like tiny little insects, hooking their hairy legs into every crevice, every artery, every synapse, laying their eggs on their quest to populate his every thought. He thought Marsali’s touch would make it better – her hands wrapped around his middle on the bike, her smooth skin under his hands and lips. But she hasn’t brought him any semblance of peace, not today.

Instead, she’s a sounding body to his vibrations, picking up the current of anger and frustration running through his veins and throwing it back at him, magnified and dangerous.

He isn’t gentle with her, and she spurs him on, as if challenging the fragile illusion of peace to implode and tumble to pieces, as if walking the edge excites her, and it isn’t lost on him that her behaviour in the face of his unrest says a lot about their relationship – the game they’ve been playing for too long, that she refuses to transform into something more real, more solid.

It’s only after – when they’re lying side by side in the wide bed, spent and heated, avoiding any more touch, that he realizes the crawling sensation has left him, his anger erupted in the heat of their joining. The silent emptiness it left behind is worse, still.

„Why do you continue to come?“ he asks, a bitter taste on his tongue – the taste of weakness. He’s not comfortable with this needy side of himself, this side that can’t stay away, this side that asks her to stay again and again.

„Ye’re a damn good fuck,“ she teases, but it’s half-hearted and they both know it. He sees the fire flicker behind her blue eyes when he turns to look at her and welcomes the bite of its flames reaching for him – anything to fill the void. He presses on.

„You refuse to quit the gang, you won’t let me quit either. You never answer my declarations or pleas, yet you always come back to me. Why?“

Marsali sits up abruptly, reaching for her shirt and swinging her pale legs over the edge of the bed. The set of her shoulders is tense and she doesn’t look at him when she snaps. „What do ye want me to say, Fergus?“

„I want you to admit you love me.“

It comes out a little too loud, a little too forceful, but he doesn’t care. This has been brewing inside him for weeks, a dark, bubbling mess long overdue to spill that he desperately needs out of his system. He wants clarity – all or nothing, to have her admit her feelings or provoke her until she finally walks out on him for good.

She’s on her feet now, moving through the room quickly, in jerky, angry motions, her body radiating stress, the stony expression of her face telling him she’s struggling to keep her walls up.

„Admit it!“ he says, even louder this time, crawling to the edge of the bed. He’s naked still, but he doesn’t make a move to get dressed. He wants to force her to be open and honest, to be naked with body and words.

„Admit it, or tell me you’re just coming back here because you need to get fucked so bad, because your shitshow of a gang doesn’t have one decent man who serves you as well as I do, because you’re a damned whore who doesn’t care one iota about who she’s hurting. Say it!“

He’s almost screaming at her now, the words purposely harsh blows, chosen to tear down her walls, chosen to make her react. It’s selfish of him, but he feels he might disintegrate, might lose himself completely if he stops.

„I do, okay?!“

It’s something between a sob and yell and he’s at her side in seconds when she drops to the floor crying.

„I do love ye,“ she admits, much quieter now, arms wrapped around herself, as if trying to protect her from falling apart now that the walls of protection have fallen.

„Are ye happy now?“ Her voice rises again, and she lifts her head to stare at him defiantly through a curtain of tears. He thinks about that – tries to pinpoint his feelings, to interpret the turmoil in his stomach, but she’s not finished.

„It doesn’t change anything, don’t ye get it?“ The look of despair on her face scares him, and he reaches for her arms, trying to become a part of the forlorn embrace she’s wrapped herself in.

„Ye dinna even know my last name.“

He wants to protest, wants to tell her he’ll happily learn every little detail about her life – how she drinks her coffee, how she ties her shoes, what colour her shower curtain and oven mitts and toothbrush are – but the words die on his tongue at her merciless stare, and her next words feel like a stab with a knife. Brutal, painful, inflicting an irreversible wound.

„My name is Marsali Fraser. My father is James Fraser, president of the Mongols’ Badlands charter. My mother is Laoghaire Mackenzie. She has early onset dementia. I moved back in with her a year ago, because she can’t live alone anymore.“

Fergus suddenly wishes he had dressed. He feels exposed, Marsali’s words a cold storm attacking him full force, her face a mask of pain he feels mirrored on his own.

„We’ll find a way,“ he says, a weak attempt at gaining some semblance of control over this chaos. He doesn’t believe it, and she doesn’t either.

„I canna leave, Fergus.“ Her voice is tender now, as she bends towards him and presses a soft kiss to his lips. It’s salty and wet from her tears, and he feels stranded, disoriented. „I’m sorry.“

And then she rises and leaves, but he can’t move. Glued down to the carpet he hates himself for being naive enough to believe that all or nothing was possible, for not seeing this coming. She loves him, but he will never have her. It’s all and nothing at the same time.

___________________________________________________________________

She’s picking out cereal when her phone rings, the melody of her favourite song echoing off the boxes stacked on the aisle. She curses under her breath at her treacherous mind, immediately flitting to Fergus. They danced to this song. Made love while it played in the background. He wouldn’t call though; he only ever texts. And he won’t text anymore, now that they stopped pretending. She swipes at her phone angrily, without checking to see who’s calling.

„Yes?“

„Marsali, good! Don’t freak out, okay?“ Claire’s voice sounds pretty close to freaking out herself, although it’s clear she’s making a conscious effort to stay calm. Marsali immediately goes into emergency mode, her feet carrying her towards the exit, the groceries in her cart abandoned.

„What happened? Did she hurt herself?“

The memory of the big blister on Laoghaire’s forearm from when she had turned her back to the hot stove for just a second makes Marsali feel nauseous and triggers more images – images of every possible danger in their house, every step you could fall, every corner you could hit your head on.

„She got out. I’m looking for her now, and Jamie is in your apartment in case she comes back. I’m really sorry, love, I swear, I was only in the bathroom for a minute...“

Marsali has to swallow around the lump in her throat before she can answer. „It’s not yer fault,“ she finally manages to say, already climbing into the car. „I’m on my way. Let’s split areas to look – where should I go?“

She finds Laoghaire at the corner café her mother used to work at, where she smiles at the customers and cleans the tables. Louie, the owner, who’s called her only ten minutes after she hung up on Claire, squeezes Marsali’s shoulder.

„It was really no trouble. She just went right to work.“

She forces herself to smile at him. „Thank ye, Louie. For not saying anything to her. And for calling me.“

„No biggie. Let me know if I can ever do anything to help.“

She gives him a grateful nod, her lips pressed together tightly to keep in the sob of exhaustion and relief she doesn’t want the world to hear. With a light touch to Louie’s arm, she turns and approaches her mother.

„Hi, Laoghaire. Let me take ye home.“

The soft tone is practiced, not even stumbling on her mother’s first name anymore – Marsali’s long since accepted the fact that addressing her with „Mam“ only agitates her, that her own mother can’t remember having a daughter.

„Is my shift already over?“ Laoghaire asks, looking over Marsali’s shoulder at Louie.

„Oh yes, dear, you go right on home and enjoy your night,“ Louie smiles at her, and Laoghaire’s face lights up, and she lets herself be led out the café and towards the car.

___________________________________________________________________

„I found the brochures,“ Jamie says, and passes her a hot cup of tea. She avoids his eyes, burying her nose in the steam rising from the cup and coughing at the strong alcoholic fumes.

„Ye put whisky in that,“ she states with half a smile that he mirrors back at her.

„Thought ye could use it.“ They settle into the couch, and his clear blue eyes - so like her own – rest sternly on her. „Marsali,“ he prompts and she shrugs her shoulders.

„I havena taken the test.“

„Ye should. I think it might be time we find a good home for Laoghaire. It’s too much for ye to take care of her all the time. Ye should be able to live yer life. And not be afraid.“ His warm palm on her knee grounds her and she sighs and lets herself be comforted by his strong presence, his warmth and solidness and safety.

„What if I have it, too?“ she whispers, not looking at him.

He wraps his strong arm around her shoulder and draws her into his chest, enveloping her into the familiar scent of worn leather and aftershave.

„I dinna ken,“ he admits, „but it’s better to know than to wonder and fret, don’t ye think? And I’ll be here. Whatever happens, I’ll be here.“

#outlander fanfiction #otheroutlandertales #mod wunder #pair: Fergus x Marsali #ch: fergus #ch: marsali #ch: jamie #ch: claire #ch: laoghaire #modern au #category: mf #angst #the borders between us #oot #*

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jeballin · 5 years

Text

Caught in the Crossfire

Hey there, I just started this new blog for when I am inspired to write! This is my first fic.

Hope you enjoy!

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Summary: When an unexpected and most definitely unwelcome gift arrives on your doorstep, you find yourself realizing the terrifying consequences of getting caught up in Jeon Jungkook and Bangtan

Genre: Mafia AU, Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Warnings: Gore, Suicidal thoughts (briefly), Panic attacks, Mentions of violence

Word Count: 3.2k

You stare in absolute horror at the box on your doorstep, wrapped perfectly in beautiful paper with a silk bow tied around it. The ribbon is embroidered with blue roses— their symbol—and a tag with your name is tucked under it. Your blood runs cold, and you immediately jerk back inside your house, slamming your front door shut. Your feel yourself start to hyperventilate; your heart is racing, and your palms are becoming sweaty.

They know about you.

You reach for the curtains on your windows, but quickly think better of it and bring your face to your front door instead. The peephole reveals nothing out of the ordinary in its limited scope, but you don’t relax. You pause briefly, hand on your doorknob, and gather all your courage.

They know your name.

Carefully, you twist the knob and open your front door again. To both your dread and unsurprise, the package is still sitting in front of your door, mocking you. You nervously crane your neck out of your doorway and glance down both ends of your street. No one is on your street and you find no parked cars with suspiciously tinted windows. You quickly collect the box in your arms and back into your house, slamming the door shut again and hurriedly locking it.

They know where you lived.

Your empty residence suddenly feels like it has far too many windows. Your legs feel like lead as you bring the box upstairs to your bedroom and draw all your curtains shut. You set the box carefully on your bed and take a few steps back, staring at it as if looking away would cause whatever was inside to jump out and kill you. You still your breath and listen, but no sound comes from the box at all. You wish that you can just ignore it and throw it in the trash. You wish doing that would actually make this all go away.

How did they find you?

You glance at your cell phone on your dresser. A pink notification blinks up at you. Pink was the color you had assigned to him in your phone; your boyfriend, Jeon Jungkook. Your fingers twitch. You want so badly to pick up your phone and call him and tell him to come and rid you of this terrible nightmare, but you steel yourself.

No. You can’t. Not until you know exactly what you’re dealing with. Not until you know exactly what’s in that box.

You squeeze your eyes shut and clench your fists. You breathe in deeply through your nose and exhale through your lips.

You take a step forward. Unease washes over you.

Another.

One more.

Reaching the edge of your bed, you reach a shaky hand to an end of the ribbon and pull it off. Resting your hands on either side of the box lid, you take another breath, grit your teeth, and yank the lid off, peering inside.

A blood chilling scream rips itself from your throat as soon as your eyes fall on what’s inside. A detached head stares up at you with dead, milky eyes. His hair is matted with blood and dirt, and his tongue sticks slightly out of his hanging jaw, puffy and pointing to a trail of dried blood that led to his neck where his skin was ripped and ragged to reveal the rotting flesh underneath.

The box lid falls from your hands as you cover your mouth, tears instantly springing to your eyes. You stumble back and crumple to the floor. Your whole body shakes and all you can think of is the last time you saw the newest intern at your job who had always been so kind to you, bringing you coffee in the morning and treats when you were stressed, coming to you for relationship advice, accompanying you on those dreadful company dinners and even escorting you home when you had too much to drink. Now he was dead, brutally murdered and head packed in a box to be delivered to you while his loved ones probably had no idea.

Adrenaline swells within you and you bolt to your dresser, pull open the top drawer, and rifle through its contents until your hand meets the cold metal of a Glock 19. You’d never really touched it before—never needed to—but Jungkook had insisted you had something to protect yourself with just in case, so he brought this home, took you to a shooting range, and taught you how to use it.

You switch the safety off and clutch it tightly in one hand. You grab your phone with the other to call Jungkook, but when you unlock your phone the text notification that lights up your screen breaks right through your panic, and you freeze instantly.

Have you been outside recently? The sky is clear and the sun is shining brightly today. -JK

It’s the type of text you don’t receive often only because Jungkook thought it was best to keep you as separated from his work as possible, but sometimes he would communicate with you in little codes.

Have you been outside recently? He’s asking if you’re well. The sky is clear. Whatever his gang, Bangtan, had been working on lately was coming close to a score and he’ll be coming home soon. The sun is shining brightly today. He misses you.

You slide down the wall next to your dresser and sink to the floor, locking your phone again and clutching it tightly. You sigh in despair; you can’t call him. If you do, then he’ll come for you and for all you know that’s what they want. Your eyes drift from the phone in your shaking hands to the lid of the gift box lying a few feet away. It had turned over in its fall, and neatly taped to the underside of the lid was a pretty, blue rose that matched the ribbon the box came tied with. The sight of it makes your skin crawl.

That symbol belongs to the Palinjang, a name you had seen in some files Jungkook had brought home one night. After plenty of reluctance, Jungkook told you they were Bangtan’s biggest problem recently; a newly formed group of criminals that were viciously trying to steal the underground empire Bangtan has created. Everyone has heard of Bangtan, but it’s Palinjang that has been all over the news lately. They’re ruthless and formidable too; just a few months ago when one of Jungkook’s partners wasn’t reporting back on a recon job, Jungkook found him in some back alley beat into a nearly unrecognizable, bloody mess with a blue rose tucked into his breast pocket. It was by the grace of God alone that Jimin survived that night. That incident was what made the name Palinjang mean anything in the criminal underworld, and that was just the start. Now they’re the subject of nearly every news story in the metro area.

This new gang wants to control the city and that means taking down the organization who currently does: Bangtan. There’s just one problem. Bangtan didn’t get where they were by dumb luck; they were dangerous and deadly and knew exactly what they were doing. If Palinjang was going to have any chance in taking them down they’d need a weakness, and in order to get that, they’d need information. It would be a cold day in hell before they got anyone in Bangtan to turn on their brothers—that much was made evident with Jimin—so it was clear that the next step would be close friends or loved ones.

That means you.

You hadn’t meant to fall in love with each other. People like him knew it was a bad idea to get involved with people like you, and you should have known better when you found out exactly what his “work” was. Yet when Jungkook came into your life he didn’t just walk in, he swept you completely off your feet and you’ve been caught in this dangerous, exhilarating, perfect whirlwind of a romance ever since. You never regretted getting caught up in Bangtan or Jeon Jungkook; not even when he came to your home bruised, bloody, drunk, or high off some job they pulled off that may or may not have included killing anyone (he never told you, but you knew).

Being with someone like Jungkook and having friends with people like Bangtan always made you feel so safe and, hell, even brave. Their confidence, ambition, and unwavering loyalty was contagious. At least, you thought it was. How simple of you. Bangtan, as much as they loved you and you loved them, was still a group of ruthless criminals. Of course, there was no such thing as “safe” when getting mixed up with them.

It’s funny how being faced with the promise of a long and painful death affects you.

Who knew what kind of torture these people would inflict on you until you gave them what they wanted? Even if you, unlikely as it is, managed to evade them, how many more people would die until they had you? They were playing with you now, you could only imagine what they’d do when they tired of the game.

You turn your eyes down to the phone that had fallen out of your grasp onto the floor, to the gun in your hands, then glance at the gift box still laying on your bed with its contents obstructed from your position on the floor. You scoff to yourself, feeling tears begin to well up again. There’s no way you’ll stand a chance.

Your eyes are locked on the gift box; even though you can’t see the head inside, the image is burned into your mind.

You don’t want to die like that—screaming and crying and painfully and slowly. You don’t want to betray Jungkook and his family before you are brutally murdered. You don’t want to be the reason for any more misery. You can’t let them get you.

You can’t.

The feeling of cold metal against your temple nearly startles you. You didn’t notice your own hand bringing the gun to your head.

Immediately you feel claustrophobic. Your knees are pressed too tightly to your chest and your body is hot. You’re sweating. You can’t breathe.

You quickly get to your feet and in your haste, you catch sight of your reflection in your vanity mirror. You’re a complete mess. The blood had gone from your face, your hair is mussed and sticking to your skin, your trembling lips are clamped tightly between your teeth, and then you meet the mirror’s gaze.

Your eyes are totally wide, nothing but panic and fear in your eyes and the cruel barrel of a gun still pointing at your head. You can only bear the disturbing sight of yourself for a moment until tears start streaming down your face. You clench your eyes shut and sob. You feel your strength draining from your body, but before you can let your hand fall to your side the solid weight of another body suddenly collides into you, knocking your body to the ground and the gun out of your hands.

You shriek in horror at the impact as you fall underneath their weight. They got you. You were a coward and you hesitated, and they got you.

Your bodies crash against the side of your bed, knocking the gift box to the ground. You scream again.

This is a terrible, horrific nightmare and you can’t escape. You’re going to be tortured for information, stripped of your dignity, and gruesomely killed.

The person above you hauls you fully onto the bed, pulling your arms roughly to your sides and pinning you against them with bruising force.

You wish you had called Jungkook. You don’t care anymore if it’s selfish, you just want to hear his voice.

“… the fuck are you doing?!” His voice sounds far away at first under the blood rushing in your ears. You don’t stop wriggling in panic; he only grabs you tighter. “Stop! (Name), stop!” He yells at you. You whimper and strain against his grip, craning your head back to look at him. He meets your eyes, looking both furious and terrified

“Jungkook…?” You breathe out in disbelief. Relief floods your being with overwhelming force and you collapse fully into Jungkook’s arms, wrapping your arms around him as tight as you could. You can’t speak, you can’t cry, you just hold onto him as both unbridled fear and insurmountable joy leaves you stunned. Jungkook holds you just as tight, afraid that if he lets go you’ll disappear. Just what the hell has gotten into you? Were you seriously about to kill yourself?

“(Name),” Jungkook calls softly after a moment and a shuddering breath. Now that he was reassured you were safe and sound, he had to get to the bottom of this. He pulls you away from him and holds you by your shoulders; his grip is firm and desperate. “Why?” He asks, looking into your eyes with an intense look. You hesitate briefly before averting your watery eyes in shame and fear.

It was then that the world began to materialize back around the two of you. Jungkook’s gaze follows the tilt of your eyes to your bedroom floor, where he sees a box on its side and a decapitated head unceremoniously laying a few feet away from it. Instinctively Jungkook pulls you back to him and hides your face in his chest so you’re not looking at it anymore.

“(Name), what happened?” Jungkook demands, glaring hard at the gift box—or more specifically—its blue floral wrapping. How the fuck do they know about you? “I need you to tell me.” He says more gently after a moment of silence, trying to remain calm for your sake.

“T-there was a knock at the door…” You whisper, training your eyes on the expensive threading on Jungkook’s shirt that your wet eyelashes had left marks on and focusing on keeping your voice from breaking, “When I opened it, there was that box…I know it was them.” You say tightly, holding your breath for a moment in an effort to keep yourself together. Jungkook’s arms tighten around you. This shouldn’t have happened. He thought he had been so careful to make sure nothing about his work threatened your safety. So how the hell did this happen?

“I’m sorry.” He tenses underneath you as you say that, but all you can do is bury your head in his shoulder in shame. “I’m not—,” You feel tears building up when Jungkook starts stroking your hair to comfort you, “I’m not strong like you, Jungkook. I’m so pathetic… I just didn’t want to betray you and Bangtan. I was scared of what they’d do to me if they ever—.”

“They won’t get you.” Jungkook insists. You squeeze your eyes shut and push away to look at him. His eyes have a desperate look.

“They already have! Don’t you see? They could’ve done whatever they wanted to me today and there would have been nothing you or I could have done about it. They’re playing around like this is all some sick fucking game—.”

“Stop!” Jungkook interrupts you, jaw tight and hands grasping your wrists. He can’t stand to hear you talking like that. He hates it, but what he hates more is the fact that what you’re saying was true. He could have easily come home to find you either missing or—he doesn’t want to think about it—but instead the Palinjang opted for trying to scare you first, and it worked. But there’s no fucking way in hell he will let it go farther than that. “We’ll handle this, (Name), okay, babe?” He doesn’t really know if he was trying to reassure you or himself, “I swear I will fucking end them for doing this to you. We’ll crush them, okay, so don’t you ever let any god damn asshole bring you to putting a gun to your head ever again, do you understand?!”

Overwhelmed, all you can do is nod as tears fall from your eyes again. You look towards the box again, but before your eyes can land on it, Jungkook’s hand on your cheek stops you. Your lip trembles.

“He was our new intern. His name was Hosung; he was so nice. He always brought me coffee and showed me pictures of his dogs and I helped him ask out a girl he really liked…” You ramble, sobbing. Jungkook leans forward and holds you while he flips the box over the head of your nice, new intern with his shoe. This is all his fault; none of it would have happened if he just stayed away from you back when you first met like he should have. He knew it was dangerous, but he was so confident he could keep you out of the crossfires if he was careful enough. How naïve of him to think such a thing.

While you cry, Jungkook walks briskly about your room with a couple of your bags and packs as much of whatever he thought you might need as he can. You watch him numbly, having calmed down a bit from your hysterics, as he finally walks back over to you and helps you stand with his free arm wrapped securely around you. Jungkook escorts you out of your bedroom, making sure to pick up the Glock 19 on his way and tuck it into his belt. On your way out of your house, Jungkook tells you that he is sorry.

“I swear I’ll never let anything like this happen to you again, baby.”

You know he can’t really promise you something like that, but you feel comforted and loved and safe all the same now that he is with you. Jungkook kisses your hair softly as he continues to apologize; he’s so soft with you, but when you look at his face as he leads you into his car and buckles your seatbelt, you see murderous rage in his clenched jaw and burning eyes. You can see his mind racing with plans of action. Jungkook gets into the driver’s seat and holds your hand tightly in his as he speeds out of your neighborhood.

You watch him drive in silence for a moment. You decide that you'll try to be strong like Jungkook. “I love you.”

He brings your knuckles to his lips and squeezes your hand, rubbing his ring clad thumb along the back of your hand. He thinks in that moment of how brave you are to say such a thing after what loving him has put you through. “I love you too, baby.”

You smile a little and turn your head to the road in front of you. You don’t have to ask where the two of you are going, you already know.

This is just the beginning.

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higuchimon · 5 years

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[fanfic] Embrace of Fate: Chapter 6

Juudai slipped out of his dorm, shivering for a few moments in the early morning air. Duel Academia tended to being warm even this time of year, but until the sun came up, temperatures could still be a trifle nippy. He stifled a small yawn and headed down the path briefly before he turned and darted into the woods.

Where he ended up at the end of this was a place he visited infrequently, usually on those rare occasions when he wanted to think by himself. He wasn’t sure if Shou or Kenzan or anyone else had ever followed him here.

Once the trees thinned out, the ground led downward to a white-sanded beach, with large rocks peppering the ground. Juudai climbed up on top of one of them and stared at the ocean. Here it still was kind of dark, though if he tilted his head, he could see streaks of gold and blue spanning the sky.

Juudai wasn’t sure of how long he sat there, thinking of nothing in particular, breathing in the scent of the salted air, before Hane Kuriboh appeared next to him, trilling a greeting to someone else. Before Juudai could turn to see who’d interrupted his silence, Ruby Carbuncle pounced onto Hane Kuriboh and the two of them began one of their already familiar tussling sessions.

“Ruby...” Johan muttered as he stepped out of the shadows. Ruby Carbuncle didn’t even look up, mouth instead closed around one of Hane Kuriboh’s wings, as the other one battered at the tiny creature.

“Johan,” Juudai greeted with a raised hand. “What brings you out here?”

“Ruby did, sort of.” Johan laughed as he came closer. “Said you were here and I thought it was a little too early for you to be up, so I came to see if everything was all right.”

Juudai turned back to look at the rolling waves. “Yeah, mostly. I come out here sometimes when it’s early.” His right hand rested against his left for a few heartbeats. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say about that. He thought – he knew – that he could trust Johan, but this was still something else altogether.

Johan caught the movement and turned gem-bright eyes on him. Juudai tensed; he’d had other people ask before. Even Shou had, back in first year. He hadn’t been the only one. Before he’d broken apart, Daitokuji-sensei had three entire lectures about how soulmates and alchemy went together.

But Johan didn’t say anything. At least not about Juudai’s mark. Instead, he came a little closer and stared at the ocean for a few moments. “This is really nice. Almost reminds me of being back home. Only warmer.”

“What’s it like for you?” Juudai asked, breathing a mental sigh of relief that he didn’t have to deal with being asked those questions again.

Though it almost made him want to answer them regardless. Maybe Johan would have answers that he didn’t and that no one else seemed to have either.

“Home? You’d probably call it chilly. Even cold.” Johan launched into describing his home, how it differed from here and how much he liked it there. He didn’t mention family of any kind, though, except for the Gem Beasts.

He never had. In the three weeks since his arrival, Juudai didn’t think that Johan had ever mentioned mother or father or siblings of any kind. Sure, they didn’t know each other that well yet but he thought Johan might have said something. Unless there wasn’t anything to say.

“And I’ve got about eight more months on my timer and there wasn’t anyone at home that had one going down at the same time,” Johan said at last. Juudai hadn’t paid quite as much attention as he should have, but that wasn’t unusual with him. He rather liked letting people ramble on about themselves without his input anyway. “What about you?”

Juudai blinked. That simple question wasn’t one that he’d expected. He glanced at his arm again before he made an extraordinarily quick decision and pushed his sleeve up. He intended to introduce Johan to the hot springs at one point so Johan would see it then anyway. Might as well get it over with.

Johan peered over, a curious expression on his face, and nodded. “You’ve already met yours? That’s awesome! Can I meet them? Do they go here?”

“Not really – not that I know of, anyway.” Juudai fidgeted, casting a brief glance to the ocean and back to Johan. “I don’t remember them. I’ve had the mark since I was really little. I think about six or seven. But I can’t remember them and I don’t know where they are.” For a few moments more he hesitated, before he started to talk.

He spoke of the vague memories he had of being sick and of how his parents hadn’t told him anything more, only that this was all for the best. He hadn’t known how to argue about it and he’d eventually stopped worrying about it. Until he’d come here, he’d barely thought about it at all, and even then, not until that strange night when he’d met Saiou.

“Later on, after I beat the Light of Ruin, I asked him about it.” Juudai remembered. “Only he didn’t know anything about my soulmate or where they could be or anything. So – I don’t know. The Neo-Spacians don’t know either. No one I know does.”

Johan nodded slowly. He rested a comforting hand on Juudai’s shoulder. “You’ll find them. Or maybe they’ll find you.” He started to stand up. “But you know, I think it’s about breakfast time, isn’t it?”

Juudai’s stomach chose that moment to roar at him, reminding him that soulmate or no soulmate, he needed to eat, and it would be such a shame to miss Tome-san’s cooking because he moped around. He shook off the brief sad mood and bounced to his feet.

“You’re right! Hey, race you to the cafeteria!”

“That’s just going to get you even hungrier!” But at the same moment Johan suited action to words and the two of them hurried back along the barely visible trail.

In the depths of the shadows, an awareness watched, barely more than the flicker of an eye and the wrath of a demon.

Thief. Thief. Thief.

How dare this thief, this mongrel, this foul creature dare to so much as speak to their Juudai? How did he dare to steal Yubel’s own form from the past and pass himself off as a friend?

If Yubel had more than one claw, they would have used them to shred Johan in that moment. But they swore, this state of affairs would not last forever. Juudai would be theirs again and Johan would be nothing but a bad memory.

Yubel. It was Yubel.

Juudai slammed his fists harder and harder into the pillow, a choked off sob tearing out of his lips, tears staining his cheeks and spilling down to the blankets.

Yubel. Yubel.

That meant all of this – everything that happened in that other world, the fact that Johan could very well be – that he might be -

Juudai didn’t want to think the word. If he thought it, then it could become real and if it were real then it couldn’t ever be taken back. No way to make it better. No way to get him back.

Dead was dead. Dead never changed. Dead meant you never saw them again.

Slowly he rubbed at his eyes. He wanted to think about this. He wanted to figure out an answer, but nothing appeared that wasn’t smoke and shadows.

He’d infuriated Yubel. He’d sent them away – he’d had a reason for it, hadn’t he? He thought he did. Those memories remained vague and hazy but he thought that was true. He’d done it for a reason and it seemed like a good one at the time.

Only now Yubel utterly hated him because of what he’d done and not only hurt everyone that he cared about now but Johan as well. Johan, his new best friend, almost as close to him as his soulmate.

That point did shine above the others as well. Yubel wasn’t just an old friend, the spirit from his childhood that he’d forgotten for whatever reasons.

Yubel was his soulmate. The one that he’d forgotten and missed without even being aware of it. The one that the Light taunted him with, teased that it watched over for so long.

Was that why Yubel hated him? Was it because of whatever reason he’d sent them into space? Or was it because of the Light?

Juudai rubbed his forehead and the back of his head, straining to remember what had happened so long ago. Try as he might, nothing wanted to come clear. He could recall vague images of sketching the Neo-Spacians, the sort of thing he’d remembered from the moment when he’d met them again, with the added feeling of Yubel’s presence there. He’d drawn them when Yubel was there, watching over him. He knew that for certain.

But why? Why was all of this happening? Why did Yubel hate him so much? They hadn’t always. Juudai knew that as well as he knew anything else. The mark on his arm confirmed it – the chains denoting that they loved one another, deeply and truly. But try as hard as he could, he didn’t remember enough to know what it felt like to love Yubel.

Oh, but he wanted to. He wanted to remember whatever times they had together, to remember what it was like to gaze into those eyes and love. He wanted to remember so much and nothing, nothing refused to come.

Undying rage bubbled in the deepest depths of his heart. He couldn’t feel the Light’s touch on this but what else would want to keep them apart? What else even could keep them apart?

No one. No one else. This was all the fault of the Light of Ruin and whatever else happened, he would find a way to save Johan from Yubel and Yubel from it.

No. Matter. What.

Yubel paid little attention to anything else but the captive that they’d taken. Johan lay slumped against the wall, eyes following them as they prowled, fingers knotted against his palms, breath coming in faint gasps as he tried to recover.

He could if he wanted to. Yubel wasn’t going to let him go anywhere. He didn’t deserve freedom. He deserved only pain and suffering – but not the kind of pain and suffering that meant Juudai’s sweet, unending love. No. While what Yubel inflicted on him would mean their love for Juudai, showing what lessons they’d learned from him, what it would mean for this horrid thief would be something far worse.

“Who are you, really? What do you want?” Johan finally snapped. Yubel knew how alone and afraid he must be. They’d taken his deck before he woke up and hidden it where he could never find it. Whatever bonds he had to those spirits would do him no good here. Here only Yubel ruled. Here only Yubel’s words mattered.

“What I’ve always wanted. What is mine and has been mine and will always be mine, as I am his.”

Johan tensed, fingers tightening even more. Yubel savored the fear in his eyes. So delicious. They wanted more. So much more.

“Juudai. You’re talking about Juudai.”

“Of course I am, thief.” Yubel circled, leaning in closer. They quite enjoyed having their body rebuilt. Johan had contributed far more to that than once Yubel thought he might. His intentions to help Juudai only made Yubel’s return that much sooner. “Juudai is my soulmate.”

Yubel extended their left arm, the mark showing clean and clear even against their dragon’s skin. Perhaps, they thought, that mark was why the largest part of their destroyed form left was that particular arm. They didn’t know but such a thought pleased them greatly.

Johan’s gaze dropped to the mark then back up to Yubel. “Why doesn’t Juudai remember you, then?”

“Because he doesn’t want to! He threw me away and refused to even think about me again!” Yubel all but shrieked in their rage, claws scraping so close to Johan’s skin that a pale line of red followed their touch.

Then they pulled back. Juudai would come. Juudai thought that he loved this filthy thief. Juudai would come, either to avenge this or to get his thief back, and then Juudai would be theirs and all the rest of creation could burn forever for all that Yubel cared.

“You’re wrong.” Johan murmured, raising one hand to touch where Yubel’s claws skittered. “He’s been worried about you – he told me. He doesn’t remember you but he knows that he’s forgotten and he doesn’t want to. I swear it.” He rested his right hand over his left arm, where his own counter ticked. Yubel had seen it before. They’d checked when taking him, to reassure themselves that fate hadn’t somehow tried to play a cruel trick on them all, binding Juudai to another while they still existed and still sought to win him back.

But no. The thief’s counter unwound itself as any other would and Yubel knew that Juudai and he had spoken and touched one another before. If he were in any way a soulmate to Juudai, then the counter would have reacted.

Yubel wondered if his counter would react if they tore his throat out. The existence of the counter could mean that he lived through all of this and made it to whatever that future meeting was. But Yubel found themselves quite tempted to find out otherwise.

“Keep your lies to yourself, thief. I know the truth. Juudai can only love me. Whatever he feels for you or anyone else is purest falsehood. I have the evidence – as does he.” Yubel rested both claws on the thief’s shoulders and leaned forward, gazing into his mind with their own. “And you’ll not confuse him with your foolishness.”

Johan looked as if he were about to say something else but Yubel refused to listen. Soon Juudai would come searching and Yubel intended to be ready.

“Do you think he has one?”

“Of course he doesn’t. This is Haou-sama. He doesn’t need a soulmate.” Guardian Baou slammed his tankard down on the table and gestured for a refill. He cast a brief glance toward the door to make certain that Haou-sama wasn’t there before he kept on talking. “Even if he did, could you imagine what they would be like?”

Chaos Sorcerer sipped at his goblet with a trifle more refinement than Baou did. His cup contained some of the finest wine available, compared to Baou’s preference for well-made beer. “A demon, most certainly. One far more loyal to him than anyone else.” Something touched his lips that wasn’t a proper smile. “You have noticed, I’m sure, of what he does to traitors.”

All five of them shuddered at that. Skull Bishop leaned forward. “Did you hear what happened to Angmar last week?”

The other four tilted closer, eagerness for gossip and tales of what their relentless liege could perform bright in their eyes. Skull Bishop took a long drink of his own before he answered.

“Angmar saw him without his armor. I think Haou-sama does have a soulmate mark of some kind. I wasn’t close enough to hear what he said, but Angmar did say something about it.” Skull Bishop shook his head slowly. “I think Angmar wanted a promotion. He – he challenged Haou-sama.”

The collective shudders resembled more the reaction if a blast of ice wind swept throughout the room. Skilled Black Magician and Skilled White Magician exchanged a single glance before the dark-robed twin spoke.

“How long did it take Haou-sama to end him?”

Skull Bishop sampled his drink carefully before he answered, clearly enjoying having all of this attention on him. Then he said two words.

“One turn.”

Again they stared in surprise, and a few moments of envy that Skull Bishop managed to be close enough to even learn that much. Chaos Sorcerer considered for a few heartbeats.

“What happened?”

“All I know is that Haou-sama allowed him the first turn,” Skull Bishop revealed. “And on his first turn, Haou-sama finished him completely. I wish I could have seen more of it.”

They all did. Such a sight would have been impressive beyond all words. Haou-sama’s dueling could only be described as amazing and whatever else the five of them were, they were duelists.

Guardian Baou sampled his drink again. So Haou-sama did have a soulmate. Exactly who this might be, none of them had the faintest idea of. At least not that they’d indicated to him. He wondered if it would be possible to catch sight of the mark and see if that would reveal anything.

Best not to make the attempt. Haou-sama will let us know if we need to know.

Armored footsteps echoed and all five of them set their drinks down and drew themselves to their feet, ready and waiting as their lord stepped into the room. None of them had ever seen him without his armor, and Baou’s gaze fell briefly towards Haou-sama’s left arm. He jerked away as quick as he could, straining not to be detected. His throat dried when Haou-sama stared at him, golden eyes glinting.

But Haou-sama said nothing at all. He strode over to the head of the table and turned his gaze to all of them.

“I’m adding these targets to our list. One is a deck – the user of the deck was killed in Brron’s arena. But their duel disk and the deck could still be around and if they are, I want them. The deck itself is known as the Gem Beast deck. If found, bring it to me at once along with anyone who dares to use it.”

The five bent their heads in perfect unison. Whatever Haou-sama’s reasons for wanting this, he would be obeyed in all things. Chaos Sorcerer dared to speak.

“As you command, my lord. What of the other target?”

Guardian Baou thought that perhaps Haou-sama hesitated. But if he did, it was only for a few scant breaths, not even time enough to comment upon.

“A being known as Yubel. They are taller than any of you, with great wings – a demon and a dragon made into one. Their hair is two toned and they have three eyes.” Another few moments, this time far more noticeable. Then, Haou-sama removed the armor from his left arm and turned it so everyone there could see the mark upon his wrist.

Guardian Baou did not attempt to breathe. He only stared at it to memorize it. A mark that he recognized as the symbol of darkness – not the kanji itself but something that he thought he recognized from history lessons he’d once had – combined with a dragon’s wing – or perhaps a demon’s. The two were bound together by a violet chain, with tiny thorns poking up from it.

“Yubel has the same mark as I do. No one else will have that mark.”

Yubel is Haou-sama’s soulmate.

Baou wasn’t entirely certain of what to think about this. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d doubted if Haou-sama even had a soulmate in the first place. Now the evidence lay before them.

“We’ll find them, Haou-sama,” Chaos Sorcerer promised. “Both the deck and Yubel-sama.”

A wise phrasing, Baou thought, as he added his own voice in agreement. If this Yubel were Haou-sama’s soulmate, then they would be at least as powerful as Haou-sama. A few thoughts formed as the group departed, Chaos Sorcerer to lead a division of the army to crush a particular annoying village claimed to be the center of a rebellion, Skull Bishop to contact someone that he swore would be a fine spy, and the magicians twins doing some recruiting.

Guardian Baou himself didn’t have anything to do at the moment so he settled himself into his room and considered. He’d never seen anyone like Haou-sama described this Yubel and he suspected that whoever used the Gem Beast deck was responsible for Yubel not being there in the first place.

He didn’t stay in his room all that long. He set out to explore several locations where demons and dragons hid themselves. If he found this Yubel, then Haou-sama would be greatly pleased. And perhaps he could even find this mysterious Gem Beast deck.

He’d done it all wrong. He’d tried to find Yubel. He’d given up on Johan even being alive, when the only evidence he had for that was the word of Brron. He’d killed so many people in his search for any sign of Johan’s deck, for any sign of Yubel, or for anything that he could do to protect those of his friends who’d still been alive at the time.

Part of him didn’t regret it. He’d made so many bad decisions and done so much that he could never make up for, but he wanted to try. But that little spark deep inside didn’t regret what he’d done for the sake of his soulmate and his friends.

If Johan had been really dead, if everyone else had been dead, then he would have done it all again. What he regretted was that he’d believed lies.

And now he stared across at Yubel, who raged endlessly because of more mistakes that he’d made. Now memories flickered back into place, slotting into where they belonged. It hadn’t been the Light that kept his memories from him – it had been his own parents, trying to take care of him in a mistaken way. He’d sent Yubel away to try to help them, to infuse them with the power of the Gentle Darkness in the hopes this would keep Yubel from hurting others.

With his own power. He knew who he was now. He knew who he’d always been: Haou, the one who carried the power of the Gentle Darkness. How Yubel linked to that he wasn’t certain, but he remembered now how his counter expired the moment he’d received Yubel’s card.

He fought. He fought with Johan’s power added to his own and he fought with the Neo-Spacians at his side and the Elemental Heroes as well.

Rainbow Neos struck against Yubel, finally being able to damage them. Juudai wanted to find a way heal Yubel’s Light-tormented mind and he wasn’t at all sure if this would work or what else he could do…

Memory flooded him with that single strike, memory that he’d never before imagined. All around him there rose a palace and outside the palace was a city and outside the city was an ocean, the salt thick in the air, and the cries of seagulls sharp in his ears, and he could see Yubel speaking to another, a tall man with a long ponytail of black hair, and a woman with rich dark brown hair and warm eyes.

And he was there as well. Juudai didn’t recognize the clothes but he knew himself when he saw himself and there he was, standing next to Yubel, their hands entwined about one another. He moved, without being aware that he moved or how he moved, and when he brushed through himself, even more memory rushed inside.

Kuragari. My kingdom. Our capital: Shadowhaven. And they – they were my parents.

King Aodh. Queen Kaien. Soulmates, just the way that he and Yubel were. He’d met Yubel at his Soulmate Party and they’d saved his life from an attacker. In due time they’d admitted that they did love each other, quite deeply, and Juudai swore that he would love no other, no matter what. Yubel was his soulmate.

Somewhere in his mind, a wall he’d never known existed fell. He could remember. Far more than just what happened between him and Yubel in this life, but what happened between them in the life before as well. Long days when they’d walked together, sometimes in the forests, others by the ocean, in the marketplace. The way that Yubel used to love certain fruits – mostly strawberries – that Yubel couldn’t get where they came from, and how he made certain that every year on the anniversary of the day they met, they had strawberries.

Yubel introduced him to fried shrimp. It had always existed, but he’d never bothered eating it until Yubel brought him some, and he’d loved it from that moment onward.

Together, after Yubel healed from their transformation, they’d visited Yubel’s old home. Given that Yubel had been a knight there, it was only proper to visit and offer something to make up for Yubel now being his soulmate and future consort. They’d brought along a reasonable chest of treasure and several other knights who wished to take a chance on a new life in a new place.

Bandits attempted to attack on their way. Said bandits learned quickly that not only had Juudai learned well how to use his powers but he’d been taught to fight with sword as well. Not to mention that he and Yubel made quite the deadly team.

So many memories and so many events that reasserted one firm awareness in every part of him, something that he’d looked forward to since he’d begun to remember Yubel in the first place.

Juudai remembered what it felt like to love Yubel. All along he’d wanted to heal Yubel’s mind, and now he knew exactly how to do that. They’d never had a full official wedding – they’d pledged to one another, of course, but the Light ended up ruining everything before they could do anything else.

It was time, and past time, to change that.

When his vision cleared, he could see Yubel across from him, head hanging, exhausted, but no more ready to give up than he was. Slowly they stirred, raising their head and staring at him. Juudai could feel the Light’s rage flickering there. Did it know that he’d regained his full memories? If it did, Juudai did so hope that it knew that what he was about to do couldn’t be stopped.

He’d set one card already, aware that Yubel sought to get Super Fusion into their hand, and wary about what they intended to fuse. His plan at first had been to divert it to fuse to create something he could use to win.

Now he had another idea altogether. Now he chose Super Fusion because he wanted Yubel to have it, because he wanted to choose something other than monsters that he could fuse.

“I activate Super Fusion! Make mine and Yubel’s souls one!”

The End

Notes: I never thought I’d end this anywhere else. There will eventually be some fourth season fics set in this world. I’m also fully aware of who Johan’s soulmate is and I may well write that one day. I’m also not ruling out the thought of writing out Haou vs Angmar as well.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo gx #yuuki juudai #yubel #yubel x juudai #juudai x yubel #soulshipping #chapters: embrace of fate #series: fate's heart

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suggestionsofthecaribbean · 5 years

Text

H34v3nlie Måll: Elizabeth, James, Will, and Barbossa

Will Turner has found something worrying: a new shop that seems at first to be filled with rubbish, but is actually full of relics from the past of anyone who steps foot inside it. With large portions of their crews absorbed in the mall cinema that appeared overnight and frustrating their evacuation plans, Elizabeth, James, Will and Captain Barbossa investigate - raising the ghosts of their former lives from the figurative dead. And perhaps literally, too....

Only the need for public displeasure made doting on James impossible, with his tooth wrapped in a handkerchief in her pocket and him visibly wincing and testing out the empty space in his gums. Her good mood and his recent dental work very apparent to onlookers, the story was clear enough - enough being the operative word. There was as yet some disagreement on whether or not James Norrington had had this inflicted on him as a punishment. The overall atmosphere towards him was one of such cheerful, welcoming schadenfreude that Elizabeth even felt it permitted her to touch his face on front of the others. The motions made towards moving out of the mall and returning to the Pearl were of a less reassuring nature. There Elizabeth was disappointed, and found Teague and Barbossa in about as much of an unsteady mind as most of their collective crews. Only the reminder that they had still had crew waiting behind for them got them reluctantly into gear.

She did not know Teague so well as to form any opinion, but such sluggishness from Barbossa certainly did surprise her. She had never felt herself in this mall, either, but that made leaving all the more imperative. Yet if she did not have an active reason to prefer the Empress to this place - the promise of something like the honeymoon she had been denied - she wondered if she would be the same. Even the night before, when her faith in her future with James had been at its weakest, she had not felt up to leaving; the prospect of living full time as the Pirate King was too daunting.

There were other bad signs.

Large numbers of crew had gone missing, including her boys Pintel and Ragetti. This had been alarming until they were discovered in what was certainly a wing of the mall she and James had not mapped - she checked their maps. Amidst the rich aroma of warm butter they found a little cordoned-off section labeled TICKETS - and the strangest and most lifelike noises there. Even Elizabeth had wasted at least an hour staring up at a story more dazzling than any theater she’d ever been to, the images of people appearing flat against a hanging panel on the wall. She cheered for a man named Blood in a riveting duel against a Frenchman, and only succeeded in pulling herself out of it when she thought of how much she would have liked James to see it.

But she had gone to find James when she received a call, quite unexpectedly, from Will.

She almost did not answer it, but that was behavior she could not justify, and so with the deepest reluctance she picked it up.

“I know this isn’t who you want to hear from,” she picked out. There was overpowering static. It had never been unusual at sea, but she had made calls in the mall before without problem.

“Will? I can barely hear you-”

There was something else garbled, and she futilely called his name a few more times, before managing to pick up, “Do you know the J. C. Penney beyond the- furniture display-”

“The one at the end of the mall?”

“It’s not- the end-”

That, most ominously, was the most she got out of him before the connection was lost. More and more vexing. The only positive was running into James on her way there.

“Well,” he said, with a nod back toward what could be generously interpreted as the rest of the mall. “I seem to be back in their good graces- or in them for the first time, rather.”

“Yes, yes,” she said hastily. “I’ve just got a call from Will-”

“What is it now-“

“He said there’s a new store,” she said, wiping her hair off her forehead. “And that’s the second one today-“

“Considering the amount of fun this place seems to want to have with us, I’m not surprised,” he said darkly. As he spoke, he rolled up a small bit of cloth from his pocket and traded it for another wedged in his teeth, which was soaked through with blood. He threw this aside into a nearby rubbish bin.

“How’s that coming,” she said with a terse nod of her chin.

“Better,” he said. “It's going to do this for some time. You needn't worry, though Mr. Rivington of the Gloriana swore and announced that in his day a captain would have a man’s hair for that and never a tooth, so your reputation appears unassailed, if not bolstered.”

He smiled a little wryly at this, his spirits improved by the throbbing ache of a partially cracked tooth being replaced by the tolerable background pain of a patch of raw gum.

She gave him a wobbly smile.

They met with Will on their way to find him. Elizabeth momentarily wanted to cut her own heart out, seeing the way his was crushed upon seeing them together. She had to force it down.

“Another new stall?” she said, before pleasantries could make things worse. James, who had been about to speak, closed his mouth quickly and nodded his head.

“Yes. It’s - we’d be better off if I showed you.”

Will had just about turned to take them when he looked back again, with a squint on his face.

“Another new stall?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said grimly. “A quarter of us has been there half of the day. It carries nothing, but plays pictures - moving pictures, with sound and everything - like watching a play with musical accompaniment-”

“What, really?”

“It isn’t as marvelous as it sounds,” she insisted - and when faced with both of them looking awed and skeptical at once, ostentatiously shut her mouth, and began again, more timidly. “It is marvelous - but - isn’t that more of a concern?”

“I don’t know,” said Will. She knew he was of a serious nature in general, but his solemnity still gave her greater concern than anything else. “After you see this you can weigh which worries you most.”

The hall lights had started to grow dimmer as they approached. They could not be fully certain there had not been a hallway here before, but they were positive nothing had been in it. At first it seemed to be nothing - the tables by the windows were crowded with clothing, children’s toys, books, all ancient and weatherbeaten and broken and used. It was nothing so nice as anything else. Paper tags hung from everything with some scribbled price, some completely illegible.

A few more of their crewmates dug there, carrying things under their arms. One of her crew had a fan and a rug of visibly Chinese make under his arm and scurried past her as she ran out - it was her navigator. He looked up at her and then ducked his head and went off running. To get his brother, perhaps.

“It’s just junk,” said Elizabeth, perplexed, lifting and setting down a journal so old it was practically falling to pieces, a dull red stone gleaming on its cover its only draw to the eye. “What’s so much more alarming about this than moving pictures on the wall, I don’t know…”

She looked back up at Will, who looked half beyond her, white as death, and gestured to something with a quick, nervous gesture of the hand.

Elizabeth turned and looked, and gasped as though in pain.

“Will,” she said, without pulling her eyes away. “Can you - please go find the other Captains. Tell them I want the packing and leaving effort doubled - and if he has a moment, I want Barbossa down here. Please. As soon as possible…”

He didn’t answer, but she knew he nodded without having to look at him. She heard him leave, only barely - so stealthy and graceful it was second nature - and when he was gone it was as though the string that held her up was slashed.

Elizabeth grabbed the edge of an unremarkable chair in front of her and held it tight, knuckles white, to keep herself steady.

“Elizabeth?” James asked, putting his hand on hers.

Elizabeth shook her head, but took his arm so tightly it must have hurt him. She felt nothing. It seemed as though her fingers had gone numb. Finally she tore her eyes from it and sought his face.

“It’s my wedding dress,” she said.

James frowned and looked where she had been and saw it- pale yellow and cream silks, trimmed with gold, hung limply on some kind of wire hook instead of a dress form. He swallowed.

“Is it, now,” he said, when he could speak again.

Elizabeth looked like she’d seen a ghost, and then, abruptly, laughed when the irony of that simile occurred to her. It must have been a strange nervous bark to him.

“I would swear it. Will recognized it, too. I wonder-”

She looked around the shop as though scared to turn her head - rubbish though it might have been.

“Do you think everything in here,” she started doubtfully. “Blast, I wish I had thought to ask Ping before he left-”

“Whatever runs this place is in a panic,” said James. “It’s trying to trick you, that’s all. You see- ah, look, it’s as I thought. Do you see that locket, there?”

He gestured toward a little silver pendant hung carelessly off the edge of one shelf.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think that contained a portrait of you that went down with Dauntless. It’s a trick, do you see? If it were truly the same locket, you would be in there. Watch.”

James plucked it from the shelf and popped the latch with his thumbnail.

“You see? There’s nothing in-”

He stopped.

The locket opened on a tiny oil portrait of Elizabeth at age 19 or so, a little clumsily executed and inaccurately proportioned, but Elizabeth nonetheless.

Elizabeth’s mouth felt dry.

“See how the painter tried to make me prettier,” she said throatily, gesturing to her own chin ineffectively.

“He wasn’t successful. It’s a poor likeness. Your head looks enormous,” he said. He shut it just as quickly and strung it back up.

She attempted to smile at him, but couldn’t meet his eyes. There was too much to take in, too much to see.

“It’s a trick,” he said again, though he sounded less convinced this time.

“It undoubtedly is a trick,” said Elizabeth, holding back tears. “But do you see that chair across the room? The one beneath the pile of quilts? Do you recognize it?”

“Your father’s study,” he said softly.

She stepped closer to him.

“Do you feel cold?”

“A bit,” he said. “They can’t bring up a whole ship.”

She took his hand, needily.

“We should leave. Barricade the place off for the time being.”

“You’re right,” she said.

“Get the others out,” he said, “by force, if we must.”

But when Elizabeth let go of his hand, she wandered further into the shop instead of leaving it.

“Elizabeth-”

How many of these things belonged to the men here, it was impossible to tell - none of them would have carried them on their person, any more than James would have kept that locket or she that dress. In fact she hadn’t kept that dress, not even to try and sell it in Tortuga, which might have been why it ended up here. A little cloth doll, a little tin officer, a hat, a rabbit’s foot, a pincushion in a picnic basket - and every other space was cluttered with equally sentimental bric-a-brac.

There was a bookshelf, she saw; she wondered if - she didn’t dare hope, but - yes, she saw it. All at once, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling flickered to life - one by one the candles rapidly lighting themselves. Elizabeth froze in fear with her fingers on the spine of one of Henry Morgan’s rough drafts - then, brazenly, she pulled the volume into her arms and opened it. There it was - Henry Morgan working on the Pirate Code of Conduct - annotations from a fifteen year old girl in the margins.

“Elizabeth,” James repeated as he came up behind her. “We need to leave.”

She showed him the pages. His brows popped up in surprise, but he tried to push the book back toward the shelf.

“God only knows if you can take it back with you.”

She let him put that volume away as with a gasp she recognized another far more precious to her. “James! It’s my diary!”

It was a swollen tome, stuffed with extra papers; a button and cord kept it closed, which Elizabeth now unlocked. Ominously, one sheaf fluttered to the floor; Elizabeth picked it up. The seal on the letter was broken; she opened it.

“Oh, my God-” James muttered.

It was his own handwriting.

Elizabeth was lost in reading it, her heart sinking and yet beating much faster as she did. She recognized this letter; she had read it three times for two lines alluding to the capture of a vessel and the execution of a pirate crew off the coast of Virginia and some ten more trying to find something in it worth replying to to keep up the correspondence - at that point for her father’s sake as much as or more than for James’. She remembered how she had felt about it and logged it away in her mind - her mind and certainly not her heart; she had been nineteen; she had thought him a dull homebody bored of all he had in his life that she envied him for, wishing to be doing dull things in Port Royal, unable to speak of anything but that most prosaic and dreaded of topics, the climate.

Again I iterate my fondest hopes for your health and happiness, & that of your father. You are often in my thoughts. We have had beautiful sunsets these last few nights. The moon has been full & the sky very cloudless; seeing the sun drop over the horizon I remember as one of your favourite views from Port Royal. You particularly enjoyd it at the docks, if you were permited to be out at such an hour. The night we went to Lady Cartwright's ball & your father permited me to escort you to your home & you persuaded me to take the longer route, which did not disappoint us in delivring a very beautiful sunset at sea. V. orange and pink, all the proper colors of a Caribbean flower, though I believe you wore a white flower in your hat that night. Yes, it was jasmyne; I recall the fragrance. Flowers are a privilige we lack at sea, so I must remember yours.

"Oh, God," Elizabeth said out loud.

I lack your flowers and you my oceans, though it seems an appropriate trade, doesn't it? But we have the same sunset and the same full moon in the sky. Please tell me what you were doing, if you remember it by the time you receive this; I should like very dearly to know if we saw the same sunset on the same night. I like to hope we did. Give some of my love to your father.

Yours truly, always,

James Norrington.

"I am an idiot," she whispered, with deep feeling.

“Elizabeth?”

James barely looked at the letter; he vaguely recalled writing it, but Elizabeth dominated his attention at the moment and he tried to move it aside.

“Elizabeth, it's all right- it's a trick, remember? I'm right here.”

She put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. James wasn't sure, exactly, what was going on, but he had just made out a pile of toys he remembered owning as a very small child on one shelf that he was almost certain had not been there a few minutes ago.

“We need to get out of here,” he repeated. “It's all right- walk with me-”

“Just give me a moment,” she said, pulling back only enough to cup his dear face - gently on the one side, very gently - and kiss him. He tasted of blood, but he satisfied her regret.

“Elizabeth?”

His smile was confused, and presently a little ghastly, but he returned the kiss, and joined it with another on her forehead.

“I love you,” she said in distress; “I love you…”

Just like he’d said in that letter, in every turn of phrase, without her knowing. But instead of leaving with him, she turned the pages of her old diary unhappily. There were mathematical equations; there was an unflattering sketch of her governess chaining her to a wall, like Andromeda, captioned to the effect of Elizabeth’s being thoroughly doomed (to continue her English history studies); a fond note from her father on her birthday that almost made her cry; a short, painstakingly printed letter from one William Turner that he would be making a delivery that day, which had been addressed to her father and to her - she had known it had only included her because had only been for her, and that succeeded; Elizabeth was wiping tears away when another letter revealed itself, an even crueler irony than James Norrington’s.

I love you very much, my darling and dearest Elizabeth - and it pains me to speak sternly to even those I do not love, but you have always urged me to be frank and honest, and you would love me less if I were not, which I could not abide; and so I see that I must be brave like you are, and attempt it. If you want to change your situation, and you are so desperately unhappy in yours now, you must marry. You have been raised to know this. All of the games of our childhood are behind us now. You have so much to look forward to! I have never known the great happiness I am provided by my dear and loving Jonathan. I only wish you could know an equal joy, and I believe you will. Please don’t speak any longer of running away. Your duty as a daughter begs you not to, for, even if you would not protect your father’s honor, surely you would protect his heart? Indeed you must take heart and have courage, and live the life you wish to life - that is all very good and true! You can and must do this through marrying. I wish I were there and could make you see your prospects as they truly are.

I do not share your conviction that Captain Norrington would ‘leave you on shore to rot’, as you put it, if you accepted him - and neither am I convinced Will Turner would make you so happy as you think. I know that it is nothing to you that he is a blacksmith; I daresay learning a trade alongside your husband is a draw to you and not a repellent; but a blacksmith will be much more at shore than a naval officer; he will craft swords and not use them; and if you marry him you will spend the rest of your life in Port Royal much as you dread you will already, and those society balls you so detest, you say, without me - a fact which I can well believe since you did not love them beside me, either! - you will only evade them because you will no longer be admitted to them. If there is a way to be bold while remaining proper, and ascertain whether or not Captain Norrington intends to take his wife to sea, surely you are the woman to discover it! And even if he has no such intention, which I doubt, if any woman could convince him, it would be you.

Elizabeth, I have spoken too much as a mother already, but as I close I find myself uneasy about your continued chest pain. Please trouble yourself to see a physician. I know that you are afraid of being labeled with one of those female ailments, and confined further to your house than you already feel you are, but it is not normal to experience such intensity in a complaint as you describe to me. As you love me, promise me you will. I would make you if I only could. Heaven knows how greatly I value you - my best friend through all the worst years of my life, who saw a beauty in me before any man did, my sister and soul - so protect yourself.

Always and forever, Amelia

Elizabeth struggled to press a quiet kiss to the closed letter; she was visibly distraught.

“Elizabeth?” James said again.

She pressed it silently into his hands. James frowned and opened it up again.

A moment into his scanning through it, his eyes softened. He folded it again and gave it back to her before folding her into his arms, against his chest.

It was a distraction - she wanted to go through those pages again, it hurt like an itch - but a relief. She sank against him with a heavy sigh.

“Come with me,” he said. “We need to go back.”

“I don’t know if I can do that right now,” she said, desperately wiping at her eyes. When the next thing they landed on was a handkerchief, she didn’t question it, though she saw the W. S. she’d embroidered in the corner afterward and snorted bitterly. “I can’t - I can’t be seen like this-”

James looked around for something that could shield her face. Predictably, yet alarmingly, an impeccable black cocked hat, trimmed with cloth of gold and ostrich feathers, slipped from the top of a clothes rack and hit the floor at their feet.

“Oh, God,” he muttered, his eyes uneasily alighting on a small oval portrait of a young woman in rather plain dress who was decidedly not Elizabeth. James reached out to try to turn it to the post on which it was hung, but it was no use. The portrait turned around on its wire, and Mrs Maria Fenton- black-haired, dark-eyed, skin a light brown and dressed in mourning- gazed back at them.

Elizabeth’s wet eyes darted from the painting to James and back again.

“Is it-?”

“Yes,” he said. “Before she set sail with us.”

“I think she’s very pretty,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said as he tried to pull her away. “We should go-”

“Her portrait is better than mine,” Elizabeth said in a feeble stab at humor. She was still reluctant to leave. “I had Will send Barbossa here - I don’t want us to be gone when he comes-”

“It's trying to keep us here, that's what it wants- it's already hurt you, it's already transfixed you-”

“I’m just not ready,” she protested, holding his hands but digging in her heels. “I’m not ready to face all of that-”

“All of what? Elizabeth-”

“All of the rest of my life!” she shouted, fear naked in her face. “Look at it, it’s just been one mistake after the other -”

“I wrote that letter, and I'm here, right now, asking you to please come with me-”

“I will! Just give me a minute - James - please - please don’t make me walk out of here like this-”

Her voice had gone from a shout to a hoarse whisper in only two phrases, and she clung to his hands with tears in her eyes. James tightened his hold on her hands.

“Elizabeth- none of this is real. None of it-”

“How can you look around at this and say that,” she said, a tiny note of hysteria creeping into her voice - that kind that says I’m not crazy, why won’t you take my side?

“The portrait- it would have rotted underwater by now-”

“Maybe they came here, maybe it all came here first-”

“Then where's the ship, Elizabeth, where are the men?” James said, his voice growing hoarse with anxiety. “How is it going to give me my bloody hat back and not Dauntless-”

Elizabeth shook her head, increasingly frantic and faint. “I don’t - I don’t know, but- these things are real - even if - even if these aren’t the originals-”

“Then why- why these of all things? Why torture us with a life we cannot go back to and would not choose to if we could?”

“Maybe just a reminder- to be-”

Her voice was growing soft.

“To be grateful for -”

Elizabeth let go of James too quickly, stumbling back into the bookshelf and knocking something over. It landed open, of course. Elizabeth did not see it, though, pressing her hand over her heart, which was jumping. It felt full of shooting pain, and she didn’t feel strong enough to stand. In fact she had such an overpowering and irrational sense of distress and physical pain she started to cry.

“Elizabeth!”

James caught her and guided her down to the floor, where he knelt beside her.

“Elizabeth, what is it-”

“I’m so glad,” she managed to tell him. “So glad you’re still here to love me-”

James glared up, wild-eyed, at the nearest sailor, and barked at him to get some help, even as he pulled Elizabeth to his chest again.

“I am,” he said. “I've loved you for years-”

Her breathing came sharp; her hands were shaking, but she kept one pressed over her chest as though that could ease that pain. She felt helpless and miserable, and mortified James had seen it - she felt she had just undone herself for good. Having a woman’s ailment - kings do not have women’s ailments.

James, his own breathing heavy, pressed his hand over hers and leaned his head on hers.

“It's this place,” he said. “It's getting to us all.”

“I don’t think I can go,” Elizabeth moaned into his chest. “I don’t think - I don’t think I have any future when I leave here, and everything that’s happened here has only hastened my downfall-”

“We can't stay here,” James said. “Beckett's still out there, alive, and we're all that can match him. He killed your father, Elizabeth- we can't stay here-”

She tried to peep up at him, but she only managed to see a portrait hanging on the far wall - obscured earlier by dangling scarves, no doubt, but Weatherby Swann just the same. She tried to fold herself into the smallest piece of person possible and hide against James, but the tears returned all the same.

“Elizabeth,”James murmured, in a much softer voice now, “it wants you to give up. It wants you to feel helpless. You're braver than that, you're so much braver than this-”

“Give it a rest, boy,” another voice cut in. “Forgive me for my admittedly rather harsh assessin’ o’ the situation, but you may not be the best man t’be preachin’ a gospel of resilience.”

“Captain,” James said, with a short nod.

“Commodore,” said Barbossa.

Elizabeth’s head came up, streaked with tears and messy hair. She tried to pull air into her lungs, but she only managed to protest Barbossa’s name in a gasp for breath, and her attempt to stand up was frustrated by a concerned lover.

Barbossa’s arms were crossed over his chest. Today, it appeared he had discovered a jacket made of the same stiff blue material as nearly everyone’s trousers, trimmed with fleece at the collar and wrists.

“So,” he said. “Who’s going to explain to me what in the name of Triton’s left bollock is going on in here?”

“It’s a trap,” James began. “The place is-”

“Oh, come off it,” Barbossa groaned. “You should’ve learned by now that when I ask something among all assembled parties, I’m exceptin’ you.”

Elizabeth took a shallow breath and pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.

“New shop-” she managed. “I’m - my heart is - “

The mortification of being discovered in such a state beyond helplessness by Barbossa, the man whose respect she most desired and whose displeasure she most feared, was almost enough to send her into a real fit of hysterics, but she focused on the ridiculousness of his fleece collar to draw her sanity from.

“It’s - subsiding, but-”

“Man alive, girl,” he said, in what approximated shocked concern where Hector Barbossa was concerned, “you ain't old enough for that!”

“It’s happened before,” she grumbled.

James pushed himself up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. Barbossa gave him a suspicious look.

“How about you? Did you know about this?” Barbossa asked, jerking his head toward Elizabeth.

“A nervous symptom is not a symbol of decline,” James said in stiff offense.

“Nobody said nothin’ about decline, handsome,” Barbossa retorted, somehow making the last word sound like an absolutely devastating insult. “Now, what's a junk shop got to do with any o’ this?”

Elizabeth picked up the Morgan journal and weakly pushed it at him. Barbossa glanced at it, at first in dismissal and then in amused interest, not noticing the letters that slipped out and fell to the floor.

“Well, ain't this a sight. Teague’ll want a look at it. What do you reckon it's doin’ here?”

“Look in the margins,” Elizabeth pressed.

A surprisingly accurate drawing of a swashbuckling teenage girl who caricatured herself with a rather big chin, wide mouth, small eyes and enormous amount of uncombed hair fought pirate doodles in the corners. She hadn’t dared to wish too hard, but the dress still showed a fair amount of flat bosom; that was the only detail she had gotten extremely wrong. Her sketches of pistols were terribly like sausages, unsurprising for a girl who was largely encouraged to draw close acquaintances and flowers only.

Fittingly, artistic license seafaring Elizabeth appeared to shoot at inksmudge-with-eyes assailants beside the coda on parlay. She had taken to drawing pistol-fire with great gusto and rather enormous clouds of smoke.

Barbossa scowled in order to not look disturbed.

“In considerin’ the circumstances, I’ll overlook the vandalizin’ of an important document,” he said. “Are you suggestin’ this place conjured this up from your old belongings?”

“There’s James’ hat,” she said pointing. “There’s Mrs. Maria Fenton. And my father over there. That - that there - is my wedding dress. Oh, look,” she said, in a perturbingly flat tone of disinterest. “Do you recognize that one?”

She was certain it hadn’t been there earlier, but draped across a beat-up and ornate chair was another familiar dress - rather older, the color of a wine stain.

“Look around. Recognize anything else?”

Barbossa followed her gaze, not noticing that James Norrington had lowered himself to the ground to look at the fallen letters.

“Mary’s blessed tits,” Barbossa muttered, eyes widening. “This be a new one, all right.”

Elizabeth wearily touched the top of James’ head - absent-mindedly, and not for long.

“I’ve been reading my old letters,” she said, her heart-beat still not returned fully to normal. “And all of a sudden I felt like to die. It’s improving though. Must be your excellent company,” she said drily.

James unfolded the letter. It was- already in disturbing defiance to the already faulty logic this place appeared to run on- one Elizabeth had sent to him.

My Dearest James:

Please promise that when you next make port in Port Royal you will leave with one sailor more than you arrived with. My father & governess & maid & each and every acquaintance agree that i look like a boy already, and i will listen to all of your orders, even the very dangerous & dirty ones, as long as you do not ever tell me to correct my posture or threaten to tie my back to a chair until I sit like a lady (which already sounds like one of your navy punishments, does it not? I may as well be there already). I wait your confirmation and only hope I am still alive to receive it for I am less & less certain every day that I shall live to see the next. Fondest -

Your Elizabeth

He remembered this one, and unfolded the accompanying letter with an increasing sense of expectant dread.

“Is that a recurrin’ affliction?” Barbossa asked.

“It was a long time ago,” said Elizabeth reluctantly, rubbing her chest as though it still ached (it did). “I’m sorry you saw it.”

“Don’t go apologizin’ to me. It’s you you’ve got to be looking after.”

My dearest, most cherished Elizabeth,

Your misfortunes do pain me. For what do I sail the seas if the cruelest injustices are meted out not by pirates, but by governesses? And against no mere stranger, but my dearest, shortest friend. (Not for long, I gather - your father mentioned having to update your warderobe to accommodate a growth spurt. Congratulations! Not for nothing are they training you to be a lady, you'll be one soon - and what a fright THAT prospect is. I am almost afraid to make port again.)

However, I shall not take you with me when I leave again, for a number of reasons.

1. Your father would not allow it, and so if I did, that would put a quick end to my career.

2. They would not train you so if they were not certain you would benefit by i one day, so I assume you won't make a convincing lad much longer. Condolenses.

3. You would terrorise my crew and bully my captain, and

4. Your knots were always abyssmal.

Try to practice either the knots or the posture a little better before we meet again, my girl.

Best wishes,

James Norrington

As James lifted his head, he realized with a start that there was someone crouching under the loaded table Elizabeth and Barbossa stood talking in front of- probably a crew member embarrassed to be rifling through the shop when the king and her dog had arrived. Elizabeth and Barbossa both seemed distracted enough that James crept forward on all fours to dismiss the eavesdropper.

As he moved closer, so did the person under the table. James made a quick gesture for them to get out, but they continued forward, one hand coming forward into the light in a dark blue woollen sleeve, trimmed with gold braid at the cuffs.

James’s frown deepened. He looked up at the eavesdropper’s face and suddenly, too abruptly to make it without stumbling back, jumped to his feet again, heart pounding.

“James?” asked Elizabeth, the sudden motion - and the fact that it was James, who did not start readily - creating havoc for her heartrate all over again. Not caring about the presence of Barbossa, she held him tightly. “James, what is it?”

“I saw-”

He bent down to see if it- he?- was still down there, and saw only his own startled face looking back from a rust-spotted mirror propped up under the table.

He exhaled and shut his eyes. “Never mind. It was a mistake. I’ll tell you later.”

Barbossa looked at him suspiciously. “Been drinking again?” “No,” said James, without much feeling.

“I pulled his tooth out,” said Elizabeth. “It came loose in the fight with Will yesterday.”

That was delivered with a mild kick to James’ posterior; his ego would feel it most. Nonetheless, things were so unsettled at the moment that it was meant to lighten the mood.

“What did you find down there, anyway?”

“Letters,” said James, who was glad to change the subject. “Between you and I.”

Barbossa rolled his eyes.

Elizabeth wilted. “What now?”

James held them out to her. “We were both much younger then.”

It wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be; they made her laugh. She tried to show them to Captain Barbossa, as a cat tries to make a gift of a dead bird, and he gave them a token glance-over and a strained smile befitting any indulgent but less than enthused cat owner.

When she moved to put them back into the diary - she wasn’t certain why; she knew they were not real, yet she couldn’t help but treat them as though they were fragile keepsakes - she looked surprised to find a third letter in her hand, overlooked by both James and herself. There was an ink sketch of the view of the beach from Elizabeth’s old bedroom that gave her a powerfully disorienting sense of homesickness and misery, and beneath it, a letter she had long since forgotten.

Everything you describe sounds so grand. I picture it vividly in my mind - the heated smell of gunpowder, the salt of the sea air, the deafening noise - and the swelling in your chest as your survey the end of it, victorious - and grieving too; it must be such a tumult of feeling! No man is more deserving, father and I both agree, of a promotion; you must make captain soon. No excuses! I speak to the Admiralty, you understand. In my heart I know it cannot be long. And father - and I, and all of Port Royal - are so proud of you.

I wish that I were on another journey, as like the passage from England was, over sea, with a fine young officer to teach me how to tie knots. I still remember the constellations you showed me. It was a night I could not sleep; you had only time to point out two. I don't suppose you recall all that. I must have been such a dreadful brat to you. But as a mourning child your kindness was never forgotten. Who could have imagined we would be such dear friends so many years later? I think if you had told me then, though, I would have believed it.

I wish I had those constellations back. I have the dances, the small talk, the music, the flowers, the dinners, the hair styles - oh, my word, so many hairstyles - and the shoes, the corsages - but never the stars, it seems, hang above my head just to spite me though they will. I envy your stars and your ocean. At least tell me of them, and then it will be almost like they are mine too.

The illustration of her view of the beach had signified a comparison between his view and hers - hers being pitiful next to his, she had thought then; the first page of the letter was missing. Yet it seemed intimate now; the closest he would have ever come to a view of her bedchamber; she had even kept in the windowsill; the curtains, crosshatched, a suggestion of lace flowers.

The rest of the letter was also missing; she was certain there had been a pencil of her father in there too, and a half-hearted attempt at her own likeness, which he had intimated in his letter he would like to see, in response to her saying she had been practising likenesses but had been her own best model. It had been done by candle, late at night, after she could not sleep; she remembered being more in shadow than out of it, but it had aided the impression of accuracy enormously.

What an encouragement it must have seemed at the time; she had not considered it from that angle. He had still been like a brother to her, though she had never liked him so much - and until recently she had never liked him so much since, either.

It sunk her spirits again. She penitently handed it over to James.

James allowed his fingers to brush over hers as he took it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I need to talk to you in private.”

“Just a moment. Captain Barbossa,” she said, turning only to discover he was no longer waiting impatiently for her to leave; he had something in his hand. Weary with dread, she repeated, “Captain Barbossa?”

When he looked over his shoulder at her, Barbossa’s eyes were, shockingly, wet.

She said nothing, but the tactful alarm in her eyebrows spoke for her.

“It’s her dress,” he said. “It’s me little Polly’s dress…” Elizabeth’s sense of personal distress for him increased exponentially. She was on the verge of apologizing for his daughter when she saw the proportions of it. It was only somewhat a relief.

“She drowned near twenty years ago,” he said, choking back a sob. “She never did no one any harm-”

“Oh, another monkey,” James said in sudden, relieved understanding.

“More’n a monkey,” Barbossa snapped. “She was me own little girl. The only little girl I got to keep.”

Elizabeth and James exchanged a look at that, Elizabeth breaking it too quickly to be seen.

With a heavy sigh, he turned away from them, dropping the long-dead monkey’s frothy little court dress on the table and walking toward the door, pausing only to look at the decaying journal with its ruby-encrusted front and making a noise like a wounded animal as he flung it down and hurried out in an uncharacteristic transport of grief.

“This place really is getting to us,” James said, watching him go. Unexpectedly - but producing a rather more normal state of surprise in Elizabeth - Will Turner leaned around the door, looking more spooked than normal.

“You can say that again,” he said, and, looking nervous at the prospect, walking back in.

Elizabeth hadn’t realized Will was still there, but she was very nearly relieved to see him, and had left James’ side to go to him before she realized what she’d done and stopped.

Will had never been excellent at concealing his feelings - all the more reason to be more shocked when it turned out he had been more than capable of doing it, she supposed bitterly. But now he made no such attempt, looking around the room with his jaw set tight, hoping not to recognize anything - and failing, she believed clearly.

“What is it?” she asked softly. Contextually, it might have seemed like a question about his mood; but he knew she meant what his eyes had fallen on, even though she couldn’t tell for certain that they had.

“A chair,” he said shortly. “Stool, really. It was in my mother’s kitchen. I remember sitting in it the day she died, putting my head in my arms, my arms on the table - not moving. A neighbor came and cooked something for me. An old woman… I’ve forgotten her name. I wish I hadn’t. She was the kindest…”

Will broke off, flatly. He lifted a brooch from one among many, with a flat expression and a shrug.

“Well, she wore this on her fichu that day. I remember that part.”

Elizabeth had shyly joined him by now, though she stood on the other side of the table.

“I’m surprised your father’s medallion hasn’t turned up by now.”

“Ha. Maybe even this place can’t conjure up those. Maybe their magic was greater…”

Elizabeth lifted a necklace, thin and delicate gold chain with one beautiful pearl, sighed, and lowered it again. Will placed his hand over hers a moment, as though to keep it down - or to touch her, possibly. As though he came to the same conclusion, he removed it with a stiff awkwardness.

“It’s getting better at finding our weak spots,” Will said, his voice low, but certain.

“Are you afraid of its overhearing you?” asked Elizabeth wryly. “It’s all around us now. I don’t suppose the volume of your voice matters.”

“No, you’re probably right,” said Will, with a quiet laugh. “Perhaps I don’t want to overhear myself. I hate thinking about it. It’s trying to keep us here, I imagine. Though I don’t know how this is going to help. As likely as anything it will make us hate the place.”

“It doesn’t want us to like the place,” Elizabeth countered. “We just have to stay here. That’s what James thinks.”

“Turner,” said James, from a few feet away.

He had his hands clasped behind his back as he approached, all business.

“Am I to call you Norrington?” asked Will, voice so subdued he nearly did not sound as though he were baiting him. Elizabeth put her hand on his arm at once, and some of Will’s tension dropped away with a small, self-conscious, visible twinge of shame.

James was visibly unamused, but he held out his hand regardless.

“I believe I owe you an apology.”

Elizabeth’s relief and surprise were their own punishment. Will took his hand, less surprised than she was, but more visibly glad of it.

“Seems that I owe you the same,” he said. “It was…. Self-destructive and foolish to demand the heart. I should have petitioned you, Elizabeth,” he said, turning to her when the handshake was relinquished, with his voice growing unconsciously soft.

“I would have told you no,” said Elizabeth firmly, but warmly. Will snorted a gentle laugh, but it was assenting.

“Then I would have chased you all over the mall,” he warned her - unable to conceal a smile.

Her own was equally unconscious.

“You’d be a sorry man if you caught up to me,” she returned in kind.

“Perhaps it would be he who lost a tooth,” James cut in.

“You lost a tooth?” asked Will, instantly humbled. “I am sorry - I didn’t realize I hit you that hard.”

James smiled just enough to show the wad of gauze where his tooth should have been and abruptly closed his mouth again before he added, a little more graciously, “It wasn’t you, exactly. It was the final straw for an older injury I sustained in Tortuga.”

“I’m still sorry, but rather less,” said Will, with a smile that was too sincere to be sly, though it approached it. Elizabeth was watching his face without realizing it.

“It comes with choosing a side,” said James. He averted his eyes, and immediately regretted it, greeted as he was by Elizabeth’s wedding dress.

“I pulled it out myself,” Elizabeth was saying, her voice soft and low; Will leaning in unconsciously to better hear it. “Pair of pliers, hardware store.”

“I tremble to think of it,” Will responded. “That’s something I’ll miss when we leave. I took a few things, but all of the things I’d really like to take would be too heavy when we swim back to shore in our - in the real world.”

“Yes, we’ve been having the same trouble. The furniture’s good here, but…”

James, eyes averted, forced himself to tune them out. A floorboard creaked at the back of the store and he turned his head in its direction.

“ - not that I really need that many pairs of trousers -” A self-conscious, adorable laugh.

“You wear them well,” Will responded, respectful and fond. “I hope you’re happy in them; you used to hate sparring in that old dress.”

“Yes! Oh, God’s name - is that -”

Elizabeth crossed to the other side of the table to pick something up by the handle, which she had only just now seen, sticking out from beneath an old blue coat.

“It is!” said Will, taking it before she did, lifting it up to admire it. Not half so nice as the one her father had commissioned, but sturdy and fine - and blunt. “I remember making this for you.”

She touched his arm again, this time her hand sinking into the crook of his elbow comfortably. His eyes met hers and rested there.

“ - May I?”

“ - oh - of course -”

With Elizabeth preoccupied and the apparition under the table still weighing on his mind, James stepped slowly, cautiously toward the back of the store. There was a creaking and shuffling from behind a rack of old clothes, as though someone were walking around back there. The clothes themselves ruffled lightly.

James stopped partway there and leaned down to peer under the rows of clothes.

There was a pair of legs on the other side- small, in greyish stockings and heavy shoes. Rationally, it was one of Barbossa’s children- a girl, probably, dressed up in boys’ clothes.

James wasn’t sure.

He reached out toward the shelf, anticipating by now that the store would answer him with what he was thinking of- and sure enough, his hand closed over the wooden handle of a pistol. Single shot, naval issue.

James opened the chamber. It was loaded.

“Come on out,” he said. “You shouldn’t be in here. It’s- unhealthy.”

Towards the front of the store, neither of the Turners - former and present - had noticed he was gone.

Will had found one of his other practice swords, and slowly lifted it for Elizabeth to block.

“Good- that’s very good.”

“Hard to mess up when you’re going so slow-” she countered, with a cautiously quicker lunge at him - he blocked it, of course.

“There’s hardly space enough to go faster -”

“If it were a real duel, we’d have to adapt to the space.”

“True enough.”

And soon Elizabeth was hitting a table and disrupting it, knocking several things off it with a heavy thud - from the table - and a giggle, from herself.

“Careful! Are you hurt?”

“Not at all. Will?”

The clang of the practice swords made his heart float, as he thought it wouldn’t again. This was familiar. He knew this feeling. He knew this sound. And he knew this woman - his Elizabeth again, not the Pirate King, not another man’s lover -

“Yes?”

“Do you think - perhaps I could commission - we used to discuss it -”

He almost got the sword away from her, but Elizabeth tossed a scarf into his eyes and got away from him while he pulled it away, laughing.

“- a sword for me, the guard shaped like a folded pair of swan’s wings - I think I’d like that.”

Clang. Clang. They’re kissing, Elizabeth used to say.

“I think I’d like that too -”

The figure behind the rack paced a few steps to the side, with a strange squelching sound. James leaned down again.

Whoever it was, they were soaking wet and dripping water. It squeezed from their shoes as they turned and paced back another few feet.

James’s pulse sped up. He closed the chamber on the gun again, took a deep breath, and parted the clothes on the rack.

The store echoed uncommonly, didn’t it? It rang with the sounds of two swords striking each other again and again, and Elizabeth’s laughter, as sweet a sound as a bell. Too small a space for echoes, and too small a space for sparring, too - they got tangled up together too quickly. Will managed to knock her sword aside, his own sword playfully at her throat. But she didn’t end it there, out of breath, caught between a smile and a thought - a dream, really - looking at him with an odd expression, like she’d had a revelation.

Will lowered his sword. “Elizabeth,” he said.

James Norrington came running, leaping over a table and clearing it of half its possessions - then skid along the floor deftly, without falling.

“We have to leave now-”

Will lifted the blunt training sword to attention at once, frowning in the direction he’d come from.

But James grabbed them both by the first surfaces he could grab, the pistol already abandoned, and started hurrying them toward the door.

“James, what is it?” asked Elizabeth, trying to keep up with him, but still rather disoriented. “And- wait- James, I wanted to keep-”

They had already been hauled out of the storefront by the time she managed to get that out, and for the life of her, she could no longer remember what she wanted - only the sense of wanting it, and wanting to go back in for it.

“What’s the matter with you-”

James looked, wild-eyed, over his shoulder at the distant storefront, as a little white face and two little white hands pressed against the glass window, water dripping from where they made contact.

Elizabeth let out a short scream and clapped her hand over her mouth.

He pulled them both another few yards away.

“Whatever else happens,” James said, trying and failing to conceal the tremble in his voice, “no one is to go back there. We ignore it, we pretend it doesn’t exist-”

When he looked back over his shoulder, the figure was gone.

Will Turner took Elizabeth - grip strong, but not rough - by the arm and hurried her, with Norrington, down the hallway until they had reached the part of the mall that was brightly lit again, whereupon, as a group, they stopped, all pale and shaken - Elizabeth pulling out her phone with a trembling hand to glance at the time. No wonder her legs felt as unsteady as they did; they had been hours in that store, and they hadn’t eaten.

“It was your cabin boy,” Will surmised, eyes meeting Norrington’s as Elizabeth scrolled her phone, the bright light of the screen making her look even more exhausted. “Wasn’t it? From the Dauntless.”

James looked at him, about to angrily retort something at him before he realized what he had actually said.

“...yes,” he said. “Georgie Bingham. He was- he was only ten years old.”

“I’m sorry,” said Will, the weight of it in his eyes. They rested on Norrington’s only a moment longer, but it was enough. He glanced over the mall; after the dim gas lanterns of the haunted storefront, the brightness of the rest of this place felt ghastly and artificial. It looked like something that had had the blood sucked out of it.

“We have to get out of here, don’t we,” he muttered.

“Does the number 403 mean anything?” asked Elizabeth Swann suddenly. She hadn’t been listening, but now she glanced up from her phone in annoyed confusion.

James looked sick.

“Oh, God-”

She continued to scroll her phone.

“Some number I don’t know has been texting me that for nearly three hours.”

“We have to get out of here-”

Elizabeth looked at him; he looked nauseated. She met Will’s eyes. In spite of her hunger and overall physical exhaustion - she felt as though Will had done much worse than merely spar with her, which was uncomfortably hard to explain - it still seemed as though her mind was clearing. She took James by the hand gently, then looked at Will.

“Tell Teague we’re leaving. I’ll get Barbossa.”

He nodded. They had no time to waste.

Wet footprints glistened on the linoleum stretch behind them, growing drier as the light grew brighter, fading into nothing.

#potcsuggestions #jackquest 1748 #pl: h34v3nlie måll #ch: firing squad #ch: turn down for what #ch: come on barbie let's go party #ch: her majesty if you're nasty

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unityghost · 6 years

Text

Scratches

I’ve come to supply the internet with more angst. One can never have too much angst. It’s kind of like parmesan cheese.

This fic, part 6 of my ultra-emo series Post-Asmodeus Sabriel Feels, is based on a prompt I got from @t-rexhighfives, who proposed the following: “later down the line (like probably a yearor two in the future), sam having a particularly bad day (bc lord knows sam hasnt been allowed to work through his own traumas, both bc of everything that happens and bc he wont let himself work through it) and then gabe is having a moderately bad day (not awful, not the worst, but not great either) and sam is trying to help gabe and its just. not working. and gabe is like '... sam, you okay?' and sams just like ‘fine, im fine’ and they both know its a lie and so gabe decides that since sam has helped him so much, hes gonna return the favor (idk if this is even interesting or good, i just think it would be interesting to have the tables turned on sam lol)”

It was good, and it was interesting! So thanks.

WARNING: This story contains brief references to torture and sexual assault.

... The spirit had been slaughtered by a local priest, and was exercising his revenge upon the clergy at the church across from where he was buried. Every seventy years or so, the parishioners were given the news that their pastor - or, occasionally, the assistant priest - had been burned alive. The general consensus was that it was suicide, and that the latest victims had picked up the idea from the unfortunate history of the parish. Sure, there were rumors of curses, of witchcraft and phantoms - but it was all fare for a small town whose self-image was all eighteenth-century colonial New England serenity.

The whole thing should have been a simple affair - gathering the sources, visiting the church, identifying the grave. And all of that had indeed been pretty straightforward; what they hadn’t anticipated was how swift and vicious the spirit proved to be.

He caught them in the dead of night just as they were preparing to incinerate the remains. Dean was armed with a lit match, per protocol, and the spirit seized it from his hand before throwing himself at Sam, forcing him into the dewey grass. He began to scratch at Sam’s face with ragged fingernails, and he screamed about the priest who had counseled him, the priest who had believed that some people deserved an early damnation. The spirit howled about how he himself had been among the casualties of the rector’s delusion.

But the spirit gave a spidery smile as he spoke about burning any priest that dared to warn the congregants about the dangers of taking a fellow man or woman to bed, lest they find themselves punished by the devil - just as he had been punished by the Reverend Casper Lockwood.

Only as the spirit attacked his brother did Dean find himself grateful that Sam allowed Gabriel to accompany them. Wickford Village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island was one of the few places Gabriel had never been in his millennia of existence.

“It’s not like there’s any real reason to go to Rhode Island at all,” he’d insisted. “Who cares about clams and potholes? But,” he conceded, “I could use a trip to overpriced new-age tourist shops as much as the next guy. You ever get ahold of those A-to-Z angel encyclopedias? I’m gonna sneak in and draw Shrek all over them.”

But in the cemetery, Gabriel - whose grace had returned in full force over the year since his rescue from Asmodeus - wrenched the spirit off of Sam, whose face was streaked with blood from the wounds inflicted by jagged fingernails, and pinned him down. But the spirit was strong; it seized Gabriel’s legs and threw him into the ground, reversing their positions so that Gabriel was crushed.

But there is no taking away an archangel’s ability to start a fire once he’s made up his mind and has his hands free.

Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the remains ignited.

Sam lay on the ground, listening to the growl of the flames.

By the time it was all over, the sky had inched from blue to gray, and Dean could barely stand up. Neither he nor Sam had slept in over twenty-four hours. He stumbled on his way back to the car, parked on the quiet village road strewn with the first shriveled leaves of late September.

“Dude,” said Sam, watching his brother collapse against the car. “You’re not driving like that.”

“I’m just tired; Father Pyro barely even noticed me.” Dean straightened up, pulled the door open, and hit himself himself in an inopportune area. “Son of a - !” He bent double and groaned. “You win this round, jerk. Get in the car.”

“No thanks, bitch. You think Cas could drive? I was thinking of hanging around, getting some breakfast at the café we saw on our way over.”

Dean raised his head to stare at Sam. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I mean, I can’t go to sleep now that it’s almost daylight.”

“I don’t even know where Cas - ”

“I’m here, Dean.” Cas shuffled over to them, face littered with fine bloody streaks just as Sam’s was. “Sam - ” He placed his middle and index fingers on Sam’s forehead and the pain of the scratch marks faded.

Sam touched his face. Only five o’ clock shadow. “Thanks. Now heal yourself.”

Castiel shook his head. “I don’t have enough grace at the moment. Fighting back was a little more than I’d - ”

“Let me, brother.” Gabriel touched him just as Castiel had touched Sam, and the wounds melted away.

“Sam, you’re gonna have to drive,” Dean instructed. His forehead was wrinkled in discomfort but he seemed otherwise recovered. That clumsy accident was, Sam realized gratefully, the worst that had happened to his brother tonight. “Cas is exhausted.”

Castiel looked more closely at Sam. “Sam, are you all right?”

“Yeah, Cas, you patched me up. Should have saved some of that juice for your - ”

“No. I mean you look distressed.”

Gabriel shot Sam a sharp glance. “He’s right, kiddo. What’s the matter?”

“I’m okay.” Sam was embarrassed. “Just thought I’d stick around for a little bit. I can always sleep later. You guys can head on back to the motel.”

“Sammy, you should come too.” Dean’s tone was gentler this time. “You need to get some rest. Come on.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m fine. Really. I promise. Later, okay?”

“I could use a cup of coffee myself,” Gabriel chimed in.

“You don’t need caffeine,” Sam pointed out. “It doesn’t do anything for you.”

Gabriel inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Technically you’re right. But in a much more important sense, you’re wrong. And besides, I just got a nice little bone-fire going for you guys, didn’t I?”

“You do realize how that sounds, don’t you?” Dean groaned.

Gabriel ignored him. “Coffee can only lead to more grace, am I right, little bro?”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Castiel replied.

“Oh, you’ve had one too many herbal teas. This guy” - he jerked a thumb at Sam - “is a bad influence.

“Gabe,” Sam interrupted, “I kind of want to be by myself.”

“Archangel vote counts as two; it’s the rules.”

Sam scoffed. “Whose rules?”

“Humans aren’t allowed access to that kind of information. Know your place, Sam. Now let’s go; these two want to get on the road.”

Sam struggled for a moment before admitting defeat. “Whatever, yeah, fine. I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

Dean hesitated. “Call if anything comes up. We’ll be around.”

Castiel’s gaze met Sam’s. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sam crossed his arms, shuddering against a chilly breeze. The sting of the wounds echoed in his skin like the remnants of a bad smell. “Yeah. Fine.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Gabriel promised.

With some reluctance, Dean and Cas climbed into the Impala, then drove away until they turned left on Main Street and disappeared.

Sam started walking in that same direction, saying nothing and refusing to acknowledge Gabriel keeping pace alongside him.

Sam kept touching his face, inspecting it for damage, and tried to ignore the twist of his stomach and the pounding of his heart.

But the silvery morning was too quiet, quiet enough to usher in a new voice: the voice that had playfully told him to hold still, that he wasn’t allowed to writhe in agony, that the more he screamed the deeper the knife would dig into him.

To Gabriel’s credit, he didn't try to initiate conversation. But it was hard for Sam to ignore the feeling of being examined from eight inches below.

The café opened its doors at 6:00, so they had fifteen minutes to lean against the bulky wood fence blocking off pedestrians from the water underneath. Off in the distance they could see a harbor and a few ducks and geese paddling their way into the daylight.

Finally, Gabriel spoke. “What was that?”

Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. “What was what?”

“The way you looked like you were gonna be sick the second that undadly freak of creation went back to where it belonged. What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Gabriel’s expression darkened. “No, Sam. Nooooooo, no no no no no. I am not about to play the same game with you that you play with me.

"Sam creased his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” When Sam continued to look puzzled, Gabriel sighed. “That stupid back-and-forth where I freak out, and you become some kind of saintly masochist, and I try to get you to go away, and you say things like ‘Let me help you, Gabe’ and ‘I’m not gonna hurt you, Gabe’ and ‘I don’t want you to keep this inside, Gabe.’ That game.”

Sam looked away.

“Spill it, Winchester. What’s going on with you?”

Still averting his eyes, Sam muttered, “Bad memories. That's all.”

“That’s all.”

“Yes, Gabriel. That’s all.”

“Okay, well, what was that thing you said to me about trying to open up when someone offers to help make things feel a little less, I don’t know, soul-crushing? Oh, that’s right: you said to open up when someone offers to help make things feel a little less soul-crushing.”

Sam shook his head, thought about crossing his arms again, and realized he felt safer if he tried not to move at all. “You’re not going to want to hear it. It’s … it’s Hell stuff. It’d remind you of what happened with Asmodeus.”

“You mean like my stuff made you remember your time in the Cage?” He felt almost satisfied at the guilt that crossed Sam’s face. “Sam. Come on. It’s me. I owe you one anyway.”

“We’re not trading stocks,” Sam protested. “You’re not ready to deal with my shit, Gabriel.”

“Well if this stubbornness is anything to go by, you weren’t ready to deal with mine either.”

There were several moments of silence, in which Gabriel realized the weight of what he had said.

“You’ve helped so much,” he told Sam, hugging himself in a protective stance; and Sam could see that he was suddenly afraid someone would hurt him for his mistake. “I didn’t mean you haven’t. You’ve done a good job. You’re too patient, Sam. I don’t deserve what you’ve given me. Shut up,” he added as Sam opened his mouth to object. “My point is that I want to return the favor, not that I have to.”

Sam sighed. Gabriel let him have a few moments to think before Sam finally spoke. “That guy … the spirit … you saw the way he pinned me to the ground and made cuts all over my face?”

“Uncourteous bastard,” Gabriel agreed.

“Well …” Sam rubbed his palms together, staring off somewhere into the distance. “I still get these … these dreams about how Lucifer used to do the same thing. Only … only instead of trapping me on the ground, he’d throw me into the fire and keep me there while he drew on me. Pictures, you know - graffiti, sort of. Family pictures of all his brothers and sisters - every last one. But like …” Sam swallowed. “He used knives. All kinds of knives. I, uh - yeah. Yeah, that’s …” He trailed off, lowering his gaze to the sidewalk, examining his shoes - caked with clammy soil from the cemetery.

Gabriel tilted his head. “All right. Welp. That explains it. Now was that so hard?”

“Damn it, Gabriel.” Sam looked angry. “You know it is.”

Gabriel flinched. “I just … I want to help you.”

Sam glanced at him, and his expression softened in concern. “Gabriel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to - ”

Gabriel waved a dismissive hand. “No, no, I’m good. Really. But anyway, Sam - why are you keeping this under wraps? Or, I mean, are you? Isn’t your brother there to listen? Or my brother?”

“I don’t know; I guess they could be.”

“But you won’t say anything.”

“I …” Sam licked his lips. “Gabriel … you understand. You understand better than anyone. I can’t talk about it because … because there’s too much there. Because I want to forget. And because I - ” The words caught in his throat. Gabriel watched him closely, wondering how to handle this with Sam as well as Sam had with him.

“Because what?” he pressed.

“Because I - because the last thing we need is extra problems,” Sam blurted out. “You’ve all got enough to be dealing with. And me complaining isn’t going to change anything; you know that! Besides,” he added more calmly, “This was your first time on a hunt with us - ever since things started to get a little better. You should be worrying about yourself, Gabriel.”

“Did you forget what I told you about how archangels have the final - ”

“The way he held you down.” Sam’s voice was quiet. “I know what that must have done to you.”

Gabriel tensed and Sam almost wished he hadn’t said anything to remind Gabriel of all those nightmares, all those spasms of memories - memories of the cold stone floor against his back and the hard warm body on top of him. “I’m not denying that. But look at me: I’m okay. A little shaken up, maybe, but okay. I knew what I was getting into. And anyway, now that I don’t need food or sleep I won’t have nightmares or puke my guts up. So forget about me for a second.”

Silence fell again. And then Sam said, “You know you can talk to me, right?”

Gabriel gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes, yeah, Sam, I do. You’ve drilled that into my brain. But now that I have a clear head, I want to help you too.”

“Why?”

Gabriel stared at him in disbelief. “I don’t know, maybe something to do with the fact that you've held my head over the toilet in the middle of the night so many times I lost count? Or the way you made sure nobody ever touched me without my permission? Or how, after months of me clinging to you, you didn’t give up?”

Sam grimaced. “Well, that was because you were …” He tried to find a diplomatic adjective. “… troubled.”

Gabriel tutted. “If by ‘troubled’ you mean ‘an undignified disaster,’ then I agree. But how is this any different, really? Come on. I’m not gonna take a single thing you say seriously if you don’t prove to me that you can practice what you preach.”

“Gabriel.” Sam was frustrated now. “What happened to me happened a long time ago. You’re just getting back on your feet. You need to focus on - ”

“You’re right.” Gabriel touched his shoulder as delicately as possible, knowing what it was like to be afraid of touch. “It was a long time ago. But that means it’s been sitting with you for years. What have you done with it? What I’d really like is for you to let me know when something freaks you out - don’t just hold that in. But it doesn’t have to be me; it can be anyone.”

Seagulls squawked overhead. The twin aromas of coffee and pastries drifted through the crisp morning air; 6:00 A.M. had come and gone, and the café doors were open. But neither of them made a move to go in.

“I think I’d want it to be you.” The confession surprised Gabriel, and he blinked. “Because … I think you’d genuinely want to hear it. Not Dean; he’s worse than I am. He’s not even tempted to say anything and he doesn’t need me throwing out all these reminders of what he went through.” His features hardened. “But neither do you. I know you’re more interested, and it’s not that I don’t appreciate it - I do. But it’s gonna make things worse for you. Bring up all kinds of stuff.”

“That’s okay.”

Sam tried to quell his anger so that he wouldn’t frighten Gabriel. “No, it’s not. Not after all your hard work.”

Gabriel snorted. “I think you mean your hard work.”

“Give yourself some credit, Gabe.”

“You give yourself some credit! Man, are you difficult to work with! Look, you told me about the knife thing Lucifer did, and do I seem upset to you? Do I seem like I’m freaked out?”

Sam studied him. Then he said, “No. You don’t. I’m glad.”

“Great. Okay, your turn. Ask me if I think you seem upset.”

Sam gripped the bar of the fence until his knuckles turned white. “Okay - fine. I’m not gonna disagree with you.” A pause. “Look, I know what I went through. I understand what you’re trying to tell me, all right? But I’ll get over it. I’ve been dealing with this for long enough that I know what to do when things get bad. I don’t want to bring anyone else into it.”

“I hear what you’re saying about me and your brother,” Gabriel admitted, “But why won’t you talk to Cas? He’ll be fine.”

“He doesn’t know how to address this kind of thing. Can you imagine how that would go down?”

“What are you - ” Gabriel stared at him. “Do you even know him at all? Of course he’d know what to say! You’ve been the Three Musketeers for how many years now? And you think he’s not tuned in enough to help?”

Sam remembered how Castiel had looked at him back in the cemetery, brow furrowed in concern, and felt a twinge of guilt for misjudging him. “No, you’re right. That was a dumb thing to say.” 

“Sam.” Gabriel somehow managed to sound simultaneously gentle and stern. “You don’t look okay. You really don’t.”

“Well I’m covered in graveyard dirt, so I’d have to agree with you there.”

“You’re pale. Sick. Shaky. Here, look - ” He picked up one of Sam’s hands to demonstrate that it was trembling.

Humiliated, Sam pulled away. “Don’t do that.”

But Gabriel seized his hand again and glared, no longer desperate but suddenly determined. “Listen up, you obdurate son of a bitch. I really, really don’t want to see you hurting. You always talked about how hard it was for you to watch me, remember? That’s what this is like! We’ve spent too much time together for me to play along and pretend you’re okay. I want to help. So please. Just let me.”

Sam paused, meeting his eyes.

Gabriel looked so much more like himself these days.

Sam took a deep breath. “I just don’t - ” He looked around, examining every part of the unfamiliar setting, hoping to distract himself from the tightness in his throat. “I - ”

Gabriel waited, still gripping his hand. When Sam didn’t continue, his voice softened. “There’s no one around, Sam. Just me.”

Sam looked at him, face flushed and eyes bright.

“It’s okay,” Gabriel went on. “Stop it. You’re hurting yourself.”

Sam turned his face away and squeezed his eyes shut. Now the prickling of the cuts was gone, replaced by the brininess of tears.

Damn it. After everything he’d been through with Gabriel - trying to bring him back to life, to coax him into something like what he had once been, to make the present feel stronger than the past - it was cruel of him to make Gabriel watch this.

Sam managed to compose himself enough to speak. “You know that feeling? The feeling that … that you can’t get out? That it’s happening right now and no one can help?”

Gabriel clutched his hand tighter. “Of course I do. But it’ll go away.”

Sam used his free hand to cover his mouth as the pressure against his chest became too solid to choke down.

“It will,” Gabriel insisted. “I’ll ride it out with you.”

Sam shook his head, clenching his eyes shut again, horribly ashamed. He lowered his hand. “It doesn't go away. It just - just gets worse before going down to where it usually is.”

Reminding himself that it wouldn’t get better - that it wouldn’t leave him alone - wrenched his control away.

He leaned up against the fence, trying to hide his face, trying to breathe.

“All right.” Gabriel put a hand on his back. “Just let it go back down to normal. Just wait for a few minutes. It’s gonna be okay.”

“No, it’s - that’s not what it feels like. Oh god - ” Sam shuddered, although there was no breeze this time. “You remember, don’t you? You know how bad it is. But you - you always talked about how you could tell the difference, how you knew your mind was playing tricks on you. Sometimes I just ... I don’t know where I really am, or who’s really with me. It’s - ” He released another harsh, desperate sob. “It’s too real.”

“Yeah, I knew how to separate one from the other. But only because I know how tricks work. They’re meant to feel real. And hey, so what if you can’t figure out what’s there and what’s not? Huh? Doesn’t change the fact that you’re gonna be fine.”

Nearly gagging from the effort of trying to maintain some semblance of dignity, Sam rasped, “Why did you make me do this? Why’d you want to make it stronger?”

“I didn’t!” Abruptly, Gabriel let go of his hand and took a step back. “I meant to make it easier!”

“I know - but -” He lowered his head, watching the sidewalk swim in a rough gray blur underneath him. “I told you not to.”

“Didn’t I always tell you the same thing?”

“No!” Sam jerked his head up despite feeling disgusted with himself. “I mean, yes, sometimes. But once in a while you … you looked for me. And you should have; I told you you could. But this is different, I ... I just wanted to be left alone.”

Gabriel looked helpless again. “You’re always alone. Because you don’t care about yourself enough to ask for what you need.” He hesitated.” You’re not scared of being touched, right? Not the way that I was?”

Am, Sam corrected silently. Aloud, he said, “Not usually. Not anymore. I - ”

Delicately, in case Sam wasn’t telling the full truth, Gabriel leaned forward and embraced him. Not the way Sam had done for him in moments of terror - Gabriel was so small that there couldn’t have been the same warmth and protection he got when Sam hugged him.

But Sam could tell he tried.

“I don’t care if you can’t tell what’s real,” Gabriel muttered. “You hold yourself together too well.”

“I really don’t.” Tentatively, Sam wrapped either arm around Gabriel’s shoulders.

“Come on. Your standards can’t be that high after a year of putting up with me.” Gabriel squeezed more tightly.

Sam was surprised - not so much by Gabriel’s outburst of affection but by his own reaction to it. He relaxed slightly, began to shiver a little less forcefully.

“That’s it,” Gabriel murmured. “You’re gonna be okay.”

They stood like that for several minutes, until Dean called to make sure everything was okay.

It wasn’t.

But gradually the wail of seagulls grew louder than the roar of hellfire.

...

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gimmetheheadcanons · 6 years

Text

Sinners & Scapegoats 3/?

A/N: Beta'd by the lovely and always supportive @siancore. The heart and soul of the Richonne fandom we don't deserve. chapter 1 here, chapter 2 here

3. Worse

Rick abandoned his fruitless teddy bear rescue mission pretty soon after it began. All it took first was an unexpected phone call from his own son to put him to shame. Made impatient by his excitement and wanting to share a piece of news his mother had insisted could wait, Carl Grimes' determined dialling unwittingly drew his delusional dad back to the real world of professional boundaries and paternal promises.

"Carl what did I tell you about bothering your father at work?"

"But mom! I just wanna know when he'll be back!"

"In his own time."

In his own time.

Rick felt the slight from miles away. An attack on his fatherhood, his commitment to his duties. It was the first time Lori had brought their battle to the 'Carl front'. The humiliation of listening helplessly over the line was unbearable to Rick, a man who prided himself in his relationship with his boy, his entire world – the center of the universe

Propelled into action by his hurt and in a desperate bid to prevent any further sullying of his good name, Rick raced all the way home – driving with very little regard to the traffic laws he was charged with reinforcing daily. Halfway into his journey, the righteous anger he felt dissipated, and he was left with an uncomfortable truth – Lori wasn't wrong.

He had a son, a little boy of his own, and whilst Michonne was out there, earning her points as a parent, he had to be dragged back to his. It wasn't right, Rick thought angrily, cursing himself, and not Lori this time, for the situation he had gotten himself into. What was he going to do anyway? Kick down his front door in a fit of rage and proceed to throw down with the mother of his child in front of said child? Over what? A comment that may have been just that – a comment. Entirely harmless, except against his ego, thus rousing his defensiveness.

Rick was exhausted; he hadn't even walked through the door yet and he was already done with this. He thought back to little Sophia, caught up in a world of hurt by the state of her parents' marriage, and he shivered at the thought of ever inflicting a different kind of damage onto his own child.

As inexcusable as it was, sooner rather than later, the tension between him and his wife would overflow and impact Carl's blissful childhood existence. Rick could feel it in his bones, the breaking point approaching. The day he would slip up as a Christian and disrespect his once beloved bride by calling her a fucking spiteful bitch. And Carl would hear him and be forever changed by it.

Unless he put a stop to it first.

There it was again, slithering across his mind. A shameful snake of a thought telling him to go against all he promised before God and a congregation of witnesses.

Divorce.

Rick shuddered at the thought, at losing his family, at bailing on them when things got tough. At ever seeing his son look back at him with weary, world worn eyes instead of the innocent, twinkling blue ones that lit up every time Rick walked through the door.

"Dad!"

"Hey there, champ," Rick yelled back, the cheer in his voice overcompensating for a guilt that sought to choke him. "Heard you had a story for me?"

Carl was twelve, but that didn't stop him from jumping into Rick's arms with a jubilant smile on his young face. He was overjoyed to see his father back so soon after his phone call; not bearing an ounce of ill will for Rick being away for so long in the first place. Rick clung to his son, his perfect little boy, grateful for the hero's welcome he knew he didn't deserve and knowing to cherish it whilst it lasted. Over Carl's shoulder, loomed Lori looking less than thrilled by her husband's return.

"Sorry I'm late," Rick mouthed to her, half expecting the apology not to take, but it did.

Lori Grimes simply shrugged her thin shoulders before leaving for their kitchen. A begrudging acceptance of the situation was all she could muster for him, and Rick immediately knew why: She had been hoping for another hour without him. Rick sighed mournfully.

How did they get here and how does it end?

"Okay dad, you can let go now," Carl said, interrupting Rick's thoughts regarding the dark state of his marriage. The not-quite teen playfully squirmed free from the man who continued to cling onto him, completely unaware of his new existence as a sad relic of a once happy marriage. Embarrassed, Rick quickly apologized and ushered his son to tell his tale.

"My piece got picked for the gallery! Everyone's coming to see it and I need you guys to be free on Thursday. This coming one not the next. At seven."

That was all Carl said but Rick was already lost.

"The what now?"

"At school," Carl said, sounding frustrated with his father's inability to extract the relevant details that made up this supposed good news from the excitable ramblings. Rolling his eyes impatiently, Carl started from the beginning.

"We have a new art teacher. Ms. Anthony."

"Yes, son, that I'm aware of," Rick said, unable to help himself but careful not to betray anything further regarding Michonne.

"Yeah she's from New York and so cool and different. Like waaay more interesting than Mrs. Randal. Man was she a pain! Dad, we were painting bowls of fruit over and over and over again. Things were that bad."

"Hey now, don't be so harsh on old Mrs. Randal, Carl. She's a kindly old woman."

"Yeah, but I'm glad she retired, because if I had to paint one more apple – I would've gladly had a stroke too!"

Rick shamefully chuckled at Mrs. Randal's expense. His son's declaration was undoubtedly dramatic as old Testament damnation. But he was glad to hear Michonne brought some much needed vigor to her new role and ditched the cumbersome curriculum of her predecessor. Back at school, he was never a fan of art and he had a sneaking suspicion the blame lay at Old Lady Randal's feet then too.

"Anyway, Ms. Anthony is awesome. We started a new art project two months ago and she promised if all do great job we'd get to display our work in our own gallery – like the Metropolitan, but right here at Henry Ellis!"

Rick clapped his hands right on cue, signalling to his son how incredibly impressed he was. And in all honesty, he was, especially with how fast Michonne was working to make her stamp on this town. She really was something special.

"And when did your school get a swanky new space for the display of art?"

Carl laughed heartily at the way his father continued to feign ignorance just for his amusement, and Rick grinned back, pleased to make his son's face beam.

"It'll only be for one evening. We get to turn the gym into one with movable screens to divide it up, and then lights on like stands, so people can really see the art. Oh and there will be snacks, for the guests – the moms and dads."

"Wow! And you're saying your piece got picked for this event? That's amazing."

Carl's body shifted uncomfortably at Rick's praise. "Well – we all get to display our work because it's a class thing," he confessed finally, for a moment looking slightly embarrassed at exaggerating his own importance.

"I'm sure your piece will be the best one there," Rick said, reassuring his son, as a parent would, but acutely aware that knowing Carl, he would be proven right. The kid had talent; he had been drawing on any and all surfaces since the day he was big enough to pick up his first crayon. It used to drive Rick and Lori nuts, trying to keep Carl's artistic sensibilities within the confines of a sketchpad, but as the years went on, Rick was glad they never did anything to stop him.

His father's praise had a reinvigorating effect on the boy, and Carl returned to gushing about the upcoming event.

"Ms. Anthony did say mine had real potential. She said I get to put my piece in the center spot because she was so impressed with it."

"That's my boy! Up top!"

Lori walked back into the hallway just in time to witness the celebratory high five between the Grimes men, and Rick was pleased to see her approval. They shared a quiet moment of pure parental pride, glad to shower their son with love, for he was a tribute to the heights they could achieve when their partnership worked.

"We're all so proud of you, sweety," said Lori.

Carl thanked his mother with a hug and it was just as welcoming a sight to Rick as his high-five had been to her. This was worth fighting for, Rick reminded himself, determined to etch this image into his mind for the next time he would be overcome with doubt.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Can I call Shane now that dad knows? You said I could tell him once I told dad."

Lori's face changed at Carl's request. There was an awkward pause before she answered with a tense smile on her face. "Sure baby."

"You know the number still?"

"Duh," Carl said sarcastically before correcting himself for fear of repercussions for his tone. "I mean yes, mom."

Lori sighed before laying out her terms. "Are you going to make sure to head straight up afterwards? Because I need you in your bed in fifteen minutes."

Carl happily agreed with his mother's request.

"Okay then, you can go call Shane," Lori said finally, dismissing Carl who dashed out the room the moment right after the first word and nod.

Left behind with his wife, Rick could feel the stillness in the air.

The mention of his best friend's name shouldn't have had this effect on them, and yet, Rick could feel something was hideously off. Lori looked back at him with brown uncertain eyes and Rick couldn't make sense of why. Or he didn't want to. He wanted to go back to the glorious picture of domestic bliss from mere moments ago.

"He expects us to attend this event. The both of us, together."

She spoke to him with none of that artificial sweetness she saved for him whenever Carl was in their presence.

"And Shane?" Rick regretted it as soon as he asked. His distressed heart cried out for him to stop pursuing this line of questioning.

"He said he'd ask him. I told him not to bother him," Lori said, arms folded over her chest a little too defensive to be casual.

Rick let out a small laugh. There was nothing funny about it. "Why Lori? He's family. Why shouldn't he attend his godson's art exhibition."

"Oh, don't Rick. Don't."

Lori turned on her heel, ready to retreat to the kitchen and leave the start of another argument. But Rick Grimes refused to be left behind.

"What, Lori? What is it that I am doing?" He demanded, following his wife into the kitchen and making sure to shut the door behind him.

Lori swung back around to face her husband, confronting him in a low angry whisper so as to not attract their son's attention. They were so well rehearsed in their bouts, they had specific modes. This was not to be one of their earth shattering "To hell with the neighbors, Carl is at school so bring your worst darling" clashes.

"This!" Lori hissed in a tactically low voice, carrying all the irritation or a much louder one. "You're making me feel bad for trying to spare you your feelings."

Rick let out an empty gasp to convey his utter surprise. "Since when? Also, what feelings?"

"It's not my fault that your son loves your best friend. You shouldn't have a problem with that!" Lori continued, serving up the outrage in tightly contained manner.

Again, none of this was making sense to Rick. He could barely follow the turn this conversation suddenly had taken.

"I don't have a problem with it, Lori," he said, answering honestly and somewhat calmly. "But you seem to. Why wasn't it okay for Carl to call his buddy Shane to tell him his good news? Why do you think that would bother me?"

Rick felt he made his question clear enough for his wife, and for a moment, with perhaps nowhere to hide, Lori Grimes was silenced.

He didn't relish in point scoring during arguments, especially when all he wanted was a sincere response. Lori seemed to agree with him. She ran her hands through her long, messy brown waves; her hair looking more and more frazzled these days to match the unkempt stubble on his chin. The toll of an unhappy home life was becoming apparent on their faces. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she finally answered.

"I don't know why, Rick, I don't know why anything bothers you anymore these days. It just does."

Rick bit his lip angrily at the disgraceful attempt at deflection.

"No Lori. You don't get that do that. Not this time."

The clatter of one unwashed pot against after that Rick sent it went flying into the sink shocked Lori for a moment. But then she let out a completely unironic cackle.

"Do what? Walk on eggshells?" Lori cried, barely able to contain her outrage pointing at her husband's behavior as another exhibit to enter into evidence.

Breathing heavily, Rick wiped the splash back of water droplets from his face. He wasn't angry, he told himself, knowing he was barely keeping it together.

"What's that? Missed my head?"

"Don't," Rick whispered the blood draining from his face.

She knew he would never but said it anyway.

How could she.

Needing a break after landing such a blow, Lori bowed over a little. Her hands resting on her knees and her face artfully hidden under a mess of dark hair instead of owning up to the cruelty of her comments. Rick could hear her sob a little, but was in no mood to comfort her.

"Fine. I'm the bad guy," he sighed, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. "What else is new?"

"No, I am. And I'll go on being the bad guy, Rick," Lori said, straightening up and staring Rick in the eye. She had a pathetic, exhausted look on her face but an iron will and a tone that matched. Lori had been done recharging her artilleries. "I'll be the bad guy. For caring about my husband. For wanting him not to be bothered at work until he's done. For making sure his son doesn't forget to tell his father news that matters first! A man he barely sees these days anyway!"

Rick took a step back, unprepared, he had been wounded by the accusation of neglect on his part.

"I know I've been busy," Rick admitted, feeling sorry for himself and his actions. This was an argument he had lost back in the car. There was no point in hiding that fact.

"You have," Lori replied, relentless in her criticism, not yet knowing she had overreached and Rick wasn't done.

"But that's not what's going on here," said Rick. He was ready to bring the argument back to his original point.

"And what is then Rick?" Lori asked.

After a pregnant pause, Rick decided to come out with it.

"You don't have to keep Carl from Shane."

Unless there is another reason.

But Rick was momentarily stunned into silence by his wife's speedy interruption. "Okay. I won't, but you don't have to keep forcing yourself to be here."

King of self-imposed amnesia, Rick Grimes ran with the subject change, no longer sure what he was getting at in the first place. Instead he decided that this would be the moment. One that called for a new kind of weapon – sincere openness.

"I'm not. Lori," he said softly, moving towards his wife slowly. "I want to be here, I want to be with my son."

Rick paused for a moment before adding the rest. "And I want to be with my wife, if she'll let me."

Lori did nothing to answer her husband's plea, flinching the moment her reached out to hold her hand. And it was enough for Rick to know that he was on his own in manning the scaffoldings that kept his marriage from falling. Lori would never leave him, but she would never stop trying to drive him out.

"I have to go check on Carl. Make sure he washed up before bed."

Both resigned to their fate for the only reason they could offer up, Lori made way towards the door.

Rick hesitated for a moment before calling out to his wife one more time.

"Lori?"

She didn't turn around to face him, but briefly stopped at the door regardless.

Never an inch.

Rick sighed and swallowed his true words for empty ones. "Tell him I'll be up in a minute to say goodn-."

She was gone before he had finished.

Rick waited until Lori returned downstairs before going up to see his son. He wolfed down the night's leftovers, unheated pasta straight from the plastic container in the fridge, before sprinting up the stairs and into Carl's room.

"Hey kiddo, you all tucked in?"

Carl groaned at his father's babying of him. Rick knew it must've looked strange having one parent enter the room, just as soon as the other left.

"You know I'm too old for tuck-ins dad."

Rick chuckled at his son's response. "Like heck you are."

"You can say hell."

Rick raised his eyebrows. "I know I can."

"But I can't," Carl grumbled, sinking further into his bed at the injustice.

"Yep and don't you forget it."

It was always a little disconcerting how quickly the boy in front of him changed. Less than an hour ago, he was flying into Rick's arms the way he always had. Here, they were embarrassing him at the mere thought of a tuck in and pushing his luck with curse words.

Rick wondered if Shane would let Carl swear around him. Maybe that's what made the kid idolize the carefree, cool cop when compared to stuffy straight and narrow old man. The thought irked him and led him down a rabbit hole he so desperately wished to avoid.

"Hey, by the way, what did Shane say when you called?"

"Not much. It was loud where he was but he said he would come."

The boy was downplaying how disappointed he was that his godfather didn't make a bigger deal about the news. But knowing his friend, Rick imagined the man was three beers in already and in the mood to do the kind of adult entertaining Carl's phone call was keeping him from.

It brought a small petty smile to his face; Carl may think the world of Shane and on the right day his godfather thought the same – but the boy only had one father and that was boring old Rick.

"Hey, proud of you son," Rick said, repeating himself but each time meaning it just the same. "Now I might not get the finer details of something as out there as art, but I know talent when I see it."

"Thanks," Carl replied with a look of genuine affection on his face for Rick's hammy, dorky dad act.

Rick looked at Carl's room, covered in a visual history of his son's artistic journey, from original comic book creations and creepy crawlers to sketches of friends, family and fellow townspeople. He had no idea where his son's artistic sensibilities had come from, it sure as hell didn't run in the Grimes family line. But unlike the men that came before him, Rick was supportive of his son's endeavour. Proud of his creative capabilities and his thoughtful, imaginative nature. As was Lori, and he was grateful to hear Michonne now too.

"So…Any hints as to what this masterpiece of yours is like?"

"You're just gonna have to wait until opening night, like everyone else."

"Wow, that's cold, son," Rick gasped, getting up from Carl's bed and stumbling to door in an exaggerated manner of a wounded soldier.

"Hey dad?" Rick heard Carl call out for him. He turned to face his son, completely serious and ready to attend to his needs. "Just don't make things weird for me at school."

Not knowing how to respond, Rick simply nodded before hitting the light switch off and leaving the room, his anxious mind wondering if Shane had received such a warning from the surly teen that was threatening to take his sweet son's place. Somehow, feeling every bit as wounded as he had pretended to be just a few moments ago, Rick Grimes knew the answer was no and all that did was make him want to take off his oldest friend's head with the dirty pot his wife thought was meant for her.

#fanfiction #richonne #twd #gimme: sinners and scapegoats #siancore

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